Rd 1 GDS. He had a turn 2 8/8 DS both games, I had thopter sword with him having enough spot removal for all my thopters to swing for lethal on turn 4 IN BOTH GAMES. It was pretty insane, I don't think that card is in modern Aug 29th...
R2 Burn
G1 he had triple goblin guide I triple collective'd him. He gets eidolon, I get down to 5 chumping his dudes with thopters til turn 3 when I cast a tezzeret and stabilize with a sword with one lofe left.
G2 I blow him out with pyroclasm and get a fast big tezz to win.
R3 Bogles
Crush him game one with quicksilver fountain and ensnaring bridge.
G2 he chooses to draw to keep me off gemstone hahahahahaha! I have 4 spreading seas and a chalice on one and it's not enough.
G3 he gets a 9/9 pro everything dude, has removal for bridge. I lose.
Rd 4 Eldrazi Tron
G1 get a first turn prism second turn tez attackwith prism. I get him to 5 life with 2 5/5s annartifact and tez on one. He plays a walking ballista and equips basilisk collar. Blocks tries to shoot a guy, I sac it to thopter foundery
G2 I get a turn 2 ensnaring bridge turn 3 quicksilver fountain and just beat him down with a big tez.
The seas are incredible. I'm wondering if anyone's used thought scour before? Could be good to put sword in the yard and is an instant. Just a thought.
He already played 3 o rings on 2 bridges and a foundry.
Correct he did not find a leyline, but tezzeret 5/5s can still win through that and I wait until I have enough creatures to get above bridge.
My opponent got lucky to find 2 of his 3 stony silences versus a mostly artifact deck right? Statistically he found 2 of 3 and I found 2 of 4 green spells.
Magic is about variance and playing to the odds. Playing technically correct is expected, playing to gain edges are what makes you actually win. Gaining edges anywhere possible leads to an impactful win percentage.
I've beaten multiple shatterstorms in the same game before as well.
Clearly stony silence is still a very good card versus this deck. The point I wanted to share with everyone is that hate is beatable and trying to find ways to beat it in deck construction and in play is what we should focus on.
Many of the worst magic players I've ever met blame things on positive or negative variance. You can always make decisions to impact your variance. Finding a deck that gives you flexibility to make those edge decisions and trying to find the 'correct' play is how you can actually improve.
You have - presumably - 2 decays and a pulse to answer everything he does since they are all enchantments. Our deck has quite literally 2 win conditions - 3 if you separate tez 5/5s from tez ultimate. He has - stony, rip, and prisons to stop thopter. He has prisons (and sphere of safety) to keep you from ever touching him with a 5/5, and he has oring leyline halo to stop tez. Suppression field hinders everything we want to do and auramancy automaticaly chews up one of your 3 green removals and if he hits 2 you basicaly cannot win.
Probability is a real mathematical thing, not just "*****ing about variance". This deck is a complete and utter dog to pillow fort as almost every card in their deck cripples two of our three win conditions and we do not have 8 removal spells to dig for - we have 3 (4 at most).
A massively against the odds win is cool, but indicative of how easy it is to beat stony silence it absolutely is not. According to your story you ran out all three copies of bridge and I guess he spent time killing the first two before he needed to. Its not like we can take many hits from 4/4 angels before we are just dead.
Sorry if thats pessimistic or negative, but you're talking about a deck that is comprised of like 90 percent hate cards all of which are live vs us while we have 3-4 answers total. You dont beat that with skill, you beat it with luck.
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Modern
* Esper Draw-Go
* Tezzeret Whir
* Blue Tron
You have - presumably - 2 decays and a pulse to answer everything he does since they are all enchantments. Our deck has quite literally 2 win conditions - 3 if you separate tez 5/5s from tez ultimate. He has - stony, rip, and prisons to stop thopter. He has prisons (and sphere of safety) to keep you from ever touching him with a 5/5, and he has oring leyline halo to stop tez. Suppression field hinders everything we want to do and auramancy automaticaly chews up one of your 3 green removals and if he hits 2 you basicaly cannot win.
Probability is a real mathematical thing, not just "*****ing about variance". This deck is a complete and utter dog to pillow fort as almost every card in their deck cripples two of our three win conditions and we do not have 8 removal spells to dig for - we have 3 (4 at most).
A massively against the odds win is cool, but indicative of how easy it is to beat stony silence it absolutely is not. According to your story you ran out all three copies of bridge and I guess he spent time killing the first two before he needed to. Its not like we can take many hits from 4/4 angels before we are just dead.
Sorry if thats pessimistic or negative, but you're talking about a deck that is comprised of like 90 percent hate cards all of which are live vs us while we have 3-4 answers total. You dont beat that with skill, you beat it with luck.
Almost every post you make is toxic. Either complaining or shooting people down. If you don't enjoy playing the deck move on, sheesh. If you do, lighten up a little.
You completely missed his point: that hiding information in early games, when you can, is important for this deck since we have such few win conditions. This gives us an edge as opponents sideboard less than ideal. Yes, a seasoned opponent will expect Tezz but that doesn't mean we shouldn't try to exploit any advantage we can in every match just in case they don't. Beating stony silence was just icing on the cake in this example, since clearly his peers believe stony is unbeatable for us and he showed them up in this instance.
