Cutting Tezzeret from the Tezzeret deck is clearly a bad idea. If you are going to cut Tezzeret go play Lantern(and even they play 2 in the sideboard). If you want to play Tezzeretless Prison but include other walkers try out blue moon or RW Prison.
I saw someone said they cut Tezzeret in the Jund matchup?! He is ridiculously good in the Jund match. If you are getting attacked by big dudes you are already losing. They don't have enough removal to beat your bridges, welding jars, Thopter Foundry's, (redundant copies of each with Whir of Invention) and your hand disruption while also immediately killing Tezzeret. After sideboard most of the terminates and fatal pushes are gone so making 5/5's is a very effective game plan. Jund is a game of attrition and they think they have the better attrition deck, but we are the Jace the Mind Sculptor, Tezzeret Agent of Bolas deck. YOU are the better attrition deck. Out of the sideboard I also play Padeem, Spellskite, and another Welding Jar. I find the matchup to be very favorable and haven't dropped more than a handuful of games to Jund since Thopter/Sword unbanning.
Mostly some mana base changes to aid in casting post board damnation. I found that even in Blood Moon games I didn't want to fetch my basic swamp because it would prevent me from casting a fast Whir of Invention. Ghost Quarter was swapped for a Darksteel Citadel when i added another Mox Opal in place of a Talisman to aid with more consistent metalcraft.
Is Navigator's compass really playable? I know we are desperate for 1 drops, but wasting a card on +3 life with some mediocre mana fixing seems weird (mediocre because it's also susceptible to Stony like Mox/Talisman/Pentad). It also feels like Board the Weatherlight is not significantly more powerful than Serum Visions.
I am in agreement with you. I think Navigator's Compass is REALLY bad. Welding Jar, Pithing Needle, Relic of Progenitus, Mox Opal, Darksteel Citadel, Tormod's Crypt, Grafdigger's Cage are all cards I would play before sleeving up Navigator's Compass. Modern has proven time and time again that gaining life isn't good and when it is at its best (against burn) cards that only gain life still are not sideboarded to help with burn. You have to be getting a lot of value out of the color fixing. You would have to warp your entire deck around the card playing as many of the colorless utility lands you could. At that it doesn't help you cast Whir because you will need to tap it to make blue mana instead of for improvise. Overall seems like a poor choice.
Board the Weatherlight seems even worse then Serum Visions. Card selection is great because it smooths out your mana and then digs for action in the late game. Board the Weatherlight can't dig for lands and only goes 2 deeper than serum visions but costs twice as much mana.
Clarification on an earlier post: In the 2nd round of the PTQ at Hartford, Grand Prix, I was the cat that Dustycrumbz faced, not Racing089. He was an exemplary opponent - good laughs. If I find the time to take a break from my mono-red prison deck, Pyro Prison, I'll be back here.
Even if I was dead and someone propped me up weekend at bernies style I would still find a way not to not cast blood moon from the grave.
Chiming in on the fetch lands discussion and some help for HiltonMode at the same time. You don't NEED fetches in your deck, and as a matter of fact I didn't run fetches for a long time but then the deck evolved and now we should and I HIGHLY recommend that you do run fetches. Here is a short list of why you should play fetches in this particular deck (given the history of modern you need to have a VERY convincing argument NOT to run fetch lands anyway).
- What If I told you they printed Opt but it was an artifact that costed 0 mana? This is very close to what Mishra's Bauble + Fetch land is in our deck.
- JTMS. 0. Brainstorm. Shuffle away the bad cards. Jace loses a lot of his power without a large number of ways to shuffle.
- 3+ Color Spalshes. We have accesses to Glimmervoid and Spire of Industry but for a variety or reasons I don't like Glimmervoid and 4 Rainbow lands isn't enough to run a third coloe unless you have 4x Mox Opal and 4x Pentad Prism. Fetches make this incredibly easy.
