The problem is the first basic is always the worst and often it is really bad when you are behind. It won't likely come to a point where you get to trophy them without them getting a basic. You cant also afford to make a net exchange of zero while spending a card and 2 mana when you destroy a land. Most of the times there are better things to do.
I think trophy makes Jace, VP worse. And a sultai deck is going to be very weak to grave hate. Adding a card like JvP that furthers the reliance on the grave yard, and can be zapped by trophy is not something I am in favor of. I see Snap as sultai's BBE. 3-4 mana investment, can be played at instant speed, does not have the total bomb flips of BBE, but you get control over what you flashback. For me the question is 4 snaps or 2-3 snaps, I have been testing lists with both, and superna7urals list with two felt the best so far.
I don't know, like my reply in the Abzan thread I don't see the need of shaving Trophy's only for the drawback. My feeling is that; after playing 2-3 copies most decks are out of basics. At that point you can start Snapcaster + Trophy without them having the access to more basics. Also, sometimes you just kill their manland or any other dual land. Which in theory doesn't give them "an extra land", you just kill their more important land in exchange for a basic land.
Personally I would run Decay over Pulse. But keep the 4x Trophy for sure, although in a deck with snapcasters I can also see 3 copies.
There is a reason you shave Trophy in favor of Decay & Pulse - The Humans match. Each removal is effective, and the difference between Trophy and Decay are not as steep as I suspect people want to believe. Yes, Trophy hits a lot of weak points, but not so many that it is worth going all in on them and sidestepping almost equally effective removal and just giving up the Humans match as a result.
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I am surpised to see Snapcaster over Jace Vryn's Prodigy in almost all lists. I think Jace fits perfectly in this Deck with a lot of sorcery speed stuff. It is not a guaranteed 2 for 1 like Snapcaster but therefore a much bigger thread if he flips. For card advantage we still have Tracker and JTMS.
that is pretty much your answer right there. i think jaceVP is plausible as a 1 or 2-of in sultai, but i would never play the first copy of jace before the first copy of snap. jaceVP has a higher power ceiling, but a much lower floor. a more even distribution of efficacy across games or matchups is a form of consistency in itself.
edit: speaking of card power across matchups. given trophies universal nature, i think its more appropriate to start at 4 copies of it. the substitution of decay and pulse are tuning points. so if you set the baseline removal suite as 4x push 4x trophy you have a better understanding of where you need to work from.
i dunno it just seems kinda ambitious to meta with a deck that basically has zero competitive presence. not to mention doing so on the back of a card that no one has actually played with yet.
JVP requires so much investment and one of the plus sides to flipping JVP is that the planeswalker is reallllly hard to deal with. Know you invest resources to flip your JVP, and a trophy kills the walker. Yes a land is nice for sure. Yes snap needs the yard for sure. Question is whether a deck with snap is weaker to grave hate then a deck with JVP? Could be a mute point overall since graveyard hate neuters gofy, snap, JVP (though the cycle is nice), grim flayer.
Keeping the board clean in the early turns with trophy's flexibility has definitely made slamming jace earlier much easier- you now have nice outs to cards like hollow one or gurmag angler with trophy.
I'll continue to play the devil's advocate here. Jace actually handles H1 and Gurmag just great on his own with -1. And then any other removal you have deals with smaller threats. I'm not saying Trophy is useless for this match, but in the example you gave Jace is already great and protects himself (assuming you curve out into him properly)
I agree that Trophy is a great addition for BGx players of all flavors but it's not the godsend people think. Other than against Tron and UWx Control, I don't think it's going to be changing our favor percentage much in other matches.
For now I actually think that thought scour might be correct- not only will it help fuel the potential turn 2 tasigur, but it also keeps up the card type count for goyf- something that can drastically go down when delving for tasigur- thought scour definitely reduces some of this tension. You can also do nifty stuff like thought scour yourself post brainstorm if you are brainstorm locked.
I agree completely with this. Tasigur + Tarmogoyf beckons some graveyard fueling and Thought Scour is perfect. I hadn't considered it's application alongside JTMS.