Keep it up Molz; you and I play and think very similarly and I believe it's no coincidence we were both competing Day 2 in the GP with this deck. I compare lists/notes against yours constantly.
Attending a PPTQ tomorrow at Face to Face games where I expect a heavy E-Tron representation, as well as Titanshift, G-Shadow, Affinity, Burn, some blue control decks and a couple of Lantern.
Trying to figure out my sideboard, I'm likely going to rock the Chalice of the Void package (yikes, wish I could've gotten more resp in with it, but halas... I'll trust my brains) and have figured that the best sideboard bullet I can be packing for such a meta is an extra Needle -- the third one; hitting E-Tron's O-Stones, Bringers, Ballistas and PWs in the Tronballs, Affinity right in the bot-nuts, and Lantern in the tchoo-tchoo too.
Am also fairly concerned by Surgical Extraction. I always get my stuff surgically extracted at that shop. It's a concern as I've been really liking the 4th Tezz out of the board against big mana and control, or when playing around a Stony Silence. It feels way more powerful than the alternate wincons (Herald, Grid... Ashiok? Ob Nixilis lolz?) that would however save our asses in the face of a Needle or Extraction. I've figured an extra Relic will double-up as Extraction insurance as well as grave hate. And perhaps Chalice can stop some of the Extracting? Not too sure what, here.
What do y'all think about the list? Lili is a flex slot that could be the second Decay, or another alternate wincon. Though I've liked her against big mana, midrange and control too, and she's *kinda almost* a wincon, y'know... Have considered going ultra-funk with Thopter Spy Network or Mechanized Production. Or evem Jester's Cap (keep in mind I do run Academy Ruins).
Also would love to squeeze in the fourth Prism, but can't manage to fit it in.
I'm playing an open Sun that I expect the same mix of decks at.
Spreading seas have been unreal help against ETron/Tron/Valakut and quicksilver fountain is very very good against all of your listed foes as well. A one of shadow of doubt with one in the side may be overkill but damn, is it reasonable to cast and backbreaking. After testing all of our options you can't disrupt Big Land decks by almost any other means than crippling their land search in a more meaningful way than ghost quarter.
For DS I have 3 chalice 3 abrupts in the side and my fingers to cross they don't have an 8/8 turn two.
As for stony answers... big tez has been pretty awesome. He can come down, grab a bridge and tick up to threaten ultimate. He's the max trump card in any midgame grind situation. Then 2 ghirapur which used to be 3 but abzan fell off at our shop so it became less important.
LIVE UPDATE (11h00) : 65 players PPTQ @ Face to Face games. R1 i get burned out by Naya Burn and lose 0-2. G1 his Atarka's Command hand is too fast, he's got the critical mass of Burn to bring me to zero on his T4 despite my T3 combo + 2 activations nutdraw! Sad panda. G2 I resolve a full value Brutality but draw air while he topdecks an Eidolon and keeps drawing heavy hitters. I die with Tezz stranded in hand.
LIVE UPDATE (13h52): R2 won against mono-black control / devotion 2-1. R3 won against Vizier Company 2-0 and through a Kataki wo0t! R4 bummer, I get elfballed and lose 1-2 to clutch (I'm untapping with combo and/or Bridge up) back to back Shaman of the Pack topdecks.
So 2-2 so far, I guess this is not my hour of glory. Let's keep it up for honor.
LIVE UPDATE (14h58): Won R5 against UWR Geist (tempo). Epic grind, came out on top 2-1. Gotta love targeted discard to punch through countermagic <
LIVE UPDATE (15h43): R6 Just steamrolled Eldrazi Tron 2-0, Sieve'ing him in the first game and mulling down to 5 in the second game. Drew perfectly, Decayed his accelerated Chalice on 2 and combo'ed him off into oblivion.
*edited* I had some braggy BS post on here. I'm just going to say I'm happy to keep working with all of you, at one point or another you have all lent me valuable insight through your thoughts/reports.
Just chiming in to say I've been successfully grinding away with Grixis Saheeli thopters. Lots of 4-1 and 3-2 results online. I like having both Lili and Saheeli, currently have a 2-4 split. Playing this list just goes to show how any walker, really, can win behind a bridge.
Out of the board, the best cards for me continue to be Izzet Staticaster, which I've mixed with 1 grid, and Moon (even though my manabase doesn't really support it). I'm down to 2 Fragmentize, and haven't noticed needing more (since Lili can get rid of enchantments). What I've noticed is the decks that lean on stony and RIP have few ways to actually remove artifacts, so bridge just does its thing.
