I think that it is safe to change coordinated assault for crater's claw and keep the lands at 18.
Dragon mantle is awesome... the deck is not about filling the batlefield with 1/1, is about dealing 20 in 5 turns, if you can use mana on firebreathing on people, you can have a second wind by dropping more guys after a sweeper, or simple put your opponent at burn range more easily.
Someone asked for a "Proper Primer", I would be glad if you let me do it, since i play the deck on a daily basis and I plan to do it the whole season.
If they have courser and caryatids they are going to still be able to block the bombs with those, no w that i think about it, it doesn't look all that bad to side in a mountain just in case you have too many 3drops in... the thing is if the mountain is worth the SB slot.
I started my testing with the decklist from the GP LA by Eric Pei, I though it was ok, but in my testing on mtgo I came to the conclusion that arena athlete and hall of triumph were quite underwhelming if our game plan was to kill before turn 6
That is the reason why I looked for more straightforward answers like the strikes, after discussing the real value of coordinated assault with a friend of mine, we came up with the idea of putting a singleton crater's claw, there were so many pros and mostly no cons that we decided that it was the real way to go, there was the "good top deck after wrath thing", the removal aspect and in some ways the casting with x=o to trigger multiple things with akroan crusader and the like... finally it is not hard to trigger ferocious and make it bigger.
As you can see most of the changes are in the sideboard, I realized that BG devotion was by far my worst match up, and i thought that War-name aspirant was the best tool at our disposal since she just walks around the manadorks and doesn't die to doomwake giant.
I think the rest is self explanatory.
Some notes and random tips and thoughts in no particular order.
On day one I just took 2 mulligans.
On day 2 I took 6 mulligans.
I dealt 18 damage by turn 3 to one guy.
My fastest round had 37 remaining minutes in the clock (r9)
I effectively missplayed in all the rounds I lost, with the exception of the last one.
Whenever possible play dragon mantle and in response titan's strength to get the scry before drawing.
War-name aspirant is really good, put a hammerhand on it and it walks past kruphixes.
The deck is absurdly consistent turns 1-2-3 if you keep 2 lands.
Horderling outburst is better than rabblemaster in this deck, outburst triggers more things, doesn't force you to attack and helps you to cast stoke the flames out of nowhere, yes rabblemaster is a better topdeck after sweepers, but the question here is... Do we want to play after turn 6?
After the PT and some testing on mtgo i realized the deck is not good at this point of the format, I am still in though, but several changes must be made in roder to make the deck playable in this new competitive enviroment.
I am going to talk about what i want to do, because nothing is set yet.
More freewins: in my version ensoul artifact + darksteel citadel can easily put enough pressure to kill someone just with a single counter to back it up, so i am upping the count of both to 4, please consider that there is sinergy between thief and ensoul artifact and ensoul artifact and springleaf drum.
We need a form of removal: althou helix is decent, most of the time is not going to save your from a powerful threat like a pw or wingmate roc, you are not going to gain much tempo against those, so i am going to use that new tap enchantment for 2 mana, remember that you can still trade it for a courser of kuprix or even ascendency.
We need countermagic: I am already playing 2 swan gong and 2 dissolve in the main, i think i will change swan song for negate and live with that, since we can't deal with PW unless we trade a flier or hour of need.
I think that the main cuts are going to be in helix and triton tactics, since both cards provided the deck with "cute" interactions, thast were terrible topdecks.
Sphinx to the sideboard: the UB match up looks grim, we mostly want to play with whatever you throw to the table, and they are throwing nothing but sphinx's that deal 3 damage, that sucks... so we must cut the engine (thieves, all of them) and jump on the sphinx train, just 2 of them, the rest might be hall of heroes.
Still figuring out what to take out, treasure cruise seems to be really good, but i am not completely sold on that.
guys i think i just made one of the most beautiful plays ever...
helix on my daring thief, bounce himself, in response triton tactics, resolves.
