Has anyone thought of SB Teferi, Mage of Zhalfir ? I feel like a 1 of could be backbreaking against fae or possibly even in the mirror. An EoT Teferi when they're tapped out or at any point they can't answer him seems like it might be worth the slot in the SB. Not sure what he'd replace however - but it doesn't seem terrible. Makes combat extremely terrible for our opponents as well, and they can't react to counters.
I actually played him in a few events recently. I had it as a 1-of and boarded it in against UWR Control and Twin. The basic issue is that as a 1-of, you don't see him often enough in those matches because your Electrolyzes and Remands aren't getting cast. He's killer for sure, don't get me wrong on that. I only cast him once and he was Mana Leaked. I have yet to try a plan that involves something like 3 Teferi, though.
I'm hesistant to jump on the Gifts Ungiven train, there isn't a much better top deck in stalled out matches, and it makes 1 of's in the sideboard that much better. That being said, against good player in matches where you are behind, the choices you make for Gifts telegraph what's in your hand, and they will never give you what you need the most to stabilize. It is slow against zoo. I'll be shocked at the times it doesn't get countered against faeries. Splinter twin either won't let it resolve, or will have twin in hand and just smile. Again, I think it is awesome in top deck stalled out matches, but I don't see it doing to much work anywhere else in this deck.
Do you really understand how that works? There is no telegraphing here.
Step 1: You EoT Gifts for unburial and a target (either elesh norn, iona, sphinxs of the steel winds or griselbrand, the most commmon choices).
Step 2: You reanimate.
Step 3: You proceed to win the game.
I dont care if the other player knows what i have in my hand. If he cant stop it, hes as good as dead, knowing or not.
It may be slow vs zoo, but thats not the main reason you play such a SB pack.
Vs fae? who cares, you are still playing that eot. If they counter it, they dont counter your other threats. Same with Twin, you say they have a twin in hand? And why should i care? its not like they can go off in my turn.
The only deck that i never want to tap out, since they can combo at instant speed is living end and i suppose ad nauseaum, but that doesnt see play.
The rest are sorcerery speed or win on their attack phases.
I don't think it's great.
-It requires tapping out on your turn and it makes the opponent's Remands into hard counters when they're hitting Unburial Rites. This matters against Twin and Faeries since both run Remands and they have few opportunities to use them against UWR Midrange.
-It still loses to removal spells and things like Cryptic Command bounce. Not only do you have to tap on your own turn, you've got to protect it against cheap removal by holding up mana or else just attempting to run it out naked.
-Zoo can still win with burn to the dome in the face of a turn 5 Elesh Norn. Iona is basically useless against Zoo.
-It takes six slots that, if you wanted a sweeper, could be solved with uncounterable Supreme Verdicts or even convoluted Engineered Explosives/Academy Ruins packs.
-Drawing Unburial Rites is atrocious and happens to me 100% of the time. On a more serious note, drawing Rites or Norn means that any Gifts you draw are pretty awful. Awful in that if you just wanted a 3U value spell for more cards, you're effectively running Inspiration in Modern.
I would love love love to be proven wrong by your testing results, though. I happen to like Gifts a lot.
Colonnade keeps people honest as a blocker, too. I am down to 3 but I still like having the ability there. You've gotta have something to flip quickly into kill mode; Colonnade fits that. As someone upthread said, it's for when you have only 0-1 cards left. It's a lot less relevant against the longer control decks since you sometimes can't afford to tap to activate it, but it's great against the midrange decks.
Geist seems crucial to beating Bitterblossom, in some strange ways. They can hold up two guys and block the Geist coming in and risk Electrolyze/Bolt/Path taking out their advantage. They can race and lose. Geist is the only thing that presents two threats each turn. I like it a lot since you can just jam it and make the opponent either solve it or lose. It reminds me of playing Platinum Angel in Tron - it's not great on its own but once it's in play, all you have to do is protect it and the opponent's plan is irrelevant. Faeries feels like you want to maximize all your 2-for-1s (which are few in number) because they don't have any. I also suspect I'd be siding out Cryptics against Faeries.