I haven't posted here in awhile because I've been on UW control. Anyways, I was watching some streamers play UB control and I got the itch to sleeve up some damnations. Long story short, I found myself playing Talisman Of Dominance and Bontu's Last Reckoning. Eventually, Whir and Tezz found their way into the list and now I find myself catching up from about page 50 here. I'm still on UW competitively, and I've only got around 8-9 matches under my belt with this list so far. But it bears a lot of similarity to what @Boomforest has been running, and that's the only real reason I'm going to post this list here. It is pretty unlike what most everyone else is playing. In anycase, I've only lost 2 games out of about 8 matches so far (mostly jank tier 5 million except a Jeskai Control and Etron (2-0, 2-1 respectively. The other game-loss was against Thopter/Servo Tribal :S)
Sideboard is garbage, not even remotely tuned. (Although the into the roils have been coming in ALOT)
I came to the same conclusion as Boomforest and started off with 4 Seas and Quicksilver Fountain main, our lists were a lot closer before I dropped the Fountain and I haven't reworked the mana-base since then. I find that Crucible does the same job as quicksilver fountain more or less but it provides card advantage. Mana base could probably use a couple Creeping Tar-pits and a Darksteel Citadel, I found myself wanting to Whir for 0 more than once against Inquistion. The Shackles haven't been stellar and come out often, but might be a necessary evil against the randomness we could face in early rounds of a tournament.
My other main concern with this list is the main deck vulnerability to Thoughtknot Seer exiling the only copy of Sword of the Meek, but it hasn't come up yet.
Last Reckoning is absurd with Talisman. The card might be busted with Opals, but that would take a complete rework of the deck (as is even Tezz whiffs very often, but he's usually a bait spell that leaves behind a 5/5 in my experience so far)
@jayjayhooks It's funny you posted this list. In the back of my mind I have a feeling sometimes it would be better to be playing snap control with a sword sub package.
Even to be all in on opal insinuates a particular kind of build, I went all in on that but when someone cryptic snap cryptic bounce snaps me I think it seems a little crazy to not have that plan up the sleeve.
With your deck I think cricible is better. You have answers in the late game, where I can't afford to answers and have tons of artifact synergy - so I've got to run quicksilver because it's better and faster to whir into quickly against tron.
I am jumping into a big open today that's mostly tron decks so if I can't get some free wins with my current setup I'll be down for trying your path for a bit.
Do you have a list on here? I like the idea of saheeli giving us something to do behind a bridge, and if we can ever ult it I think we just win if you run KCI or Sieve, plus the combo of her minus seems strong.
Rd1 Affinity
Killed with exactsies from topdecked ravager on top of plating with galv blast
G2 tried a stupid sb plan of bringing all my chalices in with a plan on dropping one on zero. He went first and dumped his entire hand and I realized the folly of my ways. Got killed the turn before thopter sword would have taken over.
Rd2
Utterly destroy esper control via slow rolling whirs
Rd3
Destroy abzan control
Rd4 bogles
G1 I go infinite
G2 I whir for a bridge and make the executive decosion to blow up my gemstone to lay another to get a chalice on one. I proceed to whif on colored mana source for 6 turns and get chewed up by gaddock teeg
G3 I mull to 5 keep a one lander and proceed to not draw a second land
Rd5 etron
I'm stoked because I've been tripping all over my tron hate mainboard all day, time to shine.
G1 I spreading seas a temple off a gemstone cavern g1 and proceed to go infinite
G2 i have seas/quicksilver/thopter/sword 3 lands. Life feels good. He plays turn 2/3/4 Thoightknot seers and I lose.
G3 I draw basically the same hand. He mulls to 4 and plays turn 2/3/4 seers followed by an endbringer.
Rd6
I smash storm via infinite game one and kill his everything then lay chalice on two in g2
///
In conclusion, if nothing serious happens in this banning I'm going to retool the deck. Tron decks are too powerful and too consistent and it's the top third of my meta, so if I want to get this thing out of FNM MVP oy status I'm gonna need to come to some beat em/join em conclusion on eldrazi.
I got in a few matches with the Brontu's build. It's very intriguing.
Came back from GP Metz where i did all the 6 modern side events (4 rounds Swiss). Some games will be comment-less because i had no time until the next round starts. So let's go for a long recap.
G1 : He goes turn 1 hierarch, turn 2 finks, turn 3 more beasts and then he just used gavony to buff them and trample me.
G2 : I discard him turn 1, taking out a part of combo. Then i use a pithing needle on devoted druid and he plays kataki on turn 2. Game over.
Round 2 : ???
G1 : ???
G2 : ???
G3 : ???
Round 3 : UB take turns
G1 : Tried to disturb his plan by decaying his mine, but i dit not draw a kill.
G2 : I discarded him of all his take turns and he had only 1 mine on the play with 0 card in hand. But he drew 1 dictate and 1 mine from top at his turn and then went off.
Note on the match up : maybe a strong pack of decay and discard targeting his howling mine effects is the way to deal with this match up.
Round 4 : BW smallpox
G1 : He does not have an efficient way of dealing with the combo and loose to it in a few turns
G2 : We got stalled to the topdeck game 2 after he managed to get both stony silence and leyline of the void in play while i had a bridge. I went down to 7 cards in library but i eventually drawn a tezzeret to finish him. The maelstrom pulse would have done the job too, freeing the combo.
