To be honest I can’t tell how you managed to simultaneously respond to my post while also not reading my post, I’m impressed though.
Leyline of sanctity is a card we have splashed white for disenchant specifically to deal with. It is a card that sees play in the modern format of magic the gathering (TM) which we have to deal with. The fact that it has added utility against Jace and Teferi as well as hitting everything relevant from Tron (which is a horrible matchup) makes it worth considering. Your glib response that 4CMC cards don’t see play in modern is either trolling or just a sincere lack of familiarity with the format, but either way it’s not particularly helpful.
See also; the prevalence of disdainful stroke in modern sideboards
I actually think if we're open to splashing that Despark is the most exciting card in the set aside from Davriel. It's a single card that simultaneously deals with both leyline as well as the card advantage walkers that give us trouble like Jace and Teferi with a bit of utility in being useful against some creatures. I've played anguished unmaking in the past when I was splashing white and I think that this is generally going to be better when we want it, although I'm unconvinced that boarding to go after the leylines is ever going to be better than delirium skeins which was the direction I eventually settled on.
Good article and as someone who’s been on Rock for a long time I always disagreed with people who thought of them as being interchangeable. Where tracker is great in the mirror or control matchups, it’s nearly unplayable against humans or affinity where Bob is often the best card we have. I’ve settled on Bob being a core 3-4 of at all times and tracker being a flex spot of 2-4 depending on the meta. These days I’m running 2 and could even see going to zero if the meta were ever fast enough
Im going to test out the manamorphose builds, but im cutting stubborn denials and blue completely out of the 75.
Stub feels bad with all the humans, hollow ones, jund decks around, and the rest of blue cards in the side were usually to fend off tron, control and big mana decks which are on the down low at the moment. Instead ill be running lingering souls package out of the side which feels better against jund, mardu and humans.
1. Is this thought process right? is stub and blue still good enough to keep in the 75 vs white?
2. How do you usually fare with the manamorphose build when it comes to running 17 lands? Do you ever fall short in hitting your second land? 18 felt good enough to consistently keep 1 landers. Do you even run out manamorphose as soon as you hit 2 lands for the cantrip, without knowing if you can draw into anything to make use of the 2 mana?
3. Im debating if I should keep in 2 lotv or add 2 bolts instead. or if i should scrap that completely and bring back 2 stubs into the main.
1 - I was really hesitant to go from lingering souls to the blue version but I just feel like the matchups souls is good in are not the matchups we are going to run into. Stubbs has been very good and even makes the UW Control matchup far more winnable.
2 - typically i manamorphose into what I need to cast the spell I already have in hand, so the Morphose is a free cycle. If I have a thoughtseize and shadow in hand turn two as well as a morphose, I take the opportunity to cycle my morphose for BB and then make the play I was going to make anyway. In the rare cases you have only morphose in hand I will usually cast it for GB since that lets me cast decay, dismember, Traverse + shadow, tarmogoyf, fatal push, basically every card I could draw into other than TBR.
3 - I miss when Lilly was good but I really don't like the card right now and my list has felt better since cutting lotv from the 75
I'm going to try it personally. I don't play GTT since hollow one and affinity are relevant matchups that make GTT way too much of a liability, while the non legendary clause isn't going to be too relevant since there isn't a deck that plays all legendaries and we should be able to balance our removal where it lines up ok.
There isn't really any way to "splash" for Eldrazi since you're looking at probably 8 lands (4 temples, 4 lanowar wastes) minimum, then 8 creatures minimum to make that worthwhile in smashers and TKS, then if you're in green you're definitely running ancient stirrings, and suddenly you're talking about a splash that represents at least a 20 card swap and is really a whole different deck.
I believe there is a BG Eldrazi deck in the deck creation section though, so I think people are experimenting with it
Decks where the game is liable to be decided before I'm able to untap and start cracking clues are generally the ones where tracker comes out. I'll shave some or all of my trackers against storm depending on how much I can bring in as the card is a vanilla 3/2 for 3 in that matchup and fairly terrible IME
I'm on 4 Bob, 4 Goyf, 2 scooze, 1 excavator and 4 tireless tracker and the deck has been excellent. I top 8d a 1K a few weeks back and think straight GB brings enough to the table to warrant playing.
Does the deck even do anything if whir gets thoughtseized or it doesn't have one in the opening hand? Lantern runs a lot of ways to find the pieces it needs and even it still spins it's wheels sometimes, it's surprising to think that a deck with maindeck pithing needles and tormods crypts but only 5 artifact tutors really functions at all.
Since when is a deck that wins through combat damage delivered by synergistic creatures not a fair deck? Humans is refreshing to see because it's the best fair creature based aggro deck we've seen in a long long time
Im not sure which I would prefer, ban cavern of souls or make counterspell modern legal. Control is still a joke. Try casting jtms in this format using an actual blue deck with cryptics and knots. The creature decks smoke you with a zero opportunity cost land (cavern) and the combo decks chortle with glee as you pay four mana for nothing and proceed to lose the game as you flounder around with your one cryptic command or logic knot that you hoped would get there.
Cavern should have cost life to use like boseiju and/or come in tapped like boseiju. Playing it should have had a cost that you would weigh vs the benefits. People play unclaimed territory in modern - that tells you all you need to know about having uncounterable slapped on for free on this land.
And no, tapping out t3 to field of ruin it doesnt help. They get gross tempo and can ust draw another one as they invariably play four.
How on earth do we continue to have these "ban cavern or give me more powerful spells" arguments less than 24 hours out from a major event where 3 out of the top 8 decks were cryptic command decks? The argument that blue or control is underpowered flies completely in the face of tournament finishes and suggestions for more tools is actually absurd.
