FWIW, I played two 8 mans on MTGO today with cruel control, made it to the finals of both.
I lost in the finals against Zoo due to land problems, and then my second finals I lost against mill because it's a randomly terrible matchup against a tier 3 deck. I beat tron 2-1, so it's not as terrible as people think as long as you can hold them off long enough to drop cruel ultimatum. I dont play any maindeck tec edges or ghost quarters either, so while it's not a great matchup, it's important to trust in the inevitability of your own deck to delay them until you can drop an ultimatum. I do have 2x sowing salt in my sideboard, but I didn't draw it in any of the games, and still was able to force him to durdle due to remands drawing into cryptics, which drew into snapcasters and then ultimatums.
The list I posted at the top of this page is more or less what I'm playing. I also played a MTGO daily event with this just recently, and barely missed the 3-1 cut after losing to two decks that are more or less hellbent on beating control (blood moon red, and jund zombies). I am a perfect 8-0 against UWR control variants in the last few competitive events I've played in. So I will say, if you're losing to UWR control, you really need to be practicing the matchups more since that matchups should be broadly in our favor (if you're using a similar list to what I provided at least). Serum visions is awesome in here. Play 4 and don't look back.
I actually played staticaster in the sideboard for a bit after the faeries unban, and it was surprisingly solid. With that said, faeries is on the decline after people are starting to realize it's not actually that great of a deck, and I've found Night of Soul's Betrayal (old school chapin tech) a flat out better card against the decks where you want staticaster.
It's disruptive (although not entirely), it cantrips, and it's very useful against tron thus saving up on sideboard slots. Zoo isn't unfavorable nor does it warrant playing silver bullet answers against. On the other hand, I don't know what you plan on doing against tron besides hope you don't face them.
I think we need to worry more-so about the unfavorable mu's (tron and burn) rather than try to win-more in match-ups we already do well against
I'm honestly just pitching the burn & tron matchups at this point. I haven't seen a ton of tron around, and if it becomes a problem, i'll start putting the sowing salts back in the sideboard.
This may sound hilarious in practice, but it's actually pretty terrible against RG tron. Reason? You tap 5 mana to cast your bribery stealing Emrakul. what happens next? They just drop a Karn or Oblivion Stone on you, and blow up emrakul. If you were to get the "cast" trigger with bribery, it would be entirely different, but unfortunately, that's not the case.
Seas actually does effect the board presence. If it prevents them from casting a creature for a couple turns or turns their nacatls into 2/2's or 1/1's it buys you turns, disrupts their tempo, and most importantly turns on electrolyze as a free removal spell. It's not the most efficient card and I'll never claim it to be an mvp, but it's cross applicable and better than the permission that zoo could just about ignore. Frankly, we need it or some other form of cheap land destruction if we want a favorable tron mu. Tron is the only thing keeping me from playing silver bullet sweepers like firespout and aotg, i swear tron warps the meta more than any other deck out there and it's kind of annoying.
Seas *might* affect their board presence. That's an important distinction to make. I'm not saying it's bad, but it won't slow down goyfs, and if they have more than 2 lands in play, it'll do literally nothing against nacatls, lions and apes. Also, if you're tapping out turn 2 to cast it, that means you're not dealing with their 2-3+ creatures attacking you, which can be a big problem.
If you're not playing dreadship reef, you're not playing this deck properly. Dreadship allows you to accelerate into turn 5-6 ultimatums without having to tap out, gives you a huge edge up in control mirrors, and is just the perfect land for this archetype overall.
I agree with most of the points you made except this one, after playing around with reef for a while, I just feel that I'd rather be using my lands to do other things rather than tick up reef. It's great against the blue mirrors, but it can a liability against anything else. It's a pet card of mine, but I don't think that it's an auto-include. Gonna try it out again though and be a bit more critical of how it determines the outcome of each mu. In order to power out a t5 or 6 ultimatum with reef, your oppponent has to literally sit there and do nothing to warrant your interaction with them (which costs the same mana required to tick it up). If you were able to goldfish with an early ultimatum, I highly doubt that it was because of dreadship reef.