Swiss 2 : 3W/1L
Round 1 : UW control, not complete
G1 : Discard his counterspells and bury him with the combo
G2 : Pithing needle takes care of PW, Decay takes care of spheres and sideboard, Discard clears the way to carefully assemble the combo.
Round 2 : Valakut
G1 : Liliana empty the opposing hand so well that he only have 1 card left and 6 lands on turn 5. I check his hand with the discard i kept to take his kill and he only have a land. He topdecks a scapeshift.
G2 : He did'nt see any part of the combo so he gess that i am some sort of UB discard deck. He packs up leyline of sanctity to protect himself for the liliana's sac effect and discard instead of going for artifact removals. I thought that it was a fair trade for me before he play's madcap experiment and put Platinium emperion on the play.I have infinite turn combo but i can't remove the emperion ... without targeting him and left the pulse in the sideboard.
Round 3 : Nahiri control
G1 : He has nothing to remove the combo game 1 so i just swarmed him with tokens.
G2 : Pithing needle does his job and discard cuted out the blood moon.
Round 4 : Burn
G1 : He goes first and the combo does not comes fast enough
G2 : Combo online by turn 3 with a welding jar, he can't keep up with life-gain despite his 3 skullcrack
G3 : He keep a hand with 1 land and 1 progenitus relic but does not draw a land in 5 turn, giving me all the time i need to assemble the combo.
Swiss 3 : 4W/0L
Round 1 : Bant Eldrazi
G1 : He start pretty slow and discard reveal no TKS. So i take time to whir for pithing needle turn 3 naming explosives before landing bridge.
G2 : He packs up some counterspells to get rid of the bridge but dicard does the job and bridge still lands. Then whir for pithing naming explosives and he is doomed again.
Round 2 : Boggles
G1 : Bridge at 6 life blocking his beast. He does pop 3 1/1 to finish the job but i whir for a foundry, allowing me to sac mox opal and baubble to block his beasts.
G2 : Bridge wins it again and, if discard is disabled by leyline of sanctity, i'm still able to whir a welding jar for extra protection.
Round 3 : Elfball with druid combo
G1 : Not the same deck but same strategy, bridge does the game and even 0/2 are buffed by archidruid when do not allow any trick with collected company. His kill with infinite mana is ezuri so even that is blocked by the bridge. I feared for balista the whole game but he had none.
G2 : Same story.
Round 4 : Affinity
G1&2 : no record but i remember pithing needle and abrupt decay doing a nice job. Also the whir into needle surprises them,so needling the ravager is awesome.
Swiss 4 :2W/1L
Round 1 : EldraTron
G1 : The plan against Eldrazi decks is always the same : bridge him and use the main deck pithing needle to block his solution. Here i did exactly that : turn 3 bridge because he had no chance to have 7 mana next turn, then wait for him to cast Karn and pithing it in response with whir.
G2 : I landed the combo on turn 3 and then just swarmed him.
Round 2 :
EldraTron
G1 : He mulligan to 6 and kp. He goes tron land and map. On my turn i use IOK and find this : ulamog, all is dust, 2 more tron lands. On his turn he map for a second tower. I try to race him with the combo, but turn 3 all is dust, turn 4 ulamog is impossible to beat.
Sideboarding : I did a guess that it was more likely for him to be playing a regular tron when went of fast than an eldratron that had his two more expensive cards and no creature early. So i took out bridges.
G2 : The guy goes turn 1 tron land and map, on my turn i use decay on it hoping to slow him a bit. Then he goes turn 2 tron land, turn 3 full tron and use 7 mana to ... TKS and Matter reshaper ! Well, first loose against eldratron in 25 games but he disguised himself x)
Round 3 : bye
G1 :
G2 :
G3 :
Round 4 : Affinity red
G1 : Decay does the job well. It prevented him from racing me too fast by removing signal pest of a turn 1 hellbent. Then combo closes the deal
G2 : He goes more carefully and with a more heavy hand, playing overseer and master of etherium. I caught him with a turn 2 collective brutality discarding a sword to lower my hand count for a turn 3 bridge + welding jar. With 1 card in hand locking his attack step, he took too long finding a second artifact killer.
Swiss 5 :1W/1D/1L
Round 1 : Valakut
G1 : We both start assembling our stuffs fast. At his last turn he seemed to fear a negate and tried to kill my with titan to get 2 valakut and then add a land for a total of 18 in a turn, i had just 3 mana left to go to 19hp and stay at 1 hp. Next turn i whired for time sieve and infinite turn. Close one.
G2 : He keeps a hand with low lands but 2 scapeshift and 2 artifact destroyer (1 ancient grudge and 1 with only one use). I discarded the grudge because he was really slow at getting lands. It allowed me some time to find a spellskite to protect the combo. I started by playing sword, and then foundry. And here i guess he missplayed because in answer he destroyed the sword. Which came back after he tried to remove the foundry with flashbacked grudge. I redirected the grudge to the skite, and sacrified the skite to the foundry. After that the game was over for him.
