I get talismans with karn and solemn, but just generally do people not find them awkward with remand, condescend, chalice, and map? Turn two I want to be doing those things more often than not. Turn three I want to be doing counterspells and thirst for knowledge or playing and cracking a map to get t4 tron.
Is giving up your t2 interaction/map crack really worth it to tap out for four mana cards t3?
I just never felt like going t2 talisman t3 solemn/karn was where I want to be in this format - esp not when im sitting on counterspells in hand that I have now skipped using for two turns :s
It is not worth jamming three temples just for three tks and an all is dust. Not finding a blue source early is death and you want academy ruins and a ld land for sure plus your twelve trons - thats fourteen minimum in a 25 land deck - youre at max 11 blue sources, and less if you want gemstone cavern or more ld lands.
So yeah I would say gemstone cavern or field of ruin are going to be better than those temples very often
How about storm? Do you chalice one one asap? Or hope to land it on two? I believe chalice on two v storm is gg unless they are playing wipe away instead of echoing truth (?) cant ritual or manamorphose.
Risk would be tapping out turn four and getting remanded and then combod out of course. The threat of that alone probably makes it better to just chalice on one asap and hope it hinders them
Vs burn how do people feel about chalice on one asap vs chalice on two on turn four? Ie would you wait?
Chalice on two stops destructive revelry and lots of spells, but not their creatures or rift/bolt/spike. It stops us from casting spatial contortion and repeal for one (ie our best answers to their one drops) as well as remand and condescend for one.
I used to think waiting for chalice on two was the right move so that it doesnt just get revelried away (I believe its common for burn to run four copies) but im starting to think getting it down on one asap is usually worth risking the revelry.
I also bring in two spell snare vs burn and storm which are just massive nonbos with chalice (either chalice is on one and we cant snare or its on two and already counters the spell we could snare).
What does uw success mean for stoneforge mystics unban prospects? Would uw control make the six slots available for sfm package? Or is this like people worrying that humans would run sfm (ie not very likely that it would even fit the deck)
Certainly a bit of a tougher sell to unban stoneforge if it will actually amp up uw control; just not sure if thats really a likely outcome. At the end of the day the "white" card making a difference is teferi which other colour combos cant access so id say there is still this issue of white kind-of sucking (although nothing like pre-teferi)
For what its worth I agree that karn scion doesnt seem to do anything blue tron actually needs. More often than not I have zero artifacts on board, or I have one out that is winning the game anyways. If karn ticked up to a game ending ult I could see it, but those servo tokens are anemic and slow ass card draw doesnt seem that good in a deck full of cantrips and dig.
Most people play one karn though so there has to be something to it (not unlike 2 slavers and tec edge - which similarly seem illogical to me).
I would love to see a u walker with x in casting cost like nissa steward of elements for this deck. Something you could fire down early to take a hit and loot or something but that would be huge with eight or more mana. Someday
What I did find with my gifts experiment was that maindeck crucible and batterskull were both pretty good. I've always had one crucible in the board for field of ruin decks, but maindecking seems reasonable as we can pitch lands to thirst and recur a couple lands (which we can find with tolaria or map). Bskull felt really good vs path and detention spheres. It's a little awkward because it eats fatal push and such g1 and then eats ancient grudge g2, but keeping one tower up to protect it is pretty doable, and it's a turn faster vs burn.
On the other hand emrakul the promised end was always dead. I think you want your finishers to be artifacts so you can toss them to tfk early and recur them w ruins later. You also don't want too many cards over six CMC period or you can get really lousy hands vs fast decks. I never actually cast emrakul, just found it was even more of a Mulligan than say sundering titan.
I'm on 25 lands with no signets. With academy ruins, field, GQ, and gemstone cavern I'm up to sixteen non-blue sources and 9 blue (7 island a river and a tolaria). Kind of worried that's getting too low on blue.
I would agree on the skill intensity. Everytime I cast it ifelt like there should be a correct four for the exact situation but it requires a tonne of forward thinking to get it right. I was hoping for some shortcuts like in classic gifts it's just norn or Iona, or in 4c you just make pure value piles like souls snap pulse cryptic or rites and a bunch of five drops.
