Cut one of the mights for mutagenic growth. You realistically only need 4 of the "telegraphed" pumped spells (And in all honesty with 13 fetches I still prefer Groundswell, Might is too telegraphed) and mutagenic allows for dirty dirty things.
I also still prefer Wild Defiance over Path, as its both a pump spell and you can keep hands with hierarch + 2 lands, pump spells and defiance
if you think about it if your opponent thinks their safe you can attack for 15 with that hand. haha
he's only running 9 fetches, i'd probably do the opposite of what you are suggesting, lol
Look at that guys board, he basically turns his deck into junk for game 2 and/or 3, it's probably why he's running only 2 company while running 4 chord.
Have a ptq this sunday and am trying a couple different things, one of which is going down to just 4 hierarchs. I had gone to 4 hierarchs/1 bird split, getting rid of the bird now. Also going to try 2 x bow of nylea. At the ptq 2 months ago, bow was actually ridiculous in most of the matchups i landed it in. Here's my first sample list.
We have a fair amount of hate against living end in the main, mostly Thalia and scavenging ooze. After board people bring in anything from rest in peace to suppression field to chalice of the void. Fringe cards that benefit you kind of in that match up are worship/Thrun/manlands. (If they living end your Thrun away, you can always activate a manland every time they would kill you to live. They have to get a fulminator mage to kill it, it's obviously the softest of locks against them, but it still can buy you time. chalice for zero with a spellskite in play is ridiculously hard for them to get around typically. Of course as stated before suppression field turns their deck into the slowest combo deck ever, they might as well just hard cast their threats at that point. Pretty much we have no match that isn't winnable, but we also CAN lose to anything as well (even favorable match ups like I did on Saturday in the PTQ).
Back from my ptq, I went 5-3. Decklist is one page back. Points of interest.
Round 1. U/R Delver. Win the roll and the game, opponent gets a turn 2 delver (turn 3 flip) after snagging my turn 1 hierarch back to my hand, we have a race contest and i win due to larger guys and opponent getting stuck in land rut (he did manage to play back to back cryptic commands to stall for 2 turns, electing to draw instead of bounce something though due to his 1 delver getting me low, he just needed a 2nd way to deal 3 damage to win the game. Game 2 I don't 100% remember, he goes first, has turn 1 serum visions, i think he missed land drop 3 for 2 turns while I had plays so he just dies.
Round 2. Jund. Opponent wins roll, turn 1 goes to 15 with a thoughtsieze. Gets me vaguely low before I drop worship to match the thrun I have on the table. He can't outrace thrun/smiter/hierach with active gavony. The turn he dies he draws pulse, but had no way to swing in or burn me for the win at that point. Game 2. He drops himself really low again with confidant/thoughtsieze/fetches. He starts swinging into me with confidant when he's at 9 and I'm still at 20. I take it and eventually he plays anger of the gods to kill 2 of my guys and his confidant. He is ahead though due to 3 goyfs to my thrun and smiter, but i have active gavony and bow of nylea. He gets me to potential lethal with a goyf swing losing 1 goyf in the process, I then draw a path and path his guy and kill him.
Round 3. Affinity. I win the roll and am happy with my opening hierach/thicket/quarter/arbiter strip mine hand. Opponent drops a turn 1 darksteel citadel and passes. So much for the strip mine play, i play a smiter, opponent drops a 2nd citadel and a lone ravager. He apparently had won both his prior matches but mulligan'd 7 times in them and got a hand of 4 lands 2 ravagers 1 master of etherium and kept it. I make a couple mistakes in the game but win it due to his slow hand. One of the mistakes I made was adding in master of etherium power/toughness to his guys so I blocked badly once. Game 2 goes to time with us both having a stalled board. He had one card in hand on turn 4 and I could have swung for lethal and won the match that way, but if his one card had been removal, then I would have lost on his attack back. So I just didn't risk it.