Round 2 : Grixis shadow
G1 : After the first stage of the game that went mainly with discard the game went pretty lame. I bridged him and then drawn only lands, while him was chaining draw cards, lands and snapcasters on draw cards. He finally drew a kolagan's command and went off.
G2 : Game 2 i stayed a long time trying to assemble the combo through discard and counterspells. I finally landed a bridge that he destroyed and whired for the missing sword after a discard to make sure that they where no counterspell waiting.
G3 : 2 min left in round when we started playing, i discarded him life loss cards to make sure he would not kill me.
Round 3 : RG tron
Not much to say, it's tron, half of his deck counters our, the second half just ramp for the first half.
Round 4 : Intentional draw
Swiss 6 : 3W/0L
Round 1 : UW control
G1 : I discarded his counterspells and resolved the combo early. Then i kept a decay to remove any sphere that would come and the combo was too much to handle.
G2 : He managed to prevent me from landing my combo with tons of counterspells. Finally he killed me with CA and Celestial colonnades .
G3 : After side i have 10 discard spells so this time i managed to remove all his counterspells and resolved 1 foundry and 1 whir for the win.
Note : Pithing needle helped all games by keeping PW in check, especially jace that can nullify my attacks.
Round 2 : Eldratron
G1 : Not much to say : bridge turn 3 and kept whir in hand to resp karn or whir for infinite turn if possible. I did resp to karn and needled it, winning on the spot because he don't play ulamog main deck.
G2 : This one was closer because despite bridge and needle he managed to deal me 10 dmg through the bridge with 2 balistas at 10 mana. Still once the combo assembled i went out of range in 1 turn.
Round 3 : Bant spirit
G1 : It's an other deck that struggle getting over bridge. I whired for it on turn 3. it gave me a lot of time to assemble the combo.
G2 : Discard were important that game. I had to be really carefull with each spell because he drew 3 Mausoleum Wanderer and had a lot of open mana. I did'nt draw the bridge but i had a foundry so i had to whir for the 2nd part of the combo. It took sometime but i forced him to sac 2 of his wanderer to counter a 2 mode brutality and then finally whir to safety.
Round 4 : Intentional draw
Total : 15W/1D/5L
Personal thoughts about the tournament :
It seems like the match ups that rely on attacking creatures are really easy to win as planed.
I like time sieve a lot, against valakut it's often the only way to win game 1.
I'm considering adding 2 stoic rebuttal to help against other combo decks. It was a part of my first iteration of the deck and it was always awesome. I had more artifact back then but i think it can still do things.
So.... Wizards thinks turn 2 Thoughtknot and turn 3 Karn are reasonably powered lines of play for modern. Just gonna pull up gatherer and look for anything else as crazy as that real quick....
I board out Saheeli combo stuff against decks with a lot of discard and/or burn, but I usually leave in some number of Saheeli as, like we mentioned, she wins behind a bridge. Blood Moon is really not supported by the manabase, but then, you put it in against decks its good against anyway, and then just try to play around it. Sometimes you have to sacrifice cards in your hand like Whir, but that's usually an obvious choice to make. Blood Moon is very good against Shadow decks, as well as big mana. I think I would play the 4th Brutality over the Thoughtseize, at the moment, but don't own one.
Honestly, the deck looks sloppy as all hell, but then it just keeps winning more than other spice I try.
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A tough 2-2
Rd 1 GDS. He had a turn 2 8/8 DS both games, I had thopter sword with him having enough spot removal for all my thopters to swing for lethal on turn 4 IN BOTH GAMES. It was pretty insane, I don't think that card is in modern Aug 29th...
R2 Burn
G1 he had triple goblin guide I triple collective'd him. He gets eidolon, I get down to 5 chumping his dudes with thopters til turn 3 when I cast a tezzeret and stabilize with a sword with one lofe left.
G2 I blow him out with pyroclasm and get a fast big tezz to win.
R3 Bogles
Crush him game one with quicksilver fountain and ensnaring bridge.
G2 he chooses to draw to keep me off gemstone hahahahahaha! I have 4 spreading seas and a chalice on one and it's not enough.
G3 he gets a 9/9 pro everything dude, has removal for bridge. I lose.
Rd 4 Eldrazi Tron
G1 get a first turn prism second turn tez attackwith prism. I get him to 5 life with 2 5/5s annartifact and tez on one. He plays a walking ballista and equips basilisk collar. Blocks tries to shoot a guy, I sac it to thopter foundery
G2 I get a turn 2 ensnaring bridge turn 3 quicksilver fountain and just beat him down with a big tez.
The seas are incredible. I'm wondering if anyone's used thought scour before? Could be good to put sword in the yard and is an instant. Just a thought.
He already played 3 o rings on 2 bridges and a foundry.
Correct he did not find a leyline, but tezzeret 5/5s can still win through that and I wait until I have enough creatures to get above bridge.
My opponent got lucky to find 2 of his 3 stony silences versus a mostly artifact deck right? Statistically he found 2 of 3 and I found 2 of 4 green spells.
Magic is about variance and playing to the odds. Playing technically correct is expected, playing to gain edges are what makes you actually win. Gaining edges anywhere possible leads to an impactful win percentage.