- Ever stared down an opposing Blood Moon? Becomes a miserable card to beat without the ability to fetch out basics. Rocks help, but it still isn't enough if you have 19 mountains in your deck when you want to cast Whir of Invention.
- Serum Visions manipulation. This is a small edge but it matters more when you have a deck full of silver bullets. Example: You are in the blind when you cast a Serum Visions and you see a Pithing Needle on top. You can leave it there and gather more information on your opponents turn before deciding if you want to keep it or fetch it away. If you are against affinity or tron you are super happy to draw it. Paired against burn? shuffle it away. Against burn you can even shuffle it away before Goblin Guide attacks for even more value. Small edges I know, but they add up.
These are reasons THIS deck should run fetches but there is a much longer list of reasons why you should just run fetches in every deck anyway. Even Momo red burn in Legacy will play fetches on occasion lol.
So a manabase for board the Weatherlight HiltonMode? I think this card is going to be at it's best in a non-tezzeret thopter-sword deck but If I were going to play it in tezzerator my mana would look something like this:
4x Spire of Industry
4x Polluted Delta
3x Flooded Strand
2x Watery Grave
1x Hallowed Fountain
2x Island
1x Swamp
1x Plains (Maybe? Idk how many other white cards you plan on playing. If only playing Board the Weatherlight make this an Island or Hallowed Fountain)
1x Academy Ruins
1x Ghost Quarter
1x Invnetor's Fair
Minimum 2x Mox Opal
I honestly dont know how that guy keeps winning with that list. Ive tried it and it seems like it just auto loses to humans and hatebears. also the whirs are super awkward because of how many non blue lands it plays. The meta i play in is quite different then online though.
The lack of blue lands was a huge barrier for me as well.
@Orangetj87: I think saying those decks have lethal by turn 3 is quite an exaggeration. If they have the perfect hand and you interact not at all maybe but normally burn and elves are turn 4-5 decks. Burn is a race to Thopter/Sword. If you can assemble the combo T2-T3 they will have a very hard time winning. Then you can lock the game up with Witchbane Orb afterwards if you feel you need to. I have also won many games against burn by picking apart their hand with disruption, playing Ensnaring Bridge and then ulting Tezzeret asap. I don't care if it is a kill I just want the big life gain boost. Burn is probably 50/50 before and after sideboarding.
Elves seems like an easy matchup to me. They have a very hard time beating the ensnaring bridge unless they play 4x chord of calling and 4x shaman of the pack. In addition to that you can main deck grafdigger's cage or at least have it after sideboard to heavily swing the matchup.
Eldrazi Tron is better then Gx Tron for us. Ensnaring Bridge does a lot of work in this matchup. Your needles will have to work over time here. The most important targets are Karn and Walking Ballista if you have to name it in the blind. Once you get the board into a semi controlled state get the combo going and start attacking as quick as you can. Their only real out to the combo is All is Dust and if you have an Academy Ruins you can easily recover.
I find myself making 5/5 creatures defensively more often than offensively nowadays. It allows you to play Tezzeret into a messy board against decks with limited removal for your 5/5. It also sets you up nicely for a JTMS. Stall the board out with 1-2 5/5 creatures and then play JTMS to unsummon the only creatures that threaten your bodies while up-ticking your Tezzeret.
@pelikanudo: The second Welding Jar main is a recent development I have been testing. I am not playing it because I am trying to hedge against anything. The only reason I am playing it is to increase the critical mass of 0-1 cost artifacts that do something relevant. I cut an expedition map for it and I do think it is going to shape up to be better than that. I would entertain just about any cheap artifact in that slot however.
