RE: Sleight. With Shadow as prevalent as it is, I sometimes appreciate SV's ability to keep a card hidden on top.
RE: Tron. You said it, Crumble to Dust is too slow. We've known that for years. Side-in 2-3x Surgical Extraction and make your Ghost Quarters become faster (pre-T3) Crumble to Dusts. Now that's the main thing I believe. Then you want all the Prisms and Tezzies for quick smashing. More Thoughtseizes and GQs out of the side, and Needling the right thing. A couple extra beaters (Clique does both beating and Disrupting) help, and the odd Quicksilver Fountain gives you an actual T3 Whir target that can permanently cut them off Tron if unanswered. Crucible is a cherry-on-top, but if you're rocking 3-4 GQs (and an Expedition Map to get them more consistently), might as well do the Crucible. That's where I landed in testing and I consistently beat Tron. It's admittedly heavy tweaks, but it does work.
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MODERN Blue Lantern, UBx Tezzerator. OLD SCHOOL 93/94 «The Pain Train» Black Sligh, Esper «Machine Gun» Artifacts, Jund «Psycho» Ponza-Disko.
Spamming pithing needles and hitting with thoughtseize is about as simple as it gets for gx tron. Its not great but they are cards you are running anyways. Would love the 2cmc needle coming in ixalan so that we could more correctly choose ostone vs karn vs ugin vs worldbreaker. They also play relics which is yet another needle target - you can see it quickly becomes impossible to needle everything.
Gq and surgical is cleaner and more effective but I dont like having gq in a whir deck - esp not over ruins or fair, and im not keen to make a sideboard of like 4 quarters and 4 surgicals or whatever itd take. Also keep in mind with relic they can fizzle your surgical
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Modern
* Esper Draw-Go
* Tezzeret Whir
* Blue Tron
And re: sleight of hand if you run baubles relics and stars its possible to stack a card on top and draw it (ie place whir then crack bauble to draw on their upkeep and cast on their end step). But sometimes its actually strong to be able to stack the top - like maybe t1 im not sure if I need bridge or not so I leave it and see what im against then I can fetch or not fetch to cycle it away if its not relevant. Also sometimes we need both combo pieces and manage to draw one and find the other (or a tutor) on top.
Id still test it but ive found I often make good use of all the options off of the scry 2 of serum
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Modern
* Esper Draw-Go
* Tezzeret Whir
* Blue Tron
@Molz: great video! It's particularly great to hear your very tempo-centric analysis of all that's going on. Some questions:
1. SB'ing vs Affinity: why no Maelstrom Pulse? Hits everything we're worried off, and multiples of them. I would tend to bring swap 'em in instead of Pentad Prism that you kept in. What do Prisms bring to the table? Are you trying to accelerate into some bullet rather than remove everything they throw at you?
2. Have you ever packed MB Inquisition of Kozilek rather than the SB Chalices? What would be your analysis on the merits of running one setup rather than the other? Looking at your Storm match, I'm thinking IoKs would have helped you. And this is a match-up we're trying to fix, right?
3. Yeah, how about some Spires in there? Some of us stand pretty convinced; I myself am up to running 3 of them. The devastating Echoing Truth line Glimmervoid gave to your opponent in the last match seems like a liability we don't have to have.
@radouf Answering your thoughts below:
1) Maelstrom pulse is not very good versus ravager (they can move counters to a sticky threat in response like an inkmoth) it's good versus plating (but normally we have this covered with thopters/bridge) and good versus steel overseer (again, bridge is very good versus overseer, and once they've untapped a lot of the damage is already done). It's also bad versus etched champion which is quite good as it walks by thopters.
The biggest reason I dislike pulse here is that it is a 3 mana removal spell for our opponents 0-2 mana spells. So it's pretty negative tempo and we need to use it sorcery speed, and it can get stuck in our hand making a bridge worse. As you saw in the one game I even had to damnation away a signal pest and an ornithopter, pulse would be very bad here.
Pentad prism helps you make sure you cast all of your spells to keep bridge to 0. If you get stuck with a card they can now attack with an inkmoth and ravager it up for lethal. I would consider it on the play, but definitely not on the draw is my current stance.
2) I haven't tried inquisition but that's because I dislike the theory of how it fits into the deck. I do not think it replaces chalice, I think they're different cards for different situations. I will give it a shot soon in place of welding jars and likely another prism, but this significantly hurts opal draws.
Inquisition is trying to trade resources with an opponent to disrupt what they're doing. Inquisition is trying to carve a hole to force through our plan (keep a bridge in play/remove counter magic/delay their board progression). Our cards are uniquely so powerful and difficult to interact with that normally we don't care about what they're doing. Why take their 3 mana creature when bridge nullifies all of their creatures? It doesn't hit collected company/tasigur/gurmag/scapeshift/tron threats/cryptic/relevant planeswalkers/gifts (storm). So at best it is trying to trade resources rather than fully disrupt their plan. Sometimes this is okay, especially post board games, but game one I normally want all of my cards to be pushing towards a win of thopter combo or tezz/bridge.
The area I see it as being good is taking a k-command, taking an abrupt decay, post board RIP/Stony, or versus storm post board or early. These are times where normally I would want welding jar or a decay.
Chalice on the other hand is extremely good as a proactive threat/something that helps win the game. Versus death shadow it is as good as a bridge, versus storm or burn putting it on 2 is a main win condition. Versus adnauseum or tron it is very disruptive and can win a game on its own given the right draw from the opponent.
