Spirits should be good match up, apply pressure early and block with Narcomoebas and Imps. It's quite easy to create situation when they can't attack becouse they will be dead in swingback.
About Maelstorm Pulse and Explolives - metagame is faster and faster and you don't have much time to wait for your response card for 3 turns.
I don't fell that Living End is a good match up. They play maindeck grave hate in form of Faerie Macabre and Archfiend of Ifnir whivh is devastating post Living End. And post side they have Angers and even sometimes Leylines. It looks really hard to overcome it.
That will sound strange but I like playing exactly 1 Thoughtseize becouse the best Thoughtseize is first Thoughtseize you play. Second and third drawn are usually not as effective as first one becouse:
1. First one already responded to opponent's best card
2. First one already got us information about opponent's gameplan
3. Every other Thoughtseize we draw it's 1 card off dredge engine which will increase chances to fizzle.
If first drawn Thoughtseize is the best and other are weaker I like to have only 1 Thoughtseize in side to draw it when it's best and not draw it when it would be worse. Also with Damping Sphere I have other plan to fight combo decks and if I need some discard I can also count Collective Brutality as discard which gives me 3 hand disruption spells which is enough to cmhave reasonable chance to draw 1 post side.
About Driven//Despair - I'm not a huge fan of this card. It can be very powerful vs combo decks but only when we are on a play and have good dredge action with many creatures returned from grave. So if we have a lot of power early we should be favored on a play anyway. On a draw it would still be too late since many combo decks can goldfish on turn 3.
There is also an argument to side in Driven vs control and heavy midrange decks. But it's not what we want to get from sideboard card. Dredge engine will win most card advantage wars anyway so having another card only to be even more ahead on cards is not a winning line post side. We should focus on dealing with their grave hate and quick clock to make sure we can execute our gameplan.
So right now u are playing Neonate or Shriekhorns? for me horn is better becouse the most important thing for me is to activate dredge engine as fast as possible and Neonate can do cute things but it won't support Dredge engine as good as stable "mill 4 no matter what".
About Maelstorm Pulse and Explolives - metagame is faster and faster and you don't have much time to wait for your response card for 3 turns.
1. First one already responded to opponent's best card
2. First one already got us information about opponent's gameplan
3. Every other Thoughtseize we draw it's 1 card off dredge engine which will increase chances to fizzle.
If first drawn Thoughtseize is the best and other are weaker I like to have only 1 Thoughtseize in side to draw it when it's best and not draw it when it would be worse. Also with Damping Sphere I have other plan to fight combo decks and if I need some discard I can also count Collective Brutality as discard which gives me 3 hand disruption spells which is enough to cmhave reasonable chance to draw 1 post side.
About Driven//Despair - I'm not a huge fan of this card. It can be very powerful vs combo decks but only when we are on a play and have good dredge action with many creatures returned from grave. So if we have a lot of power early we should be favored on a play anyway. On a draw it would still be too late since many combo decks can goldfish on turn 3.
There is also an argument to side in Driven vs control and heavy midrange decks. But it's not what we want to get from sideboard card. Dredge engine will win most card advantage wars anyway so having another card only to be even more ahead on cards is not a winning line post side. We should focus on dealing with their grave hate and quick clock to make sure we can execute our gameplan.
My match ups:
Bye
Bye
3 Traverse Shadow 2-0
4 Traverse Shadow 2-0
5 BR Hollow One 2-0
6 Soulflayer Suprise 2-1
7 Gx Tron 2-0
8 Counters Company 2-0
9 Grixis Shadow 2-1
10 BR Hollow One 1-2
11 Burn 2@0
12 Jeskai Control 2-0
13 Jeskai Tempo 1-2
14 Jeskai control 2-0
15 Humany 2-0
I'll write small report when I got home. Overall event was good but I'm sad that I haven't made cash :'(