@purklefluff can you send a link, struggling to find the list.
I don't have a list. I was at the event.
I think Manaleak, Birmingham (the store running the event) have a top 8 standing and possibly more info on their website. Can't link as on phone but it's just a few keystrokes away on Google.
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Modern: G Tron, Vannifar, Jund, Druid/Vizier combo, Humans, Eldrazi Stompy (Serum Powder), Amulet, Grishoalbrand, Breach Titan, Turns, Eternal Command, As Foretold Living End, Elves, Cheerios, RUG Scapeshift
You can whir out the Mindcrank, and if the match goes according to plan, opponent should be siding out his/her spot removal so the guildmages should have a better chance.
We'll take your suggestion in the everlasting quest for alternate wincons under the fast-kill tab, mainly looking to gain some % points against big mana decks. Now what about it?
Nuthand of 2 trinkets, Mage and Whir translates into untapping T4 for the kill (T2 Mage, T3 Whir eot, T4 kill), and that is conditional to opponent not having Nature's Claim and you committing all your ressources (and 5 sb slots) to the plan. I don't think this is reliable / compact / fast enough of a plan.
Under this tab I've been chatting with fellow prison deck afficionado @Raystack and considering drawing from his experience with Goblin Rabblemaster doing heavy lifting in the big mana match-ups when the prison deck needs to switch gears and go aggro. I'm still unconvinced but the idea is there.
Now speaking of jank, one Reddit Thopterist posted his list yesterday and he is using Altar of the Brood to go insta-kill with Thopter-Sword on top of KCI. Hey who doesn't like hoops? In all seriousness, I still think KCI and Time Sieve are too win-more to warrant a slot, but I noticed that in non-combo situations, albeit SLOW AS HECK, Altar of the Brood checks all the boxes of what we're looking for under the grindy wincon vs Stony Silence tab:
- Wins through Bridge
- Wins through Stony Silence
- Is an artifact so it's tutorable and synergistic and all
- Has inevitability.
I think it's the first single card that checks all those boxes. Bonus points for not targeting. Now, anyone brave enough to test this? Lol.
/e: @Reedy, the core of my current SB-plan vs Tron is +3 Thoughtseize, +2 Surgical Extraction, +1 Vendilion Clique and +1 Quicksilver Fountain and it's going better than ever. Most of these cards (save Fountain) have wide applications against other match-ups so it's not even like I'm using slots only for that.
Hi all, first time commenting on the thread as i always just had UBtezz on the backburner. I was the one who commented on taking out altar of the brood on /r/modernmagic. When i ran it, i milled over stuff that wasnt good for me at all. Its fine when bridge was out, but pretty meh without it. I used to run 2, then 1, then put 2 in the side, then 1. Id love for someone to make a consistent list with it though.
Im quite surprised deck vets like radouf hasnt tested altar beforehand. Im sure they would know tons better than me RE: the intricacies of deck building.
How are you guys doing the herald/mech pro split? Hows the 0cmc turbo list doing? I havent yet gathered enough balls to run a list with very minimal discard. Lol.
My tron tech is currently vendilion clique. Still cant beat the nuts, but worth a shot.
So after after moving Tezz to the side, I've had my best little run in the online competitive league, going 3-2, 5-0, and 4-1. I've replaced him with 1 Etched Champion and 1 Cranial Plating. Plating is nice as a mid-game play, and works surprisingly well with bridge. Like, way better than 5/5s from Tezz.
I've also been running 3 copies of Bomat Courier, which always feels embarrassing to cast, but seems to work how I want. Courier being a 1/1 gets swords out of the grave for free, (sweet when you discard to Collective Brutality), gets in bonus damage early game, chump blocks well, and can provide card advantage unless answered. Corner case, he can discard your hand to get under a bridge in a pinch. Late game, he essentially cantrips for 1R if you need to.
Having more creatures main has felt good against control overloading spells like Negate and Countersquall, and against Stony Silence. I've moved some removal to the side, as chump blockers are almost as good against burn and the like. Elves still feels unwinnable, which is why I may go to 3 Flaying Tendrils.
OUT:
4x Fatal Push
3x Collective Brutality
1x Ensnaring Bridge
1x Sword of the Meek
1x Relic of Progenitus
All games pre-sideboarded in.
G1: On the play, T3 Fountain into Tezz for quick beats work like a charm, he resolves a Wurmcoil on his last turn but I'm swinging for 15 which is still lethal after Lifelink. 1-0.
G2: On the draw, 2x Thoughtseize punch a hole in his threat-light hand and GQ puts him off tron just long enough while I thopter beat, backed up by more disruption (Whir for Needle as one of his two Karns is being casted), and I get there. 2-0.
