I could see a Secure in that slot, although I like Clique as an extra piece of disruption more than a threat.
I personally like Ghost Quarter because I tend to play an aggressive mana denial plan in a lot of matchups - being able to hit someone's only basic source of a colour lets you take the game longer much easier. It also makes Crucible that much better. The fifth colourless land is the reason I'm not comfortable playing a Mystic Gate, though.
Re. 2 Timely, I just jacked mcwinsauce's latest list to start, and I think the Modo meta was probably infested with burn. Blessed Alliance might be good; I've also liked playing 2 Kitchen Finks in the board in the past for a less narrow (though worse against burn) card.
Hi all, I've been on and off UW/Jeskai for a bit and have GP Toronto coming up - I had bought into Death's Shadow and thought it might be worth it to learn the 'best deck' with enough lead time, but I think it's more trouble than it's worth (many many small edges to gain or trip up on), so I've gone back to working on UW where at least I always know my role.
When I bought back in online I basically built Tom/Sauce's latest list. I attended the Toronto Face to Face Open on Saturday and for this event I swapped the Mindbreak Trap & Bribery for Surgical & Elspeth.
Surgical seemed like slightly less narrow hate (altho I'm not a huge fan of the card). I did end up playing against almost exclusively fair decks, so Elspeth came in very handy; and Surgical did okay against Tron.
There were 190 players so we had 8 rounds - short report below.
R1 vs BG(w) - Loss 1-2 - game 1 we go back and forth but I can't hit a Verdict to clear his lethal threats. game 2 I Seas his opening two lands to keep him off any plays and resolve Elspeth on an empty board. game 3 Bob into Fulminator on the play set me too far back, and a Thrun finished me off. Tough to start with a loss but my plan was basically to use this as training for long days at the GP, so I wanted to stick it out for the whole thing regardless.
R2 vs infect - Win 2-0 - simple enough, mana denial plan plus some spot removal gets there. game 1 he kept a 1-land 6 which got Seas'd.
R3 vs 4c Delver/zoo (with Chart a Course) - Win 2-0 - Gideon plus Supreme Verdict handles all of his threats. I win game 1 on 0 life with a Gideon emblem which is always fun.
R4 vs straight BG - Win 2-0 - game 1 he resolves a Liliana but Jace ticking down keeps me in cards and flips Gideon Jura to take out the Liliana for an early scoop. Game 2 he resolves a Thrun but has no answer to Elspeth (having used his Pulse on an earlier small Gideon.
R5 vs Eldrazi & Taxes - Win 2-0 - game 1 I emblem small Gideon and also resolve Jura - he concedes with me on 0 life but needing to find the unlikely out of multiple Flickerwisps/Displacer. game 2 he has a Vial-dependent draw and has to Thoughtseize a Stony Silence to stay in the game; I end up taking out 2 Vials with a turn 3 Sphere which slows him down enough for Elspeth to come out and take over.
R6 vs RG Tron - Draw 1-1-1 - maindeck Blood Sun with a huge mana advantage leads me to concede game 1 in about 6 minutes. game 2 goes on and on: after a few early Gideon hits, he clears the board, resolves a Blood Sun, but not before I destroy/Extract Towers. he hits 7 mana and resolves a World Breaker, but have lethal with Cryptic to bounce Blood Sun and attack with Colonnade, and Path just in case - but I don't realise World Breaker has REACH, so I end up having to Path after he blocks - and the game continues. at one point both of us have Crucible but I'm able to bounce his and destroy two lands in a turn cycle to keep him off Ulamog, which I then Clique; but he draws it again after a shuffle and takes out my two lethal threats, and so on - I eventually win (much later) with 2 Snapcasters and counterspells but we have 10 minutes left for game 3 and end up in an unintentional draw.
R7 vs UW pseudo-mirror - Win 2-0 - his build had a few different choices with Ancestral Vision, Blessed Alliance, etc. both games he stalled on mana early with a suspended Visions, and I was able to leverage that into an advantage. game 2 he blanked my Crucible with a Rest in Peace (and left me holding a Surgical with no chance to take out his Colonnades) - I did have Search for Azcanta scry going, and when resolved an Elspeth I was able to take it out with flyers and keep the tokens back with Jace+, then get in for lethal.
