echoing the like of treetop village. Always a solid performer. 2 mana for a 3/3 trample is a great rate and can really help close out games while allowing you to play whatever you top decked. I would say the next best man land for abzan would be stirring wildwood, especially with all the spell queller's out there now, a 3/4 reach seems real relevant. Quagmire's deathtouch is relevant, but I think less so in this archetype with all the removal we play. I'd much rather have a shambling vent that I can gain some life off of.
Also curious what people's thoughts are on the number of manlands to play. I've been playing 1 shambling vent, 3 treetop village in my 23 land no hierarch list (curve top is 2 rhino) and been pretty happy with it.
Can anyone give me tips on playing against UW Control? I seem to be having a difficult time against that deck - is it a bad matchup? Any tips on sideboarding?
Added Note: The primer seems very out of date, any chance it could be updated?
play bob! LoTV and Bob are the best threats to play against uw.
This is the list I'm gonna bring to a tourny + pptq this weekend.
Some notes. Grim Flayer was always fine, the mana cost is a little annoying, but dropping down to 3 and eliminating a lot of white helps smooth out the mana base. Nihil spellbomb is a bit of a throw away slot, I figured I'd throw in another card to trigger delirium, and help out some of the gy based matchups that are likely real bad g1, but get way better post board. I'm thinking about removing the spell bomb and grim flayers, maybe playing a collective brutality in the main and some amount of tireless trackers and another scooze. Also, renegade rallier has been really good as a 1 of. Probably wouldn't bring it up to a second, but could be good.
Pretty happy with the matchup against storm and uw control. Storm seems unlosable with a scooze or spellbomb, and even better post board. Also the UW control matchup is pretty great with the 4 Bob package. The matchups that I'm worried about are Eldrazi / Tron and maybe valakut. We'll see how the weekend goes and hopefully I'll have a good write up!
path seems super relevant if your meta has a lot of edrazi/tron. We're pretty boned by wurmcoil engine or any of the 5 mana eldrazi, especially when they come down on t3 after a t2 tks takes out a relevant removal spell.
I think the hierarch build is decent, but is a bit more meta dependent, and also, how good is a t2 liliana. I think it's reasonable to say that a t1 thoughtsieze into a t2 goyf or bob, can be more effective than a t2 liliana.
Few points against hierarch:
Lots of removal for small creatures (fatal push, bolt, kcommand, abrupt decay), and remember, bolt the bord.
Doesn't tap for black (this is speculation, would need to crunch numbers)
Abzan is pretty loaded up at the 1 drop and taking a high threat level card is a huge advantage for the deck.
I played in my local weekly Modern-tournament yesterday to a 4-0 finish with the below Abzan deck. The starting point was the deck mentioned before that placed 23rd in the SCG Classic last weekend.
Changes from the original config are:
-1 Abrupt Decay for the 4th Fatal Push. Reasoning is that I would rather have another 1 CMC kill spell
-1 Vault of the Archangel for a Gavony Township since I really like the idea of having a late game trump in mirrors
-1 Mishra´s Bauble. I was considering a Nihil Spellbomb but decided that a Liliana, the Last Hope would be something I would appreciate more with my SB-plan of Leylines against GY-decks.
I played against BW Allies, Blue Tron, Jeskai Midrange and Eldrazi Tron. I am not drawing that many conclusions about my deck from the match-ups since they are not really likely to show up that often except ET. I did however enjoy the way the deck handled itself.
I am planning on playing a PPTQ this weekend with the deck with the following changes:
4th LoTV main and move new Lilly to SB since I believe the PPTQ will have more Eldrazi and DS. Though I am not 100% sure about new Lilly at all, might be better with a Blessed Alliance instead. To create room in the board I will cut down to 3 Leylines.
Anybody have any inputs?
Curious what your thoughts are on grim flayer without the bauble. I've been trying grim flayer's without baubles and it tends to feel a bit weird binning Liliana's for delirium, and less awkward binning creatures, but it never feels great. Wondering if bauble with grim flayer's is just right. I get that it's a nonbo if you bring in stony silence which.
Also the more I see blessed alliance the more I like having at least 1 copy main.
Also, fwiw, with the uptick of UW control I like 2 maelstrom pulse's. Solid way to deal with their big walkers if you're at parity in the mid to late game.
