The deck got worse. The deck is still insanely fun (assuming you enjoy this sort of deck), and I'm still winning enough matches that I think it is viable. Probably not the best deck in Modern, but it's the best for me.
My main gripe with post-Probe Grow isn`t how competitive it is or isn`t, but the fact that it doesn`t actually play like it used to do. Losing Shoal and T2 Hoot-Denial changed the deck completely. If feels kind of like Grixis Delver now, which is what I`d be playing in the first place if I wanted that. I would keep toying with it for FNM level tournaments if it played exactly the same but was less powerful, but it really doesn`t.
I envy you guys that still enjoy it, no sarcasm.
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Ashton's post nicely sums up my struggles since the probe ban. Seems there isn't a path left that is 'ideal'.
I still think being competitive isn't an issue, but we're miles behind where we were a few months ago, and the format is always getting stronger.
I came back to check in with you guys to see how you've been doing, hoping for a positive surprise. I left the deck a few weeks after the Probe ban. It didn't take me more than a month to realize how much worse this deck was off without Probe, and I really did try to make it work. I felt like the deck did no longer to what it was supposed to do after it lost Probe. Gone were the days of über consistent T2 boltproof Goyf and Mandrills with counter protection up, and the loss of the hand information made our answers line up a lot worse. None of the reworked builds seem to make up for that. I'm kind of disappointed that it took you so long to realize (or just admit?), Ashton, my former Sensei, but kudos for giving it your best attempt. Losing my favourite deck ever still hurts, I have barely played the format since then.
I think we're getting too hung up on the Staticaster/goyf scenario. My main reason for the card is for x/1's and lingering Souls. Most players won't flash it back immediately so clasm sometimes feels bad. Plus, traverse. Just spitballing a few ideas.
It sounds like an awesome idea if you're seeing lots of spirits or problematic x/1s. Staticaster is an incredible card that should see more play than it does.
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They do the last 1 damage. If both of your goyfs are 4/5 you can attack in/block theirs. Then use izzet static caster to do the last point to trade up.
Izzet Staticaster deals the last damage to both Tarmogoyfs, so you're going to kill your own Goyf as well as theirs. Read the card again. Even if it did work, basing a plan on them attacking into your Tarmogoyf or blocking yours is very rarely viable, given that they know you have bolts. Such a play clearly telegraphs that you have a way to finish their Goyf off.
Also I sad to see some of you give up so fast. I feel like this deck is much stronger vs t1/t2 decks but does lose out to random Jank decks. Sounds like most stuff. Anyways I hope you guys find what you are looking for... (Legacy is the format you want to play) Lol
"So fast"? If it's me you're referring to, please don't make any assumptions on how much or little I have tested, tweaked and tried to make this deck work since the ban. That said, if you think the deck has improved after being hit by the ban, I'm sincerely happy for you.
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1-2 Naya Burn
1-2 GR Tron
1-2 UW Prison
2-0 TitanBreach
Bye, opponent dropped without letting the judges know
2-1 Jund
I find it absolutely infuriating to lose against those first three decks, they used to be great matchups. All three of them are a lot worse off without Shoal and Probe. Particularly Burn, I don`t think I ever lost a match pre-ban. Now it feels like an even matchup at best. I played reasonably well too yesterday. To rub it in, I didn`t even crush the new-ish Jund player, I just barely made it by the width of a hair.
I`m shelving this deck for now. At the end of the day, I am driven by competitive ambitions. I`m a spike. I play to win. I used to crush with this deck pre-Dredge, and even with Dredge legal in the format, I had a very satisfying win/loss ration. After the ban I just haven`t been able to stop losing. I`m not just talking about this event, I`ve consistently done considerably worse than pre-ban, and I feel that the deck does not longer do what it is supposed to do. I`m not saying that it isn`t good, merely that it isn`t good enough in my opinion. So I`m going to explore other options for now. It makes me sad. I have an Invitational coming up, and that combined with having kids (that`s plural) in April, I`ll have to jump ship now if I`m going to have time to find another deck to play at that event and get enough reps in with it.
It`s been an awesome ride, my monkey brethren. Monkey Grow has easily been my favourite deck of all time, and this has been my favourite deck thread of all time. I`m keeping the cards, and I might very well be back at some point, but for now, I`m out. Thanks for a great collaboration, and best of luck to you. Please make videos.
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It just sounds like you're conjecturing. The bauble build beats both. What linear decks are we losing to without Shoal exactly?
For the sake of discussion, let me play the devil's advocate here for a moment: If we're not losing anything by cutting Shoal, why were we even playing Shoal in the first place?
