I prefer dispel over spell pierce, but i can see different reasons for both. Pierce gets liliana, but not much else out of jund, which makes it fairly narrow. I'm not actually sure it getting liliana matters though since I don't think i'd side it in vs. jund/junk. I wouldn't board in dispel vs. jund anyways tho. Reason I like dispel is because it can be sided into control matchups no problem (spell pierce is a little more speculative) and its also good vs burn (pierce is too, but just not vs control as well).
Pierce does get enchantments and other things, but most of the time you can't afford to side something like that in, since statistically its usually the case that it'll be low impact or completely do nothing, (part of that is because usually decks running enchantments have a lot of other creature types of threats you care about, also pierce can turn dead in the lategame as well which doesn't do it any favors).
So with that in mind, it may appear that pierce is the more versatile card since it can potentially counter more types of spells, but the fact that you probably don't want to board it in as often as you'd think (usually you want your answers to either interact with creatures and noncreatures,Be insanely powerful, or stay in the sideboard),coupled with the fact that it can turn dead later in the game easily, I would say at least makes it a weaker card for a control deck looking to hit the late game.
Well Lordarrion you have one really good point, if we didn't get polluted delta printed, we would neeeever be talking about Sb blood moon plans as even a concept lol. Also i'd recommend maybe shaving down to 2-3 blood moons in ur sideboard just to try that out anyway, main reason is they are worse in multiples, meaning if you draw several, the first one is very effective, and the more u have the worse they get, the 4th one in ur hand does practically nothing. This is presumably why most splinter twin decks run about 2-3 in their sideboards.
I guess my thinking was, If we can rid them of the valakut combo, colorscrewing them doesn't seem super necessary since their deck's most powerful thing turns into dead draws (this is distinct from Slaughter games'ing their scapeshift, since now future scapeshift draws would be "dead draws" and not exiled). I understand that they can still cast their spells, can we not just kill their threats though? they don't seem super scary if we can just kill or counter their big bombs. I mean the deck isn't all in on the blood moon sideboard plan, it still has plenty of threats like keranos and batterskull that are good cards anyways. The downside to our disruption like Thoughtseize clique etc is that they can topdeck scapeshift, but if we shut that off with bloodmoon maybe that can be a viable path to victory?
Edit: What I really mean is, would it be a benefit to sideboard out weak cards vs scapeshift like electrolyze, bolt, etc. for cards like bloodmoon. Also when we side into the B-M plan, it always comes at the cost of siding out our ultimatum (assuming you only run one) and maybe some number of cryptics, for other cards like keranos, cliques, negates, thoughtseize, etc. So we have to consider the "Cost" of removing these cards when we side into bloodmoon. So ultimately, with that cost in mind, does the benefit of removing the "Valakut" win condition by means of our 3 mana enchantment B-M, as a benefit, outweigh those costs? I'd say that removing their biggest threat with a "3" mana enchantment might just be worth those costs. The ramp into 3 island is definitely something to consider, there may be a way to perhaps Ghost quarter one of their islands, turning off their cryptics? I also think that maybe we don't actually have to side out all our cryptics vs. Scapeshift because they can do what you say (ramp into triple blue).
I mean if their plan is to bounce the moon to cast scapeshift, then in that scenario our Cryptic is castable again once moon is bounced, and we got them to use one of their counters,
If they don't bounce it, then they have 4 dead cards in their deck (scapeshift) and we still have plenty of other ways to interact with them, having severely neutered their deck's power. It sounds reasonable to me anyways.
Last thing, blood moon is actually pretty great vs. the amulet of vigor deck, sideboarding into that, and a couple shatter effects (to slow their start down significantly) could be a path to victory in that matchup. I think as a sideboard strategy it could be pretty effective, I mean blood moon's power ceiling is bananas in modern, making it always a temptation if you're playing red.
Ever since I saw U/W Miracles control lists playing with blood moon as a sideboard card I've wanted to try a sideboard Blood moon strategy for this deck but I've always run into a couple snags with it. First you'd have to side out majority of the cryptics and cruel ultimatum, and side into things like Keranos, god of storms. Since we already play batterskull mainboard it doesn't seem super unrealistic. Second you need to run like 9 fetches or so which in a deck with not that much lifegain can be an issue.