I think the 'magic as an investment' is an interesting topic. I got into legacy about a year ago, and bought into tundras and useas. I wouldn't be too disappointed if they reprinted stuff off the RL because it would mean more people to play with! I always bring my legacy deck with me in the hopes that someone would have a deck so I could play rather than playing EDH or standard. It would suck for people who made duals an investment, but whatever, it's a hobby where you do stuff!
modern bannings and the new eldrazi deck. people are speculating on it in advance of the modern pro tour. Expedition map is up to $3 for both MMA and Zendikar printings. Scrabbling claws is also spiking.
Agreed. Even cards like disenchant, which has 14 printings is $13 for alpha. Any card that has an alpha printing and sees any kind of play is worth a bunch more and will always stay that price, or close to. I think if the reserve list were abolished then cards would lose maybe 10% of their value, and then prices would go up because of the Modern Masters 2015 effect and everyone would praise wizards for making a smart move because their collection of 200+ dual lands went up 20%+ in price!
Who needs food when you have sweet sweet cardboard crack!!!
Modern is very quickly getting level in price with legacy. Affinity is around $1000, and DnT is around $1400. Modern Jund is around $2200, which is the price of miracles.
Plus as aforementioned the legacy meta game is a lot more stable, and a lot of the pieces are interchangeable in other decks, and there really are only a handful of expensive pieces that don't go into a second or third deck, and those decks are pretty fringe.
As you pointed out yourself, Legacy has also been losing a lot of support lately, so it's often harder to find events or even just random people to play with. That hasn't actually hurt the value of the decks much, though.
It's losing a lot of support at the high levels, but I think locally it's gaining a lot of support and wizards recent changes to modern are making a lot of modern players hesitant about the format moving forward, and the mtglegacy subreddit has seen a ton of new players all basically saying 'How do I transition from twin to legacy play'
I'm playing standard right now, but that is only because I had the luck to pull out two expedition that allowed me to buy the fetchlands I "needed" for a competitive deck (pulling 3 Gideons helped as well). The modern-worthy manabase is what is killing standard right now: those who can afford to play 8-12 fetchlands are playing modern, the others are just watching with envy.
At my local LGS, FNM used to be standard + draft. They included modern right around the release of BFZ. This friday, there were more modern players than standard players for the first time. And no one stayed to draft.
SOI will save standard (at least, the fetchlands rotating out). I'm hopeful OGW will at least save limited.
A lot of people, including myself, have used this excuse, that standard is really expensive. I don't think it holds up as a relevant reason why standard is hard. If you just decide to get into standard now, then sure it's a fine reason, but if you were playing around khans block, then there's no reason why you weren't able to get your hands on a playset of every fetch for around $200 if you paid cash, and also khans was a good set to draft, so I think it would be pretty easy to open a lot of them. I think the only card you can say is too expensive and kinda blindsided people is Jace.
I think tri colors + 1 are too pushed for oath and bfz to compete I think. I think nothing will happen until khans rotates out and the current archetypes are out. BFZ only added one deck, which is good, but it's only one deck. I think oath might make some others better, and maybe add another deck, but nothing crazy is going to happen until the fetches and clan leaders rotate out.
jund is very well positioned right now as well. Anything that plays hymn is going to be solid again and stand a good chance of winning. Reanimator will see the same amount of play as it always does, it's a solid deck that dies easily to disruption, but with DTT and blue decks not cornering the meta as much reanimator might have a bit of a resurgence.
the OP was pretty against the idea of EDH. Could be that the play group is just bad, and there are others out there, but yes they are great edh cards. nekusar not so much as you'll be 'that guy who plays nekusar' and get hated off the table everytime, or you'll win and nobody will want to play with you.
someone else mentioned a good point earlier in the thread, do you like sol ring and wheel of fortune for specific reasons to the card, or to the ability of the card. If you wanna play mana rocks, there are plenty of good ramp decks you can play. If you like having everyone discard and draw, there are plenty of cards that do that :). Those two cards push you into vintage because it's the only format they're both legal in. But you can play reforge the soul in modern which is a worse wheel of fortune. If you want to ramp, play llanowar elf. Obviously as you get closer to standard you're going to have to deal with worse versions of the effects you want, but there's a reason for that, and if you can't deal with it than I think you need to reassess your view on magic.