I feel like a tonne of reps are needed to optimize play of a single gifts in this deck. Worse, as a singleton you won't see it that often to really master it. And when all is said and done it may not be much better than a supreme will for all the effort
So thats where I'm finding the hole in trying gifts online. I didnt add the buried ruin either, but just generally I get the 3rd and 4th best card for the situation which is often not very good Meanwhile you drop your 2 best cards in the GY.
situation 1) need 1 tron piece.
Tutor: Tron land, map, tolaria, whatever = get map+tolaria, 3 mana to finish tron is not putting us ahead mana for that turn at least, and we have to fish out our crucible if we want it now.
Situation 2) dying and need sweeper
Tutor: ugin, rift, ostone and... ruins?
Get: Rift+ruins probably. Bounce their board, then probably not have enough to immediately ruins+ostone (11 mana)
Situaiton 3) dying and need life
Tutor: bskull, wurmcoil, ruins, crucible.
Get: ruins+crucible.
Situation 4: need counterspell on the stack
Tutor: remand, condescend, supreme will, commit
Get: whatever the 2 least effective are. Commit would require access to 8 mana, etc.
Situation5 : have tron lands need to win.
Tutor: slaver, crucible, tolaria, map.
Get: tolaria+map, use to get ruins, ruins slaver.
Every gifts combo pretty much takes +1 turn before you get what you actually want. Adding noxious revival improves things a lot, but now you've got noxious revival in your deck. Buried ruin is less overhead, but then you have to reduce your blue count or something like gemstone cavern and its still pretty expensive to do what you want to do.
I would think as you get up into 2+ gifts you should just go UW and play actual gifts tron where the deck is built to abuse the card. And a one-of may just be a little too awkward at getting what you actually want
What are the key cards or changes to running a single gifts? I haven't tinkered with my list in a while but could try that out. Like would you main a crucible of worlds?
I think unless you play noxious revival or buried ruin most gifts piles get a turn slower:
Crucible ruins slaver and? I think you have to go map tolaria crucible slaver here, then tolaria or map for the ruins, then top the slaver and go off.
Board wipe - ugin ostone cyclonic and? I guess ruins here to force then to give you rift ugin or face looping ostones? Or you can toss in a wurmcoil/bskull/balista which are not wipes but could stabilize you too.
I just think revival and buried ruins would be going way too deep for a single gifts, so it becomes less obvious what you want to tutor for as you dont get "guaranteed" results without them. I think a lot of the power hinges on academy ruins tho, and crucible main would help ensure you keep access to it.
I was trying to think of a turn four non-tron gifts pile that would stabilize you and set you up to win vs a beatdown situation. You could grab missing tronland, wurmcoil, batterskull and - I guess aetherize or ruins?
Ill ptobably have to play it a lot to get a handle on what gifts can do vs various decks and where its worth a one-of something to facilitate better gifts piles
I don't play treasure mage at all because it doesn't seem good to me. I play trinket mage which gets ballista 90 percent of the time but occasionally grabs map chalice or explosives. When it does get ballista it's still putting two bodies out instead of one which is worth something. It lets me put out a blocker or pressure early while I can sandbag ballista until I get more mana.
How good is a second mindslaver on turn 3? Or a fourth wurmcoil or whatever. The various mages are played because the early body is sometimes useful at buying time vs aggressive decks, or making control decks do something (go ahead, path my scathe zombie).
I don't think I've ever seen a case where I used trinket mage or tolaria for a ballista and it made any difference vs drawing a ballista. I have however maged for map to complete Tron or find academy ruins at times where a straight ballista would have been moot (albeit never actually bad)
When you're behind early trinket mage can get a ballista to cast next turn giving you two cheap bodies. Treasure mage puts a dead card in your hand instead. I can't imagine ever feeling great about t3 treasure mage tutoring mindslaver.
