Wow, just found this cube, great work. I think I'm going to try it out in paper. I have a bunch of questions I hope you have the time to answer.
Do you have an up-to-date guide of draft archetypes? Did you write anything about how and why you changed from 450 to 540?
How is this cube best drafted? 8 people with 3 packs of 15 cards? Do you do anything special when you have less than 8 people? How would you organize a "tournament" (casual, of course) with fewer people?
How many of each basic land do you find yourself needing with 8 players?
Don't post here much but I do use you all as a resource, so I figure I should give back when I can. Not too much to say actually, because I didn't take any notes but I wanted to report I got 17th place with U Tron at GP Hong Kong last week. I was very close to making top 8, but I lost the last round to Jund (of all things!) Ending up with a 11-2-2 record after 15 rounds of Swiss.
No intentional draws. The story is that round 1 I was paired against UW control and that game ended in a draw, putting me in the "draw bracket" for the rest of day one. I would never advise anyone intentionally getting a draw round one (it is, for example, a reason I didn't make top 8), but perhaps only playing against other decks with draws set me up for some good matchups, or at least avoiding a lot of the bad ones.
For my matches, again sorry, I didn't take any notes, but I recall playing UW control 4 times, G Tron, Humans 2 times, Eldrazi Tron, Bant Spirits, Jund 2 times, and a home brew UG midrange good stuff deck. The rest I forget. My 2 draws were to UW control, and 1 loss to Humans, 1 loss to Jund.
Jund is a pretty good matchup for us, so I was sad to lose out of top 8 because of it. But, to be fair, this Jund was a bit different. Very agro, he had 4 Bloodbraid Elfs, and he even had a Spring Cleaning for my Wurm Coil!
Sooo, I've been playing U Tron for many years, but this past year I've mostly switched over to EDH and actually haven't been playing any Modern at all. This was actually my first paper Modern tournament since last years GP. I had a about a month of cramming on MTGO before this GP, but I still felt unprepared as to the meta. So my deck choices are what they are.
One thing I will say, is that I've never liked the Talismans, and am not impressed with the new Karn. I used to play 2 Wurm Coils, 1 Ugin main. I switched it to 2 Ugins main, 1 Wurm coil to help with the Humans matchup.
I'm mostly focusing on the early game in my analysis, because I feel that's the weak point of our deck. Utron has an probably the best late game of any deck in the format, so while Thirst is definitely better late game, I'm more concerned about cards that shine in the early game -- that let us get out of the early game and to the late game.
Anticipate is much more flexible in the early game. I'm much happier keeping a hand with no counters if it has anticipate (vs Thirst) and I'm much happier keeping a hand with 1 Anticipate and 1 Thirst (vs 2 Thirsts). Land, go > Land, go > Land, eot Thirst is a losing plan verses Affinity, Burn, Death & Taxes, etc; where as Land, go > Land, eot Anticipate > Land, Condescend is much better.
Anticipate also opens up turn 4 Anticipate + Remand/Condescend or Snap block eot Anticipate.
Turn 5 an on Thirst is better. So how many copies of a card you don't want before turn 5 should you play? 4 is defensible. After all the card is super good, and after turn 5 you do want as many as you can get. But I like 3 because I don't like them to clog my opening hand -- and remember I do play snapcaster and Torrential Gearhulk has virtual extra copies. And then I replaced one for Supreme Will because the 3 cost card selection is very similar, and it can be a counter when you need it.
Of course it's all tradeoffs, sometimes Thirst is better, sometimes Anticipate is better, and sometimes Supreme Will is better. I wouldn't leave home without 5 to 6 copies of them all together, so you're going to have to do a mixup anyways.
