Personally, it DOES feel low to the ground. I'd ask Donny though. Later this week he may stream and I'll get on twitch too and we'll all have a party.
To be fair, Donny 5-0'd with the other style list too, so he's just a good pilot in general, but he was telling me personally about how he felt like the old list was in a rut. I usually text him my brews and we talk about what's loose and what isn't.
If you see him going to 24 lands and playing new gideons and lingering souls it's probably bc I bothered him enough and he let go of his better judgement. lmao
But in all seriousness, he faced some serious, common match ups and killed it. He metioned that death's shadow felt like he could never possibly lose at all. So thats good news!
The sideboard was supposed to have 1-2 Jace, Architect of thought for Gb/x / souls matchups but Donny forgot and played purge
That being said. It's pretty straightforward. My concept for switching from Think Twice / Rev Engine to AV / Serum was, as Donny said, to stay low to the ground.
Assuming we rev for 5, the think twice and Rev package net us 18 cards for 36 mana, ancestral nets us 12 for 4 mana.
You could argue that the life gain is worth a card too, but still, thats 20 cards for 36 mana.
These aren't new arguments. It's just that I played an awful lot of games where Rev felt clunky, and I wanted SV, but didn't have room for everything. Ancestral Vision serves the role of both think twice and Rev in this sense. Which gives us room for more cheap answers.
Sideboard should be more of the same. The same core advantage engine, powering out either a) more removal and board control b) more counters
and then stuff like runed halo which is always an all star and versatile in basically every matchup.
Donny mentioned keeping the numbers the same, but moving alliance main and a few halo to the board to get maximum value out of snapcaster game 1.
looking at the sideboard, you'll see there's no (reasonable) matchup we don't have SOME sort of out to. Keeping broad answers like detention sphere and Halo help against dredge, or even something as obscure as lantern (halo on codex shredder)
In fact, I won a lantern match this weekend by putting halo on codex shredder, then casting secure for a bunch, and letting AV come off suspend and target my opponent, which let me underneath ensnaring bridge. D sphere would have worked there too if I had drawn it.
I like engineered explosives as a general catch all, not just for tokens. There's maybe one tokens player in my meta, but EE is great against everything from merfolk to Jund, to the DS decks, and amazing against affinity too. Plus lantern, bridge decks. Just a catch all really.
So far it's felt REALLY great, and you can always cast Zenith for x= a lot, then untap, cryptic tap their team / bounce lightmine for the win when it's time.
lightmine field is pretty stupid against lingering souls (a weak spot) or dumb stuff like affinity and elves or inkmoth decks in general, or tokens. depends on your meta
everything else is pretty stock, 27 lands is because I hated playing serum visions everytime I drew it. The only thing I ever wanted to dig for was more land, so we upped that to 27 like a proper-draw goer, and then compensated with a couple irrigated farmland
you could also shove in an oona's grace in place of something, but meh.
feels great against the field, no big bombs for gb/x, but they've never felt necessary. We essentially lose to lili, and engineered explosives effectively solves that. goyfs and bobs aren't an issue for so much removal. so we lose to lili or souls usually *shrug*
It helps a lot to think about boarding not as silver bullets, but as "how do I actually usually LOSE this match" and just try to band aid that. We don't need to be playing 4 color crumble to dust bullet decks anymore
It's like a laundry list of good / powerful cards in modern. And they're all cheap in mana cost, not clunky, and the mana is great.
My finisher (in leiu of easily disruptive stuff like angler or tasigur) , has been cavern of souls into Keranos or aetherling. Plus 4 tar pit / snap bolt
As the guy who asked "hey wouldn't it be cool if we played esper charm and bolt lolblah blah blah" I can pretty much confirm what everyone else is thinking. It's bad and don't do it. Not even remotely worth it.