I am starting to think trophy is probably best as a 3-of. The reason being in many different matchups, decay can do the same without having a downside. And you really don't want multiple Trophies in the opening hand.
If you think about Humans, Decay is almost always just better or at least equally good. Also against Spirits, Hardened Scales or GBx mirrors. Tron and UWx is probably the biggest and moreover single reason to run some trophies (at the current state of affairs! this might change!).
The rule of thumb for cards is that if you want on average one of a given card per game, then run 3 copies of it. Thats the case with trophy for me, I want on average 1 copy per game, for which reason I am on this number right now.
He explains why in an earlier post at the top of this page. Trophy gets very awkward when you draw multiples early game when it's likely they still have basics left. Ramping them (with an untapped land!) hurts worse thn you'd think during turn 1-3 or even later if they happen to be stuck on lands.
IMO you want Trophy as a late game catch-all against UWx, or early game against H1 and Tron. Otherwise most circumstances and match-ups I believe Abrupt decay is superior. Against Storm, Burn, Humans, Spirits - Trophy is actively bad so I certainly wouldn't want 4x in my main deck. And TBH I wouldn't play more than 3 in my 75 and I wouldn't run less than 2 Abrupt decay (in the 75)
----EDIT
To point out something people keep overlooking:
Decay is not bad against UW or Tron. It is actively good against UW because it destroys SFA, Detention Sphere, Vendilion, Rest in Peace, little Gideon (if they use him) and it can't be countered. Trophy helps mid-to-late game against Planeswalker, flipped Azcanta, and a lethal Colonnade. Both are important and useful, but you don't want either of them in copious amounts.
Decay kills Oblivion Stone AND kills their turn 1 Map if you're on the play. Both of these applications have been relevant in my competitive play experience. I don't even board out decay against Tron because it kills chalice, and also kills (or forces them to pop) Relic of Progenitus.
He explains why in an earlier post at the top of this page. Trophy gets very awkward when you draw multiples early game when it's likely they still have basics left. Ramping them (with an untapped land!) hurts worse thn you'd think during turn 1-3 or even later if they happen to be stuck on lands.
IMO you want Trophy as a late game catch-all against UWx, or early game against H1 and Tron. Otherwise most circumstances and match-ups I believe Abrupt decay is superior. Against Storm, Burn, Humans, Spirits - Trophy is actively bad so I certainly wouldn't want 4x in my main deck. And TBH I wouldn't play more than 3 in my 75 and I wouldn't run less than 2 Abrupt decay (in the 75)
----EDIT
To point out something people keep overlooking:
Decay is not bad against UW or Tron. It is actively good against UW because it destroys SFA, Detention Sphere, Vendilion, Rest in Peace, little Gideon (if they use him) and it can't be countered. Trophy helps mid-to-late game against Planeswalker, flipped Azcanta, and a lethal Colonnade. Both are important and useful, but you don't want either of them in copious amounts.
Decay kills Oblivion Stone AND kills their turn 1 Map if you're on the play. Both of these applications have been relevant in my competitive play experience. I don't even board out decay against Tron because it kills chalice, and also kills (or forces them to pop) Relic of Progenitus.
I board all copies of Decay out vs UW. It really is not great in that match as they really only run 1 Detention Sphere and I don't care about RIP. They only run 2 copies of Gideon at most and Clique is not always a thing nor is Spell Queller.
Vs Tron it only hits their set up and if they have already set up the card is just dead, less than discard like Seize. I do like it over something like IoK though, it just isn't the greatest against Tron either.
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It's not great but it's still useful in both examples. Unlike let's say H1 where decay is actively a bad card. The only thing you can hope to do is destroy a Flameblade Adept.
That being said, I'll move from the Trophy/Decay debate because it looks like both Abzan and Sultai threads are derailing (and crashing into each other). Here is my updated list that I've been play testing with, proxying Trophy of course.
I haven't been able to see Nissa in action yet but she feels good here. I thought about trying her in a Traverse she'll also, since she works great with Grim Flayer and also Bauble.