I used to say the same thing, in fact you can read me saying that if you go back to page 200 or something in this thread. But I think modern is getting faster, and there are a lot of fast decks where you can't afford to take turn off from interacting with them. That plus thirst is not a card you want as a 2 of in your opening hand. Here's my Thirst history:
When Supreme will came out a lot of people were talking about it being a replacement for Mana Leak, but that's wrong in my opinion. It's a replacement for Thirst. Hell, it's not that infrequent that "1 of 4" is better than "2 of 3" -- you are often in desperate digging mode for that last tron piece, or a bomb to cast.
Now Ulamog is wonderful, recently he has been prompting as many on the spot concessions as Mindslaver. Since the printing of Fatal Push, decks have been running more of that and less of Path to Exile (also the reason I'm up to 2x Wurmcoil main), so he's Less of a liability now. He's really the jack of all trades -- if you can cast him he will be good verses almost any deck (unlike Darksteal Colossus or even Wurmcoil sometimes).
He costs 10 mana -- same as Mindslaver, but I play online where Mindslaver is less good. (lost a game yesterday to Merfolk after I got the slaver lock, very sad)
But where he really shines is against RG/BG Tron.
This is a matchup which is not great for us, especially if you're unprepared. One of the biggest problems is that their big things to do with tron mana are much better than ours. Very often you both get tron mana and if you're putting out Wurmcoil, and they drop Karn -- you lose. This guy can shore that up for us, you play him and you win on the spot. Of course our number 1 game plan is still to disrupt them and keep them off tron, but if you have a lot of tron in your meta I would advise Ulamog as a backup plan.
I have some data too! This will be relevant for anyone on MTGO.
About me, I have been playing this deck for a year or two now, recently took a break for a while, and have been getting back into it. I play almost exclusively on MTGO and usually in the friendly leagues because this is still a budget build and frankly because I win more there
Since the release of Hour of Devastation I've been grinding matches on MTGO and keeping track of the results. So far I've played 100 matches. Here they are: http://imgur.com/krmcZWK
I'm pretty happy with my results. On MTGO each league is 5 matches with prizes for a 3-2 record or better (higher than the entry). Out of the 20 leagues I only had a losing record 3 times. Each individual matchup is broken down, but against the most frequent decks I'm able to get a greater than 50% matchwin percentage. The only outlier is affinity (0% matchwin), but I'm going to chalk that up to variance -- It's not that bad a matchup.
Mostly posting here to share my decklist and results in case anyone wanted to see some mtgo data. I'd be happy to discuss my card choices if anyone likes. Like I said this is a bit of a budget build, if I had the money I would buy a third copy of Chalice of the Void and replace the Relics with Surgical Extractions
I like your SB except its a little weird that 4 contortions and 3 dismembers are all on the SB. I play 4 and 2 myself, but I have 2 Contortions and 1 Dismember main. I would suggest putting some of these in the main deck to free up your sideboard a little and give you some outs game 1 in the matchups where you really need them.
I think we all need to really sit down and ask our selves this. That's what I did; answer: not often.
I would say 1 Titan / 1 Ugin is far better then 2 Ugins 0 Titan. Since Ugin is not great vs Affinty / Infect / Bant Eldrazi / Burn / RG Tron / SZoo either I rather have Titan in those matchups.
No, Ugin isn't great in any of those matchups, but its a lot better than Titan yes?
Titan is absolutely useless in those matchusps. And those are are bad machups. So lets try to make the bad matchups better.
I understand how controversial this is. But, when I ran 4, I often came across too many. If you are facing an aggressive deck, like infect, burn, or affinity, then, ok, having one in your opening hand is not good, but if you run 4 you run the risk of having 2. This is bad, and this is very bad. There are hands you can't keep (vs aggro) with Thirst, that you can keep with Anticipate.
Let me ask you a question. How many of you ever side out Thirst for Knowledge? I do, on the draw against hyper aggro decks TfK is a bad card. You should know this.
Aggro decks are our nemesis. In all things, I try to improve our bad matchups while not dis-improving our good ones. I think a 3-2 split of Thirst/Anticipate accomplishes this goal well.
