I've tried 1 of big Teferi and for the most part I wasn't all that excited as he's neither recurrable by Emeria nor Sun Titan. The +1 draws a card every turn with the untap 2 only marginally relevant for Path/Field of ruin mana - we play at Sorcery speed most of the time anyway. I think I prefer Cavalier of Dawn more in that utility slot.
Deck I'm going to run tomorrow in our weekly modern tournament - keep in mind my SB is tuned against my meta which has a lot of GDS, Burn, Scapeshift, and a Whirza, hence going all the way up to 3 Aven Mindcensor & 3 Leylines - ridiculous I know lol. Normally I'd pack an extra wrath, a flexible catch-all card/secondary finisher (Cavalier, Gideon, Dragonlord Ojutai), and adjust graveyard/artifact/pithing needle/counterspell effects based on the meta.
I absolutely cannot wait to replace the Missionaries with Charming Prince!
I agree that if you've already exhausted of 1 drops, you're probably at the point where you can recur them with Sun Titan / Emeria. In my local meta I've been doing quite well against the UWx matchup - and we have a lot of players that are on it so I'm quite familiar with it. I don't think Mistveil is necessary - I've been comfortable with 3 Ranger Cap + 5/6 1-drops (4 Thraben, 1 Kami, 1 Hex Parasite). I'm looking to test Giant Killer in the Hex Parasite slot which was there to answer the early Planeswalkers.
I personally find that I have a positive matchup against it with the UW variant - Dsphere to answer the walkers...JTMS + counterspell back up I believe should be their main strategy to win. Narset is annoying, but you can pop clues on their turn to get around it. I cut the 2 Teferi's and went back to 2 Court Hussar and find that I just churn through my deck way faster. I really don't care too much if they counter my stuff cause I'll end up getting it back anyway. Their Path's actually help ramp me faster to Emeria. The other sub game we need to be aware of is the Field of Ruin / Emeria to make sure we don't get hit. We have 4 Field of Ruins ourselves so try to hit their Field of ruin if the opportunity presents itself. If my Sun Titan resolves usually the first thing I look to get back is Emeria. We most definitely out grind them late game with a variety of ways to win
I'm going to be dropping my 3 Lone Missionary + 1 Phantasmal Image and bringing in the full 4 Charming Prince once ELD is out
The other thing I've been doing is dropping the number of Wraths I play - I don't think theres many matchups in the meta right now that warrant 3.5 Wraths (2 Verdict, 1 ***, 0.5 from Winds of Abandon). Humans/Eldrazi Tron are the matchups I most want it in; I did like it vs. Jund before but now that they've moved to more W6s and cutting Dark Confidant, I've been boarding them out. Other decks that are t1 now include Burn, Whirza, Scapeshift, Death Shadow variants, UWx control, so wrath's aren't where I want to be right now.
My hypothesis is that the meta could now be slow enough that Spreading Seas is back to being effective...will be testing it out this week.
Both your list and the popularized Bant Soulherder deck leverage repeatable flicker effects through Ephemerate and Flickerwisp to generate value and card advantage. However, I feel the Bant Soulherder list has a better suite of creatures to blink with Ice Fang Coatl, Coiling Oracle, Wall of Blossoms and Eternal Witness. Though it doesn't have Emeria, it has inevitability with the Ewit, Ephemerate with Timewalk / force negation loop/lock. I guess the question you need to ask yourself is - what does your deck do better than the Bant Soulherder deck? The obvious is that we have Emeria, but is your deck truly leveraging Emeria's power or are your Ephemerates / other flicker effects already doing the same thing?
Based on the success of Hogaak/Eldrazi Tron and fast creature decks in general, I've adjusted the deck to be less soft against creatures so added in an extra Winds of Abandon as a 5th path, and the Kami of False Hope for a lock in the long game. Added an extra Condemn in the board for good measure. Phantasmal image can be useful in copying fatties on the opposing side of the board or get additional value copying our 3 drop creatures / Sun Titan.
I no longer play on modo so haven't had the reps that I wanted to take the deck to a larger tournament. I am kinda itching to bring it to the MCQ this weekend so I thought about buying back in and testing it...logic and experience tells me it's a bad decision though playing uphill against Hogaak.