It has nothing to do with the land and everything to do with Freebooter and Meddling Mage.
I will argue that Decay hits most things that are relevant anyways, which means Trophy isn’t really what I consider to be significantly better - but in instances where it is, Trophy can close huge gaps for us.
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Yeah, he posted an article on SCG the other day. Interesting, it's like Grixis Control but without the red cards, obviously. I wonder why not Languish instead of Damnation? It:
Does not kill your own creatures (often times Goyf is 5, or you can time it such that it is and Tasigur is always 5).
It works versus indestructible effects like Selfless Spirit.
I am not a fan of Languish and I can't understand the recent hype around the card due to the uptick of Spirits. Selfless Spirits is mostly a 2-of in the lists I have seen and I am assuming that I am not in the worst position when I have a creature on the BF, hence it could be that I don't need to cast a sweeper then. And even if I have to, I am personally fine by loosing my creature.
Damnation just cleanly hits everything and Languish misses too much: Too big grown Humans, opposing Gurmag Angler, Smashers, Too big Grown robots from hardened scales, opposing goyfs and big trackers, greater gargodons, revelers with just one prowess trigger, bogles pretty much always etc.
I am personally not willing to miss that much compared to a 2-of card of one miser matchup which is probably already slightly favoured for us, so thats my reasoning.
I'll be trying out the big Sultai list too as soon as Trophy lands. Seems great removal alongside Spell Snare which will hit so many things.
A problem which i've been reading about and have encountered myself back then is the color requirements of the big spells (PW's and in my case Glen Elendra Archmage) while also being able to make good use of Scavenging Ooze.
My sulition was the U/G filterland. But havn't seen anyone else do so. Why doesn't anyone run Flooded Grove or any of the filterlands for that matter?
I'll be trying out the big Sultai list too as soon as Trophy lands. Seems great removal alongside Spell Snare which will hit so many things.
A problem which i've been reading about and have encountered myself back then is the color requirements of the big spells (PW's and in my case Glen Elendra Archmage) while also being able to make good use of Scavenging Ooze.
My sulition was the U/G filterland. But havn't seen anyone else do so. Why doesn't anyone run Flooded Grove or any of the filterlands for that matter?
I think LOTV is the main reason no one uses that land. I think Sunken Ruins is a better consideration. It doesn't help with Scooze but it helps with LOTV, Jace, and Clique
I personally think LoTV is not at its best in Sultai and better in Jund/Abzan. I think LtLH and Jace pair so well together and fit way better in the deck than LoTV. blue wants to generate CA by drawing cards, and LoTV wants you to get into topdeck mode so that her +1 doesnt affect you too much, this doesn't go well together.
I'm interested in building a GBu deck which just splashes for Snapcaster MD, but plays cards like Countersquall and the new cranial effect out of the board. I haven't played much GBx before (just a bit of Jund) so I'm hoping someone else with more experience is trying something similar and can point me in the right direction. I just drew up this totally arbitrary list:
4 goyf
4 tracker
3 ooze
3 snapcaster
4 push
4 trophy
1 pulse
4 lotv
2 ltlh
4 inquisition
2 thoughtseize
1 cobru
4 verdant cat
4 blooming marsh
2 overgrown tomb
1 breeding pool
1 watery grave
1 treetop village
1 hissing quagmire
1 creeping tar pit
3 field of ruin
3 swamp
2 forest
1 island
That's probably not enough basics to support FoR but I don't know if I should play more basics and the full set of fields, or just drop the fields and use the slots to play more manlands. I don't much like the idea of the heavier Jace approach because it seems like a bigger liability if lots of people are going to be maindecking trophy when it comes out (whether or not they continue to do so long term is another question).
I think your manabase is suboptimal, right now you have 16 black sources which is not enough to support a turn 3 LoTV/LtLH. Given that you run 6 Lili PWs this is absolutely crucial. You could count FoR as black sources as well, but you get to activate it the soonest on turn 3, so this is not a good thing to do. 8 blue sources without FoR is also way too few. You want to be able to snapcaster + discard/push on turn 3, and you cannot do that. Your green sources are alright (15).