^ This point kind of ties into why I and many others are not maxing out on Mox Opal. If you want to have metalcraft by turn 2 > 80% of the time you need to be playing close to 25 artifacts that could have been cast by turn 2. If you look at my list for example I only have 19 artifacts that do that (all of them except Ensnaring Bridge) and if you have a large density of 2 cmc cards you can't really count all of them either because you can only cast 1 by turn 2. This is not nearly enough cheap artifacts for T2 Mox Opal. I play Mox Opal almost exclusively because of my first point. It is better than most other 0-1 cmc artifacts we can play with but if I ever draw the second one it is much worse.
Previously you could just shove 4x Darksteel Citadel into your mana base and you could make 4x Mox Opal work but you are not going to be able to cast Whir of Invention consistently if you do that (I had so much trouble that I also dropped my swamp for the third island and I play only 3 other lands that don't make blue). This means you have to cut non-artifact slots for weak artifact cards to support Mox Opal. Mox Opal is great, but it isn't worth handicapping 6+ cards in your deck to play 2 more Mox Opal.
I have to agree with the nobodys on the jund match up. If i was playing against reid duke and he knew my list within 5 cards I could probably never win but against the vast majority of players I feel I can out play and bait my jund opponent into a situation where I can win.
The Rack as an alternate win condition seems cool but you really need LotV in your list to enable The Rack. Otherwise they will just hold on to the cards that are already doing nothing.
Thirst for Knowledge is probably the best card in our toolkit we are not playing. Before Ensnaring Bridge builds it was a 4x staple and buried opposing grindy decks. I think I could get past it being a small nombo with Ensnaring Bridge but I can't afford to give up my nonartifact slots for it. Which for me currently is 5x planeswalkers, 4x Whir of Invention, 4x Serum Visions, 5x hand dirsuption. If the meta continues to progress towards being more grindy I could see getting away from hand disruption again or at lest moving some to the sideboard for main deck Thirst for Knowledge.
@Catherine Cook: I am having a really hard time understanding your list. You have taken tezzerator and lantern and smashed them together, which is fine, that is something most all of us have tried at one point or another. However you then cut the cards that hold both strategies together by going -2 Whir of Invention, -2 Mox Opal and -4 Ancient Stirrings from lantern. So then I thought, "okay, maybe they want to cast Whir more consistently so they cut green for more blue." You really shouldn't have to do that given the rainbow lands but maybe they insisted on a 2 color manabase. With 20 mana sources and only 15 blue Whir of Invention and Tezzeret are going to be stuck in your hand A LOT. Even if testing has shown otherwise it is likely confirmation bias. Mathematically you can't cast Whir with a 90% success rate until at least turn 10. Why play the card if you can't cast it? You need 23-24 mana sources to be casting Tezzeret consistently and you only have ~19 (two legendary mana sources). You might be thinking that you didn't trim too many lands from Lantern and they did it just fine but they could also use Ancient Stirrings to find mana.
My suggestions for your list would be:
-4 Glint-Nest Crane (the body rarely matters and it is worse at doing what ancient stirrings does 95% of the time)
-2 Darksteel Citadel (if it doesn't make blue it needs to be VERY good to eat a land slot)
-1 Tezzeret, Agent of Bolas (you shouldn't need all 4, if one sticks it will you the game, if it dies immediately you probably didn't want another one)
+2 Spire of Industry (Have to make that blue mana)
+2 Mox Opal (Essentially a power 9 card that makes blue mana)
+2 Whir of Invention (It is the reason either archetype exists currently)
+1 Pithing Needle (You need to beat planeswalkers +random other cards during your lock)
Realistically I would recommend playing Lantern. Play this List: http://mtgtop8.com/event?e=18360&d=313973&f=MO
Move 2 Tezzerets main deck and introduce 2 Thopter Foundry/1 Sword of the Meek main. Cut 1 Grafdigger's Cage, 1 Thoughtsieze and 1 Mishra's Bauble. Move 1 Abrupt Decay and 1 Witchbane Orb to the sideboard.
@pelikanudo:
Aether Grid and Cranial Plating are why I prefer the decays over the fatal pushes.