I have been playing this deck for about 3 years now, and I have been playing Sundering Titan for about as long. So I am sad to say it, but this guy is now firmly in the 'win more' category. Decks and mana bases have been shifting to places where this guy does not go. A lot of decks don't mind losing a few of their lands (infect, RG Titan Breach, Dredge), a lot of decks will only lose 1 land (Merfolk, Elves), a lot of decks don't run/rely on basic land types (Affinity, Eldrazi, RG Tron, Ad Nauseum).
But the nail in the coffin: a lot of 3 color mid range decks, which is where Sundering Titan should shine, run surprisingly few basic land type cards. Jund, Junk, Nahiri RWU, Azban Company, these desks are full of fast lands, man lands, and utility lands. A turn 4 Sundering Titan no longer means you destroy 3 lands. Now its often 2. Sometimes 1.
Its still always good against Scapeshift and Grixis Delver, and it can be good vs Burn and Suicide Zoo, but only if you're a head on the board.
Verdict: win more.
Do your self a favor and run an extra Wurmcoil, Mindslaver, or Ugin. These are the guys that do the work.
Yeah, if you cast it for x=7 you're going to have a good time, no doubt. But you're only getting half the cards, and if you really need one in particular, not that one. Typically you're getting 2, 3, or 4 cards, and considering getting your opponent involved is never a good choice, I'd just rather have a Thirst for Knowledge. For 2 cards, Thirst delivers mightily better. No only is it 3 mana (vs 5) but you get to choose, not your opponent.
But you already run 4 Thirsts? Well you shouldn't be. You know whats better than your 4th copy of Thirst? an Anticipate or 2. A lot of the time we are simply digging. We only need 1 card, and we were only going to keep 1 card from Thirst anyways. Anticipate does it better. 2 mana is key because 4 mana is the crucial turn. The ability to draw into a remand or Spatial contortion on turn 4, or snapcaster anticipate on turn 4, is so strong.
Thirst is the MVP of the late game, but he can clog up our hand early on. Anticipate smooths everything out. I recommend a 3 Thirst 2 Anticipate split.
Just 5-0'd a Friendly league on MTGO, and since I haven't posted my list in a while I felt like now was as good of a time to do it as any. Of course I don't normally 5-0, but it has been a long time since I did worse than 3-2. You can get pretty consistent results with this.
This time around I faced: Affinity, Elves, Dredge, Burn, and mono blue taking turns.
I want to remove Engineered Explosives from the Sideboard, its not great. What works well vs Bant Eldrazi?
Here is a sideboard discussion I posted on reddit.
I play on MTGO and here is my sideboard and thought process.
3x Spreading Seas -- RG Tron, Infect, Affinity
My concession to RG Tron, I can't find any other way to beat it. But these do do a good job keeping them off tron while keeping your hand flowing. Also good against man lands, which are otherwise notoriously difficult to deal with.
2x Hurky's Recall -- Affinity, Lantern Control
It's obviously quite good against these decks due to the high number of artifacts they play. This can give you time to set up your Chalice of the Voids correctly, then blow them out. Snapcastable!
2x Surgical Extraction -- Dredge, Ad Nauseum, RG Titan Shift.
A blow out vs Dredge (choose their recurrable creatures not the dredge cards themselves!), Surgical is also good vs many fringe combo decks like Ad Nauseum. I also sometimes bring it in vs RG Titan Shift, their spells are highly counterable, and if you can get Titan or Valakut the game gets that much easier.
2x Squelch -- RG Tron, fetchlands, planeswalkers
Others will talk at length about squelch. I'm not a huge fan of it. It's great vs WR/WRU against an ultimating Nahiri and also their fetches. It is really here for the RG Tron Matchup, stopping a map, or a Ghost Quarter or a planeswalker activation is good.
2x Spell Snare -- We all know the value of Remand/Condescend, but sometimes these are too slow on the draw. So game 2 (or 3) you can side them in vs decks that get too much value from their two drops (Dark Confident, Steel Overseer, Thalia, or Voice of Resurgence, to name a few). It also does a good dispel impression in counter wars (targeting Remand, Negate, or Mana leak). Great against Burn also.