G3: On the draw and I mull to 5, the Tezz part of my GQ into Prism into Tezz beats gameplan gets Thoughtseized, sad panda. I draw into Fountain which buys me loads of time but I fail to find a clock and eventually die to giant topdecks. 2-1.
G4: On the play, T2 I go all in as he has tapped-out for a Map and proceed to GQ + Extract his Towers away, followed up by Needle on his O-Stone followed up by Tezz beats a couple of turns later, and close. 3-1.
G5: On the draw, I get that interesting hand of Crucible + double Ghost Quarter and I know that it's probably too slow on the draw specifically, but elect to try it out *for science* (wouldn't have kept in a big tourney). Big surprise: he's got natural Tron plus a second tower and obv. I pick the Tower when GQ'ing him the first time. I get Karn'd before Crucible ever becomes relevant. 3-2.
G6: Best game I ever played against Tron, lots of swinging back and forth. Long story short: On the play, I Duress Karn, Needle Stone and get on beating with a 5/5 only to get brick walled by a Wurmcoil Engine. So I reluctantly +1 Tezz and find Bridge, and keep ticking up until I ultimate for exactsies. Tezz ultimate is met by him Nature's Claim'ing his own artifact so he survives at 3 life -_- ...And topdecks a Worldbreaker right there, which puts my plan way off balance, eating the Needle that's naming O-Stone. I still Whir for Thopter Foundry end of turn and sac all the stuff to go wide on flyers, which forces him to Stone the field including all his stuff, but I have a Jar to keep the Foundry up and get there by the skin of my teeth!! Ridiculously awesome, swingy and grindy game. 4-2.
So the score for tonight ended up 4-2, which puts me at 7-3 post-board against Tron so far on this plan. Feels solid really, and even in game where we start to grind, we still have game (yet we're still the tempo / beatdown).
Thanks for testing that horrendous matchup man. Do you think going a 3-2-2 split of push-thoughtseize-cb main deck gives us a bit of game vs tron g1?
Running some MB TS of course would help our G1 however you'd lose big points to Burn. And although its not a walk in the park, Burn is beatable G1. I'm not sure that Tron is, really. I've even been considering scooping on sight G1 to theoretically get a "free" G2 where I'm boarded in but not them. We'll need to test more G1s to know if its really that hopeless and if it's worth the trade-off.
OUT:
4x Fatal Push
3x Collective Brutality
1x Ensnaring Bridge
1x Sword of the Meek
1x Relic of Progenitus
All games pre-sideboarded in.
G1: On the play, T3 Fountain into Tezz for quick beats work like a charm, he resolves a Wurmcoil on his last turn but I'm swinging for 15 which is still lethal after Lifelink. 1-0.
G2: On the draw, 2x Thoughtseize punch a hole in his threat-light hand and GQ puts him off tron just long enough while I thopter beat, backed up by more disruption (Whir for Needle as one of his two Karns is being casted), and I get there. 2-0.
G3: On the draw and I mull to 5, the Tezz part of my GQ into Prism into Tezz beats gameplan gets Thoughtseized, sad panda. I draw into Fountain which buys me loads of time but I fail to find a clock and eventually die to giant topdecks. 2-1.
G4: On the play, T2 I go all in as he has tapped-out for a Map and proceed to GQ + Extract his Towers away, followed up by Needle on his O-Stone followed up by Tezz beats a couple of turns later, and close. 3-1.
G5: On the draw, I get that interesting hand of Crucible + double Ghost Quarter and I know that it's probably too slow on the draw specifically, but elect to try it out *for science* (wouldn't have kept in a big tourney). Big surprise: he's got natural Tron plus a second tower and obv. I pick the Tower when GQ'ing him the first time. I get Karn'd before Crucible ever becomes relevant. 3-2.
G6: Best game I ever played against Tron, lots of swinging back and forth. Long story short: On the play, I Duress Karn, Needle Stone and get on beating with a 5/5 only to get brick walled by a Wurmcoil Engine. So I reluctantly +1 Tezz and find Bridge, and keep ticking up until I ultimate for exactsies. Tezz ultimate is met by him Nature's Claim'ing his own artifact so he survives at 3 life -_- ...And topdecks a Worldbreaker right there, which puts my plan way off balance, eating the Needle that's naming O-Stone. I still Whir for Thopter Foundry end of turn and sac all the stuff to go wide on flyers, which forces him to Stone the field including all his stuff, but I have a Jar to keep the Foundry up and get there by the skin of my teeth!! Ridiculously awesome, swingy and grindy game. 4-2.
