Also, I think it's a little strange that the sample deck listed in the MTGO meta breakdown right now runs Sorin, Solemn Visitor. It doesn't seem like a card that belongs in this archetype to me, but hey, what do ya know.
Sorin shouldn't be run in Abzan midrange. At all. Ever.
Everyone’s thought on Journey to Eternity in Abzan Midrange? Makes me want to main fulminator mage with it although it would actually be better in Jund.
Hadana’s Climb makes me wanna go sultai with longtusk cub..
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Took my old Abzan build for a spin on mtgo practice rooms, really dominated a lot of decks. Did lose to Valakut and Breach though. Breach is another brutal uphill matchup.
I must have beaten multiple people on the non geist Jeskai deck like 3 times, pretty comfortably.
My old build is running 22 lands with Gavony as a win con, pretty surprised how smooth it ran considering the greedy mana base.
No, I dont ever look at any card which isnt good on its own to be played in a gbx shell. Every card you play has to be good on its own to be even playable. Thats the fundamental part of our deck and the most important advantage we have left.
I think that Tec Edge is better than Field of Ruin, because is cheaper to activate and we usually run 3 or 4 basic lands. Against PtE decks Ruin is specially bad. Edge has better sinergy with Blooming Marsh too. We normally need 3 lands to make our game, so losing a land affects more to our opponents.
I dont think so, as i am at first talking about rock and not abzan and field is way more versatile. Tec edge does almost nothing right now when its treshhold is reached. Tron only needs its 3 lands and death shadow barely has 4 lands in play. You want that interaction as early as possible and with ruin you dont loose lands yourself. I think ruins purpose against control is to just kill their manlands.
If you activate Field of Ruin you get an untapped basic back, which is also only 1 mana cost essentially.
Well however, Tec edge is still destroying your own land as well. That also sets you behind. Manabases are very greedy that days, where I think destroying a land sooner (and reducing their landquality as they only can replace it with a basic) is more valuable than denying both players mana. Basically any deck faster than you with cheaper spells trades better here.
I am looking at the ROck list which went two times 5-0 lately, it runs 4 Field of Ruins. Plus, in Europe it won a somewhat big tournament yesterday.
The list I saw online does not only play 3 basics. You have to play more to include Field of Ruin. I personally don't think thats necessarily true that we always trade better if we both remove lands, decks like Grixis DS can operate on much lower landcount than we can. Its exceptionally bad vs. Affinity if we also kill a land of our own and so on. There are arguments for Tec Edge but I want to try Ruins, as I can see more potential here.
Now, this list I saw online does play pure BG Rock, and I am not quite sure if this version is all that great vs. Control. I think splashing for Lingering Souls certainly has merit to it.
I made a hybrid therefore which includes Souls as well as Ruin, and I want to give this a try:
Its probably a bit greedy to run it that way, but I wanna try it anyways. With this manabase, I have 16 green sources on turn 2, which is sufficient to cast Decay/Goyf/Ooze on turn 2. I have 18 black sources, which is consistant enough to cast every black 1 mana spell on turn 1, but just not quite ideal to have double black on turn 3 for Liliana (You would need 19 black sources for that). To have consistantly white mana on turn 3 for Souls one would need 11 white sources, which I only have 10 of, so there is also some inconsistancy there. Of those issues, I think the Liliana one might be the "biggest" problem, since Souls is only a 3 of and we can also discard it and just flashback it without needing to have white. Due toi the black requirements, I don't see a way we can run Treetop here though, which would be awesome, but I have to with Quagmire here to serve with enough black mana.
I am not sure if I want Stony Silence in the board, you need 13 white sources to consistantly cast it on turn 2 (which we really, really want if we have it) so that might be better to cut and replace with 1 Creeping Corrosion as well as the fourth copy of Souls. I could replace one Quagmire with Shambling Vent, which would help, but am not sure if I want that either.
My thoughts to run this over straigth Abzan is, that you don't need to take much dmg from your manabase (reasoning from Reid, which also plays a BG deck splashing for Souls) as well as have better play vs. Blood Moon and so on. With a LD maindeck, we can more easily battle Tron, and race them with our goyfs. I think due to Tron being very popular, we need to have Ruins here, to kill their land, and still have enough mana to cast our Discard and Goyfs. Sometimes we also want Pulse to be castable if one PW comes down. The lack of Path is a problem for Wurmcoil though. Pulse at least gets rid of both tokens, and we have 2 of them.
