It's interesting to see Jund and rg tron with such low percentages. I've always thought of those as fairly good matchups. The rest of it seems like it makes sense.
RG/GW Tron was good before Ulamog/Worldbreaker. Now I just can't seem to win, I get turn4/5 Worldbreaker/Ulamog'd every game. Jund has also gotten better, mostly because of Kalitas being really good vs Engine. Jund just always seems to have turn1 discard, turn2 Bob, turn 3 Lili/Fulminator vs me. FeelsBadMan... However you also have to take variance into account. If I remember correctly I was 8-8 vs Jund like a month ago, just ended up losing the last 3 matches and now I am 8-11.
RG/GW Tron was good before Ulamog/Worldbreaker. Now I just can't seem to win, I get turn4/5 Worldbreaker/Ulamog'd every game. Jund has also gotten better, mostly because of Kalitas being really good vs Engine. Jund just always seems to have turn1 discard, turn2 Bob, turn 3 Lili/Fulminator vs me. FeelsBadMan... However you also have to take variance into account. If I remember correctly I was 8-8 vs Jund like a month ago, just ended up losing the last 3 matches and now I am 8-11.
This is why I find myself frustrated at players who try to downplay the difficulty of the RG Tron match; what am I missing here? It seems to me that there's nothing a RG Tron player likes to see more than a slower, grindier deck like ours, because once they set themselves up all they have to do is ride those cast triggers to victory. What are we going to do? Remand it and give them another cast trigger? Repeal it and give them another cast trigger? Condescend and Oblivion Stone stop the bleeding, but Sanctum of Ugin ensures your problems are just beginning, and it's been my experience that there's just no way for us to consistently keep up with them. Chalice on 1 is strong, and use your counters to slow them down as much as you can during the first few turns, but I find that the few games you win have way more to do with them stumbling on draws than with the way you play.
Jund has been an all-together different story for me, but it sounds like they've just been nut-drawing against you each time you play them.
I hadn't even thought of Kalitas in Jund, I figured them pickin up Grim flayer and collective brutality was enough. It seems that 2016 was very good for them. I think the matchup should still be about 50/50 though.
RG tron is tough. I have been playing summary dismissal in my sideboard for them and it has been good when I have drawn it.
When I played thought-knot seer and squelch I found them both very helpful against RG tron, but they didn't do enough outside of that matchup to justify keeping them (especially when I'm not really hitting any RG tron in my local meta). I think it'd be possible to tune your list against it, with things like talismans to power out a turn 3 thought knot, but overall it just doesn't seem worth it because of the percentage points you'd be sacrificing elsewhere.
jund you just have to play super tight. i think its like 60/40 or so in our favor, but play/draw is a big factor as always...where spell snare can shine. to counter their turn 2 creature before we have counters up (or dismember to kill it when it hits the board) then once we have 2 lands, hopefully can grind through and gain control. just gotta respect LILI.
tron sucks, i agree there. land kill+surgical is our main hope in this match, otherwise theyll just race us and win probably. spellskite helps with cast triggers too!
im surprised you have such a good record vs infect pie... im like 25% win... but i guess my dredge is flipped from you as well `\_(`')_/`
i wish the new (whir of invention) spoiler was only 2U! damn. instant speed artifact search, ugh.
i think we could use fatal push. up to 4 river of tears, drop oboro. painless turn 1 creature kill...even kills goyfs or deaths shadow of any size.
maybe drop some reliance on chalice for certain matches...
Over the break I received a gift from a friend which was a book called next level deckbuilding. I got to the chance to skim through a lot of it all while keeping my two decks, burn and U tron, in mind. One thing that the book mentioned was building decks on a curve. Ideally most decks want to be playing 8-10 one drops in order to not fall behind on tempo
(See: http://www.channelfireball.com/articles/frank-analysis-finding-the-optimal-mana-curve-via-computer-simulation/). Our deck however only uses 4 expedition map and some small number of cards out of the sideboard. Time and time again when I have used this deck the biggest problem are decks which lead with a T1 creature and either a T2 CMC 2 creature or maybe even two more 1 CMC creatures. As of now we don't meaningfully react to the opponents 1 drop unless you MB dismember(which no one seems to do) so our choices T2 are either to repeal the 1 drop, T2 chalice(rarely T1 with a gemstone), remand/condescend the CMC 2 card or crack the expedition map. All of these option leave us behind on tempo and on the receieving end of beatdowns from decks like infect, burn, zoo and more. The way I see it we have a few choices:
1. Increase our "1 drops" with some number of dismembers or engineered explosives in the main. Ideally we have at least 7-8 pieces of early interaction/plays T1.