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No matter what your deck build preference is and what you're seeing locally, you gotta give it up for the wider metagame predictions of Monkey Dad and the rest of the Nexus crew. GB/x is 17% of the MTGO meta right now according to MTGGoldfish, followed by Tron to prey on them. The best choice for playing online is whatever crushes GB/x and still doesn't lose to Tron, which easily makes Jordan's build the correct one. I finished my league with the Mikefon/mnesci list yesterday (it didn't go well, but I've never ever mulled that much in one league), and I'll be playing the Traverse mainboard version online for the foreseeable future.
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One thing I notice about Traverse is that opponents seem to be expecting a Blood Moon when they see you cast that early. Some hands with a Traverse just require you to fetch Stomping Grounds>Traverse for an island. On the play, it can be a clear indicator that basics matter to you, which means they start fetching accordingly.
I've seen it work the other way around too, where basics searched up with Traverse aren't as suspicious as fetched ones, since Traverse can only fetch basics at that point anyway.
Do you play online? I noticed the longer I play at my LGS, even with generally 24-32 people showing up. I am the Bloodmoon guy, so people prepare for it regardless of how I fetch or what I do lol. I feel like Bloodmoon is a card that is great when people dont know what you are doing, but the power goes down when you play the same 7 people every week.
I play both online and locally. I'd say about 50-60% of the people at my store knows about my Moons, but in my experience they're still good enough. They still play slower/more carefully because they fear it, which is great for a tempo deck, and sometimes it's enough to keep them off one of their three colors, or keep them off double something, or shut down utility lands or manlands. What makes Moon so incredible in this deck is that since we have the opportunity to apply so much early pressure, we don't need to rely on Moon working as a "gotcha" prison piece, it's often enough to make their deck clunky so that they can't keep up.
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@ Havrekjex, I really liked your concession game 1 against grixis delver. You got enough information to sideboard and gave little in return with what was basically a guaranteed losing hand. Your opponent could put you on anything from delver, to Blue Moon, to control. Kudos sir. Or ma'am. I don't know.
Yeah, I was stone effin dead with that hand plus those first land draws, so it was the only way to get anything out of it. It's a perk of running an URx fetch-shock manabase. G2 I got a post-board game against his pre-board, that's very valuable. I'm a dude btw.
Also, not to pat y'alls back too much, but congratulations on maintaining a productive and critical thread. After haunting a few others lately, it's become clear how out of the weeds we tend to stay, and how we actually make progress tuning our deck instead of just posting a bunch of unproductive fluff.
Yeah, this is one of the better ones. Between the deck threads I've spent time in, this is probably the best. The threads of most of the bigger decks have a lot of that unproductive fluff you're mentioning, while the smaller ones tend to be unfocused and way less collaberative. It helps a lot having a Monkey Dad to lead the way and create an established standard list as a starting point, but it's also about us being passionate about this deck. We know it's very good, despite being tier 4 (in prevalence).
Of those running Traverse, how many copies do y'all run? I run two copies, mostly due to the fact that it can be clunky in multiples and plus delirium is not always active during the game due to the tension between Hooting Mandrills and Traverse. And if you run Traverse in the sideboard, how many copies do you run?
I like four post board and always feel like I need to have a very good reason to go below four. When you board the package in against grindy decks, you need them both to make the extra land drops in the early game and Green Sun's Zenith stuff up in the late game, so I want to see more than one. It also increases the chances of finding one with Reveler so I can chain into the second one. I can see maybe cutting the fourth for a Huntmaster, as that's also a card that pulls that weight in addition to having uses against specific decks, but ideally I'd love to fit 4 Traverse + 2 Reveler + 1 Huntmaster in there. We have a lot of uncuttable cards in the side, so it's hard to find room.
One thing I notice about Traverse is that opponents seem to be expecting a Blood Moon when they see you cast that early. Some hands with a Traverse just require you to fetch Stomping Grounds>Traverse for an island. On the play, it can be a clear indicator that basics matter to you, which means they start fetching accordingly.
I've seen it work the other way around too, where basics searched up with Traverse aren't as suspicious as fetched ones, since Traverse can only fetch basics at that point anyway.
Save Leak and Snag for KotR if you can. We have very few ways of answering her otherwise, she can't be burned, Denialed, Shoaled or outgrown by Goyfs. You need to respect her a lot.
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I am very interested in whether or not you hit sufficient land drops with that mainboard. Switching Probe for 2 Bauble and 2 Traverse with no other changes looks land-light. I like the lowered curve and 3 Shoals with it though. You'll have my views!