1x Negate -- Good against non creature spells.
Pretty much any deck that is looking to resolve non creatures spells that cost 3 or more you want this. So not Merfolk, Affinity, Dredge, Death and Taxes, or Bant Eldrazi, but pretty much everything else.
1x Spacial Contortion (2 main) -- Infect, Affinity, etc
Aggressive creature decks. Merfolk, Elves, Burn, also good utility creatures like Dark Confident.
1x Chalice of the Void (2 main) -- so many
So many decks rely on 1 mana spells. We don't so this is great. I could write a whole essay on how good Chalice is, but that is mostly for the 2 in the main deck. Usually either they come out or this comes in (sometimes we can leave 1 in though to protect the Platinum Angel against Path to Exile). So post SB you're really only going to be setting this on 1 (Infect, Burn, Boggles, Grixis Delver, etc) or 0 (Living End, Affinity (on the play), Ad Nauseum, pacts). Don't fret, you'll be surprised how still relevant a turn 2 Chalice on 1 is, even on the draw.
1x Engineered Explosives -- Suicide Zoo, Infect, Burn, Boggles, Elves
But Sam, you can only set it on 1, you have no other colors! Wrong, with blood moon out we can get it up to 2. But yes I know and 1 is all for (well and zero). This is my concession to Suicide Zoo, but its good for some other things too. Randomly wreaks token strategies.
So taking a list close to shok's latest to the orlando open and wanted advice on a specific card choice. I'm running ghost quarter right now over tectonic edge because I feel in the matchups where ld matters, tron,infect,affinity, our opponents have fewer than 4 lands on the field when we want to blow up ole inky or a tron piece. However there are matchups when tech edge is better such as in u/w control and r/g valakut but i feel those are already good matchups and i would rather lose minor points in a good matchup then die to an inkmoth nexus because my infect opponent has 3 lands. thoughts?
If, against an unknown opponent, you get a 2 land hand with one island and one tron piece, and no one mana spells (no map or anything), which land do you lead with?
Since it doesn't actually matter this is purely a psychological question right? Do you want them to think you're keeping a bad RG tron hand, or do you want them to think, "what deck plays island go"?
I'm a new player to the deck. I just finished 3 leagues on MTGO with the stock list from the main post. (1-4, 2-3, and 4-1). Here are my thoughts.
18 Lands seams a little light, I mulliganed a lot of other wise good one land hands. And I feel operating without any help (like Puresteel Paladin) is the norm. I'm thinking of going up to 19 or 20? But then there is mana flood. Mask of Memory? Or what else?
And I think cutting a Darksteel Citadel for a plains is a good idea. Metalcraft isn't that relevant, and a turn 2 Puresteel Paladin is.
I feel the sideboard is not great, though I'm not sure what to do about that yet. Any suggestions?
My initial feeling is that red is worth investigating. (new RW fastlands from the latest set eh?) If anyone has done some testing I would love to hear from you.
Do you have an up-to-date guide of draft archetypes? Did you write anything about how and why you changed from 450 to 540?
How is this cube best drafted? 8 people with 3 packs of 15 cards? Do you do anything special when you have less than 8 people? How would you organize a "tournament" (casual, of course) with fewer people?
How many of each basic land do you find yourself needing with 8 players?
Don't post here much but I do use you all as a resource, so I figure I should give back when I can. Not too much to say actually, because I didn't take any notes but I wanted to report I got 17th place with U Tron at GP Hong Kong last week. I was very close to making top 8, but I lost the last round to Jund (of all things!) Ending up with a 11-2-2 record after 15 rounds of Swiss.
No intentional draws. The story is that round 1 I was paired against UW control and that game ended in a draw, putting me in the "draw bracket" for the rest of day one. I would never advise anyone intentionally getting a draw round one (it is, for example, a reason I didn't make top 8), but perhaps only playing against other decks with draws set me up for some good matchups, or at least avoiding a lot of the bad ones.
