I don't care for it. whitemane lion already exists and we don't use that. And what would you cut? All of our creatures are already better, and I wouldn't want to cut burn or counters for more creatures. It might work in standard but not Modern IMO.
Whitemane Lion doesn't have a 'may' attached to it, which makes it quite a bit worse than Deputy of Acquittals, since you have to play it into a board with a creature already on it, or you have to return it to your hand.
Having said that, I don't think it'll work out in Modern, maybe in budget decks that can't afford Clique, but I don't think he quite adds enough to Modern. I can see him seeing play in Standard though (I plan on trying him out).
I'm interested if people think that Turn // Burn Could maybe see modern plan at all? It's a cool combat trick to protect geist and will result in a creature dead on opponents side. It's 2 dmg straight to a creature or player's face, or at 5CMC, it pretty much kills any creature.
I am saying the card will always have a progressive use outside of legendary rule on creatures
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Decks I have in my bag of tricks- Needless to say, someone who wants to play will probably have a deck UB/x Faeries UR Storm XURWB Affinity G Elves UW control
Phantasmal Image could be a good option for it. We can use burns for Thalia (g2 i had to wait until t3 to helix her, and i was on the draw... bad!) and leave that for Thrun, GoST (mirror, just in case... even if i never worried about it, we can always suicide one of our ones, we run 4 after all) and stuff. I don't understand the restoration/snappy thing, though; how can they be useful against thrun?
i just threw 1x phantasmal image into my sideboard to help with Thrun/Sigarda. also considering renounce the guilds:
I'm interested if people think that Turn // Burn Could maybe see modern plan at all? It's a cool combat trick to protect geist and will result in a creature dead on opponents side. It's 2 dmg straight to a creature or player's face, or at 5CMC, it pretty much kills any creature.
i'm thinking Wear // Tear as a sideboard option is a better fit.
i've played about 10 full matches against Melira Pod in the last week. it's not Kiki Pod, but the concepts are the same. i don't know how relatable my findings will be, but they should be similar:
game 1
first, ramp needs to be stopped but not at the cost of a path. if i have a lightning bolt in my opening hand i'm pretty happy and will fetch/shock myself to take out a deathrite or a bird. every time. i only like pathing a shaman, and even then only if i'm holding a geist. if i'm looking at a burn/counter for card advantage opening hand, i hold on to it for finks/madcaps.
second, landing a geist on on turn 3 is super important. with all our removal and four mana open for a cryptic on turn 4, this is usually good enough to push through for a win.
third, if they ramp into pod on turn 2 we are very, very far behind. it becomes a very patient game at that point, and you must make very good choices about what to spend your spells on.
game 2
first, i sideboard in two wraths and a verdict. initially i was only playing the two wraths, but found i wanted a board wipe option on turn 4/5 more often than not. this is probably due to the matchup. thrun and sigarda always come in against me. another reason i threw in 1x image and consider renounce the guilds.
second, i sideboard in two stony silences. if the matchup in on the pod plan this just shuts their deck off. about half the time playing a silence lets them resolve another spell, and no pod comes out anyway. i get beat down regardless. still., this is an effective option.
third, i sideboard in a surgical extraction. if you can get a finks/madcap in the graveyard and then remove it from their deck completely, half of their combo is gone. this also applies to melira. with the amount of helixes / bolts / electrolyzes, this is usually not an issue.
fourth, i take out 4x Leak, 1x Resto, and 1x Cryptica. the matchup changes to burn and midrange over countering, since there aren't a lot of spells.
after boards i find the matchup to be 50/50 and usually depends on drawing a wrath affect.
game 3
this usually goes the same way as game 2. overall the matchup is extremely tight and usually comes down to resolving a geist on 3 and drawing wrath effects.
The deck i lost to was some sort of a hatebears, but it was modified to be more deadly.