I have been very impressed with chalice and will definitely run 3 in the board, but I don't think running chalice and inquisition are necessarily mutually exclusive.
The other issue with inquisition is that I've had plenty of games where I 1-for-1 my opponent (like someone on elves) and I get stuck on lands or not enough sources to whir for a bridge and end up losing.
Brutality fits my interaction spot because of the synergy with bridge and that it is at worse a bad disfigure versus creatures or a bad duress versus decks we need to duress. It is more flexible rather than just trading resources.
3) I tried playing multiple spires when I was attempting a white splash for mirran crusaders, but I had to muligan more hands because they make the manabase worse. hand of spire fetch foundry prism whir is not very exciting, but it is very good if the spire is an island or glimmervoid. The other point I made during the video is that it's concerning if my opponent echoing truths me in round 5, but hes essentially wastelanding/stripmining me and we're trading 2 mana each. The main consensus is that you do not want to wasteland someone when you are not ahead on board, and he wasn't. Also, if he does this and then I stick a bridge he basically can't interact with it. His plan is to build a critical mass and use the echoing truth as a game ending spell.
Not saying spire is wrong, it's probably fine, I've just had more consistency with a fetch/basics/shocks core.
Great conversation and I'd be happy to have more detailed conversations about specifics. I'm still trying out a bunch of random ideas online (might play around with stirrings and visions in the same build next). Look forward to more discussions. Glad most of you appreciated the video!
Thanks for the detailed answer @Molz. Now I officially feel bad about selling out of my Chalices a couple weeks ago
On Ancient Stirrings, while almighty powerful in Lantern (which I do play), we've had plenty of testing with it and found it really subpar in the Tezz shell. It's main con is that it misses on our two main win conditions, Foundry and Tezzeret, which really hinders the card's power as a digging tool. It effectively becomes a pretty bad late-game topdeck. Stirrings will grab a Bridge or some bullet, sure, but the upside isn't worth the downside (including some strain on mana) nor swapping out Baubles or Serum Visions for them. And if you just throw it in, then you get to way too much «air» in the deck.
You may want to try them for yourself, but we came to a collective agreement on it falling short on business too many times.
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I've played stirrings before and it was fine, but I could see Trimming a sword/bridge/land/jar for 4 stirrings. Lowers tempo but increases consistency. Basically I'd play stirrings and visions. At that point I'd probably go back to playing a bottled cloister though. Strange testing ideas.
So after being inspired by @molz7's videos I abandoned my over the top turbo build (took out SimianSGs and chalices) and added Serums and some basic bullet stuff back (welding jar, grafdigger's)
My meta has a ton of tron floating around so I added a ghost quarter instead of inventor's fair as the 21st land. The burn matchup is a lot easier as a gemstone build than my standard build so I thoight we could foregoe.
I 3-1'd losing to an exceptionally fast two abzan starts whilst getting jammed up on colors.
Thinking back on it my worst finish has been 2-2. I have never had a losing record since sleeving this deck up.
So after today I'm convinced that 4 serum visions is where we want to be. But maybe a 5th-6th cantrip slot of sleight?? All my hands that had multiple SVs tonight felt unlosable...
The real play in the deck is the ratio of questions to answers, right? If you get thopter/sword that's a damn good question that most decks aren't preapred to answer. So our dilemma is the value of playing toward having powerful questions or powerful answers. Chalice is insanely strong, but basically dead against some decks. But grafdigger's cage is relatively weak against lots of decks but is searchable, futhers our artifact plan and can flat out cut some decks in the format out game one. Having a gradigger's main means our chances of losing to storm G1 are very low. I think that should be the benchmark for silver bullets. Cards that end whole classes of decks and can be whirred for. That's gonna be our biggest bang for buck.
Next crazy crazy thought for tron/valakut hate.
Mindlock orb??
What does RG ramp do about that? I know it hurts us, but it seems to be a stand alone answer.
The real play in the deck is the ratio of questions to answers, right? If you get thopter/sword that's a damn good question that most decks aren't preapred to answer. So our dilemma is the value of playing toward having powerful questions or powerful answers. Chalice is insanely strong, but basically dead against some decks. But grafdigger's cage is relatively weak against lots of decks but is searchable, futhers our artifact plan and can flat out cut some decks in the format out game one. Having a gradigger's main means our chances of losing to storm G1 are very low. I think that should be the benchmark for silver bullets. Cards that end whole classes of decks and can be whirred for. That's gonna be our biggest bang for buck.
This really is the deck in a nutshell. Thopter/Sword is the only question we usually have to ask g1 so being very good at presenting it is the place to be (serum, whir, muddle). I'm up to a 4/2 split and wondering again if 4/3 is the place to be game 1 and then just shave one of each in sideboarded games to be less all in. Drawing the combo naturally is usually a lot more efficient than tutoring for it; and saves your tutors for jar/bridge/sieve.
The answers as you suggest get something of a pass when they are also cheap artifacts, because they can do other things when they aren't that relevant. I think one-of cage is so low opportunity cost and high ceiling that it should absolutely be in the maindeck. It is massive against chord/company decks, good (but slow) vs dredge decks, and you get random value versus things like snapcaster mage or gifts ungiven. One needle is similar because its a versatile answer even if its annoying to have to drop it cold in the early game and guess to turn on whir/bauble. I don't know that there's anything beyond those 2 cards that is worth it MD. You can run relic/spellbomb (and should have at least 1) but that's more because they are cheap cantrips than because they will win the game for you regularly. I don't think I have ever whir'd for my relic but I'm usually fine with drawing it since I can annoy delve decks and cycle it away when needed.
