For those who don't know, the rule of Team Unified is that other than basic lands, no two decks on the same team may contain the same card. All other deckbuilding restrictions apply. So if team member 1 plays Lightning Bolt, team members 2 and 3 cannot play any Lightning Bolts, even if team member 1 played less than 4 copies.
This rule makes choosing decks a little harder. For starters, decks with non-fetch mana bases such as Affinity, Tron and Merfolk offer more options for the other two decks. So it's probably a good idea to have one or more of those decks on your team. Conversely, 3-color decks restrict the other two decks on the team.
Sideboards are also a consideration. Modern decks are known for having many 1- or 2-ofs in the SB, and with 3 different decks there may be some overlap. It's good if your decks don't eat into each other's SB slots - for example, Living End will play Ingot Chewer as its artifact hate, so that frees up Ancient Grudge for one of the other two decks. Having to split SB cards also makes certain strategies more dangerous - again Living End is a good example, since you could be paired up against a deck that chose to use Grafdigger's Cage as its SB hate while the other two decks on the opposing team each chose to use Relic of Progenitus and Rest in Peace.
What 3-deck combination would you choose for a Team Unified Modern event?
I know I didn't answer your question, but thanks for posting this. I just saw this posted by a friend on FB. He was asking who wanted to do this with him at Houston. Although I have a super slim chance of going, I definitely would love to do so. You never know.
EDIT> I'm pretty sure Affinity/Infect/Burn destroy this format. (Although I'm probably wrong with my 20 second analysis )
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Legacy - Sneak Show, BR Reanimator, Miracles, UW Stoneblade
Premodern - Trix, RecSur, Enchantress, Reanimator, Elves https://www.facebook.com/groups/PremodernUSA/ Modern - Neobrand, Hogaak Vine, Elves
Standard - Mono Red (6-2 and 5-3 in 2 McQ)
Draft - (I wish I had more time for limited...)
Commander - Norin the Wary, Grimgrin, Adun Oakenshield (taking forever to build) (dead format for me)
Other than the fetch/shock issue, there are so many decks with very little overlap that it seems trivial. In Standard, when you only have a slim pool to build from, it is quite an intense challenge. But you could literally pick almost any 3 decks from a Tiered roster and build them with little to no overlap.
I would probably choose Infect, Affinity, and Burn.
Edit: infect and affinity both use Inkmoth Nexus. Probably one of those two with Burn and Merfolk then. The point is there's not a shortage of options and most decks will need almost no downgrades (which is supposed to be the point of the restriction). Hell, if you're not playing another UR deck you could play Storm. You definitely don't want to be playing an answers deck.
Agreed the aggro 3 benefit from this format. Lightning bolt being a card used by a huge % of the field specifically to handle those 3, and those 3 being a valid team makes it hard to consider other options. Maybe jund instead of burn?
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Modern Decks
KnightfallGWUR
Azorius Control UW
Burn RBG
I think land destruction gets more interesting as only one deck can run ghost quarter, and since tron does not have many overlaps I imagine many threesomes will run a tron deck.
For a three color combination I would run: Affinity, Merfolk, and Naya Burn. Mostly because I like bathroom breaks between rounds and I think that lineup offers a decent chance at some robust bathroom breaks.
Other than the fetch/shock issue, there are so many decks with very little overlap that it seems trivial. In Standard, when you only have a slim pool to build from, it is quite an intense challenge. But you could literally pick almost any 3 decks from a Tiered roster and build them with little to no overlap.
I would probably choose Infect, Affinity, and Burn.
Edit: infect and affinity both use Inkmoth Nexus. Probably one of those two with Burn and Merfolk then. The point is there's not a shortage of options and most decks will need almost no downgrades (which is supposed to be the point of the restriction). Hell, if you're not playing another UR deck you could play Storm. You definitely don't want to be playing an answers deck.
I forgot about that. Merfolk then.
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Legacy - Sneak Show, BR Reanimator, Miracles, UW Stoneblade
Premodern - Trix, RecSur, Enchantress, Reanimator, Elves https://www.facebook.com/groups/PremodernUSA/ Modern - Neobrand, Hogaak Vine, Elves
Standard - Mono Red (6-2 and 5-3 in 2 McQ)
Draft - (I wish I had more time for limited...)
Commander - Norin the Wary, Grimgrin, Adun Oakenshield (taking forever to build) (dead format for me)
Those decks need either no fetches at all or ones, which are not that crucial. Furthermore, their SB cards do not overlap. Hence, my guess currently is, that most teams will contain 2 from the above decks plus any mainstay deck, which poses a good match-up vs them (which is nigh impossible).
In general I like the idea of unified X, however, it is just not that restrictive in Modern, than it is in Standard. Hence, good idea, but bad application.
Greetings,
Kathal
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What I play or have:
Modern/Legacy
either funpolice (Delver, Deathcloud, UW Control) or the fun decks (especially those ft. Griselbrand)
The rest of the tournament will be Team Unified Modern Constructed. However, Unified Constructed will be undergoing a rules change. To build a legal deck for a Unified Constructed tournament, other than basic lands, no two decks on the same team may contain the same card.
This will replace the previous rule of only being able to use a combined 4 of any non-basic-land card in any of your team's decks. Modern Constructed is an expansive format, and we do not anticipate any shortage of options for teams playing in this tournament.
