I put this deck together and it would seem i suck at it.
What's an ideal starting hand if you don't know what your up against? Even when I get a bridge down with a welding jar to back it up, the win cons still seem very far away.
@Decadent_Command A lot of hands are keepable in the deck, some zero/one drops land opal will be how most of your hands look. That's usually keepable. Where you don't want to keep is if your hand has no action cards like inventors' fair/exp map/tolaria west/whir of invention/bridge/tezzeret /// but that is a lot of cards, you'll usually have one of them. The deck needs critical mass and doesn't mulligan well, so be stingy. Also don't play your tolaria wests too early, they are not a land unless it's a horrific emergency. They are tutors.
The game has three distinct phases, getting to a win con is your last priority. Phase one is getting the right killswitch down (bridge or withcbane orb depending on opponent) then phase two is protecting your killswitch (jars/spellskites/paddeem) and cutting off your opponents' alternate wincons like planeswalker ults, walking ballistas, hazorets etc phase three if they haven't been smart and scooped yet is to offer to tell them what the win con is for concession, if they don't concede you can usually just play draw go until you find your wincon which is easy with baubles and shuffle effects and additional draws with bottled cloister.
When in doubt watch Susurrus play a bunch of matches, you'll start to figure out the deck's tempo.
I lost another g3 int he finals to a shatterstorm. It is a bit of a bummer in the local meta that people will just waste a sidebaord slot on you once they fear your deck.
I went and bought a Declaration of Naught right away, and I think I'm gonna sleeve up a few counterspells. Probably a negate and metallic rebuke.
I have been underwhelmed with defense grid, anyone else feeling that? Maybe I'm just not using it correctly, but I whirred for it against my cryptic opponent and the game just went to the point that he had enough lands to do whatever he wanted. Right now I have shaved a jar main for an aether grid from the side... for me it's just always good. I also took out the defense grid and in their places I'm playing a possessed portal and for the other slot I might try a jester's cap but I feel some metallic rebukes might be better for my blue heavy meta.
I find the engineered explosives aren't that powerful. I'm surprised there a 4 of, but I guess they are your only defense before you get the engineering bridge lock up.
And I found most games are decided by concession (thankfully since all the win conditions are pretty slow on MTGO).
What do you think about Thopter Spy Network for SB against control decks ?
It can slowly generate thopters and draw cards and doesn't get shut down by Stony Silence.
Also, why doesn't this deck run Tezzeret, Agent of Bolas (in the maindeck) ?
With some tweaks to the mana it should be easily castable.
EE is very flexible and very good against humans. It can be a zero drop a lot.
I don’t think there’s room for spy network or tezzeret. Stony isn’t really a problem for the deck, and lil Tezzeret doesn’t work that well in this deck not even considering the stress on the manabase. If anything it’d be a second big tezz main but the meta is too fast right now to justify too many big walkers. Getting your hand low is already a last minute proposition with the whirs/orb/cloister/tez
Tez works better in the thopter/sword build that’s in the established deck section.
The question with Thopter Spy Network is what problem does the deck face that you're solving? Once again this is not Lantern, most of our artifacts are static and Stoney really doesn't hose us. Second, taking a turn to pay 4 cmc for a card that literally does nothing for a turn is a dangerous proposition in modern.
Agent of Bolas is a common question for the deck mainly for "reach". Mana restrictions aside Tez AoB is a very underwhelming card in this shell. Turns out a 4 mana Ancient Stirrings is super medium and even worse when you whiff. Tez the Seeker can grab what you need when you need it giving it far more utility here.
I lost another g3 int he finals to a shatterstorm. It is a bit of a bummer in the local meta that people will just waste a sidebaord slot on you once they fear your deck.
I went and bought a Declaration of Naught right away, and I think I'm gonna sleeve up a few counterspells. Probably a negate and metallic rebuke.
I have been underwhelmed with defense grid, anyone else feeling that? Maybe I'm just not using it correctly, but I whirred for it against my cryptic opponent and the game just went to the point that he had enough lands to do whatever he wanted. Right now I have shaved a jar main for an aether grid from the side... for me it's just always good. I also took out the defense grid and in their places I'm playing a possessed portal and for the other slot I might try a jester's cap but I feel some metallic rebukes might be better for my blue heavy meta.
That's rough dude, I feel you. People get so salty when they lose to this deck. I started getting hit with Shatterstorms and random Creeping Corrosions which is exactly why I added Declaration of Naught.
I've felt that Defense Grid works better against tempo style Spell Queller type decks. I certainly see what you mean playing Defense Grid against control. They've done the same thing to me and Cryptic bounced my things around the grid once they had the mana. If we had a quicker clock to back up the grid it would be a little better but since we are playing for the long game I've shaved down to one in the sb.
I don't think Tezzeret, Agent of Bolas is a good fit because I think what this deck needs is a non-targetting ability/ult to win. tezzeret the seeker gives the deck a go-wide option.
All the win conditions in the deck are "target player" so the deck struggles against leyline of sanctity. And engineered explosives is the only removal for a leyline. So you need a win condition which is not a targeted ability. Tezzeret the seeker gives us that.