I would dumb FoR completely and play more fetchlands. 6 basics is also too many, I would settle for 4-max 5.
"First, the blue and the black cards often played in these decks don't have a cohesive gameplan. The black cards want to restrict the number of resources in the game, which is a gameplan of Jund, and the blue cards want to increase the number of resources in the game, which is the gameplan of Azorius Control. Mixing the two means your deck is fighting against itself, and although the individual cards look powerful on paper, the end result is your cards end up doing less than normal.
Two prime examples of this are Liliana of the Veil and Snapcaster Mage. When playing Liliana of the Veil, you want to trade off your resources to empty your hand as soon as possible so the +1 ability has a minimal negative effect on you. However, if you're playing card draw and countermagic, you want as many cards in your hand as you can have. These two deck designs are completely opposite, and therefore, Liliana of the Veil is not a card I want in my Modern Sultai deck.
Snapcaster Mage is a card that's best played during the late game when you have a graveyard filled with options. However, if many of those options are discard spells and your opponent doesn't have cards in their hand anymore, the strength of Snapcaster Mage is significantly weakened. Instead of being able to use Snapcaster Mage to protect yourself from the top of your opponent's deck like the blue-based control decks are able to do by pairing it with countermagic, you need to hope you have the specific removal spell in your graveyard that can deal with the card your opponent draws.
While I could continue on with other examples of this flaw with Sultai, I often times see people try to put Snapcaster Mage and Liliana of the Veil in the same deck which I believe has even worse consequences than putting either one individually with the cards they don't work well with. You need to pick a lane with Sultai and stick with it, and for my decklist below I've included Snapcaster Mage over Liliana of the Veil. "
There is a reason you shave Trophy in favor of Decay & Pulse - The Humans match. Each removal is effective, and the difference between Trophy and Decay are not as steep as I suspect people want to believe. Yes, Trophy hits a lot of weak points, but not so many that it is worth going all in on them and sidestepping almost equally effective removal and just giving up the Humans match as a result.
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that is pretty much your answer right there. i think jaceVP is plausible as a 1 or 2-of in sultai, but i would never play the first copy of jace before the first copy of snap. jaceVP has a higher power ceiling, but a much lower floor. a more even distribution of efficacy across games or matchups is a form of consistency in itself.
edit: speaking of card power across matchups. given trophies universal nature, i think its more appropriate to start at 4 copies of it. the substitution of decay and pulse are tuning points. so if you set the baseline removal suite as 4x push 4x trophy you have a better understanding of where you need to work from.
i dunno it just seems kinda ambitious to meta with a deck that basically has zero competitive presence. not to mention doing so on the back of a card that no one has actually played with yet.
UWGSnow-Bant Control
BURGrixis Death's Shadow
GWBCoCo Elves
WCDeath and Taxes(sold)I'll continue to play the devil's advocate here. Jace actually handles H1 and Gurmag just great on his own with -1. And then any other removal you have deals with smaller threats. I'm not saying Trophy is useless for this match, but in the example you gave Jace is already great and protects himself (assuming you curve out into him properly)
I agree that Trophy is a great addition for BGx players of all flavors but it's not the godsend people think. Other than against Tron and UWx Control, I don't think it's going to be changing our favor percentage much in other matches.
I agree completely with this. Tasigur + Tarmogoyf beckons some graveyard fueling and Thought Scour is perfect. I hadn't considered it's application alongside JTMS.