So tonight i tested against gw hatebears slightly modified (with finks, leonin arbiter, etc) and i found EXTREMELY USEFUL SPhinx's revelation. I put it in 2x in SB taking out engineered explosives and that card literally saved my life twice. Is really NUTS in this MU. Since it is useful against Jund, too, and even against some aggros, i am gonna do some more testing with it 2x in SB. Another idea is to take out sowing salt from SB since Scapeshift usually does not put non basic mountains on the board, and i don't suffer SO much from Tron (plus, i don't think i am gonna find lots of them at the GPT). This will free 2 SB slots for some healty GY hate. Thoughts?
if you don't think there will be a big tron meta then taking out sowing salt isn't a bad idea. i'm not sure i'd want to risk it, though,, because that one card wins you the matchup every time.
sphinx is way too good to not be mainboard, imo. because this deck is essentially stick GoST on 3 or win through card advantage, sphinx becomes very important.
sphinx in MB slows down the deck, and occupies 2 slots that are surely counters or removals. since the deck suffer faster decks, it's vital to always have removals for the creatures that are a nightmare for us (Thalia, Arbiter, Mindcensor, Finks, Goyfs, Bob) and to counter threats both to gain time (remand) and to not allow them to be on board because if they do it's a disaster (like Liliana, Garruk, Karn, etc). I usually prefer to be well protected in the very first turns, because when i come to turn 4 i usually can do lots of things (Angel, command, etc) and if i come there with a pretty empty board, i am in control.
Wow good to know that a lot of activity is going on here I too agree that MB sphinx slows down the deck. Honestly, for myself, I don't play sphinx, haha I don't even play commands (part of the reason is that I am still uncomfortable with it's cost, the other reason is that I don't have them yet and they are expensive now lol), I am more incline to support the notion of having cheap answers in this deck that can deal with fast threats. Because it is just plain simple to win by being faster, and there are a lot of faster decks out there that work by this principle and try to overrun us with speed (ie. RDW, zoo, affinity/robots, infect etc.). Therefore, yup like I said, I am more incline to support the idea of having cheap and efficient answers. Having cheap efficient spells also allows me to more conveniently change gear to become more aggressive and to hasten up the pace of the game to my advantage. (don't ask me why I am not playing the delver variant, it's just because I find that it lacks the versatility to survive the long game and I have seen so many people having problems flipping delver) The downside of that is that pass midgame, I am going to try to fight it out with incremental advantage instead of the explosive advantage that cards like command and sphinx offer. This also explains why my deck has 14 creatures to compensate for the lack of massive CA by increasing the threat density.
I can't say which is the way to go, unless someone can convince us of the way forward, I could be wrong for now but I guess as of now this is just a matter of risk appetite here, some of us (like me) prefer to lower the curve and the variance and prefer the implied versatility, some of us wouldn't mind raising that tolerance to allow for greater power. But perhaps this difference here can affect the strategy of the deck's game play. It would be logical to say that if you have so powerful high cost spells like commands and sphinx, you would be inclined to prefer that the game drags into midgame, from then on you would have a better chance of relative advantage in most matchups (with the exception of a few decks like GW Hatebears and Gifts Control etc.). However, if like my deck which packs in mainly cheaper effiicient spells, I guess I am relatively more "indifferent" to such an effect with the exception of having to survive the first 3 turns against faster decks. Such a difference can subconsciously affect the way we play, we just need to make sure that we are aware of it and it's implications on our tempo and on the matchups
I find surgical extraction a very interesting sb card. It is an sweet companion with tiago, it is a form of graveyard hate, it can also help against some combo decks (ie. it would be interesting to surgical that stomping ground/sacred foundry from scapeshift. It seldom happens but wouldn't it be nice to tec edge a urza tower then surgical it. etc.)
I have a strange feeling and I could be wrong but it may be worth trying boros charm vs GW hatebears. Sometimes perhaps that 4 damage burn or double strike is all you need to win. Afterall, as I mentioned it is a far easier strategy to try to win by just being faster.
IMO, Rest in peace would be one of the A-list graveyard hate unless if your opponent boards in enchantment hate. The way it troubles Melira Pod, Gifts Control, Vengevine etc. buys quite some time. And for this deck, having some time in favor of you often leads to a win.