The real issue I thought was when are you siding into the blood moon package? I could only think of vs. Junk and Tron. Damnation was also hard to cast after playing a blood moon so there becomes a consideration to also siding those out which takes a toll on the junk matchup unless you don't side them all out. I guess it seems somewhat feasible but everytime I go back to it I run into snags here and there. Is it even good against Tron? I guess if you have multiple shattering sprees in the sideboard I could see it as a strategy vs them since if they try to play something like an O-Stone after you tap out for Blood Moon you can just blow up their O-Stones and plus the excess of Red mana that blood moon creates helps replicate get more value, a small thing I guess. Idk I'll definitely think about it more again, everytime I come back to it it seems more feasible lol.
I was also thinking that if our Land destruction land is Ghost quarter we don't necessarily need 9 or so fetches since in an emergency we can GQ our own land to get our basics, then blood moon. Additionally we can also GQ their basics since most decks don't run that many (some only run 1 basic of a certain type for instance) in case they try to play around our blood moons, seems interesting.
Random question I have is how good is blood moon versus Scapeshift? I've never tried that out so I have no idea if that actually helps that matchup. I know some scapeshift players play prismatic omen are we worried about them playing that? if they can't combo with valakut does that mean we only have to kill their primeval titans and batterskulls etc? or do they still have another threat i'm not thinking about atm.
Edit: This has piqued my interest again, someone please test it :).
well at that point why not just play drowned catacomb since you're almost always going to be able to play it untapped given that you're not going to keep a 1 lander and almost every land in ur list makes it come into play untapped (except for 5?). Am I missing something?
But when I was playing against tron, I sided in things like Rakdos Charm for their Expedition Map as well. And simple counters for green version with Sylvan Scrying and I could easily get to the 4 mana before he could assemble tron and use it. (Doesn't work if he got the godhand with all three lands inside though, but with Bo3 hard for him to get that hand twice.)
In the end, Tron is not played as much has before, so Sowing salt lost it's place.
Since charm doesn't work vs expedition map on the draw, wouldn't you prefer a 1 mana artifact destruction spell?
I could definitely see the possiblity of anticipate in modern, So i'll be watching for that. Of course the actual card advantage of think twice is still a real point of consideration, but it may be that anticipates digging power may be strong enough to supplant that advantage, at least at such a cheap cost anyway (2 mana is pretty cheap in modern, especially with no further mana investment required). If nothing else however anticipate is going to be great in the "Standard Format" U/x control decks, They just have nothing to smooth out their early draws at instant speed right now so this is a real boon to that deck, im really happy to see it :).
Affinity does typically play sideboard copies of spell pierce making it far more difficult to resolve 5 mana spells, do you not run into this interaction? In my experience affinity is capable of very fast openings where they dump their hand on the field. It doesn't always happen but it is possible, and in these spots they can put put lots of pressure on the life total making 5 mana spells a lot harder to cast or get to.
mana denial is great but I think if they're left with few or no threats and we can get into cryptic territory that should be enough to win. As you say, we have quite a bit of removal to take it home from there. I think its more likely that killing multiple key threats before 5 mana vs them results in more wins on average than waiting for 5 mana with a vandalblast, also god forbid we stumble to hit 5 mana which has to also be part of our calculation.
maybe, idk i mean technically the discarded card is random so while that means it could be a really good card, it could also turn out to be a land. Electrolyze is just so much better because it doesn't depend on a creature in the yard to be great and always cycles. We'll see how it turns out, there's always a shot it turns out to be a great card i suppose.
were you thinking sideboard or mainboard btw? those seem to change the card a bit for me.
Were u comparing vandalblast to shatterstorm or shattering spree? (vandalblast vs. shattering spree was the comparison i was focusing on mainly). If you were comparing Vandalblast to spree, are u sure u need to blow all the artifacts vs. affinity to win? I find some of them to be useless, as well as you do need 5 mana to overload the vandalblast, are you certain that's realistic vs. affinity since they can put a pretty fast clock vs. us?