And for modern this is a really expensive deck. Almost supports "Pay to win".
Every time I play this deck I always start the first 4 turns constantly talking to myself saying "WE'VE GOT TO PUT THE SHIELDS UP SCOTTY! WE NEED OUR SHIELDS!" when I can't get the defense on time I'm just like "WE'RE GOING DOWN CAPTAIN!"
Yeah, the deck is hella expensive and not obvious to pilot, which is why I don’t think it will get mainstream.
I’ve just always wanted a g1 where you’re not DOA and this deck has pretty good interaction with like 99% of the format.
Anyone who plays the deck some knows win cons are not the problem, not losing games is the problem the deck can be fine tuned to solve. Winning is easy when you eliminate the possibility of your opponent winning.
Anyone who plays the deck some knows win cons are not the problem, not losing games is the problem the deck can be fine tuned to solve. Winning is easy when you eliminate the possibility of your opponent winning.
Your word selection sounds awfully similar to platinum angel. Which is a card which will totally owns this deck. It has no answers for it and can not interact with it.
Another card which ticks me off is Ulamog, the Ceaseless Hunger. Oh you have 2 bridges down, oh you have 2 welding jar's, well let me just lay this card take out both your bridges and go to the face!
Tron has been my nightmare. Not enough hate, I always forget we have torpor orb. Takes to long to get the crucible and ghost quarters out some games too.
Hi all. Been following this deck a bit and starting to play it, starting from the SCG list. Some observations I have:
4 mox opal is too much. They're useful, but frequently come online relatively late. And drawing multiple has hurt me so much more vs. just having more land. I think the deck wants only 2-3 opals, with 1-2 extra lands in their place.
1 chalice of the void is the most you want in the maindeck. We have lots of CMC we care about (0 for jar, 1 for map, 2 for spyglass, 3 for bridge). Witchbane can lock out burn, so I don't think chalice actually has much purpose.
Maindeck Tormod's Crypt is awful. It's a sideboard card. It's especially redundant with Grafdigger's Cage.
I've been trying Search for Azcanta in this deck. I think it's pretty useful. We have a lot of conditional cards and a lot of high value ones too.
Cryptic command decks are a very serious problem for this deck. I'm very tempted to run green for maybe Ancient stirrings in the maindeck and Thrun, the Last Troll in the sideboard. Thrun thrashes the cryptic decks.
I think the deck wants at least one pithing needle. There seems to be a nonzero number of times where you want to whir for X=1. 4 spyglass between main and side seems excessive.
Tron is a horrible matchup. We're just too slow to impact them. Even if you get a ghost quarter, we can't usually back it up with anything else. For this reason, I feel like it's okay to just not really worry about the matchup. You can't beat everything in Modern. But if you do want a card, I think Bribery is your best option. You need something which actually wins the game vs. them, not just slows them down.
I always want to end the game by trying to mana lock people out of the game, but that never seems to work due to just being too slow. It's sometimes hard to predict all the ways people have as outs for the game too. I'm almost tempted to include Nephalia Drownyard alongside Ipnu Rivulet to speed up the end game clock. It is costly as an uncolored source though. We can easily run River of Tears for no downside to have the black when we need it. Probably bad though.
On the matter of black, Necrogen Spellbomb seems like a neat way to lock people out of playing anything except instants.
Now I could be wrong but I'm willing to wager your experience with the deck is very limited.
Opal is a definite 4 of. Drawing multiples is rarely bad because you can abuse the legend rule to ramp mana. How is Opal coming online late for you in an artifact deck??? I feel you're suggesting changing an integral part of the deck because you're simply doing it all wrong.
Chalice to a 1 of is sketch imo. You usually want to lock out the opps 1 and 2 cmc spells either to slow them down or to counter some interaction.
Crypt serves 2 purposes here aside from it's incidental interaction. It's a cheap 0 cmc way to get opal online early and acts as a mana rock for future whirs. DO NOT CUT IT BEFORE SB.
Search for Azcanta has nice utility but is too slow. There's a reason it's used in reactive style decks like control. We are not a control deck, prison is proactive preemptively shutting down lines and outs.
As to more tutors, you realize the deck has fair, 3 maps, 4 Tolaria West, 4 whir, tezzeret and in my case Artificer's Intuition to go with that. Once again if you're having trouble getting a bridge or a crucible when you need it you're addressing improper play by making fundamental changes to the deck.
Yes Cryptic is a very good card against us. Have you read the earlier posts where we discuss solutions that don't involve us readjusting the entire mana base to fight 1 card. And how does Thrun address this problem or help the deck accomplish it's goal?
Tron is a medium matchup. We have lots of weapons main like chalice, the LD lands and crucible and sb we have damping sphere. Listen I'm really trying not to come off as jerk in my reply but I just can't wrap my head around someone saying we are too slow to fight Tron then suggest a 5 mana sorcery as a sideboard suggestion that has 0 interaction with their board state. You take their Ulamog, they pop their O-stone, you cry because they just time walked you.