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Modern
* Esper Draw-Go
* Tezzeret Whir
* Blue Tron
I would really like a fetchable win-con with whir against them. However, I think if you play Ashiok, nightmare weaver and padeem, consul of innovation, you should be fine in winning the topdeck war and either milling them out or winning some other way. All tron players I was against boarded out all their dismember so padeem is pretty safe.
Might even be a good idea to post board run 4x tezz, 2x ashiok (boarded in), 1x lili and take out most of the combo and just go for the grind/topdeck battle.
A whirrable win condition that doesn't fold to stony silence or non-bo with bridge really is the missing piece of the deck. The closest we have is the rack. That actually makes me wonder if there's some kind of 8-rack hybrid that could be good, or if a discard/liliana style deck could board into racks. Racks have some synergy with herald of anguish too as part of the sideboard plan (1. their hand is stripped so herald more likely to stick and 2. heralds discard keeps them from getting out of rack range even if you're stuck behind a bridge).
Taking the thopter-sword combo out altogether has always felt like a no. It's too powerful when it works and too many cards to replace, and its not like dropping the combo makes us immune to artifact hate since there are another 15-20 artifacts sitting in the deck
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Modern
* Esper Draw-Go
* Tezzeret Whir
* Blue Tron
First time i post here, i've been working on this deck since a year and i have come to something close to what you built.
One erratum : i used to play 1 Tasigur but have been really disapointed in it. He has been replaced by an Executionner capsule in this list but i'm still seeking for something better.
Some explanations :
- About tezzeret : while i do like it a lot in grindy matchups, i find it really clunky game 1. His -1 often get the opponent a perfect target for the removal he is keeping in hand since the beginning due to the lack of targets. I still kept one as he is still good if the game is starting to last long.
- About the Time sieve : I've read sometime that sieve was a win more con. In certain match ups it is but, as long as the opponent has a way in his deck to remove either part of the combo, being able to whir for an instant kill is the best way to prevent any blowout from the opponent.
- About the Pentad prism : I must agree with @the nobodys on this matter. I find it an awfull topdeck and the ramp it provides, while giving comfort in the manabase and allowing (i'dd say 2) darksteel citadel, is not enough to justify his presence, and even more if you don't run as many tezz.
-About 4 Serum vision and 4 discard main deck : Discard hurt the deck a lot and I had a lot of struggle avoiding his effects. Filling the deck with cantrips (4 serum, 4 baubble) and discard allow me to dodge it really often by refilling my hand after their discard is out.
Last night i went to FNM with this deck.
G1 : UR aggro cheap :
Not a lot of thing to say, it's an home-brew which could afford some obvious optimizations. I won 2/0 by assembling the combo while he was trying to slowly put the 6 final points.
G2 : Affinity blue :
Game 1 he does a slow start so i'm able to lock him out with a bridge. Even with the combo assembled, it took me a while to win because my opponent had two cranial plating, a Vault Skirge, a steel overseer and an arcbound ravager. Si even with infinite turn i had to play until i draw Liliana, plus it until i can make him sac his Skirge.
Game 2 he drew a lot of his hate and just enough creatures to lower my health consistently. Flashbacked ancient grudge after i discarded it, removing my first foundry, drew pithing needle when i whired for the second one.
Game 3 started, and if was starting to slow down when the 5 turn finished.
G3 : BW control :
Game 1 not very interesting. I discarded his discard turn 1, followed by the combo on turn 2 and 3. Killed with a swarm of thopter after he anguished my foundry.
Game 2 i managed to put my thopter foundry combo on the board, he start puting pw on the board. Finally he went hellbent and i sacrified my Inventor's fair to get the time sieve at the end of his turn, i lacked one mana to go infinite turn, giving him 1 turn to draw an answer. He did'nt.
G4 : regular Abzan :
Game 1 i lock him with a bridge hellbent. He managed to use his Liliana's ult to remove all my lands, but i stick to my bridge. Finally drew the rest of the combo and killed him with fliers.
Game 2 he does turn 1 discard, turn 2 stony silence. I play it hopping that bridge and tezz or Ghirapur grid could save me but i did'nt draw them.
Game 3 i tried to protect the combo or the bridge but he drew a lot of decay/pulse.
As someone pointed it out at the tournament i don't need red for Grid if i have way of removing the Stony silence. I'm still not sure if i'll go for green to put decay/pulse or go only white and put 2 fragmentize over ceremonious rejection and grid. If green i might even replace capsule with decay main deck.
What do you think of it ?
PS : Sry if i made english mistakes, it's not my first language.
Couple thoughts/comments/questions on your list Xatrith:
1. Has sun droplet done much in the sideboard? I tried both that and elixir of immortality as anti-burn tech and neither impressed. Whirring for them is just too slow and they don't have enough use in other matches to warrant the slot. I went back to just playing extra copies of collective brutality which is a lot more flexible (can be used vs combo decks).
2. Spellskite main should have the exact same problem you described for tezzeret. They are bound to have push/path/terminate etc in hand and just fire it off at the spellskite. If your plan is to whir for it to protect bridge that's okay but most decks can't blow up our bridge game 1 anyways. I do like that skite stops cryptic command / flickerwisp type effects where welding jar fails, but unless you're whirring for the skite they should have removal sitting there to get rid of it before going after your bridge (or foundry).
