I run Sphinx of the Final Word post board against control. It really puts them in a precarious position if when he hits the board I switched out Dromoka for him since Jace/Teferi can deal with him pretty easily.
@simonepontz personally I try not to worry too much about metagaming for large tourneys. The field is going to be incredibly diverse so it's pretty much pointless to worry about it. Basically it comes down to how confident you are in the deck and your ability to play it as well as dodging your bad matchups(aka luck). Anyways good luck!
What do you board in against Ponza? I find myself leaning heavily on my mana rocks and not playing them out until I can really benefit from them. Personally here in Arizona there are a ton of Ponza players for some reason so I run 2 C-Purge in the board and it's helped me in the matchup immensely.
Blood fast comes at a very high cost. Paying 2 life could be the difference from going off or dying a turn too soon. Especially with hyper aggro decks like Hollow One every point of life matters. We already have loads of card draw between Visions and Slight. A 2 cmc card that effectively draws 1 card after spending a total of 4 mana + 2 life on it is no bueno. You're new to the deck and I know pentad seems boring but you'll soon come to find it's one of your best cards to power out a quick combo kill and it can help you beat through a Blood Moon. My advice that I always give new players to the deck is DON'T CHANGE ANYTHING. Run a stock Ad Naus list until you know the deck inside and out. Innovating is good but you always need to ask, what problem are you solving and what do you remove to make room for it. I tell you this because i tried to do the same thing when I fist picked up the deck, it makes the deck harder to understand because aside from learning the deck you're trying to solve the problems you're bringing to it with the new changes. Once i switched it back to the stock list for a few weeks my wins went up and i killed it at a gp and haven't looked back. Anyways good luck dude keep hurling those Lightning Storms.
In my experience beating Blood Moon just requires a lot of discipline in your sequencing and not necessarily a card that ends the turn. I appreciate the enthusiasm over Glorious End, i loved that card when it was spoiled, but the card is simply too narrow. I would see more merit to playing Celestial Purge over Glorious End since it answers many problematic cards for our deck. In a lot of these scenarios you listed we already have cards that deal with them for the most part. Matchup knowledge also helps with fighting through hate cards which you will gain in time as you play the deck more. Keep practicing and keep that enthusiasm, it always make me happy hearing others are having fun with the deck too.
Hi guys i'm a newb to this deck but I was reading recent convo about mana bases and blood moon and I think I have found an excellent one of (or maybe more) option out of the sideboard or heck maybe main deck and fits in *super on flavor* plus gives us a lot of help in the current state of the meta! glorious end was printed just for us as far as I can tell! I'm running one out of the side right now but i'm intrigued to maybe test mainboard depending on how much main board hate we have going on. This card is just what we are looking for against all the hate. Tax hate (the worst kind), mana base hate, as well as trying to race new meta combo decks like KCI, storm, and even the mirror(dont hate!) Besides just being an extra angel's grace/fog effect that can double as a 3 mana counter spell fix all including planeswalker and ALL activated abilites or even upkeep triggers (pact of negation guilt free anyone?)....... The BEST part about glorious end is it allows us to cast our combo with two turns worth of mana and our whole deck (-1 bottom card to draw for turn) in our hand (when cast as an instant on our opponents turn they have to discard down to hand size NOT US) Effectively we can stretch our combo out over two turns of upkeep if we have to. EXAMPLE: blood moon got ya down and you dont have phyrexian unlife out? Well as long as we can cast Ad Nauseam and Angel's Grace we can draw out our whole deck (-1 card on bottom we need to draw for our upkeep!)go to 1 life and just cast glorious end on their turn with all that lovely red mana they so kindly gave us or SSG if we need the mana Now on untap we have a full swept of simian spirit guide and pentad prism to either get around blood moon or in sideboard games we can just use our echoing truth. EXAMPLE2: damping sphere really putting a damper on things? Or maybe thalia guardian of thraben is taxing you?? Well dont sweat it you have to suffer taxes in this life but not in the next! As long as we can effectively get off the Ad Nauseam part of our combo we can again draw out our deck (-1 card we need to draw in the next life), then on their turn we can glorious end with the mana from our SSG, then on our turn we can upkeep with the mana we had to work hard to earn ourselves and deliver proper justice. EXAMPLE3: With KCI (is going to get Mox Opal banned for sure), the eternal STORM (NOT Q), new and improved puresteel paladin decks, and reanimator decks going into the future that try and combo off faster than us glorious end is an excellent option that goes much deeper than a fog effect. It effectively counterspells anything including any activated abilities, and im pretty sure it gets around upkeep triggers as well (please tell me if im wrong on anything). The only downside I can see about this card (but also a silver-lining upside if you are trying to make their stuff go away forever) is that it exiles everything on the stack as well as itself. So there is no way to use it over and over again unless you run more copies, but it does interact with angel's grace so even though no matter what the turn will come to a glorious end, the game doesnt have to
Why was I reading this with Billy May"s voice in my head.