For my matches, again sorry, I didn't take any notes, but I recall playing UW control 4 times, G Tron, Humans 2 times, Eldrazi Tron, Bant Spirits, Jund 2 times, and a home brew UG midrange good stuff deck. The rest I forget. My 2 draws were to UW control, and 1 loss to Humans, 1 loss to Jund.
Jund is a pretty good matchup for us, so I was sad to lose out of top 8 because of it. But, to be fair, this Jund was a bit different. Very agro, he had 4 Bloodbraid Elfs, and he even had a Spring Cleaning for my Wurm Coil!
As for my deck:
4 Condescend
3 Remand
3 Thirst for Knowledge
1 Wurmcoil Engine
2 Ugin, the Spirit Dragon
2 Repeal
4 Urza's Tower
1 Mindslaver
1 Treasure Mage
2 Anticipate
1 Chalice of the Void
1 Mana Leak
1 Oblivion Stone
1 Solemn Simulacrum
1 Cyclonic Rift
1 Snapcaster Mage
1 Supreme Will
1 Walking Ballista
1 Dismember
1 Ulamog, the Ceaseless Hunger
1 Spell Burst
1 Torrential Gearhulk
4 Urza's Power Plant
4 Urza's Mine
1 Tectonic Edge
9 Island
1 Gemstone Caverns
1 Field of Ruin
1 Academy Ruins
1 Wurmcoil Engine
2 Spatial Contortion
3 Surgical Extraction
1 Chalice of the Void
3 Negate
1 Relic of Progenitus
1 Dismember
Sooo, I've been playing U Tron for many years, but this past year I've mostly switched over to EDH and actually haven't been playing any Modern at all. This was actually my first paper Modern tournament since last years GP. I had a about a month of cramming on MTGO before this GP, but I still felt unprepared as to the meta. So my deck choices are what they are.
One thing I will say, is that I've never liked the Talismans, and am not impressed with the new Karn. I used to play 2 Wurm Coils, 1 Ugin main. I switched it to 2 Ugins main, 1 Wurm coil to help with the Humans matchup.
Anticipate is much more flexible in the early game. I'm much happier keeping a hand with no counters if it has anticipate (vs Thirst) and I'm much happier keeping a hand with 1 Anticipate and 1 Thirst (vs 2 Thirsts). Land, go > Land, go > Land, eot Thirst is a losing plan verses Affinity, Burn, Death & Taxes, etc; where as Land, go > Land, eot Anticipate > Land, Condescend is much better.
Anticipate also opens up turn 4 Anticipate + Remand/Condescend or Snap block eot Anticipate.
Turn 5 an on Thirst is better. So how many copies of a card you don't want before turn 5 should you play? 4 is defensible. After all the card is super good, and after turn 5 you do want as many as you can get. But I like 3 because I don't like them to clog my opening hand -- and remember I do play snapcaster and Torrential Gearhulk has virtual extra copies. And then I replaced one for Supreme Will because the 3 cost card selection is very similar, and it can be a counter when you need it.
Of course it's all tradeoffs, sometimes Thirst is better, sometimes Anticipate is better, and sometimes Supreme Will is better. I wouldn't leave home without 5 to 6 copies of them all together, so you're going to have to do a mixup anyways.
4x Thirst > 3x Thirst + 2x Anticipate > 2x Thirst + 2x Anticipate + 1x Supreme will.
When Supreme will came out a lot of people were talking about it being a replacement for Mana Leak, but that's wrong in my opinion. It's a replacement for Thirst. Hell, it's not that infrequent that "1 of 4" is better than "2 of 3" -- you are often in desperate digging mode for that last tron piece, or a bomb to cast.