Round 4. Affinity. I win the roll here and have the worship/thrun hand. I drop both, he builds an army, while i build a smaller army. I draw 3 ghost quarters before he draws a single inkmoth. He finally gets an inkmoth and i kill it, then show him 3 paths in my hand and he scoops. Game 2. I make a HUGE play error here and it costs me this game. I keep an opener with supression field/kataki 2 lands and like a thrun and smiters or soemthing. He drops inkmoth inkmoth blinkmoth plating plating ornithopter champion. I played the suppression field on turn 2 so he wouldn't be able to activate inkmoths for a while, then didn't drop kataki turn 3 instead opting to play a smiter. I wanted to maximize the effect of kataki hitting the board in case he had removal so i waited. Well, he had no colored mana sources (I overlooked this like an idiot) and 3 lands and 2 artifacts at the time, it would have locked his board down so he couldn't play the champion/2nd plating/etc. Instead since his board wasn't locked down he played and equiped champion and i pretty much lost. I was only looking at the sacing aspect of kataki and not the fact that it's a psuedo tangle wire for his lands even if they arent' artifacts. Game 3 came down to time with both of us top decking in turns to not die or win. I drew a pridemage to kill his plating that would kill me on his next turn, then the turn after dropped him to lethal on what would be turn 5 of turns. He draws a ravager to get the blinkmoth win (i was at 7, and he had 8 artifacts to pump it). This puts me at 3-1
Round 5. UWR Kiki/angel varient. Game 1 I win the roll and promptly mull to 4 and lose to restoration angel beat down. Game 2 I mulligan to 5 and lose. Yep, this happens sometimes, oh well. Out of top 8 consideration but may as well finish to get more practice and I'm still in prize contention i guess (yay journey to nyx packs >.>)
Round 6. Pyromancer/Delver. Game 1. lose the roll and keep a loose hand that's slow because I didn't feel like shuffling again, end up losing to like 9 1/1s over time. Game 2 I play turn 1 hierarch and eventaulyl get worship combo out and win off of that, opponent apparently isn't playing cryptic in his build but does know his vapor snags can finish me, but doesn't draw a snapcaster or 3rd snag at this point. Game 3 Opponent drops bloodmoon on me when i just have a bird out and 2 non basics. I debate pathing my bird and opt not to and instead drop choke. Opponent eventually loses as I play avenmindcensor and path it after hitting him once with it, then i draw a hierarch and just start playnig guys. He draws blue cards the rest of the match to go with all the steamvents/sulfur falls (mountains) he draws. He concludes that blood moon hurt him more than me.
Round 7. Melira Pod. Game 1 Mulligan to 5 again and get combo'd out. Game 2 get worship online with thrun and beat through for the win. Game 3. Mulligan to 6 keep an aggressive hand with no removal. Opponent has opening hand of finks/seer/melira but with 2 lands. He hits his 3rd land on turn 4 and wins, he was at 11 from me swinging.
Round 8. Melira Pod. Game 1 I mulligan to 5 again and opponent thune/feeder combos me. Game 2. Get a search denial package going with arbiter/mindcensor with active gavony, oppopnent stalls with finks and a gavony for a few turns, but i draw removal and he doesn't. Game 3. Get active worship/thrun and bow of nylea online, opponent is just wtfing the whole time in a mixture of frustration and humor. Oh, I also had torpor orb in play, and he only had harmonic sliver in his deck to deal with enchantments, I guess he had either sided out pridemage or not sided it in. He asks me a few times if i'd like to tap my horizon canopy for fun while I'm at 1, lol.
Takeaways: Bow of Nylea is really good as a general 1 of in this deck, you don't want it in some matches, but in others it can take over aspects of the game. The deathtouch is relevant for getting in some early damage and all 3 modes can be relevant. I will definitely be keeping it in at this point.
Smiter/Arbiter/Hierarch/Mindcensor/Pridemage/Ooze: Still as good as ever, will never take them out. They just cause issues for many decks and are our staples.
Voice: I kept in one voice and hardly saw it. Of the two times I saw it, it was pathed both times. So it eats removal at least.
Worship/Thrun: Still too good atm to take out in my mind, against some decks it just wins, against others it stalls them out and gives you a chance where you might not have had one originally.
Will edit if i can think of something else, at work and have to go.