Trigger daring thief, target himself and an opponent creature, in response to trigger tap again to target something and bounce a token, resolve the stack.
Bounce token, change control of daring theif and my opponents creature, daring thief comes back to my hand.
Hey! i have been playing with the deck on mtgo only in tournament practice since i'm out of tix to grind DEs.
I have been playing with things here and there in order to make the deck more consistent and more likely to do "powerful stuff" over "cute stuff".
The biggest inclusion here is master of waves and vortex elemental while cutiing on military intelligence and stubborn denial.
Military intelligence and denial had to go because their power level was determined by your board position, and your board position might vary from outstanting to non-existent, therefore i decided to replace those with more straightforward stuff, in this case, negate/dissolve and 2 treasure cruise.
Vortex elemental gives you a way to deal with stuff you don't have another way to deal with, you want to force the lategame, where you can spit some hour of need's or steal big things... this guy will help you to not to get rushed by small guys, props to you if you tap yourself, block and activate it with springleaf drum.
-btw, vortex elemental gets buffed by master of waves.
Master of waves has a nice little synergy here... you have 2/1 tokens, untap a thief, give your opponent a token and get a real guy, now your opponent owns nothing, don't think of master of waves as your beater of last season, now if we get 2 tokens out of him, it is fine as long as you control a thief... anyway, going for a nice beating curve of 4 tokens on turn 4 and ride to victory is still doable.
First thing... this deck already existed in block constructed I saw it from Travis Woo, [mana]actually there is a video of Ralph Levy with a UB version from the PT.
When rotation came, i realized that most of my cards from Theros were actually meaningless postrotation (I took a break during Theros block, just came back around journey to Nyx, but I already had most I wanted for UW), so I wanted a deck with no fecthlands or multicolored stuff for competitive purposes.
I decided to look at the card pool with m15 and khans and went to my breweing cave and i realized that this deck was still pretty powerful and out of the radar, specially if you add some goodies from m15 like ensoul artifact and darksteel citadel, and some others like stubborn denial and icy blast from kahns.
Here is my current list, i will go card by card after it.
Military intelligence you play 12 1 drops, 8 of them with some form of evasion, having a military intel will keep you hand full of tricks... i considered bident of thassa, but the big con is the CMC which is huge for a deck with 19 lands.
Ensoul artifact,Darksteel citadel These two make many different funny things here, First ensoul can be a turn 2 5/5 beater which is massive and here you have the beautiful synergy with stubborn denial and Icy blast to cover your back AND you have the following synergies as an added up value.
Ensoul artifact can be traded for an oppoment enchantment for full value since trading the controller of ensoul artifact doesn't do anything to your 5/5, you keep your 5/5 your oponent loses something, nice deal.
If your opponent happens to have a valuable artifact that have no way to deal with, play ensoul artifact on it, transform it in a creature and trade it for a random 1/1.
Dakra Mystic this guy is going to do a lot of things for you, and you won't thank him enough, It will ruin every single scry of your opponents, specially the first, since most people just leave something valuable on top and you get to send it to the graveyard, I won't always recommend trading your opponents courser of kuprix right away if you have one of these out, believe me, the value is huge when you get to know when it is going to be safe to go for a draw or go for a toss, specially against stuff like Nissa, and when you get to trade a kuprix for you, you get to quickly cycle cards until you now know when it is valuable to draw, this depends a lot on what is going on with your hand, if you happen to be somewhat behind, just take the courser ASAP, if you have some spare space to play around, let him have it and you play with his draws.
Btw, you can trade Dakra Mystic tapped, since you con activate it in response to thief, btw 2, try to trade everything tapped with drums as long as you can afford it ans is valuable for you.
Stubborn Denial It doesn't only trigger to stuff you take, it also triggers to ensoul artifact and hour of need tokens.