Bottom line: if you read the meta game as "majority of it is decks where I want to durdle and mind rotting with charm is instrumental to beating some of the most popular decks, and thoughtseize is pretty ganebreaking" (ie: combo meta, jund/junk increases by 5-7 percent or more, nahiri gets REALLY huge, etc), play esper
If your read on the metagame is "man there sure is a lot of zoo and elves and death's shadow and every 3rd of 4th matchup is infect" then play jeskai.
You can't have EVERYthing, haha. Especially as a control deck, we aren't just gonna be able to blindly pick a deck and have it be good against 90 percent of the metagame, and never bother reading the metagame.
Today I'm playing jeskai, and I found that with bolts and stuff in the deck, usually I just wanted to use esper charm to draw two, so I'm back on a straight U/w/r mana base with 2-3 Comparative Analysis just to get a quick instant speed divination, which in THIS configuration is what I was using esper charm for primarily anyway. Definitely not worth it to screw up your whole mana base to be able to mind rot sometimes. Gotta pick what you expect to be more relevant (mind rot or lightning bolt) and roll with it, and whatever you chose, try to hedge against everything else in the board (clique is extra good in jeskai bc it shores up the combo and controlly matchups, but also bc it's a 3 power flyer in a deck full of lightning bolts)
Edit: to be fair, as "average" as Electrolyze is, it IS super good against lingering souls which is definitely making a comeback right now, and it IS pretty damn efficient against snapcaster mages, etc. I think I might just stick with wafo's jeskai, -1 serum +1 Bolt, and see where that gets me. So far it actually feels pretty tight.
As far as the board, I do want an extra wrath and some runed halos, bant eldrazi is a real thing.
electrolyze is definitely the least impressive and most meh card in the deck
when it's good, it's a complete blowout, but 90 percent of the time its just "alright"
maybe those electrolyze can just be AV
Who's good at mana bases, is that Amaelek's thing? Amalek figure out how I can play jeskai with esper charm!.. I don;t care about thoughtseizes or souls or anything, I just want to run jeskai with 4 charm. Thanks in advance
Just dropping in to say I don't find the jeskai switch all that shocking. I had already been talking to Donny about how Jeskai made more sense in this metagame. The only decks charm is really grinding out are gb/x. Been testing wafo's maindeck jeskai list -1 serum visions +1 lightning bolt and loving it.
I'll add that it really is almost our exact same deck, but with more spot removal, and currently, that's relevant. If the meta switches to ridiculous amounts of midrange, and combo starts popping up more, then thats the bat signal for Esper charm. Currently we're in zoo-land and spirits and affinity and dredge land.
As far as toxic flames, I was about 6 Jack and Cokes into my birthday evening, and that post came across as both elitist and accusatory / belittling to the entirety of everyone who posts here. Now, I'm not the political correctness police by any means, I just thought it was stupid, and I still do. But far be it from me to hold a grudge against someone because I didn't like their "tone"
So putting that aside, I actually can get behind a lot of what Cipher has said post-LileGate.
I think it would be hard to argue AGAINST Cipher's point of "cryptic command doesn't have that many decks where cryptic is a trump card that grinds them out" because "those decks have dissapeared and now we have things like zoo, infect, and even nahiri where you would feasibly trim cryptics"
Yes, yes, and yes. I'm not actually going to comment on wafo's list, seeing as it has 4 cryptic, but I will say Serum visions seems fine and I would also be interested in building a more "low to the ground" version that isn't looking for cryptics to be some big gamebreaking payoff.
And before anyone tries explaining versatility, I get it. I'm one of the biggest Cryptic Command fans that there could ever possibly be. It just that Cipher and the people who agree with him (I think Amalek chimed in), I feel are on to something as far as cryptic and it's interactions in the metagame are concerned.
Ok wafo we were just kidding. Serum
Visions is #1. And we like your foils. You can use your real account now.
You had me up until the part where wafo invented draw go control. That's when we knew it was you, Guillame.
Somebody get amalek to update this the thread title guys. It's not just modern esper draw go. You WILL do as wafo says or you are NOT in the club.
*sassy finger wave*
Give me a break
I'm with amalek on "mtgo sucks I'm not spending money on that" , and it that makes my opinion invalid, oh well.
