Board in: 4x Wear//Tear, 3x Path to Exile
Board out: 4x Eidolon of the Great Revel, 3x Rift Bolt
Just wanted to say that you should NEVER board out Rift Bolt against E-Tron since it plays around Chalice.
This x 1000
It's important to remember this early game in sequencing. Normally, playing rift bolt earlier is preferred because of the suspend/delay. But you're actually better off firing off your other spells that cost 1 first so as to not get blown out by chalice and be stuck with a hand full of lightning bolts/lava spikes
Also (and I'm sure this is hugely irrelevant), with an Eidolon/Machinations out you can fuse Wear//Tear to remove a chalice on 2 Even better, you can sack the Machinations in response and W/T will still resolve
So the other night I had my first 4-0 at my LGS. It's a bigger LGS, usually with 40-50 players per night. Thought I'd give a quick breakdown. Here's the list:
Match 1: UG Infect (2-1)
Game 1: I trade my burn for early removal successfully, and end up getting him down to three. But he has a strong turn and gets me to nine poison with a Nexus. It comes down to if I draw a burn spell or not, and I draw...a Machinations. Feelsbadman.
Board in: 4x Searing Blaze, 3x Path to Exile
Board out: 4x Gonti's Machinations, 3x Lightning Helix (this is a special case of my opponent being fast but not actually damaging my life total, making Gonti pretty bad here. Also in retrospect, I think I should have boarded out Bumps and kept Helix, to have more targeted removal. If I had done that, I would have boarded out all four Bumps and brought in a Skullcrack so I didn't have to worry about black mana.)
Game 2: Pretty easy win, I have two Blazes with landfall to deal with his Glistener Elf and Blighted Agent.
Game 3: I have him down to 5 with burn spells aplenty in hand and a Guide on the field. He tries to go for the win with an Inkmoth Nexus. He tries to cast Vines of Vastwood on it, and I Shard Volley in response. He's one mana away from being able to Become Immense in response to that, and I win.
Match 2: Scapeshift (2-0)
Game 1: He mulls to five, and I mull to six here. It's a straight race, but his mulliganing hurt him badly.
Board in: 4x Skullcrack, 3x Path to Exile
Board out: 4x Gonti's Machinations, 3x Rift Bolt (again, a situation where he isn't really harming me until he goes in for the kill. I'm learning Gonti is better versus fair decks, and I probably side it out against combo, which makes sense).
Game 2: This time, we both mulligan to five. Fortunately, my mulligan gets me two lands, a Guide, a Swiftspear, and a Bump in the Night. I draw gas and he can't go off in time.
Match 3: Grixis Control (2-1)
Game 1: Definitely my closest match of the evening. Game one he blocks with a Guide an early Jace, Vryn's Prodigy, which I personally think was a mistake. He does stop my initial assault, but then we play the draw-go game and I bottle his counters and snaps for the win.
Board in: 3x Path to Exile
Board out: 3x Rift Bolt (I thought about taking out Helixes, but I decided I'd rather be able to play at instant speed as much as I can).
Game 2: His discard game is strong, and I end up having to spend a lot of my resources to destroy a Liliana, the Last Hope (redirect the damage trigger from my Eidolon on his casted Kozilek's Return, then Lava Spike her). Pretty soon I have no cards in hard and he's still at 15. A Gurmag Angler secures him the game.
Game 3: This game was interesting. I end up drawing three Swiftspears and a Guide, and he ends up drawing three Young Pyromancers. There's a lot of chump blocking and trading with elemental tokens. I'm glad I drew so many creatures to match his Pyromancers, otherwise I don't believe I would have won. He ends up flooding after that ground battle clears up, and I finish him with burn with three minutes left in the round.
Match 4: EldraziTron (2-0)
Game 1: My opponent offers the split, but I decide I wanted to play to try and go for 4-0. These games were blissfully quick, and I'm thankful I never saw a Chalice. Game one I just burn him out before he can assemble Tron, nothing special to talk about.
Board in: 4x Wear//Tear, 3x Path to Exile
Board out: 4x Eidolon of the Great Revel, 3x Rift Bolt
Game 2: I lead off with a Goblin Guide, followed by a Swiftspear and a Lightning Bolt. He's trying to stabilize as fast as he can. I get him down to three, and he hardcasts a Batterskull. I Path the token on his end step, and he scoops.
Overall, I'm extremely happy with how Gonti's is performing for me. I know I boarded it out in two games, and I've learned that it's not good against combo decks. I did topdeck it for the loss against Infect, and that's a very real potentiality. As of right now, I'm accepting that it's a bad topdeck in the way our creatures are bad topdecks. A lot of the speed in which I won had to do with Gonti's, and I'm not just saying that because I'm reporting. A lot of my opening plays were Guide/Swifty, followed by Gonti and then crack a fetch for another burn spell, giving me an energy and pumping Swifty twice. If you're on the fence about this card, I personally recommend it's worth testing.
How did this feel with just 18 lands? I found it hard to reliably have 2 mana on turn 2 when I played an 18-land, 2 SSG Bushwhacker Zoo.
Also, I've considered adding Sulfurous Springs as an additional way to trigger Machinations without the need to sandbag or topdeck fetchlands. Can't see how to fit them in a 18-land list though...
Yeah, that player commented on reddit about it. It's apparently for situations against GDS where Bolt+protection kills them, though I'm not sold on that because if Bolt+protection wins then Bolt+Bolt wins. It's also spice to counter Gifts, but I'd rather just kill their graveyard with graveyard hate.
Not convinced either; countering Gifts is about the only case I could come up with in which it won't be equivalent to another damage to the face spell.
Seems like it's at it's worst point ever. Bad against Eldrazi Tron, Death Shadow. Bad against UW control.