R8 vs humans - Win 2-1 - game 1 my opponent puts a Meddling Mage on Settle the Wreckage (?) and loses to the Gideon team-up plus Path/Snap/Sphere. game 2 he has 3 Meddling Mages (2 courtesy of Phantasmal Image) on Path, Detention Sphere, and Settle again (??) but I can't find a Verdict before I die. game 3 he has a Vial to start but a Spreading Seas on his only land and a turn 3 Sphere on Vial keeps him with just a Champion of the Parish for a few turns. he develops a board with a Thalia but I finally hit a Verdict with 5 lands, and small Gideon + Clique + Colonnade finish him off.
6-1-1, 9th place on breakers (not close), and not unexpected given the round 1 loss.
I feel like I'm pretty well established with playing the tap-out/planeswalker build - it was good to get in a full day and keep playing (reasonably) well, barring the terrible punt with attacking into the World Breaker.
I do want to try the Miracles package that a few people have been experimenting with - has anyone in the thread played with it at all?
Unless you have a fifth colour in yr mana base you can't Bring to Light to cast Fracturing Gust, which is huge (5 copies and all). Before Bring to Light I often did play 2 Fracturing Gust.
You want the 4th Bring to Light where you have high-impact sideboard bullets like Shatterstorm, Slaughter Games, etc.--so that you have an additional copy of those key effects.
Since the Vancouver mulligan became law I've been much more inclined to mulligan sevens without any ramp.
I would certainly snap mulligan 3 Remands on the draw, on the play it would depend on if I had any idea of the matchup.
You basically want yr fetches to be able to get blue and basic Forest, so that you can suspend Search with less pain on turn 1 and so that you can fetch to cast Cryptic on turns 3-4.
If I were building a mana base for Bring to Light with white, hoping to cast actual white cards either main or sideboard, I would probably swap the 4 Misties for something like 3-4 Windswept Heath and/or another UG dual, either a Flooded Grove if you have access to that or maybe a Temple of Mystery. You could consider Wooded Foothills (as Steam Vents is a better red dual to fetch generally than Stomping Ground), but I think you're much less likely to want to fetch basic Mountain with a land than you are to want access to Plains/Fountain.
All of this is pretty much assuming you have at least 2 Farseek to fix yr colours by fetching duals.
I've liked 25 lands rather than 26 if you have 11 ramp spells--4 Elder, 4 Search, 2 Farseek, Cultivate/Hunting Wilds (I prefer Cultivate):
4 of [3-4 Windswept Heath
1-0 Temple of Mystery
1-0 Flooded Grove]
2 Breeding Pool
1 Hallowed Fountain
4 Steam Vents
5 of [3-4 Stomping Grounds
2-1 Cinder Glade]
1 Mountain
1 Plains
2 Forest
3 Island
2 Valakut
I shave probably 3 on the draw and 1-2 on the play. I bring in Negate to answer Liliana or late-game discard spells, Baloths, sometimes Wrath over Anger (depending on if they're junk with Lingering Souls.
I would be fine playing BtL Scapeshift in a meta of those decks, altho you'll want to tilt yr sideboard to having cards for infect and Bogles as they are difficult to interact with--elves and affinity are easier to deal with a normal maindeck, two sweepers in the 75, and a Shatterstorm in the sideboard. I'm playing a Spellskite and a Melira, you could play multiple Spellskites but infect is often prepared with Nature's Claim, Twisted Image, or Dismember. If you're really worried about Bogles, you could play a Fracturing Gust--altho without a fifth colour you can't Bring it--which also covers affinity quite nicely.
I took my 'normal' list splashing white to a 6-round Sunday tournament, the list is below--I'm not confident that the 5c Glittering Wish list is tuned enough so I went with the safe bet, just trying the Ojutai's Command in the Careful Consideration slot (which was okay, I'll keep trying it for a bit). In the swiss I beat the mirror (splashing black but without Slaughter Games), UR Twin twice, and a Company/Chord list before IDing with friends on RUG Twin and Grixis Jace/control; I was 2nd seed in the top 8 and beat GR Tron before losing to a rematch of my round 3 Twin opponent. I still like where the list is currently; I could still see swapping a Dispel into the main for the 4th Bring.