I've beaten multiple shatterstorms in the same game before as well.
Clearly stony silence is still a very good card versus this deck. The point I wanted to share with everyone is that hate is beatable and trying to find ways to beat it in deck construction and in play is what we should focus on.
Many of the worst magic players I've ever met blame things on positive or negative variance. You can always make decisions to impact your variance. Finding a deck that gives you flexibility to make those edge decisions and trying to find the 'correct' play is how you can actually improve.
Probability is a real mathematical thing, not just "*****ing about variance". This deck is a complete and utter dog to pillow fort as almost every card in their deck cripples two of our three win conditions and we do not have 8 removal spells to dig for - we have 3 (4 at most).
A massively against the odds win is cool, but indicative of how easy it is to beat stony silence it absolutely is not. According to your story you ran out all three copies of bridge and I guess he spent time killing the first two before he needed to. Its not like we can take many hits from 4/4 angels before we are just dead.
Sorry if thats pessimistic or negative, but you're talking about a deck that is comprised of like 90 percent hate cards all of which are live vs us while we have 3-4 answers total. You dont beat that with skill, you beat it with luck.
* Esper Draw-Go
* Tezzeret Whir
* Blue Tron
Almost every post you make is toxic. Either complaining or shooting people down. If you don't enjoy playing the deck move on, sheesh. If you do, lighten up a little.
You completely missed his point: that hiding information in early games, when you can, is important for this deck since we have such few win conditions. This gives us an edge as opponents sideboard less than ideal. Yes, a seasoned opponent will expect Tezz but that doesn't mean we shouldn't try to exploit any advantage we can in every match just in case they don't. Beating stony silence was just icing on the cake in this example, since clearly his peers believe stony is unbeatable for us and he showed them up in this instance.
Keep it up Molz; you and I play and think very similarly and I believe it's no coincidence we were both competing Day 2 in the GP with this deck. I compare lists/notes against yours constantly.
Dont criticize or think. Deck is amazing and busted.
* Esper Draw-Go
* Tezzeret Whir
* Blue Tron
Attending a PPTQ tomorrow at Face to Face games where I expect a heavy E-Tron representation, as well as Titanshift, G-Shadow, Affinity, Burn, some blue control decks and a couple of Lantern.
Trying to figure out my sideboard, I'm likely going to rock the Chalice of the Void package (yikes, wish I could've gotten more resp in with it, but halas... I'll trust my brains) and have figured that the best sideboard bullet I can be packing for such a meta is an extra Needle -- the third one; hitting E-Tron's O-Stones, Bringers, Ballistas and PWs in the Tronballs, Affinity right in the bot-nuts, and Lantern in the tchoo-tchoo too.
Am also fairly concerned by Surgical Extraction. I always get my stuff surgically extracted at that shop. It's a concern as I've been really liking the 4th Tezz out of the board against big mana and control, or when playing around a Stony Silence. It feels way more powerful than the alternate wincons (Herald, Grid... Ashiok? Ob Nixilis lolz?) that would however save our asses in the face of a Needle or Extraction. I've figured an extra Relic will double-up as Extraction insurance as well as grave hate. And perhaps Chalice can stop some of the Extracting? Not too sure what, here.
What do y'all think about the list? Lili is a flex slot that could be the second Decay, or another alternate wincon. Though I've liked her against big mana, midrange and control too, and she's *kinda almost* a wincon, y'know... Have considered going ultra-funk with Thopter Spy Network or Mechanized Production. Or evem Jester's Cap (keep in mind I do run Academy Ruins).
Also would love to squeeze in the fourth Prism, but can't manage to fit it in.
PS. Make love, not war.
Edit:
3x Tezzeret, Agent of Bolas
4x Whir of Invention
4x Mishra's Bauble
4x Serum Visions
4x Thopter Foundry
3x Sword of the Meek
1x Time Sieve
Bullets
1x Pithing Needle
1x Relic of Progenitus
1x Grafdiger's Cage
3x Ensnaring Bridge
2x Welding jar
3x Collective Brutality
Mana (20 lands)
3x Mox Opal
3x Pentad Prism
2x Island
1x Swamp
4x Polluted Delta
3x Flooded Strand
2x Watery Grave
1x Breeding Pool
3x Darkslick Shores
2x Spire of Industry
1x Glimmervoid
1x Academy Ruins
3x Chalice of the Void
2x Pithing Needle
1x Relic of Progenitus
1x Witchbane Orb
1x Abrupt Decay
2x Maelstrom Pulse
1x Damnation
2x Thoughtseize
1x Liliana of the Veil (FLEX)
1x Tezzeret, Agent of Bolas
OLD SCHOOL 93/94 «The Pain Train» Black Sligh, Esper «Machine Gun» Artifacts, Jund «Psycho» Ponza-Disko.
Spreading seas have been unreal help against ETron/Tron/Valakut and quicksilver fountain is very very good against all of your listed foes as well. A one of shadow of doubt with one in the side may be overkill but damn, is it reasonable to cast and backbreaking. After testing all of our options you can't disrupt Big Land decks by almost any other means than crippling their land search in a more meaningful way than ghost quarter.