So the score for tonight ended up 4-2, which puts me at 7-3 post-board against Tron so far on this plan. Feels solid really, and even in game where we start to grind, we still have game (yet we're still the tempo / beatdown).
good to hear that tron might not be a hopeless matchup anymore! in these matches did clique or herald show up at all? it seems that the most success was had with more standard cards/lines, i.e. targeted discard, tezz beats and GQ'ing the sh*t out of them. so im just wondering how necessary the cliques in the board are? especially as they dont seem terribly useful in other matchups, they turn on all our opponents removal that hasn't been boarded out and will just sit behind bridge a lot of the time. the cycling effect doesn't seem like a good enough reason to play it for me. instead we can use those spots either for more discard or perhaps for the new 2 mana counterspell in censor, which cycles for just U.
also i've noticed no padeem in the board or tolaria west. what were your reasons for excluding them in your list?
Great points, thank you for chiming in! I didn't see Herald this time and will say it again: I have yet to be impressed by him. It's so slow! No? Clique did good work though, for example cycling my opponent's O-Stone on T3 while representing a clock in and by itself. And dodges Nature's Claim, which you will know is huge when your Ensoul Artifact gets blown up in a pinch and youre left stranded without a wincon. Clique was great in the last testing session too, which is why I upped it's count to two. Also flying has proven invaluable when opponent dropped a Wurmcoil to stop my beats, one of the few outs I had I knew was drawing a Clique to finish him off in the air. As far as other applications go, I like it very much against countermagic and Spell Queller decks that are running rampant around here, to force their hand in order to resolve a key spell myself. That's the logic behind my choice anyway.
Indeed the bulk of the work was Tezz beats, GQ, TS, Needle, Fountain, Extraction, but relying on only 4-5 clock cards won't get you there IMO. As testing has shown, your disruption is useless if you dont have a clock to go along. Clique adds to the bulk of both.
For this testing session, Ive swapped out Tolaria West for a third GQ looking for tempo points in this specific match-up. I phased Padeem out too, looking for more artifacts and synergy, and a lower curve postboard - where I found there might be too much non-artifact business coming in. So it's out for now, either for a Jar or Skite. I've also been playing without an Exec Capsule for a couple of days (following Numot's advice; don't do it kids) and I must say, it's been missed badly.
I've tested it for a while, albeit before the Whir era. Even with running the full Crane playset, it felt like we had very few carriers for it. It's a strong card for sure though, when you successfully set it up.
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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.
How about tasigur or angler. I don't think Herald is fast enough and I agree disruption+clock is the key to fixing that matchup so perhaps venturing outside of artifacts is the answer.
TL;DR Herald is good when you are the aggro, bad when you are the control.
As a fan of Herald, I will try to explain my reason for including it. I will start by saying it is a meta choice like all SB cards, so you mileage my vary.
I disagree with it being "too slow" but ultimately it comes down to what the expectations for it are. I think turn 3-4 is the typical case, with it mostly being turned on turn 3 if you are willing to spend prism mana on it. I have cast it on turn 2 which is disgusting but that was a nutty case (Jar, Bauble, Opal, delta, fair, prism, herald as my 7 on the play)
In my experience, if you land it turn 3-4 if they don't have removal for it you can quickly snowball out of control.
1. If you get to endstep it is already generating card advantage.
2. It is hard to removal for some decks (dodges push, bolt, abrupt decay)
3. If you untap it turns your opals, used up prisms, and jars into removal spells.
4. 5/5 beatstick with built in combat trick goes to combat very well.
Now the card has two very obvious drawbacks
1. Dies to removal
2. Requires high artifact density for improvise
I think both of the drawbacks are mitigated by our deck building choices we already made to make Whir and Tezz work.
First, artifact density shouldn't matter for us as the deck is already built to turn improvise x=3 by turn 3 for whir, and along with tezz means we are already up to 23-26 artifacts mainboard.
Dying to removal is the primary drawback of the card, and is why you would never play it maindeck. Simply put in modern having your wincon Path of exiled is not something any deck can afford to do. However, we run no other creatures other than a maybe spellskite in the sideboard, animated artifacts with tezz, and thopter tokens. This means most removal is super weak against us, and just by having the herald in the SB means we can threaten to side in one and just be able to run away with a game.
So far I just have been stating obvious facts about the card, but I want to talk about the way running it allows the deck more options.
I have stated in a previous post, but I think a WhirBridge version of tezzerator loses for 3 reasons.
1. Too slow of a start to land a bridge/combo to stabilize fast enough
2. Get blown out by artifact/permanent removal without an answer or good line.
3. Get stuck top-decking behind a bridge with multiple bad draws in a row.
Herald helps a lot with points one and two by being a fast clock while also forcing them to have even more diverse permanent removal.
for point one, it represents another stalling card. I have won more than one game by simply resolving Herald and leaving my opponent with no way to deal with it and not being able to go to combat affordably. In this way it is a lot like TezzAoB or LotV, but has a different set of pros and cons over those two. This is very relevant to what @Reedy26 was saying in his reply, where some match-ups are completely dependent on playing Tezz to start a fast beatdown clock. For that reason it is good against tron because it is just another payoff card in the deck to increase the speed in situations where you are the beat-down.