A problem with forum like this is anybody new isn't going to read 732 pages of discussion to see what's already been said. Your link will soon be on an old page itself and that'll be the end of that l. Notwithstanding that I wouldn't point someone to a 2015 source for info on a deck anyways. The format is ridiculously different now and there's no way to know which advice in there has been rendered bad advice by format change
Yeah people can play whatever they like but ive put in quite a few matches with one mindslaver and I have never wished I had another one. Its a nice way to just end a grindy game with the lock and an out you can hope for in bad situations, but it is the first card I pitch to thirst given the chance. If im not in a position to lock the game im not real keen to cast mindslaver.
Another card I wouldnt mind upping to two is field of ruin. Manlands can actually be a problem since bounce spells cant hit them and ugin and ostone cant wipe them. I run two dismember main but ive still died several times to ravines and fumaroles. I just dont know if the deck can support any less blue; hands without islands are so much worse on turn two when you cant remand/condescend/repeal; and field on turn three as a blue source is still really anemic. Its good for getting you a second blue source, not so much the first.
In most of those situations whatever happened to the first one is just as likely to happen to the second. Ooze, counter, etc. I dont find I actually win that many games via slaver anyways so the idea of needing a redundant copy seems bizarre. If there was a common one of that id say a second copy would be good more often than not itd be ugin. He cant be tutored by a mage or recurred by ruins, and sometimes you need to discard to thirst early on just to stay afloat - then later end up wishing you had one.
More often than not I find a straight ten mana slaver is a time warp and a two-for-one. Often its a ten mana time warp and nothing else. I think the best I did recently was make a guy flashback grudge on a clue token, cast nissa steward of elements for zero, ewit with no return and fetch fail to find. More often its like - cast a spell into my condescend for zero run a manland into my blocker and tap you out.
Its far more often on the low-middle end than the high; so not an effect im often wishing to execute as a one-shot
Two slavers is not unusual, ijust don't get it personally. If you want to see it more reliably treasure mage is a virtual second copy that does other things too. If you're worried something will happen to the first one you can ruins it back, which is a card you want for the lock anyways. I guess if there's some scenario where slaver is your only win conditions and it gets exiled then yeah you'd need a second one but that seems very fringe. It could get hit with relic or thought knot sure, but also being your only way to win? Seems unlikely
Is giving up your t2 interaction/map crack really worth it to tap out for four mana cards t3?
I just never felt like going t2 talisman t3 solemn/karn was where I want to be in this format - esp not when im sitting on counterspells in hand that I have now skipped using for two turns :s
So yeah I would say gemstone cavern or field of ruin are going to be better than those temples very often
Risk would be tapping out turn four and getting remanded and then combod out of course. The threat of that alone probably makes it better to just chalice on one asap and hope it hinders them
Chalice on two stops destructive revelry and lots of spells, but not their creatures or rift/bolt/spike. It stops us from casting spatial contortion and repeal for one (ie our best answers to their one drops) as well as remand and condescend for one.
I used to think waiting for chalice on two was the right move so that it doesnt just get revelried away (I believe its common for burn to run four copies) but im starting to think getting it down on one asap is usually worth risking the revelry.
I also bring in two spell snare vs burn and storm which are just massive nonbos with chalice (either chalice is on one and we cant snare or its on two and already counters the spell we could snare).
Certainly a bit of a tougher sell to unban stoneforge if it will actually amp up uw control; just not sure if thats really a likely outcome. At the end of the day the "white" card making a difference is teferi which other colour combos cant access so id say there is still this issue of white kind-of sucking (although nothing like pre-teferi)
Most people play one karn though so there has to be something to it (not unlike 2 slavers and tec edge - which similarly seem illogical to me).
I would love to see a u walker with x in casting cost like nissa steward of elements for this deck. Something you could fire down early to take a hit and loot or something but that would be huge with eight or more mana. Someday
On the other hand emrakul the promised end was always dead. I think you want your finishers to be artifacts so you can toss them to tfk early and recur them w ruins later. You also don't want too many cards over six CMC period or you can get really lousy hands vs fast decks. I never actually cast emrakul, just found it was even more of a Mulligan than say sundering titan.
I'm on 25 lands with no signets. With academy ruins, field, GQ, and gemstone cavern I'm up to sixteen non-blue sources and 9 blue (7 island a river and a tolaria). Kind of worried that's getting too low on blue.