Unlike decks like UWR control where you want to actively deal with all their threats, this deck really wants to just hold off the opponent's gameplan long enough until it can drop an ultimatum and win. I've said this for a while, but it's worth repeating. The only time this isn't the case is when your opponent has a large board presence and you can't just cryptic timewalk them into an ultimatum for the win. But in those instances, that's why you have damnations & anger of the gods out of the sideboard.
^^This^^
Which is the beauty of Cruel Control, it has tempo/combo elements to it without actually being a tempo/combo deck. Cruel Control is secretly a combo deck, the combo being Lands + Cruel Ultimatum
I think it's the right choice to max out on Inquisitions right now. They're way better vs. Zoo and Faeries than permission is, and allow you to rip out turn 1 Nacatls, turn 2 Bitterblossoms, or simply hit your opponent's leak before dropping an ultimatum.
Yup. IoK is boss and the perfect out to any nut draw
While I don't think the zoo matchup is bad, adding Anger of the Gods & Deathmark ensures that you have a decent matchup throughout the entire match. These cards are also great vs. all pod variants, which never huts.
Have you tried spreading seas? Hear me out, zoo usually only has one sacred foundry and temple garden that they fetch for (while running few lands in the first place). Seas is very debilitating to their game-plan and they even cantrip, it's a great card against decks with greedy mana bases, running very few lands, or TRON. Zoo has a greedy mana base and they're typically not running more than 19-21 lands. I know that aotg and deathmark are better against zoo than seas would ever be, but they don't do anything for the tron match-up which is one we really need to lock down. It also does work in the burn match-up, considering they're a deck that's more than content to sit on 1 to 2 lands and count to twenty with all of their burn spells. Seas can be a significant to debilitating kink in their flow, often buying more than a few turns
Seas is decent, but it doesn't solve the problem of creatures smashing into you. It's just too hit or miss, and doesn't affect your opponent's board presence at all. Beyond that, you're literally screwed if your opponent topdecks just about any land in their deck if you're relying on it. The name of the game against Zoo is being efficient, and spreading seas is an extremely inefficient way to deal with their threats regardless of whether it cantrips. For every instance it will be awesome, there will be other instances where the zoo player has the lands needed and it just does nothing as you're being smashed by goyfs, nacatls, and whatever else they throw at you. If you already have it in your sideboard for other matchups, and you have irrelevant cards to board out (such as permission) then it may be a decent card to board in if you have the space, but I certainly wouldn't use it specifically as an anti-zoo sideboard card.
I agree with most of the points you made except this one, after playing around with reef for a while, I just feel that I'd rather be using my lands to do other things rather than tick up reef. It's great against the blue mirrors, but it can a liability against anything else. It's a pet card of mine, but I don't think that it's an auto-include. Gonna try it out again though and be a bit more critical of how it determines the outcome of each mu. In order to power out a t5 or 6 ultimatum with reef, your oppponent has to literally sit there and do nothing to warrant your interaction with them (which costs the same mana required to tick it up). If you were able to goldfish with an early ultimatum, I highly doubt that it was because of dreadship reef.
It's not that reef is always relevant, but when it is, it's extremely awesome. The thing is, of course you won't always be using it, but when you're stuck trying to find your 7th land drop normally, with reef, you can just tick it up for a few turns which mitigates the issue of not hitting land drops. In other words, it gives you something to do with your mana in your end step that accelerates your game plan. Similar to think twice, it's a mana dump, except it doesn't take up "normal" deck slots like think twice would. I've lost count of the games where I cast ultimatum with only 5-6 lands in play due to dreadship reef.
With that said, you've played with it a lot so I don't need to really explain it's value. I've rarely found it to be a hindrance in my mana plan, and most of the time, in turns where I "wouldn't be doing anything" it isn't much of a hindrance since I can still use 1-3 mana for removal / disruption, then my remaining leftover mana to tick it up.
Okay so I've been tuning cruel control for the newer meta, and it's been quite strong, especially when you dont' have to worry about turn 1 deathrite into t2 Liliana of the Veil.
Here is my up-to-date decklist. I don't have a ton of testing vs. Faeries, but I've done a decent amount vs. zoo and the matchup seems to be even to favorable (which is pretty good with all things being considered). I feel like Faeries would likely be similar, with the match widely favorable if they don't get an early bitterblossom out, but similarly in their favor if they get an early active blossom going.