Clunky at times because we can get constricted on lands and draw multiples. For now, I'm at 3 copies and running a shard volley instead.
Would love to hear everyone else's thoughts.
I'm not sure I want 4 in the main, but I really want 4 in the 75.
And of every card in my sideboard, it's probably the easiest to justify playing mainboard
Even against Eldrazi & DS, it won't be able to kill most creatures, but it will at least be able to do 3 to face (assuming landfall)
Likewise, while UW doesn't run a lot of creatures, it will still usually have snapcaster & wall of omen (& at some point it's going to start attacking with colonnades or gideons)
As of now, I still think it's worth leaving in the main, but I wouldn't be shocked if the next list to top 8 a big event skimmed on them
Coaxing a block on a GG/SS combined with Searing Blaze can take care of a x/5 creature.
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The were Incinerates in some early modern burn decks, too. I saw some in my database.
There has always been a niche in Burn for 2cc/3 damage instants with utility. Incinerate's utility, however, is not very good these days as Regenerate has been phased out for Indestructible.
I gather that Lightning Bolt was regarded as overpowered for a long time and I suppose they took a large step back from Bolt to Incinerate, Volcanic Hammer, and massive downside Bolts like Sonic Seizure. Maybe it's embarrassing, but I have a growing collection of burn spells, even if they're terrible.
Even Incinerate was Extended-type power. The red burn gauntlet in Standard at that time (7-9 eds.) was Shock/Volcanic Hammer.
It doesn't matter for us, but Lightning Strike is finally back in Standard. I just like seeing "3 damage to target creature or player" for an acceptable mana cost.
Atarka's Command also grants Reach, which is nice when you cast it before blockers and then block Inkmoth and Signal Pest and hand AC to the Affinity player when they say "but flying".
The cards are different and have slightly different borderline flavor text perks. I'd argue that AC's are more relevant because you control them, while Skullcrack requires your opponent to block your creature.
Also, one probably has room for both in the stock Naya list.
And AC has the occasional upside that it doesn't target
Technically correct, but that doesn't factor into my decision. The non-targeted player damage on AC is similar to the "can't be prevented" on Skullcrack, as in they are both perks that almost never matter and are borderline flavor text. My gut feeling is that is that AC's perk clause is relevant more often than Skullcrack's, since Skullcrack's relies on your opponent blocking with their pro-red creature while you have 2 mana up.
There are also the corner cases when (1) someone decides to block with a pro-red creature, and (2) you want to use Searing Blaze at instant speed and have AC and a non-fetch land in hand. But these should be fairly rare.
I have to question the credentials of someone who didn't board out Shrines and boarded in Kor Firewalkers in against RG Ponza. If he was running Le Briand's list, he should have probably swapped the Shrines for PoE and Grim Lavamancer.
Yeah, I think that's just poor play. I have no idea why you would want to remove any 1cc spell against Ponza.
Between blowing up lands and Blood Moon, Ponza will rarely let you keep two white sources. And even if a Firewalker hits the board, half of Ponza's spells spells/threats are green, so you're not even getting full value.
Sure, dragons have pro-white. But you can't do much with his dragons short of double-bolting, and Paths work great against Titans and Thragtusks that can turn the game around quickly.
Grim Lavamancer provides him with a clock that's not particularly mana intensive -- and if Ponza is blowing up lands, then they're actually fuelling the Lavamancer. Ponza also doesn't exactly have a ton of removal, so once Lavaman hits the board, he has a chance to do some damage.
Gonti is best on T1 though
Also (and I'm sure this is hugely irrelevant), with an Eidolon/Machinations out you can fuse Wear//Tear to remove a chalice on 2
How did this feel with just 18 lands? I found it hard to reliably have 2 mana on turn 2 when I played an 18-land, 2 SSG Bushwhacker Zoo.
Also, I've considered adding Sulfurous Springs as an additional way to trigger Machinations without the need to sandbag or topdeck fetchlands. Can't see how to fit them in a 18-land list though...
Not convinced either; countering Gifts is about the only case I could come up with in which it won't be equivalent to another damage to the face spell.
GR can also prevent blowouts from Cryptic Command, but I'm guessing it's anti-Storm tech (counter Gifts Ungiven).
Coaxing a block on a GG/SS combined with Searing Blaze can take care of a x/5 creature.
There has always been a niche in Burn for 2cc/3 damage instants with utility. Incinerate's utility, however, is not very good these days as Regenerate has been phased out for Indestructible.
Even Incinerate was Extended-type power. The red burn gauntlet in Standard at that time (7-9 eds.) was Shock/Volcanic Hammer.
When I started playing, this type of damage also had to come at sorcery speed. Times have certainly changed.
Also, one probably has room for both in the stock Naya list.
There are also the corner cases when (1) someone decides to block with a pro-red creature, and (2) you want to use Searing Blaze at instant speed and have AC and a non-fetch land in hand. But these should be fairly rare.
Thunderous Wrath is also a card you can't really sandbag, which can hurt you in some matchups even if it's not in your opening hand.
Yeah, I think that's just poor play. I have no idea why you would want to remove any 1cc spell against Ponza.
Between blowing up lands and Blood Moon, Ponza will rarely let you keep two white sources. And even if a Firewalker hits the board, half of Ponza's spells spells/threats are green, so you're not even getting full value.
Sure, dragons have pro-white. But you can't do much with his dragons short of double-bolting, and Paths work great against Titans and Thragtusks that can turn the game around quickly.
Grim Lavamancer provides him with a clock that's not particularly mana intensive -- and if Ponza is blowing up lands, then they're actually fuelling the Lavamancer. Ponza also doesn't exactly have a ton of removal, so once Lavaman hits the board, he has a chance to do some damage.