If I were to Whir or a land I would just get Mox Opal although I have only ever had to do it once. The reason I only play 2 Mox Opal is because they are terrible top decks. If you draw the second one you might as well have not even drawn a card.
Thoughtseize is NOT good against Jund. You are playing right into their hand if you keep hand disruption in your deck. They want to deplete both hands to nothing and then top deck better than you. Hand disruption helps them get both hands to nothing and it is a bad top deck. Board them out.
Grafdigger's Cage does nothing against a lot of decks. Company decks have also fallen to a pretty low meta share. I think it is fine to play it in the sideboard.
@the nobodys: Battle at the Bridge should probably get more testing from us now that we lean so heavily on improvise anyway.
My record has been incredible as of late but Hollow One is consistently beating me. Every time I start putting together a good game Burning Inquiry destroys me on the spot. That and they have many ways to dig very deep to ancient grudges. I am not really sure if there is anything we can do. Sometimes we are just going to get got by that deck.
I saw someone said they cut Tezzeret in the Jund matchup?! He is ridiculously good in the Jund match. If you are getting attacked by big dudes you are already losing. They don't have enough removal to beat your bridges, welding jars, Thopter Foundry's, (redundant copies of each with Whir of Invention) and your hand disruption while also immediately killing Tezzeret. After sideboard most of the terminates and fatal pushes are gone so making 5/5's is a very effective game plan. Jund is a game of attrition and they think they have the better attrition deck, but we are the Jace the Mind Sculptor, Tezzeret Agent of Bolas deck. YOU are the better attrition deck. Out of the sideboard I also play Padeem, Spellskite, and another Welding Jar. I find the matchup to be very favorable and haven't dropped more than a handuful of games to Jund since Thopter/Sword unbanning.
Here is my list for reference:
1 Academy Ruins
1 Breeding Pool
1 Darksteel Citadel
1 Inventors' Fair
3 Island
2 Misty Rainforest
4 Polluted Delta
4 Spire of Industry
1 Sunken Ruins
3 Watery Grave
Artifacts:
1 Damping Sphere
2 Ensnaring Bridge
4 Mishra's Bauble
3 Mox Opal
1 Nihil Spellbomb
1 Pithing Needle
2 Sword of the Meek
2 Talisman of Dominance
4 Thopter Foundry
1 Welding Jar
3 Inquisition of Kozilek
2 Jace, the Mind Sculptor
4 Serum Visions
3 Tezzeret, Agent of Bolas
2 Thoughtseize
4 Whir of Invention
3 Abrupt Decay
2 Collective Brutality
1 Damnation
1 Damping Sphere
2 Fatal Push
1 Grafdigger's Cage
1 Padeem, Consul of Innovation
1 Pithing Needle
1 Spellskite
1 Welding Jar
1 Witchbane Orb
Noteable changes:
+1 Dampening Sphere
+1 Sunken Ruins
+1 Darksteel Citadel
+1 Mox Opal
-1 Talisman of Dominace
-1 Swamp
-1 Ghost Quarter
-1 Fetchland
Mostly some mana base changes to aid in casting post board damnation. I found that even in Blood Moon games I didn't want to fetch my basic swamp because it would prevent me from casting a fast Whir of Invention. Ghost Quarter was swapped for a Darksteel Citadel when i added another Mox Opal in place of a Talisman to aid with more consistent metalcraft.
I am in agreement with you. I think Navigator's Compass is REALLY bad. Welding Jar, Pithing Needle, Relic of Progenitus, Mox Opal, Darksteel Citadel, Tormod's Crypt, Grafdigger's Cage are all cards I would play before sleeving up Navigator's Compass. Modern has proven time and time again that gaining life isn't good and when it is at its best (against burn) cards that only gain life still are not sideboarded to help with burn. You have to be getting a lot of value out of the color fixing. You would have to warp your entire deck around the card playing as many of the colorless utility lands you could. At that it doesn't help you cast Whir because you will need to tap it to make blue mana instead of for improvise. Overall seems like a poor choice.
