Yeah, having those black sources is definitely not very important.
It is for the flexibility of being able to suspend Living end, or cast Architects, Street Wraith or Faerie Macabre. Both the filter lands and River of Tears provide almost 0 downside, so I like having the extra options and have actually used them a couple of times.
I'm also planning on playing 2 Collective Brutalities on the sideboard, they should be very valuable against burn. Used to have dismember, and the 2 or 4 life points you could save there were useful from time to time as well.
Been hard tweaking this deck for a day or two with a view to taking the rough core and hammering it into a more competitive spot. Feel I like I've got somewhere.
First consideration; why are we running four cryptic? Jeskai, UR and esper have more ways to survive and disrupt past turn 3 and can't afford to run more than 2 cryptic. For us it's clearly wishful thinking. Obviously it's a powerful card but you can't assume you'll live long enough to use it. I dropped down to 2.
Next; included 1x maindeck tutorable engineered explosives and a further 1x in the sideboard (maindeck answer to Chalice of the void, tokens, deaths shadow, plus a bunch of other things)
Next: 2x path to Exile in the main (this is less about sniping a goblin guide and more about hitting hatebears or combo pieces which would disrupt us or win instantly) and a further 2x path in the side (bringing in more allows us to begin to attack stuff like eldrazi, merfolk, affinity etc rather than just use path as a quick fix).
Manabase; not perfect yet but slanted it towards a white splash.
Sideboard:
OK went a bit down a rabbit hole here and decided to test 3x ghostly prison, a stony silence, hurkyl's recall and dispel as my obvious choices. Ghostly prison struck me as in-effect as foretolds 5-7 in specific matchups where you slam it and it prevents them from doing anything meaningful. It also works generally great against tricky matchups like dredge, infect, merfolk etc. My other consideration was that against fast matchups you can't afford to durdle and try to find an As Foretold, you need to draw your powerful 3-drop in as few topdecks as possible. Having another effective shutdown-style 3-drop seemed like a good idea against aggro. If only to buy you a couple of turns and ve really irritating for your opponent while you maneuver yourself into a good position to take over the game.
What you guys think about Psionic Blast? Seems good against DS. Anyone expect burn from a Blue deck. And its a good removal too for creatures or Planes.
Against aggro decks like Humans or Merfolks, im using Profaner of the Dead. You can exploit himself and return all little creatures, and then you can return him with Living End and exploit another big creature or himself again to clean the field.
Im having a lot of problemns against aggro decks, especially against Humans and Merfolks, because of Cavern of Souls, and Vial, and islandwalk in Merfolks case...
I think your decisions are based on some false premises. Despite how it may seem this is not a combo deck but rather a card/advantage or control deck with a fast finish (not too unlike twin). There is no such thing as autowins with hatebears or leylines against us. In those cases we just get play our recalls and play free creatures with As Foretold and then win.
Humans is likely the worst matchup so some of your choices will definitely help there so may be worth testing out.
As for Cryptic if you envision this as a control deck it does make more sense. It's still a 4 of for me since it is so versitile and every mode is insanely helpful to us. Just tapping out boards and buying us turns to either have opponents overplay into our wrath or help with suspend counters on hard-suspender visions is very helpful.
In response to another posted River of Tears and filter lands have big downside as it can't hard suspend visions on turn 1. Still likely worth playing but also worth knowing they come with a cost.
I agree 100% with urzatheplaneswalker.
And it's true that suspending visions t1 would be a downside of having let's say a River of Tears and a Filter land in the initial hand. It didn't happen to me yet, but it is certainly a possible scenario, I'm finding myself suspending visions t1 a lot, frequently even with As Foretold in hand.
I've been running into A TON of control matches, it's been probably over a week since I last faced Humans or Burn, so that is not really helping me evaluate the sideboard, haha.