This version seems solid vs DS decks, as we have plenty of removal in the form of Hissing, Push, Decay, Pulse and Lilianas, and the Souls tokens help very much to grind them out. Tracker does also seem decent here, which gets not that easy removed with Push here.
Control is the reason to have Souls. I think straight BG has a hard time fighting with Control, where those Souls tokens really can make the difference. Treetop would be a better manland here to have, as well as Grim Flayer. I think that, if you play a fourth Souls in the SB, you can have a decent matchup vs. those Jekai decks and have an probably hard but close match against UW.
Storm is obvioulsy great matchup due to discard/removal/GY Hate and clock, nothing changes here.
Affinity and Humans are very beatable I think, CoCo decks might be tricky, since Souls is not great against them, but therefore I try to help with 2 Flaying Tendrils. I am not sure this is correct, could probably just 1, but Tendrils also helps against Humans and Affinity.
Eldrazi Tron is ***** matchup nonetheless, I think nothing changes that. Don't know if regular Abzan has better win% here, but I don't think it changes much.
Played my list that I posted above at my FNM tonight
Ended up just dismantling all my opponents beating 2-0 Rock, 2-0 Grixis Control with Azcanta, Humans 2-0, and then I wanted to go home early to not deal with frozen ice on the highways, so me and Jund guy tied. I'm pretty certain my deck was designed well to beat his though. Had he lost my opponent would have been Storm.
I'm extremely impressed with my lists mana base, it looks incredibly greedy on paper until you play it, it was smooth. It honestly feels more like jund than Abzan, no clunky Rhinos, no Trackers. Gavony and souls was too much for Grixis when he had Azcanta flipped.
4x Bobs and 3x Grim really help things alone with the 22 land count.
Humans felt 70/30, I always felt in control even when I was on the backfoot.
Luckily I dodged U Tron guy and Titanshift. If I had shown up with any Shadow deck tonight I'm certain I would have been going home early.
Yeah jeskai breach can get ya sometimes since it got gotcha elements in it, but I think its not that bad of a matchup. Discard rips them apart usually.
I would board pretty much similar than regular Jeskai Control. Cut Pulse/Pushes/Decay (Decay depends on if they run Azcanta or not, but probably yes, so leaving them in might be good) and Paths/Flayers and bring in CB/Thrun/Fulminator/Gideon and if space left Spellbombs.
3 ties is a lot though, it sounds like you need to get more reps in to speed things up, that shouldn't be happening. If your opponent is constantly tanking, you need to tell them to speed it up. It's ok for both players to tank in a crucial board state, but if it's happening constantly you need to warn your opponent and then call a judge for slow play if they keep doing it
There's little things you need to do, like when you thoughtseize someone, don't spend a minute deciding on what to take and then write it down. Write down their hand and think about what you want to take in the meantime. If it's turn 1 and they can't cast anything meaningful write down their hand and tell them to go while you do so.
I haven't found myself go to turns in over half a year, maybe longer, it's probably closer to 9 months, and that's even with Lantern decks locking me out and making them play the whole thing. Definitely get those reps in.
@avey That exact MKM series tournament was won by the Rock list I was talking about earlier. How do you feel about that list compared to yours? You think the lack of Souls wasn't that bad for the meta there? Anyways congratz on the result, very impressive for that many participants!
Wurmcoil is tough, but BG can deal with Tron through their Field of Ruins, which attacks them on a different axis. As for CoCo, it is true SOuls and Path is bad. So it makes sense for that one. But I am curious about Jeskai, how did that deck beat Jeskai? Souls are so great against that deck.
4 Fulminators and 6 Lilianas post-board seems really rough for Jeskai to deal with. The Jeskai matchup is the reason that I can't bring myself to ditch Fulminator for Blood Moon with Jund. It's an impactful card on the average board, is never something they want to use removal on, and gives us a clean answer to Celestial Colonnade that they can't just Dispel. Thrun is great, but whenever I've played against Jeskai I've felt like I'm very likely to win if I just draw all of the Fulminators and Kitchen Finks in the deck.
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I decided on 2x Path as well.
I'm very undecided on a tournament at the end of the month, I'm testing for various Abzan builds, Jund with Rabbles and Moons, or 4C Jund Shadow.
I don't think centralized Abzan is good, the meta would really have to slow down. Siege Rhino is just looking more and more outdated, too.
Sorin shouldn't be run in Abzan midrange. At all. Ever.
Hadana’s Climb makes me wanna go sultai with longtusk cub..
TappedOut
Would love to have more input to improve!
