Running Field of Ruin is not something I am against in a Control List. Take Nikolich's Open winning list for example, with 2x Search for Azcanta and 1x Nahiri, the Harbinger, the 1x Desolate Lighthouse becomes a bit redundant with all that other MD selection. Swapping it for a FoR is easy. Then for a 2nd copy we could go +1 FoR -1 spell or -1 dual land +1 FoR. I think the opportunity cost is low for 2 copies and the potential utility high. There is even an argument that 25 lands is a good place to be in control deck wanting to slam a 6-drop fatcaster on time.
Running MD FoR increases the value of any sideboard land hate you run as well, since it would contribute to a certain 'critical mass' that just 2 or 3 copies of Spreading Seas or Molten Rain (for example) in the SB can't so on it's own. 3 seas and 2 FoR though, and who knows, maybe g2 and g3 against tron goes up 10% points? Maybe it doesn't... but the card is good, so it deserves a test IMO.
Control lists need more outs to Big Mana than Tempo, as well, since you can't just t3 Geist + Burn Face + Pray.
Totally agree. It was also "painful" to watch Nicolich and Jones fighting each other's Azcanta with Cryptics to maybe prevent one or two activations.
I caught most of that stream as well, great stuff as usual.
Have to agree with Borzi, EE sounds good in theory but it looked terrible every single time he drew it. It got locked out by Stony multiple times, and would have been better as a sweeper in almost every time. I think Settle or wrath is a fine sideboard card in that slot.
Where I disagree is on the 3 fetchland basis. It just seems absurd to me. Some of us are considering playing 5th and even 6th fetches because of the interaction with stuff like Logic Knot, Azcanta and Crucible of worlds, not to mention the ability to play around blood moon. It's nice to play less painful mana, and have less dead cards going super late, but the later can be built around in better ways than cutting Flooded Strand. I would certainly cut all the mystic gates, glacial fortresses and even a Celestial Colonnade to add extra fetchables before ever touching a flooded strand if I though that was a real concern.
That's a really bad idea from my experience - I tried facilitating more than two logic knot using fetchlands before and it's just way more damage than you want to be taking. When the games go as long as they do, lightning bolt is a serious threat in the late game and every point of damage that you deal to yourself ends up being relevant. Furthermore, it increases the situations where you are forced to shock fetch more than you might realise. It also doesn't actually have a very high impact on delve / flipping azcanta to make it worth it. Playing four fetchlands is of course, completely reasonable, but going for more than that is not that great.
I had the same problems a bunch of times. Sometimes I kept drawing fetches and had no more lands to fetch for, and sometimes I had to Bolt myself to search for my Hallowed Fountain in order to cast a timely Verdict, Cryptic or Gideon.
I believe I solved the problem by cutting the Mystic Gate for a Prairie Stream. I have been enjoying it a lot. Now I have one more fetchable land, and it easily enters the battlefield untapped by turn 3 or 4 without doing me any damage. If I feel like I'm not gonna need an untapped dual land or I won't have 2 basics on the field to make it enter untapped, I just fetch for it at my opponent's end step.
I feel like it's better than Irrigated Farmland. If I had to cut one, I'd probably go for the Farmland. But I'm keeping both for now.
What do you guys think? Anyone else have a list that they would be willing 100% to register for a GP if it were tomorrow?
I think you're making a mistake if you're not at least considering Vendilion Clique. Also 4th Celestial Colonnade is surely core and you can consider the GQ or the 5th fetchland for the flex slot. 24 lands has always been good for me but I think there's not much point in discussing that at least among people who have played the deck as much as we have.
Fortunately I have an extra week until my next GP (Lyon) so I'll look forward to your report. Then again I might also audible to UR Pyromancer, I'm a big sucker for any deck that has Ancestral Vision.
The 4th colonnade is a core card for sure, I'm just toying with an inspiration by Levy casting condemn on his own colonnade. My logic is that in the match-ups where we need colonnade to win, condemn is probably bad and the match-ups where we need Condemn, once we've stabilized, we are going to win regardless of how many colonnades we have and the ETB tapped matters a lot (vs humans for example). So if one were to run 2x condemn main, cutting a colonnade is reasonable because Condemn acts as extra colonnades and life against control, sort of.
As far as Clique is concerned, I'm not convinced that it's a maindeck card, despite every pro playing at least 1 copy. It's a great SB card but the ETB isn't worth a full card outside of the combo matches, and neither is 3/1 flyer in a deck that isn't looking to put on pressure. I think players are winning despite Clique, not because of it, much in the same way as the player who played 1 Ojutai.