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Modern
* Esper Draw-Go
* Tezzeret Whir
* Blue Tron
I started testing out 3 ghost quarters main with 4 chromatic stars. Really the only bummer of running colorless lands is missing your second color on two for a foundry/pentad/whir so the stars balance that out. I think the huge upside to making room for lots of GQs main is that it gives us only 3-4 spots in the side needed for GQ/surgical/extirpate/crucible to make tron a real match up.
I started testing out 3 ghost quarters main with 4 chromatic stars. Really the only bummer of running colorless lands is missing your second color on two for a foundry/pentad/whir so the stars balance that out. I think the huge upside to making room for lots of GQs main is that it gives us only 3-4 spots in the side needed for GQ/surgical/extirpate/crucible to make tron a real match up.
Will keep you guys posted.
there are two cautions I would make with this having been playing 1-2 stars for a long time now.
1) you still need 2 artifacts on turn 3 to whir (improvise), so if you sac it for blue to whir then now you actually need 3 artifacts. I suspect a lot of times you'll find on turn 3 you can improvise for 2 or have triple blue but not both if you play a lot of gQ with stars.
2) stars get hit by stony silence too which can make them a liability in post-board games.
3) surgicals can otherwise feel pretty redundant when we have access to cage relic spellbomb. So they really need to do the work vs tron to be worth the slots.
4) disabling tron vs eldrazitron doesnt actually accomplish that much. So this is a move you'd make to really fix the classic tron match
The other upsides on the card are vs blood moon, enabling splashes, and cycling for 1 mana (assuming you can use the floated mana)
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* Esper Draw-Go
* Tezzeret Whir
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@BadMcFadden : I agree with your opinion, this is quite good in the beginning hand but bad to draw after turn 3 or whired. An other brutality will be better.
It's a problem yes, but Spellskite does not have the same manacost, so if the opponent spend a turn killing it, at least it delayed my opponent a bit, so the cost is low when it fails. On the other hand against valakut it can saves from an full scapeshift, slow down burn and block if need be. Also i'm not sure what to put in his stead.
@BadMcFadden : I agree with your opinion, this is quite good in the beginning hand but bad to draw after turn 3 or whired. An other brutality will be better.
It's a problem yes, but Spellskite does not have the same manacost, so if the opponent spend a turn killing it, at least it delayed my opponent a bit, so the cost is low when it fails. On the other hand against valakut it can saves from an full scapeshift, slow down burn and block if need be. Also i'm not sure what to put in his stead.
welding jar would be the obvious pick. but really just about anything - capsule, cage, relic, star, tezzeret etc. vs valakut you cost them 1 turn at most, and you are only beating valakut realistically if you do sieve combo so blowing whirs on spellskites is not good. vs burn you just give them something to searing blaze more often than not. I'm okay with sucking up a blaze once I've got combo online, but turn 2 skite block gob guide eat searing blaze is not really where I want to be, let alone whirring for it.
In any case, both scenarios sound like a sideboard card rather than main. Skite is okay post-board vs burn because they will take out searing blaze and now at least its eating lightning bolts that would hit you or revelries that would hit your combo pieces.
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Modern
* Esper Draw-Go
* Tezzeret Whir
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Also ive been pretty happy with two engineered explosives maindeck so far. Had an opponent cast two tideholow scullers and was able to find an explosives with tezz to get my cards back and keep tezz from dying to the next sculler swing.
Its also a decent maindeck out to thalias and arbiters and can decimate fast decks that lean on one drops (zoo, elf-sprawl etc)
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* Esper Draw-Go
* Tezzeret Whir
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sucks that you lost to merfolk, that matchup is pretty favoured for us. must've been a little annoying? still, 7-2 is awesome man, keep us posted, i'll be about tomorrow so i'll look out for any tezz decks
Depends on the list imo. Some will run up to 2 echoing truth mainboard and if they bounce your bridge you generally lose on the spot. Also some will put up to 4 hurkyll's recall in the side to have a prayer vs affinity, and when that comes down on you you once again will likely be dead to the army of giant fish that you were holding back with a bridge.
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* Esper Draw-Go
* Tezzeret Whir
* Blue Tron
Did pentad prism do anything relevant? Also how did you feel about running inquisition over serum (assuming that was the choice)?
Also surprised you wouldnt run at least one copy of either relic or nihil spellbomb in the main. Such low cost for one slot to give you a whir target vs gy situations
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* Esper Draw-Go
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Whoops missed the serums as I was reading on mobile and thought "black cards" was "spells" ;p
I played prism a long time and first converted them to Talisman of Dominance, and then dropped the turn 2 mana rock altogether. Most of the time my turn 2 play is casting a foundry or sword between 7 copies in the deck and 4 serums that could go off t1 to find a piece. They were great for casting herald of anguish on time, but the synergy with whir was extremely meh since its not like I'm trying to whir for 5. It's 2 or 3, and on turn 3 I can do whir for 2 with almost any hand the deck presents while a bridge t3 is likely to not be low enough until t4 anyways (although if those vengevine decks are real that could change).
Fair point on the graveyard cards. Thinking about it I don't think I have ever actually whirred for either. They are fine draws since they cantrip, but as you say most of the decks we might "break" with them we already have a good game 1 plan as is. It's not like whirring for a relic on turn 3 is going to stop that turn 2 tasigur.
I flip-flop on the MD discard because they are such terrible topdecks and I really think you want to be focused on assembling the combo. I don't like the tension between turn 1 IoK vs Serum either.
