If I can get away with firing off a tbr against uw or esper for an additional 5+ damage I will. If you get them down to single digits snaps has a good chance of getting there. Against creature decks I'd rather use it to crack through blockers. If I can kill them, I will unless I believe there's a trick up to blow me out.
I'm not so sure about FoN in GDS, if only because the number of blue spells is so low and seems to get lower by the season. This of course changes if modern gets back to properly grinding and we play more serum visions and less baubles, but I have no way to predict that. I will be starting all my blue control lists with 1 FoN in the main and at least 2 in the 75 for testing as I think it's an upgrade to the negate slot at worst and possibly just necessary. There's no doubt that the card is powerful and I doubt the community is going to grasp that in the beginning as it took years for us to understand FoW and even now we see suboptimal use. I don't think it will be a four-of like FoW is in legacy, but it will almost assuredly have an impact on the format and will probably warp it for a bit in the coming months while decks find room for it.
I really love this card, played it for ages in 1v1 Commander. Thus I was really excited when it got reprinted and I initially cut an Esper Charm for it.
But the more I think of it... Imagine you flip over 4 random cards and a Teferi (which is my main wincon and I'm playing two right now). I can imagine many cases in which the opponent sets up a pile with Teferi and one with the rest, pretty much forcing you to pick Teferi. That can't feel good for a 4 mana investment...
But you got to dig 5 deep for that Teferi and once we get to the point where we need a wincon and not answers, that dig can mean all the difference. Personally I'm shaving an esper charm for FoF and a negate out of the main and side for FoN initially. I don't think we want a FoN in the main because negate can only get us so far, but it's a nice early game safety valve and we probably want a second in the side. FoF is a little more interesting because it competes for the instant speed card draw slot that esper charm occupies and charm has so much more utility despite FoF having much more raw power.
Gds is a good deck, it didn't become bad. Ita just at the moment the meta is awful for it, even at an fnm level. Some high level gds players feel itd very poorly positioned right now. Humans wish tron, dredge and uw...very brutal to hope to dodge so much.
I'm very new to GDS and I might be talking rubbish here, but in testing I've found Wish Tron perfectly fine - I find myself either ripping their mana fixing out of their hand so they never hit tron in the first place, or countering their fetching spells/threats and winning with a fast clock.
Having played the matchup from both sides, GDS is slightly favored vs tron and uw with percentage points going to the more skilled pilot. Humans can be tough, but winnable with the right 75. Dredge on the other hand.....I mean, every deck in the format basically has to draw their dredge hate right?
I like the black force and I think we'll end up playing it in the side as it's really hard to compete with free spells and often this will buy us that one combat step we need to win the game.
I see it as a sideboard card if decks like neoform become the new norm and we just have to have t0 interaction. It's mediocre to downright awful against most decks where we want counters.
I don't think Dovin's Veto is the card from War we need to worry about, 1 mana negate still beats out 2 mana negate with additional text. The new Teferi, Time Raveler has been giving me grief though as it allows UW decks to tempo us out of the game and that largely invalidates our game plan against them. With the meta shifting back over to the Humans side of things, I've been running double Grim Lavamancer in the board and it's helped. That being said, when 5 of the 10 most popular decks are Humans, UW, Burn, Dredge, and GB with Esper and both flavors of Affinity rising in prominence it's a tough time to be playing GDS in an open field. I don't think the deck will ever truly die as it's a disruptive deck with a quick clock and that historically is just an optimal way to play magic, but if you are planning on attending a large tournament, you have to be aware of these decks and prepare for them. This is a lot of effort to put in when the matchup still favors those decks.
While it is true that wizards prints cards with a goal in some situations, I think that you may be attributing intent to happenstance for a lot of these. You're going to get a number of midrange/ control/ aggro cards added to the cardpool per set because those are common archetypes across standard seasons and some number those cards will be printed to be powerful enough for eternal formats (ie: fatal push and assassin's trophy) and some will be standard role players that happen to fill a niche in those formats (ie: hardened scales and Kitesail Freebooter). That being said, there are examples of Wizards specifically boosting or creating modern achetypes: Thought-knot Seer and Reality Smasher are prominent examples of this going wrong as Wizards knew that these would be powerful in conjunction with Eldrazi Temple and Eye of Ugin and designed them with those lands in mind, but were unaware of just how powerful they ended up being. Similarly any lord that is printed for an aggro creature deck and cards like Arclight Phoenix are fairly obvious in what they were designed for and often do not have the necessary support in standard.
