Storm is a triggered ability. You can counter it with nimble. With modern storm, you need to be careful though, because if they have remand, they can just remand the storm spell and try to cast it again if they have the mana.
Also, in case it ever comes up (because it is less known), you can counter Suspend cards with stifle as well.
Damping Sphere. You already have 3 Field of Ruin and 2 Alpine Moon for Tron (I am not going to get started on Alpine Moon), and you have Nimble Obstructionist, counter magic, and graveyard hate for Storm. IMO, I would add a negate effect over a dispel effect. Dispel is nice for winning the counter was, but negate is more versatile and can actually counter the planeswalkers. This is more important against UW. Also, negate effects are useful against Tron and Storm, so you aren't losing a whole lot on that front.
We can compare new Bolas to TKS all we want, but it doesn't really mean much unless we start warping our manabase to run TKS. More relevant question is when do we like Bolas over Pia and Kiraan Nalaar, the go to 4-drop for most URx players for a while?
@TheAlexGnan: Is that 64% game win rate or match win rate? Either way, 64% in a competitive environment (e.g. competitive league, modern challenge, scg IQ) is a pretty good win rate. I use those events as examples because there is a very high chance each match involves a tiered decked played by a good player. Although people can spike from time to time to do well in a tournament, if you factor in the times they don't perform, they usually land around that area. 50% is literally an average showing.
In the mirror match, you have to be especially astute at figuring out your role, figuring out your game plan, obscuring information, and sussing out information about your opponent's hand. If you just play the game passively, you are going to fold more to variance. I think a good example of how you can leverage player skill and experience in a control mirror is from a SCG Finals Round between two Jeskai decks at the beginning of the year. Here is the link: https://youtu.be/KxFyscRZ1ko?t=23m17s
In game 2, Kevin Jones, who is a good player but shifted to Jeskai control recently, landed a turn 2 Search for Azcanta, on the play, against Ben Nikolich, who only plays Jeskai Control. At that moment, Ben knew his role and made a game plan that deprived his opponent of the ability to utilize Azcanta, until he could even the tables.
Sure sometimes your opponent might have advantage based on going first/drawing hot. But outside the outliers, assuming you have close in power hands, the games should be fairly skill intensive.
I was going to table the request until next week, but given the comment on meta: Does anyone have any good/recent SB guides. If not, should we as a forum try and put down a foundation?
The Nimble Obstructionists have not been bad. Great in the fairer match ups, at the very least making your opponent reconsider every fetch/activation. I also like how I can cycle it when I can read my opponent for having lots of removal in hand. Shockingly, a gatherer search shows it and V Clique are sadly tiers above other flash creatures (sorry Venser). V Clique's legendariness can be a drawback in multiples, and sometimes it just force cycles an opponent's card and dies to the removal they haven't been able to use yet. I usually side out Nimble against Affinity. I wish the cycle was just 1U since they continue to refuse to release Baleful Strix in Modern.
I dont love Collective Brutality main deck since for a lot of decks, the instants/sorceries are ancillary to their game plan, as opposed to planeswalkers (e.g. Lili, Teferi), artifacts, and enchantments (e.g. Blood Moon).
I guess the removal debate also depends on what else you got going on. I stick with 3 K Command because it can be clunky sometimes, especially when you haven't drawn a creature to recur, and run Serum Visions instead of Thought Scour. I also run 3 Fields of Ruin so man lands are less of a concern.
How are people feeling on Tasigur? I have not run him in a while since he's easily hateable now with all the Paths, Lilis, GY hate, and reflector mage around, but wanted to check if people disagree strongly.
I have seen U/W decks running more mana leaks because it's harder for them to fill up their graveyards for Logic Knots and Azcanta flips.
For removal, I have never been hot on Dismember. Yes, you can kill a Hazoret sometimes, but it hurts a lot and you are essentially including 1 card in your mainboard to deal with with 1-2 sideboard cards from opponents. Dismember can be awkward again some Goyfs and Death Shadows, cannot kill Titans, and feels bad against the hyper aggro decks. I would rather just run a 3rd fatal push or if I think people are going big with creatures/blood moon, a third terminate.
I have been liking the 4/2/2 split, with 3 K-Command and some counters as additional support. I have tried the 3rd Fatal Push/Terminate and while I am never overwhelmingly disappointed with it, it is bad enough in control matchups and Tron such that I try to avoid it. For the same reason, I don't like including sweepers in the mainboard.
My current struggle is debating whether to go up 25 lands, and if so, what to cut.
I am thinking about going up to from two to three Search for Azcanta. Anyone have any actual experience with running a set? I will report back regardless.
@Gods_Shadow: how much do you value the Liliana of the Veil in your build? I have been digging LtlH, but have been hesitant to embrace the Veil. I guess the deciding factor for me is that my build is less proactive.
Yeah. I understand that. The argument for Leyline is that against those unfair graveyard matches, most of the time you just cant keep a good grixis control 7 and need to mulligan to hate. And for decks like Hollow One, Living End, and Dredge, one piece of hate is not going to help most of the time; rather you need have multiple forms of hate in your opening hand. Talking about topping Leyline later in the game does not really apply when you likely arent making it past turn 1-2 draws, and your opponent has already abused the graveyard. So instead of hoping to chain hate cards, why not just mull to a game winning card in those match ups.