I see, multiple red mana is definitely a downside to shattering spree so I can understand if your manabase in particular has trouble with so few red sources.
I am not certain how good the b/r command will be, the discard mode seems very mediocre because they choose which to discard. vs affinity it seems playable, but i'm not sure I would use a sideboard slot for it since sideboard cards should be impactful and the B/r command doesn't seem to be very impactful except for against affinity, so that doesn't seem like enough matchups.
Hey guys, I'd like to try and see if we can agree on what the best sideboard artifact hate for this deck would be. I've given it a lot of thought but ofc maybe there's something that I missed but atm I'm thinking theres good reason to play 1-2 shattering spree over the other options. So to start artifact hate should be versatile I think, meaning it should be a good option to bring in against a large amount of decks. Why I think shattering spree is better to bring in than other options? Versatility in modern for artifact hate is best achieved by being incredibly cheap (at least when it comes to artifact hate) Why? The things we need to hate out, outside of affinity, are t1 plays like expedition map and amulet of vigor.
Shattering spree can be brought in against Tron and amulet of vigor decks effectively, it is also able to be brought in against affinity. Shatterstorm cannot be effectively brought in vs Tron and amulet, this is a big downside, it just costs too much, the only deck shatterstorm can be brought in vs. is really affinity. Vandalblast can be brought in vs the same matchups that shattering spree can, its the only other "good" 1 mana artifact hate card aside from shattering spree. So we've narrowed it down between 2 choices. [Rakdos charm fails here because it can't interact with a t1 expedition map from tron and is meager vs. affinity.(despite it being instant speed which is a huge plus to it, its only a 1 for 1 and if this is gonna be our affinity hate, 1 for 1 doesn't cut it)].
Vandalblast:
Pros:
-can be overloaded vs. affinity
-doesn't cost multiple red mana
-overload can kill etched champion in affinity (S.S. cannot do this if replicated)
Cons:
-costs FIVE mana to overload
-huge target for something like spell pierce out of affinity (harder to resolve in general than S.S)
-overload mode cannot be used if snapcasted back.
Shattering Spree:
Pros:
-doesn't cost FIVE mana to get a 2 for 1 or a 3 for 1 (aka do its job, this is a decent plus vs affinity since they pressure your life total early, 5 mana may not always be realistic).
-replicate as a mechanic is very resilient to countermagic (if affinity tries to spell pierce this card when its replicated they only get to choose 1 copy of the spell).
-Snapcasting this spell you CAN choose to replicate it.
Cons:
-you need multiple red mana to replicate it, so realistically vs things like affinity you could probably expect to replicate only once or MAYBE twice since 4 and + red mana is really hard to get to even with fetches.
-etched champion doesn't die to this
The biggest downside to Shattering spree I can see is that it doesn't absolutely get rid of almost everything on affinity's board. So the question I think that has to be asked is, do we need to completely annihilate their board? I would say that its possible we don't and that a 2 for 1 or 3 for 1 should be good enough, after all ancient grudge is played a lot vs affinity and thats exactly what that is, also we mainboard electrolyze and a lot of cheap removal unlike some/other decks so we don't need as insane a blowout vs. affinity to win. I think that overall with all these things in mind Shattering spree is the definitive better option, with that being said its always possible I missed something big so if anyone can think of any let me know. Other than that what do other people think about these choices and the comparison?
I think its still pretty good, in standard that is. Of course its pretty unplayable in modern, I'm hoping the Blue Black Command will be good though lol, I'm hoping for something like Choose two - Doomblade(or maybe opponent lose 4 life?), Negate, Boomerang, Opponent discards a card. I think the last two modes would be awesome as "make your own" Recoil effect :). God i miss recoil... recoil would be so awesome in this deck lol.
Either way im sure whatever they print for the U/B command will be at least playable for standard. I love spoiler season lol, its just unfortunate most things they print in standard these days don't quite matchup to things like cryptic command etc. making it really hard for us to want to play it in this deck over cryptic ( at least for commands that is.)