2. Splash black to gain access to fatal push in the main. The black splash would also open up some other interesting possibilities, but first I think its worth considering the comparative costs of such a splash vs just using dismember.
Dismember: A turn one dismember costs 4 life and a colorless. This is easy on casting cost and difficult on life. If we want to repeat a use of dismember with snapcaster we have to pay life again. Plays nice with chalice which we use to great effect.
Fatal Push: It deals with problematic creatures and can painlessly be flashbacked with snapcaster. The black splash also opens up the possibility of using engineered explosives for 2, painless surgical extraction out of the sideboard, lowered damage from dismember if used in combination, the potential for greater use of sundering titan in conjuction with urborg, tomb of yawgmoth, and other things I'm probably not thinking of off the top of my head. In order to use these cards you obviously have to revamp the mana base. The downsides are that our manbase becomes clunkier and we probably shock ourselves for 3 T1 to actually use push(vs four from dismember).
They cut their basic lands down to 3 which in our case would likely be all islands. They also shave their urza lands to 10, have two flex lands, use UW manlands, and make use of signets/talismans. I don't think we necessarily need to be running manlands although I suppose we could. My proposed deck would look something like this:
Now, with all that being said its not clear to me that using fatal push is better than just using some number of dismember mainboard. What is clear to me is that we need to be interacting more in the early game if we don't want to to continue to get overrun by low cost creature decks.
I've been thinking a lot about fatal push since the spoiler and here are my thoughts. initially I wanted it. I even thought it would be possible with lets say 2-3 talismans and 2-3 river of tears and maybe an urborg, plus gemstone's if we get it. Thinking that way, it definitely seems possible. However, there is also a reason we don't try to squeeze in white for path to exile and the many great SB cards white provides us. It's going to completely make our mana base unreliable. We'll be basically playing a 3 color deck.
I think it may be possible to try and fit it in, but unless we drastically alter our mana base it wont be a reliable turn 1-2 play. I don't think its worth completely altering our mana base for 1 card. With talismans, orborg, gemstone's and river of tears maybe we could try to put 2 copies in, but to play 3-4 to completely screw our mana base does not seem worth it. Just my 2 cents.
I played yesterday and went X-1 in a small tournament, losing only to Death and Taxes (which I ironically won also before the playoffs). I felt comfortable with the deck, but realized that against heavy board presence, we don't have any sweepers such as Drown in Sorrow or any of these effects. I had to use counters on Thalia, Leonin Arbiter and Aven Mindcensor or Spatial Contortion in game 1, but brought in Urborg and Dismember in game 2 and 3 against aggro decks (Knightfall, Hatebears, etc.). I found also myself winning a lot through the combo Ruins / Mindslaver. A lot more than I expected!
I even thought it would be possible with lets say 2-3 talismans and 2-3 river of tears and maybe an urborg, plus gemstone's if we get it.
I'm already doing that for a couple of different reasons, including Engineered Explosives and Dismember. Fatal Push is going to be great against some of our weakest matchups, like Merfolk, Zoo, Hatebears, and other smaller aggro decks, but it's only really good if we can cast it turn 1 consistently. Otherwise it's not much better than Spatial Contortion. I'm hoping that this manabase will allow us to do that, because you are right: I don't want to go any more non-basic as we already are, otherwise we are going to be in trouble against Bloodmoon decks.
I even thought it would be possible with lets say 2-3 talismans and 2-3 river of tears and maybe an urborg, plus gemstone's if we get it.
I'm already doing that for a couple of different reasons, including Engineered Explosives and Dismember. Fatal Push is going to be great against some of our weakest matchups, like Merfolk, Zoo, Hatebears, and other smaller aggro decks, but it's only really good if we can cast it turn 1 consistently. Otherwise it's not much better than Spatial Contortion. I'm hoping that this manabase will allow us to do that, because you are right: I don't want to go any more non-basic as we already are, otherwise we are going to be in trouble against Bloodmoon decks.