For DS I have 3 chalice 3 abrupts in the side and my fingers to cross they don't have an 8/8 turn two.
As for stony answers... big tez has been pretty awesome. He can come down, grab a bridge and tick up to threaten ultimate. He's the max trump card in any midgame grind situation. Then 2 ghirapur which used to be 3 but abzan fell off at our shop so it became less important.
Good luck, post your results!
LIVE UPDATE (13h52): R2 won against mono-black control / devotion 2-1. R3 won against Vizier Company 2-0 and through a Kataki wo0t! R4 bummer, I get elfballed and lose 1-2 to clutch (I'm untapping with combo and/or Bridge up) back to back Shaman of the Pack topdecks.
So 2-2 so far, I guess this is not my hour of glory. Let's keep it up for honor.
LIVE UPDATE (14h58): Won R5 against UWR Geist (tempo). Epic grind, came out on top 2-1. Gotta love targeted discard to punch through countermagic <
LIVE UPDATE (15h43): R6 Just steamrolled Eldrazi Tron 2-0, Sieve'ing him in the first game and mulling down to 5 in the second game. Drew perfectly, Decayed his accelerated Chalice on 2 and combo'ed him off into oblivion.
4-2 finish. Could've been worst.
OLD SCHOOL 93/94 «The Pain Train» Black Sligh, Esper «Machine Gun» Artifacts, Jund «Psycho» Ponza-Disko.
Out of the board, the best cards for me continue to be Izzet Staticaster, which I've mixed with 1 grid, and Moon (even though my manabase doesn't really support it). I'm down to 2 Fragmentize, and haven't noticed needing more (since Lili can get rid of enchantments). What I've noticed is the decks that lean on stony and RIP have few ways to actually remove artifacts, so bridge just does its thing.
I haven't posted here in awhile because I've been on UW control. Anyways, I was watching some streamers play UB control and I got the itch to sleeve up some damnations. Long story short, I found myself playing Talisman Of Dominance and Bontu's Last Reckoning. Eventually, Whir and Tezz found their way into the list and now I find myself catching up from about page 50 here. I'm still on UW competitively, and I've only got around 8-9 matches under my belt with this list so far. But it bears a lot of similarity to what @Boomforest has been running, and that's the only real reason I'm going to post this list here. It is pretty unlike what most everyone else is playing. In anycase, I've only lost 2 games out of about 8 matches so far (mostly jank tier 5 million except a Jeskai Control and Etron (2-0, 2-1 respectively. The other game-loss was against Thopter/Servo Tribal :S)
3 Fatal Push
2 Serum Visions
2 Anticipate
3 Mana Leak
1 Negate
4 Spreading Seas
1 Hero's Downfall
3 Bontu's Last Reckoning
2 Cryptic Command
3 Whir of Invention
2 Tezzeret, Agent of Bolas
3 Talisman of Dominance
2 Thopter Foundry
1 Sword of The Meek
1 Vedalken Shackles
1 Crucible of Worlds
1 Pithing Needle
4 Watery Grave
4 Polluted Delta
3 Sunken Hollow
1 Scalding Tarn
1 Bloodstained Mire
4 Island
2 Swamp
3 Tectonic Edge
1 Ghost Quarter
1 Flaying Tendrils
1 Pithing Needle
2 Into the Roil
2 Dispel
2 Negate
1 Tasigur, The Golden Fang
1 Ghost Quarter
2 Surgical Extraction
2 Lost Legacy
Sideboard is garbage, not even remotely tuned. (Although the into the roils have been coming in ALOT)
I came to the same conclusion as Boomforest and started off with 4 Seas and Quicksilver Fountain main, our lists were a lot closer before I dropped the Fountain and I haven't reworked the mana-base since then. I find that Crucible does the same job as quicksilver fountain more or less but it provides card advantage. Mana base could probably use a couple Creeping Tar-pits and a Darksteel Citadel, I found myself wanting to Whir for 0 more than once against Inquistion. The Shackles haven't been stellar and come out often, but might be a necessary evil against the randomness we could face in early rounds of a tournament.
My other main concern with this list is the main deck vulnerability to Thoughtknot Seer exiling the only copy of Sword of the Meek, but it hasn't come up yet.
Last Reckoning is absurd with Talisman. The card might be busted with Opals, but that would take a complete rework of the deck (as is even Tezz whiffs very often, but he's usually a bait spell that leaves behind a 5/5 in my experience so far)
Anyways, cheers mates. Keep up the good work.
Even to be all in on opal insinuates a particular kind of build, I went all in on that but when someone cryptic snap cryptic bounce snaps me I think it seems a little crazy to not have that plan up the sleeve.
With your deck I think cricible is better. You have answers in the late game, where I can't afford to answers and have tons of artifact synergy - so I've got to run quicksilver because it's better and faster to whir into quickly against tron.
I am jumping into a big open today that's mostly tron decks so if I can't get some free wins with my current setup I'll be down for trying your path for a bit.