I think your decisions are based on some false premises. Despite how it may seem this is not a combo deck but rather a card/advantage or control deck with a fast finish (not too unlike twin). There is no such thing as autowins with hatebears or leylines against us. In those cases we just get play our recalls and play free creatures with As Foretold and then win.
Humans is likely the worst matchup so some of your choices will definitely help there so may be worth testing out.
As for Cryptic if you envision this as a control deck it does make more sense. It's still a 4 of for me since it is so versitile and every mode is insanely helpful to us. Just tapping out boards and buying us turns to either have opponents overplay into our wrath or help with suspend counters on hard-suspender visions is very helpful.
In response to another posted River of Tears and filter lands have big downside as it can't hard suspend visions on turn 1. Still likely worth playing but also worth knowing they come with a cost.
I'd like to address your point and preface what by say by reassuring you that since before modern even began I've been playing control/combo and tempo/combo decks intensely. They are very much my jam. Also I don't want to strike a confrontational tone so please don't assume as such. I'm just laying out things as I understand them.
This deck though isn't a control deck. Not really. It's in a weird middle spot and really more combo/tempo than anything else (and while subtle the distinction is really important if you are considering high levels of play).
It has control elements; cards generally at home within a tempo/control shell, but taking a hard look at the deck reveals that it has a game-plan or playstyle similar to some old RUG Scapeshift decks or even Taking Turns.
We lean really hard on remand in order to not immediately die against basically every deck in the format, and remand draws us into the combo while applying a temporary tempo speed bump on our opponent. Crucially, this isn't what a control deck does.
What's missing from this deck which control decks need to contain is a powerful suite of hard answers, and more specifically for modern a range of hard answers in the 1-2 mana range.
Most of the time in modern, remand won't get you there. This comes from someone who's played a playset of remand continuously throughout all of modern in as many decks as possible (I dearly love the card). Remand is, for the most part, fairly underwhelming. But it does its job of drawing cards admirably.
Playing 4 cryptics is a luxury only RUG scapeshift has enjoyed with any kind of success and that's because they could routinely cast it on turn 3, and follow it up with enough clout to finish the game on turn 5 with an opponent still locked down. Unless you have a decent way to survive until you hit cryptic mana, you can't run four in modern it's that simple. While a turn 3 living end might do that (just about...) it requires you having two different cards in hand and your opponent having no disruption of their own. RUG scapeshift by contrast just needed to hit any single ramp spell from turn 1 onwards and cryptic was live for turn 3. It could even ramp AND play remand on turn two (search for tomorrow). This deck can't achieve that sort of simple effectiveness.
Look at jeskai, currently tier 1, appeared in the finals of two recent huge tournaments (both mirror match finals no less!), proving its status as a powerful and effective control deck in modern. Plays on average at most 2 cryptics.
Look back further at a control/combo deck UR twin. Played 2 cryptics.
Both of these decks have more early interaction and hard answers which this deck is lacking and even with the extra interaction, cryptic was deemed powerful but slow so copies were cut.
Some of this is moot, but it's worth understanding the deck's playstyle and how a deck like this even survives in a cutthroat format like modern.
Going forward we can see there's a proven shell with As Foretold and the suspend spells. It's inherently powerful and a great thing to build towards as a game plan. What's not there right now and *needs* to be there is an actual tuned-for-modern decklist that goes beyond "just play my favourite spells" and really gets to the heart of how to survive the early turns in a diverse aggressive format. Remember it's not guaranteed that you'll even survive until turn 3 in modern, and remand as your only real early interaction won't work.
I've been constantly tweaking and changing my list every day getting close and closer to something I'd be happy running at a tournament. I've kept the combo, kept the cyclers and started to mess with the remaining part; the interaction. I discovered you can probably drop some number of Serum Visions on account of 22-ish maindeck cantrips and you definitely want to slim on the expensive cryptic commands, freeing up some space for a selection of cards like spell snare, path or push, spell pierce, maybe even 1x dispel like Twin used to run (highly versatile at both protecting the combo and slamming tricky matchups like burn and storm; also counters collected company which is great). I'm even keeping my options open into red and lightning bolt, but I think that's a dead end (at least for now).