If you really fear Bitterblossom, then Celestial Purge is probably better off the board than Spell Snare is (since you can rip it off the top).
Maybe I'm leaning too far into my time on Tron but Oblivion Stone did a whole lot of work against the matchups like Affinity and Melira where the opponent would clog the board up with garbage. I'm considering 1-3 between main and side. It's a whole lot slower than either EE or Supreme Verdict, but it can both eliminate everything and save my lone attacker. If we're blessed with all the time in the world, it also clears Bogles out pretty well.
I've got a feeling that Restoration Angel is pretty great against Faeries if it sticks. Hard to muster the faeries to counter with Spellstutter and it absorbs a lot of attackers while you burn them out.
I'm comfortable considering Tron a bad matchup and being OK with that. Their endgame of Eye is just better than anything we can do. If they Karn and kill a land, you've got Bolts and Cliques to kill it off. If they Wurmcoil, you've got Paths and Bolt-Snap-Bolt. They can't reliably beat a Geist.
I bring in Mindcensors post board and plan to kill them early. They have good turns from 3-5 and then again from about 8 onward, and it's in that middle area where you've got to be sure you kill them.
If you're running all that conditional junk, just run Tempest of Light so you can Snapcast it. Bogles is a bad match because of all the sub-par burn (and we have to keep some of it in to respect Spirit Dancer).
Anyone have luck maindecking 4 Molten Rain? I feel like those along with Snapcaster make for a pretty brutal land destruction package. I don't like the idea of tapping out a lot in a Cryptic Command deck, but maindeck Molten seems pretty good. If you've tried it, have you liked it? It's essentially the Tempo Twin plan postboard against control decks anyway.
just won a 5-3-2-2 This deck man. This deck. I might just have to get those hierarchs.
Congratulations!
Hierarchs and Groves are not essential like Birthing Pod and Kiki are, but they help. Maybe your recent victory will embolden you to acquire the other pieces!
I like that you can Pact for Witness and then get your Pact back. The deck probably has better things to do than that but it can help build inevitability against Jund and the like.
My favourite Jund sideboards are Garruk (PH) and Obstinate Baloth.
I play a quite resiliant version of the deck, that keeps landing resilient creatures (Geists and Baloths), aswell as 4 Selkies. It's really hard to run out of gass. And while their threats cap at some point, ours just get bigger and bigger. I also run 4 Witnesses, that make discard pointless.
The heavy control decks seem to fold to boil and defense grid siding, while Tron seems to be the one deck I just cant seem to beat.
My deck is basicly a very resillient mono green aggro, that can easily go on defense against faster decks (affinity, burn), where Geists and Witnesses make sure we live long enough, and forces control to hold back so long, it just runs out of answers, or mana to answer me efficiently.
My wincons are basily Garruk, a singleton kessig and two Behemoths.
How are Boil and Grid getting there? I was testing against the UWR Tempo deck from the GP this weekend and it was hard to see a board state where Boil would have helped. They have a bunch of things like Glacial Fortress and Colonnade to get right around Boil and Choke. That list also only plays two Leaks, three Cryptics and a Counterflux from the board. Makes me think that Grid is a little too narrow. If you found different results, I'd like to hear them for certain!
I like Ghost Quarter over Edge because Tron can do a host of nasty things with just three Tron lands out. If you're having issues with Tron, have you tried Beast Within? Maybe I'm using it as a crutch but it's a good catch-all.
Seems like he has an issue with decks that play removal... Like, the good ones? KotR works in that it consolidates fetching shrines with putting a creature on the field, but I'm not convinced it is where this deck wants to go.
Anyway, as for the g wave convo... It is a Timmy deck, however, it beats soul sisters regularly so I don't think it's a tier 3 deck, whatever that means. P command is where my testing is taking me, along with tooth and nail. I think the deck needs resilient devotion targets along with card draw. Basically CA is where we need to go.
Kitchen Finks and Predator Ooze are resilient devotion guys. I find Selkie even lives long enough to generate devotion mana. For card draw, I have been trying Slate of Ancestry and it works pretty well. Slower than Harmonize but it runs away with the game. I feel safe fighting Jund when I can reload easily. You can also Wave it out.