Notes on cards / deck
Batterskull is good vs. just about every non-twin deck in the format, and even vs. Tempo Twin, it's a fairly strong choice against their plan b tempo gameplan. It's great vs. Zoo, and is even relevant in control mirrors.
Serum visions has always over-performed in every cruel deck I've made, as has Augur of Bolas. Considering that this deck NEEDS to hit land drops on cue, and needs to be able to find it's damnations, cryptics, or ultimatums when it really matters, I don't see any reason not to play 4x visions and 2-3 augurs in here.
I think it's the right choice to max out on Inquisitions right now. They're way better vs. Zoo and Faeries than permission is, and allow you to rip out turn 1 Nacatls, turn 2 Bitterblossoms, or simply hit your opponent's leak before dropping an ultimatum.
I may push Hero's downfall to the sideboard. It was much more relevant when Jund was a force since it was a viable answer to most of their threats (ajani, Goyf, Liliana otv, etc etc). Right now, it just feels like an inefficient removal spell.
The burn matchup is still awful, but that's just how life is. The good thing is that Zoo & Faeries seem like they'll do a ton to decrease the volume of RG Tron in the current meta, which bodes well for Cruel Control.
While I don't think the zoo matchup is bad, adding Anger of the Gods & Deathmark ensures that you have a decent matchup throughout the entire match. These cards are also great vs. all pod variants, which never huts.
If you're not playing dreadship reef, you're not playing this deck properly. Dreadship allows you to accelerate into turn 5-6 ultimatums without having to tap out, gives you a huge edge up in control mirrors, and is just the perfect land for this archetype overall.
Unlike decks like UWR control where you want to actively deal with all their threats, this deck really wants to just hold off the opponent's gameplan long enough until it can drop an ultimatum and win. I've said this for a while, but it's worth repeating. The only time this isn't the case is when your opponent has a large board presence and you can't just cryptic timewalk them into an ultimatum for the win. But in those instances, that's why you have damnations & anger of the gods out of the sideboard.
I'm new to these forums and have been scanning most of this thread, and I'm wondering why cards such as Surgical Extraction and Shadow of Doubt aren't mentioned very often. I've seen them listed in other places, but wondering why they aren't getting any mention here or in some of the most recent deck lists on MTGO.
In a deck that is focused on card removal and counters, as soon as 1 key card is in the opponents graveyard extracting the rest of them from the game is an amazing ability. I mean Spell Snaring a bob or goyf then removing all of them from their deck for 1 mana or 2 life is killer. Same thing with Shadow of Doubt... nearly all modern decks play fetch lands. Doubt can stop a land fetch, thus setting the opponent behind a land and you get a can trip. Using it to stop a pod is effectively a free creature removal too.
Many players use Shadow either as a 1-2 of maindeck, and some have it in their sideboard. It's definitely considered in most competitive lists I've seen.
Surgical extraction just isn't that relevant in modern. It's good at hating tron out if you can destroy a land, but it's not great aside from that since you already have a fairly good matchup against the decks you would want it against.
What do you guys think of Ashiok, Nightmare Weaver here? I have been testing it and it has been a very effective win condition. It's easy to cast at 3cc, and relatively easy to protect. He snowballs rapidly and can win the game all by himself from multiple angles.
It can be decent in mirror matches, but I think adding a 3 cmc planeswalker that doesnt' really do a ton isn't in this deck's best interest. All it does is improve on irrelevant matchups you're already good against without helping against matchups you're poor against. The other issue with Ashiok is it makes your opponent's removal spells relevant. Half the reason to play a deck like this or UWR wafo-tapa is that you make your opponent's abrupt decays, maelstrom pulses, and other removal spells largely irrelevant.
Another walker to consider is Sorin Markov, 6cc sorcery speed is steep but when he lands he is a gigantic house. I have been runnin a 3/1 split between Ashiok and Sorin, those 4 cards + manlands make up the bulk of my win conditions.
If you're worried about tapping out for Ultimatum, why are you bothering with Sorin? Is it just for the purpose of being different? I'm not against sorin, but Cruel Ultimatum is infinitely more powerful for only 1 more mana. It's not really a matter of whether Sorin is powerful or not, it's mostly just that dropping a Cruel is better in almost every matchup than Sorin would be.
