I've been toying with abrades main which have been great! I would try it out in the board, as it's just a good card vs so many decks. As for spyglass, I'm not the biggest fan of it because people bring in so much artifact/enchantment hate from the board and it doesn't quite keep you alive.
Really though, sideboard discussions don't make a ton of sense without your current decklist and the rest of the proposed board.
(So I am really new to this forum, and dont know how to format correctly, sorry)
Ive been playing Sun and Moon for approximately a year and a half, and have had some amount of success with it, including a top 16 finish in a smaller sized SCG Classic of approximately 200 players. Ive been loving the deck since i first picked it up, but I have been finding that meta of the last few months have been unfriendly to the deck, and as such kind, of pushed me away from the deck.
Last weekend I played in a few side events of GP DC and ended up going 10-6 for the weekend with it. My only loses being 2x B/R Hollow One, 2x Tron, Humans, and Boggles. Wins were Counters Company, Burn, 2x Jeskai Control, Affinity, GW Valuetown, Scapeshift, Jund Traverse Shadow, Eldrazi D&T, Humans. Humans is kind of annoying since a super disruptive hand can easily sway the game their way. Boggles really came down to if i had an early enough t1 Chalice of the Void or not. It seems that Hollow One pretty much down to the variance of Burning Inquiry. Then Tron went as most Tron matchups do.
Im looking on input on how do we combat these pesky matchups. What has everyone here been trying out?
here is my decklist:
Land (24)
4x Arid Mesa
1x Clifftop Retreat
2x Field of Ruin
1x Mountain
9x Plains
1x Rugged Prairie
2x Sacred Foundry
4x Temple of Triumph
Instant (5)
2x Abrade
3x Lightning Helix
Creature (5)
1x Emrakul, the Aeons Torn
4x Simian Spirit Guide
Planeswalker (10)
1x Ajani Vengeant
2x Chandra, Torch of Defiance
2x Gideon Jura
1x Gideon of the Trials
4x Nahiri, the Harbinger
Sorcery (7)
3x Anger of the Gods
1x Day of Judgment
1x Declaration in Stone
2x Wrath of God
Enchantment (5)
4x Blood Moon
1x Journey to Nowhere
I diversified my sweepers and spot removal in order to avoid being locked out my Meddling Mage, as well as being able to hit a wider range of things. I feel as though the sideboard gives me plenty of outs towards almost every deck in the meta, with the exception of Tron (its such a bad matchup that i figured I would just bite the bullet on this one and try to stock up on beating the rest of them.) Im not sold on the Journey to Nowhere, almost favoring another Declaration in Stone as an early answer to punish the decks that play a lot of the same creatures at once, but the drawback of providing clues is pretty significant.
To continue diversifying the sweepers, one suggestion would be a 1-of Sweltering Suns mainboard in place of an Anger of the Gods. Bonus, if it turns out you don't need a lot of sweepers, you can cycle it...
Not of fan of giving the opponent Clues (of any type lol)...
Like your 1-of Nevermore sideboard. Playing the SCG regional this weekend; I may need to consider that card.
Boggles, in particular, struggles with Runed Halo, but my personal favorite against those decks is Porphyry Nodes. Playing one turn 1 on the draw against some of the format's more aggressive decks makes it effectively a Time Walk in some matchups.
I was thinking of putting Sweltering Sun in the main, but realized it would feel awful to cast it into a board full of Bloodghasts, Prized Amalgams, and or Flamewake Phoenix, I feel as though the exile clause is way to relevant to substitute Anger of the Gods out for a subpar card.
Nevermore is an all star card. Naming their sideboard cards with it feels great 100% of the time
The only reason why I don't run Nodes is cause it doesn't get through Chalice, otherwise I'd be about it
Oh yeah, I forgot about that because I'm poor and run a budget enchantment prison. Well, you still have Runed Halo and maybe Ghostly Prison. In my pursuit of janky prison cards, I also run Story Circle, which can be a dandy card in some matchups as well.