My point is to look around at other successful combo/tempo decks in modern. What do they have that wr don't. What are we lacking. Where are we just deluding ourselves or thinking wistfully that something will work out. Be honest with yourself, look at the most powerful hard answers and try to solve the puzzle; can we fit them in and how many, what combination. That's the challenge. We shouldn't be arguing over playing a playset of cryptic with no real solid way to survive the early game. That's just silly lol.
Blue Moon seems like a good comparison and they run 3 Cryptic Commands, sometimes 2. I think we need to find a splash the gives us a way to answer an early threat but Cryptic is so good mid to late game that I think 3 is the right number. It's like how G/b tron splashes for Push. Use those black mana sources for Push/Collective Bruts
I don't think Serum Visions is where we want to be. We have cyclers to dig while progressing our game plan, and they allow us to keep countermagic up.
I play with Spell Snare main, as well as a couple of Spell pierce, not only Remand to hold up until I reach Cryptic mana. So I at least am definitely playing it "control" style, not combo at all. Agreed, it is a draw-go control style that resembles tempo since we can put a fast clock some times, and we don't drag the game that much (at least as our main gameplan), but I don't play the deck as combo at all.
Some dismembers or collective brutalities for hatebears or particularly annoying creatures are useful besides Engineered Explosives, and I usually trim a Cryptic against those more aggro matchups, but I'm not particularly tempted to try Push or splash white for Path (a MUCH better spot removal for us). I honestly think having to cut down on Ghost Quarters and Field of Ruin, plus the damage from eventual fetching/shocking will hurt the deck more than what we gain from it.
What else do people feel the splashes bring into the deck?
Or what do you feel the deck needs to improve? Answering to early threats seems to be the number 1 concern, and finding/resolving As Foretold number 2. Anybody tried Perplex or Drift of Phantasms? They seem slow.
I'm tempted to try a Flaying Tendrils/Damnation/Yahenni's Expertise in the sideboard, but the double black is tough unless we hit a filter land.
Agree, I don't think there is room for Serum Vision or Opts, our Cyclers are our cantrips. The deck is really just U/x control but instead of Colonnades, Platinum Emperions, or Planeswalkers backed up by Snaps we use As Foretold/Living End. However, As Foretold does some more interesting things if left in play. The other direction you could take is the Magic Aids guys version https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gvlKwtBwEWU where he goes the combo//reanimator route. Which might not be so bad.
You guys ever think about dropping a a lone river snake for a wormcoil engine? Living ending multiple times can be pretty good with a wurmcoil engine. Also very castable at 6 mana and lifeline is nothing to sweat at especially for Grindy match ups.
You guys ever think about dropping a a lone river snake for a wormcoil engine? Living ending multiple times can be pretty good with a wurmcoil engine. Also very castable at 6 mana and lifeline is nothing to sweat at especially for Grindy match ups.
Against fast decks where you'd need the lifelink, six mana is too many.
I agree in the abstract that cards like wurmcoil are very good against midrange opponents (who aren't playing path) but we draw so many cards that it likely won't matter against them. We aren't a ramp deck, so how are we casting wurmcoil with any sort of consistency against opponents who are (for example) playing Death's Shadow or an early tsrmogoyf?
At best, it's a shaky sideboard card. At worst it's a genuinely dead card because you'll lose before you ever get the chance to cast it.
I'd rather play Bottle Gnomes haha
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Modern: G Tron, Vannifar, Jund, Druid/Vizier combo, Humans, Eldrazi Stompy (Serum Powder), Amulet, Grishoalbrand, Breach Titan, Turns, Eternal Command, As Foretold Living End, Elves, Cheerios, RUG Scapeshift
Maybe wurmcoil was asking for too much. I do think though that a lone snapcaster mage could do some work. Recurring him over and over with multiple cryptics and visions in the graveyard could prove useful.