So now that we've all learned our opinions are completely irrelevant, and none of our experiences or testing matters (because we all only play 2 round fnm's against players who forgot to put spells in their deck and accidentally showed up with 75 lands) I guess we can all just go home.
It's not like Piotrowiak and Stokpile, pound for pound, put up better "in paper" results with similar lists than wafo did. Nah, screw those guys because they aren't on modo and haven't personally messaged Cipher a copy of their DC number and play history. /Sarcasm
I play in SCG events or grand prixs when I have time, I'm also a musician, Married, and work 60 hours a week doing R&D engineering for Apple. If I think mtgo sucks, and I'm not willing to just drop everything and leave my wife every weekend, but still manage to play 6-7 medium sized events per month, should that make my experiences totally irrelevant?
Where is your modo channel where you put up such amazing results? Who here has ever seen Cipher play a game of magic? I mean jesus christ dude. Nobody knows who you are and you don't even meet YOUR OWN CRITERIA for being allowed to have an opinion.
Donny is a busy guy but still finds time to crunch Caleb D ON STREAM (with a list he tweaked himself, even though he forgot to ask your permission)
That is the most off putting thing I've read in a while. What the hell is the point of even having a forum?
"Test on cockatrice? HA. I only test with a pool of former world champions. I used to do that lowly sort of thing back in the day before I wasn't just some guy *****ing about other people's opinions on the internet"
Of course this may or may not be true, because "I personally never trust anything I read on the internet" , so for all we know.....
To be fair, Donny 5-0'd with the other style list too, so he's just a good pilot in general, but he was telling me personally about how he felt like the old list was in a rut. I usually text him my brews and we talk about what's loose and what isn't.
If you see him going to 24 lands and playing new gideons and lingering souls it's probably bc I bothered him enough and he let go of his better judgement. lmao
But in all seriousness, he faced some serious, common match ups and killed it. He metioned that death's shadow felt like he could never possibly lose at all. So thats good news!
That being said. It's pretty straightforward. My concept for switching from Think Twice / Rev Engine to AV / Serum was, as Donny said, to stay low to the ground.
Assuming we rev for 5, the think twice and Rev package net us 18 cards for 36 mana, ancestral nets us 12 for 4 mana.
You could argue that the life gain is worth a card too, but still, thats 20 cards for 36 mana.
These aren't new arguments. It's just that I played an awful lot of games where Rev felt clunky, and I wanted SV, but didn't have room for everything. Ancestral Vision serves the role of both think twice and Rev in this sense. Which gives us room for more cheap answers.
Sideboard should be more of the same. The same core advantage engine, powering out either a) more removal and board control b) more counters
and then stuff like runed halo which is always an all star and versatile in basically every matchup.
Donny mentioned keeping the numbers the same, but moving alliance main and a few halo to the board to get maximum value out of snapcaster game 1.
looking at the sideboard, you'll see there's no (reasonable) matchup we don't have SOME sort of out to. Keeping broad answers like detention sphere and Halo help against dredge, or even something as obscure as lantern (halo on codex shredder)
In fact, I won a lantern match this weekend by putting halo on codex shredder, then casting secure for a bunch, and letting AV come off suspend and target my opponent, which let me underneath ensnaring bridge. D sphere would have worked there too if I had drawn it.
Considering brewing up something dumb, which is to say, a green splash. Probably only for the sideboard : Maelstrom pulse & thragtusk
We've got enough debate about secure vs WsZ / souls or no souls, to have to deal with his social justice nonsense.
-White, American, residing in the south.
Jesus Christ you guys. I'm gone for 6 months and now this lmfao
Lightmine Field was originally Jace AOT, but lightmine stops bloodghast, inkmoth nexus that are wearing cranial plating,
vendilion clique, snapcaster mage, forces insectile aberration to attack alone rather than multiples, plus also hoses affinity and elves in addition to lingering souls, dark confidant beats etc.