Icy Blast helps you to outtempo your opponent and casually taps daring thief, it also helps you to interact with nisa since it is the only thing that you have that is capable of dealing with the 4/4s (Nissa transfors the lands into elementals which are still lands, therefore you can't trade them with thief, neither bounce them with helix; Is it necessary to point out the interaction with ensoul artifact?
i usually take 1 revelation against aggro out, mostly because in turns 1-5 you need removal spells, goats and counters.... a sphinx's revelation in your opener is basically a mulligan if you are unable to cast it profitably.
Other guy: sure
M: trade invite-> take a look
O: accepts trade-> ho much are you valuing your temple garden?
M: X?
O: supernova says X-1?
M: How much for your stomping then?
O: Z?
M: take a look a find something else (Obviously trying to lowball me, but hell... let him take some commons).
O: (takes temple gaden + path to exile).
M: no way bro...
O: leaves trade.
Basically 5 minutes of my life wasted... which is more or less the same ammount of time i spent writing this post.
Dragon mantle is awesome... the deck is not about filling the batlefield with 1/1, is about dealing 20 in 5 turns, if you can use mana on firebreathing on people, you can have a second wind by dropping more guys after a sweeper, or simple put your opponent at burn range more easily.
Someone asked for a "Proper Primer", I would be glad if you let me do it, since i play the deck on a daily basis and I plan to do it the whole season.
RDW is currently putting 1 or 2 copies on every GP and most high profile events around the world.
We are better positioned than UB control and we will keep that spot at least until february.
finished 39th, had a terrible day 2.
r10 boros heroic 1-2 (7-3)
r11 Mono green 2-0 (opponent gets a GL for marked cards)(8-3)
r12 UB 2-1 (9-3)
r13 Constellation 2-0 (10-3)
r14 RG 1-2 (10-4)
r15 UW 1-2 (10-5)
this is my decklist
4 firedrinker Satyr
4 Akroan crusader
4 monastery swiftspear
4 foundry street denizen
3 frenized goblin
4 stoke the flames
1 crater's claw
4 titan's strength
2 horderling outburst
4 hammerhand
4 dragon mantle
3 War-name aspirant
4 Eidolon of the great revel
2 harness by force
2 arc lightning
2 searing blood
2 hall of triumph
I started my testing with the decklist from the GP LA by Eric Pei, I though it was ok, but in my testing on mtgo I came to the conclusion that arena athlete and hall of triumph were quite underwhelming if our game plan was to kill before turn 6
That is the reason why I looked for more straightforward answers like the strikes, after discussing the real value of coordinated assault with a friend of mine, we came up with the idea of putting a singleton crater's claw, there were so many pros and mostly no cons that we decided that it was the real way to go, there was the "good top deck after wrath thing", the removal aspect and in some ways the casting with x=o to trigger multiple things with akroan crusader and the like... finally it is not hard to trigger ferocious and make it bigger.
As you can see most of the changes are in the sideboard, I realized that BG devotion was by far my worst match up, and i thought that War-name aspirant was the best tool at our disposal since she just walks around the manadorks and doesn't die to doomwake giant.
I think the rest is self explanatory.
Some notes and random tips and thoughts in no particular order.
On day one I just took 2 mulligans.
On day 2 I took 6 mulligans.
I dealt 18 damage by turn 3 to one guy.
My fastest round had 37 remaining minutes in the clock (r9)
I effectively missplayed in all the rounds I lost, with the exception of the last one.
Whenever possible play dragon mantle and in response titan's strength to get the scry before drawing.
War-name aspirant is really good, put a hammerhand on it and it walks past kruphixes.
The deck is absurdly consistent turns 1-2-3 if you keep 2 lands.
Horderling outburst is better than rabblemaster in this deck, outburst triggers more things, doesn't force you to attack and helps you to cast stoke the flames out of nowhere, yes rabblemaster is a better topdeck after sweepers, but the question here is... Do we want to play after turn 6?
Made it to day 2.