I like the idea of 1 or 2 Snapcasters. Reusing the countermagic (or the Ancestral Visions) seems very good, and it fits right in the playstyle.
As Foretold with 2 counters means we can cast it for free and flashback a Cryptic with only 4 mana up for example.
Hey guys snap doesn't work with ancestral. The card your looking for is flip jace The -3 of jace with the as foretold let's you recast living ends and ancestral visions from the graveyard.
Hey guys snap doesn't work with ancestral. The card your looking for is flip jace The -3 of jace with the as foretold let's you recast living ends and ancestral visions from the graveyard.
Well in that case I'm not sure if Flip Jace is worth it. I guess Jace himself is an alternate win con and can easily transform and loot for us...
Thoughts? Maybe a 1/1 split between Jace and Snap?
Hey guys snap doesn't work with ancestral. The card your looking for is flip jace The -3 of jace with the as foretold let's you recast living ends and ancestral visions from the graveyard.
To be fair, just snaking for counterspells is quite a good thought. Who cares if you can't cast AV from the yard, it's the counterspells we want to be getting more value from.
OK so snapcaster doesn't interact with any part of the engine of this deck. Here it would just be an extra "value dude" for doubling up on a cheap counterspell.
we probably don't run any cantrips (we have cyclers instead) so snappy loses half his value.
I can foresee the odd occasion when you can do something like flash in snappy as a blocker, he trades or chumps. Then on your turn living end bringing him back and also get to flash something back.
Sounds good. Issue is that the sort of stuff you'd want to flash back are generally counterspells and stuff, not great in your main phase.
So generally unless we make some big changes to the build of the deck I'm gonna suggest snappy is a nonbo and we probs shouldn't bother.
Literal actual baby Jace (vryn's moody teenager) could be a spicy one-of. Opportunity cost is fairly low I have to say, and (especially with maindeck path to Exile) there's both ways to protect him and stuff to re-use (including the actual engine of the deck of course).
If someone was to start running 1x lit-act-babby-J in their main I wouldn't slam them for it. Seems totally reasonable.
I've got one Japanese signed Jace sitting around so I may consider 1x myself.
I've been trawling gatherer and I reckon in order to include any value creatures we'd have to dip into another colour (e.g black/red for fulminator mage). There isn't much in mono blue. White seems to have the biggest hate cards? Also stuff like disenchant and detention sphere which are good answers to tricky permanents. Echoing truth is potentially an option in blue of course. I'll be having a good hard look at matchups over the next few days and deciding what sort of answers we want.
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Modern: G Tron, Vannifar, Jund, Druid/Vizier combo, Humans, Eldrazi Stompy (Serum Powder), Amulet, Grishoalbrand, Breach Titan, Turns, Eternal Command, As Foretold Living End, Elves, Cheerios, RUG Scapeshift
Quick note about the primer, final deck list says Feb 7th 2018 rather than January.
Also how much do you think the cost of Chalice of the Void effects the viability of the deck?
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Modern
Yes, I am that guy.
Yes, I have had my nose broken before.
Quick note about the primer, final deck list says Feb 7th 2018 rather than January.
Also how much do you think the cost of Chalice of the Void effects the viability of the deck?
You can deal with Chalice using Disallow and Ratched Bomb. It's hard, but it's not the end of the world.
I really like black splash for Fatal Push, Dismember, and Collective Brutality. It's the early creatures that threaten us the most. Fatal Push should prolong long enough and Dismember is for those early Gurmag/Tasigur/Hollow Ones. Since I run 4x Leyline of Sanctity, Collective Brutality allows me an outlet to discard them for value.
The other splash that I like is Red, for Bolt, Faithless Looting, and Kari Zev's expertise. I don't feel like we've really explored that splash hard enough.