So far it's felt REALLY great, and you can always cast Zenith for x= a lot, then untap, cryptic tap their team / bounce lightmine for the win when it's time.
you'll need halos and paths / snap paths to clean up the amalgams. But, that's not too terrible.
I'd actually like to squeeze another lightmine in the SB. EngExp is too good against stuff like lantern, and random jank to cut any of those though.
maybe cut a thoughtseize depending on the meta. Dredge doesn't bother me much. I hate losing to burn, hence the dispels and extra blessed alliances
Bed time for me.
Played about 40 paper matches in the last 5 days, and I'm now on this. This should spark a healthy amount of argument lol.
4x flooded strand
4x polluted delta
3x island
2x plains
1x swamp
2x hallowed fountain
2x watery grave
3x drowned catacomb
2x irrigated farmland
1x mystic gate
3x snapcaster mage
4x think twice
4x esper charm
2x sphinx's revelation
4x path to exile
2x fatal push
4x supreme verdict
3x logic knot
2x negate
4x cryptic command
3x thoughtseize
1x negate
2x dispel
3x engineered explosives
3x blessed alliance
1x lightmine field
2x runed halo
lightmine field is pretty stupid against lingering souls (a weak spot) or dumb stuff like affinity and elves or inkmoth decks in general, or tokens. depends on your meta
everything else is pretty stock, 27 lands is because I hated playing serum visions everytime I drew it. The only thing I ever wanted to dig for was more land, so we upped that to 27 like a proper-draw goer, and then compensated with a couple irrigated farmland
you could also shove in an oona's grace in place of something, but meh.
feels great against the field, no big bombs for gb/x, but they've never felt necessary. We essentially lose to lili, and engineered explosives effectively solves that. goyfs and bobs aren't an issue for so much removal. so we lose to lili or souls usually *shrug*
It helps a lot to think about boarding not as silver bullets, but as "how do I actually usually LOSE this match" and just try to band aid that. We don't need to be playing 4 color crumble to dust bullet decks anymore
Have fun guys!
My verdict : "fire emoji"
Inquisition
Bolt
Ancestral vision
Terminate
Damnation
Knot/ leak
Snapcaster
K command.
It's like a laundry list of good / powerful cards in modern. And they're all cheap in mana cost, not clunky, and the mana is great.
My finisher (in leiu of easily disruptive stuff like angler or tasigur) , has been cavern of souls into Keranos or aetherling. Plus 4 tar pit / snap bolt
Bottom line: if you read the meta game as "majority of it is decks where I want to durdle and mind rotting with charm is instrumental to beating some of the most popular decks, and thoughtseize is pretty ganebreaking" (ie: combo meta, jund/junk increases by 5-7 percent or more, nahiri gets REALLY huge, etc), play esper
If your read on the metagame is "man there sure is a lot of zoo and elves and death's shadow and every 3rd of 4th matchup is infect" then play jeskai.
You can't have EVERYthing, haha. Especially as a control deck, we aren't just gonna be able to blindly pick a deck and have it be good against 90 percent of the metagame, and never bother reading the metagame.
Today I'm playing jeskai, and I found that with bolts and stuff in the deck, usually I just wanted to use esper charm to draw two, so I'm back on a straight U/w/r mana base with 2-3 Comparative Analysis just to get a quick instant speed divination, which in THIS configuration is what I was using esper charm for primarily anyway. Definitely not worth it to screw up your whole mana base to be able to mind rot sometimes. Gotta pick what you expect to be more relevant (mind rot or lightning bolt) and roll with it, and whatever you chose, try to hedge against everything else in the board (clique is extra good in jeskai bc it shores up the combo and controlly matchups, but also bc it's a 3 power flyer in a deck full of lightning bolts)
and again, right now izzet staticaster is bae
Edit: to be fair, as "average" as Electrolyze is, it IS super good against lingering souls which is definitely making a comeback right now, and it IS pretty damn efficient against snapcaster mages, etc. I think I might just stick with wafo's jeskai, -1 serum +1 Bolt, and see where that gets me. So far it actually feels pretty tight.
