Everyone who ran Solar Flare in our state fell on their face with it. Everyone... Most went 1-3 or 2-3 drop.
Spellskite while a nice answer to Wolf Run (Actually won me one of the matches), just kinda sits there waiting for friends.
There's something big missing from this deck, we need a serious outlet for discard and have Despise which is blatantly not what we want, and Distress which is BB and almost impossible to get early, and while Mana Leak and Dissipate are decent they just don't have that raw cantrip power that Remand gave this type of deck.
I folded vs UW control decks (mostly due to horrible draws and bad card choices on my Alchemies (3 different times I had DoJ, Forbidden Alchemy and 2 W/X lands come out of it...)
So I went 0-2 vs 2 different UW Blade decks, one with Geist and Stalker and one without.
1-1 vs Wolf Run and it came down to the fact that I happened to have a Spellskite alive.
Only other deck I beat was some crazy Zombie deck with Grim-Grin that still managed to cast Army of the Damned 3 times because this deck is so slow.
Oddly enough I went 5-0 in Game Ones (most of them on the draw), so I wonder if it's just that there's so much quality hate against us right now.
I'm not terribly surprised. The deck has a lot of holes, and everybody's attention has been on it as of late. I think it's a testament to how balanced the format is right now that such powerful interactions such as Sun Titan and Phantasmal Image/Liliana/ 3-drop aren't simply dominating.
I think that the future for Solar Flare is going to be toning down the crazy mana base and interactions for something more well-rounded. I'm considering cutting Scars duals altogether as they hurt me more than helped me at my last FNM.
After playtesting the deck for a couple of weeks, I've started to wonder about using Invisible Stalker and SoFaF along with the Sun Titan package. They make for a good distraction midgame and I feel that being able to untap at the end of the game gives you a lot more options with Snapcaster in the mirror. Has anyone tested this?
I finished 5-1 at my local FNM tonight without leaks as well. I have found that having an answer to whatever is on the board is better than counting on being able to Mana Leak early.
I've been running the pair in a U/B control shell, but Tempered Steel is just too strong now for it to have any game against aggro.
I've got a set of Hedron Crab, and when they get going they can really speed up the mill, but I've found them to just be too weak in most instances. The best success I've had is just plugging Jace 3 and SOBAM into Cawblade, but as it has been said it's just better to run Baby Jace and SOFAF. I'm going to do some testing with Jace's Erasure, Jace's Archivist, Jens, Hedron Crab, and Consecrated Sphinx in a Monoblue deck for fun.
I've been fooling around with a mill deck that uses the new Jace and Sword of Body and Mind. The biggest complaint about Jace's second ability is that takes four turns for it to win the game on average. Well, SoB&M mills ten too, and I think the current metagame has shown us that getting a hawk in for a hit with a sword attached is pretty powerful and not hard to accomplish. In this context, Jace can act as a powerful finisher.
This is my first time posting, and I thought I'd point out an interesting combo that will be legal until Zendikar rotates:
Quest for the Gravelord + Smallpox
There are a ton of ways you can make sure that you can keep the counters coming too:
Viscera Seer
Geth's Verdict
Tezzeret's Gambit
Add all that and some hand disruption and spot removal and you can effectively operate without mana for the first few turns and then start pumping out 5/5 zombie tokens. Also, you could definitely keep the curve low enough that Dark Tutelage would give you great card advantage without putting you at a major disadvantage, not to mention Viscera Seer.
Not sure how all the linking stuff works, so sorry that the cards themselves aren't linked. If someone tells me how I can fix it!
I'm not terribly surprised. The deck has a lot of holes, and everybody's attention has been on it as of late. I think it's a testament to how balanced the format is right now that such powerful interactions such as Sun Titan and Phantasmal Image/Liliana/ 3-drop aren't simply dominating.
I think that the future for Solar Flare is going to be toning down the crazy mana base and interactions for something more well-rounded. I'm considering cutting Scars duals altogether as they hurt me more than helped me at my last FNM.
I've got a set of Hedron Crab, and when they get going they can really speed up the mill, but I've found them to just be too weak in most instances. The best success I've had is just plugging Jace 3 and SOBAM into Cawblade, but as it has been said it's just better to run Baby Jace and SOFAF. I'm going to do some testing with Jace's Erasure, Jace's Archivist, Jens, Hedron Crab, and Consecrated Sphinx in a Monoblue deck for fun.
Thoughts?
Quest for the Gravelord + Smallpox
There are a ton of ways you can make sure that you can keep the counters coming too:
Viscera Seer
Geth's Verdict
Tezzeret's Gambit
Add all that and some hand disruption and spot removal and you can effectively operate without mana for the first few turns and then start pumping out 5/5 zombie tokens. Also, you could definitely keep the curve low enough that Dark Tutelage would give you great card advantage without putting you at a major disadvantage, not to mention Viscera Seer.
Not sure how all the linking stuff works, so sorry that the cards themselves aren't linked. If someone tells me how I can fix it!