Also curious what people's thoughts are on the number of manlands to play. I've been playing 1 shambling vent, 3 treetop village in my 23 land no hierarch list (curve top is 2 rhino) and been pretty happy with it.
play bob! LoTV and Bob are the best threats to play against uw.
This is the list I'm gonna bring to a tourny + pptq this weekend.
4x Blooming Marsh
1x Forest
1x Godless Shrine
4x Marsh Flats
2x Overgrown Tomb
1x Shambling Vent
1x Swamp
1x Temple Garden
2x Treetop Village
1x Twilight Mire
4x Verdant Catacombs
Creature (14)
4x Dark Confidant
3x Grim Flayer
1x Renegade Rallier
2x Scavenging Ooze
4x Tarmogoyf
4x Inquisition of Kozilek
3x Lingering Souls
2x Maelstrom Pulse
2x Thoughtseize
2x Abrupt Decay
4x Fatal Push
2x Path to Exile
Artifact (1)
1x Nihil Spellbomb
Planeswalker (4)
3x Liliana of the Veil
1x Liliana, the Last Hope
2x Collective Brutality
2x Flaying Tendrils
2x Fulminator Mage
1x Gaddock Teeg
1x Go for the Throat
1x Nihil Spellbomb
2x Path to Exile
1x Ratchet Bomb
2x Stony Silence
1x Surgical Extraction
Some notes. Grim Flayer was always fine, the mana cost is a little annoying, but dropping down to 3 and eliminating a lot of white helps smooth out the mana base. Nihil spellbomb is a bit of a throw away slot, I figured I'd throw in another card to trigger delirium, and help out some of the gy based matchups that are likely real bad g1, but get way better post board. I'm thinking about removing the spell bomb and grim flayers, maybe playing a collective brutality in the main and some amount of tireless trackers and another scooze. Also, renegade rallier has been really good as a 1 of. Probably wouldn't bring it up to a second, but could be good.
Pretty happy with the matchup against storm and uw control. Storm seems unlosable with a scooze or spellbomb, and even better post board. Also the UW control matchup is pretty great with the 4 Bob package. The matchups that I'm worried about are Eldrazi / Tron and maybe valakut. We'll see how the weekend goes and hopefully I'll have a good write up!
I think the hierarch build is decent, but is a bit more meta dependent, and also, how good is a t2 liliana. I think it's reasonable to say that a t1 thoughtsieze into a t2 goyf or bob, can be more effective than a t2 liliana.
Few points against hierarch:
Lots of removal for small creatures (fatal push, bolt, kcommand, abrupt decay), and remember, bolt the bord.
Doesn't tap for black (this is speculation, would need to crunch numbers)
Abzan is pretty loaded up at the 1 drop and taking a high threat level card is a huge advantage for the deck.
Curious what your thoughts are on grim flayer without the bauble. I've been trying grim flayer's without baubles and it tends to feel a bit weird binning Liliana's for delirium, and less awkward binning creatures, but it never feels great. Wondering if bauble with grim flayer's is just right. I get that it's a nonbo if you bring in stony silence which.
Also the more I see blessed alliance the more I like having at least 1 copy main.
Also, fwiw, with the uptick of UW control I like 2 maelstrom pulse's. Solid way to deal with their big walkers if you're at parity in the mid to late game.
Modern is very quickly getting level in price with legacy. Affinity is around $1000, and DnT is around $1400. Modern Jund is around $2200, which is the price of miracles.
Plus as aforementioned the legacy meta game is a lot more stable, and a lot of the pieces are interchangeable in other decks, and there really are only a handful of expensive pieces that don't go into a second or third deck, and those decks are pretty fringe.
It's losing a lot of support at the high levels, but I think locally it's gaining a lot of support and wizards recent changes to modern are making a lot of modern players hesitant about the format moving forward, and the mtglegacy subreddit has seen a ton of new players all basically saying 'How do I transition from twin to legacy play'
A lot of people, including myself, have used this excuse, that standard is really expensive. I don't think it holds up as a relevant reason why standard is hard. If you just decide to get into standard now, then sure it's a fine reason, but if you were playing around khans block, then there's no reason why you weren't able to get your hands on a playset of every fetch for around $200 if you paid cash, and also khans was a good set to draft, so I think it would be pretty easy to open a lot of them. I think the only card you can say is too expensive and kinda blindsided people is Jace.
The rest of the lands are cheap.