Board the Weatherlight seems even worse then Serum Visions. Card selection is great because it smooths out your mana and then digs for action in the late game. Board the Weatherlight can't dig for lands and only goes 2 deeper than serum visions but costs twice as much mana.
Even if I was dead and someone propped me up weekend at bernies style I would still find a way not to not cast blood moon from the grave.
I have been testing sultai midrange lately lol.
- What If I told you they printed Opt but it was an artifact that costed 0 mana? This is very close to what Mishra's Bauble + Fetch land is in our deck.
- JTMS. 0. Brainstorm. Shuffle away the bad cards. Jace loses a lot of his power without a large number of ways to shuffle.
- 3+ Color Spalshes. We have accesses to Glimmervoid and Spire of Industry but for a variety or reasons I don't like Glimmervoid and 4 Rainbow lands isn't enough to run a third coloe unless you have 4x Mox Opal and 4x Pentad Prism. Fetches make this incredibly easy.
- Ever stared down an opposing Blood Moon? Becomes a miserable card to beat without the ability to fetch out basics. Rocks help, but it still isn't enough if you have 19 mountains in your deck when you want to cast Whir of Invention.
- Serum Visions manipulation. This is a small edge but it matters more when you have a deck full of silver bullets. Example: You are in the blind when you cast a Serum Visions and you see a Pithing Needle on top. You can leave it there and gather more information on your opponents turn before deciding if you want to keep it or fetch it away. If you are against affinity or tron you are super happy to draw it. Paired against burn? shuffle it away. Against burn you can even shuffle it away before Goblin Guide attacks for even more value. Small edges I know, but they add up.
These are reasons THIS deck should run fetches but there is a much longer list of reasons why you should just run fetches in every deck anyway. Even Momo red burn in Legacy will play fetches on occasion lol.
So a manabase for board the Weatherlight HiltonMode? I think this card is going to be at it's best in a non-tezzeret thopter-sword deck but If I were going to play it in tezzerator my mana would look something like this:
4x Spire of Industry
4x Polluted Delta
3x Flooded Strand
2x Watery Grave
1x Hallowed Fountain
2x Island
1x Swamp
1x Plains (Maybe? Idk how many other white cards you plan on playing. If only playing Board the Weatherlight make this an Island or Hallowed Fountain)
1x Academy Ruins
1x Ghost Quarter
1x Invnetor's Fair
Minimum 2x Mox Opal
The lack of blue lands was a huge barrier for me as well.
Elves seems like an easy matchup to me. They have a very hard time beating the ensnaring bridge unless they play 4x chord of calling and 4x shaman of the pack. In addition to that you can main deck grafdigger's cage or at least have it after sideboard to heavily swing the matchup.
Eldrazi Tron is better then Gx Tron for us. Ensnaring Bridge does a lot of work in this matchup. Your needles will have to work over time here. The most important targets are Karn and Walking Ballista if you have to name it in the blind. Once you get the board into a semi controlled state get the combo going and start attacking as quick as you can. Their only real out to the combo is All is Dust and if you have an Academy Ruins you can easily recover.
Hope this helps!
^ This point kind of ties into why I and many others are not maxing out on Mox Opal. If you want to have metalcraft by turn 2 > 80% of the time you need to be playing close to 25 artifacts that could have been cast by turn 2. If you look at my list for example I only have 19 artifacts that do that (all of them except Ensnaring Bridge) and if you have a large density of 2 cmc cards you can't really count all of them either because you can only cast 1 by turn 2. This is not nearly enough cheap artifacts for T2 Mox Opal. I play Mox Opal almost exclusively because of my first point. It is better than most other 0-1 cmc artifacts we can play with but if I ever draw the second one it is much worse.