I did dig up another option for the whirrable-stony-proof-bridge-proof win condition: Mindcrank Duskmantle Guildmage
If you play muddle the mixture you even get an extra tutor for either piece. This plays into them sideboarding out removal, and could cost as little as 2 sideboard slots depending how confidant you are in your tutors (1 crank is probably fine, but I think 2-3 guildmages probably). Ideally you make a few thopters, whir for crank, untap cast guildmage activate (5 mana) and poke with a thopter to set off the combo. Getting to 7 mana for a full guildmage activation is not trivial (but would be another reason to run prisms)
The other angle I can imagine is going jeskai and splicing saheeli/felidar together with thopter/sword. Saheeli digs for pieces, can win behind a bridge when our foundry gets extracted. Only downer to that deck is the saheeli/cat don't synergize with anything else int he current build.
I also consider nahiri/emrakul an option - emrakul fixes the mill matchup if thats a thing, nahiri gets rid of stony/rip, but the nonbo between emr and bridge is a thing
Here is my current test - bringing prisms back in mainly to improve the post-board games with herald/duskmantle.
Bottom line - the game 1 with this deck is very good. The devil is in making game 2 and 3 winnable through ancient grudge, shatterstorm, rip, stony, etc. I have lots of random ideas but it takes forever to test them and see if they work. Decay is the most no-nonsense approach but I feel like we can do more so that it isn't "draw decay or lose"
RE: Tron. You said it, Crumble to Dust is too slow. We've known that for years. Side-in 2-3x Surgical Extraction and make your Ghost Quarters become faster (pre-T3) Crumble to Dusts. Now that's the main thing I believe. Then you want all the Prisms and Tezzies for quick smashing. More Thoughtseizes and GQs out of the side, and Needling the right thing. A couple extra beaters (Clique does both beating and Disrupting) help, and the odd Quicksilver Fountain gives you an actual T3 Whir target that can permanently cut them off Tron if unanswered. Crucible is a cherry-on-top, but if you're rocking 3-4 GQs (and an Expedition Map to get them more consistently), might as well do the Crucible. That's where I landed in testing and I consistently beat Tron. It's admittedly heavy tweaks, but it does work.
OLD SCHOOL 93/94 «The Pain Train» Black Sligh, Esper «Machine Gun» Artifacts, Jund «Psycho» Ponza-Disko.
Gq and surgical is cleaner and more effective but I dont like having gq in a whir deck - esp not over ruins or fair, and im not keen to make a sideboard of like 4 quarters and 4 surgicals or whatever itd take. Also keep in mind with relic they can fizzle your surgical
* Esper Draw-Go
* Tezzeret Whir
* Blue Tron
Id still test it but ive found I often make good use of all the options off of the scry 2 of serum
* Esper Draw-Go
* Tezzeret Whir
* Blue Tron
@radouf Answering your thoughts below:
1) Maelstrom pulse is not very good versus ravager (they can move counters to a sticky threat in response like an inkmoth) it's good versus plating (but normally we have this covered with thopters/bridge) and good versus steel overseer (again, bridge is very good versus overseer, and once they've untapped a lot of the damage is already done). It's also bad versus etched champion which is quite good as it walks by thopters.
The biggest reason I dislike pulse here is that it is a 3 mana removal spell for our opponents 0-2 mana spells. So it's pretty negative tempo and we need to use it sorcery speed, and it can get stuck in our hand making a bridge worse. As you saw in the one game I even had to damnation away a signal pest and an ornithopter, pulse would be very bad here.
Pentad prism helps you make sure you cast all of your spells to keep bridge to 0. If you get stuck with a card they can now attack with an inkmoth and ravager it up for lethal. I would consider it on the play, but definitely not on the draw is my current stance.
2) I haven't tried inquisition but that's because I dislike the theory of how it fits into the deck. I do not think it replaces chalice, I think they're different cards for different situations. I will give it a shot soon in place of welding jars and likely another prism, but this significantly hurts opal draws.
Inquisition is trying to trade resources with an opponent to disrupt what they're doing. Inquisition is trying to carve a hole to force through our plan (keep a bridge in play/remove counter magic/delay their board progression). Our cards are uniquely so powerful and difficult to interact with that normally we don't care about what they're doing. Why take their 3 mana creature when bridge nullifies all of their creatures? It doesn't hit collected company/tasigur/gurmag/scapeshift/tron threats/cryptic/relevant planeswalkers/gifts (storm). So at best it is trying to trade resources rather than fully disrupt their plan. Sometimes this is okay, especially post board games, but game one I normally want all of my cards to be pushing towards a win of thopter combo or tezz/bridge.
The area I see it as being good is taking a k-command, taking an abrupt decay, post board RIP/Stony, or versus storm post board or early. These are times where normally I would want welding jar or a decay.
Chalice on the other hand is extremely good as a proactive threat/something that helps win the game. Versus death shadow it is as good as a bridge, versus storm or burn putting it on 2 is a main win condition. Versus adnauseum or tron it is very disruptive and can win a game on its own given the right draw from the opponent.
I have been very impressed with chalice and will definitely run 3 in the board, but I don't think running chalice and inquisition are necessarily mutually exclusive.
The other issue with inquisition is that I've had plenty of games where I 1-for-1 my opponent (like someone on elves) and I get stuck on lands or not enough sources to whir for a bridge and end up losing.
Brutality fits my interaction spot because of the synergy with bridge and that it is at worse a bad disfigure versus creatures or a bad duress versus decks we need to duress. It is more flexible rather than just trading resources.