Choices/Randomness. Historically I haven't liked multiples of Thalia, so I tend to not run her as more than a 1 of. She was in the board, but I moved her to the main due to needing one more card and not wanting to run 2 Voices of Resurgence. Brimaz, I didn't like originally, but with all the anger of the gods going around he seems not bad again to me. Brushland I still run just to cut down a little on the pain from lands, I considered running the 4th canopy instead because my mana curve is lower than before with no baneslayer or other 5 drop. In the end I just decided to stick with it. I've liked Bow of Nylea, it can force bad blocks when your opponent gets concerned about their life totals, also they don't know what you will do sometimes on your 2nd main. I like the troll/worship package. Troll gives us more game against uwr and worship gives us a knockout against a variety of decks in game 1. Thrill of the hunt, watch your opponents face when they bolt something and you thrill of the hunt it, then they take the card from you and read it. It's pretty priceless (probably a bit cute, but I still like it, compared to mark of asylum it doesn't save all yoru guys or anything, but it can be used as a combat trick and the flashback stalls your opponents choices and basically gives you a 2 for 1 option against things, can also be used to save 2 guys against anger.
Good luck to all the ptq people tomorrow, will let you all know how I fared.
I would never replace Canopy with a brushland, I do have a brushland in my deck though because I wanted 1 g/w source besides thicket that wasn't guaranteed to hurt me. Hence my 3/1 split. Goes back to I think (Lectrys?) build like 4 months ago. He suggested it first I think and I liked the logic behind it.
Yeah, this is more of a DnT build man. Looks alright by the standards set by that deck, but you probably want to post it over there to get better feedback.
Like I mentioned a few posts ago I haven't been around for a bit. This is what I'm going to test run on Modo since I have a ptq I'm attending on the 14th.
Choices:
6 x Mana producers: I've always wanted to run 6, I tried 5 at one point and saw a pretty steep drop in turn 1 plays and ideally we get the strip mine play so yeah....
4 x arbiter 2 x mindcensor: This is what I decided I wanted to run quite a while ago, I'm almost never disappointed with getting any of these cards and sometimes the strip mine play just wins the game.
4 x Smiter: Just a really solid 4/4, best clock in our deck and control/jund hate this guy.
2 x Linvala/Spellskite: Maindeck twin hate, happens to bloom against other decks also, has been explained over and over again in thread.
3 x Voice/2 x Pridemage/3 x Ooze: All great utility bears, it seems like voice has somewhat been replaced by mirran crusader in some people's builds, I can do that, but I would like to test out voice for a bit again first.
2 x Worship/2 x Thrun: I have never been disappointed getting this, it's rarely answered even after boarding by players due to infrequency of good enchants to destroy.
SB
3 x choke : I loved this card at the cfb5k i got 2nd at. It was an allstar in the board and won matches out of nowhere, probably expected a bit more now though than it was back then.
3 x Chalice: I still love chalice, hoses burn/affinity on the play (they can draw out of it though)/slows storm (can also draw out of out)/destroys bogle if dropped turn 2/etc
1 x rest in peace: singleton against living end and a few other decks that like graveyard effects. Doesn't usually come in unless it's against a deck that really abuses the effect though.
1 x stony silence/1 x kataki: affinity
1 x Thalia: Control and storm
1 x mark of asylum/1 x thrill of the hunt: serve the same purpose to deal with problem burn spells that kill our guys. I don't like running duplicates of certain cards and asylum fits that bill, I can also block with a guy and use thrill of the hunt.
1 x suppression field/1 x engineered explosives: Both of these cards can come in against certain decks to blanket our hate. Suppression field stops twin, slows almost all relevant activated abilities and even causes cycling to be garbage. Explosives is good against a variety of decks in the field, can destroy parts of affinity's board, zoo, RuG twin, etc.
One interesting idea I remember people running back in the days of TS standard against burn removal wasThrill of the hunt. It's cheap, and pretty effective can be flashed back to not build up goyfs and can save 2 things or be used as a finish card or to swing advantage. Still might not be worth it compared to Mark of asylum but I'm probably going to give it a try as a 1-2 of in my board.