Lightning Helix : Just a worse lightning bolt, I wouldn't run it even if it were in my colors. UWR runs lightning helix because it has trouble with the 2cmc removal/counter spot outside of mana leak, remand wouldn't be a good fit due to lack of cruel ultimatum. If there were a functional copy of lightning helix in grixis colors, I would still prefer remand since it pairs well with cruel ultimatum and much more suited to the gameplan. Helix is a good card, but imho it's arbitrary to what UWR is trying to accomplish is to grind away incremental damage until very late in the game. You know why grixis can grind away at its opponent's life total better than UWR? Cruel ultimatum
I agree with most of what you wrote, but the life-gain offered by Helix is half the reason why UWR has some advantages over Grixis. Grixis control decks can't even think about gaining life until they resolve a 7cmc Ultimatum. Against burn-intensive decks, this is a big big deal as I've lost tons of games with this deck to being burned out before being able to gain life back. If your opponent is just playing creature-based aggro, it's another story, but most aggro decks are packing a decent volume of burn spells where you really want the life gain to help stabilize you as you enter late-game territory.
I don't like spot discard in the maindeck, especially if our gameplan is keep our mana untapped to react during our opponent's turn. They're also bad topdecks (control is in a bad spot when it runs out of gas) and lose a lot of effectiveness unless played early. Spot discard is good against tempo, tron, control, and combo so it's definitely sideboard-worthy, I run four seize in the board. Just my own 2 cents
I've really liked playing 2-3 Inquisitions maindeck. The information you gather is really important, and it's way less narrow than Spell Snare. Spell snare is typically a terrible topdeck as well unless you're in a control mirror, but even then, Inquisition is probably better. If you're having issues keeping mana open for permission... just wait a turn or two and cast it when you have 3 mana. Besides, in a deck where you're trying to resolve a 7cmc sorcery, I think it's usually better to function less as a pure draw-go deck with the option to have stuff to tap out for more.
You're not gonna like augur all too much, with the amount of permission you're running you're going to wish that he's a think twice (good against jund). Trust me, I've been there lol
I suppose we just have different opinions. Every time I resolve Augur, I feel really good, whereas think twice always just feels like Junk. If you're having issues tapping out with Augur, just play more intelligently with it and wait until you have 4 mana to cast it with leak/remand backup. Augur is very good at digging for Ultimatums, hand disruption, wraths, or removal, which is pretty important overall for this deck. The other benefit of Augur is that it gives you more options to put pressure on opposing planeswalkers such as Liliana of the Veil, which can be legitimate issues upon resolving.
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I actually got to play a ridiculously intense mirror match of Cruel vs Cruel this past Sunday, and even though I lost, I enjoyed that match quite a lot.
Some things I made note of during that match - Vendilion Clique is a much better card than Augur of Bolas for a secondary utility creature. The fact that you can Clique away your opponent's counterspell right before you cast Cruel is amazing. Your opponent is left with a choice of using the counter on Clique, and not having it for the inevitable Ultimatum about to hit him, or letting it resolve, and losing the counter anyway. Flash makes it infinitely better! And on top of that, it also helps you aggro your opponent to death faster as it is doing 3x the damage of Augur. With evasion!
If you are wanting a finisher to avoid going to time, Batterskull is a great way to go. It helps you stabilize your life total while being immune to most removal, especially Path. A 1 of in the main and/or side is not a terrible call. Also, it can be equipped to your unblockable Creeping Tar Pit to guarantee life gain (but beware of Path to Exile!)
Mystical Teachings is a much better card than I initially gave it credit for. You don't even need to run the full Teachings package, honestly just having a tutorable sweeper (Consume the Meek) and being able to search for Cryptic Commands (or Suffer the Past if you want a wincon) makes it worth 2 slots.
Also, and especially if you want to run Suffer the Past, run at least 1-2 storage lands. These will help your control matchups immensely by being a lightning rod for Cryptics, and giving you massive mana advantage when they aren't doing that. They help you keep up when you stumble on land drops too. Plus, late game being able to Suffer for like 15+ is always a great way to win!
Teachings is good in slow control mirrors. The reason you wouldn't want to play teachings is because it's awful in 95% of the other matchups where you actually need to be dealing with their threats instead of paying 4 mana to search for a 5 mana answer as you're getting your face beat in.
If the meta were super control & combo heavy, teachings may not be a bad card, but with an aggro, ramp (tron) and midrange meta, it's typically just too slow.