This next paragraph confirmed everything I said before. You are forcing the LD line instead of playing to the board state. This deck as you see is not easy and requires a lot of format knowledge to pilot correctly. If you go in trying to establish what you want to do without considering what the opp is trying to do or able to do you will lose every time. Period. If your knowledge of decks is suspect like mine was when I started try watching the popular modern decks on YouTube to learn what their outs are so you know how to shut them down. For a third time adding Drown Yard(a colorless mana producing land) over Rivulet will not solve improper play nor would restructuring the mana base to UB. And how would Necrogen Spell bomb lock opp from playing instants? If we are keeping them from playing magic properly they should have a good deal of cards in hand giving them discard fodder while we durdle on the world's slowest mill strategy.
Once again this was not meant to be rude and sorry to everyone for the long response post.
TLDR; Don't change a decks identity to supplement poor play or an intro level understanding of the decks mechanics.
You say you don't want to be rude, but then you say directly that I do not understand the deck and am playing it poorly. You can't have it both ways.
The point of a thread is to discuss how to make a deck better. Just because there's a few people playing a deck with some list doesn't mean it's an optimal list. I'm providing opinions from watching a lot of different people play the deck online, as well as my experience from playing it myself.
Why is opal a 4 of? It's easy to just say that is the case because Opal seems like such a good card. Many would say that it's a 4-of in Lantern control too. I mean, they have tons of cheap artifacts and they want the mana. However, thnkr, who gathers a lot of data on the deck, and decided 3 was better than 4: Here's a post analyzing Mox Opal. So no, it's not obvious that Mox Opal should just be an auto 4-of here. And blindly assuming that this should be the case without deeper analysis is foolish. This is an extremely mana hungry deck, and multiple Mox Opals often suck. 1 temporary mana can be helpful, but generally I would rather have more lands.
Chalice in general is a weak card in modern. Having access to at least 1 is important, but I'm still not convinced that multiple are needed in the maindeck. It's easy to pay attention to the times where it was very valuable. But a lot of times it's just not that valuable.
For Tormod's crypt, why should I play a bad card just to enable my other cards in a slow deck? That is not good deck design. There are plenty of cheap artifacts we can still play to opal and whir on. This deck doesn't really have "explosive" draws in the traditional sense. There are also plenty of turns when you can't utilize all of its mana 100% efficiently. So having, say a Pithing Needle, instead of Tormod's crypt could give the same benefits for whir and opal in many cases, while having a lot more utility.
Why is Search for Azcanta too slow? There's a lot of upside to a card like this in the deck. It helps us find the cards we need, which is crucial for a deck like this. Despite having a lot of tutors, we are often at the mercy of our deck. Later it flips and makes it easier to assemble our prison lock. Two mana is not a large investment, and I think there is a lot of upside to running 1 of these.
Yes, I have read this thread. I have watched a lot of videos. I have read responses on Reddit. The problem with all the ways to deal with cryptic decks are just band-aids. Cards like Declaration of Naught don't actually help you win the game. Reactive decks have lots of different possible cards we need ways to deal with. The reactive decks are built to go long. Thrun, the Last Troll stomps cryptic decks, because they can't interact with it on the stack or in play and it wins the game. Control decks are a very real threat in the current meta, so ways to deal with them are necessary. I know [G][G] is a large ask, but I think this deck has a lot of flexibility in its mana the splashes which can be used.
For getting the artifacts that we need, it's not just about getting one bridge or crucible. It's about getting all of the cards that we need, which is quite a few. It's not clear what the optimal number of tutors is, which is why I said that maybe more tutors should be considered.
I would say the deck has "some" tools against Tron, not "a lot." The main issue is that some disruption not backed up by a clock or a lock is a recipe for losing against Tron. They have a wide array of threats which need to be dealt with, and it's hard to find the proper ones in time. Yes, Bribery is not fast. But it's a card that is very likely to win the game. Ulamog, the Ceaseless Hunger is indestructible, and cannot be stopped by oblivion stone like you say. Karn is their only out.
So, when I say "want to end the game with land destruction," I mean not in the literal sense that this is actually what I do. But rather, with crucible this is my favorite type of line to take. I identify that it's too slow, so I don't do it if I can't profit from it.
For Necrogen Spellbomb I said anything except instants. You can repeatedly activate it in their draw step by recurring it with ruins. This limits them to the handsize they currently have.
I literally say Nephalia Drownyard is probably bad, and somehow you seem to think I'm suggesting this is for sure a card the deck needs. There's a very real upside in having the ability to mill from 4 cards a turn to 7 cards a turn, since you have a way to end the game almost twice as fast as before.
Again, discussion is about ideas. Not everything is going to be great, but without innovation and change, nothing gets better. I'm hardly changing the core deck by wanting to change a few cards in the list.
He wasn’t trying to be rude, he was trying to suggest that you don’t understand the deck very well. You can have a polite discussion that involves someone being mistaken, which is what he was attempting.
I was glad he said something because I also feel you don’t understand the deck or have enough reps with it if you suggested the changes you did. It’s okay that you want to change everything about the deck, that’s everyone’s first thought until they get to know the deck and realize that it’s tuned to about 99% right now.