I was actually thinking about nephalia drownyard myself lol. The problem though I think is that against tron decks its really really really bad because as soon as emrakul hits their GY they just can't get milled. Also Manlands can block sometimes that can make the difference between losing and winning a game. Finally we play 4 lightning bolts and some electrolyze, we have a solid damage plan with these and so tar pit synergizes with this a bit more than milling would.
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Pierce does get enchantments and other things, but most of the time you can't afford to side something like that in, since statistically its usually the case that it'll be low impact or completely do nothing, (part of that is because usually decks running enchantments have a lot of other creature types of threats you care about, also pierce can turn dead in the lategame as well which doesn't do it any favors).
So with that in mind, it may appear that pierce is the more versatile card since it can potentially counter more types of spells, but the fact that you probably don't want to board it in as often as you'd think (usually you want your answers to either interact with creatures and noncreatures,Be insanely powerful, or stay in the sideboard),coupled with the fact that it can turn dead later in the game easily, I would say at least makes it a weaker card for a control deck looking to hit the late game.
Edit: What I really mean is, would it be a benefit to sideboard out weak cards vs scapeshift like electrolyze, bolt, etc. for cards like bloodmoon. Also when we side into the B-M plan, it always comes at the cost of siding out our ultimatum (assuming you only run one) and maybe some number of cryptics, for other cards like keranos, cliques, negates, thoughtseize, etc. So we have to consider the "Cost" of removing these cards when we side into bloodmoon. So ultimately, with that cost in mind, does the benefit of removing the "Valakut" win condition by means of our 3 mana enchantment B-M, as a benefit, outweigh those costs? I'd say that removing their biggest threat with a "3" mana enchantment might just be worth those costs. The ramp into 3 island is definitely something to consider, there may be a way to perhaps Ghost quarter one of their islands, turning off their cryptics? I also think that maybe we don't actually have to side out all our cryptics vs. Scapeshift because they can do what you say (ramp into triple blue).
I mean if their plan is to bounce the moon to cast scapeshift, then in that scenario our Cryptic is castable again once moon is bounced, and we got them to use one of their counters,
If they don't bounce it, then they have 4 dead cards in their deck (scapeshift) and we still have plenty of other ways to interact with them, having severely neutered their deck's power. It sounds reasonable to me anyways.
Last thing, blood moon is actually pretty great vs. the amulet of vigor deck, sideboarding into that, and a couple shatter effects (to slow their start down significantly) could be a path to victory in that matchup. I think as a sideboard strategy it could be pretty effective, I mean blood moon's power ceiling is bananas in modern, making it always a temptation if you're playing red.
The real issue I thought was when are you siding into the blood moon package? I could only think of vs. Junk and Tron. Damnation was also hard to cast after playing a blood moon so there becomes a consideration to also siding those out which takes a toll on the junk matchup unless you don't side them all out. I guess it seems somewhat feasible but everytime I go back to it I run into snags here and there. Is it even good against Tron? I guess if you have multiple shattering sprees in the sideboard I could see it as a strategy vs them since if they try to play something like an O-Stone after you tap out for Blood Moon you can just blow up their O-Stones and plus the excess of Red mana that blood moon creates helps replicate get more value, a small thing I guess. Idk I'll definitely think about it more again, everytime I come back to it it seems more feasible lol.
I was also thinking that if our Land destruction land is Ghost quarter we don't necessarily need 9 or so fetches since in an emergency we can GQ our own land to get our basics, then blood moon. Additionally we can also GQ their basics since most decks don't run that many (some only run 1 basic of a certain type for instance) in case they try to play around our blood moons, seems interesting.
Random question I have is how good is blood moon versus Scapeshift? I've never tried that out so I have no idea if that actually helps that matchup. I know some scapeshift players play prismatic omen are we worried about them playing that? if they can't combo with valakut does that mean we only have to kill their primeval titans and batterskulls etc? or do they still have another threat i'm not thinking about atm.