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4 Polluted Delta
4 Misty Rainforest
1 Verdant Catacombs
2 Watery Grave
2 Breeding Pool
1 Overgrown Tomb
3 Darkslick Shores
2 Creeping Tar Pit
2 Island
1 Swamp
1 Forest
Creatures [8]
4 Tarmogoyf
3 Snapcaster Mage
1 Tasigur, the golden Fang
4 Inquisition of Kozilek
2 Thoughtseize
4 Fatal Push
4 Opt
2 Thought Scour
3 Assassin's Trophy
1 Abrupt Decay
1 Collective Brutality
1 Search for Azcanta
1 Damnation
2 Cryptic Command
2 Jace, the Mind Sculptor
2 Liliana, the Last Hope
2 Engineered Explosives
1 Damnation
2 Collective Brutality
2 Negate
2 Dispel
2 Unmoored Ego
3 Surgical Extraction
1 Ceremonious Rejection
If you think about Humans, Decay is almost always just better or at least equally good. Also against Spirits, Hardened Scales or GBx mirrors. Tron and UWx is probably the biggest and moreover single reason to run some trophies (at the current state of affairs! this might change!).
The rule of thumb for cards is that if you want on average one of a given card per game, then run 3 copies of it. Thats the case with trophy for me, I want on average 1 copy per game, for which reason I am on this number right now.
IMO you want Trophy as a late game catch-all against UWx, or early game against H1 and Tron. Otherwise most circumstances and match-ups I believe Abrupt decay is superior. Against Storm, Burn, Humans, Spirits - Trophy is actively bad so I certainly wouldn't want 4x in my main deck. And TBH I wouldn't play more than 3 in my 75 and I wouldn't run less than 2 Abrupt decay (in the 75)
----EDIT
To point out something people keep overlooking:
Decay is not bad against UW or Tron. It is actively good against UW because it destroys SFA, Detention Sphere, Vendilion, Rest in Peace, little Gideon (if they use him) and it can't be countered. Trophy helps mid-to-late game against Planeswalker, flipped Azcanta, and a lethal Colonnade. Both are important and useful, but you don't want either of them in copious amounts.
Decay kills Oblivion Stone AND kills their turn 1 Map if you're on the play. Both of these applications have been relevant in my competitive play experience. I don't even board out decay against Tron because it kills chalice, and also kills (or forces them to pop) Relic of Progenitus.
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I board all copies of Decay out vs UW. It really is not great in that match as they really only run 1 Detention Sphere and I don't care about RIP. They only run 2 copies of Gideon at most and Clique is not always a thing nor is Spell Queller.
Vs Tron it only hits their set up and if they have already set up the card is just dead, less than discard like Seize. I do like it over something like IoK though, it just isn't the greatest against Tron either.
STANDARD|UW Control MODERN| UBG Midrange PAUPER| UG Fog COMMANDER| UBG The Mimeoplasm
That being said, I'll move from the Trophy/Decay debate because it looks like both Abzan and Sultai threads are derailing (and crashing into each other). Here is my updated list that I've been play testing with, proxying Trophy of course.
4 Tarmogoyf
3 Grim Flayer
3 Tireless Tracker
2 Scavenging Ooze
2 Snapcaster mage
Spells (16)
4 Inquisition of Kozilek
4 Thoughtseize
3 Fatal Push
2 Assassin's Trophy
2 Abrupt decay
1 Maelstrom Pulse
Other (6)
3 Liliana of the veil
1 Nissa, Steward of Elements
2 Jace, the Mind Sculptor
4 Blooming Marsh
4 Verdant catacombs
4 Polluted Delta
1 Misty Rainforest
2 Watery grave
1 Breeding Pool
1 Overgrown Tomb
3 Creeping tar pit
2 Swamp
1 Forest
1 Island
3 Unmoored Ego
2 Collective Brutality
2 Spell Snare
1 Assassin's Trophy
1 Abrupt Decay
1 Damnation
1 Engineered Explosives
2 Nihil Spellbomb
1 Duress
1 Golgari Charm
I haven't been able to see Nissa in action yet but she feels good here. I thought about trying her in a Traverse she'll also, since she works great with Grim Flayer and also Bauble.
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I will argue that Decay hits most things that are relevant anyways, which means Trophy isn’t really what I consider to be significantly better - but in instances where it is, Trophy can close huge gaps for us.