I agree with you. Vendilion Clique without the Burn spells and the higher creature count that Jeskai has (Spell Quellers, more copies of Snapcasters and eventually some Geists), seems a little awkward to me. Also, I feel like on the current metagame, Vendilion is good agaisnt decks that we already are good against, except for Storm and maybe some U-Controls (not all of them, too).
BloodyRabbit actually pin-pointed the reason why I don't like snare in my UW lists - you need to have multiples for it to be excellent and increase the chances of having it when it is actually preferable, which is the early game. This is why I don't want to run it, snare is dead or low impact in a considerable amount of matchups (lantern being the biggest offender), counters increasingly less relevant spells as the game progresses (dark confidant isn't nearly as intimidating on turn four onwards as he is on turn two) and thus personally, won't be packing any for the next few events.
I think that the same can be stated for Ancestral Vision. You have to run a lot of them, to increase the chance of having one in your opening hand. But the more you play them, more likely you're drawing one of them by turn 3 or later on the game, when they're essencially a dead card. IMO, that's a card that must be played in lists with heavy loot (as Jeskai Nahiris, for example) or with As Foretold. I did play AVs on my Jeskai Nahiris, and even on this deck, I felt they were too clunky and too binary. I had to have them by turn 2 at most, otherwise they were going to be irrelevant on most of the games.
Spell Snare is similar in the sense that it's a lot better on the first turns. I did like the card when Bitterblossom, Tarmogoyf, Dark Confidant, Goryo's Vengeance and Voice of Resurgence were more played. Now that those cards are very rarely seen, at least on my field, I don't like it that much anymore. Green decks seem to be just jumping the 2 CMC curve now. They play a dork turn 1 and a 3 CMC threat on turn 2. It's also bad against the most popular Aggro decks on my field due to Cavern of Souls and Aether Vial (Humans and Merfolks). Grishoalbrand has been kicked away form the format by DS, I assume. Jund is not played oftenly now, because it loses hard to the Big Mana Decks.
I used to play 2 of them on my Jeskai and more oftenly than I consider acceptable, it was just a dead card. My opponent was doing something dangerous, I wanted something proactive, a generic counterspell or a removal and it was neither. It's still great vs Burn, Storm, Affinity and U-Controls, and the first two are though match-ups. But I'd rather play something less powerful against those two decks, but less narrow, like a Negate, for example.
Could you guys see search for azcanta being in jeskai nahiri, the only card it wouldn't be able to hit is emrakul and lands, are there any thoughts on it, I know nahiri isn't really played but i'm a big fan of it
Not really, it messes you up if you see Emrakul on the top with search. You either mess up your GY or your hand.
I actually like Azcanta on this deck. Before SfA flips, it helps you make sure you don't draw Emrakul. Sure. It'll mess up your graveyard in the process, but that's a risk you assume when you play Jeskai Nahiri, in the first place.
You would have to discard Emrakul at some point anyways too, so I don't see much damage here. The only problem would be if you see Emrakul on top and have a well stocked graveyard, but in that case your Azcanta should be flipped already. You might draw Emrakul as well and plan to discard it later if your graveyard is that relevant.
Once Azcanta is flipped you have a great card advantage engine that won't draw you Emrakul, which is great.
I hardly lose to Humans on Jeskai. On UW Control I do have a real hard time with them, because I basically play 4 Paths, 2 D-Spheres and 3 Verdicts. I hardly have one of each on my hand. He plays Freebooter, takes my lone Path away, than plays Meddling Mage for Verdict and now I just have to pray I draw a D-Sphere, another Path or just lose hard. They eventually play more than one Meddling Mage or Phantasmal Image, naming Path or D-Sphere and than I probably lose.
On Jeskai I find it much easier. I have Bolts, Helixes, Electrolyzes, Verdicts, Paths and 4 Snappys (that might trade with Meddling Mage in combat, and cast a removal). He usually can't lock all my answers.
I think the most dangerous card is Thalia's Liutenant.
Granted, that's a match-up where Wall of Omens and Spell Snare really shine. I see most lists cutting all the Walls - and I don't get it, cause it's seriously one of your best spells against URx strategies: they will win only when they're able to chain Bolt-Snap-Bolt, and having a free block on Snapcaster - instead of Pathing it for the opposite of value - it's crucial in our strategy against them. Path are really relevant against Quellers, and remember that you can cast Supreme Verdict at istant speed if they queller it. It *ins't* a good idea to queller a Supreme Verdict, overall. Against Jeskai, anyway, it's better to cut the white mana. Because we'll getter their Colonnades, and - mostly - because it blocks Path to Exile on little Gideon.