How is our deck situated now? I haven't played much modern since that CFB tournament I took 2nd at, just had too much work to do. Have things changed as far as removal people are using/the meta/etc?
he's only running 9 fetches, i'd probably do the opposite of what you are suggesting, lol
Look at that guys board, he basically turns his deck into junk for game 2 and/or 3, it's probably why he's running only 2 company while running 4 chord.
4 leonin arbiter
4 noble hierarch
2 linvala, keeper of silence
3 scavenging ooze
2 spellskite
1 voice of resurgence
2 aven mindcensor
1 brimaz, king of orezkos
2 thrun, the last troll
2 qasali pridemage
2 hushwing gryff
2 bow of nylea
4 path to exile
3 Chalice of the Void
1 Engineered explosives
1 Rest in Peace
3 Choke
1 Stony Silence
1 Kataki, War's Wage
1 Qasali Pridemage
1 worship
1 creeping corrosion
Round 1. U/R Delver. Win the roll and the game, opponent gets a turn 2 delver (turn 3 flip) after snagging my turn 1 hierarch back to my hand, we have a race contest and i win due to larger guys and opponent getting stuck in land rut (he did manage to play back to back cryptic commands to stall for 2 turns, electing to draw instead of bounce something though due to his 1 delver getting me low, he just needed a 2nd way to deal 3 damage to win the game. Game 2 I don't 100% remember, he goes first, has turn 1 serum visions, i think he missed land drop 3 for 2 turns while I had plays so he just dies.
Round 2. Jund. Opponent wins roll, turn 1 goes to 15 with a thoughtsieze. Gets me vaguely low before I drop worship to match the thrun I have on the table. He can't outrace thrun/smiter/hierach with active gavony. The turn he dies he draws pulse, but had no way to swing in or burn me for the win at that point. Game 2. He drops himself really low again with confidant/thoughtsieze/fetches. He starts swinging into me with confidant when he's at 9 and I'm still at 20. I take it and eventually he plays anger of the gods to kill 2 of my guys and his confidant. He is ahead though due to 3 goyfs to my thrun and smiter, but i have active gavony and bow of nylea. He gets me to potential lethal with a goyf swing losing 1 goyf in the process, I then draw a path and path his guy and kill him.
Round 3. Affinity. I win the roll and am happy with my opening hierach/thicket/quarter/arbiter strip mine hand. Opponent drops a turn 1 darksteel citadel and passes. So much for the strip mine play, i play a smiter, opponent drops a 2nd citadel and a lone ravager. He apparently had won both his prior matches but mulligan'd 7 times in them and got a hand of 4 lands 2 ravagers 1 master of etherium and kept it. I make a couple mistakes in the game but win it due to his slow hand. One of the mistakes I made was adding in master of etherium power/toughness to his guys so I blocked badly once. Game 2 goes to time with us both having a stalled board. He had one card in hand on turn 4 and I could have swung for lethal and won the match that way, but if his one card had been removal, then I would have lost on his attack back. So I just didn't risk it.