Been testing baby jace as a 3 of and a 2 of. The main problem is he literally dies to all removal so using him as a looter for pieces or flooding is unlikely. However I have been pleased with him coming back when I living end. Having him flip and then + him to the ultimate or -3 recasting Ancestral Visions. I think if there is a number of him you want main it is probably a 1 of. Needs more testing.
Quick note about the primer, final deck list says Feb 7th 2018 rather than January.
Also how much do you think the cost of Chalice of the Void effects the viability of the deck?
You can deal with Chalice using Disallow and Ratched Bomb. It's hard, but it's not the end of the world.
Also by cycling a nimble obstructionist in respone to the chalice trigger.
Quick note about the primer, final deck list says Feb 7th 2018 rather than January.
Also how much do you think the cost of Chalice of the Void effects the viability of the deck?
You can deal with Chalice using Disallow and Ratched Bomb. It's hard, but it's not the end of the world.
Engineered explosives is better than both of those options if you have some way of generating colourless mana (allowing you to pay mana and overcome the restriction on Chalice while still keeping explosives on zero)
And it's tutorable with Tolaria West.
This by the way is one definite upside to playing some number of filter lands (at least one). This seemingly small interaction will come up nearly every time you play against a deck running Chalice.
Been testing baby jace as a 3 of and a 2 of. The main problem is he literally dies to all removal so using him as a looter for pieces or flooding is unlikely. However I have been pleased with him coming back when I living end. Having him flip and then + him to the ultimate or -3 recasting Ancestral Visions. I think if there is a number of him you want main it is probably a 1 of. Needs more testing.
Yeah right? One of, the opportunity cost is low enough while providing some potentially great value in matchups where deck velocity is more important than remanding something.
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Modern: G Tron, Vannifar, Jund, Druid/Vizier combo, Humans, Eldrazi Stompy (Serum Powder), Amulet, Grishoalbrand, Breach Titan, Turns, Eternal Command, As Foretold Living End, Elves, Cheerios, RUG Scapeshift
Yeah, I think Snapcaster is very close to being good, flashing him + countermagic (specially cryptic) is sweet, I agree having some other utility spells would make a more compeling case for it.
I love Baby Jace, but it's hard to flip him reliably, and I feel it's mostly win more, since we need to have As Foretold in play and him flipped, plus have casted a Visions or Living End already. Am I missing some other nice value lines with him?
As far as value creatures in Blue/Black, there is certainly some in the Evoke creatures (Mulldrifter, Shriekmaw, AEthersnipe). We can play them for the Evoke cost, and get them back for extra value. They look decent enough for a try to me.
My only issue with the red splash is that I feel it's actually another deck altogether rather than a splash. A lot more comboish, closer to the original Living End in a way. It probably just folds to graveyard hate also. Magic AIDS has a series of videos with a UR version, it looks a ton of fun.
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It is for the flexibility of being able to suspend Living end, or cast Architects, Street Wraith or Faerie Macabre. Both the filter lands and River of Tears provide almost 0 downside, so I like having the extra options and have actually used them a couple of times.
I'm also planning on playing 2 Collective Brutalities on the sideboard, they should be very valuable against burn. Used to have dismember, and the 2 or 4 life points you could save there were useful from time to time as well.
First consideration; why are we running four cryptic? Jeskai, UR and esper have more ways to survive and disrupt past turn 3 and can't afford to run more than 2 cryptic. For us it's clearly wishful thinking. Obviously it's a powerful card but you can't assume you'll live long enough to use it. I dropped down to 2.
Next; included 1x maindeck tutorable engineered explosives and a further 1x in the sideboard (maindeck answer to Chalice of the void, tokens, deaths shadow, plus a bunch of other things)
Next: 2x path to Exile in the main (this is less about sniping a goblin guide and more about hitting hatebears or combo pieces which would disrupt us or win instantly) and a further 2x path in the side (bringing in more allows us to begin to attack stuff like eldrazi, merfolk, affinity etc rather than just use path as a quick fix).