We ought to play more than six counterspells. If we're, IMHO that's the wrong way to approach this metagame. Having 2 Knot, 2 Negate, 2 Snare and 3 Cryptic felt fantastic all the day. And Path shouldn't really go on their Snappy, that's basically it. D-Sphere isn't clunky at all, as it is another way to dispose of multiple Quellers after absorbing a Path. Their Path, however, are very limited because both color screw (again, we should focus on white) and multiple targets. They don't run land destruction, so we have 4 Colonnades, 3 Gideons and Walls. It's a handful of spells for them to handle, if they intend to race.
Sorry... didn't reply to your first point at all...
About playing that much counterspells, I don't know if I'd better do it. Might try it. But... on my Jeskai I used to play 2 Spell Snares and recently cut 1. It shines sometimes, specially on these Control Mirrors, but a lot of times it feels useless on my hand. I think it's really good vs Storm, Burn and Control Mirrors (which are pretty relevant matches), but I think it's almost useless against Tron, Valakut, Humans, Merfolks, Company and Ponza.
It also feels bad to mediocre against EldraTron, DS and DNT... so... I don't really see it as shiny as it was sometime ago. I think it's very risky to play 2 copies of it on the main deck. I could try to make room for 1, but I think playing 2 of them probably makes my match-up significantly worse vs a lot of relevant decks of the meta.
I don't think I can afford to play more than one Knot either. I oftenly find the single one I play to be ineffective because I hardly have more than 2 or 3 cards on my graveyard until turn 4. If I'd like to run more Knots, I think I'd probably need to run more fetches.
I could try to make room for more counterspells anyways. Maybe some Mana Leaks... but I don't know. I'm not sure that would be a good pay off. Could be wrong, though.
Granted, that's a match-up where Wall of Omens and Spell Snare really shine. I see most lists cutting all the Walls - and I don't get it, cause it's seriously one of your best spells against URx strategies: they will win only when they're able to chain Bolt-Snap-Bolt, and having a free block on Snapcaster - instead of Pathing it for the opposite of value - it's crucial in our strategy against them. Path are really relevant against Quellers, and remember that you can cast Supreme Verdict at istant speed if they queller it. It *ins't* a good idea to queller a Supreme Verdict, overall. Against Jeskai, anyway, it's better to cut the white mana. Because we'll getter their Colonnades, and - mostly - because it blocks Path to Exile on little Gideon.
We ought to play more than six counterspells. If we're, IMHO that's the wrong way to approach this metagame. Having 2 Knot, 2 Negate, 2 Snare and 3 Cryptic felt fantastic all the day. And Path shouldn't really go on their Snappy, that's basically it. D-Sphere isn't clunky at all, as it is another way to dispose of multiple Quellers after absorbing a Path. Their Path, however, are very limited because both color screw (again, we should focus on white) and multiple targets. They don't run land destruction, so we have 4 Colonnades, 3 Gideons and Walls. It's a handful of spells for them to handle, if they intend to race.
Well... most lists don't run that much counterspells as far as I know, and mine doesn't as well. 2 Snares is a beating against Jeskais, but most lists don't run any, and few ones run one single copy. Most lists also play only one Knot, because we usually don't feed our graveyard very well.
D-Sphere is clunky against them IMO because it costs 3, which is more than most of their answers to it, it will likely try to answer something that costs less than itself, it's likely not removing more than one creature, since they hardly have more than one of each creature on the battlefield and is Sorcery Speed. Not to mention they probably got some value of the creature we're trying to answer, in the first place. So... it's a really bad card against them IMO.
Gideon is good if we can resolve him. But since we have so few ways to force them to tap out, I don't think we'll have an easy time resolving one, unless our opponent precipitates himself and taps out for some reason. Unless we manage to draw more counterspells than our opponent, or they just run out of them, I think we won't resolve Gideon easily.
I agree with you Path shouldn't target Snapcaster, but I feel like I have to do it a lot of times on this match-up, because I don't play any other cheap removal spell as most UW Control players do. Once they have a Snapcaster on the field, they're probably Pathing the wall away so they keep pressure. Now what would you do? Let the Snapcaster attack you sometimes until you can find another wall, fiercely try to fight over the Path on the wall, try to resolve a D-Sphere to remove Snappy, try to kill Snappy with Verdict (and give him a good opportunity to Cryptic bounce Snappy), try to slam a Gideon hoping you can win a counterwar with 3 less mana, or do you Path the Snappy? They're all bad options. I usually go for the Path route.