I must have beaten multiple people on the non geist Jeskai deck like 3 times, pretty comfortably.
My old build is running 22 lands with Gavony as a win con, pretty surprised how smooth it ran considering the greedy mana base.
Kinda frustrating, too, since Azcanta totally blows it out of the water
Someone may find a use for the card but I doubt it'll be in jund or junk
I dont think so, as i am at first talking about rock and not abzan and field is way more versatile. Tec edge does almost nothing right now when its treshhold is reached. Tron only needs its 3 lands and death shadow barely has 4 lands in play. You want that interaction as early as possible and with ruin you dont loose lands yourself. I think ruins purpose against control is to just kill their manlands.
Well however, Tec edge is still destroying your own land as well. That also sets you behind. Manabases are very greedy that days, where I think destroying a land sooner (and reducing their landquality as they only can replace it with a basic) is more valuable than denying both players mana. Basically any deck faster than you with cheaper spells trades better here.
I am looking at the ROck list which went two times 5-0 lately, it runs 4 Field of Ruins. Plus, in Europe it won a somewhat big tournament yesterday.
Now, this list I saw online does play pure BG Rock, and I am not quite sure if this version is all that great vs. Control. I think splashing for Lingering Souls certainly has merit to it.
I made a hybrid therefore which includes Souls as well as Ruin, and I want to give this a try:
4 Verdant Catacombs
4 Marsh Flats
2 Overgrown Tomb
1 Godless Shrine
1 Temple Garden
2 Blooming Marsh
2 Hissing Quagmire
4 Field of Ruin
3 Swamp
1 Forest
Creatures [13]
4 Tarmogoyf
4 Dark Confidant
3 Scavenging Ooze
2 Tireless Tracker
4 Fatal Push
4 Inquisition of Kozilek
2 Thoughtseize
2 Abrupt Decay
1 Dismember
2 Maelstrom Pulse
3 Lingering Souls
4 Liliana of the Veil
1 Liliana, the Last Hope
3 Fulminator Mage
2 Stony Silence
2 Collective Brutality
2 Nihil Spellbomb
1 Grafdigger's Cage
1 Surgical Extraction
2 Flaying Tendrils
1 Damnation
1 Thrun, the Last Troll
Its probably a bit greedy to run it that way, but I wanna try it anyways. With this manabase, I have 16 green sources on turn 2, which is sufficient to cast Decay/Goyf/Ooze on turn 2. I have 18 black sources, which is consistant enough to cast every black 1 mana spell on turn 1, but just not quite ideal to have double black on turn 3 for Liliana (You would need 19 black sources for that). To have consistantly white mana on turn 3 for Souls one would need 11 white sources, which I only have 10 of, so there is also some inconsistancy there. Of those issues, I think the Liliana one might be the "biggest" problem, since Souls is only a 3 of and we can also discard it and just flashback it without needing to have white. Due toi the black requirements, I don't see a way we can run Treetop here though, which would be awesome, but I have to with Quagmire here to serve with enough black mana.
I am not sure if I want Stony Silence in the board, you need 13 white sources to consistantly cast it on turn 2 (which we really, really want if we have it) so that might be better to cut and replace with 1 Creeping Corrosion as well as the fourth copy of Souls. I could replace one Quagmire with Shambling Vent, which would help, but am not sure if I want that either.
My thoughts to run this over straigth Abzan is, that you don't need to take much dmg from your manabase (reasoning from Reid, which also plays a BG deck splashing for Souls) as well as have better play vs. Blood Moon and so on. With a LD maindeck, we can more easily battle Tron, and race them with our goyfs. I think due to Tron being very popular, we need to have Ruins here, to kill their land, and still have enough mana to cast our Discard and Goyfs. Sometimes we also want Pulse to be castable if one PW comes down. The lack of Path is a problem for Wurmcoil though. Pulse at least gets rid of both tokens, and we have 2 of them.
This version seems solid vs DS decks, as we have plenty of removal in the form of Hissing, Push, Decay, Pulse and Lilianas, and the Souls tokens help very much to grind them out. Tracker does also seem decent here, which gets not that easy removed with Push here.
Control is the reason to have Souls. I think straight BG has a hard time fighting with Control, where those Souls tokens really can make the difference. Treetop would be a better manland here to have, as well as Grim Flayer. I think that, if you play a fourth Souls in the SB, you can have a decent matchup vs. those Jekai decks and have an probably hard but close match against UW.
Storm is obvioulsy great matchup due to discard/removal/GY Hate and clock, nothing changes here.