3) I tried playing multiple spires when I was attempting a white splash for mirran crusaders, but I had to muligan more hands because they make the manabase worse. hand of spire fetch foundry prism whir is not very exciting, but it is very good if the spire is an island or glimmervoid. The other point I made during the video is that it's concerning if my opponent echoing truths me in round 5, but hes essentially wastelanding/stripmining me and we're trading 2 mana each. The main consensus is that you do not want to wasteland someone when you are not ahead on board, and he wasn't. Also, if he does this and then I stick a bridge he basically can't interact with it. His plan is to build a critical mass and use the echoing truth as a game ending spell.
Not saying spire is wrong, it's probably fine, I've just had more consistency with a fetch/basics/shocks core.
Great conversation and I'd be happy to have more detailed conversations about specifics. I'm still trying out a bunch of random ideas online (might play around with stirrings and visions in the same build next). Look forward to more discussions. Glad most of you appreciated the video!
On Ancient Stirrings, while almighty powerful in Lantern (which I do play), we've had plenty of testing with it and found it really subpar in the Tezz shell. It's main con is that it misses on our two main win conditions, Foundry and Tezzeret, which really hinders the card's power as a digging tool. It effectively becomes a pretty bad late-game topdeck. Stirrings will grab a Bridge or some bullet, sure, but the upside isn't worth the downside (including some strain on mana) nor swapping out Baubles or Serum Visions for them. And if you just throw it in, then you get to way too much «air» in the deck.
You may want to try them for yourself, but we came to a collective agreement on it falling short on business too many times.
OLD SCHOOL 93/94 «The Pain Train» Black Sligh, Esper «Machine Gun» Artifacts, Jund «Psycho» Ponza-Disko.
My meta has a ton of tron floating around so I added a ghost quarter instead of inventor's fair as the 21st land. The burn matchup is a lot easier as a gemstone build than my standard build so I thoight we could foregoe.
I 3-1'd losing to an exceptionally fast two abzan starts whilst getting jammed up on colors.
Thinking back on it my worst finish has been 2-2. I have never had a losing record since sleeving this deck up.
So after today I'm convinced that 4 serum visions is where we want to be. But maybe a 5th-6th cantrip slot of sleight?? All my hands that had multiple SVs tonight felt unlosable...
The real play in the deck is the ratio of questions to answers, right? If you get thopter/sword that's a damn good question that most decks aren't preapred to answer. So our dilemma is the value of playing toward having powerful questions or powerful answers. Chalice is insanely strong, but basically dead against some decks. But grafdigger's cage is relatively weak against lots of decks but is searchable, futhers our artifact plan and can flat out cut some decks in the format out game one. Having a gradigger's main means our chances of losing to storm G1 are very low. I think that should be the benchmark for silver bullets. Cards that end whole classes of decks and can be whirred for. That's gonna be our biggest bang for buck.
Next crazy crazy thought for tron/valakut hate.
Mindlock orb??
What does RG ramp do about that? I know it hurts us, but it seems to be a stand alone answer.
This really is the deck in a nutshell. Thopter/Sword is the only question we usually have to ask g1 so being very good at presenting it is the place to be (serum, whir, muddle). I'm up to a 4/2 split and wondering again if 4/3 is the place to be game 1 and then just shave one of each in sideboarded games to be less all in. Drawing the combo naturally is usually a lot more efficient than tutoring for it; and saves your tutors for jar/bridge/sieve.
The answers as you suggest get something of a pass when they are also cheap artifacts, because they can do other things when they aren't that relevant. I think one-of cage is so low opportunity cost and high ceiling that it should absolutely be in the maindeck. It is massive against chord/company decks, good (but slow) vs dredge decks, and you get random value versus things like snapcaster mage or gifts ungiven. One needle is similar because its a versatile answer even if its annoying to have to drop it cold in the early game and guess to turn on whir/bauble. I don't know that there's anything beyond those 2 cards that is worth it MD. You can run relic/spellbomb (and should have at least 1) but that's more because they are cheap cantrips than because they will win the game for you regularly. I don't think I have ever whir'd for my relic but I'm usually fine with drawing it since I can annoy delve decks and cycle it away when needed.
* Esper Draw-Go
* Tezzeret Whir
* Blue Tron
A whirrable win condition that doesn't fold to stony silence or non-bo with bridge really is the missing piece of the deck. The closest we have is the rack. That actually makes me wonder if there's some kind of 8-rack hybrid that could be good, or if a discard/liliana style deck could board into racks. Racks have some synergy with herald of anguish too as part of the sideboard plan (1. their hand is stripped so herald more likely to stick and 2. heralds discard keeps them from getting out of rack range even if you're stuck behind a bridge).
Taking the thopter-sword combo out altogether has always felt like a no. It's too powerful when it works and too many cards to replace, and its not like dropping the combo makes us immune to artifact hate since there are another 15-20 artifacts sitting in the deck
* Esper Draw-Go
* Tezzeret Whir
* Blue Tron
First time i post here, i've been working on this deck since a year and i have come to something close to what you built.
One erratum : i used to play 1 Tasigur but have been really disapointed in it. He has been replaced by an Executionner capsule in this list but i'm still seeking for something better.