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I always find it funny how people who haven't tested serum visions in here regard it as trash, then people who actually playtest with it a bit all love it.
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So, what are people's thoughts on my idea of running Isochron Scepter. With Thoughtseize and Inquisition of Kozilek, we can get rid of Abrupt Decay, and even if they draw another one soon we probably will have gotten some card advantage from it.
I wouldn't bother, especially in a deck without lightning helix. There are just too many things that can go wrong with scepter in here.
I would say if you want to play scepter, you need a lot of instants and sorceries that are very strong when imprinted on it, and you probably want some # of muddle the mixtures (tutors scepters and imprint targets), and some # of academy ruins (since recursion is good). At that point, you're probably better off with a dedicated artifact control package, which starts to get away from playing more standard cruel grixis.
So is Augur of Bolas a no go in this deck? I've been liking it but it's not at instant speed.
Not everything has to be an instant. If you have 4 mana, you can easily cast an augur, gain a blocker and card to filter with while holding up permission mana. If you play hand disruption, tapping out turn 2 after an inquisition is much safer as you know what you have to deal with, and usually will have discarded any relevant threats.
Augur is extremely helpful in dealing with Liliana of the veil as well. If you can get an attack in on Liliana, you can just bolt her to death, or swing with tar-pit to kill Liliana in one shot. Without augur, it's a much more difficult task to deal with Liliana.
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simply , rune snag is not really good since there is lots of DrS and Ooze , also snapcaster
my vision of teachings is that you can tutor for a snapcaster or any instant , but also reduces the amount of cards in the deck which leaves to you a higher possibility to draw what you want/need
The problem is that teachings is really expensive, and most good decks in the format aren't that vulnerable to silver bullets you could grab with it anyway. Against Jund, you're better off just playing more removal & electrolyzes. Against combo you're better off simply playing more early game disruption.
The flashback aspect of teachings is almost never relevant since you're using up all your mana each turn to deal with goyfs, lilianas, cranial platings, or holding mana up to prevent an opponent from ripping off a large revelation.
I guess I would rather just main deck more cheap library manipulation and answers that are relevant prior to turn 4 than play teachings. And at the 4 mana slot, I'd rather have cards better at gaining card advantage than a 4 mana tutor for a cryptic or removal spell.
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Hooray, finally a pro agrees that Serum Visions rocks in here (and is much better in control decks than people realize in general). If he were to add thoughtflares and some hand disruption, he would more or less arrive at the lists me and Magicman were playing a while back.
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I'm curious as to how relevant steam augury will be in here. It's great card advantage, but giving your opponent the choice will result in a lot of cards in your hand that won't do much of anything. I think if you're playing augury, you'll probably want 1-2 Mystic retrievals in your deck so your opponent doesn't just bin your ultimatums and leave you with no win conditions.
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I still don't like Mulldrifter in a deck like this that wants to be draw-go. The problem with mulldrifter is that you can't hold up cryptic command, electrolyze, or leak countermagic at the same time that you tap out to cast mulldrifter. If you want to play sorcery speed draw-spells like drifter, that's fine, but you need to play hand disruption as well since it allows you to tap out with more confidence that you're not running it into a cryptic command, or that you're going to die to combo decks the following turn while you can't counter anything.
Long story short, if you're going to play almost entirely draw-go with this deck, you really need to be playing instant speed draw effects to go along with it. I think this deck functions much better with hand disruption since it's better in conjunction with cruel. I like replacing snares with inquisitions as they're far less situational, and are simply more functional with the deck's overall gameplan. Gaining information on the opponent's hand is also invaluable when you're trying to resolve a 7cmc sorcery.
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Well what I mean't to say is that it loses the digging power/relevant body of augur, and it would have less card advantage/resilience to hand disruption than Think Twice. You also have the high interactivity of remand vs the non-interactivity of Think twice, augur of bolas is closer to the middle of this sprectrum while think twice is on the non-interactive side.