Affinity and Humans are very beatable I think, CoCo decks might be tricky, since Souls is not great against them, but therefore I try to help with 2 Flaying Tendrils. I am not sure this is correct, could probably just 1, but Tendrils also helps against Humans and Affinity.
Eldrazi Tron is ***** matchup nonetheless, I think nothing changes that. Don't know if regular Abzan has better win% here, but I don't think it changes much.
Anyway, playing a similar old list thats smoother than the mana base would indicate
4x Verdant Catacombs
4x Marsh Flats
1x Windswept Heath
2x Overgrown Tomb
1x Godless Shrine
1x Temple Garden
3x Blooming Marsh
2x Shambling Vent
1x Gavony Township
1x Swamp
1x Forest
1x Plains
4x Dark Confidant
4x Tarmogoyf
3x Grim Flayer
2x Scavenging Ooze
Spells (25)
4x Inquisition of Kozilek
2x Thoughtseize
4x Fatal Push
3x Path to Exile
2x Abrupt Decay
1x Collective Brutality
4x Lingering Souls
4x Liliana of the Veil
1x Maelstrom Pulse
3x Fulminator Mage
2x Collective Brutality
2x Surgical Extraction
1x Gideon, Ally of Zendikar
1x Liliana, the Last Hope
1x Thrun, the Last Troll
2x Stony Silence
1x Lost Legacy
1x Damnation
1x Engineered Explosives
Haven't liked Lost Legacy much at all, probably to be replaced with a Nihil Spellbomb.
The deck runs more like a Jund deck with lingering souls
Against all these Jeskai Geist and Jeskai Control decks, I've been siding like this:
It's worked fantastically, and I'm putting them on the backfoot to the point push and path isn't missed.
I try to strip their hand on turn 2 more than turn 1, and then follow up with bait or LOTV.
It's also making me realize how bad the average Jeskai player is
Ended up just dismantling all my opponents beating 2-0 Rock, 2-0 Grixis Control with Azcanta, Humans 2-0, and then I wanted to go home early to not deal with frozen ice on the highways, so me and Jund guy tied. I'm pretty certain my deck was designed well to beat his though. Had he lost my opponent would have been Storm.
I'm extremely impressed with my lists mana base, it looks incredibly greedy on paper until you play it, it was smooth. It honestly feels more like jund than Abzan, no clunky Rhinos, no Trackers. Gavony and souls was too much for Grixis when he had Azcanta flipped.
4x Bobs and 3x Grim really help things alone with the 22 land count.
Humans felt 70/30, I always felt in control even when I was on the backfoot.
Luckily I dodged U Tron guy and Titanshift. If I had shown up with any Shadow deck tonight I'm certain I would have been going home early.
3 ties is a lot though, it sounds like you need to get more reps in to speed things up, that shouldn't be happening. If your opponent is constantly tanking, you need to tell them to speed it up. It's ok for both players to tank in a crucial board state, but if it's happening constantly you need to warn your opponent and then call a judge for slow play if they keep doing it
There's little things you need to do, like when you thoughtseize someone, don't spend a minute deciding on what to take and then write it down. Write down their hand and think about what you want to take in the meantime. If it's turn 1 and they can't cast anything meaningful write down their hand and tell them to go while you do so.
I haven't found myself go to turns in over half a year, maybe longer, it's probably closer to 9 months, and that's even with Lantern decks locking me out and making them play the whole thing. Definitely get those reps in.
For reference, this is the list:
4 Verdant Catacombs
4 Field of Ruin
4 Hissing Quagmire
4 Blooming Marsh
4 Swamp
2 Forest
2 Overgrown Tomb
Creatures [14]
4 Tarmogoyf
4 Dark Confidant
4 Scavenging Ooze
2 Tireless Tracker
4 Fatal Push
4 Inquisition of Kozilek
4 Thoughtseize
2 Abrupt Decay
2 Maelstrom Pulse
1 Dismember
4 Liliana of the Veil
1 Liliana, the Last Hope
1 Creeping Corrosiosn
2 Surgical Extraction
4 Fulminator Mage
2 Nihil Spellbomb
1 Night of Souls' Betrayal
2 Collective Brutality
1 Flaying Tendrils
1 Damnation
1 Liliana, the Last Hope
Wurmcoil is tough, but BG can deal with Tron through their Field of Ruins, which attacks them on a different axis. As for CoCo, it is true SOuls and Path is bad. So it makes sense for that one. But I am curious about Jeskai, how did that deck beat Jeskai? Souls are so great against that deck.