// 23 Artifact
3 Ensnaring Bridge
1 Relic of Progenitus
4 Thopter Foundry
3 Sword of the Meek
2 Welding Jar
1 Pithing Needle
3 Mox Opal
4 Mishra's Bauble
1 Time Sieve
1 Executioner's Capsule
// 1 Creature
1 Spellskite
// 4 Instant
4 Whir of Invention
// 20 Land
1 Inventors' Fair
4 Darkslick Shores
4 Polluted Delta
2 Watery Grave
3 Island
3 Flooded Strand
1 Hallowed Fountain
1 Glimmervoid
1 Steam Vents
2 Liliana of the Veil
1 Tezzeret, Agent of Bolas
// 9 Sorcery
3 Inquisition of Kozilek
1 Thoughtseize
4 Serum Visions
1 Collective Brutality
// 8 Artifact
2 Pithing Needle
1 Grafdigger's Cage
1 Chalice of the Void
1 Sun Droplet
1 Welding Jar
1 Witchbane Orb
// 1 Creature
1 Ethersworn Canonist
// 1 Enchantment
1 Ghirapur Aether Grid
// 1 Instant
1 Ceremonious Rejection
// 1 Planeswalker
1 Tezzeret, Agent of Bolas
2 Thoughtseize
2 Collective Brutality
Some explanations :
- About tezzeret : while i do like it a lot in grindy matchups, i find it really clunky game 1. His -1 often get the opponent a perfect target for the removal he is keeping in hand since the beginning due to the lack of targets. I still kept one as he is still good if the game is starting to last long.
- About the Time sieve : I've read sometime that sieve was a win more con. In certain match ups it is but, as long as the opponent has a way in his deck to remove either part of the combo, being able to whir for an instant kill is the best way to prevent any blowout from the opponent.
- About the Pentad prism : I must agree with @the nobodys on this matter. I find it an awfull topdeck and the ramp it provides, while giving comfort in the manabase and allowing (i'dd say 2) darksteel citadel, is not enough to justify his presence, and even more if you don't run as many tezz.
-About 4 Serum vision and 4 discard main deck : Discard hurt the deck a lot and I had a lot of struggle avoiding his effects. Filling the deck with cantrips (4 serum, 4 baubble) and discard allow me to dodge it really often by refilling my hand after their discard is out.
Last night i went to FNM with this deck.
G1 : UR aggro cheap :
Not a lot of thing to say, it's an home-brew which could afford some obvious optimizations. I won 2/0 by assembling the combo while he was trying to slowly put the 6 final points.
G2 : Affinity blue :
Game 1 he does a slow start so i'm able to lock him out with a bridge. Even with the combo assembled, it took me a while to win because my opponent had two cranial plating, a Vault Skirge, a steel overseer and an arcbound ravager. Si even with infinite turn i had to play until i draw Liliana, plus it until i can make him sac his Skirge.
Game 2 he drew a lot of his hate and just enough creatures to lower my health consistently. Flashbacked ancient grudge after i discarded it, removing my first foundry, drew pithing needle when i whired for the second one.
Game 3 started, and if was starting to slow down when the 5 turn finished.
G3 : BW control :
Game 1 not very interesting. I discarded his discard turn 1, followed by the combo on turn 2 and 3. Killed with a swarm of thopter after he anguished my foundry.
Game 2 i managed to put my thopter foundry combo on the board, he start puting pw on the board. Finally he went hellbent and i sacrified my Inventor's fair to get the time sieve at the end of his turn, i lacked one mana to go infinite turn, giving him 1 turn to draw an answer. He did'nt.
G4 : regular Abzan :
Game 1 i lock him with a bridge hellbent. He managed to use his Liliana's ult to remove all my lands, but i stick to my bridge. Finally drew the rest of the combo and killed him with fliers.
Game 2 he does turn 1 discard, turn 2 stony silence. I play it hopping that bridge and tezz or Ghirapur grid could save me but i did'nt draw them.
Game 3 i tried to protect the combo or the bridge but he drew a lot of decay/pulse.
As someone pointed it out at the tournament i don't need red for Grid if i have way of removing the Stony silence. I'm still not sure if i'll go for green to put decay/pulse or go only white and put 2 fragmentize over ceremonious rejection and grid. If green i might even replace capsule with decay main deck.
What do you think of it ?
PS : Sry if i made english mistakes, it's not my first language.
1. Has sun droplet done much in the sideboard? I tried both that and elixir of immortality as anti-burn tech and neither impressed. Whirring for them is just too slow and they don't have enough use in other matches to warrant the slot. I went back to just playing extra copies of collective brutality which is a lot more flexible (can be used vs combo decks).
2. Spellskite main should have the exact same problem you described for tezzeret. They are bound to have push/path/terminate etc in hand and just fire it off at the spellskite. If your plan is to whir for it to protect bridge that's okay but most decks can't blow up our bridge game 1 anyways. I do like that skite stops cryptic command / flickerwisp type effects where welding jar fails, but unless you're whirring for the skite they should have removal sitting there to get rid of it before going after your bridge (or foundry).
* Esper Draw-Go
* Tezzeret Whir
* Blue Tron
Will keep you guys posted.
there are two cautions I would make with this having been playing 1-2 stars for a long time now.
1) you still need 2 artifacts on turn 3 to whir (improvise), so if you sac it for blue to whir then now you actually need 3 artifacts. I suspect a lot of times you'll find on turn 3 you can improvise for 2 or have triple blue but not both if you play a lot of gQ with stars.
2) stars get hit by stony silence too which can make them a liability in post-board games.
3) surgicals can otherwise feel pretty redundant when we have access to cage relic spellbomb. So they really need to do the work vs tron to be worth the slots.