Manabase; not perfect yet but slanted it towards a white splash.
Sideboard:
OK went a bit down a rabbit hole here and decided to test 3x ghostly prison, a stony silence, hurkyl's recall and dispel as my obvious choices. Ghostly prison struck me as in-effect as foretolds 5-7 in specific matchups where you slam it and it prevents them from doing anything meaningful. It also works generally great against tricky matchups like dredge, infect, merfolk etc. My other consideration was that against fast matchups you can't afford to durdle and try to find an As Foretold, you need to draw your powerful 3-drop in as few topdecks as possible. Having another effective shutdown-style 3-drop seemed like a good idea against aggro. If only to buy you a couple of turns and ve really irritating for your opponent while you maneuver yourself into a good position to take over the game.
Here's the list real quick:
4x striped riverwinder
4x curator of mysteries
4x Street wraith
4x as foretold
4x ancestral vision
4x living end
4x serum visions
4x remand
1x spell snare
1x spell pierce
1x engineered explosives
2x path to Exile
2x cryptic command
1x Bojuka Bog
1x field of ruin
6x island
4x flooded strand
2x hallowed fountain
1x mystic gate
1x seachrome coast
4x leyline of the void
1x engineered explosives
2x path to Exile
2x dispel
3x ghostly prison
2x hurkyl's recall
1x stony silence
The sideboard and manabase need more work but the maindeck spells seem in a good place.
Against aggro decks like Humans or Merfolks, im using Profaner of the Dead. You can exploit himself and return all little creatures, and then you can return him with Living End and exploit another big creature or himself again to clean the field.
Im having a lot of problemns against aggro decks, especially against Humans and Merfolks, because of Cavern of Souls, and Vial, and islandwalk in Merfolks case...
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Humans is likely the worst matchup so some of your choices will definitely help there so may be worth testing out.
As for Cryptic if you envision this as a control deck it does make more sense. It's still a 4 of for me since it is so versitile and every mode is insanely helpful to us. Just tapping out boards and buying us turns to either have opponents overplay into our wrath or help with suspend counters on hard-suspender visions is very helpful.
In response to another posted River of Tears and filter lands have big downside as it can't hard suspend visions on turn 1. Still likely worth playing but also worth knowing they come with a cost.
And it's true that suspending visions t1 would be a downside of having let's say a River of Tears and a Filter land in the initial hand. It didn't happen to me yet, but it is certainly a possible scenario, I'm finding myself suspending visions t1 a lot, frequently even with As Foretold in hand.
I've been running into A TON of control matches, it's been probably over a week since I last faced Humans or Burn, so that is not really helping me evaluate the sideboard, haha.
I'd like to address your point and preface what by say by reassuring you that since before modern even began I've been playing control/combo and tempo/combo decks intensely. They are very much my jam. Also I don't want to strike a confrontational tone so please don't assume as such. I'm just laying out things as I understand them.
This deck though isn't a control deck. Not really. It's in a weird middle spot and really more combo/tempo than anything else (and while subtle the distinction is really important if you are considering high levels of play).
It has control elements; cards generally at home within a tempo/control shell, but taking a hard look at the deck reveals that it has a game-plan or playstyle similar to some old RUG Scapeshift decks or even Taking Turns.
We lean really hard on remand in order to not immediately die against basically every deck in the format, and remand draws us into the combo while applying a temporary tempo speed bump on our opponent. Crucially, this isn't what a control deck does.
What's missing from this deck which control decks need to contain is a powerful suite of hard answers, and more specifically for modern a range of hard answers in the 1-2 mana range.
Most of the time in modern, remand won't get you there. This comes from someone who's played a playset of remand continuously throughout all of modern in as many decks as possible (I dearly love the card). Remand is, for the most part, fairly underwhelming. But it does its job of drawing cards admirably.