Sideboarding-wise I am more incline to support this interesting idea of what I call "diversified" sideboarding (people can always call it something else), the idea is to have a set of cards that serve the same purpose but are of different types for which there is no overlapping hate against it (a simple example is for Artifact hate: Kataki, War's Wage is a legend creature, disenchant is an instant, stony silence is an enchantment). The reason for doing this, it's so that your opponent's would find it harder to sideboard against your sideboard, at the very least he would have no one card answer to deal with ALL your hate against him (ie. your opponent plays vengevine, your sideboard's graveyard hate package is 4 Rest in Peace, he guesses that and boards in 4 naturalize, and tada your sideboard didn't matter)
i understand your points, but i'm going to have to politely disagree. the deck is supposed to be slow. fast decks are easily stifled with an early bolt or path, and having 3 wrath effects in the side just invites them to fill the board.
once cryptic mana is up it is just too good. it probably wins me 90% of my games. last night i played these decks: Fish, Burn, Doran, Varolz, and Obliterator a few times each. not only did hitting cryptic mana let me take over the game, but sphinx's revelation put games to bed.
because we're churning through spells so much we need a way to get our card advantage back. this is especially true when i board out Geist and move to a more control build.
Guys, sphinxs is good and all, but this is modern not standard, and its a card meant for CONTROL, and this is tempo/midrange.
That means you very rarely will get to cast a sphinxs bigger than 2 or 3, and for 6 mana there are a lot of better cards. Im not even sure i want a 6 mana card in a midrange modern deck to begin with.
I play it as a 1 off, but im not sure if i will keep it, i definitly can see me playing a Cryptic command in that spot.
i understand your points, but i'm going to have to politely disagree. the deck is supposed to be slow. fast decks are easily stifled with an early bolt or path, and having 3 wrath effects in the side just invites them to fill the board.
once cryptic mana is up it is just too good. it probably wins me 90% of my games. last night i played these decks: Fish, Burn, Doran, Varolz, and Obliterator a few times each. not only did hitting cryptic mana let me take over the game, but sphinx's revelation put games to bed.
because we're churning through spells so much we need a way to get our card advantage back. this is especially true when i board out Geist and move to a more control build.
Couldn't agree more. Sphinx is that one card that's going to put you over the top once you get to midgame. When you're sitting on one card in hand Turn 7 and it's a mana leak, you're going to wish that was a Sphinx's Revelation. Even casting it with X=3 is a huge blowout, and you can always cast it again later with snappy.
Also to address an earlier comment...path is probably the worst generic removal we have. Let's be honest; this is a tempo deck. Why would you give them an extra land, and counteract all the tempo advantage you've worked so hard to accumulate the past several turns? Well obviously to hit a creature that's out of range of our normal removal like goyf, but that's exactly the point. You should NOT be pathing small bros like mana dorks or Thalia or arbiter because that's just bad. Path is usually run as a 3-of because you probably need to see one or two over the course of the game, but you definitely don't want to draw all of them.
Electrolyze, on the other hand, fits the archetype of this deck like a boss. Sure it's only 2 damage, but it replaces itself! Against x/1's, it's almost a 3-for-1! Just the fact that it does something relevant, and then it replaces itself with something else that might be relevant too is simply backbreaking. Don't be so quick to dismiss it's advantages.
oh i agree about command too, there is no way im playing 4, right now im not playing it, actually, thats why going 0 -> 1 seems fine to me.
What i do find akward is the lack of real midragne threats in this lists i have seen here.
I mean, we want to win early if possible, but as a midrange deck i dont mind going late in the game as well, thats why i find it weird that pleople here curve at 4 with resto.
I do not see me cutting them from the board anytime soon.
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Common sense is the most fairly distributed thing in the world, for each one thinks he is so well-endowed with it that even those who are hardest to satisfy in all other matters are not in the habit of desiring more of it than they already have. - René Descartes
I'm having trouble picking sideboard options for Aggro Domain Zoo.
Isn't discard a shaky option, given that Snapcaster and Resto bring those discarded spells back?
Yea, the discard has to come in large quantities. One or two spot discard like Inquisition or Thoughtseize won't do too much. Blood moon is the worst I think, or running lots of creatures that are out of bolt range.