I enjoy the Command loops for four turns of Fallow Earth, ending in Craterhoof with four Witnesses out. I run two but I want more.
One advantage of Wave over Tooth is that it lets you set up to get around a lot of corner cards in the format. For example, Emrakul + Urabrask still loses to Ensnaring Bridge. However, if you Wave for 9, then 15, then 22, you've probably got access to Witness getting Primal Command to get rid of it. You can certainly run Terastodon to get around that stuff, but then you're still loading up on a lot of cards to solve problems that can just be answered by the spells you've already got.
If you're playing Tooth with Craterhoofs, I'm almost completely sure that the correct Tooth is for Hoof and Phyrexian Metamorph instead of two Hoofs.
I actually played him in a few events recently. I had it as a 1-of and boarded it in against UWR Control and Twin. The basic issue is that as a 1-of, you don't see him often enough in those matches because your Electrolyzes and Remands aren't getting cast. He's killer for sure, don't get me wrong on that. I only cast him once and he was Mana Leaked. I have yet to try a plan that involves something like 3 Teferi, though.
I don't think it's great.
-It requires tapping out on your turn and it makes the opponent's Remands into hard counters when they're hitting Unburial Rites. This matters against Twin and Faeries since both run Remands and they have few opportunities to use them against UWR Midrange.
-It still loses to removal spells and things like Cryptic Command bounce. Not only do you have to tap on your own turn, you've got to protect it against cheap removal by holding up mana or else just attempting to run it out naked.
-Zoo can still win with burn to the dome in the face of a turn 5 Elesh Norn. Iona is basically useless against Zoo.
-It takes six slots that, if you wanted a sweeper, could be solved with uncounterable Supreme Verdicts or even convoluted Engineered Explosives/Academy Ruins packs.
-Drawing Unburial Rites is atrocious and happens to me 100% of the time. On a more serious note, drawing Rites or Norn means that any Gifts you draw are pretty awful. Awful in that if you just wanted a 3U value spell for more cards, you're effectively running Inspiration in Modern.
I would love love love to be proven wrong by your testing results, though. I happen to like Gifts a lot.
If you really fear Bitterblossom, then Celestial Purge is probably better off the board than Spell Snare is (since you can rip it off the top).
I've got a feeling that Restoration Angel is pretty great against Faeries if it sticks. Hard to muster the faeries to counter with Spellstutter and it absorbs a lot of attackers while you burn them out.
I bring in Mindcensors post board and plan to kill them early. They have good turns from 3-5 and then again from about 8 onward, and it's in that middle area where you've got to be sure you kill them.
Be aware that they're all running Thassa now, so that's yet another thing to hold Paths for.
EE for 2 might be a thing against them, too.
Congratulations!
Hierarchs and Groves are not essential like Birthing Pod and Kiki are, but they help. Maybe your recent victory will embolden you to acquire the other pieces!
How are Boil and Grid getting there? I was testing against the UWR Tempo deck from the GP this weekend and it was hard to see a board state where Boil would have helped. They have a bunch of things like Glacial Fortress and Colonnade to get right around Boil and Choke. That list also only plays two Leaks, three Cryptics and a Counterflux from the board. Makes me think that Grid is a little too narrow. If you found different results, I'd like to hear them for certain!
I like Ghost Quarter over Edge because Tron can do a host of nasty things with just three Tron lands out. If you're having issues with Tron, have you tried Beast Within? Maybe I'm using it as a crutch but it's a good catch-all.
Kitchen Finks and Predator Ooze are resilient devotion guys. I find Selkie even lives long enough to generate devotion mana. For card draw, I have been trying Slate of Ancestry and it works pretty well. Slower than Harmonize but it runs away with the game. I feel safe fighting Jund when I can reload easily. You can also Wave it out.
I enjoy the Command loops for four turns of Fallow Earth, ending in Craterhoof with four Witnesses out. I run two but I want more.
You are right and I am wrong on this.
Kiki-Jiki is a possible alternative.
If you're playing Tooth with Craterhoofs, I'm almost completely sure that the correct Tooth is for Hoof and Phyrexian Metamorph instead of two Hoofs.