Point two is where I think things get interesting, and really is what makes herald good with lots of sideboard headgames we can play. It is a card that gets payoff from artifacts while dodging all the artifact hate being played in modern. Most decks have at least some artifact hate in the sideboard for affinity, so game 2 thats coming in once they see your maindeck often in place of the removal spells already in the deck. Herald, while cleanly answered by popular removal spells, demands those spells as an answer. Even in situations where you are playing against someone who knows your deck and expects the heralds just by having them you mess up their sideboard plans by demanding they keep at least a couple paths or terminates in order to have an out against herald. This leads to situations where you simply don't board them in and get to play a game with a couple dead cards in the opponents deck. A diverse set of threats means we are forcing an opponents deck to have deal with artifact, walker, or creature threats while still being proactive.
In terms of match-ups where it is a no brainer are anytime you are the beat-down. Being one of the few proactive, aggressive threats we would be interested in means against combo, tron, and really slow control match-ups it is a card we can try to power out and beat down before it is answered or the opponent has won. My meta is lousy with combo so its likely why I see so much value in running it, as being too durdly in my meta means you will die swiftly to some sort of degeneracy.
Against any deck in Jund colors it is good, namely death's shadow jund. They should be taking terminates out game 2 and most aren't running maelstrom pulse and are staying on a low count of LotV right now and it is a wincon that dodges the destroy artifacts hate cards (ancient grudge, shatterstorm, etc). Add onto that herald goes to combat really well with goyfs and even death's shadow sometimes by being able to manipulate p&t at instant speed. It also helps mitigate the damage done by discard spells by letting us run another wincon.
It is hardly effected by stony silence and rest in peace, which is big against any deck with white in it as those are the hate cards of choice in white. Of course path becomes an issue here but the rest of the path targets in your deck are much less appetizing leading to the sideboard mindgame I talked about.
Its worst against decks where you are obviously the control and are leaning very heavily on ensnaring bridge as it means you are just playing a big creature. This is something decks like eldrazi, hatebears, burn, delver, dredge etc are just ignoring or punishing you for. Obviously we just skip bringing them in here.
I saw everyone talking about Tron on here so I also did some testing but I didn't take extensive notes and I did it a few different ways.
One of the things we tried was drawing six and putting the sideboard card to be tested directly into my hand. That way we could tell if the card was actually helping or not.
Disruption + Fast Clock has always been the way to beat Big Mana/Combo decks and likely always will be in Modern. That being said I think we are taking the wrong approach to disruption. Tron and friends have a great match up against Jund despite discard/discard/goyf/lilly. Trying to 1:1 them into oblivion doesn't work because the can very easily top deck into Tron off Expedition Maps and Ancient Stirrings and all the eggs they play.
In my testing we found Chalice of the Void to be HIGHLY effective. Unless they have a perfect hand of natural tron + threats Chalice of the Void will keep them off finding Tron and Threats for a very long time. Long enough to kill with with Tezz or Thopter beats, or Herald of Anguish.
Hand disruption is fine but it isn't going to get you there. You need more than 1:1 to compete with Tron since even the fastest clocks can't race a turn 3 Karn Liberated and Wurmcoil Engine. Every turn you take off to disrupt they are getting closer to hard casting bombs or drawing tutors off the top.
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@OnlyTiggerlol: thank you for this, good write-up! Excellent arguments.
On it being slow: I always seem to cap at mana + improvise = 6 for some reason. [...] Thinking about it, I can see two reasons:
1. Against white or counterspell decks (and it's all I seem to run into these days), I tend to side out some less useful artifacts in favour of discard spells and alternate wincons, which decreases my ability to improvise fast. Maybe I'm overdoing it. Also, I tend not to side Whir of Invention out at all because even if I'm on less of a Thopter-Sword game, I've always considered Ensnaring Bridge, silver bullets and additional Welding Jars very useful postboard. So the point here is sideboarding. Which leads me to asking: How would you side against, say, Abzan Coco? And Bant Knightfall?
2. Maybe my use of improvise fuel (Baubles, Relic, Prisms) isn't as focused on optimizing Herald as it should be. Meaning: early and mid-game, when there's no immediate upside to having Bauble or Relic in play, I tend to crack 'em asap in order to dig further down toward payoff cards. This *could* lead to me feeling that «cap» effect around 6 mana / improvise. But it's how I found the deck was seeing more cards and rolling best. Except for enabling quick Heralds. But on the flip side, I don't think that NOT cracking a Bauble IN CASE you see Herald (one, two or max three-of) would be correct. Another line that could explain this *cap* would be that most of the time I reach Tezz or Whir mana way before Herald mana, and I tend to use them because proactive we need to be. Which often leaves me with topdecked Herald stranded in hand, staring down at an empty prism on the board.
