The card can have wild degrees of variance, from win-more to a do-nothing (i.e. casting both halves with a full board vs having both halves countered).
Being better than x, y, or z in a given scenario can potentially mean it is too niche to run in larger numbers.
Despair appears to be the real power on the card, as menace is much harder to deal with than trample, and discard is as good or better than the card draw (at least, in my opinion).
This is also besides the fact that, unlike Lead, Chord, or Company, we already need bodies on the field capable of attacking for the card to be usable. Otherwise it's just dead in our hand.
Worth testing, and I think I might even pick up one or two for fun, but I'm a hopeful skeptic over exactly how good the card will be for now.
I'll also have to echo the sentiments of a few other here, this list is...very very janky. If you enjoy playing combo, stick to it, but focus on either Curio or the new Vizier/Devoted Druid one. Besides that, there's five popular color flavors you can build elves into - Mono green, Golgari (BG), Selesnya (GW), Sultai (BUG), and Abzan (BGW).
And before rebuilding, please reconsider your land count. Less than seventeen is really shaky to the point of being unplayable in most cases. Remember that a small portion of games - even a few months worth - of anecdotal experience doesn't supercede the cut-and-dry math.
It's an interesting card. Uncage looks like a compromise between Chord and Lead - it tutors for specific cards like the former but is slower like the latter. However, it also put the creatures we dig up in our hand, and nets us less creatures on average. The way the card's worded, a 3GG cast cost means you can only dig up three 3-CMC creatures. I don't like that the creature number seems negotiable while creature CMC does not (up to X creatures with different names of CMC X).
Also remember Lead allows you to pull dupes - dropping multiple Archdruids/Shamans in a single line of play can immediately turn some games into blowout wins.
If you try for the fast T3/4 kill, you'll suffer the same issue Infect did - single-target removal. The one benefit we have over Infect is the only real removal that ruins the Druid/vizier combo with Ezuri as the pump is the aforementioned exile or "cannot be regenerated" removal instants.
However, I don't think we need a full playset of Vizier. Elves has an insane amount of redundancy between the Heritage/Nettle pairing, Archdruid, and this new Druid/Vizier combo (with Eternal Witness to help salvage any of the above as well) that we force our opponents to have many multiple removal options in their hand when we start dumping all these mana engines onto the board. Your opponent has to constantly decide between killing your ramp to stop you from simply going wide, or try to survive the swarming to prevent us from just going infinite. To trade removals for mana engines 1:1, they need a minimum 12 spells that we cannot regenerate from/bring back with Witness.
My games last night went very roughly, finally had a chance to get back to regular playing and the rust was apparent. First gave was versus burn, even after sideboarding in my Timely Reinforcements I still got shut out due to simply not drawing into what I needed. I couldn't force a trade with token either since the only creature they managed to get on the board was a Monastery Swiftspear. Went 0-2.
I had two games against Death's Shadow decks, both Grixis builds, and in the end lost both games. I would say that the major point to take away is that the Grixis build's access to counterspells and hand attack can really put Tokens through the ringer if they draw right, even though the match is favored for us. Also worth noting is that Blessed Alliance is quite handy as it removed a handful of Tasigurs over the course of the two games.
The other game I played was against a Goblin list that was focused on token generation. Won that by out-valuing my opponent both games and simply keeping cards in hand to play.
This past night has made me feel like the inevitability afforded by Bitterblossom is just absolutely necessary in my meta. While Raise the Alarm is a great card, it seems a rare occasion I'm able to have it resolve in an opponent's ends step and have both tokens attack and hit in the next combat. The majority of the time, I find I use it as a combat trick to make surprise chump blockers.
Edit:
After further time to digest my games, one thing I can say about the Grixis Shadow matchup is that the big thing you want to rip out of their hands with Thoughtseize is Tasigur every time. It's a 4/5 value engine that, once it's on the table, your only real option is Path and hope they can't counter it. The other two picks will usually seem to be Snapcaster or Gurmag Angler.
Optimally, you want to board in Rest in Peace, hope to hit it early, and the match should quickly sort itself out as long as you don't set up a lethal crackback for your opponent. You need to do a careful dance around their discard and counter spells. Work them down to a life total you can one-shot them by going wide all the while denying them the value of their yard.
Anointed Procession is really interesting, but I think it's just much too slow for our deck. It's four mana to make every subsequent token spell twice as powerful. While that seems worthwhile on paper, it's competing with Sorin, Solemn Visitor, Gideon, Ally of Zendikar, and Sram's Expertise. Consider the following:
Sorin turns every unanswered swing of ours into an increasingly insurmountable mountain of life points. Sorin can put you so far ahead if he sticks for a few turns that it exhausts your opponent's resources while you simply swing wide over the head of their blockers.