Hi all, I just recently picked up RW planeswalker prison online and I'm really loving it. I've always been a fan of prison strategies and this one is really clicking with me right now. However, it feels like the meta is not friendly to this deck at the moment. The top 3 decks seem to be humans, Gx tron, and Jeskai, and of those, only humans feels like an ok matchup. Do I just need more practice, or is this a bad meta for Nahiri Prison?
i run a one-of; have yet to sideboard it in and have it come into play at the right time. It may be coming out; i'm trying to find room for a Ghostly Prison for help against go-wide decks, and a Spellskite as added planeswalker protection. (of the two, I'm more in love with Ghostly right now - i'm sick and tired of elves and 1/1 tokens running over my deck)
Are you just trying to fit Ghostly Prison in the sideboard, or are you considering finding room for it in the main? The card feels really good in this meta. I've been running it in Restore Balance, another prison-style strategy, and it's worked quite well.
i run a one-of; have yet to sideboard it in and have it come into play at the right time. It may be coming out; i'm trying to find room for a Ghostly Prison for help against go-wide decks, and a Spellskite as added planeswalker protection. (of the two, I'm more in love with Ghostly right now - i'm sick and tired of elves and 1/1 tokens running over my deck)
Don't use Ghostly Prison against elves. They produce enough mana to power through it. While effective against go-wide decks, GP is best against low-mana decks, such as Affinity and Boggles, that frequently have to choose between casting spells and attacking.
i hear you Blazing - but if we're just talking a one-of, i could easily pull my one-of Journey to Nowhere or a Moon to squeeze it in i would think. And yes, Affinity beat me at the SCG regionals; i would've loved have GP in the 60 for that match.
Another sb question - i'm currently running two Shattering Spree but recently stumbled upon Fiery Confluence. Any thoughts on either? Spree certainly has the better spot removal action, but the flexibility of Fiery is appetizing.
i hear you Blazing - but if we're just talking a one-of, i could easily pull my one-of Journey to Nowhere or a Moon to squeeze it in i would think. And yes, Affinity beat me at the SCG regionals; i would've loved have GP in the 60 for that match.
Another sb question - i'm currently running two Shattering Spree but recently stumbled upon Fiery Confluence. Any thoughts on either? Spree certainly has the better spot removal action, but the flexibility of Fiery is appetizing.
Hate to burst your bubble, but Fiery Confluence isn't Modern legal. It's only been printed in a Commander set.
well that explains why i haven't heard of it before :-). I actually read about it on a Patrick Chapin article on SCG today that was about Modern decks, but stuck right in the middle of the flow was a Legacy deck and i didn't realize the switch.
Regardless, it's a good thing; i already own the Sprees and would've had to buy the Fieries :-):-)
What are people's thoughts on leyline of sanctity? Obviously it was good when it protected our pws, but now I'm not so sure. Could we cut it entirely from the sb?
Interesting article on SCG today re what hands to keep and when to mulligan. Author basically broke it into three primary decktypes and mulliganing strategies - ours was the third type (I'm referring specifically to Sun & Moon, although I believe all w/r prison decks, and prison decks in general, would also fall here)
first type of deck/mull strategy was where you only need a few specific cards to go off. Deck example was Affinity, where 'only a few things matter'. Here the strategy was simply to mulligan every hand that isn't a form of nut draw.
second type of deck/mull strategy was more toward the 'fair' decks, where you need to see an equal balance of cards. The deck example was Jund, and the strategy was basically to 'keep any hand that casts spells because your deck will sort the rest out'.
Lastly, there's our deck type - a deck that is 'off in its own world', a deck which does not particularly rely on speed or powerful game-ending synergies, but instead does a great job of stopping those from its opponent, rendering their hi-power cards useless. The example deck was bogles/hexproof, and the mulliganing strategy was:
Keep any hand that performs a baseline action, and change your deck if that stops being good.
So here's more he advises about 'our' strategy:
The final category of Modern deck is the one that plays to not care about the cards its opponent has. While that might sound a lot like the "nut draws required" category, the end result is way different. You're aiming for a game where you make none of your opponent's cards matter just by the nature of the cards you selected.