As far as the board, I do want an extra wrath and some runed halos, bant eldrazi is a real thing.
when it's good, it's a complete blowout, but 90 percent of the time its just "alright"
maybe those electrolyze can just be AV
Who's good at mana bases, is that Amaelek's thing? Amalek figure out how I can play jeskai with esper charm!.. I don;t care about thoughtseizes or souls or anything, I just want to run jeskai with 4 charm. Thanks in advance
I'll add that it really is almost our exact same deck, but with more spot removal, and currently, that's relevant. If the meta switches to ridiculous amounts of midrange, and combo starts popping up more, then thats the bat signal for Esper charm. Currently we're in zoo-land and spirits and affinity and dredge land.
PS Izzet Staticaster vs. bloodghast is lol
As far as toxic flames, I was about 6 Jack and Cokes into my birthday evening, and that post came across as both elitist and accusatory / belittling to the entirety of everyone who posts here. Now, I'm not the political correctness police by any means, I just thought it was stupid, and I still do. But far be it from me to hold a grudge against someone because I didn't like their "tone"
So putting that aside, I actually can get behind a lot of what Cipher has said post-LileGate.
I think it would be hard to argue AGAINST Cipher's point of "cryptic command doesn't have that many decks where cryptic is a trump card that grinds them out" because "those decks have dissapeared and now we have things like zoo, infect, and even nahiri where you would feasibly trim cryptics"
Yes, yes, and yes. I'm not actually going to comment on wafo's list, seeing as it has 4 cryptic, but I will say Serum visions seems fine and I would also be interested in building a more "low to the ground" version that isn't looking for cryptics to be some big gamebreaking payoff.
And before anyone tries explaining versatility, I get it. I'm one of the biggest Cryptic Command fans that there could ever possibly be. It just that Cipher and the people who agree with him (I think Amalek chimed in), I feel are on to something as far as cryptic and it's interactions in the metagame are concerned.
Brew accordingly.
Visions is #1. And we like your foils. You can use your real account now.
You had me up until the part where wafo invented draw go control. That's when we knew it was you, Guillame.
Somebody get amalek to update this the thread title guys. It's not just modern esper draw go. You WILL do as wafo says or you are NOT in the club.
*sassy finger wave*
Give me a break
I'm with amalek on "mtgo sucks I'm not spending money on that" , and it that makes my opinion invalid, oh well.
So now that we've all learned our opinions are completely irrelevant, and none of our experiences or testing matters (because we all only play 2 round fnm's against players who forgot to put spells in their deck and accidentally showed up with 75 lands) I guess we can all just go home.
It's not like Piotrowiak and Stokpile, pound for pound, put up better "in paper" results with similar lists than wafo did. Nah, screw those guys because they aren't on modo and haven't personally messaged Cipher a copy of their DC number and play history. /Sarcasm
I play in SCG events or grand prixs when I have time, I'm also a musician, Married, and work 60 hours a week doing R&D engineering for Apple. If I think mtgo sucks, and I'm not willing to just drop everything and leave my wife every weekend, but still manage to play 6-7 medium sized events per month, should that make my experiences totally irrelevant?
Where is your modo channel where you put up such amazing results? Who here has ever seen Cipher play a game of magic? I mean jesus christ dude. Nobody knows who you are and you don't even meet YOUR OWN CRITERIA for being allowed to have an opinion.
Donny is a busy guy but still finds time to crunch Caleb D ON STREAM (with a list he tweaked himself, even though he forgot to ask your permission)
That is the most off putting thing I've read in a while. What the hell is the point of even having a forum?
"Test on cockatrice? HA. I only test with a pool of former world champions. I used to do that lowly sort of thing back in the day before I wasn't just some guy *****ing about other people's opinions on the internet"
Of course this may or may not be true, because "I personally never trust anything I read on the internet" , so for all we know.....
And "runed halo is really good against bant eldrazi ". That is a certified fact. 2/0'd bant eldrazi twice today