Modern doesn't really need anything at this point, and it absolutely doesn't need more tools given to decks that are already performing well.
I'm always skeptical when we start speculating about whether Deck A has a good/bad matchup vs. Deck B. These speculations are almost always off-base. I think Ari Lax coined that as one of the cardinal sins of Modern. Unless someone has access to hundreds of game datapoints in a complete tournament/MTGO dataset, I don't think anyone here can speak to the MWP of any deck against any other deck. The exception would be if you track your own games and somehow account for possible influences that might skew your results negative or positive, and even that would only give us an idea of your personal deck's MWP.
I don’t agree with this at all. Most people within playing a few matches between two decks can get a feel for the matchup and tell you whether it’s closer to Tron vs infect (incredibly lopsided) or humans vs jeskai (a winnable matchup for either side). Whether a deck is 45/55 or 40/60 is probably meaningless since variance in draws is going to affect win rates over small samples such as when you run into it in round 5 at a GP, but it’s absolutely reasonable and probably useful to speak about whether it’s a decent winnable matchup or not.
I mean as a disclaimer, this is my own anecdotal evidence. I don't play online. I play 3-4 times during the weekdays and 1-2 days on weekends, including local 1Ks, but no recent GPs since Santa Clara Modern side events.
A good Humans player will have a positive matchup vs. Jund. The games can be very tempo oriented and outside of super early Fatal Pushes or sweepers after SB when the disrupting dudes are not drawn, Humans will get there before all those extra cards drawn matter. The Humans players that I know are mostly just above average, but most have had a positive Jund matchup. It is similar to how Affinity beats Jund, with brute speed, except Humans sacrifices some speed for disruption.
It can also be compared to Affinity vs. Jeskai. Some players feel like Jeskai is strongly favored, yet I know some super good Affinity players (I'm looking at you mtgs member, kodieyost) that have had a really good matchup vs. Jeskai. I'm personally not quite there yet on this matchup, but even I have had a positive matchup vs. Jund as a Humans' player.
I admit though, that Humans cannot beat Elves. That matchup is probably pretty close to 70/30 for Elves.
Well, the card advantage from Bob isn’t huge in the matchup in the sense of having extra cards but the extra draw matters a lot when you’re digging for removal and only some of your cards are good. I don’t know, I’ve found the matchup to be fine from the GBx side and I actually think it’s quite good for straight GB which I’ve been on for a short while now and played the matchup a few times at 1Ks against competent players. I think humans is probably the best aggro deck in the format but I don’t think it has positive matchups across the board at all IMO
The GB matchup versus humans is excellent and I have to imagine Jund to be very good as well isn’t it? Drawing two cards a turn with dark confidant is extremely effective at letting you answer their threats while still being able to play your own. I’ve also played against elves from the humans side and that matchup is hopeless for the humans deck. I think the deck has game even in some of its unfavoured matchups but I wouldn’t even begin to consider it a deck where we should have to look particularly hard to find bad matchups for it.
Leyline of sanctity is a card we have splashed white for disenchant specifically to deal with. It is a card that sees play in the modern format of magic the gathering (TM) which we have to deal with. The fact that it has added utility against Jace and Teferi as well as hitting everything relevant from Tron (which is a horrible matchup) makes it worth considering. Your glib response that 4CMC cards don’t see play in modern is either trolling or just a sincere lack of familiarity with the format, but either way it’s not particularly helpful.
See also; the prevalence of disdainful stroke in modern sideboards
1 - I was really hesitant to go from lingering souls to the blue version but I just feel like the matchups souls is good in are not the matchups we are going to run into. Stubbs has been very good and even makes the UW Control matchup far more winnable.
2 - typically i manamorphose into what I need to cast the spell I already have in hand, so the Morphose is a free cycle. If I have a thoughtseize and shadow in hand turn two as well as a morphose, I take the opportunity to cycle my morphose for BB and then make the play I was going to make anyway. In the rare cases you have only morphose in hand I will usually cast it for GB since that lets me cast decay, dismember, Traverse + shadow, tarmogoyf, fatal push, basically every card I could draw into other than TBR.
3 - I miss when Lilly was good but I really don't like the card right now and my list has felt better since cutting lotv from the 75
I believe there is a BG Eldrazi deck in the deck creation section though, so I think people are experimenting with it
How on earth do we continue to have these "ban cavern or give me more powerful spells" arguments less than 24 hours out from a major event where 3 out of the top 8 decks were cryptic command decks? The argument that blue or control is underpowered flies completely in the face of tournament finishes and suggestions for more tools is actually absurd.
Modern doesn't really need anything at this point, and it absolutely doesn't need more tools given to decks that are already performing well.
I don’t agree with this at all. Most people within playing a few matches between two decks can get a feel for the matchup and tell you whether it’s closer to Tron vs infect (incredibly lopsided) or humans vs jeskai (a winnable matchup for either side). Whether a deck is 45/55 or 40/60 is probably meaningless since variance in draws is going to affect win rates over small samples such as when you run into it in round 5 at a GP, but it’s absolutely reasonable and probably useful to speak about whether it’s a decent winnable matchup or not.
Well, the card advantage from Bob isn’t huge in the matchup in the sense of having extra cards but the extra draw matters a lot when you’re digging for removal and only some of your cards are good. I don’t know, I’ve found the matchup to be fine from the GBx side and I actually think it’s quite good for straight GB which I’ve been on for a short while now and played the matchup a few times at 1Ks against competent players. I think humans is probably the best aggro deck in the format but I don’t think it has positive matchups across the board at all IMO