Tron is tough but favored, about 60/40 us. You have to be smart with your spyglasses/welding jars and make a focused effort to attack one tron piece until they are out of basics when you can whittle them back. It’s tough but not unwinnable. Same w cryptic decks.
Anyway, hope you keep playing the deck, and by all means if you make your changes you talked about and it turns into a simic midrange deck let us know if you find some success. Best of luck to you!
I do want to have polite discussion. But your guys' responses, whether you mean to or not, have been quite condescending. Just look at the language:
Quote from Bloodyroar »
TLDR; Don't change a decks identity to supplement poor play or an intro level understanding of the decks mechanics.
Quote from boomforest »
Anyway, hope you keep playing the deck, and by all means if you make your changes you talked about and it turns into a simic midrange deck let us know if you find some success.
I suggested one green sideboard card as a potential answer to a tough matchup, yet somehow you jump to "simic midrange deck," which more or less sounds like a summary dismissal of anything I have to say.
I highly doubt the deck is 99% tuned. There simply hasn't been enough people playing the deck to get the amount of data that most other decks have. For example, look at the U-tron thread. It is over 700 pages long, and there are even two relatively divergent lists now. If you assume that this Ux prison deck is already tuned, the deck will never get better.
I'm not sure why you seem to suggest that I want to "change everything about the deck." I said that these cards do not seem the best to me: 4th mox opal, tormod's crypt, 2nd chalice, 4th spyglass. This is hardly a drastic alteration to the deck.
In their place, I mentioned a few cards that seemed like they might have potential. Did I say they're must haves? No. Are they worth trying? Possibly. Have you actually tried Search for Azcanta in this deck? I did, and liked what it did for me.
As another example, I mentioned Necrogen Spellbomb giving an interesting line of discarding our opponent's draws. Does this mean I think the deck needs it? I'm not sure. But I think it's still worth considering new lines of attack that a deck could possibly have access to.
In my playtesting the deck is solid and wins for me a lot. I had a weakness to blue and big mana decks which I shored up by shaving a SB card for a posessed portal.
I’ve been talking to the community of players who have been developing this, and collectively we’ve tried most of the reasonable suggestions you’ve made (like serach for azcanta which doesn’t do enough to warrant a slot)
One of the hardest parts of the deck is balancing the powerful colorless lands with enough U and not being crushed by blood moon. So I don’t like adding Black and Green and a colorless mill land that helps win a fraction sooner than rivulet, which has never been too slow to win once I have the game locked up with things like maindeck chalices and tormod’s crypt which is VERY good vs delve, snapcasters, bloodghasts/phoenixes, griselbrand, living end, storm
So that’s why I said keep testing your changes - if you start winning let us know. In my experiences I will try zero of your suggested changes because they don’t do anything to help the deck as I understand it.
The beautiful thing about magic is that it’s customizable - and if you start winning with your changes I’ll be happy for you and it would add gravity to your suggested changes.
I Agree with Boomforest and Bloodyroar, I'm not an innovator when it comes to tuning decks, especially one as crazy as this one, but i've been piloting it ever since i started seeing the 5-0's start to rack up and it feels solid, i was at scg minneapolis this weekend and didn't quite make day 2 finishing 5-2-2 in the open. i played the exact list he won with at the classic except i shaved one welding jar in the side for an extra defense grid and i agree it has not felt like enough,I'm hesitant to try metallic rebuke in the deck because my general plan against control is to get a cloister down and start racking up card advantage thus leaving my hand empty on their turn, but i could see the appeal in using it offensively while working to resolve a spell. any insights that can be given on the uw/uwr matchups would be greatly appreciated.
@S_Valtrix, once again it was not meant to be rude but to challenge some bold assertions you've made about the deck. After all what good are ideas if they can't be challenged. It seems quite obvious that you are hyper focused on win-cons or closing the game out as fast as you can instead of focusing on what the deck is actually meant to do, trying to not lose.
The one thing if anything that I think you need to consider while making changes is what problem are you solving and how does this change improves your game plan overall. If you think the deck is slow how does it benefit from cutting a 0 cmc card in place of a land or a 1 cmc card, or adding multiple 3 cmc cards. The mana curve as it stands is very low, as a bridge deck wouldn't these cards exasturbate the "slow" problem pushing you back vital turns you need to get your hand empty?
Something I've noticed while playing the deck is that there are an insane amount of lines and choosing the wrong one severely punishes you. Losing with a deck like this makes it easy for some players to blame the deck instead of sub optimal play. Jeff Hoogland talks about this while he was streaming the deck and it's so true.
Anyways, like boomforest said test out your ideas and get back to us, that's what this is all about. It's all about the data, currently the deck is putting up stellar results as built and who knows you might be the one to push it further.
@mdkpopo congrats on the results dude. Not a bad record at all.
Against control I really focus on 2 things getting my spyglasses and needles down and neutralizing cryptic. Once that is established we move on to phase 2 either get a crucible and start disrupting their mana(mainly for jeskai) or get academy ruin and start forcing through the final lock pieces through their counter spells. In a lot of cases baiting out counter magic then following it up with a Aether Grid is ggs.