Now Ulamog is wonderful, recently he has been prompting as many on the spot concessions as Mindslaver. Since the printing of Fatal Push, decks have been running more of that and less of Path to Exile (also the reason I'm up to 2x Wurmcoil main), so he's Less of a liability now. He's really the jack of all trades -- if you can cast him he will be good verses almost any deck (unlike Darksteal Colossus or even Wurmcoil sometimes).
He costs 10 mana -- same as Mindslaver, but I play online where Mindslaver is less good. (lost a game yesterday to Merfolk after I got the slaver lock, very sad)
But where he really shines is against RG/BG Tron.
This is a matchup which is not great for us, especially if you're unprepared. One of the biggest problems is that their big things to do with tron mana are much better than ours. Very often you both get tron mana and if you're putting out Wurmcoil, and they drop Karn -- you lose. This guy can shore that up for us, you play him and you win on the spot. Of course our number 1 game plan is still to disrupt them and keep them off tron, but if you have a lot of tron in your meta I would advise Ulamog as a backup plan.
About me, I have been playing this deck for a year or two now, recently took a break for a while, and have been getting back into it. I play almost exclusively on MTGO and usually in the friendly leagues because this is still a budget build and frankly because I win more there
Firstly, Here is the deck:
1 Oblivion Stone
2 Wurmcoil Engine
1 Torrential Gearhulk
1 Mindslaver
1 Ugin, the Spirit Dragon
1 Ulamog, the Ceaseless Hunger
Value Creatures:
1 Solemn Simulacrum
1 Snapcaster Mage
1 Treasure Mage
Counters:
4 Condescend
3 Remand
2 Mana Leak
1 Spellburst
1 Supreme Will
2 Spatial Contortion
2 Repeal
1 Cyclonic Rift
Card Draw:
2 Anticipate
2 Thirst for Knowledge
Artifacts:
4 Expedition Map
2 Chalice of the Void
Lands (25):
4 Urza's Tower
4 Urza's Power Plant
4 Urza's Mine
1 Tectonic Edge
1 Ghost Quatar
1 Gemstone Caverns
1 Academy Ruins
9 Island
2 Spreading Seas
2 Relic of Progenitus
1 Spatial Contortion
1 Engineered Explosives
2 Filigree Familiar
2 Negate
1 Dispel
2 Hurkyl's Recal
2 Ceremonious Rejection
Since the release of Hour of Devastation I've been grinding matches on MTGO and keeping track of the results. So far I've played 100 matches. Here they are: http://imgur.com/krmcZWK
I'm pretty happy with my results. On MTGO each league is 5 matches with prizes for a 3-2 record or better (higher than the entry). Out of the 20 leagues I only had a losing record 3 times. Each individual matchup is broken down, but against the most frequent decks I'm able to get a greater than 50% matchwin percentage. The only outlier is affinity (0% matchwin), but I'm going to chalk that up to variance -- It's not that bad a matchup.
Mostly posting here to share my decklist and results in case anyone wanted to see some mtgo data. I'd be happy to discuss my card choices if anyone likes. Like I said this is a bit of a budget build, if I had the money I would buy a third copy of Chalice of the Void and replace the Relics with Surgical Extractions
I like your SB except its a little weird that 4 contortions and 3 dismembers are all on the SB. I play 4 and 2 myself, but I have 2 Contortions and 1 Dismember main. I would suggest putting some of these in the main deck to free up your sideboard a little and give you some outs game 1 in the matchups where you really need them.
I think we all need to really sit down and ask our selves this. That's what I did; answer: not often.
No, Ugin isn't great in any of those matchups, but its a lot better than Titan yes?
Titan is absolutely useless in those matchusps. And those are are bad machups. So lets try to make the bad matchups better.
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As for Thirst for Knowledge,
I understand how controversial this is. But, when I ran 4, I often came across too many. If you are facing an aggressive deck, like infect, burn, or affinity, then, ok, having one in your opening hand is not good, but if you run 4 you run the risk of having 2. This is bad, and this is very bad. There are hands you can't keep (vs aggro) with Thirst, that you can keep with Anticipate.