I thought about adding Oboro to the mana base as well. I love the card and it allows for some next level plays. However, since I have been toying around with the idea of adding Alpine Moon to the sb I figured it would be smarter to run an additional Shivan Reef for some red sources. Tbh I never really agreed with suss regarding Cascade Bluffs in a deck that has Damping Sphere. So far I'm planning on my board looking like this:
1 Damping Sphere
2 Declaration of Naught
1 Ghirapur Aether Grid(1 main)
2 Welding Jar(2 main)
1 Chalice of the Void(2 main)
2 Sorcerous Spyglass
2 Spellskite
1 Torper Orb
2 Alpine Moon
1 Amulet of Safekeeping
I thought about adding Oboro to the mana base as well. I love the card and it allows for some next level plays. However, since I have been toying around with the idea of adding Alpine Moon to the sb I figured it would be smarter to run an additional Shivan Reef for some red sources. Tbh I never really agreed with suss regarding Cascade Bluffs in a deck that has Damping Sphere. So far I'm planning on my board looking like this:
1 Damping Sphere
2 Declaration of Naught
1 Ghirapur Aether Grid(1 main)
2 Welding Jar(2 main)
1 Chalice of the Void(2 main)
2 Sorcerous Spyglass
2 Spellskite
1 Torper Orb
2 Alpine Moon
1 Amulet of Safekeeping
I thought about adding Oboro to the mana base as well. I love the card and it allows for some next level plays. However, since I have been toying around with the idea of adding Alpine Moon to the sb I figured it would be smarter to run an additional Shivan Reef for some red sources. Tbh I never really agreed with suss regarding Cascade Bluffs in a deck that has Damping Sphere. So far I'm planning on my board looking like this:
1 Damping Sphere
2 Declaration of Naught
1 Ghirapur Aether Grid(1 main)
2 Welding Jar(2 main)
1 Chalice of the Void(2 main)
2 Sorcerous Spyglass
2 Spellskite
1 Torper Orb
2 Alpine Moon
1 Amulet of Safekeeping
Not from what I've seen online. The special thing about what this deck does is it allows sideboarding to be intuitive. Decks with artifact destruction you bring in skites and jars, control you bring in needle effects for walkers and ways to mitigate cryptic command, aggro you bring in the extra aethergrids to ping dudes. This is all very general of course.
My best advice is get your reps in and really, I mean REALLY learn your local meta. This deck can only win if you have a deep format IQ. Play a stock UR prison list for a while and just learn DO NOT make any changes to the list until you have a comfortable understanding of the deck.(this is me glaring at the trading post comment)
I can see that argument for Alpine Moon. I guess the real question is what do we take out to make room for it in the sb? I'm assuming 1 or both side board chalices since they are the least impactful from the board. Same question for amulet, WotC gave me too many new toys!
@boomforest I do like how Alpine Moon could give us some options to hate out troublesome lands without hurting us. I'm super interested in testing it. Against Tron it seems meh because we fix them on green to get it Nature's Claimed then they still go off. Besides we're pretty good against Tron anyways. I can see this having more utility against cavern of souls or man lands, Valakut maybe, things like that.
Why was I reading this with Billy May"s voice in my head.
1 Damping Sphere
2 Declaration of Naught
1 Ghirapur Aether Grid(1 main)
2 Welding Jar(2 main)
1 Chalice of the Void(2 main)
2 Sorcerous Spyglass
2 Spellskite
1 Torper Orb
2 Alpine Moon
1 Amulet of Safekeeping
1 Damping Sphere
2 Declaration of Naught
1 Ghirapur Aether Grid(1 main)
2 Welding Jar(2 main)
1 Chalice of the Void(2 main)
2 Sorcerous Spyglass
2 Spellskite
1 Torper Orb
2 Alpine Moon
1 Amulet of Safekeeping
1 Damping Sphere
2 Declaration of Naught
1 Ghirapur Aether Grid(1 main)
2 Welding Jar(2 main)
1 Chalice of the Void(2 main)
2 Sorcerous Spyglass
2 Spellskite
1 Torper Orb
2 Alpine Moon
1 Amulet of Safekeeping
My best advice is get your reps in and really, I mean REALLY learn your local meta. This deck can only win if you have a deep format IQ. Play a stock UR prison list for a while and just learn DO NOT make any changes to the list until you have a comfortable understanding of the deck.(this is me glaring at the trading post comment)
Hope this helps. Best of luck to you dude