In retrospect I think that attacking the control player’s manabase is most important. I have tried getting cloister out before but I think it’s probably crucible/spyglasses as top priority because one well-timed cryptic/echoing truth can spell the beginning of the end.
The matchup doesn’t feel even close to unwinnable, I just think they will never stop having a dangerous top of their deck - so setting up a permanent defensive position isn’t possible.
Also it’s important to note that you have to have a fundamental and deep understanding of the meta and cardpool of modern to play this deck well. If you can’t anticipate what your opponent’s 75 is going to be to a degree of certainty this deck will never win for you.
The good news is, magic is designed for you to have fun without having to play a complex knowledge-fueled prison puzzle deck.
I have put an aethergrid into my main in place of the third welding jar which I moved to the side, two is usually enough with academy ruins g1. I trimmed a defense grid and aether
Grid in SB for a jester’s cap and metallic rebuke because this store’s meta is a lot more tempo blue/land based.
My only loss was to a chord deck because I got down aether grid and got so excited to ping hierarchs that I only left a U and one artifact for improvise for the metallic rebuke in my hand. He then, obviously, top decked the stony silence. That shut off my jar skite bridge board and whirred for a pridemage. Cool.
It made me think - can that metallic rebuke not just be a swan song? Everything that really hurts is inst/sorc/enchantment. Has anyone toyed with that in the SB? Is the swan a downside?
Possessed Portal won me all of my matches tonight as well. I really think not having one in the 75 is wrong. You don’t even need crucible. You can just rewind the game back trading your redundant perms for their stuff and when you’re good just sac the portal and resume the game. It’s just a hella powerful card that people scoop to when maybe they shouldn’t.
Hi, I lost very very hard to a Blue Moon Deck...
I think 1st game is one of the few decks you loose miserably to...
on the other side 2nd game the cards I brought in were Elendra - which was just too slow and defense grid which was good... the bad thing is that I sided out an opal when I shouldn't have.
I'll likely try metallic rebuke as it is a slow mana cost. but vs thse matc ups I just miss the manabase from Tezz, those IoK/T.S and the inevitability from thopter...
yeah I love PP...
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Yeah, mardu and R/U you have to fetch basic islands and be modest with your exp maps, but it shouldn’t be backbreaking. If not for our non basics being vital to our tutor loop we could side moon.
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What's an ideal starting hand if you don't know what your up against? Even when I get a bridge down with a welding jar to back it up, the win cons still seem very far away.
The game has three distinct phases, getting to a win con is your last priority. Phase one is getting the right killswitch down (bridge or withcbane orb depending on opponent) then phase two is protecting your killswitch (jars/spellskites/paddeem) and cutting off your opponents' alternate wincons like planeswalker ults, walking ballistas, hazorets etc phase three if they haven't been smart and scooped yet is to offer to tell them what the win con is for concession, if they don't concede you can usually just play draw go until you find your wincon which is easy with baubles and shuffle effects and additional draws with bottled cloister.
When in doubt watch Susurrus play a bunch of matches, you'll start to figure out the deck's tempo.
Good luck!
I went and bought a Declaration of Naught right away, and I think I'm gonna sleeve up a few counterspells. Probably a negate and metallic rebuke.
I have been underwhelmed with defense grid, anyone else feeling that? Maybe I'm just not using it correctly, but I whirred for it against my cryptic opponent and the game just went to the point that he had enough lands to do whatever he wanted. Right now I have shaved a jar main for an aether grid from the side... for me it's just always good. I also took out the defense grid and in their places I'm playing a possessed portal and for the other slot I might try a jester's cap but I feel some metallic rebukes might be better for my blue heavy meta.
And I found most games are decided by concession (thankfully since all the win conditions are pretty slow on MTGO).
It can slowly generate thopters and draw cards and doesn't get shut down by Stony Silence.
Also, why doesn't this deck run Tezzeret, Agent of Bolas (in the maindeck) ?
With some tweaks to the mana it should be easily castable.
I don’t think there’s room for spy network or tezzeret. Stony isn’t really a problem for the deck, and lil Tezzeret doesn’t work that well in this deck not even considering the stress on the manabase. If anything it’d be a second big tezz main but the meta is too fast right now to justify too many big walkers. Getting your hand low is already a last minute proposition with the whirs/orb/cloister/tez
Tez works better in the thopter/sword build that’s in the established deck section.
Agent of Bolas is a common question for the deck mainly for "reach". Mana restrictions aside Tez AoB is a very underwhelming card in this shell. Turns out a 4 mana Ancient Stirrings is super medium and even worse when you whiff. Tez the Seeker can grab what you need when you need it giving it far more utility here.
That's rough dude, I feel you. People get so salty when they lose to this deck. I started getting hit with Shatterstorms and random Creeping Corrosions which is exactly why I added Declaration of Naught.
I've felt that Defense Grid works better against tempo style Spell Queller type decks. I certainly see what you mean playing Defense Grid against control. They've done the same thing to me and Cryptic bounced my things around the grid once they had the mana. If we had a quicker clock to back up the grid it would be a little better but since we are playing for the long game I've shaved down to one in the sb.