I've taken Emeria to 2 GPs with 2 poor finishes unfortunately; went 4-5 during Eldrazi Winter ... packing Spreading Seas/Mortarpod/Aether Spellbomb in my deck lol. The other time I went 0-2-1 losing to UB control, Jund and drawing with Jeskai. Deep down I really want to put up a decent result with this deck (top 16/32) but so far I've been hemmoraging entry fee money from playing this deck lol. I think I've also taken it to maybe 3 Face to Face opens with my best result a 5-3 I believe.
So yeah until I have some reps with other T1 decks (Hogaak, E Tron, Jund) I think I will pass on competitive events with Emeria. Previously we had a decent matchup vs E Tron and Jund from all our value/removal/spreading seas to cut off mana, but with the introduction of Wrenn & 6 and small Karn, I wonder if that is still the case...
Dusted off the deck and here's the UW list I ran with yesterday in a casual 3 round modern tournament yesterday. Won't go into the details of all the matches but I went 1-0-1 against two traditional UW control lists and lost against a Narset Wheels brew in a back and forth match that I think I could've taken with some tighter play. Ended 1-1-1 overall.
PROPS:
+++Ranger Captain of Eos - First time playing with this card, after looking back at my games I missed some good opportunities to pop his sacrifice effect to advance my board and held onto it for too long. With Emeria online and Ranger, you can establish a lock on them by saccing Ranger on your opponents upkeep which balanced the matchups against UW. I should've used it more aggressively on my own turn to resolve Sun Titan / Teferi, as by resolving Sun Titan you can immediately get Ranger back. Fetching up a Thraben Inspector is extra value
++Teferi - Extremely strong against blue decks and is a must remove target. Returnable via Sun Titan, and can bounce opposing enhancements/artifacts for tempo. I dropped Gideon of the Trials out of my 75 completely as a lot of the aggro decks go wide now so I didn't think he's very good. The 'cant lose game' emblem isn't as good as it was before.
+Thraben Inspector - I know this forum has mixed opinions on it but I really think this card is the truth and allows you to churn through your deck as a pseudo cantrip. I find that I often have mana available to pop the clue anyway between turns so haven't found that to be a crutch. You can throw it in front of something for a chump block and have some board presence to pressure the 2,3 CMC walkers. Having it also gives me comfort to go down to 24 lands.
SLOPS:
--Ghost Quarter - after moving Crucible to the SB, Sun Titan-GQ lock is way too slow. It was good against Tron but this slot should really be a Blast Zone.
-Irrigated Farmland - Coming in tapped actually matters and the cycling effect isn't as relevant as I thought anymore. Likely swapping this out for Prismatic Vista going forward or Emeria #4.
-Tormod's Crypt - I never had to bring it in yesterday but thinking whether this should just be Leyline of the Void at this point for Hogaak.
Sideboard could be better tuned against creature decks with an additional wrath or cheap removal like Condemn/Winds of Abandon. Also still want to include a threat that doesn't rely on the graveyard and can end games quickly - perhaps Cavalier of Dawn in the slot. My 3 drop slot is already overburdened but would like to test a single Soulherder somewhere - thinking it's really taking the place of the Phantasmal flex slot.
Mainboard I'm relatively happy with, but intend on testing 1 x Hex Parasite (-1 Flickerwisp) as a target for Ranger and can answer walkers, with a side bonus of removing the counter off Blast Zone to blow up tokens.
My general rules in tuning the deck is to largely avoid the following:
1. Permanents with UU in the casting cost - mana base is already somewhat stretched so UU is not always reliable. Jace would be one of the few interesting cards I'd like to test but at 4 CMC and not returnable by Sun Titan, I'm not super high on it.
2. Too many instants/sorceries/counterspells - Emeria is a creature control deck that relies on synergies and value to grind out your opponent. I want to maximize the number of permanents that I can recur from Emeria / Sun Titan, with ETB effects that I can also recur from Flickerwisp. Hence my focus is always on permanents 3 CMC or less. Don't build the deck in a way so that it's just a worse version of traditional UW control.
Militia Bugler and Remorseful Cleric are definitely interesting enough to test...
Bugler is loosely a Court Hussar replacement and Remorseful Cleric is a recyclable Tormods Crypt which seems insane on first glance.
If we are going this route I would suggest just going Mono W at this point and throw in Inspectors as mentioned and perhaps also Blade Splicer. That said our matchups against combo will be even worse without the blue lmao. Afterboard since we play Bugler, it can theoretically help us find some silver bullet hate cards like Eidolon of Rhetoric, Kami, Intrepid Hero
I think our burn matchup preboard isnt great but is improved significantly postboard with 3 x Leyline, 2 Dispel, 2 Negate.