Having a lot of 1 cmc sorcery spells (for my style of deck) has interrupted my game-plan just by being there. The scenarios would look like this
It's turn 2, your opponent has a deathrite shaman in play and you put down a second land with an IOK or Serum Visions in hand, you also have a combination 1-2 Mana Leaks, Think Twice, Terminate. I almost always decide to ignore IOK/visions in favor of keeping the mana up to interact with my opponent on their turn, by the time I can cast IOK without getting blown out the next turn with something I have to react to, it doesn't hit anything relevant or they've used all of there cmc1-3 spells anyway, or I even have to choose from IOK/SV over Electrolyze/Damnation/Cryptic Command. The only times IOK and Visions have been effective for me were when I was able to play them on my very first turn, but probability dictates I would be playing them on the following turns instead.
This is my reasoning for possibly cutting Augur of Bolas for Remand since it's more compatible with my game-plan but I would be cutting the digging power i previously got from Augur of Bolas (Also a better top-deck) significantly.
I don't like the idea of spending resources to hit land-drops when I could just play the 26th land but I'll try it out for sure
Fair enough, to me I either play Visions turn 1 when I won't have to bolt something, or wait until I would play it turn 3-4-5-6 where I can start digging for cards I know i'll need in the given matchup, or to search for cruels. It's not a turn 2 play unless you drop inquisition on turn 1-2, and know it's not going to hurt you for tapping out to cast it. I think visions is less effective in decks with more permission like yours however, so it's a tough call.
If you want to hold countermagic up, you just hold the visions until it's more useful later in the game. This is how most of the pros played preordain back during the caw-blade era. If they weren't digging for land drops early on, they would often hold it until later on when their hand was less full, and they could dig for relevant gas at that point in the game.
If you've tried it and don't like it, then fair enough. I've just found the deck worked much more consistently when I had access to 1-3 visions for whatever reason.
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I lost in the finals against Zoo due to land problems, and then my second finals I lost against mill because it's a randomly terrible matchup against a tier 3 deck. I beat tron 2-1, so it's not as terrible as people think as long as you can hold them off long enough to drop cruel ultimatum. I dont play any maindeck tec edges or ghost quarters either, so while it's not a great matchup, it's important to trust in the inevitability of your own deck to delay them until you can drop an ultimatum. I do have 2x sowing salt in my sideboard, but I didn't draw it in any of the games, and still was able to force him to durdle due to remands drawing into cryptics, which drew into snapcasters and then ultimatums.
The list I posted at the top of this page is more or less what I'm playing. I also played a MTGO daily event with this just recently, and barely missed the 3-1 cut after losing to two decks that are more or less hellbent on beating control (blood moon red, and jund zombies). I am a perfect 8-0 against UWR control variants in the last few competitive events I've played in. So I will say, if you're losing to UWR control, you really need to be practicing the matchups more since that matchups should be broadly in our favor (if you're using a similar list to what I provided at least). Serum visions is awesome in here. Play 4 and don't look back.
I actually played staticaster in the sideboard for a bit after the faeries unban, and it was surprisingly solid. With that said, faeries is on the decline after people are starting to realize it's not actually that great of a deck, and I've found Night of Soul's Betrayal (old school chapin tech) a flat out better card against the decks where you want staticaster.
I'm honestly just pitching the burn & tron matchups at this point. I haven't seen a ton of tron around, and if it becomes a problem, i'll start putting the sowing salts back in the sideboard.
This may sound hilarious in practice, but it's actually pretty terrible against RG tron. Reason? You tap 5 mana to cast your bribery stealing Emrakul. what happens next? They just drop a Karn or Oblivion Stone on you, and blow up emrakul. If you were to get the "cast" trigger with bribery, it would be entirely different, but unfortunately, that's not the case.
Seas *might* affect their board presence. That's an important distinction to make. I'm not saying it's bad, but it won't slow down goyfs, and if they have more than 2 lands in play, it'll do literally nothing against nacatls, lions and apes. Also, if you're tapping out turn 2 to cast it, that means you're not dealing with their 2-3+ creatures attacking you, which can be a big problem.
Seas is decent, but it doesn't solve the problem of creatures smashing into you. It's just too hit or miss, and doesn't affect your opponent's board presence at all. Beyond that, you're literally screwed if your opponent topdecks just about any land in their deck if you're relying on it. The name of the game against Zoo is being efficient, and spreading seas is an extremely inefficient way to deal with their threats regardless of whether it cantrips. For every instance it will be awesome, there will be other instances where the zoo player has the lands needed and it just does nothing as you're being smashed by goyfs, nacatls, and whatever else they throw at you. If you already have it in your sideboard for other matchups, and you have irrelevant cards to board out (such as permission) then it may be a decent card to board in if you have the space, but I certainly wouldn't use it specifically as an anti-zoo sideboard card.