I'm not really sure about trying to keep them off white mana. It could be better. But I'm not sure. Although Colonnade is a real threat, I feel like on this match we usually are more afraid of the red spells than the white ones. Could be wrong though, because if you manage to resolve a Gideon, cutting him off of Path is big deal. But I never have an easy time cutting them off of red mana, so probably not much easier to deny them white mana.
Lately I only played against the Jeskai Flash version of the deck, both the one with Geist and the one with Azcanta. Well, I'm 4-0. I don't have any recent experience against Jeskai Control (the Nikolich list) but against Jeskai Flash we have simply more relevant spells. They are on 8 (EIGHT) burn spells in their maindeck, and sometimes you'll be on the verge of being burned out... except, you should be able to win most of the counterwars, and Gideon of the Trials usually wins the match-up alone (except if you swing with it when tapped out). Granted, that's a match-up where Wall of Omens and Spell Snare really shine. I see most lists cutting all the Walls - and I don't get it, cause it's seriously one of your best spells against URx strategies: they will win only when they're able to chain Bolt-Snap-Bolt, and having a free block on Snapcaster - instead of Pathing it for the opposite of value - it's crucial in our strategy against them. Path are really relevant against Quellers, and remember that you can cast Supreme Verdict at istant speed if they queller it. It *ins't* a good idea to queller a Supreme Verdict, overall. Against Jeskai, anyway, it's better to cut the white mana. Because we'll getter their Colonnades, and - mostly - because it blocks Path to Exile on little Gideon.
4-5 months ago I remember being on a crusade against most players because they ran too little CA, cutting Sphinx's Revelation and even shaving one Jace. Nowdays, I don't get how we can afford all that space JUST for CA spells. Two Azcanta, two Jace, Sphinx... but shaving useful cantrips (I mean, come on, Wall of Omens it's at its best since a while) and running only 5-6 counterspells. This won't work. It's obvious that you will have trouble against many strategies, that way. About Cryptic Command: I'll play the fourth before even considering shaving one. For me it's been 90% of the time the best spell in the deck. I also tend to shave them in postboard games more than most, simply because when they are an hinderance you can just cut all of them (like, against Stubborn Denial archetypes). And I would probably play the tenth cantrip before adding an Azcanta. Today I gave it a try again, and I was very disappointed by it. It feels nothing like as in Esper.
Concerning UR Breach. Yes, maindeck it's very tough for us. They are on the "usual" Blue Moon strategy + TTB combo, and they run a lot of cheap counterspells (Snare, Dispel) + Blood Moon AND Snapcaster AND Cryptic. Game two it's much better, because we also bring in cheap counterspells, and evn Disdainful Stroke recycles well here, while they have to assemble the combo every time. Remember that, if they didn't cast TTB in your EOT but in their main phase, it's usually better to make their TTB resolve and then tap/draw the Emrakul before combact. They will spend two cards, that way.
Well... I disagree with somethings here. I'm not really sure we have more relevant spells. I think we probably have more impactful and powerful spells, but most of them are Sorcery Speed and cost more mana, therefore are much harder to resolve. They usually play more counterspells than us as well. Most lists play 3 Knots, 4 Quellers, 3~4 Cryptics, 4 Snappys, and eventually some random 1~2 slots of Mana Leak, Remand, Spell Snare, Negate, etc. We usually play something around 1 Knot, 2 Mana Leak/Negate, 3 Cryptics, 2~3 Snappys and eventually 1 Snare/Leak/Negate. So... I can't really see us winning most counterwars. I can see it happening if we manage to stop our opponent's early aggression to a point where we get one of our Card Advantage sources rolling, but it doesn't seems easy to do, since they almost never tap out, and they usually have more counterspells.
Surely, Queller can be answered by our Paths, but we might need to spend some of them on Snappys/Vendilions to make it through to the late game, and they are our only spot removals. Unless we have a Wall of Omens and they don't remove it, what seems unlikely since they usually run 4 Paths as well, we'll probably be forced to Path some Snappys/Vendilions, or play clunky D-Spheres or Verdicts on them. Either way, we're likely opening space for his Quellers and Geists.