Right, but like I said, the problem with this will be consistency. I'm sure we would be able to get the black mana and a fatal push late game, but it wont be as useful there. Do you think with that package we can consistently get it turn 1-2? I'm thinking not but is it still worth it? MAYBE, a late game fatal push is still very valuable, so it could still work, I'm just not sure.
Do you think with that package we can consistently get it turn 1-2? I'm thinking not but is it still worth it? MAYBE, a late game fatal push is still very valuable, so it could still work, I'm just not sure.
I seriously doubt it for two reasons: lack of "natural" black sources and the timing of River of Tears. There are only 4 black sources in my deck currently that can come down on turn 1 (6 on the draw with two Gemstone Caverns). One those black sources, only 1 (3 on the draw) will be available on the opponent's turn because River of Tears turns blue on their turn. So if you're on the play, the creature they play will likely not be removed at the end of their turn. If it's getting removed on turn two, we should just be playing Spatial Contortions.
We would definitely need to rework the manabase to include Shocklands, Checklands, Painlands, or Tango Lands. The problem then of course becomes that we are moving away from the robustness of the current base to something that dies to Blood Moon. Blue sources are tough enough to come by, having them all be Mountains would be devastating. So while Fatal Push seems like a great card on the surface, I'm afraid the cost to cast it consistently may be too high.
more fatal push thoughts after reading others' input...
i agree that a turn 1/2 black source is important for the card to be worth playing. river of tears does work great for this but isnt fetchable. maybe it involves some fetches, and rivers, and no gemstone/oboro. with fatal push, gemstone may be less needed because it can take out a 1-2 cmc creature anyways.
in comparing it to spatial contortion, i agree that after turn 1 the downsides of splashing another color with fetches and whatnot goes down, BUT spatial just does -3/-3... fatal push doesnt care about creature size. this is really important at the moment, with all the glass cannon decks going around... and mutagenic growths and whatnot. know what i mean? ...
I think it does make it worth considering other black cards in the 75, but i dont know what.
fatal push doesnt care about creature size. this is really important at the moment, with all the glass cannon decks going around... and mutagenic growths and whatnot. know what i mean?
I do know, and agree, that that would be great against stuff like Mutagenic Growth. But decks that play MG often also play Vines of Vastwood and Apostle's Blessing which still saved their creature and screw us big time. So yeah, Fatal Push is better than Spatial Contortion if they only got a pump spell, but it's still no guarantee that the creature is gonna go away.
river of tears does work great for this but isnt fetchable.
The other downside of this plan that I pointed out before is that you're casting Fatal Push on your turn if you're counting on River of Tears. I don't think that's ideal, since you want to kill their stuff at the end of their turn or in response to a pump spell that they most likely will cast on their turn. Unless you have a fetchland to crack, of some other way of getting a land into play on their turn, you will need an alternative black source to get the Instant Speed value.
The upside of this is that it kills indestructible creatures. Granted, not much application of this, but if we're talking edge cases, killing indestructibles and killing creatures after pump spells... Maybe it doesn't even out, but scale is not completely tipped over to Fatal Push's side.
So yeah, while it's nice to be able to kill an any-sized creature with CMC 2 for B, it's not a cure-all for our aggro woes and with the casting cost, it might not be entirely worth it to upset the mana base so drastically. I may be wrong (actually I hope so), but I don't think this is the removal spell we have been looking for.
Fatal Push definitely doesn't fit into this deck. We don't use fetches so we can't even reliably trigger revolt. With that in mind, it's certainly no better than path and we already don't splash for that. It also doesn't cantrip which we want almost all of our spells to do in some form. Baral is interesting, skeptical as to whether we want a 2 mana creature though, that's usually the time to be doing other things than casting creatures. Overall I don't think there's anything from the new set we could use yet.
vs most glass cannon aggro decks, i usually kill creatures in my turn when they are tapped out, or waste a pump spell, or their eot... but yeah, tears doesnt work eot for sure.
just trying to push for some peeps to test it out at least. cmonnnn. weve gotta get excited about one new spoiler each set that comes out! heh
oh, and VS path to exile... path doesnt work for sure because of the land it nets the opponent, when we play cards that rely on mana advantage, thats no bueno.
fatal push might be a great addition to our deck without even being in the 75. if the format starts to slow down and decks like grixis control become prevalent, then i think we're in a good spot.