It's not that reef is always relevant, but when it is, it's extremely awesome. The thing is, of course you won't always be using it, but when you're stuck trying to find your 7th land drop normally, with reef, you can just tick it up for a few turns which mitigates the issue of not hitting land drops. In other words, it gives you something to do with your mana in your end step that accelerates your game plan. Similar to think twice, it's a mana dump, except it doesn't take up "normal" deck slots like think twice would. I've lost count of the games where I cast ultimatum with only 5-6 lands in play due to dreadship reef.
With that said, you've played with it a lot so I don't need to really explain it's value. I've rarely found it to be a hindrance in my mana plan, and most of the time, in turns where I "wouldn't be doing anything" it isn't much of a hindrance since I can still use 1-3 mana for removal / disruption, then my remaining leftover mana to tick it up.
Here is my up-to-date decklist. I don't have a ton of testing vs. Faeries, but I've done a decent amount vs. zoo and the matchup seems to be even to favorable (which is pretty good with all things being considered). I feel like Faeries would likely be similar, with the match widely favorable if they don't get an early bitterblossom out, but similarly in their favor if they get an early active blossom going.
Notes on cards / deck
2 Snapcaster Mage
3 Augur of Bolas
Spells
4 Serum Visions
3 Cryptic Command
2 Cruel Ultimatum
4 Lightning Bolt
4 Inquisition of Kozilek
2 Electrolyze
2 Damnation
2 Terminate
3 Remand
1 Hero's Downfall
1 Repeal
1 Thoughtflare
1 Batterskull
Lands
4 Scalding Tarn
3 Creeping Tar Pit
3 Cascade Bluffs
2 Dreadship Reef
2 Watery Grave
1 Snow-Covered Island
1 Snow-Covered Mountain
1 Snow-Covered Swamp
1 Lavaclaw Reaches
2 Steam Vents
2 River of Tears
1 Sulfur Falls
1 Drowned Catacomb
1 Blood Crypt
1 Rakdos Charm
2 Spellskite
1 Pithing Needle
2 Relic of Progenitus
1 Dispel
1 Batterskull
2 Deathmark
2 Anger of the Gods
1 Countersquall
2 Night of Souls' Betrayal
Many players use Shadow either as a 1-2 of maindeck, and some have it in their sideboard. It's definitely considered in most competitive lists I've seen.
Surgical extraction just isn't that relevant in modern. It's good at hating tron out if you can destroy a land, but it's not great aside from that since you already have a fairly good matchup against the decks you would want it against.
It can be decent in mirror matches, but I think adding a 3 cmc planeswalker that doesnt' really do a ton isn't in this deck's best interest. All it does is improve on irrelevant matchups you're already good against without helping against matchups you're poor against. The other issue with Ashiok is it makes your opponent's removal spells relevant. Half the reason to play a deck like this or UWR wafo-tapa is that you make your opponent's abrupt decays, maelstrom pulses, and other removal spells largely irrelevant.
If you're worried about tapping out for Ultimatum, why are you bothering with Sorin? Is it just for the purpose of being different? I'm not against sorin, but Cruel Ultimatum is infinitely more powerful for only 1 more mana. It's not really a matter of whether Sorin is powerful or not, it's mostly just that dropping a Cruel is better in almost every matchup than Sorin would be.
I agree with most of what you wrote, but the life-gain offered by Helix is half the reason why UWR has some advantages over Grixis. Grixis control decks can't even think about gaining life until they resolve a 7cmc Ultimatum. Against burn-intensive decks, this is a big big deal as I've lost tons of games with this deck to being burned out before being able to gain life back. If your opponent is just playing creature-based aggro, it's another story, but most aggro decks are packing a decent volume of burn spells where you really want the life gain to help stabilize you as you enter late-game territory.
I've really liked playing 2-3 Inquisitions maindeck. The information you gather is really important, and it's way less narrow than Spell Snare. Spell snare is typically a terrible topdeck as well unless you're in a control mirror, but even then, Inquisition is probably better. If you're having issues keeping mana open for permission... just wait a turn or two and cast it when you have 3 mana. Besides, in a deck where you're trying to resolve a 7cmc sorcery, I think it's usually better to function less as a pure draw-go deck with the option to have stuff to tap out for more.