Gideon comes into play with a friend, and then becomes a 5/5 indestructible beater that can simply bash your opponent into submission. Alternatively, he can use his second minus ability at any time (including when you play him) to give you a fifth anthem effect.
Sram's might not be as appealing as the other two options, but it's also still quite handy. You give up token evasion and pay one more mana, but you can then cast nearly any one nonland card in the deck, which can be a huge tempo play.
Sram's Expertise into Lingering Souls gets you five tokens on turn four, two with evasion, and a Souls in the yard ready for flashback - a play that's comparable to turn four Anointed Procession into turn five Spectral Procession. If your opponent can't or doesn't counter the Expertise, you've made a significantly stronger play. Conversely, any opponent who can counter the next card you play will hold off until your next turn and attempt to prevent the now telegraphed token generator.
Going with a Sram's focused build, and trying Read the Bones alongside it, I figure there's a few things we need to reconsider from more "normal" lists. First, we're going to deal so much damage to ourselves between our mana base and sorceries that I'd actually see if going it without Thoughtseize is possible. Thus, we rely heavily on a full play set of Inquisition and supplanting it with some copies of Duress. Next, Read the Bones overloads our three slot, so to lessen the average CMC load we cut Spectral Procession. Luckily, it's effectively replaced by Sram's Expertise in this build. I've swapped Gideon for Elspeth, since I think her ability to turn one of our servos into a 4/4 flyer or better if we have Intangible Virtue online is a stronger play since we're going to be fielding so many token without evasion. I've included Secure the Wastes as a new secondary win condition to replace the potential Gideon beats. To keep in line with the concept of affecting our draws via deck-thinning and scrying, I've chucked pain lands, and am avoiding heavy use of shocks, instead preferring some scry lands and lots of fetches.
This style deck is probably going to want to have loads of removal and combat tricks since we're relying on a much larger concentration of tokens without evasion, I'm guessing a baseline of 6 removal and at least two Persecutions to supplement combat alongside Sorin and Vault. Honor of the Pure would be nice, but I'm uncertain if the guaranteed amount of white tokens we can generate is worth that.
I've included my current sideboard, only swapping in two more copies of Fatal Push for the two copies of Extirpate I run. While I see cards like Blessed Alliance, Timely Reinforcements, and Disenchant are easily sideboard inclusions, I think some of my other choices might warrant replacement in this style build, since this list seems to incentivize more digging and aggressive attacks to me. Instead of hating out particular lists, we might want to focus more on means of bolstering the aggressive strategy or buy us more resources in the terms of health for additional turns or even more card draw or token generation.
Pretty easy, just cut some Forests from your list and shove in Caverns. You can run fetches, if you want. You will probably want at least 2-3 basic Forests.
With Caverns, is it an all-or-nothing for the full playset? Is it worth running them alongside fetches? I would guess that because we run cards like Chord and Company, we have such a strong ability to tutor a silver bullet or dig through the deck that fetches for thinning are a bit redundant.I'm guessing a cleaner mana base for BG variants as per the primer's OP is like so:
Hey guys. So I just bought into this deck the past week, intending to start with a budget beatdown build and upgrade as I learn it over the summer. Well, I splurged instead, and now I have a fully sleeved deck that is comparable to some of the GB lists. I'm super excited to begin playing, but I'm wondering mainly what you guys would recommend with the mana base? I already have my palaces, fastlands, and a Pendelhaven, I'm mainly wondering about the number of fetches and shock that are seen as optimal, and how I can fit in Cavern of Souls also. I've been theory-crafting and reformatting my list on and off here all week since I've yet been unable to actually play.
Disenchant is likely the best option for me if Chalice is the major consideration. They drop it for one on turn two, I respond with a Disenchant immediately. Disenchant will play a bit nicer with my mana base I figure, and while you can't populate, there's no temptation to hold onto it to get some tokens out for the populate trigger.
Actually, Chalice can utterly derail us if it blocks out our silver bullets, doesn't it? The first time around they might try setting up a pair at one and three, but once you ripfire the Disenchant/Sundering Growth, they might try rushing out the Chalice's on two and three instead, blocking our best token generators and our means of removing the Chalice itself. I can see why you might want to run the variation with both Fragmentize and the two two-CMC spells.
Then again, a build with Bitterblossom that can sneak one or two onto the board before a Chalice on two gets played can avoid the issue entirely, as there's always guaranteed token production even if our token producing spells get temporarily locked out by Chalice.