I definitely want access to 4 Bring in the 75, I could see 3+3 and the 4th Bring in the sideboard to come in as the extra copy of the bullets; so far I've been comfortable with all 4 in the main deck.
Having 4 Bring to Light and 3 Scapeshift means you're very very unlikely to lose a game due to never finding your Scapeshift, as you not infrequently did when playing the deck before (except when Dig through Time was legal). It's also very flexible as it allows you extra copies of Anger of the Gods and lets you play a toolbox sideboard (since 1 copy of any creature, instant, or sorcery under 4 mana gives you 5 functional copies).
The splash is a cost, but in my opinion not a too great one: I was playing 24 lands in my version before, so adding a basic of the 4th colour and changing the Flooded Grove to a blue dual makes Cryptic a bit harder to cast, but that's about it.
The problem with Bolts and Snapcasters is that on their own they don't make a tempo plan--and adding them makes your combo plan worse. If you want to think about Bolt as a control card, that's fine in certain metagames, but I would never play more than 1-2 Snapcasters.
@Mr_Bote I honestly think you might be expecting a bit much to ask people who it seems as a whole (given the lack of response) would not play that main deck configuration, and are not playing those sideboard cards, to teach you how to sideboard.
That said:
- Baloths are key against BGx (and also can come in against more grindy blue matchups to give you a plan B), Remands tend to be bad against BG on the draw and the red sweepers are not great (unless they're playing Lingering Souls) as they will not kill creature-lands or Goyfs (usually)
- Negate, Dispels, and Wear/Tear (to answer Blood Moon) would come in against Twin as it's fought mainly on the stack--probably the Ghostly Prison is there to turn off the combo kill and tax their mana otherwise
- against burn you get 4 Baloths, Dispels, and Negate over Remands and probably Gifts
- against affinity you get all the artifact removal and sweepers over Remands and probably Gifts
- you have very few cards against Amulet--probably Negate and the Grudges over sweepers and Bolts
- against the mirror you just have counterspells over removal--people bring in Baloth a lot but I tend not to
- I have no idea why you want Suppression Field in yr sideboard, nor do I think you need access to 4 unique red sweepers, 2 of which can't be cast off of Bring to Light
----
I took a pretty normal BtL list splashing white over black, as I found Slaughter Games was underperforming and I wanted more game against aggro (Wrath of God in the main deck and Timely Reinforcements in the sideboard; I also wanted to play an Ojutai's Command over the Careful Consideration but forgot it), to a weekly "high stakes" modern night last night. I ended up 4-0 beating junk twice, Naya zoo, and an unusual Esper Jace/reanimator Gifts deck. The highlight was my casting Bring to Light into my Esper opponent's known Negate and Flashfreeze, his letting it resolve (I guess figuring he could just counter the Scapeshift I was sure to get), and my getting Glen Elendra Archmage.
Re. the 'stock' list that people are copying from Hoogland, I strongly feel that Hunting Wilds is not correct--I play Cultivate instead and the number of times I have cast Bring to Light with 3 colours in order to Cultivate for the 4th is already not insignificant.
Having never played Scapeshift with Gifts, I think yr list looks fine--Gifts definitely lends itself more to a draw-go style, whereas I think Bring to Light can send you down a more tap-out path (which is why I'm interested in playing more with 4 Farseeks in the Glittering Wish/Bring to Light version); I think one can definitely win with any of the various builds of Scapeshift, it depends more on yr preference and familiarity with yr list.
Some small thots:
I would certainly cut it to 60 cards if I were playing it, either the 4th Bolt (esp. when you have 2 red sweepers in the main) or the Noxious Revival, as I don't think Revival is really necessary when you have Snapcaster and Witness as rebuys/Gifts targets; I might switch a Repeal for an Into the Roil so that you can Gifts for multiple outs to Blood Moon (both castable and Snapcastable with fewer than 3 Islands), Roil also has utility against some of the delve creatures and lets you tap lower against Twin; and I'm surprised you have no hard enchantment removal in yr sideboard (Nature's Claim, Krosan Grip, etc.).