I like Settle over *** or 4th Verdict for a couple of reasons
1. Plays around Selfless Spirit (*** cannot do that)
2. Exile clause for Dredge, Hollow One which have recursive threats
3. Vs Humans they likely name Verdict with Meddling Mage
4. If you wanted *** for an unlikely Thrun, Settle can deal with him too
Lone Missionary is probably one of my least favorite cards in the main but a necessary evil in the 75. He is one of the most important cards in the Geist matchup to prevent yourself getting burned out and can trade with a Geist as a 2 power creature.
Im in favor of having one or two win cons outside of the basic setup like Elspeth, Gideon AoZ, even Dragonlord Ojutai which i have had some success with.
Lately I havent had much success with Emeria on modo and it is kind of disheartening considering I want to play it at GP Toronto. Game 1s vs combo decks are absolutely discouraging as we have no disruption and no clock whatsoever. After board it is slightly better but still maybe 40-45 pct underdog at best vs Storm, Ad Naus, UR breach etc
Have also had problems against opposing graveyard decks like Dredge and Hollow One who get off to fast starts, and remand-tempo decks like Jeskai Geist is also quite nightmarish. Merfolk Ive had a lot of trouble with also
Having said that im quite confident vs Eldrazi Tron, Burn (especially after board), affinity, bgx, shadow decks, and surprisingly I really like our chances post board vs rg shift.
My audible is hollow one but i definitely have so much more reps with Emeria. I know Id be 1000x happier if i was able to take emeria to day 2 but yeah havent had good results lately online. Runed halo MB seems like a good idea I will try it out
I absolutely cannot wait to replace the Missionaries with Charming Prince!
3 Emeria, the Sky Ruin
3 Hallowed Fountain
4 Flooded Strand
6 Plains
1 Island
1 Prismatic Vista
1 Prairie Stream
1 Blast Zone
4 Field of Ruin
1 Kami of False Hope
4 Thraben Inspector
4 Wall of Omens
3 Lone Missionary
4 Ranger-Captain of Eos
3 Flickerwisp
3 Sun Titan
1 Court Hussar
3 Detention Sphere
4 Path to Exile
1 Winds of Abandon
4 Spreading Seas
1 Supreme Verdict
3 Leyline of Sanctity
2 Dovin's Veto
2 Sorcerous Spyglass
2 Remorseful Cleric
3 Aven Mindcensor
1 Runed Halo
2 Stony Silence
I personally find that I have a positive matchup against it with the UW variant - Dsphere to answer the walkers...JTMS + counterspell back up I believe should be their main strategy to win. Narset is annoying, but you can pop clues on their turn to get around it. I cut the 2 Teferi's and went back to 2 Court Hussar and find that I just churn through my deck way faster. I really don't care too much if they counter my stuff cause I'll end up getting it back anyway. Their Path's actually help ramp me faster to Emeria. The other sub game we need to be aware of is the Field of Ruin / Emeria to make sure we don't get hit. We have 4 Field of Ruins ourselves so try to hit their Field of ruin if the opportunity presents itself. If my Sun Titan resolves usually the first thing I look to get back is Emeria. We most definitely out grind them late game with a variety of ways to win
I'm going to be dropping my 3 Lone Missionary + 1 Phantasmal Image and bringing in the full 4 Charming Prince once ELD is out
The other thing I've been doing is dropping the number of Wraths I play - I don't think theres many matchups in the meta right now that warrant 3.5 Wraths (2 Verdict, 1 ***, 0.5 from Winds of Abandon). Humans/Eldrazi Tron are the matchups I most want it in; I did like it vs. Jund before but now that they've moved to more W6s and cutting Dark Confidant, I've been boarding them out. Other decks that are t1 now include Burn, Whirza, Scapeshift, Death Shadow variants, UWx control, so wrath's aren't where I want to be right now.
My hypothesis is that the meta could now be slow enough that Spreading Seas is back to being effective...will be testing it out this week.
I'm also looking at Giant Killer being a 1 of as it is tutorable from Ranger Cap. Very excited at these new cards!