I'm not sure about the land count myself, it's lower than with 4 Probes, but at the same time, the Baubles replace themselves and Traverses always cycle into lands when needed, so 18 feels a bit high. It shouldn't have a huge impact either, I don't expect to know from just 5-15 matches if it's too low or too high. If I were good with numbers, I'd calculate probability of hitting X lands in turn Y, but I'm not.
I'm actually more worried about having enough blue for Shoal (particularly postboard) with those Baubles and Traverses over something like more blue cantrips, which on the other hand would be slower and almost certainly demand the 18th land anyway.
The two first matches are up. One cheesy game against TitanShift and one incredibly exciting game against Grixis Delver. 170119-*.
Anyway, since the probe ban I'm playing the same old list of mine, simply replacing 4 probes with 4 sleight of hand. It's working... decent actually! Tonight I'm gonna play in a local 30 players tournament and see how the new list performs. I don't have huge hopes in it though
I have such a hard time evaluating Sleight. Sometimes it seems good enough, but those times it shows you two cards you don't want, you just want to rip it in half. Please keep us updated on that card if you play it as a 4-of.
Agree. Go to 5 and try to find Bolt and Goyf/Mandrills + Scour.
Yup. It's a hand that looks kind of playable at first glance, and it's easy to be persuaded to keep it because we've already gone down to 6, but I mulled it and would do it again.
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I'm going to rip this exact mainboard, run it through a league, record it and report back. The list looks precisely like what I want to be doing right now. I disagree with some minor stuff in the sideboard, mostly cutting the second Reveler. If I want to run Reveler, i want to be able to chain one into the other, it's often the second one that kills. It sure costs some valuable sideboard slots though.
Apart from doing that test run, my current plan is to play the Traverse list online and some kind of Shoal build in paper. I don`t expect my very linear local meta to respond quickly to the bans, Shoal has been very kind to me and people like to stick to their paper decks.
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Keep or mull?
Shoal/Sleight/Bauble list, G2 on the play against Naya Burn, mulliganed once.
To what extent is the Traverse mainboard plan tailored for expected shifts in the metagame, and to what extent is it seen as a direct, unavoidable result of the Probe ban and its consequences to our build? What's the ratio there? Because I'm wondering how valid the sticking with Shoal plan is if the format remains linear and we don't see a significant upswing in grindy marchups. Is Shoal/Traverse a metagame call?
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I was going to do a TNM report for my last run with Probe, but I mulled all night, and none of the games were particularly notable or interesting. I managed to lose 0-2 to Gifts Storm because I could not get an even passable hand in either game, lost 0-2 against Eggs, beat Grixis Delver 2-1 (G1 was one of those beautiful, glorious games where you plant a protected T2 Hoot and keep protecting it while disrupting enough to get it through, then burn for the win, and it feels like everything is right in the world), beat BG Infect 2-0. In game two I cast my last Probe in Modern and we gave it 30 seconds of silence.
The only reason I'm posting at all is to tell you that if you're ever up against Eggs, you should know that the whole matchup hinges on casting fericious Stubborn Denials on their key cards, those that recycle their graveyards. They have an easy time playing the important cards around Leak with enough mana, and few to none of them are shoalable. Shoal for X=0 on suspend Lotus is useful. Artifact removal goes on the "sac artifact: get 2 mana" thing. Might as well bring in Blood Moon to take out their Quarters, because you have a million dead cards in the main.
It's a rare deck, but maybe now a few of you won't be completely unprepared like I was. I lost mostly to mulligans though, I went to 5 and 4.
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I envy you guys that still enjoy it, no sarcasm.
Stay reasonable, be mindful of your expectations and don't feed the trolls.
Doomsdayin'
Stay reasonable, be mindful of your expectations and don't feed the trolls.
Doomsdayin'
Stay reasonable, be mindful of your expectations and don't feed the trolls.
Doomsdayin'
Stay reasonable, be mindful of your expectations and don't feed the trolls.
Doomsdayin'
1-2 Naya Burn
1-2 GR Tron
1-2 UW Prison
2-0 TitanBreach
Bye, opponent dropped without letting the judges know
2-1 Jund
I find it absolutely infuriating to lose against those first three decks, they used to be great matchups. All three of them are a lot worse off without Shoal and Probe. Particularly Burn, I don`t think I ever lost a match pre-ban. Now it feels like an even matchup at best. I played reasonably well too yesterday. To rub it in, I didn`t even crush the new-ish Jund player, I just barely made it by the width of a hair.