Round 4. Affinity. I win the roll here and have the worship/thrun hand. I drop both, he builds an army, while i build a smaller army. I draw 3 ghost quarters before he draws a single inkmoth. He finally gets an inkmoth and i kill it, then show him 3 paths in my hand and he scoops. Game 2. I make a HUGE play error here and it costs me this game. I keep an opener with supression field/kataki 2 lands and like a thrun and smiters or soemthing. He drops inkmoth inkmoth blinkmoth plating plating ornithopter champion. I played the suppression field on turn 2 so he wouldn't be able to activate inkmoths for a while, then didn't drop kataki turn 3 instead opting to play a smiter. I wanted to maximize the effect of kataki hitting the board in case he had removal so i waited. Well, he had no colored mana sources (I overlooked this like an idiot) and 3 lands and 2 artifacts at the time, it would have locked his board down so he couldn't play the champion/2nd plating/etc. Instead since his board wasn't locked down he played and equiped champion and i pretty much lost. I was only looking at the sacing aspect of kataki and not the fact that it's a psuedo tangle wire for his lands even if they arent' artifacts. Game 3 came down to time with both of us top decking in turns to not die or win. I drew a pridemage to kill his plating that would kill me on his next turn, then the turn after dropped him to lethal on what would be turn 5 of turns. He draws a ravager to get the blinkmoth win (i was at 7, and he had 8 artifacts to pump it). This puts me at 3-1
Round 5. UWR Kiki/angel varient. Game 1 I win the roll and promptly mull to 4 and lose to restoration angel beat down. Game 2 I mulligan to 5 and lose. Yep, this happens sometimes, oh well. Out of top 8 consideration but may as well finish to get more practice and I'm still in prize contention i guess (yay journey to nyx packs >.>)
Round 6. Pyromancer/Delver. Game 1. lose the roll and keep a loose hand that's slow because I didn't feel like shuffling again, end up losing to like 9 1/1s over time. Game 2 I play turn 1 hierarch and eventaulyl get worship combo out and win off of that, opponent apparently isn't playing cryptic in his build but does know his vapor snags can finish me, but doesn't draw a snapcaster or 3rd snag at this point. Game 3 Opponent drops bloodmoon on me when i just have a bird out and 2 non basics. I debate pathing my bird and opt not to and instead drop choke. Opponent eventually loses as I play avenmindcensor and path it after hitting him once with it, then i draw a hierarch and just start playnig guys. He draws blue cards the rest of the match to go with all the steamvents/sulfur falls (mountains) he draws. He concludes that blood moon hurt him more than me.
Round 7. Melira Pod. Game 1 Mulligan to 5 again and get combo'd out. Game 2 get worship online with thrun and beat through for the win. Game 3. Mulligan to 6 keep an aggressive hand with no removal. Opponent has opening hand of finks/seer/melira but with 2 lands. He hits his 3rd land on turn 4 and wins, he was at 11 from me swinging.
Round 8. Melira Pod. Game 1 I mulligan to 5 again and opponent thune/feeder combos me. Game 2. Get a search denial package going with arbiter/mindcensor with active gavony, oppopnent stalls with finks and a gavony for a few turns, but i draw removal and he doesn't. Game 3. Get active worship/thrun and bow of nylea online, opponent is just wtfing the whole time in a mixture of frustration and humor. Oh, I also had torpor orb in play, and he only had harmonic sliver in his deck to deal with enchantments, I guess he had either sided out pridemage or not sided it in. He asks me a few times if i'd like to tap my horizon canopy for fun while I'm at 1, lol.
Takeaways: Bow of Nylea is really good as a general 1 of in this deck, you don't want it in some matches, but in others it can take over aspects of the game. The deathtouch is relevant for getting in some early damage and all 3 modes can be relevant. I will definitely be keeping it in at this point.
Smiter/Arbiter/Hierarch/Mindcensor/Pridemage/Ooze: Still as good as ever, will never take them out. They just cause issues for many decks and are our staples.
Voice: I kept in one voice and hardly saw it. Of the two times I saw it, it was pathed both times. So it eats removal at least.
Worship/Thrun: Still too good atm to take out in my mind, against some decks it just wins, against others it stalls them out and gives you a chance where you might not have had one originally.
Will edit if i can think of something else, at work and have to go.