All the win conditions in the deck are "target player" so the deck struggles against leyline of sanctity. And engineered explosives is the only removal for a leyline. So you need a win condition which is not a targeted ability. Tezzeret the seeker gives us that.
And for modern this is a really expensive deck. Almost supports "Pay to win".
Every time I play this deck I always start the first 4 turns constantly talking to myself saying "WE'VE GOT TO PUT THE SHIELDS UP SCOTTY! WE NEED OUR SHIELDS!" when I can't get the defense on time I'm just like "WE'RE GOING DOWN CAPTAIN!"
I’ve just always wanted a g1 where you’re not DOA and this deck has pretty good interaction with like 99% of the format.
Anyone who plays the deck some knows win cons are not the problem, not losing games is the problem the deck can be fine tuned to solve. Winning is easy when you eliminate the possibility of your opponent winning.
Your word selection sounds awfully similar to platinum angel. Which is a card which will totally owns this deck. It has no answers for it and can not interact with it.
Another card which ticks me off is Ulamog, the Ceaseless Hunger. Oh you have 2 bridges down, oh you have 2 welding jar's, well let me just lay this card take out both your bridges and go to the face!
Tron has been my nightmare. Not enough hate, I always forget we have torpor orb. Takes to long to get the crucible and ghost quarters out some games too.
4 mox opal is too much. They're useful, but frequently come online relatively late. And drawing multiple has hurt me so much more vs. just having more land. I think the deck wants only 2-3 opals, with 1-2 extra lands in their place.
1 chalice of the void is the most you want in the maindeck. We have lots of CMC we care about (0 for jar, 1 for map, 2 for spyglass, 3 for bridge). Witchbane can lock out burn, so I don't think chalice actually has much purpose.
Maindeck Tormod's Crypt is awful. It's a sideboard card. It's especially redundant with Grafdigger's Cage.
I've been trying Search for Azcanta in this deck. I think it's pretty useful. We have a lot of conditional cards and a lot of high value ones too.
Ensnaring Bridge and Crucible of Worlds are so important. It may be worth playing more tutors. Maybe Fabricate or Trophy Mage even.
Cryptic command decks are a very serious problem for this deck. I'm very tempted to run green for maybe Ancient stirrings in the maindeck and Thrun, the Last Troll in the sideboard. Thrun thrashes the cryptic decks.
I think the deck wants at least one pithing needle. There seems to be a nonzero number of times where you want to whir for X=1. 4 spyglass between main and side seems excessive.
Tron is a horrible matchup. We're just too slow to impact them. Even if you get a ghost quarter, we can't usually back it up with anything else. For this reason, I feel like it's okay to just not really worry about the matchup. You can't beat everything in Modern. But if you do want a card, I think Bribery is your best option. You need something which actually wins the game vs. them, not just slows them down.
I always want to end the game by trying to mana lock people out of the game, but that never seems to work due to just being too slow. It's sometimes hard to predict all the ways people have as outs for the game too. I'm almost tempted to include Nephalia Drownyard alongside Ipnu Rivulet to speed up the end game clock. It is costly as an uncolored source though. We can easily run River of Tears for no downside to have the black when we need it. Probably bad though.
On the matter of black, Necrogen Spellbomb seems like a neat way to lock people out of playing anything except instants.
Now I could be wrong but I'm willing to wager your experience with the deck is very limited.
Opal is a definite 4 of. Drawing multiples is rarely bad because you can abuse the legend rule to ramp mana. How is Opal coming online late for you in an artifact deck??? I feel you're suggesting changing an integral part of the deck because you're simply doing it all wrong.
Chalice to a 1 of is sketch imo. You usually want to lock out the opps 1 and 2 cmc spells either to slow them down or to counter some interaction.
Crypt serves 2 purposes here aside from it's incidental interaction. It's a cheap 0 cmc way to get opal online early and acts as a mana rock for future whirs. DO NOT CUT IT BEFORE SB.
Search for Azcanta has nice utility but is too slow. There's a reason it's used in reactive style decks like control. We are not a control deck, prison is proactive preemptively shutting down lines and outs.
As to more tutors, you realize the deck has fair, 3 maps, 4 Tolaria West, 4 whir, tezzeret and in my case Artificer's Intuition to go with that. Once again if you're having trouble getting a bridge or a crucible when you need it you're addressing improper play by making fundamental changes to the deck.
Yes Cryptic is a very good card against us. Have you read the earlier posts where we discuss solutions that don't involve us readjusting the entire mana base to fight 1 card. And how does Thrun address this problem or help the deck accomplish it's goal?
Tron is a medium matchup. We have lots of weapons main like chalice, the LD lands and crucible and sb we have damping sphere. Listen I'm really trying not to come off as jerk in my reply but I just can't wrap my head around someone saying we are too slow to fight Tron then suggest a 5 mana sorcery as a sideboard suggestion that has 0 interaction with their board state. You take their Ulamog, they pop their O-stone, you cry because they just time walked you.