STANDARD|UW Control MODERN| UBG Midrange PAUPER| UG Fog COMMANDER| UBG The Mimeoplasm
I am not a fan of Languish and I can't understand the recent hype around the card due to the uptick of Spirits. Selfless Spirits is mostly a 2-of in the lists I have seen and I am assuming that I am not in the worst position when I have a creature on the BF, hence it could be that I don't need to cast a sweeper then. And even if I have to, I am personally fine by loosing my creature.
Damnation just cleanly hits everything and Languish misses too much: Too big grown Humans, opposing Gurmag Angler, Smashers, Too big Grown robots from hardened scales, opposing goyfs and big trackers, greater gargodons, revelers with just one prowess trigger, bogles pretty much always etc.
I am personally not willing to miss that much compared to a 2-of card of one miser matchup which is probably already slightly favoured for us, so thats my reasoning.
A problem which i've been reading about and have encountered myself back then is the color requirements of the big spells (PW's and in my case Glen Elendra Archmage) while also being able to make good use of Scavenging Ooze.
My sulition was the U/G filterland. But havn't seen anyone else do so. Why doesn't anyone run Flooded Grove or any of the filterlands for that matter?
Modern: WUBRG Humans - GBW Traverse - GWU Knightfall - GRW Bushwhacker Zoo -
I think LOTV is the main reason no one uses that land. I think Sunken Ruins is a better consideration. It doesn't help with Scooze but it helps with LOTV, Jace, and Clique
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4 goyf
4 tracker
3 ooze
3 snapcaster
4 push
4 trophy
1 pulse
4 lotv
2 ltlh
4 inquisition
2 thoughtseize
1 cobru
4 verdant cat
4 blooming marsh
2 overgrown tomb
1 breeding pool
1 watery grave
1 treetop village
1 hissing quagmire
1 creeping tar pit
3 field of ruin
3 swamp
2 forest
1 island
That's probably not enough basics to support FoR but I don't know if I should play more basics and the full set of fields, or just drop the fields and use the slots to play more manlands. I don't much like the idea of the heavier Jace approach because it seems like a bigger liability if lots of people are going to be maindecking trophy when it comes out (whether or not they continue to do so long term is another question).
You can literally virtually negate the fairness of her +1 ability in Sultai far more effectively than you can in both Abzan and Jund...
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I would dumb FoR completely and play more fetchlands. 6 basics is also too many, I would settle for 4-max 5.
This is not true. Also Todd Stevens is on this opinion: http://www.starcitygames.com/articles/37711_Modern-Sultai-With-Assassins-Trophy.html
"First, the blue and the black cards often played in these decks don't have a cohesive gameplan. The black cards want to restrict the number of resources in the game, which is a gameplan of Jund, and the blue cards want to increase the number of resources in the game, which is the gameplan of Azorius Control. Mixing the two means your deck is fighting against itself, and although the individual cards look powerful on paper, the end result is your cards end up doing less than normal.
Two prime examples of this are Liliana of the Veil and Snapcaster Mage. When playing Liliana of the Veil, you want to trade off your resources to empty your hand as soon as possible so the +1 ability has a minimal negative effect on you. However, if you're playing card draw and countermagic, you want as many cards in your hand as you can have. These two deck designs are completely opposite, and therefore, Liliana of the Veil is not a card I want in my Modern Sultai deck.
Snapcaster Mage is a card that's best played during the late game when you have a graveyard filled with options. However, if many of those options are discard spells and your opponent doesn't have cards in their hand anymore, the strength of Snapcaster Mage is significantly weakened. Instead of being able to use Snapcaster Mage to protect yourself from the top of your opponent's deck like the blue-based control decks are able to do by pairing it with countermagic, you need to hope you have the specific removal spell in your graveyard that can deal with the card your opponent draws.
While I could continue on with other examples of this flaw with Sultai, I often times see people try to put Snapcaster Mage and Liliana of the Veil in the same deck which I believe has even worse consequences than putting either one individually with the cards they don't work well with. You need to pick a lane with Sultai and stick with it, and for my decklist below I've included Snapcaster Mage over Liliana of the Veil. "