This could be one critical interactive spell, or, really, "interactive" in a lot of these cases, because Ensnaring Bridge's interaction with your opponent's cards is that it makes them literally do nothing. Sometimes that is just a single removal spell, such as old Storm and similar combo decks using Lightning Bolt to cripple Infect's clock.
By playing these decks, you're admitting that you aren't winning games on raw power against anything. You're hoping your exact cards crush your opponent and accepting that some percentage of the time your deck is a joke against the opponent.
In terms of mulligans and pre-game strategy, you fall somewhere between the other decks. You need to mulligan for functional hands that can execute your basic gameplan, but you're looking for your equivalent of the slightly slower Etched Champion Affinity hands. You wouldn't be playing your slightly underpowered strategy if it wasn't well-positioned against the metagame at large, right?
The slightly finicky part is figuring out the bare minimum for functionality. Like I said, there's some acceptance that your good draw might just not make the cut sometimes, but the metagame should mean it usually does.
Eldrazi Tron doesn't fall squarely into this sector, but the Turn 2 Chalice of the Void draws are great examples of this. If last summer you had Chalice of the Void, two lands, and basically any other action on the play against an unknown opponent, you had to keep. That was one of the reasons to play your deck.
And when the metagame became a bunch of decks that don't care about Chalice of the Void? Then you stopped playing that deck.
With decks in this category, you don't necessarily mulligan hands, but if you should be doing a lot of it, you might want to mulligan your deck choice instead.
Note the line above that i placed in bold italic. Thoughts on this? Do you feel we are presently in a meta (not our own personal metas, but that of Modern in general) where our primary 'need to have this in my starting hand' cards do not necessarily give us a great chance at winning?
(Just a topic of conversation. I'm not suggesting that I throw my cards in the trash, or that whenever I lose a game it's because my deck sucks and not that I made a stupid play :-))
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
To post a comment, please login or register a new account.
Fair point - okay, here it is:
4 Nahiri, The Harbinger
2 Chandra, Torch of Defiance
1 Gideon Jura
1 Koth of the Hammer
Creatures (6)
4 Simian Spirit Guide
1 Emrakul, the Aeons Torn
1 Shalai, Voice of Plenty
Spells (18)
4 Blood Moon
2 Desperate Ritual
2 Anger Of The Gods
2 Wrath of God
1 Sweltering Suns
2 Lightning Helix
1 Oblivion Ring
1 Blessed Alliance
2 Ixalan's Binding
1 Journey To Nowhere
4 Chalice of the Void
Lands (24)
4 Flooded Strand
1 Clifftop Retreat
2 Sacred Foundry
2 Rugged Prairie
1 Needle Spires
1 Inspiring Vantage
4 Temple of Triumph
8 Plains
1 Mountain
3 Rest in Peace
3 Stony Silence
2 Shattering Spree
1 Elspeth, Sun's Champion
1 Anger of the Gods
1 Wrath of God
1 Abrade
1 Boil
2 Damping Sphere
The two Spree slots I'm uncertain about, between Sprees, Spyglasses, or...? Maybe Timely Reinforcements
Ive been playing Sun and Moon for approximately a year and a half, and have had some amount of success with it, including a top 16 finish in a smaller sized SCG Classic of approximately 200 players. Ive been loving the deck since i first picked it up, but I have been finding that meta of the last few months have been unfriendly to the deck, and as such kind, of pushed me away from the deck.
Last weekend I played in a few side events of GP DC and ended up going 10-6 for the weekend with it. My only loses being 2x B/R Hollow One, 2x Tron, Humans, and Boggles. Wins were Counters Company, Burn, 2x Jeskai Control, Affinity, GW Valuetown, Scapeshift, Jund Traverse Shadow, Eldrazi D&T, Humans. Humans is kind of annoying since a super disruptive hand can easily sway the game their way. Boggles really came down to if i had an early enough t1 Chalice of the Void or not. It seems that Hollow One pretty much down to the variance of Burning Inquiry. Then Tron went as most Tron matchups do.