At first glance on your list I am seeing many common themes with the now more popular Bant Soulherder deck that put up a very good showing at GP Birmingham last week. Decklist for reference: https://www.mtggoldfish.com/archetype/modern-bant-soulherder#paper
Both your list and the popularized Bant Soulherder deck leverage repeatable flicker effects through Ephemerate and Flickerwisp to generate value and card advantage. However, I feel the Bant Soulherder list has a better suite of creatures to blink with Ice Fang Coatl, Coiling Oracle, Wall of Blossoms and Eternal Witness. Though it doesn't have Emeria, it has inevitability with the Ewit, Ephemerate with Timewalk / force negation loop/lock. I guess the question you need to ask yourself is - what does your deck do better than the Bant Soulherder deck? The obvious is that we have Emeria, but is your deck truly leveraging Emeria's power or are your Ephemerates / other flicker effects already doing the same thing?
3 Emeria, the Sky Ruin
3 Hallowed Fountain
4 Flooded Strand
6 Plains
1 Island
1 Prismatic Vista
1 Prairie Stream
1 Blast Zone
4 Field of Ruin
1 Kami of False Hope
4 Thraben Inspector
4 Wall of Omens
3 Lone Missionary
3 Ranger-Captain of Eos
4 Flickerwisp
3 Sun Titan
1 Phantasmal Image
2 Teferi, Time Raveler
3 Detention Sphere
4 Path to Exile
1 Winds of Abandon
2 Supreme Verdict
1 Wrath of God
2 Dovin's Veto
2 Sorcerous Spyglass
2 Tormod's Crypt
2 Remorseful Cleric
2 Damping Sphere
1 Runed Halo
2 Stony Silence
Based on the success of Hogaak/Eldrazi Tron and fast creature decks in general, I've adjusted the deck to be less soft against creatures so added in an extra Winds of Abandon as a 5th path, and the Kami of False Hope for a lock in the long game. Added an extra Condemn in the board for good measure. Phantasmal image can be useful in copying fatties on the opposing side of the board or get additional value copying our 3 drop creatures / Sun Titan.
I've taken Emeria to 2 GPs with 2 poor finishes unfortunately; went 4-5 during Eldrazi Winter ... packing Spreading Seas/Mortarpod/Aether Spellbomb in my deck lol. The other time I went 0-2-1 losing to UB control, Jund and drawing with Jeskai. Deep down I really want to put up a decent result with this deck (top 16/32) but so far I've been hemmoraging entry fee money from playing this deck lol. I think I've also taken it to maybe 3 Face to Face opens with my best result a 5-3 I believe.
So yeah until I have some reps with other T1 decks (Hogaak, E Tron, Jund) I think I will pass on competitive events with Emeria. Previously we had a decent matchup vs E Tron and Jund from all our value/removal/spreading seas to cut off mana, but with the introduction of Wrenn & 6 and small Karn, I wonder if that is still the case...
3 Emeria, the Sky Ruin
3 Hallowed Fountain
4 Flooded Strand
6 Plains
1 Island
1 Prairie Stream
1 Irrigated Farmland
1 Ghost Quarter
4 Field of Ruin
4 Thraben Inspector
4 Wall of Omens
3 Lone Missionary
3 Ranger-Captain of Eos
4 Flickerwisp
2 Court Hussar
3 Sun Titan
1 Phantasmal Image
2 Teferi, Time Raveler
3 Detention Sphere
4 Path to Exile
2 Supreme Verdict
1 Wrath of God
3 Dovin's Veto
2 Sorcerous Spyglass
2 Tormod's Crypt
2 Remorseful Cleric
2 Damping Sphere
1 Runed Halo
2 Stony Silence
Dusted off the deck and here's the UW list I ran with yesterday in a casual 3 round modern tournament yesterday. Won't go into the details of all the matches but I went 1-0-1 against two traditional UW control lists and lost against a Narset Wheels brew in a back and forth match that I think I could've taken with some tighter play. Ended 1-1-1 overall.
PROPS:
+++Ranger Captain of Eos - First time playing with this card, after looking back at my games I missed some good opportunities to pop his sacrifice effect to advance my board and held onto it for too long. With Emeria online and Ranger, you can establish a lock on them by saccing Ranger on your opponents upkeep which balanced the matchups against UW. I should've used it more aggressively on my own turn to resolve Sun Titan / Teferi, as by resolving Sun Titan you can immediately get Ranger back. Fetching up a Thraben Inspector is extra value
++Teferi - Extremely strong against blue decks and is a must remove target. Returnable via Sun Titan, and can bounce opposing enhancements/artifacts for tempo. I dropped Gideon of the Trials out of my 75 completely as a lot of the aggro decks go wide now so I didn't think he's very good. The 'cant lose game' emblem isn't as good as it was before.