Edit: This has piqued my interest again, someone please test it :).
Since charm doesn't work vs expedition map on the draw, wouldn't you prefer a 1 mana artifact destruction spell?
mana denial is great but I think if they're left with few or no threats and we can get into cryptic territory that should be enough to win. As you say, we have quite a bit of removal to take it home from there. I think its more likely that killing multiple key threats before 5 mana vs them results in more wins on average than waiting for 5 mana with a vandalblast, also god forbid we stumble to hit 5 mana which has to also be part of our calculation.
were you thinking sideboard or mainboard btw? those seem to change the card a bit for me.
Were u comparing vandalblast to shatterstorm or shattering spree? (vandalblast vs. shattering spree was the comparison i was focusing on mainly). If you were comparing Vandalblast to spree, are u sure u need to blow all the artifacts vs. affinity to win? I find some of them to be useless, as well as you do need 5 mana to overload the vandalblast, are you certain that's realistic vs. affinity since they can put a pretty fast clock vs. us?
I am not certain how good the b/r command will be, the discard mode seems very mediocre because they choose which to discard. vs affinity it seems playable, but i'm not sure I would use a sideboard slot for it since sideboard cards should be impactful and the B/r command doesn't seem to be very impactful except for against affinity, so that doesn't seem like enough matchups.
Shattering spree can be brought in against Tron and amulet of vigor decks effectively, it is also able to be brought in against affinity.
Shatterstorm cannot be effectively brought in vs Tron and amulet, this is a big downside, it just costs too much, the only deck shatterstorm can be brought in vs. is really affinity.
Vandalblast can be brought in vs the same matchups that shattering spree can, its the only other "good" 1 mana artifact hate card aside from shattering spree. So we've narrowed it down between 2 choices. [Rakdos charm fails here because it can't interact with a t1 expedition map from tron and is meager vs. affinity.(despite it being instant speed which is a huge plus to it, its only a 1 for 1 and if this is gonna be our affinity hate, 1 for 1 doesn't cut it)].
Vandalblast:
Pros:
-can be overloaded vs. affinity
-doesn't cost multiple red mana
-overload can kill etched champion in affinity (S.S. cannot do this if replicated)
Cons:
-costs FIVE mana to overload
-huge target for something like spell pierce out of affinity (harder to resolve in general than S.S)
-overload mode cannot be used if snapcasted back.
Shattering Spree:
Pros:
-doesn't cost FIVE mana to get a 2 for 1 or a 3 for 1 (aka do its job, this is a decent plus vs affinity since they pressure your life total early, 5 mana may not always be realistic).
-replicate as a mechanic is very resilient to countermagic (if affinity tries to spell pierce this card when its replicated they only get to choose 1 copy of the spell).
-Snapcasting this spell you CAN choose to replicate it.
Cons:
-you need multiple red mana to replicate it, so realistically vs things like affinity you could probably expect to replicate only once or MAYBE twice since 4 and + red mana is really hard to get to even with fetches.
-etched champion doesn't die to this
The biggest downside to Shattering spree I can see is that it doesn't absolutely get rid of almost everything on affinity's board. So the question I think that has to be asked is, do we need to completely annihilate their board? I would say that its possible we don't and that a 2 for 1 or 3 for 1 should be good enough, after all ancient grudge is played a lot vs affinity and thats exactly what that is, also we mainboard electrolyze and a lot of cheap removal unlike some/other decks so we don't need as insane a blowout vs. affinity to win. I think that overall with all these things in mind Shattering spree is the definitive better option, with that being said its always possible I missed something big so if anyone can think of any let me know. Other than that what do other people think about these choices and the comparison?
Either way im sure whatever they print for the U/B command will be at least playable for standard. I love spoiler season lol, its just unfortunate most things they print in standard these days don't quite matchup to things like cryptic command etc. making it really hard for us to want to play it in this deck over cryptic ( at least for commands that is.)
Shattering Spree > Turn 1 expedition map and amulet of vigor
i'd say just change out affinity hate for a couple sprees