Now, some of these are experiments/nonoptimals right now, but my thoughts are thus:
Extirpate is the cheaper alternative to Surgical Extraction. It performs all the same functions, but trades being able to be cast for life when we're tapped out for Split Second.
Blessed Alliance is a great swiss army knife style card useful in many aggro and burn match-ups. It's removal or life gain, or both if we need it. While I don't see the untap clause particularly useful for us, there is always the weird possibility of our opponent playing spells or creatures with ETB that tap our stuff, so there's that too.
Timely Reinforcements is doubling up on top of my pair of Blessed Alliance. But where the latter can buy us a turn or two, the former can just cause a blowout against some faster strategies. Why gain four and remove a single creature when you can gain six and three blockers?
Hour of Reckoning is probably the shakiest inclusion I have for two reasons. The thought is this is included to boardwipe specific decks such as Merfolk and Elves; however, Wrath of God would be the better option if we just want to reset the board. Furthermore, This is effectively tripling up alongside Blessed Alliance and Timely Reinforcements. This is the most likely candidate for replacement.
Rest in Peace is an obvious inclusion - graveyard strategies are strong and popular, and some form of hate is necessary.
Similarly, Stony Silence is to any form of artifact-based strategy as Rest in Peace is to graveyards.
Pithing Needle is a handy catch-all for particularly egregious creature abilities, and even more importantly, Planeswalkers. This is my added insurance policy against the dreaded tron match-ups.
Now the big issue I forsee is effects such as Ghostly Prison, Ensnaring Bridge, etc. These can quickly turn all of our tokens into a nothing more than a huge wall of chumps. My guess is I'm going to be swapping these cards out for targeted removal for such effects - likely Fragmentize since I have three colorless sources in my mana base, and that's the cheapest cast cost despite my preference for Sundering Growth.
Would you figure it's safe to run three colorless-only sources and be more basic-heavy until I can get my last two fetches and some shocks?In an ideal world, I see my current setup having four land enter tapped: two of the courtyards and the vents. That potentially could spike to a maximum of six, but that's relatively unlikely. I take it I should cut some chapels for plains and maybe another swamp?
My initial plan was to keep trimming down basics as I get fetches, and cut out chapels and caves as I get my shocks and other non-Marsh Flats fetches. So I'm guessing for the time being my lands should look more like this:
Another question: Temple of Silence is a card I've been mulling over because, while it is slow, it's a two-color land that lets us potentially avoid a dead draw on the next turn due to the trade-off of giving us a scry for it entering tapped. Since chapel appears to get a bit better once we're running shocks (we can cascade a fetch into a shock that lets chapel enter in untapped), would it be worth experimenting with where in my current build I cut chapel entirely for two temples? Should I just run Caves in the final mana base instead?
While it's not been a crippling occurrence, it's definitely something I noticing playing tabletop all afternoon. While I think I've about hit the limit I can spend for a few weeks on cardboard, I'm still testing a few things out and getting more comfortable with recent additions. I've decided on running six removal mainboard, so that will include two Fatal Pushes. Next thing I plan on picking up is the other half of my fetches playset, and then probably shock from there. I'm wondering a few things:
I want to squeeze Vault of the Archangel back into the list as another mana sink. Is this worthwhile?
Once I get my fetches, shocks are the next lands to grab. What's a solid number to run, and which land should they replace?
Until I can afford to make the expensive changes of the last fetches and later shocks, what would be suggested for holdovers? Just some basics?
Here's how my list is looking in my head, minus lands:
With all this talking about mana concerns and potential splashes for various sideboard strategies, I'm interested to know exactly what you guys are running for lands. I'm mainly asking since I'm currently running a full playset both pain and check lands, and I'm looking to find the best trade-off between having the right color when you need it, some added utility, and minimal drawbacks. Currently my mana base looks like so:
I just picked up the Marsh Flats this afternoon, and those are my big target for upping my mana base's power level. My plan is to cut another swamp and a plains for the two I'm missing. Shocks are the next logical upgrade after I complete the fetches.
This is also besides the fact that, unlike Lead, Chord, or Company, we already need bodies on the field capable of attacking for the card to be usable. Otherwise it's just dead in our hand.
Worth testing, and I think I might even pick up one or two for fun, but I'm a hopeful skeptic over exactly how good the card will be for now.
I'll also have to echo the sentiments of a few other here, this list is...very very janky. If you enjoy playing combo, stick to it, but focus on either Curio or the new Vizier/Devoted Druid one. Besides that, there's five popular color flavors you can build elves into - Mono green, Golgari (BG), Selesnya (GW), Sultai (BUG), and Abzan (BGW).