Here's a list of possible sideboard options for you:
1 - Spellskite - Makes all the Lightning Bolts, Lightning Helixes and Electrolyzes much less useful. Also protects a more powerful creatures from a PtE 2 - Kira, Great Glass-Spinner - I think that this card is hard to run in your deck, although I believe that you run blue? This card will really shut down UWr pretty hard or make them burn a large portion of their hand in order to deal with her. 3 - Blood Moon - Much more useful than Magus of the Moon and makes for a tough time if the UWr deck didn't set up their mana base properly since it is a greedy mana base as well as having quite a bit of the power coming in the form of Celestial Colonnade 4 - Relic of Progenitus - Potentially useful as it shuts down Snapcaster Mage, however its usefulness is extremely limited. 5 - Chalice of the Void - Set at 1 it's quite fiesty against this deck. Just look at the number of spells that are run at that... up to 16! (Spell Snare, Spell Pierce, Lightning Bolt, Path to Exile, etc etc) 6 - Ghost Quarter - Destroys Celestial Colonnade as well as punishes the greedy manabase of this deck.
Not saying all of these are shoe in sideboard cards, but they each have their use and it depends on what you're going up against as to how useful they will be. Hopefully it helps!
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Current Decks:
Modern
Modern Warp / UR Control / UR Storm / Naya Breachshift / ElectroBalance
Legacy
Solidarity / Lands / Sneak and Show / Grixis Delver / Reanimator / Belcher / Storm / Dredge
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Whitemane Lion doesn't have a 'may' attached to it, which makes it quite a bit worse than Deputy of Acquittals, since you have to play it into a board with a creature already on it, or you have to return it to your hand.
Having said that, I don't think it'll work out in Modern, maybe in budget decks that can't afford Clique, but I don't think he quite adds enough to Modern. I can see him seeing play in Standard though (I plan on trying him out).
I'm interested if people think that Turn // Burn Could maybe see modern plan at all? It's a cool combat trick to protect geist and will result in a creature dead on opponents side. It's 2 dmg straight to a creature or player's face, or at 5CMC, it pretty much kills any creature.
UB/x Faeries
UR Storm
XURWB Affinity
G Elves
UW control
i just threw 1x phantasmal image into my sideboard to help with Thrun/Sigarda. also considering renounce the guilds:
http://tappedout.net/mtg-decks/uwr-geist-22-04-13-1/
i'm thinking Wear // Tear as a sideboard option is a better fit.
i've played about 10 full matches against Melira Pod in the last week. it's not Kiki Pod, but the concepts are the same. i don't know how relatable my findings will be, but they should be similar:
game 1
first, ramp needs to be stopped but not at the cost of a path. if i have a lightning bolt in my opening hand i'm pretty happy and will fetch/shock myself to take out a deathrite or a bird. every time. i only like pathing a shaman, and even then only if i'm holding a geist. if i'm looking at a burn/counter for card advantage opening hand, i hold on to it for finks/madcaps.
second, landing a geist on on turn 3 is super important. with all our removal and four mana open for a cryptic on turn 4, this is usually good enough to push through for a win.
third, if they ramp into pod on turn 2 we are very, very far behind. it becomes a very patient game at that point, and you must make very good choices about what to spend your spells on.
game 2
first, i sideboard in two wraths and a verdict. initially i was only playing the two wraths, but found i wanted a board wipe option on turn 4/5 more often than not. this is probably due to the matchup. thrun and sigarda always come in against me. another reason i threw in 1x image and consider renounce the guilds.
second, i sideboard in two stony silences. if the matchup in on the pod plan this just shuts their deck off. about half the time playing a silence lets them resolve another spell, and no pod comes out anyway. i get beat down regardless. still., this is an effective option.
third, i sideboard in a surgical extraction. if you can get a finks/madcap in the graveyard and then remove it from their deck completely, half of their combo is gone. this also applies to melira. with the amount of helixes / bolts / electrolyzes, this is usually not an issue.
fourth, i take out 4x Leak, 1x Resto, and 1x Cryptica. the matchup changes to burn and midrange over countering, since there aren't a lot of spells.
after boards i find the matchup to be 50/50 and usually depends on drawing a wrath affect.
game 3
this usually goes the same way as game 2. overall the matchup is extremely tight and usually comes down to resolving a geist on 3 and drawing wrath effects.