I`m shelving this deck for now. At the end of the day, I am driven by competitive ambitions. I`m a spike. I play to win. I used to crush with this deck pre-Dredge, and even with Dredge legal in the format, I had a very satisfying win/loss ration. After the ban I just haven`t been able to stop losing. I`m not just talking about this event, I`ve consistently done considerably worse than pre-ban, and I feel that the deck does not longer do what it is supposed to do. I`m not saying that it isn`t good, merely that it isn`t good enough in my opinion. So I`m going to explore other options for now. It makes me sad. I have an Invitational coming up, and that combined with having kids (that`s plural) in April, I`ll have to jump ship now if I`m going to have time to find another deck to play at that event and get enough reps in with it.
It`s been an awesome ride, my monkey brethren. Monkey Grow has easily been my favourite deck of all time, and this has been my favourite deck thread of all time. I`m keeping the cards, and I might very well be back at some point, but for now, I`m out. Thanks for a great collaboration, and best of luck to you. Please make videos.
Stay reasonable, be mindful of your expectations and don't feed the trolls.
Doomsdayin'
Stay reasonable, be mindful of your expectations and don't feed the trolls.
Doomsdayin'
Stay reasonable, be mindful of your expectations and don't feed the trolls.
Doomsdayin'
Stay reasonable, be mindful of your expectations and don't feed the trolls.
Doomsdayin'
Yeah, this is one of the better ones. Between the deck threads I've spent time in, this is probably the best. The threads of most of the bigger decks have a lot of that unproductive fluff you're mentioning, while the smaller ones tend to be unfocused and way less collaberative. It helps a lot having a Monkey Dad to lead the way and create an established standard list as a starting point, but it's also about us being passionate about this deck. We know it's very good, despite being tier 4 (in prevalence).
I like four post board and always feel like I need to have a very good reason to go below four. When you board the package in against grindy decks, you need them both to make the extra land drops in the early game and Green Sun's Zenith stuff up in the late game, so I want to see more than one. It also increases the chances of finding one with Reveler so I can chain into the second one. I can see maybe cutting the fourth for a Huntmaster, as that's also a card that pulls that weight in addition to having uses against specific decks, but ideally I'd love to fit 4 Traverse + 2 Reveler + 1 Huntmaster in there. We have a lot of uncuttable cards in the side, so it's hard to find room.
I've seen it work the other way around too, where basics searched up with Traverse aren't as suspicious as fetched ones, since Traverse can only fetch basics at that point anyway.
Stay reasonable, be mindful of your expectations and don't feed the trolls.
Doomsdayin'
Stay reasonable, be mindful of your expectations and don't feed the trolls.
Doomsdayin'
I'm actually more worried about having enough blue for Shoal (particularly postboard) with those Baubles and Traverses over something like more blue cantrips, which on the other hand would be slower and almost certainly demand the 18th land anyway.
The two first matches are up. One cheesy game against TitanShift and one incredibly exciting game against Grixis Delver. 170119-*. I have such a hard time evaluating Sleight. Sometimes it seems good enough, but those times it shows you two cards you don't want, you just want to rip it in half. Please keep us updated on that card if you play it as a 4-of. As always, it's greatly appreciated. Thanks. Yup. It's a hand that looks kind of playable at first glance, and it's easy to be persuaded to keep it because we've already gone down to 6, but I mulled it and would do it again.
Stay reasonable, be mindful of your expectations and don't feed the trolls.
Doomsdayin'
Apart from doing that test run, my current plan is to play the Traverse list online and some kind of Shoal build in paper. I don`t expect my very linear local meta to respond quickly to the bans, Shoal has been very kind to me and people like to stick to their paper decks.
---
Keep or mull?
Shoal/Sleight/Bauble list, G2 on the play against Naya Burn, mulliganed once.
Stay reasonable, be mindful of your expectations and don't feed the trolls.
Doomsdayin'
Stay reasonable, be mindful of your expectations and don't feed the trolls.
Doomsdayin'
Stay reasonable, be mindful of your expectations and don't feed the trolls.
Doomsdayin'
The only reason I'm posting at all is to tell you that if you're ever up against Eggs, you should know that the whole matchup hinges on casting fericious Stubborn Denials on their key cards, those that recycle their graveyards. They have an easy time playing the important cards around Leak with enough mana, and few to none of them are shoalable. Shoal for X=0 on suspend Lotus is useful. Artifact removal goes on the "sac artifact: get 2 mana" thing. Might as well bring in Blood Moon to take out their Quarters, because you have a million dead cards in the main.
It's a rare deck, but maybe now a few of you won't be completely unprepared like I was. I lost mostly to mulligans though, I went to 5 and 4.
Stay reasonable, be mindful of your expectations and don't feed the trolls.
Doomsdayin'