This next paragraph confirmed everything I said before. You are forcing the LD line instead of playing to the board state. This deck as you see is not easy and requires a lot of format knowledge to pilot correctly. If you go in trying to establish what you want to do without considering what the opp is trying to do or able to do you will lose every time. Period. If your knowledge of decks is suspect like mine was when I started try watching the popular modern decks on YouTube to learn what their outs are so you know how to shut them down. For a third time adding Drown Yard(a colorless mana producing land) over Rivulet will not solve improper play nor would restructuring the mana base to UB. And how would Necrogen Spell bomb lock opp from playing instants? If we are keeping them from playing magic properly they should have a good deal of cards in hand giving them discard fodder while we durdle on the world's slowest mill strategy.
Once again this was not meant to be rude and sorry to everyone for the long response post.
TLDR; Don't change a decks identity to supplement poor play or an intro level understanding of the decks mechanics.
The point of a thread is to discuss how to make a deck better. Just because there's a few people playing a deck with some list doesn't mean it's an optimal list. I'm providing opinions from watching a lot of different people play the deck online, as well as my experience from playing it myself.
Why is opal a 4 of? It's easy to just say that is the case because Opal seems like such a good card. Many would say that it's a 4-of in Lantern control too. I mean, they have tons of cheap artifacts and they want the mana. However, thnkr, who gathers a lot of data on the deck, and decided 3 was better than 4: Here's a post analyzing Mox Opal. So no, it's not obvious that Mox Opal should just be an auto 4-of here. And blindly assuming that this should be the case without deeper analysis is foolish. This is an extremely mana hungry deck, and multiple Mox Opals often suck. 1 temporary mana can be helpful, but generally I would rather have more lands.
Chalice in general is a weak card in modern. Having access to at least 1 is important, but I'm still not convinced that multiple are needed in the maindeck. It's easy to pay attention to the times where it was very valuable. But a lot of times it's just not that valuable.
For Tormod's crypt, why should I play a bad card just to enable my other cards in a slow deck? That is not good deck design. There are plenty of cheap artifacts we can still play to opal and whir on. This deck doesn't really have "explosive" draws in the traditional sense. There are also plenty of turns when you can't utilize all of its mana 100% efficiently. So having, say a Pithing Needle, instead of Tormod's crypt could give the same benefits for whir and opal in many cases, while having a lot more utility.
Why is Search for Azcanta too slow? There's a lot of upside to a card like this in the deck. It helps us find the cards we need, which is crucial for a deck like this. Despite having a lot of tutors, we are often at the mercy of our deck. Later it flips and makes it easier to assemble our prison lock. Two mana is not a large investment, and I think there is a lot of upside to running 1 of these.
Yes, I have read this thread. I have watched a lot of videos. I have read responses on Reddit. The problem with all the ways to deal with cryptic decks are just band-aids. Cards like Declaration of Naught don't actually help you win the game. Reactive decks have lots of different possible cards we need ways to deal with. The reactive decks are built to go long. Thrun, the Last Troll stomps cryptic decks, because they can't interact with it on the stack or in play and it wins the game. Control decks are a very real threat in the current meta, so ways to deal with them are necessary. I know [G][G] is a large ask, but I think this deck has a lot of flexibility in its mana the splashes which can be used.
For getting the artifacts that we need, it's not just about getting one bridge or crucible. It's about getting all of the cards that we need, which is quite a few. It's not clear what the optimal number of tutors is, which is why I said that maybe more tutors should be considered.
I would say the deck has "some" tools against Tron, not "a lot." The main issue is that some disruption not backed up by a clock or a lock is a recipe for losing against Tron. They have a wide array of threats which need to be dealt with, and it's hard to find the proper ones in time. Yes, Bribery is not fast. But it's a card that is very likely to win the game. Ulamog, the Ceaseless Hunger is indestructible, and cannot be stopped by oblivion stone like you say. Karn is their only out.
So, when I say "want to end the game with land destruction," I mean not in the literal sense that this is actually what I do. But rather, with crucible this is my favorite type of line to take. I identify that it's too slow, so I don't do it if I can't profit from it.
For Necrogen Spellbomb I said anything except instants. You can repeatedly activate it in their draw step by recurring it with ruins. This limits them to the handsize they currently have.
I literally say Nephalia Drownyard is probably bad, and somehow you seem to think I'm suggesting this is for sure a card the deck needs. There's a very real upside in having the ability to mill from 4 cards a turn to 7 cards a turn, since you have a way to end the game almost twice as fast as before.
Again, discussion is about ideas. Not everything is going to be great, but without innovation and change, nothing gets better. I'm hardly changing the core deck by wanting to change a few cards in the list.
He wasn’t trying to be rude, he was trying to suggest that you don’t understand the deck very well. You can have a polite discussion that involves someone being mistaken, which is what he was attempting.
I was glad he said something because I also feel you don’t understand the deck or have enough reps with it if you suggested the changes you did. It’s okay that you want to change everything about the deck, that’s everyone’s first thought until they get to know the deck and realize that it’s tuned to about 99% right now.
Tron is tough but favored, about 60/40 us. You have to be smart with your spyglasses/welding jars and make a focused effort to attack one tron piece until they are out of basics when you can whittle them back. It’s tough but not unwinnable. Same w cryptic decks.