Modern Warp / UR Control / UR Storm / Naya Breachshift / ElectroBalance
Solidarity / Lands / Sneak and Show / Grixis Delver / Reanimator / Belcher / Storm / Dredge
If you aren't running Snapcaster Mage, then Rest in Peace is also fantastic.
Modern Warp / UR Control / UR Storm / Naya Breachshift / ElectroBalance
Solidarity / Lands / Sneak and Show / Grixis Delver / Reanimator / Belcher / Storm / Dredge
if you don't think there will be a big tron meta then taking out sowing salt isn't a bad idea. i'm not sure i'd want to risk it, though,, because that one card wins you the matchup every time.
sphinx is way too good to not be mainboard, imo. because this deck is essentially stick GoST on 3 or win through card advantage, sphinx becomes very important.
Wow good to know that a lot of activity is going on here I too agree that MB sphinx slows down the deck. Honestly, for myself, I don't play sphinx, haha I don't even play commands (part of the reason is that I am still uncomfortable with it's cost, the other reason is that I don't have them yet and they are expensive now lol), I am more incline to support the notion of having cheap answers in this deck that can deal with fast threats. Because it is just plain simple to win by being faster, and there are a lot of faster decks out there that work by this principle and try to overrun us with speed (ie. RDW, zoo, affinity/robots, infect etc.). Therefore, yup like I said, I am more incline to support the idea of having cheap and efficient answers. Having cheap efficient spells also allows me to more conveniently change gear to become more aggressive and to hasten up the pace of the game to my advantage. (don't ask me why I am not playing the delver variant, it's just because I find that it lacks the versatility to survive the long game and I have seen so many people having problems flipping delver) The downside of that is that pass midgame, I am going to try to fight it out with incremental advantage instead of the explosive advantage that cards like command and sphinx offer. This also explains why my deck has 14 creatures to compensate for the lack of massive CA by increasing the threat density.
I can't say which is the way to go, unless someone can convince us of the way forward, I could be wrong for now but I guess as of now this is just a matter of risk appetite here, some of us (like me) prefer to lower the curve and the variance and prefer the implied versatility, some of us wouldn't mind raising that tolerance to allow for greater power. But perhaps this difference here can affect the strategy of the deck's game play. It would be logical to say that if you have so powerful high cost spells like commands and sphinx, you would be inclined to prefer that the game drags into midgame, from then on you would have a better chance of relative advantage in most matchups (with the exception of a few decks like GW Hatebears and Gifts Control etc.). However, if like my deck which packs in mainly cheaper effiicient spells, I guess I am relatively more "indifferent" to such an effect with the exception of having to survive the first 3 turns against faster decks. Such a difference can subconsciously affect the way we play, we just need to make sure that we are aware of it and it's implications on our tempo and on the matchups
Modern Esper Midrange
EDH Jenara ETB
I have a strange feeling and I could be wrong but it may be worth trying boros charm vs GW hatebears. Sometimes perhaps that 4 damage burn or double strike is all you need to win. Afterall, as I mentioned it is a far easier strategy to try to win by just being faster.
IMO, Rest in peace would be one of the A-list graveyard hate unless if your opponent boards in enchantment hate. The way it troubles Melira Pod, Gifts Control, Vengevine etc. buys quite some time. And for this deck, having some time in favor of you often leads to a win.
Sideboarding-wise I am more incline to support this interesting idea of what I call "diversified" sideboarding (people can always call it something else), the idea is to have a set of cards that serve the same purpose but are of different types for which there is no overlapping hate against it (a simple example is for Artifact hate: Kataki, War's Wage is a legend creature, disenchant is an instant, stony silence is an enchantment). The reason for doing this, it's so that your opponent's would find it harder to sideboard against your sideboard, at the very least he would have no one card answer to deal with ALL your hate against him (ie. your opponent plays vengevine, your sideboard's graveyard hate package is 4 Rest in Peace, he guesses that and boards in 4 naturalize, and tada your sideboard didn't matter)
Modern Esper Midrange
EDH Jenara ETB
once cryptic mana is up it is just too good. it probably wins me 90% of my games. last night i played these decks: Fish, Burn, Doran, Varolz, and Obliterator a few times each. not only did hitting cryptic mana let me take over the game, but sphinx's revelation put games to bed.
because we're churning through spells so much we need a way to get our card advantage back. this is especially true when i board out Geist and move to a more control build.