At least in my experience, it didn't really matter that much that my spells were more powerful. They just had more efficient answers and threats most of the times. Azcanta is probably our best bet, but it takes a lot of time until it starts gaining advantage, and it does cost 4 mana to activate, what is really relevant against an "all Flash" deck. Even if we activate it at his end step, he might just fire off some Burns/Snapcasters if it's relevant enough.
On my experience, we're unfavoured against Jeskai Tempo. They usually don't rush a Geist into our Verdicts. They'll probably just keep pressuring us with Snapcasters + Burns and Vendilions, eventually Spell Quellers. And since we play a very low spot removal count (basically, only the 4 Paths), every one of these is a really annoying and dangerous threat. The results are I'm oftenly forced to try Gideons and D-Spheres into counterspells, or play Verdicts to deal with smaller threats. Than they play Geist, eventually with Queller back-up. I oftenly can't kill a Queller that ate a Verdict as well. I just feel very clunky against them as well.
Against the Control version I haven't played the match so oftenly from the UW side, but I have played it a bunch of times from the Jeskai side. When I played UWs with my Jeskai, I always felt favoured. Not only I had Burn spells, but I had much more powerful Instant Speed plays. So... in my experience, it's probably not an easy match. My Jeskai deck was not the same Nycolich played though. But... it had the same core.
So my feelings about this are: if we let him play Snapcasters + Burns, we'll probably be forced to try to resolve a clunky Sorcery Speed answer like D-Sphere, Gideon3 or Verdict and that'll give him opportunities to play bigger threats on the following turn. That could happen because we play very little creature spot removal (again... only the 4 Paths). We'll oftenly have to play Verdicts to kill one or two Snapcasters, which opens good opportunities for them to play a Cryptic to bounce Snappy + draw, or let the Snapcaster die, and than try to smash in a Nahiri, a medium sized Secure the Wastes with counter back-up or a Gearhulk, for example. Unless we draw a lot of Paths, which is not a great answer for Snapcaster, anyways, we're probably gonna be on this kind of situation. Because of that, I think that Wall of Omens is surprisingly good on this match. On Nycolich's Jeskai it could not happen though, because he plays only 3 Snappys, 3 Bolts and no Vendilion main deck.
Keeping him off red is a good plan, but it's not so easy, because they have a good amount of red producing lands, and they have a lot of fetch lands, which we can't hit before they have an opportunity to play at least two red spells, and they don't really need to play so much red spells to pressure us. If they're able to inflict 8~9 damage, we're already on a point that a Snapcaster or Vendilion Clique can be real threats. After they done some damage with a red source, they can play a fetch land and keep it on the battlefield for as long as he wants, and only crack it when they're able to fire at least 2 more burn spells on our face. We can eat the Burns and try to outgrind them, but I always feel I can't reliably outgrind anyone without resolving some of my PWs and give him the opportunity to Cryptic them.
I think the way to win from the UW side is probably with the lands/mana denial plan and with Azcanta. We can deal with his Colonnades and Azcantas better than they can deal with ours. So... probably the best way to beat them would be to try to resolve an early Azcanta, IMO. We might me able to keep him of red as well and since we have more basics, we're probably have more mana available at some point of the game, which could balance the fact that our spells are more clunky and mana intensive in general. Well... I feel it's probably gonna be a tough match anyways. I'd say that's probably around 50/50 or 45/55. But I don't have much experience playing the match, specially from the UW side.
What's the best plan vs Jeskais? I find this match to be hard, because they have a lot of powerful Instant Speed plays with Snapcasters + Burns. I always feel my deck very clunky against them.
About these plans of playing GotT, embleming and protecting him until opponent decks out vs Controls... don't you have problems with the Time Running out? On MTGO it could be less of a problem, since if you play fastly, your opponent might time out first, but on IRL at seems a big issue on playing this strategy.
I play 2 Azcantas, 1 Jace, and 1 Rev, but I do play a Gideon, Ally of Zendikar as a 5th CA source. I like him, because he increases my chances against Burn and some Aggros when I can manage to emblem GotT, and they have a really tough time trying to beat him as a 4 loyalty walker that constantly creates 2/2 blockers. He also forces Aggro opponents to over commit to the board into Verdicts. He's very good on Control Mirrors too because he constantly keeps pressure on the field. He feels as awkward as Jace to cast vs some combos, but he closes the game really fast if needed, specially when you know your opponent is not playing PtEs or Dismembers.
Do you usually concede to stone rain?
They will almost never cast worldbreaker on t3 (and they can't cast ulamog t3).