I suppose we just have different opinions. Every time I resolve Augur, I feel really good, whereas think twice always just feels like Junk. If you're having issues tapping out with Augur, just play more intelligently with it and wait until you have 4 mana to cast it with leak/remand backup. Augur is very good at digging for Ultimatums, hand disruption, wraths, or removal, which is pretty important overall for this deck. The other benefit of Augur is that it gives you more options to put pressure on opposing planeswalkers such as Liliana of the Veil, which can be legitimate issues upon resolving.
Teachings is good in slow control mirrors. The reason you wouldn't want to play teachings is because it's awful in 95% of the other matchups where you actually need to be dealing with their threats instead of paying 4 mana to search for a 5 mana answer as you're getting your face beat in.
If the meta were super control & combo heavy, teachings may not be a bad card, but with an aggro, ramp (tron) and midrange meta, it's typically just too slow.
I wouldn't bother, especially in a deck without lightning helix. There are just too many things that can go wrong with scepter in here.
I played with a singleton scepter as a finisher in a thirst/shackles control deck here - http://forums.mtgsalvation.com/showthread.php?t=421889&highlight=thirst+shackles and even there it was a bit vulnerable to decays and grudges.
I would say if you want to play scepter, you need a lot of instants and sorceries that are very strong when imprinted on it, and you probably want some # of muddle the mixtures (tutors scepters and imprint targets), and some # of academy ruins (since recursion is good). At that point, you're probably better off with a dedicated artifact control package, which starts to get away from playing more standard cruel grixis.
Not everything has to be an instant. If you have 4 mana, you can easily cast an augur, gain a blocker and card to filter with while holding up permission mana. If you play hand disruption, tapping out turn 2 after an inquisition is much safer as you know what you have to deal with, and usually will have discarded any relevant threats.
Augur is extremely helpful in dealing with Liliana of the veil as well. If you can get an attack in on Liliana, you can just bolt her to death, or swing with tar-pit to kill Liliana in one shot. Without augur, it's a much more difficult task to deal with Liliana.
The problem is that teachings is really expensive, and most good decks in the format aren't that vulnerable to silver bullets you could grab with it anyway. Against Jund, you're better off just playing more removal & electrolyzes. Against combo you're better off simply playing more early game disruption.
The flashback aspect of teachings is almost never relevant since you're using up all your mana each turn to deal with goyfs, lilianas, cranial platings, or holding mana up to prevent an opponent from ripping off a large revelation.
I guess I would rather just main deck more cheap library manipulation and answers that are relevant prior to turn 4 than play teachings. And at the 4 mana slot, I'd rather have cards better at gaining card advantage than a 4 mana tutor for a cryptic or removal spell.
Hooray, finally a pro agrees that Serum Visions rocks in here (and is much better in control decks than people realize in general). If he were to add thoughtflares and some hand disruption, he would more or less arrive at the lists me and Magicman were playing a while back.
Long story short, if you're going to play almost entirely draw-go with this deck, you really need to be playing instant speed draw effects to go along with it. I think this deck functions much better with hand disruption since it's better in conjunction with cruel. I like replacing snares with inquisitions as they're far less situational, and are simply more functional with the deck's overall gameplan. Gaining information on the opponent's hand is also invaluable when you're trying to resolve a 7cmc sorcery.
Fair enough, to me I either play Visions turn 1 when I won't have to bolt something, or wait until I would play it turn 3-4-5-6 where I can start digging for cards I know i'll need in the given matchup, or to search for cruels. It's not a turn 2 play unless you drop inquisition on turn 1-2, and know it's not going to hurt you for tapping out to cast it. I think visions is less effective in decks with more permission like yours however, so it's a tough call.
If you want to hold countermagic up, you just hold the visions until it's more useful later in the game. This is how most of the pros played preordain back during the caw-blade era. If they weren't digging for land drops early on, they would often hold it until later on when their hand was less full, and they could dig for relevant gas at that point in the game.
If you've tried it and don't like it, then fair enough. I've just found the deck worked much more consistently when I had access to 1-3 visions for whatever reason.