Thanks for sharing, I may try a variation on this list if I can find more time to play.
I personally like Ghost Quarter because I tend to play an aggressive mana denial plan in a lot of matchups - being able to hit someone's only basic source of a colour lets you take the game longer much easier. It also makes Crucible that much better. The fifth colourless land is the reason I'm not comfortable playing a Mystic Gate, though.
Re. 2 Timely, I just jacked mcwinsauce's latest list to start, and I think the Modo meta was probably infested with burn. Blessed Alliance might be good; I've also liked playing 2 Kitchen Finks in the board in the past for a less narrow (though worse against burn) card.
When I bought back in online I basically built Tom/Sauce's latest list. I attended the Toronto Face to Face Open on Saturday and for this event I swapped the Mindbreak Trap & Bribery for Surgical & Elspeth.
Surgical seemed like slightly less narrow hate (altho I'm not a huge fan of the card). I did end up playing against almost exclusively fair decks, so Elspeth came in very handy; and Surgical did okay against Tron.
4 Flooded Strand
4 Celestial Colonnade
1 Glacial Fortress
2 Hallowed Fountain
6 Island
3 Plains
4 Field of Ruin
1 Ghost Quarter
Creatures/Planeswalkers (7)
2 Snapcaster Mage
1 Vendilion Clique
2 Gideon of the Trials
1 Gideon Jura
1 Jace, Architect of Thought
4 Spreading Seas
2 Search for Azcanta
1 Runed Halo
2 Detention Sphere
Spells (19)
4 Path to Exile
4 Serum Visions
1 Spell Snare
1 Logic Knot
1 Mana Leak
1 Negate
3 Cryptic Command
3 Supreme Verdict
1 Sphinx's Revelation
1 Celestial Purge
1 Ceremonious Rejection
1 Disdainful Stroke
2 Dispel
1 Elspeth, Sun's Champion
1 Grafdigger's Cage
1 Negate
2 Rest in Peace
1 Settle the Wreckage
2 Stony Silence
2 Timely Reinforcements
R2 vs infect - Win 2-0 - simple enough, mana denial plan plus some spot removal gets there. game 1 he kept a 1-land 6 which got Seas'd.
R3 vs 4c Delver/zoo (with Chart a Course) - Win 2-0 - Gideon plus Supreme Verdict handles all of his threats. I win game 1 on 0 life with a Gideon emblem which is always fun.
R4 vs straight BG - Win 2-0 - game 1 he resolves a Liliana but Jace ticking down keeps me in cards and flips Gideon Jura to take out the Liliana for an early scoop. Game 2 he resolves a Thrun but has no answer to Elspeth (having used his Pulse on an earlier small Gideon.
R5 vs Eldrazi & Taxes - Win 2-0 - game 1 I emblem small Gideon and also resolve Jura - he concedes with me on 0 life but needing to find the unlikely out of multiple Flickerwisps/Displacer. game 2 he has a Vial-dependent draw and has to Thoughtseize a Stony Silence to stay in the game; I end up taking out 2 Vials with a turn 3 Sphere which slows him down enough for Elspeth to come out and take over.
R6 vs RG Tron - Draw 1-1-1 - maindeck Blood Sun with a huge mana advantage leads me to concede game 1 in about 6 minutes. game 2 goes on and on: after a few early Gideon hits, he clears the board, resolves a Blood Sun, but not before I destroy/Extract Towers. he hits 7 mana and resolves a World Breaker, but have lethal with Cryptic to bounce Blood Sun and attack with Colonnade, and Path just in case - but I don't realise World Breaker has REACH, so I end up having to Path after he blocks - and the game continues. at one point both of us have Crucible but I'm able to bounce his and destroy two lands in a turn cycle to keep him off Ulamog, which I then Clique; but he draws it again after a shuffle and takes out my two lethal threats, and so on - I eventually win (much later) with 2 Snapcasters and counterspells but we have 10 minutes left for game 3 and end up in an unintentional draw.