I can write more, cause i need to sleep
r1 y 2 awarded bye (2-0)
r3 abzan 0-2 (2-1)
r4 BG constellation 2-0 (3-1)
r5 Abzan aggro 2-0 (4-1)
r6 jeskai burn 2-0 (5-1)
r7 BG constellation 1-2 (5-2)
r8 temur 2-0 (6-2)
r9 mono black aggro (basically a bye) 2-0 (7-2)
I am going to talk about what i want to do, because nothing is set yet.
More freewins: in my version ensoul artifact + darksteel citadel can easily put enough pressure to kill someone just with a single counter to back it up, so i am upping the count of both to 4, please consider that there is sinergy between thief and ensoul artifact and ensoul artifact and springleaf drum.
We need a form of removal: althou helix is decent, most of the time is not going to save your from a powerful threat like a pw or wingmate roc, you are not going to gain much tempo against those, so i am going to use that new tap enchantment for 2 mana, remember that you can still trade it for a courser of kuprix or even ascendency.
We need countermagic: I am already playing 2 swan gong and 2 dissolve in the main, i think i will change swan song for negate and live with that, since we can't deal with PW unless we trade a flier or hour of need.
I think that the main cuts are going to be in helix and triton tactics, since both cards provided the deck with "cute" interactions, thast were terrible topdecks.
Sphinx to the sideboard: the UB match up looks grim, we mostly want to play with whatever you throw to the table, and they are throwing nothing but sphinx's that deal 3 damage, that sucks... so we must cut the engine (thieves, all of them) and jump on the sphinx train, just 2 of them, the rest might be hall of heroes.
Still figuring out what to take out, treasure cruise seems to be really good, but i am not completely sold on that.
helix on my daring thief, bounce himself, in response triton tactics, resolves.
Trigger daring thief, target himself and an opponent creature, in response to trigger tap again to target something and bounce a token, resolve the stack.
Bounce token, change control of daring theif and my opponents creature, daring thief comes back to my hand.
LEGENDARY
I have been playing with things here and there in order to make the deck more consistent and more likely to do "powerful stuff" over "cute stuff".
The biggest inclusion here is master of waves and vortex elemental while cutiing on military intelligence and stubborn denial.
Military intelligence and denial had to go because their power level was determined by your board position, and your board position might vary from outstanting to non-existent, therefore i decided to replace those with more straightforward stuff, in this case, negate/dissolve and 2 treasure cruise.
Vortex elemental gives you a way to deal with stuff you don't have another way to deal with, you want to force the lategame, where you can spit some hour of need's or steal big things... this guy will help you to not to get rushed by small guys, props to you if you tap yourself, block and activate it with springleaf drum.
-btw, vortex elemental gets buffed by master of waves.
Master of waves has a nice little synergy here... you have 2/1 tokens, untap a thief, give your opponent a token and get a real guy, now your opponent owns nothing, don't think of master of waves as your beater of last season, now if we get 2 tokens out of him, it is fine as long as you control a thief... anyway, going for a nice beating curve of 4 tokens on turn 4 and ride to victory is still doable.
there you go! enjoy
2 Hour of Need
4 Retraction Helix
4 Triton Tactics
3 Ensoul Artifact
4 Daring Thief
4 Springleaf Drum
16 Island
2 Negate
4 Vortex Elemental
3 Darksteel Citadel
2 Master of Waves
4 Omenspeaker
2 Dissolve
2 Treasure Cruise
3 Swan Song
2 Hall of Triumph
2 Tormod's Crypt
2 Negate
2 Icy Blast
2 Curse of the Swine
When rotation came, i realized that most of my cards from Theros were actually meaningless postrotation (I took a break during Theros block, just came back around journey to Nyx, but I already had most I wanted for UW), so I wanted a deck with no fecthlands or multicolored stuff for competitive purposes.
I decided to look at the card pool with m15 and khans and went to my breweing cave and i realized that this deck was still pretty powerful and out of the radar, specially if you add some goodies from m15 like ensoul artifact and darksteel citadel, and some others like stubborn denial and icy blast from kahns.