Let me ask you a question. How many of you ever side out Thirst for Knowledge? I do, on the draw against hyper aggro decks TfK is a bad card. You should know this.
Aggro decks are our nemesis. In all things, I try to improve our bad matchups while not dis-improving our good ones. I think a 3-2 split of Thirst/Anticipate accomplishes this goal well.
1. Sundering Titan.
I have been playing this deck for about 3 years now, and I have been playing Sundering Titan for about as long. So I am sad to say it, but this guy is now firmly in the 'win more' category. Decks and mana bases have been shifting to places where this guy does not go. A lot of decks don't mind losing a few of their lands (infect, RG Titan Breach, Dredge), a lot of decks will only lose 1 land (Merfolk, Elves), a lot of decks don't run/rely on basic land types (Affinity, Eldrazi, RG Tron, Ad Nauseum).
But the nail in the coffin: a lot of 3 color mid range decks, which is where Sundering Titan should shine, run surprisingly few basic land type cards. Jund, Junk, Nahiri RWU, Azban Company, these desks are full of fast lands, man lands, and utility lands. A turn 4 Sundering Titan no longer means you destroy 3 lands. Now its often 2. Sometimes 1.
Its still always good against Scapeshift and Grixis Delver, and it can be good vs Burn and Suicide Zoo, but only if you're a head on the board.
Verdict: win more.
Do your self a favor and run an extra Wurmcoil, Mindslaver, or Ugin. These are the guys that do the work.
2. Epiphany at the Drownyard
Yeah, if you cast it for x=7 you're going to have a good time, no doubt. But you're only getting half the cards, and if you really need one in particular, not that one. Typically you're getting 2, 3, or 4 cards, and considering getting your opponent involved is never a good choice, I'd just rather have a Thirst for Knowledge. For 2 cards, Thirst delivers mightily better. No only is it 3 mana (vs 5) but you get to choose, not your opponent.
But you already run 4 Thirsts? Well you shouldn't be. You know whats better than your 4th copy of Thirst? an Anticipate or 2. A lot of the time we are simply digging. We only need 1 card, and we were only going to keep 1 card from Thirst anyways. Anticipate does it better. 2 mana is key because 4 mana is the crucial turn. The ability to draw into a remand or Spatial contortion on turn 4, or snapcaster anticipate on turn 4, is so strong.
Thirst is the MVP of the late game, but he can clog up our hand early on. Anticipate smooths everything out. I recommend a 3 Thirst 2 Anticipate split.
Verdict: win more
This time around I faced: Affinity, Elves, Dredge, Burn, and mono blue taking turns.
9 Island
1 Academy Ruins
1 Gemstone Caverns
1 Ghost Quarter
1 Tectonic Edge
4 Urza's Mine
4 Urza's Tower
4 Urza's Power Plant
Artifacts
2 Chalice of the Void
4 Expedition Map
1 Oblivion Stone
2 Anticipate
3 Thirst for Knowledge
Counters
4 Remand
4 Condescend
1 Spell Burst
Removal
2 Repeal
2 Spacial Contortion
Big Stuff
2 Mindslaver
2 Wurmcoil Engine
1 Platinum Angel
2 Ugin, the Spirit Dragon
2 Spell Snare
2 Hurkyl's Recall
1 Negate
3 Spreading Seas
2 Squelch
2 Surgical Extraction
1 Spacial Contortion
1 Engineered Explosives
1 Chalice of the Void
I want to remove Engineered Explosives from the Sideboard, its not great. What works well vs Bant Eldrazi?
Here is a sideboard discussion I posted on reddit.
3x Spreading Seas -- RG Tron, Infect, Affinity
My concession to RG Tron, I can't find any other way to beat it. But these do do a good job keeping them off tron while keeping your hand flowing. Also good against man lands, which are otherwise notoriously difficult to deal with.