I feel like a tonne of reps are needed to optimize play of a single gifts in this deck. Worse, as a singleton you won't see it that often to really master it. And when all is said and done it may not be much better than a supreme will for all the effort
situation 1) need 1 tron piece.
Tutor: Tron land, map, tolaria, whatever = get map+tolaria, 3 mana to finish tron is not putting us ahead mana for that turn at least, and we have to fish out our crucible if we want it now.
Situation 2) dying and need sweeper
Tutor: ugin, rift, ostone and... ruins?
Get: Rift+ruins probably. Bounce their board, then probably not have enough to immediately ruins+ostone (11 mana)
Situaiton 3) dying and need life
Tutor: bskull, wurmcoil, ruins, crucible.
Get: ruins+crucible.
Situation 4: need counterspell on the stack
Tutor: remand, condescend, supreme will, commit
Get: whatever the 2 least effective are. Commit would require access to 8 mana, etc.
Situation5 : have tron lands need to win.
Tutor: slaver, crucible, tolaria, map.
Get: tolaria+map, use to get ruins, ruins slaver.
Every gifts combo pretty much takes +1 turn before you get what you actually want. Adding noxious revival improves things a lot, but now you've got noxious revival in your deck. Buried ruin is less overhead, but then you have to reduce your blue count or something like gemstone cavern and its still pretty expensive to do what you want to do.
I would think as you get up into 2+ gifts you should just go UW and play actual gifts tron where the deck is built to abuse the card. And a one-of may just be a little too awkward at getting what you actually want
I think unless you play noxious revival or buried ruin most gifts piles get a turn slower:
Crucible ruins slaver and? I think you have to go map tolaria crucible slaver here, then tolaria or map for the ruins, then top the slaver and go off.
Board wipe - ugin ostone cyclonic and? I guess ruins here to force then to give you rift ugin or face looping ostones? Or you can toss in a wurmcoil/bskull/balista which are not wipes but could stabilize you too.
I just think revival and buried ruins would be going way too deep for a single gifts, so it becomes less obvious what you want to tutor for as you dont get "guaranteed" results without them. I think a lot of the power hinges on academy ruins tho, and crucible main would help ensure you keep access to it.
I was trying to think of a turn four non-tron gifts pile that would stabilize you and set you up to win vs a beatdown situation. You could grab missing tronland, wurmcoil, batterskull and - I guess aetherize or ruins?
Ill ptobably have to play it a lot to get a handle on what gifts can do vs various decks and where its worth a one-of something to facilitate better gifts piles
How good is a second mindslaver on turn 3? Or a fourth wurmcoil or whatever. The various mages are played because the early body is sometimes useful at buying time vs aggressive decks, or making control decks do something (go ahead, path my scathe zombie).
I don't think I've ever seen a case where I used trinket mage or tolaria for a ballista and it made any difference vs drawing a ballista. I have however maged for map to complete Tron or find academy ruins at times where a straight ballista would have been moot (albeit never actually bad)
When you're behind early trinket mage can get a ballista to cast next turn giving you two cheap bodies. Treasure mage puts a dead card in your hand instead. I can't imagine ever feeling great about t3 treasure mage tutoring mindslaver.
Another card I wouldnt mind upping to two is field of ruin. Manlands can actually be a problem since bounce spells cant hit them and ugin and ostone cant wipe them. I run two dismember main but ive still died several times to ravines and fumaroles. I just dont know if the deck can support any less blue; hands without islands are so much worse on turn two when you cant remand/condescend/repeal; and field on turn three as a blue source is still really anemic. Its good for getting you a second blue source, not so much the first.
More often than not I find a straight ten mana slaver is a time warp and a two-for-one. Often its a ten mana time warp and nothing else. I think the best I did recently was make a guy flashback grudge on a clue token, cast nissa steward of elements for zero, ewit with no return and fetch fail to find. More often its like - cast a spell into my condescend for zero run a manland into my blocker and tap you out.
Its far more often on the low-middle end than the high; so not an effect im often wishing to execute as a one-shot