4) disabling tron vs eldrazitron doesnt actually accomplish that much. So this is a move you'd make to really fix the classic tron match
The other upsides on the card are vs blood moon, enabling splashes, and cycling for 1 mana (assuming you can use the floated mana)
* Esper Draw-Go
* Tezzeret Whir
* Blue Tron
It's a problem yes, but Spellskite does not have the same manacost, so if the opponent spend a turn killing it, at least it delayed my opponent a bit, so the cost is low when it fails. On the other hand against valakut it can saves from an full scapeshift, slow down burn and block if need be. Also i'm not sure what to put in his stead.
welding jar would be the obvious pick. but really just about anything - capsule, cage, relic, star, tezzeret etc. vs valakut you cost them 1 turn at most, and you are only beating valakut realistically if you do sieve combo so blowing whirs on spellskites is not good. vs burn you just give them something to searing blaze more often than not. I'm okay with sucking up a blaze once I've got combo online, but turn 2 skite block gob guide eat searing blaze is not really where I want to be, let alone whirring for it.
In any case, both scenarios sound like a sideboard card rather than main. Skite is okay post-board vs burn because they will take out searing blaze and now at least its eating lightning bolts that would hit you or revelries that would hit your combo pieces.
* Esper Draw-Go
* Tezzeret Whir
* Blue Tron
Its also a decent maindeck out to thalias and arbiters and can decimate fast decks that lean on one drops (zoo, elf-sprawl etc)
* Esper Draw-Go
* Tezzeret Whir
* Blue Tron
Depends on the list imo. Some will run up to 2 echoing truth mainboard and if they bounce your bridge you generally lose on the spot. Also some will put up to 4 hurkyll's recall in the side to have a prayer vs affinity, and when that comes down on you you once again will likely be dead to the army of giant fish that you were holding back with a bridge.
* Esper Draw-Go
* Tezzeret Whir
* Blue Tron
Also surprised you wouldnt run at least one copy of either relic or nihil spellbomb in the main. Such low cost for one slot to give you a whir target vs gy situations
* Esper Draw-Go
* Tezzeret Whir
* Blue Tron
I played prism a long time and first converted them to Talisman of Dominance, and then dropped the turn 2 mana rock altogether. Most of the time my turn 2 play is casting a foundry or sword between 7 copies in the deck and 4 serums that could go off t1 to find a piece. They were great for casting herald of anguish on time, but the synergy with whir was extremely meh since its not like I'm trying to whir for 5. It's 2 or 3, and on turn 3 I can do whir for 2 with almost any hand the deck presents while a bridge t3 is likely to not be low enough until t4 anyways (although if those vengevine decks are real that could change).
Fair point on the graveyard cards. Thinking about it I don't think I have ever actually whirred for either. They are fine draws since they cantrip, but as you say most of the decks we might "break" with them we already have a good game 1 plan as is. It's not like whirring for a relic on turn 3 is going to stop that turn 2 tasigur.
I flip-flop on the MD discard because they are such terrible topdecks and I really think you want to be focused on assembling the combo. I don't like the tension between turn 1 IoK vs Serum either.
I did dig up another option for the whirrable-stony-proof-bridge-proof win condition:
Mindcrank
Duskmantle Guildmage
If you play muddle the mixture you even get an extra tutor for either piece. This plays into them sideboarding out removal, and could cost as little as 2 sideboard slots depending how confidant you are in your tutors (1 crank is probably fine, but I think 2-3 guildmages probably). Ideally you make a few thopters, whir for crank, untap cast guildmage activate (5 mana) and poke with a thopter to set off the combo. Getting to 7 mana for a full guildmage activation is not trivial (but would be another reason to run prisms)
The other angle I can imagine is going jeskai and splicing saheeli/felidar together with thopter/sword. Saheeli digs for pieces, can win behind a bridge when our foundry gets extracted. Only downer to that deck is the saheeli/cat don't synergize with anything else int he current build.
I also consider nahiri/emrakul an option - emrakul fixes the mill matchup if thats a thing, nahiri gets rid of stony/rip, but the nonbo between emr and bridge is a thing
Here is my current test - bringing prisms back in mainly to improve the post-board games with herald/duskmantle.
4 Thopter Foundry
3 Sword of the Meek
1 Time Sieve
3 Pentad Prism
4 Mishra's Bauble
3 Mox Opal
2 Engineered Explosives
1 Executioner's Capsule
1 Grafdigger's Cage
1 Pithing Needle
Card Selection (12)
4 Serum Visions
4 Whir of Invention
2 Muddle the Mixture
2 Tezzeret, Agent of Bolas
1 Liliana of the Veil
1 Collective Brutality
Lands (21)
4 Darkslick Shores
4 Polluted Delta
2 Misty Rainforest
2 Watery Grave
1 Breeding Pool
3 Island
1 Swamp
1 Academy Ruins
1 Inventors' Fair
2 Duskmantle Guildmage
1 Mindcrank
2 Herald of Anguish
2 Abrupt Decay
1 Ghirapur Aether Grid
1 Maelstrom Pulse
1 Witchbane Orb
1 Ethersworn Canonist
1 Pithing Needle
1 Torpor Orb
2 Collective Brutality
Bottom line - the game 1 with this deck is very good. The devil is in making game 2 and 3 winnable through ancient grudge, shatterstorm, rip, stony, etc. I have lots of random ideas but it takes forever to test them and see if they work. Decay is the most no-nonsense approach but I feel like we can do more so that it isn't "draw decay or lose"
* Esper Draw-Go
* Tezzeret Whir
* Blue Tron