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This is why I find myself frustrated at players who try to downplay the difficulty of the RG Tron match; what am I missing here? It seems to me that there's nothing a RG Tron player likes to see more than a slower, grindier deck like ours, because once they set themselves up all they have to do is ride those cast triggers to victory. What are we going to do? Remand it and give them another cast trigger? Repeal it and give them another cast trigger? Condescend and Oblivion Stone stop the bleeding, but Sanctum of Ugin ensures your problems are just beginning, and it's been my experience that there's just no way for us to consistently keep up with them. Chalice on 1 is strong, and use your counters to slow them down as much as you can during the first few turns, but I find that the few games you win have way more to do with them stumbling on draws than with the way you play.
Jund has been an all-together different story for me, but it sounds like they've just been nut-drawing against you each time you play them.
RG tron is tough. I have been playing summary dismissal in my sideboard for them and it has been good when I have drawn it.
tron sucks, i agree there. land kill+surgical is our main hope in this match, otherwise theyll just race us and win probably. spellskite helps with cast triggers too!
im surprised you have such a good record vs infect pie... im like 25% win... but i guess my dredge is flipped from you as well `\_(`')_/`
i wish the new (whir of invention) spoiler was only 2U! damn. instant speed artifact search, ugh.
i think we could use fatal push. up to 4 river of tears, drop oboro. painless turn 1 creature kill...even kills goyfs or deaths shadow of any size.
maybe drop some reliance on chalice for certain matches...
ill be testing it for sure.
(See: http://www.channelfireball.com/articles/frank-analysis-finding-the-optimal-mana-curve-via-computer-simulation/). Our deck however only uses 4 expedition map and some small number of cards out of the sideboard. Time and time again when I have used this deck the biggest problem are decks which lead with a T1 creature and either a T2 CMC 2 creature or maybe even two more 1 CMC creatures. As of now we don't meaningfully react to the opponents 1 drop unless you MB dismember(which no one seems to do) so our choices T2 are either to repeal the 1 drop, T2 chalice(rarely T1 with a gemstone), remand/condescend the CMC 2 card or crack the expedition map. All of these option leave us behind on tempo and on the receieving end of beatdowns from decks like infect, burn, zoo and more. The way I see it we have a few choices:
1. Increase our "1 drops" with some number of dismembers or engineered explosives in the main. Ideally we have at least 7-8 pieces of early interaction/plays T1.
2. Splash black to gain access to fatal push in the main. The black splash would also open up some other interesting possibilities, but first I think its worth considering the comparative costs of such a splash vs just using dismember.
Dismember: A turn one dismember costs 4 life and a colorless. This is easy on casting cost and difficult on life. If we want to repeat a use of dismember with snapcaster we have to pay life again. Plays nice with chalice which we use to great effect.
Fatal Push: It deals with problematic creatures and can painlessly be flashbacked with snapcaster. The black splash also opens up the possibility of using engineered explosives for 2, painless surgical extraction out of the sideboard, lowered damage from dismember if used in combination, the potential for greater use of sundering titan in conjuction with urborg, tomb of yawgmoth, and other things I'm probably not thinking of off the top of my head. In order to use these cards you obviously have to revamp the mana base. The downsides are that our manbase becomes clunkier and we probably shock ourselves for 3 T1 to actually use push(vs four from dismember).
A normal mono U tron deck runs 25 lands:
I think we can take a look at our UW bretheren for inspiration on how a UB splash would be accomplished.
https://www.mtggoldfish.com/archetype/modern-uw-tron-25157#online
They cut their basic lands down to 3 which in our case would likely be all islands. They also shave their urza lands to 10, have two flex lands, use UW manlands, and make use of signets/talismans. I don't think we necessarily need to be running manlands although I suppose we could. My proposed deck would look something like this:
12 Urza Lands
1 Academy Ruins
1 Ghost Quarter
2 Island
1 Swamp
4 Polluted Delta
2 Watery Grave
1 River of Tears
Non creature Artifacts-9
3 Talisman of Dominance
4 Expedition Map
1 Mindslaver
1 Oblivion Stone
2 Treasure Mage
2 Wurmcoil Engine
1 Sundering Titan
2 Snapcaster Mage
1 Platinum Angel
Non-Creature Spells-19
4 Condescend
4 Remand
3 Repeal
4 Thirst For Knowledge
3 Fatal Push
1 Ugin, The spirit dragon
1 Engineered Explosives
1 Engineered Explosives
1 Surgical Extraction
1 Dismember
Now, with all that being said its not clear to me that using fatal push is better than just using some number of dismember mainboard. What is clear to me is that we need to be interacting more in the early game if we don't want to to continue to get overrun by low cost creature decks.