And before rebuilding, please reconsider your land count. Less than seventeen is really shaky to the point of being unplayable in most cases. Remember that a small portion of games - even a few months worth - of anecdotal experience doesn't supercede the cut-and-dry math.
Also remember Lead allows you to pull dupes - dropping multiple Archdruids/Shamans in a single line of play can immediately turn some games into blowout wins.
However, I don't think we need a full playset of Vizier. Elves has an insane amount of redundancy between the Heritage/Nettle pairing, Archdruid, and this new Druid/Vizier combo (with Eternal Witness to help salvage any of the above as well) that we force our opponents to have many multiple removal options in their hand when we start dumping all these mana engines onto the board. Your opponent has to constantly decide between killing your ramp to stop you from simply going wide, or try to survive the swarming to prevent us from just going infinite. To trade removals for mana engines 1:1, they need a minimum 12 spells that we cannot regenerate from/bring back with Witness.
I had two games against Death's Shadow decks, both Grixis builds, and in the end lost both games. I would say that the major point to take away is that the Grixis build's access to counterspells and hand attack can really put Tokens through the ringer if they draw right, even though the match is favored for us. Also worth noting is that Blessed Alliance is quite handy as it removed a handful of Tasigurs over the course of the two games.
The other game I played was against a Goblin list that was focused on token generation. Won that by out-valuing my opponent both games and simply keeping cards in hand to play.
This past night has made me feel like the inevitability afforded by Bitterblossom is just absolutely necessary in my meta. While Raise the Alarm is a great card, it seems a rare occasion I'm able to have it resolve in an opponent's ends step and have both tokens attack and hit in the next combat. The majority of the time, I find I use it as a combat trick to make surprise chump blockers.
Edit:
After further time to digest my games, one thing I can say about the Grixis Shadow matchup is that the big thing you want to rip out of their hands with Thoughtseize is Tasigur every time. It's a 4/5 value engine that, once it's on the table, your only real option is Path and hope they can't counter it. The other two picks will usually seem to be Snapcaster or Gurmag Angler.
Optimally, you want to board in Rest in Peace, hope to hit it early, and the match should quickly sort itself out as long as you don't set up a lethal crackback for your opponent. You need to do a careful dance around their discard and counter spells. Work them down to a life total you can one-shot them by going wide all the while denying them the value of their yard.
Sram's Expertise into Lingering Souls gets you five tokens on turn four, two with evasion, and a Souls in the yard ready for flashback - a play that's comparable to turn four Anointed Procession into turn five Spectral Procession. If your opponent can't or doesn't counter the Expertise, you've made a significantly stronger play. Conversely, any opponent who can counter the next card you play will hold off until your next turn and attempt to prevent the now telegraphed token generator.
2 Sorin, Solemn Visitor
1 Elspeth, Knight-Errant
Sorcery (16)
2 Duress
2 Read the Bones
4 Inquisition of Kozilek
4 Lingering Souls
4 Sram's Expertise
Instant (13)
1 Secure the Wastes
2 Fatal Push
2 Zealous Persecution
4 Path to Exile
4 Raise the Alarm
4 Intangible Virtue
Land (24)
1 Godless Shrine
1 Vault of the Archangel
2 Flooded Strand
2 Isolated Chapel
2 Temple of Silence
2 Shambling Vent
4 Windswept Heath
4 Concealed Courtyard
5 Plains
1 Swamp
1 Fragmentize
2 Selfless Spirit
2 Blessed Alliance
2 Disenchant
2 Timely Reinforcements
2 Fatal Push
2 Rest in Peace
2 Stony Silence
Going with a Sram's focused build, and trying Read the Bones alongside it, I figure there's a few things we need to reconsider from more "normal" lists. First, we're going to deal so much damage to ourselves between our mana base and sorceries that I'd actually see if going it without Thoughtseize is possible. Thus, we rely heavily on a full play set of Inquisition and supplanting it with some copies of Duress. Next, Read the Bones overloads our three slot, so to lessen the average CMC load we cut Spectral Procession. Luckily, it's effectively replaced by Sram's Expertise in this build. I've swapped Gideon for Elspeth, since I think her ability to turn one of our servos into a 4/4 flyer or better if we have Intangible Virtue online is a stronger play since we're going to be fielding so many token without evasion. I've included Secure the Wastes as a new secondary win condition to replace the potential Gideon beats. To keep in line with the concept of affecting our draws via deck-thinning and scrying, I've chucked pain lands, and am avoiding heavy use of shocks, instead preferring some scry lands and lots of fetches.