Rd1 Affinity
Killed with exactsies from topdecked ravager on top of plating with galv blast
G2 tried a stupid sb plan of bringing all my chalices in with a plan on dropping one on zero. He went first and dumped his entire hand and I realized the folly of my ways. Got killed the turn before thopter sword would have taken over.
Rd2
Utterly destroy esper control via slow rolling whirs
Rd3
Destroy abzan control
Rd4 bogles
G1 I go infinite
G2 I whir for a bridge and make the executive decosion to blow up my gemstone to lay another to get a chalice on one. I proceed to whif on colored mana source for 6 turns and get chewed up by gaddock teeg
G3 I mull to 5 keep a one lander and proceed to not draw a second land
Rd5 etron
I'm stoked because I've been tripping all over my tron hate mainboard all day, time to shine.
G1 I spreading seas a temple off a gemstone cavern g1 and proceed to go infinite
G2 i have seas/quicksilver/thopter/sword 3 lands. Life feels good. He plays turn 2/3/4 Thoightknot seers and I lose.
G3 I draw basically the same hand. He mulls to 4 and plays turn 2/3/4 seers followed by an endbringer.
Rd6
I smash storm via infinite game one and kill his everything then lay chalice on two in g2
///
In conclusion, if nothing serious happens in this banning I'm going to retool the deck. Tron decks are too powerful and too consistent and it's the top third of my meta, so if I want to get this thing out of FNM MVP oy status I'm gonna need to come to some beat em/join em conclusion on eldrazi.
I got in a few matches with the Brontu's build. It's very intriguing.
Came back from GP Metz where i did all the 6 modern side events (4 rounds Swiss). Some games will be comment-less because i had no time until the next round starts. So let's go for a long recap.
First, i went with this list :
// 22 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
// 6 Instant
4 Whir of Invention
2 Abrupt Decay
// 20 Land
1 Inventors' Fair
4 Darkslick Shores
4 Polluted Delta
2 Watery Grave
3 Island
2 Flooded Strand
1 Hallowed Fountain
1 Glimmervoid
1 Breeding Pool
1 Spire of Industry
2 Liliana of the Veil
1 Tezzeret, Agent of Bolas
// 9 Sorcery
3 Inquisition of Kozilek
1 Thoughtseize
4 Serum Visions
1 Collective Brutality
// 5 Artifact
2 Pithing Needle
1 Grafdigger's Cage
1 Chalice of the Void
1 Witchbane Orb
// 2 Creature
1 Ethersworn Canonist
1 Spellskite
// 1 Instant
1 Abrupt Decay
// 1 Planeswalker
1 Tezzeret, Agent of Bolas
// 6 Sorcery
2 Thoughtseize
3 Collective Brutality
1 Maelstrom Pulse
Swiss 1 : 2W/2L
Round 2 : ???
Round 3 : UB take turns
Round 4 : BW smallpox
Swiss 2 : 3W/1L
Round 2 : Valakut
Round 3 : Nahiri control
Round 4 : Burn
Swiss 3 : 4W/0L
Round 2 : Boggles
Round 3 : Elfball with druid combo
Round 4 : Affinity
Swiss 4 :2W/1L
Round 2 :
Round 3 : bye
Round 4 : Affinity red
Swiss 5 :1W/1D/1L
Round 2 : Grixis shadow
Round 3 : RG tron
Round 4 : Intentional draw
Swiss 6 : 3W/0L
Round 2 : Eldratron
Round 3 : Bant spirit
Round 4 : Intentional draw
Total : 15W/1D/5L
Personal thoughts about the tournament :
4 Mishra's Bauble
3 Mox Opal
1 Pithing Needle
2 Altar of the Brood
2 Liquimetal Coating
4 Thopter Foundry
3 Sword of the Meek
2 Ensnaring Bridge
Other Permanents: 6
2 Liliana of the Veil
4 Saheeli Rai
Instants/Sorceries: 13
4 Serum Visions
3 Inquisition of Kozilek
2 Collective Brutality
4 Whir of Invention
4 Darkslick Shores
4 Polluted Delta
3 Flooded Strand
1 Watery Grave
1 Hallowed Fountain
1 Steam Vents
1 Glimmervoid
4 Island
1 Swamp
2 Fragmentize
1 Ethersworn Canonist
3 Blood Moon
1 Grafdigger's Cage
1 Phyrexian Revoker
3 Izzet Staticaster
2 Extirpate
1 Collective Brutality
1 Thoughtseize
I board out Saheeli combo stuff against decks with a lot of discard and/or burn, but I usually leave in some number of Saheeli as, like we mentioned, she wins behind a bridge. Blood Moon is really not supported by the manabase, but then, you put it in against decks its good against anyway, and then just try to play around it. Sometimes you have to sacrifice cards in your hand like Whir, but that's usually an obvious choice to make. Blood Moon is very good against Shadow decks, as well as big mana. I think I would play the 4th Brutality over the Thoughtseize, at the moment, but don't own one.
Honestly, the deck looks sloppy as all hell, but then it just keeps winning more than other spice I try.