Playing 4 cryptics is a luxury only RUG scapeshift has enjoyed with any kind of success and that's because they could routinely cast it on turn 3, and follow it up with enough clout to finish the game on turn 5 with an opponent still locked down. Unless you have a decent way to survive until you hit cryptic mana, you can't run four in modern it's that simple. While a turn 3 living end might do that (just about...) it requires you having two different cards in hand and your opponent having no disruption of their own. RUG scapeshift by contrast just needed to hit any single ramp spell from turn 1 onwards and cryptic was live for turn 3. It could even ramp AND play remand on turn two (search for tomorrow). This deck can't achieve that sort of simple effectiveness.
Look at jeskai, currently tier 1, appeared in the finals of two recent huge tournaments (both mirror match finals no less!), proving its status as a powerful and effective control deck in modern. Plays on average at most 2 cryptics.
Look back further at a control/combo deck UR twin. Played 2 cryptics.
Both of these decks have more early interaction and hard answers which this deck is lacking and even with the extra interaction, cryptic was deemed powerful but slow so copies were cut.
Some of this is moot, but it's worth understanding the deck's playstyle and how a deck like this even survives in a cutthroat format like modern.
Going forward we can see there's a proven shell with As Foretold and the suspend spells. It's inherently powerful and a great thing to build towards as a game plan. What's not there right now and *needs* to be there is an actual tuned-for-modern decklist that goes beyond "just play my favourite spells" and really gets to the heart of how to survive the early turns in a diverse aggressive format. Remember it's not guaranteed that you'll even survive until turn 3 in modern, and remand as your only real early interaction won't work.
I've been constantly tweaking and changing my list every day getting close and closer to something I'd be happy running at a tournament. I've kept the combo, kept the cyclers and started to mess with the remaining part; the interaction. I discovered you can probably drop some number of Serum Visions on account of 22-ish maindeck cantrips and you definitely want to slim on the expensive cryptic commands, freeing up some space for a selection of cards like spell snare, path or push, spell pierce, maybe even 1x dispel like Twin used to run (highly versatile at both protecting the combo and slamming tricky matchups like burn and storm; also counters collected company which is great). I'm even keeping my options open into red and lightning bolt, but I think that's a dead end (at least for now).
My point is to look around at other successful combo/tempo decks in modern. What do they have that wr don't. What are we lacking. Where are we just deluding ourselves or thinking wistfully that something will work out. Be honest with yourself, look at the most powerful hard answers and try to solve the puzzle; can we fit them in and how many, what combination. That's the challenge. We shouldn't be arguing over playing a playset of cryptic with no real solid way to survive the early game. That's just silly lol.
I play with Spell Snare main, as well as a couple of Spell pierce, not only Remand to hold up until I reach Cryptic mana. So I at least am definitely playing it "control" style, not combo at all. Agreed, it is a draw-go control style that resembles tempo since we can put a fast clock some times, and we don't drag the game that much (at least as our main gameplan), but I don't play the deck as combo at all.
Some dismembers or collective brutalities for hatebears or particularly annoying creatures are useful besides Engineered Explosives, and I usually trim a Cryptic against those more aggro matchups, but I'm not particularly tempted to try Push or splash white for Path (a MUCH better spot removal for us). I honestly think having to cut down on Ghost Quarters and Field of Ruin, plus the damage from eventual fetching/shocking will hurt the deck more than what we gain from it.
What else do people feel the splashes bring into the deck?
Or what do you feel the deck needs to improve? Answering to early threats seems to be the number 1 concern, and finding/resolving As Foretold number 2. Anybody tried Perplex or Drift of Phantasms? They seem slow.
I'm tempted to try a Flaying Tendrils/Damnation/Yahenni's Expertise in the sideboard, but the double black is tough unless we hit a filter land.