Im looking on input on how do we combat these pesky matchups. What has everyone here been trying out?
here is my decklist:
Land (24)
4x Arid Mesa
1x Clifftop Retreat
2x Field of Ruin
1x Mountain
9x Plains
1x Rugged Prairie
2x Sacred Foundry
4x Temple of Triumph
Instant (5)
2x Abrade
3x Lightning Helix
Creature (5)
1x Emrakul, the Aeons Torn
4x Simian Spirit Guide
Planeswalker (10)
1x Ajani Vengeant
2x Chandra, Torch of Defiance
2x Gideon Jura
1x Gideon of the Trials
4x Nahiri, the Harbinger
Sorcery (7)
3x Anger of the Gods
1x Day of Judgment
1x Declaration in Stone
2x Wrath of God
Enchantment (5)
4x Blood Moon
1x Journey to Nowhere
Artifact (4)
4x Chalice of the Void
Sideboard (15)
1x Damping Sphere
2x Defense Grid
1x Engineered Explosives
2x Leyline of Sanctity
1x Nevermore
2x Rest in Peace
1x Runed Halo
1x Settle the Wreckage
2x Stony Silence
1x Sweltering Suns
1x Torpor Orb
I diversified my sweepers and spot removal in order to avoid being locked out my Meddling Mage, as well as being able to hit a wider range of things. I feel as though the sideboard gives me plenty of outs towards almost every deck in the meta, with the exception of Tron (its such a bad matchup that i figured I would just bite the bullet on this one and try to stock up on beating the rest of them.) Im not sold on the Journey to Nowhere, almost favoring another Declaration in Stone as an early answer to punish the decks that play a lot of the same creatures at once, but the drawback of providing clues is pretty significant.
Thoughts?
Not of fan of giving the opponent Clues (of any type lol)...
Like your 1-of Nevermore sideboard. Playing the SCG regional this weekend; I may need to consider that card.
Nevermore is an all star card. Naming their sideboard cards with it feels great 100% of the time
Oh yeah, I forgot about that because I'm poor and run a budget enchantment prison. Well, you still have Runed Halo and maybe Ghostly Prison. In my pursuit of janky prison cards, I also run Story Circle, which can be a dandy card in some matchups as well.
[Primer] Dralnu Control/Reanimator BU
[Primer] Jolrael, Empress of Beasts GG
Nath Stax BG | Borborygmos Enraged RG | Ladies of Magic UGW | Aminatou Control UWB | Enduring Ideal Zedruu UWR | Momir Vig Combo UG
Modern
Restore Balance RWUG
Kiki Chord RWG
Jeskai Control – 22
Humans – 11
Affinity – 11
Mardu Pyromancer – 9
U/W Control – 8
B/R Hollow One – 7
U/R Gifts Storm – 6
G/W Hexproof – 6
Burn – 6
Ironworks Combo – 5
Mono-Green Tron – 5
Dredge – 4
G/W Company – 4
Eldrazi Tron – 2
Counters Company – 2
Titan Shift – 2
Jund – 2
R/G Eldrazi – 2
W/R Prison – 1
Amulet Titan – 1
Infect – 1
Esper Control – 1
Blue Moon – 1
Colorless Eldrazi – 1
G/R Tron – 1
Elves – 1
Skred Red – 1
Grixis Death’s Shadow – 1
Four-Color Death’s Shadow – 1
G/W Midrange – 1
Mono-Green Devotion – 1
Obviously your local meta and/or online meta will vary.
And that variance doesn't look too bad. Of the top 5, it's just the two control decks I'd worry about. Guess I just have to git gud.
[Primer] Dralnu Control/Reanimator BU
[Primer] Jolrael, Empress of Beasts GG
Nath Stax BG | Borborygmos Enraged RG | Ladies of Magic UGW | Aminatou Control UWB | Enduring Ideal Zedruu UWR | Momir Vig Combo UG
Modern
Restore Balance RWUG
Kiki Chord RWG
[Primer] Dralnu Control/Reanimator BU
[Primer] Jolrael, Empress of Beasts GG
Nath Stax BG | Borborygmos Enraged RG | Ladies of Magic UGW | Aminatou Control UWB | Enduring Ideal Zedruu UWR | Momir Vig Combo UG
Modern
Restore Balance RWUG
Kiki Chord RWG
Don't use Ghostly Prison against elves. They produce enough mana to power through it. While effective against go-wide decks, GP is best against low-mana decks, such as Affinity and Boggles, that frequently have to choose between casting spells and attacking.