R7 vs UW pseudo-mirror - Win 2-0 - his build had a few different choices with Ancestral Vision, Blessed Alliance, etc. both games he stalled on mana early with a suspended Visions, and I was able to leverage that into an advantage. game 2 he blanked my Crucible with a Rest in Peace (and left me holding a Surgical with no chance to take out his Colonnades) - I did have Search for Azcanta scry going, and when resolved an Elspeth I was able to take it out with flyers and keep the tokens back with Jace+, then get in for lethal.
R8 vs humans - Win 2-1 - game 1 my opponent puts a Meddling Mage on Settle the Wreckage (?) and loses to the Gideon team-up plus Path/Snap/Sphere. game 2 he has 3 Meddling Mages (2 courtesy of Phantasmal Image) on Path, Detention Sphere, and Settle again (??) but I can't find a Verdict before I die. game 3 he has a Vial to start but a Spreading Seas on his only land and a turn 3 Sphere on Vial keeps him with just a Champion of the Parish for a few turns. he develops a board with a Thalia but I finally hit a Verdict with 5 lands, and small Gideon + Clique + Colonnade finish him off.
6-1-1, 9th place on breakers (not close), and not unexpected given the round 1 loss.
I do want to try the Miracles package that a few people have been experimenting with - has anyone in the thread played with it at all?
I would certainly snap mulligan 3 Remands on the draw, on the play it would depend on if I had any idea of the matchup.
If I were building a mana base for Bring to Light with white, hoping to cast actual white cards either main or sideboard, I would probably swap the 4 Misties for something like 3-4 Windswept Heath and/or another UG dual, either a Flooded Grove if you have access to that or maybe a Temple of Mystery. You could consider Wooded Foothills (as Steam Vents is a better red dual to fetch generally than Stomping Ground), but I think you're much less likely to want to fetch basic Mountain with a land than you are to want access to Plains/Fountain.
All of this is pretty much assuming you have at least 2 Farseek to fix yr colours by fetching duals.
I've liked 25 lands rather than 26 if you have 11 ramp spells--4 Elder, 4 Search, 2 Farseek, Cultivate/Hunting Wilds (I prefer Cultivate):
4 of [3-4 Windswept Heath
1-0 Temple of Mystery
1-0 Flooded Grove]
2 Breeding Pool
1 Hallowed Fountain
4 Steam Vents
5 of [3-4 Stomping Grounds
2-1 Cinder Glade]
1 Mountain
1 Plains
2 Forest
3 Island
2 Valakut
I took my 'normal' list splashing white to a 6-round Sunday tournament, the list is below--I'm not confident that the 5c Glittering Wish list is tuned enough so I went with the safe bet, just trying the Ojutai's Command in the Careful Consideration slot (which was okay, I'll keep trying it for a bit). In the swiss I beat the mirror (splashing black but without Slaughter Games), UR Twin twice, and a Company/Chord list before IDing with friends on RUG Twin and Grixis Jace/control; I was 2nd seed in the top 8 and beat GR Tron before losing to a rematch of my round 3 Twin opponent. I still like where the list is currently; I could still see swapping a Dispel into the main for the 4th Bring.
4 Misty Rainforest
3 Island
2 Forest
1 Mountain
1 Plains
2 Breeding Pool
1 Hallowed Fountain
4 Steam Vents
3 Stomping Ground
2 Cinder Glade
2 Valakut, the Molten Pinnacle
Creatures (5)
4 Sakura-Tribe Elder
1 Snapcaster Mage
4 Search for Tomorrow
2 Farseek
1 Cultivate
1 Anger of the Gods
4 Bring to Light
3 Scapeshift
Instant (15)
4 Remand
2 Izzet Charm
2 Worldly Counsel
2 Electrolyze
4 Cryptic Command
1 Ojutai's Command
3 Obstinate Baloth
2 Nature's Claim
1 Timely Reinforcements
1 Wrath of God
2 Dispel
1 Negate
1 Glen Elendra Archmage
1 Crumble to Dust
1 Shatterstorm
1 Melira, Sylvok Outcast
1 Spellskite
The splash is a cost, but in my opinion not a too great one: I was playing 24 lands in my version before, so adding a basic of the 4th colour and changing the Flooded Grove to a blue dual makes Cryptic a bit harder to cast, but that's about it.