There is a very good chance you'll be able to disrupt their lands in the first couple of turns, and if you can continue to counter/path their threats and make land drops, you'll be fine.
You may often counter/path ulamog or worldbreaker and still lose a land, but thats usually ok. You don't need 10 lands to win.
Stone Rain can be countered, doesn't destroy unflipped Azcanta, Spreading Seas, D-Spheres, and most important, it doesn't 3 for 1 me while it searches for something that'll likely 3~4 for 1 me.
After reading your last two posts I think I've identified your problem; You're far too concerned with O-stone because you think you're the beatdown.
O-stone isn't a spell that matters, and it should never hit anything relevant unless they topdeck it. Don't offer them anything to the O-stone except Spreading Seas. As you said, they usually won't pop the stone until they have a good target for it (other than seas) so you can play the sit and stare game for as long as you like; we are the better control deck. You aren't the beatdown, ever. You talk about the problem with proactive lines, and I agree, if you start dropping spheres, gideons, azcanta, you're going to get whooped because as soon as one spell resolves it starts a chain reaction (Ulamog kills sphere, sphere unlocks karn, karn kills azcanta etc). Again, this is going to be a much harder role to assume if you aren't running mana leak (which should only be hitting 7+cmc cards, btw).
Try to approach it that way, I learned it from Ben Hill, who had a record of like 20-3 against traditional tron. I watched him stream a lot a few months back and since then I adopted his Seas/Ruin/GQ list and approach to the match. Since then my record is somewhere near the same % wise. The match can just be a bye for you.
Well... I'll try that approach than. Always believed the Tron player had the inevitability. Are you sure we can survive when he starts casting World Breakers + Sanctum into Ulamogs?
I play the 2nd Negate instead of the Mana Leak, and on this match-up I can't see Leak being better. I'd rather answer his creatures with Path, and Negate is better vs anything else through the entire game.
Totally agree. It was also "painful" to watch Nicolich and Jones fighting each other's Azcanta with Cryptics to maybe prevent one or two activations.
I had the same problems a bunch of times. Sometimes I kept drawing fetches and had no more lands to fetch for, and sometimes I had to Bolt myself to search for my Hallowed Fountain in order to cast a timely Verdict, Cryptic or Gideon.
I believe I solved the problem by cutting the Mystic Gate for a Prairie Stream. I have been enjoying it a lot. Now I have one more fetchable land, and it easily enters the battlefield untapped by turn 3 or 4 without doing me any damage. If I feel like I'm not gonna need an untapped dual land or I won't have 2 basics on the field to make it enter untapped, I just fetch for it at my opponent's end step.
I feel like it's better than Irrigated Farmland. If I had to cut one, I'd probably go for the Farmland. But I'm keeping both for now.
I agree with you. Vendilion Clique without the Burn spells and the higher creature count that Jeskai has (Spell Quellers, more copies of Snapcasters and eventually some Geists), seems a little awkward to me. Also, I feel like on the current metagame, Vendilion is good agaisnt decks that we already are good against, except for Storm and maybe some U-Controls (not all of them, too).
I think that the same can be stated for Ancestral Vision. You have to run a lot of them, to increase the chance of having one in your opening hand. But the more you play them, more likely you're drawing one of them by turn 3 or later on the game, when they're essencially a dead card. IMO, that's a card that must be played in lists with heavy loot (as Jeskai Nahiris, for example) or with As Foretold. I did play AVs on my Jeskai Nahiris, and even on this deck, I felt they were too clunky and too binary. I had to have them by turn 2 at most, otherwise they were going to be irrelevant on most of the games.
Spell Snare is similar in the sense that it's a lot better on the first turns. I did like the card when Bitterblossom, Tarmogoyf, Dark Confidant, Goryo's Vengeance and Voice of Resurgence were more played. Now that those cards are very rarely seen, at least on my field, I don't like it that much anymore. Green decks seem to be just jumping the 2 CMC curve now. They play a dork turn 1 and a 3 CMC threat on turn 2. It's also bad against the most popular Aggro decks on my field due to Cavern of Souls and Aether Vial (Humans and Merfolks). Grishoalbrand has been kicked away form the format by DS, I assume. Jund is not played oftenly now, because it loses hard to the Big Mana Decks.