Anyway, hope you keep playing the deck, and by all means if you make your changes you talked about and it turns into a simic midrange deck let us know if you find some success. Best of luck to you!
I suggested one green sideboard card as a potential answer to a tough matchup, yet somehow you jump to "simic midrange deck," which more or less sounds like a summary dismissal of anything I have to say.
I highly doubt the deck is 99% tuned. There simply hasn't been enough people playing the deck to get the amount of data that most other decks have. For example, look at the U-tron thread. It is over 700 pages long, and there are even two relatively divergent lists now. If you assume that this Ux prison deck is already tuned, the deck will never get better.
I'm not sure why you seem to suggest that I want to "change everything about the deck." I said that these cards do not seem the best to me: 4th mox opal, tormod's crypt, 2nd chalice, 4th spyglass. This is hardly a drastic alteration to the deck.
In their place, I mentioned a few cards that seemed like they might have potential. Did I say they're must haves? No. Are they worth trying? Possibly. Have you actually tried Search for Azcanta in this deck? I did, and liked what it did for me.
As another example, I mentioned Necrogen Spellbomb giving an interesting line of discarding our opponent's draws. Does this mean I think the deck needs it? I'm not sure. But I think it's still worth considering new lines of attack that a deck could possibly have access to.
I’ve been talking to the community of players who have been developing this, and collectively we’ve tried most of the reasonable suggestions you’ve made (like serach for azcanta which doesn’t do enough to warrant a slot)
One of the hardest parts of the deck is balancing the powerful colorless lands with enough U and not being crushed by blood moon. So I don’t like adding Black and Green and a colorless mill land that helps win a fraction sooner than rivulet, which has never been too slow to win once I have the game locked up with things like maindeck chalices and tormod’s crypt which is VERY good vs delve, snapcasters, bloodghasts/phoenixes, griselbrand, living end, storm
So that’s why I said keep testing your changes - if you start winning let us know. In my experiences I will try zero of your suggested changes because they don’t do anything to help the deck as I understand it.
The beautiful thing about magic is that it’s customizable - and if you start winning with your changes I’ll be happy for you and it would add gravity to your suggested changes.
The one thing if anything that I think you need to consider while making changes is what problem are you solving and how does this change improves your game plan overall. If you think the deck is slow how does it benefit from cutting a 0 cmc card in place of a land or a 1 cmc card, or adding multiple 3 cmc cards. The mana curve as it stands is very low, as a bridge deck wouldn't these cards exasturbate the "slow" problem pushing you back vital turns you need to get your hand empty?
Something I've noticed while playing the deck is that there are an insane amount of lines and choosing the wrong one severely punishes you. Losing with a deck like this makes it easy for some players to blame the deck instead of sub optimal play. Jeff Hoogland talks about this while he was streaming the deck and it's so true.
Anyways, like boomforest said test out your ideas and get back to us, that's what this is all about. It's all about the data, currently the deck is putting up stellar results as built and who knows you might be the one to push it further.
Against control I really focus on 2 things getting my spyglasses and needles down and neutralizing cryptic. Once that is established we move on to phase 2 either get a crucible and start disrupting their mana(mainly for jeskai) or get academy ruin and start forcing through the final lock pieces through their counter spells. In a lot of cases baiting out counter magic then following it up with a Aether Grid is ggs.
The matchup doesn’t feel even close to unwinnable, I just think they will never stop having a dangerous top of their deck - so setting up a permanent defensive position isn’t possible.
Also it’s important to note that you have to have a fundamental and deep understanding of the meta and cardpool of modern to play this deck well. If you can’t anticipate what your opponent’s 75 is going to be to a degree of certainty this deck will never win for you.
The good news is, magic is designed for you to have fun without having to play a complex knowledge-fueled prison puzzle deck.
Grid in SB for a jester’s cap and metallic rebuke because this store’s meta is a lot more tempo blue/land based.
My only loss was to a chord deck because I got down aether grid and got so excited to ping hierarchs that I only left a U and one artifact for improvise for the metallic rebuke in my hand. He then, obviously, top decked the stony silence. That shut off my jar skite bridge board and whirred for a pridemage. Cool.
It made me think - can that metallic rebuke not just be a swan song? Everything that really hurts is inst/sorc/enchantment. Has anyone toyed with that in the SB? Is the swan a downside?
Possessed Portal won me all of my matches tonight as well. I really think not having one in the 75 is wrong. You don’t even need crucible. You can just rewind the game back trading your redundant perms for their stuff and when you’re good just sac the portal and resume the game. It’s just a hella powerful card that people scoop to when maybe they shouldn’t.
I think 1st game is one of the few decks you loose miserably to...
on the other side 2nd game the cards I brought in were Elendra - which was just too slow and defense grid which was good... the bad thing is that I sided out an opal when I shouldn't have.
I'll likely try metallic rebuke as it is a slow mana cost. but vs thse matc ups I just miss the manabase from Tezz, those IoK/T.S and the inevitability from thopter...
yeah I love PP...