Against fast decks where you'd need the lifelink, six mana is too many.
I agree in the abstract that cards like wurmcoil are very good against midrange opponents (who aren't playing path) but we draw so many cards that it likely won't matter against them. We aren't a ramp deck, so how are we casting wurmcoil with any sort of consistency against opponents who are (for example) playing Death's Shadow or an early tsrmogoyf?
At best, it's a shaky sideboard card. At worst it's a genuinely dead card because you'll lose before you ever get the chance to cast it.
I'd rather play Bottle Gnomes haha
As Foretold with 2 counters means we can cast it for free and flashback a Cryptic with only 4 mana up for example.
Well in that case I'm not sure if Flip Jace is worth it. I guess Jace himself is an alternate win con and can easily transform and loot for us...
Thoughts? Maybe a 1/1 split between Jace and Snap?
OK so snapcaster doesn't interact with any part of the engine of this deck. Here it would just be an extra "value dude" for doubling up on a cheap counterspell.
we probably don't run any cantrips (we have cyclers instead) so snappy loses half his value.
I can foresee the odd occasion when you can do something like flash in snappy as a blocker, he trades or chumps. Then on your turn living end bringing him back and also get to flash something back.
Sounds good. Issue is that the sort of stuff you'd want to flash back are generally counterspells and stuff, not great in your main phase.
So generally unless we make some big changes to the build of the deck I'm gonna suggest snappy is a nonbo and we probs shouldn't bother.
Literal actual baby Jace (vryn's moody teenager) could be a spicy one-of. Opportunity cost is fairly low I have to say, and (especially with maindeck path to Exile) there's both ways to protect him and stuff to re-use (including the actual engine of the deck of course).
If someone was to start running 1x lit-act-babby-J in their main I wouldn't slam them for it. Seems totally reasonable.
I've got one Japanese signed Jace sitting around so I may consider 1x myself.
I've been trawling gatherer and I reckon in order to include any value creatures we'd have to dip into another colour (e.g black/red for fulminator mage). There isn't much in mono blue. White seems to have the biggest hate cards? Also stuff like disenchant and detention sphere which are good answers to tricky permanents. Echoing truth is potentially an option in blue of course. I'll be having a good hard look at matchups over the next few days and deciding what sort of answers we want.
Also how much do you think the cost of Chalice of the Void effects the viability of the deck?
Yes, I am that guy.
Yes, I have had my nose broken before.
You can deal with Chalice using Disallow and Ratched Bomb. It's hard, but it's not the end of the world.
UBlue EndU
BAd NauseamB
The other splash that I like is Red, for Bolt, Faithless Looting, and Kari Zev's expertise. I don't feel like we've really explored that splash hard enough.
Also by cycling a nimble obstructionist in respone to the chalice trigger.
Engineered explosives is better than both of those options if you have some way of generating colourless mana (allowing you to pay mana and overcome the restriction on Chalice while still keeping explosives on zero)
And it's tutorable with Tolaria West.
This by the way is one definite upside to playing some number of filter lands (at least one). This seemingly small interaction will come up nearly every time you play against a deck running Chalice.
Yeah right? One of, the opportunity cost is low enough while providing some potentially great value in matchups where deck velocity is more important than remanding something.
I love Baby Jace, but it's hard to flip him reliably, and I feel it's mostly win more, since we need to have As Foretold in play and him flipped, plus have casted a Visions or Living End already. Am I missing some other nice value lines with him?
As far as value creatures in Blue/Black, there is certainly some in the Evoke creatures (Mulldrifter, Shriekmaw, AEthersnipe). We can play them for the Evoke cost, and get them back for extra value. They look decent enough for a try to me.
My only issue with the red splash is that I feel it's actually another deck altogether rather than a splash. A lot more comboish, closer to the original Living End in a way. It probably just folds to graveyard hate also. Magic AIDS has a series of videos with a UR version, it looks a ton of fun.