Here is my current list, i will go card by card after it.
4 Triton Shorestalker
4 Retraction Helix
4 Hypnotic Siren
2 Hour of Need
4 Daring Thief
2 Icy Blast
4 Dakra Mystic
3 Ensoul Artifact
4 Stubborn Denial
4 Springleaf Drum
16 Island
3 Darksteel Citadel
2 Military Intelligence
Military intelligence you play 12 1 drops, 8 of them with some form of evasion, having a military intel will keep you hand full of tricks... i considered bident of thassa, but the big con is the CMC which is huge for a deck with 19 lands.
Ensoul artifact,Darksteel citadel These two make many different funny things here, First ensoul can be a turn 2 5/5 beater which is massive and here you have the beautiful synergy with stubborn denial and Icy blast to cover your back AND you have the following synergies as an added up value.
Ensoul artifact can be traded for an oppoment enchantment for full value since trading the controller of ensoul artifact doesn't do anything to your 5/5, you keep your 5/5 your oponent loses something, nice deal.
If your opponent happens to have a valuable artifact that have no way to deal with, play ensoul artifact on it, transform it in a creature and trade it for a random 1/1.
Dakra Mystic this guy is going to do a lot of things for you, and you won't thank him enough, It will ruin every single scry of your opponents, specially the first, since most people just leave something valuable on top and you get to send it to the graveyard, I won't always recommend trading your opponents courser of kuprix right away if you have one of these out, believe me, the value is huge when you get to know when it is going to be safe to go for a draw or go for a toss, specially against stuff like Nissa, and when you get to trade a kuprix for you, you get to quickly cycle cards until you now know when it is valuable to draw, this depends a lot on what is going on with your hand, if you happen to be somewhat behind, just take the courser ASAP, if you have some spare space to play around, let him have it and you play with his draws.
Btw, you can trade Dakra Mystic tapped, since you con activate it in response to thief, btw 2, try to trade everything tapped with drums as long as you can afford it ans is valuable for you.
Stubborn Denial It doesn't only trigger to stuff you take, it also triggers to ensoul artifact and hour of need tokens.
Icy Blast helps you to outtempo your opponent and casually taps daring thief, it also helps you to interact with nisa since it is the only thing that you have that is capable of dealing with the 4/4s (Nissa transfors the lands into elementals which are still lands, therefore you can't trade them with thief, neither bounce them with helix; Is it necessary to point out the interaction with ensoul artifact?
Enjoy trolling
Taking 2 seems too much though.
My current record is 21-3-4 which is quite good for me since I move from a small city to Santiago (Chile) and I am quite experienced with the deck.
4 temple of enlightment
1 azorious guildgate
2 temple of silence
spells
4 dissolve
2 syncopate
2 celestial flare
4 azorious charm
1 aethersprouts
1 fated retribution
4 sphinx's revelation
4 supreme veredict
1 dispel
4 Jace AoT
2 Elspeth
3 detention sphere
1 elixir of inmortality
1 Aetherling
4 Goats
2 dispel
1 blind obedience
1 celestial flare
2 last breath
1 detention sphere
2 gainsay
2 spell that exiles white permanent
Just don't die until you get a finisher, that is my motto.
Learn your match ups and avoid using transformational sideboards and stuff.
Sideboard aggressively against aggro and control.
Keep in mind pro white/blue cards
Fill your sideboard with more answers not with more threats and upgrade accordingly.
current UW record 12-3
M: trade invite-> take a look
O: accepts trade-> ho much are you valuing your temple garden?
M: X?
O: supernova says X-1?
M: How much for your stomping then?
O: Z?
M: take a look a find something else (Obviously trying to lowball me, but hell... let him take some commons).
O: (takes temple gaden + path to exile).
M: no way bro...
O: leaves trade.
Basically 5 minutes of my life wasted... which is more or less the same ammount of time i spent writing this post.