This style deck is probably going to want to have loads of removal and combat tricks since we're relying on a much larger concentration of tokens without evasion, I'm guessing a baseline of 6 removal and at least two Persecutions to supplement combat alongside Sorin and Vault. Honor of the Pure would be nice, but I'm uncertain if the guaranteed amount of white tokens we can generate is worth that.
I've included my current sideboard, only swapping in two more copies of Fatal Push for the two copies of Extirpate I run. While I see cards like Blessed Alliance, Timely Reinforcements, and Disenchant are easily sideboard inclusions, I think some of my other choices might warrant replacement in this style build, since this list seems to incentivize more digging and aggressive attacks to me. Instead of hating out particular lists, we might want to focus more on means of bolstering the aggressive strategy or buy us more resources in the terms of health for additional turns or even more card draw or token generation.
Edit: Selfless Spirit is an obvious sideboard include for this list, shame on me. Also, the one free Fragmentize for the potential Chalice of the Void on 2.
With Caverns, is it an all-or-nothing for the full playset? Is it worth running them alongside fetches? I would guess that because we run cards like Chord and Company, we have such a strong ability to tutor a silver bullet or dig through the deck that fetches for thinning are a bit redundant.I'm guessing a cleaner mana base for BG variants as per the primer's OP is like so:
1 Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx
4 Cavern of Souls
4 Gilt-Leaf Palace
4 Blooming Marsh
4 Forest
Actually, Chalice can utterly derail us if it blocks out our silver bullets, doesn't it? The first time around they might try setting up a pair at one and three, but once you ripfire the Disenchant/Sundering Growth, they might try rushing out the Chalice's on two and three instead, blocking our best token generators and our means of removing the Chalice itself. I can see why you might want to run the variation with both Fragmentize and the two two-CMC spells.
Then again, a build with Bitterblossom that can sneak one or two onto the board before a Chalice on two gets played can avoid the issue entirely, as there's always guaranteed token production even if our token producing spells get temporarily locked out by Chalice.
2 Blessed Alliance
2 Timely Reinforcements
2 Hour of Reckoning
2 Rest in Peace
3 Stony Silence
2 Pithing Needle
Now, some of these are experiments/nonoptimals right now, but my thoughts are thus:
Now the big issue I forsee is effects such as Ghostly Prison, Ensnaring Bridge, etc. These can quickly turn all of our tokens into a nothing more than a huge wall of chumps. My guess is I'm going to be swapping these cards out for targeted removal for such effects - likely Fragmentize since I have three colorless sources in my mana base, and that's the cheapest cast cost despite my preference for Sundering Growth.
My initial plan was to keep trimming down basics as I get fetches, and cut out chapels and caves as I get my shocks and other non-Marsh Flats fetches. So I'm guessing for the time being my lands should look more like this:
4 Caves of Koilos
2 Isolated Chapel
2 Marsh Flats
2 Shambling Vent
2 Ghost Quarter
1 Vault of the Archangel
6 Plains
1 Swamp
Which will eventually finalize into something like this:
4 Marsh Flats
2 Windswept Heath
2 Godless Shrine
2 Shambling Vent
2 Isolated Chapel
2 Ghost Quarter
1 Vault of the Archangel
4 Plains
1 Swamp
Another question: Temple of Silence is a card I've been mulling over because, while it is slow, it's a two-color land that lets us potentially avoid a dead draw on the next turn due to the trade-off of giving us a scry for it entering tapped. Since chapel appears to get a bit better once we're running shocks (we can cascade a fetch into a shock that lets chapel enter in untapped), would it be worth experimenting with where in my current build I cut chapel entirely for two temples? Should I just run Caves in the final mana base instead?
Here's how my list is looking in my head, minus lands:
2 Sorin, Solemn Visitor
1 Gideon, Ally of Zendikar
Creature (4)
4 Wall of Omens
Sorcery (15)
3 Inquisition of Kozilek
3 Thoughtseize
4 Lingering Souls
4 Spectral Procession
1 Collective Brutality
4 Path to Exile
4 Raise the Alarm
2 Fatal Push
Enchantment (4)
4 Intangible Virtue
2 Blessed Alliance
2 Hour of Reckoning
2 Timely Reinforcements
2 Extirpate
2 Rest in Peace
3 Stony Silence
2 Pithing Needle
4 Caves of Koilos
4 Isolated Chapel
2 Marsh Flats
2 Shambling Vent
2 Ghost Quarter
4 Plains
2 Swamp
I just picked up the Marsh Flats this afternoon, and those are my big target for upping my mana base's power level. My plan is to cut another swamp and a plains for the two I'm missing. Shocks are the next logical upgrade after I complete the fetches.