What do you think? Don't you find yourself in these situations? When I do, I really wish Herald was anything cheaper. And even resolving him on T4 (my average) against Tron won't cut it at all, and that's really where I need the hammerpower. However you make a great point about his, let's call them peripheral benefits (removal, discard, screwing up combat maths, etc.) -- in this sense he's less of an immediate beater (which I wished and thought he'd be) and more of an attrition machine.
One last question: what do you mean when you say:
TL;DR Herald is good when you are the aggro, bad when you are the beatdown.
@Grouty we're a permanent-based control deck. So most of our stuff won't go to the graveyard quick. That's a major nonbo between our general gameplan and the big Delvers. On topic, Ensoul artifact is the fastest option we have, however it's weak to artifact and enchantment removal that people are going to bring in. I've run 1-2x for a looong time, and like it but it's a fragile option. Pack Rat is another option I've tested; it's great but slowish, and very card and mana hungry so it didn't feel shoe-in. Now I was mentioning that Goblin Rabblemaster was the solution that @Raystack had found for his red prison deck to best clock the Tron opponents, but this remains untested in a Tezz shell and would need us to splash (which isn't too hard btw with access to 8 rainbow lands we have now). Whatever beater you pick, I encourage you to test it up and report. We're all ears
/e: @Racing089 thanks for the insight, pal! Will look into that.
OLD SCHOOL 93/94 «The Pain Train» Black Sligh, Esper «Machine Gun» Artifacts, Jund «Psycho» Ponza-Disko.
I don't have a list. I was at the event.
I think Manaleak, Birmingham (the store running the event) have a top 8 standing and possibly more info on their website. Can't link as on phone but it's just a few keystrokes away on Google.
I'm def never cutting Brutality for now, and maybe he will feel the same way after losing finals to burn.
4x Duskmantle Guildmage and 1xMindcrank
You can whir out the Mindcrank, and if the match goes according to plan, opponent should be siding out his/her spot removal so the guildmages should have a better chance.
Nuthand of 2 trinkets, Mage and Whir translates into untapping T4 for the kill (T2 Mage, T3 Whir eot, T4 kill), and that is conditional to opponent not having Nature's Claim and you committing all your ressources (and 5 sb slots) to the plan. I don't think this is reliable / compact / fast enough of a plan.
Under this tab I've been chatting with fellow prison deck afficionado @Raystack and considering drawing from his experience with Goblin Rabblemaster doing heavy lifting in the big mana match-ups when the prison deck needs to switch gears and go aggro. I'm still unconvinced but the idea is there.
Now speaking of jank, one Reddit Thopterist posted his list yesterday and he is using Altar of the Brood to go insta-kill with Thopter-Sword on top of KCI. Hey who doesn't like hoops? In all seriousness, I still think KCI and Time Sieve are too win-more to warrant a slot, but I noticed that in non-combo situations, albeit SLOW AS HECK, Altar of the Brood checks all the boxes of what we're looking for under the grindy wincon vs Stony Silence tab:
- Wins through Bridge
- Wins through Stony Silence
- Is an artifact so it's tutorable and synergistic and all
- Has inevitability.
I think it's the first single card that checks all those boxes. Bonus points for not targeting. Now, anyone brave enough to test this? Lol.
/e: @Reedy, the core of my current SB-plan vs Tron is +3 Thoughtseize, +2 Surgical Extraction, +1 Vendilion Clique and +1 Quicksilver Fountain and it's going better than ever. Most of these cards (save Fountain) have wide applications against other match-ups so it's not even like I'm using slots only for that.
OLD SCHOOL 93/94 «The Pain Train» Black Sligh, Esper «Machine Gun» Artifacts, Jund «Psycho» Ponza-Disko.
Im quite surprised deck vets like radouf hasnt tested altar beforehand. Im sure they would know tons better than me RE: the intricacies of deck building.
How are you guys doing the herald/mech pro split? Hows the 0cmc turbo list doing? I havent yet gathered enough balls to run a list with very minimal discard. Lol.
My tron tech is currently vendilion clique. Still cant beat the nuts, but worth a shot.
I've also been running 3 copies of Bomat Courier, which always feels embarrassing to cast, but seems to work how I want. Courier being a 1/1 gets swords out of the grave for free, (sweet when you discard to Collective Brutality), gets in bonus damage early game, chump blocks well, and can provide card advantage unless answered. Corner case, he can discard your hand to get under a bridge in a pinch. Late game, he essentially cantrips for 1R if you need to.