I'm not a huge fan of wrench mind. It doesn't do much against aggro decks (except burn, probably the best deck for it honestly). Most combo decks can shrug it off (if you can't stand being down 2 cards in combo, good luck fighting jund). It's okay in the grindy matchups, but both players tend to have cards that they're willing to just ditch.
Cruel control is more of a meme than a viable deck at this point. I rocked it back during jund's heyday and I'll occasionally rock it at fnm or a side event if I'm feeling saucy, but if I'm rocking grixis and intending to win I'm likely playing a list similar to the one you posted but with anglefish as my big beater. That being said, Cruel Ultimatum has won me a number of games that other cards just couldn't and it'll be a go to for fun.
Edit:
Ancestral Visions vs cantrips. Cantrips help smooth out your draws making sure you make land drops and draw gas. I view AV as more of a wincon and it should take up on of those slots if you're playing it. personally, I run AV in the sideboard of control decks with burn and bring it in for the mirror or combo decks where removal and expensive planeswalkers can be a liability. I like to start fights at the endstep with snapcasters and bolts and AV enables that.
As much as I like it, there are a couple of problems with your proposal:
1) this is a 4 mana 1/1 that does not affect the game when it enters, so it's gonna be hard to not just get steamrolled.
2) It, like scepter, only works with instants so no fancy tricks with serum visions or glittering wish.
I like it though and the idea intrigues me, those are just some of the hurdles that'd you have to overcome.
It depends on the strategy, if you're a combo/control deck the dig from drown is probably best. The other two are better for protecting your creatures, but they seem like weaker options. Why no love for Zealous Persecution?
@Kangha94: I'm not sure I'm approaching the grixis energy match-up right. Sure, game one is nothing, but games two and three have been nightmares for me. What is your general game plan for sideboarded games in this match-up?
But you got to dig 5 deep for that Teferi and once we get to the point where we need a wincon and not answers, that dig can mean all the difference. Personally I'm shaving an esper charm for FoF and a negate out of the main and side for FoN initially. I don't think we want a FoN in the main because negate can only get us so far, but it's a nice early game safety valve and we probably want a second in the side. FoF is a little more interesting because it competes for the instant speed card draw slot that esper charm occupies and charm has so much more utility despite FoF having much more raw power.
Having played the matchup from both sides, GDS is slightly favored vs tron and uw with percentage points going to the more skilled pilot. Humans can be tough, but winnable with the right 75. Dredge on the other hand.....I mean, every deck in the format basically has to draw their dredge hate right?
It's a combo with Leveler to win the game on the spot. It seems pretty bad, but maybe there's something there?
I'm not a huge fan of wrench mind. It doesn't do much against aggro decks (except burn, probably the best deck for it honestly). Most combo decks can shrug it off (if you can't stand being down 2 cards in combo, good luck fighting jund). It's okay in the grindy matchups, but both players tend to have cards that they're willing to just ditch.
Cruel control is more of a meme than a viable deck at this point. I rocked it back during jund's heyday and I'll occasionally rock it at fnm or a side event if I'm feeling saucy, but if I'm rocking grixis and intending to win I'm likely playing a list similar to the one you posted but with anglefish as my big beater. That being said, Cruel Ultimatum has won me a number of games that other cards just couldn't and it'll be a go to for fun.
Edit:
Ancestral Visions vs cantrips. Cantrips help smooth out your draws making sure you make land drops and draw gas. I view AV as more of a wincon and it should take up on of those slots if you're playing it. personally, I run AV in the sideboard of control decks with burn and bring it in for the mirror or combo decks where removal and expensive planeswalkers can be a liability. I like to start fights at the endstep with snapcasters and bolts and AV enables that.
1) this is a 4 mana 1/1 that does not affect the game when it enters, so it's gonna be hard to not just get steamrolled.
2) It, like scepter, only works with instants so no fancy tricks with serum visions or glittering wish.
I like it though and the idea intrigues me, those are just some of the hurdles that'd you have to overcome.