4 noble hierarch
3 scavenging ooze
4 leonin arbiter
2 spellskite
2 qasali pridemage
1 voice of resurgence
1 thalia, guardian of thraben
1 brimaz, king of oreskos
2 aven mindcensor
4 loxodon smiter
2 Thrun, the last troll
2 Linvala, the keeper of silence
4 path to exile
1 dismember
2 worship
1 bow of nylea
2 forest
2 plains
4 razorverge thicket
3 horizon canopy
2 stirring wildwood
1 okina, temple to the grandfather
4 ghost quarter
2 gavony township
1 brushland
2 temple garden
3 Choke
1 Qasali Pridemage
1 Kataki, War's Wage
1 Stoney Silence
1 Rest in Peace
2 Suppression field
1 Thrill of the hunt
1 Engineered Explosives
1 Torpor Orb
Choices/Randomness. Historically I haven't liked multiples of Thalia, so I tend to not run her as more than a 1 of. She was in the board, but I moved her to the main due to needing one more card and not wanting to run 2 Voices of Resurgence. Brimaz, I didn't like originally, but with all the anger of the gods going around he seems not bad again to me. Brushland I still run just to cut down a little on the pain from lands, I considered running the 4th canopy instead because my mana curve is lower than before with no baneslayer or other 5 drop. In the end I just decided to stick with it. I've liked Bow of Nylea, it can force bad blocks when your opponent gets concerned about their life totals, also they don't know what you will do sometimes on your 2nd main. I like the troll/worship package. Troll gives us more game against uwr and worship gives us a knockout against a variety of decks in game 1. Thrill of the hunt, watch your opponents face when they bolt something and you thrill of the hunt it, then they take the card from you and read it. It's pretty priceless (probably a bit cute, but I still like it, compared to mark of asylum it doesn't save all yoru guys or anything, but it can be used as a combat trick and the flashback stalls your opponents choices and basically gives you a 2 for 1 option against things, can also be used to save 2 guys against anger.
Good luck to all the ptq people tomorrow, will let you all know how I fared.
2 birds of paradise
4 leonin arbiter
4 loxodon smiter
2 spellskite
2 thrun, the last troll
3 voice of resurgence
2 qasali pridemage
3 scavenging ooze
2 linvala, keeper of silence
2 aven mindcensor
4 path to exile
1 dismember
2 worship
2 Stirring Wildwood
3 Forest
2 Plains
4 Razorverge Thicket
4 Ghost Quarter
2 Temple Garden
2 Gavony Township
3 Horizon canopy
1 Brushland
1 torpor orb
3 chalice of the void
1 rest in peace
1 stony silence
1 thalia, guardian of thraben
1 mark of asylum
1 thrill of the hunt
1 Kataki, war's wage
1 suppression field
1 engineered explosives
Choices:
6 x Mana producers: I've always wanted to run 6, I tried 5 at one point and saw a pretty steep drop in turn 1 plays and ideally we get the strip mine play so yeah....
4 x arbiter 2 x mindcensor: This is what I decided I wanted to run quite a while ago, I'm almost never disappointed with getting any of these cards and sometimes the strip mine play just wins the game.
4 x Smiter: Just a really solid 4/4, best clock in our deck and control/jund hate this guy.
2 x Linvala/Spellskite: Maindeck twin hate, happens to bloom against other decks also, has been explained over and over again in thread.
3 x Voice/2 x Pridemage/3 x Ooze: All great utility bears, it seems like voice has somewhat been replaced by mirran crusader in some people's builds, I can do that, but I would like to test out voice for a bit again first.
2 x Worship/2 x Thrun: I have never been disappointed getting this, it's rarely answered even after boarding by players due to infrequency of good enchants to destroy.
SB
3 x choke : I loved this card at the cfb5k i got 2nd at. It was an allstar in the board and won matches out of nowhere, probably expected a bit more now though than it was back then.
3 x Chalice: I still love chalice, hoses burn/affinity on the play (they can draw out of it though)/slows storm (can also draw out of out)/destroys bogle if dropped turn 2/etc
1 x rest in peace: singleton against living end and a few other decks that like graveyard effects. Doesn't usually come in unless it's against a deck that really abuses the effect though.
1 x stony silence/1 x kataki: affinity
1 x Thalia: Control and storm
1 x mark of asylum/1 x thrill of the hunt: serve the same purpose to deal with problem burn spells that kill our guys. I don't like running duplicates of certain cards and asylum fits that bill, I can also block with a guy and use thrill of the hunt.
1 x suppression field/1 x engineered explosives: Both of these cards can come in against certain decks to blanket our hate. Suppression field stops twin, slows almost all relevant activated abilities and even causes cycling to be garbage. Explosives is good against a variety of decks in the field, can destroy parts of affinity's board, zoo, RuG twin, etc.
** Explosives slot used to be Seal of Primordium