+Thraben Inspector - I know this forum has mixed opinions on it but I really think this card is the truth and allows you to churn through your deck as a pseudo cantrip. I find that I often have mana available to pop the clue anyway between turns so haven't found that to be a crutch. You can throw it in front of something for a chump block and have some board presence to pressure the 2,3 CMC walkers. Having it also gives me comfort to go down to 24 lands.
SLOPS:
--Ghost Quarter - after moving Crucible to the SB, Sun Titan-GQ lock is way too slow. It was good against Tron but this slot should really be a Blast Zone.
-Irrigated Farmland - Coming in tapped actually matters and the cycling effect isn't as relevant as I thought anymore. Likely swapping this out for Prismatic Vista going forward or Emeria #4.
-Tormod's Crypt - I never had to bring it in yesterday but thinking whether this should just be Leyline of the Void at this point for Hogaak.
Sideboard could be better tuned against creature decks with an additional wrath or cheap removal like Condemn/Winds of Abandon. Also still want to include a threat that doesn't rely on the graveyard and can end games quickly - perhaps Cavalier of Dawn in the slot. My 3 drop slot is already overburdened but would like to test a single Soulherder somewhere - thinking it's really taking the place of the Phantasmal flex slot.
Mainboard I'm relatively happy with, but intend on testing 1 x Hex Parasite (-1 Flickerwisp) as a target for Ranger and can answer walkers, with a side bonus of removing the counter off Blast Zone to blow up tokens.
My general rules in tuning the deck is to largely avoid the following:
1. Permanents with UU in the casting cost - mana base is already somewhat stretched so UU is not always reliable. Jace would be one of the few interesting cards I'd like to test but at 4 CMC and not returnable by Sun Titan, I'm not super high on it.
2. Too many instants/sorceries/counterspells - Emeria is a creature control deck that relies on synergies and value to grind out your opponent. I want to maximize the number of permanents that I can recur from Emeria / Sun Titan, with ETB effects that I can also recur from Flickerwisp. Hence my focus is always on permanents 3 CMC or less. Don't build the deck in a way so that it's just a worse version of traditional UW control.
Bugler is loosely a Court Hussar replacement and Remorseful Cleric is a recyclable Tormods Crypt which seems insane on first glance.
If we are going this route I would suggest just going Mono W at this point and throw in Inspectors as mentioned and perhaps also Blade Splicer. That said our matchups against combo will be even worse without the blue lmao. Afterboard since we play Bugler, it can theoretically help us find some silver bullet hate cards like Eidolon of Rhetoric, Kami, Intrepid Hero
I like Settle over *** or 4th Verdict for a couple of reasons
1. Plays around Selfless Spirit (*** cannot do that)
2. Exile clause for Dredge, Hollow One which have recursive threats
3. Vs Humans they likely name Verdict with Meddling Mage
4. If you wanted *** for an unlikely Thrun, Settle can deal with him too
Lone Missionary is probably one of my least favorite cards in the main but a necessary evil in the 75. He is one of the most important cards in the Geist matchup to prevent yourself getting burned out and can trade with a Geist as a 2 power creature.
Lately I havent had much success with Emeria on modo and it is kind of disheartening considering I want to play it at GP Toronto. Game 1s vs combo decks are absolutely discouraging as we have no disruption and no clock whatsoever. After board it is slightly better but still maybe 40-45 pct underdog at best vs Storm, Ad Naus, UR breach etc
Have also had problems against opposing graveyard decks like Dredge and Hollow One who get off to fast starts, and remand-tempo decks like Jeskai Geist is also quite nightmarish. Merfolk Ive had a lot of trouble with also
Having said that im quite confident vs Eldrazi Tron, Burn (especially after board), affinity, bgx, shadow decks, and surprisingly I really like our chances post board vs rg shift.
My audible is hollow one but i definitely have so much more reps with Emeria. I know Id be 1000x happier if i was able to take emeria to day 2 but yeah havent had good results lately online. Runed halo MB seems like a good idea I will try it out