I used to play 2 of them on my Jeskai and more oftenly than I consider acceptable, it was just a dead card. My opponent was doing something dangerous, I wanted something proactive, a generic counterspell or a removal and it was neither. It's still great vs Burn, Storm, Affinity and U-Controls, and the first two are though match-ups. But I'd rather play something less powerful against those two decks, but less narrow, like a Negate, for example.
I actually like Azcanta on this deck. Before SfA flips, it helps you make sure you don't draw Emrakul. Sure. It'll mess up your graveyard in the process, but that's a risk you assume when you play Jeskai Nahiri, in the first place.
You would have to discard Emrakul at some point anyways too, so I don't see much damage here. The only problem would be if you see Emrakul on top and have a well stocked graveyard, but in that case your Azcanta should be flipped already. You might draw Emrakul as well and plan to discard it later if your graveyard is that relevant.
Once Azcanta is flipped you have a great card advantage engine that won't draw you Emrakul, which is great.
On Jeskai I find it much easier. I have Bolts, Helixes, Electrolyzes, Verdicts, Paths and 4 Snappys (that might trade with Meddling Mage in combat, and cast a removal). He usually can't lock all my answers.
I think the most dangerous card is Thalia's Liutenant.
Sorry... didn't reply to your first point at all...
About playing that much counterspells, I don't know if I'd better do it. Might try it. But... on my Jeskai I used to play 2 Spell Snares and recently cut 1. It shines sometimes, specially on these Control Mirrors, but a lot of times it feels useless on my hand. I think it's really good vs Storm, Burn and Control Mirrors (which are pretty relevant matches), but I think it's almost useless against Tron, Valakut, Humans, Merfolks, Company and Ponza.
It also feels bad to mediocre against EldraTron, DS and DNT... so... I don't really see it as shiny as it was sometime ago. I think it's very risky to play 2 copies of it on the main deck. I could try to make room for 1, but I think playing 2 of them probably makes my match-up significantly worse vs a lot of relevant decks of the meta.
I don't think I can afford to play more than one Knot either. I oftenly find the single one I play to be ineffective because I hardly have more than 2 or 3 cards on my graveyard until turn 4. If I'd like to run more Knots, I think I'd probably need to run more fetches.
I could try to make room for more counterspells anyways. Maybe some Mana Leaks... but I don't know. I'm not sure that would be a good pay off. Could be wrong, though.
Well... most lists don't run that much counterspells as far as I know, and mine doesn't as well. 2 Snares is a beating against Jeskais, but most lists don't run any, and few ones run one single copy. Most lists also play only one Knot, because we usually don't feed our graveyard very well.
D-Sphere is clunky against them IMO because it costs 3, which is more than most of their answers to it, it will likely try to answer something that costs less than itself, it's likely not removing more than one creature, since they hardly have more than one of each creature on the battlefield and is Sorcery Speed. Not to mention they probably got some value of the creature we're trying to answer, in the first place. So... it's a really bad card against them IMO.
Gideon is good if we can resolve him. But since we have so few ways to force them to tap out, I don't think we'll have an easy time resolving one, unless our opponent precipitates himself and taps out for some reason. Unless we manage to draw more counterspells than our opponent, or they just run out of them, I think we won't resolve Gideon easily.
I agree with you Path shouldn't target Snapcaster, but I feel like I have to do it a lot of times on this match-up, because I don't play any other cheap removal spell as most UW Control players do. Once they have a Snapcaster on the field, they're probably Pathing the wall away so they keep pressure. Now what would you do? Let the Snapcaster attack you sometimes until you can find another wall, fiercely try to fight over the Path on the wall, try to resolve a D-Sphere to remove Snappy, try to kill Snappy with Verdict (and give him a good opportunity to Cryptic bounce Snappy), try to slam a Gideon hoping you can win a counterwar with 3 less mana, or do you Path the Snappy? They're all bad options. I usually go for the Path route.
I'm not really sure about trying to keep them off white mana. It could be better. But I'm not sure. Although Colonnade is a real threat, I feel like on this match we usually are more afraid of the red spells than the white ones. Could be wrong though, because if you manage to resolve a Gideon, cutting him off of Path is big deal. But I never have an easy time cutting them off of red mana, so probably not much easier to deny them white mana.