Current List:
3 Bomat Courier
1 Hangarback Walker
2 Glint-Nest Crane
1 Phyrexian Revoker
1 Etched Champion
Other Permanents: 20
3 Mishra's Bauble
3 Mox Opal
2 Welding Jar
1 Grafdigger's Cage
1 Cranial Plating
4 Thopter Foundry
3 Sword of the Meek
1 Time Sieve
2 Ensnaring Bridge
4 Serum Visions
1 Fatal Push
2 Collective Brutality
4 Whir of Invention
Land: 21
4 Polluted Delta
4 Flooded Strand
1 Watery Grave
1 Steam Vents
4 Darkslick Shores
1 Swamp
6 Island
3 Blood Moon
1 Ghirapur Aether Grid
1 Fatal Push
1 Collective Brutality
2 Flaying Tendrils
2 Cryptic Command
1 Padeem, Consul of Innovation
1 Pithing Needle
1 Witchbane Orb
2 Tezzeret, Agent of Bolas
Having more creatures main has felt good against control overloading spells like Negate and Countersquall, and against Stony Silence. I've moved some removal to the side, as chump blockers are almost as good against burn and the like. Elves still feels unwinnable, which is why I may go to 3 Flaying Tendrils.
OLD SCHOOL 93/94 «The Pain Train» Black Sligh, Esper «Machine Gun» Artifacts, Jund «Psycho» Ponza-Disko.
4x Tezzeret, Agent of Bolas
4x Whir of Invention
1x Crucible of Worlds
1x Expedition Map
2x Thopter Foundry
2x Sword of the Meek
4x Mishra's Bauble
Bullets
1x Pithing Needle
1x Relic of Progenitus
2x Ensnaring Bridge
2x Welding jar
Disruption
4x Fatal Push
3x Collective Brutality
3x Mox Opal
4x Pentad Prism
3x Ghost Quarter
1x Inventors' Fair
1x Academy Ruins
4x Polluted Delta
3x Flooded Strand
3x Watery Grave
4x Darkslick Shores
2x Island
1x Swamp
1x Welding Jar
1x Pithing Needle
1x Grafdigger's Cage
1x Quicksilver Fountain
1x Witchbane Orb
2x Surgical Extraction
2x Thoughtseize
1x Duress
2x Vendilion Clique
1x Herald of Anguish
2x Damnation
1x Pithing Needle
1x Quicksilver Fountain
2x Surgical Extraction
2x Thoughtseize
1x Duress
2x Vendilion Clique
1x Herald of Anguish
OUT:
4x Fatal Push
3x Collective Brutality
1x Ensnaring Bridge
1x Sword of the Meek
1x Relic of Progenitus
All games pre-sideboarded in.
G1: On the play, T3 Fountain into Tezz for quick beats work like a charm, he resolves a Wurmcoil on his last turn but I'm swinging for 15 which is still lethal after Lifelink. 1-0.
G2: On the draw, 2x Thoughtseize punch a hole in his threat-light hand and GQ puts him off tron just long enough while I thopter beat, backed up by more disruption (Whir for Needle as one of his two Karns is being casted), and I get there. 2-0.
G3: On the draw and I mull to 5, the Tezz part of my GQ into Prism into Tezz beats gameplan gets Thoughtseized, sad panda. I draw into Fountain which buys me loads of time but I fail to find a clock and eventually die to giant topdecks. 2-1.
G4: On the play, T2 I go all in as he has tapped-out for a Map and proceed to GQ + Extract his Towers away, followed up by Needle on his O-Stone followed up by Tezz beats a couple of turns later, and close. 3-1.
G5: On the draw, I get that interesting hand of Crucible + double Ghost Quarter and I know that it's probably too slow on the draw specifically, but elect to try it out *for science* (wouldn't have kept in a big tourney). Big surprise: he's got natural Tron plus a second tower and obv. I pick the Tower when GQ'ing him the first time. I get Karn'd before Crucible ever becomes relevant. 3-2.
G6: Best game I ever played against Tron, lots of swinging back and forth. Long story short: On the play, I Duress Karn, Needle Stone and get on beating with a 5/5 only to get brick walled by a Wurmcoil Engine. So I reluctantly +1 Tezz and find Bridge, and keep ticking up until I ultimate for exactsies. Tezz ultimate is met by him Nature's Claim'ing his own artifact so he survives at 3 life -_- ...And topdecks a Worldbreaker right there, which puts my plan way off balance, eating the Needle that's naming O-Stone. I still Whir for Thopter Foundry end of turn and sac all the stuff to go wide on flyers, which forces him to Stone the field including all his stuff, but I have a Jar to keep the Foundry up and get there by the skin of my teeth!! Ridiculously awesome, swingy and grindy game. 4-2.