Put differently, if you accept that Surgical isn't that great against Tron or non-graveyard based combo (e.g. look at @Tiemuuu's sboard plan against Storm), is it worth switching Surgical and Nihil Spellbomb to Leyline if Hollow One, Storm, Living End, and Dredge continue to creep up in meta-share? (The counterarguments I can think of are hyper-geometric distributions, overvaluing the impact of Leyline, meta is not that bad, etc.) And as a corollary, do people feel Surgical is a good sideboard card insofar that it converts unfavorable matchups to fair or good ones? (Sure it may help when 1 or 2 matches from time to time, but if we are just converting a 25% match-up to a 40%, why not just devote the sideboard slot to something more effective, in the same way some people eschew burn hate, for example?)
I actually have been pretty unimpressed with Anger and Surgical as sideboard options. For Anger, it's usually boarded in versus the go-wide decks like Humans or Elves, or against the graveyard decks. Against the wide-strategies, it usually just gets used as a 1-for-1 or a 2-for-1 at best, because the deck has so much removal and people play around it. It could just as easily be another value card like Electrolyze 90% of the time.
I am also relatively more conservative with siding in Surgical Extraction. I join in the opinion that it's the most over-sideboarded card in Modern. The only deck that I bring it in against that doesn't run graveyard cards is Tron, and even that is a concession to me having a lot of chafe. Most combo decks you can just rely on your countermagic to keep them in check. Tron is now on the downswing due to Dampening Sphere being in more sideboards. The only matchup where Lelyline is probably worse is Storm, since they can bounce Leyline before going off. I also am running Serum Visions over Thought Scour so there is less incentive to keep Surgical.
Also, in case it ever comes up (because it is less known), you can counter Suspend cards with stifle as well.
In other news, Grixis Control deck in this weekends Modern Challenge ran Nicol Bolas in a standard Grixis Control Tasigur Build (Nicol Bolas took the Vendi Clique/Pyro flex slot). https://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/archive/mtgo-standings/modern-challenge-2018-07-15
https://youtu.be/KxFyscRZ1ko?t=23m17s
In game 2, Kevin Jones, who is a good player but shifted to Jeskai control recently, landed a turn 2 Search for Azcanta, on the play, against Ben Nikolich, who only plays Jeskai Control. At that moment, Ben knew his role and made a game plan that deprived his opponent of the ability to utilize Azcanta, until he could even the tables.
Sure sometimes your opponent might have advantage based on going first/drawing hot. But outside the outliers, assuming you have close in power hands, the games should be fairly skill intensive.
***********************************
SPOILER FROM M19
https://imgur.com/a/RzfFRzq
***********************************
I dont love Collective Brutality main deck since for a lot of decks, the instants/sorceries are ancillary to their game plan, as opposed to planeswalkers (e.g. Lili, Teferi), artifacts, and enchantments (e.g. Blood Moon).
I guess the removal debate also depends on what else you got going on. I stick with 3 K Command because it can be clunky sometimes, especially when you haven't drawn a creature to recur, and run Serum Visions instead of Thought Scour. I also run 3 Fields of Ruin so man lands are less of a concern.
How are people feeling on Tasigur? I have not run him in a while since he's easily hateable now with all the Paths, Lilis, GY hate, and reflector mage around, but wanted to check if people disagree strongly.
For removal, I have never been hot on Dismember. Yes, you can kill a Hazoret sometimes, but it hurts a lot and you are essentially including 1 card in your mainboard to deal with with 1-2 sideboard cards from opponents. Dismember can be awkward again some Goyfs and Death Shadows, cannot kill Titans, and feels bad against the hyper aggro decks. I would rather just run a 3rd fatal push or if I think people are going big with creatures/blood moon, a third terminate.
I have been liking the 4/2/2 split, with 3 K-Command and some counters as additional support. I have tried the 3rd Fatal Push/Terminate and while I am never overwhelmingly disappointed with it, it is bad enough in control matchups and Tron such that I try to avoid it. For the same reason, I don't like including sweepers in the mainboard.
My current struggle is debating whether to go up 25 lands, and if so, what to cut.
https://www.mtggoldfish.com/deck/732512#paper
Put differently, if you accept that Surgical isn't that great against Tron or non-graveyard based combo (e.g. look at @Tiemuuu's sboard plan against Storm), is it worth switching Surgical and Nihil Spellbomb to Leyline if Hollow One, Storm, Living End, and Dredge continue to creep up in meta-share? (The counterarguments I can think of are hyper-geometric distributions, overvaluing the impact of Leyline, meta is not that bad, etc.) And as a corollary, do people feel Surgical is a good sideboard card insofar that it converts unfavorable matchups to fair or good ones? (Sure it may help when 1 or 2 matches from time to time, but if we are just converting a 25% match-up to a 40%, why not just devote the sideboard slot to something more effective, in the same way some people eschew burn hate, for example?)
I am also relatively more conservative with siding in Surgical Extraction. I join in the opinion that it's the most over-sideboarded card in Modern. The only deck that I bring it in against that doesn't run graveyard cards is Tron, and even that is a concession to me having a lot of chafe. Most combo decks you can just rely on your countermagic to keep them in check. Tron is now on the downswing due to Dampening Sphere being in more sideboards. The only matchup where Lelyline is probably worse is Storm, since they can bounce Leyline before going off. I also am running Serum Visions over Thought Scour so there is less incentive to keep Surgical.