That means you very rarely will get to cast a sphinxs bigger than 2 or 3, and for 6 mana there are a lot of better cards. Im not even sure i want a 6 mana card in a midrange modern deck to begin with.
I play it as a 1 off, but im not sure if i will keep it, i definitly can see me playing a Cryptic command in that spot.
Couldn't agree more. Sphinx is that one card that's going to put you over the top once you get to midgame. When you're sitting on one card in hand Turn 7 and it's a mana leak, you're going to wish that was a Sphinx's Revelation. Even casting it with X=3 is a huge blowout, and you can always cast it again later with snappy.
Also to address an earlier comment...path is probably the worst generic removal we have. Let's be honest; this is a tempo deck. Why would you give them an extra land, and counteract all the tempo advantage you've worked so hard to accumulate the past several turns? Well obviously to hit a creature that's out of range of our normal removal like goyf, but that's exactly the point. You should NOT be pathing small bros like mana dorks or Thalia or arbiter because that's just bad. Path is usually run as a 3-of because you probably need to see one or two over the course of the game, but you definitely don't want to draw all of them.
Electrolyze, on the other hand, fits the archetype of this deck like a boss. Sure it's only 2 damage, but it replaces itself! Against x/1's, it's almost a 3-for-1! Just the fact that it does something relevant, and then it replaces itself with something else that might be relevant too is simply backbreaking. Don't be so quick to dismiss it's advantages.
UWRUWR Midrange/GeistRWU
Retired
GWBMelira PodBWG
What i do find akward is the lack of real midragne threats in this lists i have seen here.
I mean, we want to win early if possible, but as a midrange deck i dont mind going late in the game as well, thats why i find it weird that pleople here curve at 4 with resto.
I do not see me cutting them from the board anytime soon.
agree.
Legacy: Strawberry Shortcake, Aggro Loam, DnT+b
Modern: Devoted Karn
Vintage: Survival
Which of the three decks in your list are you running that you're wanting a matchup regarding? (Point me to a decklist if you could)
Modern Warp / UR Control / UR Storm / Naya Breachshift / ElectroBalance
Solidarity / Lands / Sneak and Show / Grixis Delver / Reanimator / Belcher / Storm / Dredge
blood moon and/or discard mechanics seems to work best.
Isn't discard a shaky option, given that Snapcaster and Resto bring those discarded spells back?
Legacy: Strawberry Shortcake, Aggro Loam, DnT+b
Modern: Devoted Karn
Vintage: Survival
Yea, the discard has to come in large quantities. One or two spot discard like Inquisition or Thoughtseize won't do too much. Blood moon is the worst I think, or running lots of creatures that are out of bolt range.
UWRUWR Midrange/GeistRWU
Retired
GWBMelira PodBWG
1 - Spellskite - Makes all the Lightning Bolts, Lightning Helixes and Electrolyzes much less useful. Also protects a more powerful creatures from a PtE
2 - Kira, Great Glass-Spinner - I think that this card is hard to run in your deck, although I believe that you run blue? This card will really shut down UWr pretty hard or make them burn a large portion of their hand in order to deal with her.
3 - Blood Moon - Much more useful than Magus of the Moon and makes for a tough time if the UWr deck didn't set up their mana base properly since it is a greedy mana base as well as having quite a bit of the power coming in the form of Celestial Colonnade
4 - Relic of Progenitus - Potentially useful as it shuts down Snapcaster Mage, however its usefulness is extremely limited.
5 - Chalice of the Void - Set at 1 it's quite fiesty against this deck. Just look at the number of spells that are run at that... up to 16! (Spell Snare, Spell Pierce, Lightning Bolt, Path to Exile, etc etc)
6 - Ghost Quarter - Destroys Celestial Colonnade as well as punishes the greedy manabase of this deck.
Not saying all of these are shoe in sideboard cards, but they each have their use and it depends on what you're going up against as to how useful they will be. Hopefully it helps!
Modern Warp / UR Control / UR Storm / Naya Breachshift / ElectroBalance
Solidarity / Lands / Sneak and Show / Grixis Delver / Reanimator / Belcher / Storm / Dredge