The problem with Bolts and Snapcasters is that on their own they don't make a tempo plan--and adding them makes your combo plan worse. If you want to think about Bolt as a control card, that's fine in certain metagames, but I would never play more than 1-2 Snapcasters.
4 Misty Rainforest
3 Island
2 Forest
1 Mountain
1 Plains
2 Breeding Pool
1 Hallowed Fountain
4 Steam Vents
3 Stomping Ground
2 Cinder Glade
2 Valakut, the Molten Pinnacle
Creatures (5)
4 Sakura-Tribe Elder
1 Snapcaster Mage
4 Search for Tomorrow
2 Farseek
1 Cultivate
4 Remand
2 Izzet Charm
2 Electrolyze
1 Wrath of God/Anger of the Gods
4 Cryptic Command
2 Anticipate
1 Careful Consideration/Ojutai's Command
4 Bring to Light
3 Scapeshift
3 Obstinate Baloth
2 Dispel
1 Negate
1 Glen Elendra Archmage
1 Timely Reinforcements
1 Anger of the Gods/Wrath of God
1 Spellskite
1 Melira, Sylvok Outcast/Spellskite
2 Nature's Claim
1 Shatterstorm
1 Crumble to Dust
That said:
- Baloths are key against BGx (and also can come in against more grindy blue matchups to give you a plan B), Remands tend to be bad against BG on the draw and the red sweepers are not great (unless they're playing Lingering Souls) as they will not kill creature-lands or Goyfs (usually)
- Negate, Dispels, and Wear/Tear (to answer Blood Moon) would come in against Twin as it's fought mainly on the stack--probably the Ghostly Prison is there to turn off the combo kill and tax their mana otherwise
- against burn you get 4 Baloths, Dispels, and Negate over Remands and probably Gifts
- against affinity you get all the artifact removal and sweepers over Remands and probably Gifts
- you have very few cards against Amulet--probably Negate and the Grudges over sweepers and Bolts
- against the mirror you just have counterspells over removal--people bring in Baloth a lot but I tend not to
- I have no idea why you want Suppression Field in yr sideboard, nor do I think you need access to 4 unique red sweepers, 2 of which can't be cast off of Bring to Light
----
I took a pretty normal BtL list splashing white over black, as I found Slaughter Games was underperforming and I wanted more game against aggro (Wrath of God in the main deck and Timely Reinforcements in the sideboard; I also wanted to play an Ojutai's Command over the Careful Consideration but forgot it), to a weekly "high stakes" modern night last night. I ended up 4-0 beating junk twice, Naya zoo, and an unusual Esper Jace/reanimator Gifts deck. The highlight was my casting Bring to Light into my Esper opponent's known Negate and Flashfreeze, his letting it resolve (I guess figuring he could just counter the Scapeshift I was sure to get), and my getting Glen Elendra Archmage.
Re. the 'stock' list that people are copying from Hoogland, I strongly feel that Hunting Wilds is not correct--I play Cultivate instead and the number of times I have cast Bring to Light with 3 colours in order to Cultivate for the 4th is already not insignificant.
Some small thots:
I would certainly cut it to 60 cards if I were playing it, either the 4th Bolt (esp. when you have 2 red sweepers in the main) or the Noxious Revival, as I don't think Revival is really necessary when you have Snapcaster and Witness as rebuys/Gifts targets; I might switch a Repeal for an Into the Roil so that you can Gifts for multiple outs to Blood Moon (both castable and Snapcastable with fewer than 3 Islands), Roil also has utility against some of the delve creatures and lets you tap lower against Twin; and I'm surprised you have no hard enchantment removal in yr sideboard (Nature's Claim, Krosan Grip, etc.).
Thanks for sharing, I may try a variation on this list if I can find more time to play.