So the score for tonight ended up 4-2, which puts me at 7-3 post-board against Tron so far on this plan. Feels solid really, and even in game where we start to grind, we still have game (yet we're still the tempo / beatdown).
OLD SCHOOL 93/94 «The Pain Train» Black Sligh, Esper «Machine Gun» Artifacts, Jund «Psycho» Ponza-Disko.
Indeed the bulk of the work was Tezz beats, GQ, TS, Needle, Fountain, Extraction, but relying on only 4-5 clock cards won't get you there IMO. As testing has shown, your disruption is useless if you dont have a clock to go along. Clique adds to the bulk of both.
For this testing session, Ive swapped out Tolaria West for a third GQ looking for tempo points in this specific match-up. I phased Padeem out too, looking for more artifacts and synergy, and a lower curve postboard - where I found there might be too much non-artifact business coming in. So it's out for now, either for a Jar or Skite. I've also been playing without an Exec Capsule for a couple of days (following Numot's advice; don't do it kids) and I must say, it's been missed badly.
OLD SCHOOL 93/94 «The Pain Train» Black Sligh, Esper «Machine Gun» Artifacts, Jund «Psycho» Ponza-Disko.
OLD SCHOOL 93/94 «The Pain Train» Black Sligh, Esper «Machine Gun» Artifacts, Jund «Psycho» Ponza-Disko.
@radouf
TL;DR Herald is good when you are the aggro, bad when you are the control.
As a fan of Herald, I will try to explain my reason for including it. I will start by saying it is a meta choice like all SB cards, so you mileage my vary.
I disagree with it being "too slow" but ultimately it comes down to what the expectations for it are. I think turn 3-4 is the typical case, with it mostly being turned on turn 3 if you are willing to spend prism mana on it. I have cast it on turn 2 which is disgusting but that was a nutty case (Jar, Bauble, Opal, delta, fair, prism, herald as my 7 on the play)
In my experience, if you land it turn 3-4 if they don't have removal for it you can quickly snowball out of control.
1. If you get to endstep it is already generating card advantage.
2. It is hard to removal for some decks (dodges push, bolt, abrupt decay)
3. If you untap it turns your opals, used up prisms, and jars into removal spells.
4. 5/5 beatstick with built in combat trick goes to combat very well.
Now the card has two very obvious drawbacks
1. Dies to removal
2. Requires high artifact density for improvise
I think both of the drawbacks are mitigated by our deck building choices we already made to make Whir and Tezz work.
First, artifact density shouldn't matter for us as the deck is already built to turn improvise x=3 by turn 3 for whir, and along with tezz means we are already up to 23-26 artifacts mainboard.
Dying to removal is the primary drawback of the card, and is why you would never play it maindeck. Simply put in modern having your wincon Path of exiled is not something any deck can afford to do. However, we run no other creatures other than a maybe spellskite in the sideboard, animated artifacts with tezz, and thopter tokens. This means most removal is super weak against us, and just by having the herald in the SB means we can threaten to side in one and just be able to run away with a game.
So far I just have been stating obvious facts about the card, but I want to talk about the way running it allows the deck more options.
I have stated in a previous post, but I think a WhirBridge version of tezzerator loses for 3 reasons.
1. Too slow of a start to land a bridge/combo to stabilize fast enough
2. Get blown out by artifact/permanent removal without an answer or good line.
3. Get stuck top-decking behind a bridge with multiple bad draws in a row.
Herald helps a lot with points one and two by being a fast clock while also forcing them to have even more diverse permanent removal.
for point one, it represents another stalling card. I have won more than one game by simply resolving Herald and leaving my opponent with no way to deal with it and not being able to go to combat affordably. In this way it is a lot like TezzAoB or LotV, but has a different set of pros and cons over those two. This is very relevant to what @Reedy26 was saying in his reply, where some match-ups are completely dependent on playing Tezz to start a fast beatdown clock. For that reason it is good against tron because it is just another payoff card in the deck to increase the speed in situations where you are the beat-down.
Point two is where I think things get interesting, and really is what makes herald good with lots of sideboard headgames we can play. It is a card that gets payoff from artifacts while dodging all the artifact hate being played in modern. Most decks have at least some artifact hate in the sideboard for affinity, so game 2 thats coming in once they see your maindeck often in place of the removal spells already in the deck. Herald, while cleanly answered by popular removal spells, demands those spells as an answer. Even in situations where you are playing against someone who knows your deck and expects the heralds just by having them you mess up their sideboard plans by demanding they keep at least a couple paths or terminates in order to have an out against herald. This leads to situations where you simply don't board them in and get to play a game with a couple dead cards in the opponents deck. A diverse set of threats means we are forcing an opponents deck to have deal with artifact, walker, or creature threats while still being proactive.