2x Hurky's Recall -- Affinity, Lantern Control
It's obviously quite good against these decks due to the high number of artifacts they play. This can give you time to set up your Chalice of the Voids correctly, then blow them out. Snapcastable!
2x Surgical Extraction -- Dredge, Ad Nauseum, RG Titan Shift.
A blow out vs Dredge (choose their recurrable creatures not the dredge cards themselves!), Surgical is also good vs many fringe combo decks like Ad Nauseum. I also sometimes bring it in vs RG Titan Shift, their spells are highly counterable, and if you can get Titan or Valakut the game gets that much easier.
2x Squelch -- RG Tron, fetchlands, planeswalkers
Others will talk at length about squelch. I'm not a huge fan of it. It's great vs WR/WRU against an ultimating Nahiri and also their fetches. It is really here for the RG Tron Matchup, stopping a map, or a Ghost Quarter or a planeswalker activation is good.
2x Spell Snare -- We all know the value of Remand/Condescend, but sometimes these are too slow on the draw. So game 2 (or 3) you can side them in vs decks that get too much value from their two drops (Dark Confident, Steel Overseer, Thalia, or Voice of Resurgence, to name a few). It also does a good dispel impression in counter wars (targeting Remand, Negate, or Mana leak). Great against Burn also.
1x Negate -- Good against non creature spells.
Pretty much any deck that is looking to resolve non creatures spells that cost 3 or more you want this. So not Merfolk, Affinity, Dredge, Death and Taxes, or Bant Eldrazi, but pretty much everything else.
1x Spacial Contortion (2 main) -- Infect, Affinity, etc
Aggressive creature decks. Merfolk, Elves, Burn, also good utility creatures like Dark Confident.
1x Chalice of the Void (2 main) -- so many
So many decks rely on 1 mana spells. We don't so this is great. I could write a whole essay on how good Chalice is, but that is mostly for the 2 in the main deck. Usually either they come out or this comes in (sometimes we can leave 1 in though to protect the Platinum Angel against Path to Exile). So post SB you're really only going to be setting this on 1 (Infect, Burn, Boggles, Grixis Delver, etc) or 0 (Living End, Affinity (on the play), Ad Nauseum, pacts). Don't fret, you'll be surprised how still relevant a turn 2 Chalice on 1 is, even on the draw.
1x Engineered Explosives -- Suicide Zoo, Infect, Burn, Boggles, Elves
But Sam, you can only set it on 1, you have no other colors! Wrong, with blood moon out we can get it up to 2. But yes I know and 1 is all for (well and zero). This is my concession to Suicide Zoo, but its good for some other things too. Randomly wreaks token strategies.
I solved this dilemma by playing both.
If, against an unknown opponent, you get a 2 land hand with one island and one tron piece, and no one mana spells (no map or anything), which land do you lead with?
Since it doesn't actually matter this is purely a psychological question right? Do you want them to think you're keeping a bad RG tron hand, or do you want them to think, "what deck plays island go"?
I'm a new player to the deck. I just finished 3 leagues on MTGO with the stock list from the main post. (1-4, 2-3, and 4-1). Here are my thoughts.
18 Lands seams a little light, I mulliganed a lot of other wise good one land hands. And I feel operating without any help (like Puresteel Paladin) is the norm. I'm thinking of going up to 19 or 20? But then there is mana flood. Mask of Memory? Or what else?
And I think cutting a Darksteel Citadel for a plains is a good idea. Metalcraft isn't that relevant, and a turn 2 Puresteel Paladin is.
I feel the sideboard is not great, though I'm not sure what to do about that yet. Any suggestions?
My initial feeling is that red is worth investigating. (new RW fastlands from the latest set eh?) If anyone has done some testing I would love to hear from you.
Since you have multiple sources of black mana I would consider running the Dismember main, swapping it with the spacial contortion.
I would also not run Minamo and/or Orboro on such a small island count for fear of Blood Moon.
What's your current decklist?