Previously you could just shove 4x Darksteel Citadel into your mana base and you could make 4x Mox Opal work but you are not going to be able to cast Whir of Invention consistently if you do that (I had so much trouble that I also dropped my swamp for the third island and I play only 3 other lands that don't make blue). This means you have to cut non-artifact slots for weak artifact cards to support Mox Opal. Mox Opal is great, but it isn't worth handicapping 6+ cards in your deck to play 2 more Mox Opal.
1 Academy Ruins
1 Breeding Pool
1 Ghost Quarter
1 Inventors' Fair
3 Island
2 Misty Rainforest
4 Polluted Delta
4 Spire of Industry
1 Sunken Ruins
3 Watery Grave
Artifacts:
2 Ensnaring Bridge
4 Mishra's Bauble
2 Mox Opal
1 Nihil Spellbomb
1 Pithing Needle
2 Sword of the Meek
3 Talisman of Dominance
4 Thopter Foundry
2 Welding Jar
3 Inquisition of Kozilek
2 Jace, the Mind Sculptor
4 Serum Visions
3 Tezzeret, Agent of Bolas
2 Thoughtseize
4 Whir of Invention
3 Abrupt Decay
2 Collective Brutality
2 Damnation
2 Fatal Push
1 Grafdigger's Cage
1 Padeem, Consul of Innovation
1 Pithing Needle
1 Spellskite
1 Welding Jar
1 Witchbane Orb
Thirst for Knowledge is probably the best card in our toolkit we are not playing. Before Ensnaring Bridge builds it was a 4x staple and buried opposing grindy decks. I think I could get past it being a small nombo with Ensnaring Bridge but I can't afford to give up my nonartifact slots for it. Which for me currently is 5x planeswalkers, 4x Whir of Invention, 4x Serum Visions, 5x hand dirsuption. If the meta continues to progress towards being more grindy I could see getting away from hand disruption again or at lest moving some to the sideboard for main deck Thirst for Knowledge.
My suggestions for your list would be:
-4 Glint-Nest Crane (the body rarely matters and it is worse at doing what ancient stirrings does 95% of the time)
-2 Darksteel Citadel (if it doesn't make blue it needs to be VERY good to eat a land slot)
-1 Tezzeret, Agent of Bolas (you shouldn't need all 4, if one sticks it will you the game, if it dies immediately you probably didn't want another one)
+2 Spire of Industry (Have to make that blue mana)
+2 Mox Opal (Essentially a power 9 card that makes blue mana)
+2 Whir of Invention (It is the reason either archetype exists currently)
+1 Pithing Needle (You need to beat planeswalkers +random other cards during your lock)
Realistically I would recommend playing Lantern. Play this List: http://mtgtop8.com/event?e=18360&d=313973&f=MO
Move 2 Tezzerets main deck and introduce 2 Thopter Foundry/1 Sword of the Meek main. Cut 1 Grafdigger's Cage, 1 Thoughtsieze and 1 Mishra's Bauble. Move 1 Abrupt Decay and 1 Witchbane Orb to the sideboard.
Aether Grid and Cranial Plating are why I prefer the decays over the fatal pushes.
If I were to Whir or a land I would just get Mox Opal although I have only ever had to do it once. The reason I only play 2 Mox Opal is because they are terrible top decks. If you draw the second one you might as well have not even drawn a card.
Thoughtseize is NOT good against Jund. You are playing right into their hand if you keep hand disruption in your deck. They want to deplete both hands to nothing and then top deck better than you. Hand disruption helps them get both hands to nothing and it is a bad top deck. Board them out.
Grafdigger's Cage does nothing against a lot of decks. Company decks have also fallen to a pretty low meta share. I think it is fine to play it in the sideboard.
My record has been incredible as of late but Hollow One is consistently beating me. Every time I start putting together a good game Burning Inquiry destroys me on the spot. That and they have many ways to dig very deep to ancient grudges. I am not really sure if there is anything we can do. Sometimes we are just going to get got by that deck.