Well... I disagree with somethings here. I'm not really sure we have more relevant spells. I think we probably have more impactful and powerful spells, but most of them are Sorcery Speed and cost more mana, therefore are much harder to resolve. They usually play more counterspells than us as well. Most lists play 3 Knots, 4 Quellers, 3~4 Cryptics, 4 Snappys, and eventually some random 1~2 slots of Mana Leak, Remand, Spell Snare, Negate, etc. We usually play something around 1 Knot, 2 Mana Leak/Negate, 3 Cryptics, 2~3 Snappys and eventually 1 Snare/Leak/Negate. So... I can't really see us winning most counterwars. I can see it happening if we manage to stop our opponent's early aggression to a point where we get one of our Card Advantage sources rolling, but it doesn't seems easy to do, since they almost never tap out, and they usually have more counterspells.
Surely, Queller can be answered by our Paths, but we might need to spend some of them on Snappys/Vendilions to make it through to the late game, and they are our only spot removals. Unless we have a Wall of Omens and they don't remove it, what seems unlikely since they usually run 4 Paths as well, we'll probably be forced to Path some Snappys/Vendilions, or play clunky D-Spheres or Verdicts on them. Either way, we're likely opening space for his Quellers and Geists.
At least in my experience, it didn't really matter that much that my spells were more powerful. They just had more efficient answers and threats most of the times. Azcanta is probably our best bet, but it takes a lot of time until it starts gaining advantage, and it does cost 4 mana to activate, what is really relevant against an "all Flash" deck. Even if we activate it at his end step, he might just fire off some Burns/Snapcasters if it's relevant enough.
Against the Control version I haven't played the match so oftenly from the UW side, but I have played it a bunch of times from the Jeskai side. When I played UWs with my Jeskai, I always felt favoured. Not only I had Burn spells, but I had much more powerful Instant Speed plays. So... in my experience, it's probably not an easy match. My Jeskai deck was not the same Nycolich played though. But... it had the same core.
So my feelings about this are: if we let him play Snapcasters + Burns, we'll probably be forced to try to resolve a clunky Sorcery Speed answer like D-Sphere, Gideon3 or Verdict and that'll give him opportunities to play bigger threats on the following turn. That could happen because we play very little creature spot removal (again... only the 4 Paths). We'll oftenly have to play Verdicts to kill one or two Snapcasters, which opens good opportunities for them to play a Cryptic to bounce Snappy + draw, or let the Snapcaster die, and than try to smash in a Nahiri, a medium sized Secure the Wastes with counter back-up or a Gearhulk, for example. Unless we draw a lot of Paths, which is not a great answer for Snapcaster, anyways, we're probably gonna be on this kind of situation. Because of that, I think that Wall of Omens is surprisingly good on this match. On Nycolich's Jeskai it could not happen though, because he plays only 3 Snappys, 3 Bolts and no Vendilion main deck.
Keeping him off red is a good plan, but it's not so easy, because they have a good amount of red producing lands, and they have a lot of fetch lands, which we can't hit before they have an opportunity to play at least two red spells, and they don't really need to play so much red spells to pressure us. If they're able to inflict 8~9 damage, we're already on a point that a Snapcaster or Vendilion Clique can be real threats. After they done some damage with a red source, they can play a fetch land and keep it on the battlefield for as long as he wants, and only crack it when they're able to fire at least 2 more burn spells on our face. We can eat the Burns and try to outgrind them, but I always feel I can't reliably outgrind anyone without resolving some of my PWs and give him the opportunity to Cryptic them.
I think the way to win from the UW side is probably with the lands/mana denial plan and with Azcanta. We can deal with his Colonnades and Azcantas better than they can deal with ours. So... probably the best way to beat them would be to try to resolve an early Azcanta, IMO. We might me able to keep him of red as well and since we have more basics, we're probably have more mana available at some point of the game, which could balance the fact that our spells are more clunky and mana intensive in general. Well... I feel it's probably gonna be a tough match anyways. I'd say that's probably around 50/50 or 45/55. But I don't have much experience playing the match, specially from the UW side.
About these plans of playing GotT, embleming and protecting him until opponent decks out vs Controls... don't you have problems with the Time Running out? On MTGO it could be less of a problem, since if you play fastly, your opponent might time out first, but on IRL at seems a big issue on playing this strategy.
Stone Rain can be countered, doesn't destroy unflipped Azcanta, Spreading Seas, D-Spheres, and most important, it doesn't 3 for 1 me while it searches for something that'll likely 3~4 for 1 me.
Well... I'll try that approach than. Always believed the Tron player had the inevitability. Are you sure we can survive when he starts casting World Breakers + Sanctum into Ulamogs?
I play the 2nd Negate instead of the Mana Leak, and on this match-up I can't see Leak being better. I'd rather answer his creatures with Path, and Negate is better vs anything else through the entire game.