Another sb question - i'm currently running two Shattering Spree but recently stumbled upon Fiery Confluence. Any thoughts on either? Spree certainly has the better spot removal action, but the flexibility of Fiery is appetizing.
Hate to burst your bubble, but Fiery Confluence isn't Modern legal. It's only been printed in a Commander set.
[Primer] Dralnu Control/Reanimator BU
[Primer] Jolrael, Empress of Beasts GG
Nath Stax BG | Borborygmos Enraged RG | Ladies of Magic UGW | Aminatou Control UWB | Enduring Ideal Zedruu UWR | Momir Vig Combo UG
Modern
Restore Balance RWUG
Kiki Chord RWG
Regardless, it's a good thing; i already own the Sprees and would've had to buy the Fieries :-):-)
[Primer] Dralnu Control/Reanimator BU
[Primer] Jolrael, Empress of Beasts GG
Nath Stax BG | Borborygmos Enraged RG | Ladies of Magic UGW | Aminatou Control UWB | Enduring Ideal Zedruu UWR | Momir Vig Combo UG
Modern
Restore Balance RWUG
Kiki Chord RWG
first type of deck/mull strategy was where you only need a few specific cards to go off. Deck example was Affinity, where 'only a few things matter'. Here the strategy was simply to mulligan every hand that isn't a form of nut draw.
second type of deck/mull strategy was more toward the 'fair' decks, where you need to see an equal balance of cards. The deck example was Jund, and the strategy was basically to 'keep any hand that casts spells because your deck will sort the rest out'.
Lastly, there's our deck type - a deck that is 'off in its own world', a deck which does not particularly rely on speed or powerful game-ending synergies, but instead does a great job of stopping those from its opponent, rendering their hi-power cards useless. The example deck was bogles/hexproof, and the mulliganing strategy was:
Keep any hand that performs a baseline action, and change your deck if that stops being good.
So here's more he advises about 'our' strategy:
The final category of Modern deck is the one that plays to not care about the cards its opponent has. While that might sound a lot like the "nut draws required" category, the end result is way different. You're aiming for a game where you make none of your opponent's cards matter just by the nature of the cards you selected.
This could be one critical interactive spell, or, really, "interactive" in a lot of these cases, because Ensnaring Bridge's interaction with your opponent's cards is that it makes them literally do nothing. Sometimes that is just a single removal spell, such as old Storm and similar combo decks using Lightning Bolt to cripple Infect's clock.
By playing these decks, you're admitting that you aren't winning games on raw power against anything. You're hoping your exact cards crush your opponent and accepting that some percentage of the time your deck is a joke against the opponent.
In terms of mulligans and pre-game strategy, you fall somewhere between the other decks. You need to mulligan for functional hands that can execute your basic gameplan, but you're looking for your equivalent of the slightly slower Etched Champion Affinity hands. You wouldn't be playing your slightly underpowered strategy if it wasn't well-positioned against the metagame at large, right?
The slightly finicky part is figuring out the bare minimum for functionality. Like I said, there's some acceptance that your good draw might just not make the cut sometimes, but the metagame should mean it usually does.
Eldrazi Tron doesn't fall squarely into this sector, but the Turn 2 Chalice of the Void draws are great examples of this. If last summer you had Chalice of the Void, two lands, and basically any other action on the play against an unknown opponent, you had to keep. That was one of the reasons to play your deck.
And when the metagame became a bunch of decks that don't care about Chalice of the Void? Then you stopped playing that deck.
With decks in this category, you don't necessarily mulligan hands, but if you should be doing a lot of it, you might want to mulligan your deck choice instead.
Note the line above that i placed in bold italic. Thoughts on this? Do you feel we are presently in a meta (not our own personal metas, but that of Modern in general) where our primary 'need to have this in my starting hand' cards do not necessarily give us a great chance at winning?
(Just a topic of conversation. I'm not suggesting that I throw my cards in the trash, or that whenever I lose a game it's because my deck sucks and not that I made a stupid play :-))