I think it may be possible to try and fit it in, but unless we drastically alter our mana base it wont be a reliable turn 1-2 play. I don't think its worth completely altering our mana base for 1 card. With talismans, orborg, gemstone's and river of tears maybe we could try to put 2 copies in, but to play 3-4 to completely screw our mana base does not seem worth it. Just my 2 cents.
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I'm already doing that for a couple of different reasons, including Engineered Explosives and Dismember. Fatal Push is going to be great against some of our weakest matchups, like Merfolk, Zoo, Hatebears, and other smaller aggro decks, but it's only really good if we can cast it turn 1 consistently. Otherwise it's not much better than Spatial Contortion. I'm hoping that this manabase will allow us to do that, because you are right: I don't want to go any more non-basic as we already are, otherwise we are going to be in trouble against Bloodmoon decks.
Right, but like I said, the problem with this will be consistency. I'm sure we would be able to get the black mana and a fatal push late game, but it wont be as useful there. Do you think with that package we can consistently get it turn 1-2? I'm thinking not but is it still worth it? MAYBE, a late game fatal push is still very valuable, so it could still work, I'm just not sure.
I seriously doubt it for two reasons: lack of "natural" black sources and the timing of River of Tears. There are only 4 black sources in my deck currently that can come down on turn 1 (6 on the draw with two Gemstone Caverns). One those black sources, only 1 (3 on the draw) will be available on the opponent's turn because River of Tears turns blue on their turn. So if you're on the play, the creature they play will likely not be removed at the end of their turn. If it's getting removed on turn two, we should just be playing Spatial Contortions.
We would definitely need to rework the manabase to include Shocklands, Checklands, Painlands, or Tango Lands. The problem then of course becomes that we are moving away from the robustness of the current base to something that dies to Blood Moon. Blue sources are tough enough to come by, having them all be Mountains would be devastating. So while Fatal Push seems like a great card on the surface, I'm afraid the cost to cast it consistently may be too high.
Edit: Changes Gemstone Mines to Gemstone Caverns
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i agree that a turn 1/2 black source is important for the card to be worth playing. river of tears does work great for this but isnt fetchable. maybe it involves some fetches, and rivers, and no gemstone/oboro. with fatal push, gemstone may be less needed because it can take out a 1-2 cmc creature anyways.
in comparing it to spatial contortion, i agree that after turn 1 the downsides of splashing another color with fetches and whatnot goes down, BUT spatial just does -3/-3... fatal push doesnt care about creature size. this is really important at the moment, with all the glass cannon decks going around... and mutagenic growths and whatnot. know what i mean? ...
I think it does make it worth considering other black cards in the 75, but i dont know what.
I do know, and agree, that that would be great against stuff like Mutagenic Growth. But decks that play MG often also play Vines of Vastwood and Apostle's Blessing which still saved their creature and screw us big time. So yeah, Fatal Push is better than Spatial Contortion if they only got a pump spell, but it's still no guarantee that the creature is gonna go away.
The other downside of this plan that I pointed out before is that you're casting Fatal Push on your turn if you're counting on River of Tears. I don't think that's ideal, since you want to kill their stuff at the end of their turn or in response to a pump spell that they most likely will cast on their turn. Unless you have a fetchland to crack, of some other way of getting a land into play on their turn, you will need an alternative black source to get the Instant Speed value.
BUT spatial just does [+]3/-3
The upside of this is that it kills indestructible creatures. Granted, not much application of this, but if we're talking edge cases, killing indestructibles and killing creatures after pump spells... Maybe it doesn't even out, but scale is not completely tipped over to Fatal Push's side.
So yeah, while it's nice to be able to kill an any-sized creature with CMC 2 for B, it's not a cure-all for our aggro woes and with the casting cost, it might not be entirely worth it to upset the mana base so drastically. I may be wrong (actually I hope so), but I don't think this is the removal spell we have been looking for.
just trying to push for some peeps to test it out at least. cmonnnn. weve gotta get excited about one new spoiler each set that comes out! heh
oh, and VS path to exile... path doesnt work for sure because of the land it nets the opponent, when we play cards that rely on mana advantage, thats no bueno.
O