In terms of match-ups where it is a no brainer are anytime you are the beat-down. Being one of the few proactive, aggressive threats we would be interested in means against combo, tron, and really slow control match-ups it is a card we can try to power out and beat down before it is answered or the opponent has won. My meta is lousy with combo so its likely why I see so much value in running it, as being too durdly in my meta means you will die swiftly to some sort of degeneracy.
Against any deck in Jund colors it is good, namely death's shadow jund. They should be taking terminates out game 2 and most aren't running maelstrom pulse and are staying on a low count of LotV right now and it is a wincon that dodges the destroy artifacts hate cards (ancient grudge, shatterstorm, etc). Add onto that herald goes to combat really well with goyfs and even death's shadow sometimes by being able to manipulate p&t at instant speed. It also helps mitigate the damage done by discard spells by letting us run another wincon.
It is hardly effected by stony silence and rest in peace, which is big against any deck with white in it as those are the hate cards of choice in white. Of course path becomes an issue here but the rest of the path targets in your deck are much less appetizing leading to the sideboard mindgame I talked about.
Its worst against decks where you are obviously the control and are leaning very heavily on ensnaring bridge as it means you are just playing a big creature. This is something decks like eldrazi, hatebears, burn, delver, dredge etc are just ignoring or punishing you for. Obviously we just skip bringing them in here.
One of the things we tried was drawing six and putting the sideboard card to be tested directly into my hand. That way we could tell if the card was actually helping or not.
Disruption + Fast Clock has always been the way to beat Big Mana/Combo decks and likely always will be in Modern. That being said I think we are taking the wrong approach to disruption. Tron and friends have a great match up against Jund despite discard/discard/goyf/lilly. Trying to 1:1 them into oblivion doesn't work because the can very easily top deck into Tron off Expedition Maps and Ancient Stirrings and all the eggs they play.
In my testing we found Chalice of the Void to be HIGHLY effective. Unless they have a perfect hand of natural tron + threats Chalice of the Void will keep them off finding Tron and Threats for a very long time. Long enough to kill with with Tezz or Thopter beats, or Herald of Anguish.
Hand disruption is fine but it isn't going to get you there. You need more than 1:1 to compete with Tron since even the fastest clocks can't race a turn 3 Karn Liberated and Wurmcoil Engine. Every turn you take off to disrupt they are getting closer to hard casting bombs or drawing tutors off the top.
Sultai Midrange
Anything Innovative
On it being slow: I always seem to cap at mana + improvise = 6 for some reason. [...] Thinking about it, I can see two reasons:
1. Against white or counterspell decks (and it's all I seem to run into these days), I tend to side out some less useful artifacts in favour of discard spells and alternate wincons, which decreases my ability to improvise fast. Maybe I'm overdoing it. Also, I tend not to side Whir of Invention out at all because even if I'm on less of a Thopter-Sword game, I've always considered Ensnaring Bridge, silver bullets and additional Welding Jars very useful postboard. So the point here is sideboarding. Which leads me to asking: How would you side against, say, Abzan Coco? And Bant Knightfall?
2. Maybe my use of improvise fuel (Baubles, Relic, Prisms) isn't as focused on optimizing Herald as it should be. Meaning: early and mid-game, when there's no immediate upside to having Bauble or Relic in play, I tend to crack 'em asap in order to dig further down toward payoff cards. This *could* lead to me feeling that «cap» effect around 6 mana / improvise. But it's how I found the deck was seeing more cards and rolling best. Except for enabling quick Heralds. But on the flip side, I don't think that NOT cracking a Bauble IN CASE you see Herald (one, two or max three-of) would be correct. Another line that could explain this *cap* would be that most of the time I reach Tezz or Whir mana way before Herald mana, and I tend to use them because proactive we need to be. Which often leaves me with topdecked Herald stranded in hand, staring down at an empty prism on the board.
What do you think? Don't you find yourself in these situations? When I do, I really wish Herald was anything cheaper. And even resolving him on T4 (my average) against Tron won't cut it at all, and that's really where I need the hammerpower. However you make a great point about his, let's call them peripheral benefits (removal, discard, screwing up combat maths, etc.) -- in this sense he's less of an immediate beater (which I wished and thought he'd be) and more of an attrition machine.
One last question: what do you mean when you say:Aggro? Beatdown? What's the nuance here?
OLD SCHOOL 93/94 «The Pain Train» Black Sligh, Esper «Machine Gun» Artifacts, Jund «Psycho» Ponza-Disko.
/e: @Racing089 thanks for the insight, pal! Will look into that.
OLD SCHOOL 93/94 «The Pain Train» Black Sligh, Esper «Machine Gun» Artifacts, Jund «Psycho» Ponza-Disko.