Likely affinity, merfolk and jund/nahiri control would be my go tos. since theres no interlap between those decks, sans a few artifacts. It also covers a range of matchups pretty nicely.
Affinity 33% of the meta Also, that argument over who gets to run Bolt. My money is on the Snapcaster player, and then the Jund guy gets to play more Tarfires/Seal of Fires and go deep on delirium.
Honestly though, I love the idea of this format. It`s an interesting deck building constraint that might force players to give their decks a twist, and also they are forced to work as a team and agree on these things. Predicting the meta should also be a fun exercise. I`d prepare for Infect and Affinity, not only because they share few cards, but also because only every third player is allowed to run Bolt. Also, I`d prepare on Jeskai decks seeking to prey on all the Infect and Affinity decks.
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When I hit my 3000 post mark, I'm gone for good.
Stay reasonable, be mindful of your expectations and don't feed the trolls.
I did some experimenting to see if any edges could be gained by deck choice. The answer is yes, but those edges are mostly very small.
Let A be a 3x3 matrix where a_{ij} = probability that team member i on your team will beat opponent j on the other team in a match. Suppose that every team member has an equal chance of being paired against any given opponent. Then the probability that your team wins the round is:
\frac{1}{|S|}\sum_{(p_1,p_2,p_3) \in S}{p_1p_2+p_1p_3+p_2p_3-2p_1p_2p_3}
where
S = \{(a_{11}, a_{22}, a_{33}),(a_{11}, a_{23}, a_{32}),(a_{12}, a_{21}, a_{33}),(a_{12}, a_{23}, a_{31}),(a_{13}, a_{21}, a_{32}),(a_{13}, a_{22}, a_{31})\}
In this case |S| = 6.
Assume the following:
1) all possible decks are perfectly balanced for 1v1, so a_{i1}+a_{i2}+a_{i3} = 1.5, i.e. the average win rate of any deck is 0.5.
2) the opponent's decks are known ahead of time, and we can choose any decks with any matchup spread against them, subject to the condition in assumption 1). However, we cannot choose which opponent each of our team members is going to play against; that is done at random.
3) ignore the deckbuilding constraint of Unified. So, for example, we can have 3 decks with the exact same matchup spread (the equivalent of three identical decks).
*note: paste those equations here for better viewing.
Here are some examples of A, and the corresponding round win probabilities:
So what conclusions can be drawn from these examples? Warning: any conclusions are subject to the assumptions that were made.
1) Changing matchup spreads does not affect the round win probability much. In all the above examples, the round win probability ranged from 0.496 to 0.504. So just play whatever decks you want.
I believe (but can't verify) that a possible optimal A is given by a_{i1}=a_{i2}=0.75, a_{i3}=0 for i = 1 to 3. This gives a round win probability of 0.5625, or 9/16. Of course it's impossible to have a win rate of exactly 0%, since it's possible (but extremely unlikely) that your opponent just doesn't draw well and loses, regardless of how favored his deck is.
2) If you still care about those 0.4s of a percent, avoid 50/50 decks. Playing a single 50/50 deck on your team will lock your round win probability at 0.50. This is relatively easy to prove: without loss of generality, assume that player 1 plays a deck that is 50/50 against all opponents, i.e. a_{11}=a_{12}=a_{13}=0.5. Then the round win probability simplifies to:
\frac{1}{6}\sum_{(p_2,p_3) \in S'}{0.5p_2+0.5p_3}
where
S' = \{(a_{22}, a_{33}),(a_{23}, a_{32}),(a_{21}, a_{33}),(a_{23}, a_{31}),(a_{21}, a_{32}),(a_{22}, a_{31})\}
Notice that the term to be summed is linear. It should be quite obvious that we'll end up with 0.5. A little expansion will confirm that:
\frac{1}{6}(a_{21}+a_{22}+a_{23}+a_{31}+a_{32}+a_{33})
From assumption 1), a_{21}+a_{22}+a_{23}=a_{31}+a_{32}+a_{33}=1.5. So the round win probability is \frac{3}{6} = 0.5.
This doesn't mean that you shouldn't play 50/50 decks. Read conclusion 1) again. What it does mean is tuning a deck (that's 50/50 in 1v1) such that its matchups are a little more imbalanced can help your round win probability. You'll want to consider the other decks on your team and the example As provided when you do this - for example, let's say the other two decks on your team are identical 60/60/30 decks, and the last deck is a 50/50/50 deck that can be tuned to a 60/60/30 or 60/30/60 one. One of these will increase your round win probability to 0.504, and the other will decrease it to 0.498!
3) You can give up on a particular matchup and still have a >0.5 round win probability. The extreme case given in conclusion 1) is a good example - it has a round win probability of 0.5625 despite every single deck losing to the opponent's deck 3! Even if every one of your team's decks loses to a particular deck, you will only face it once due to the nature of Unified, so the worst that can happen is a single match loss. You can still win the round if the other two team-mates win their matches.
However, you should be aware that you may face two opposing decks that have very similar matchup spreads, and this can have the same effect has two identical decks on the opponent's team.
4) Conversely, you don't have to ensure that every deck on your team beats a particular matchup. Again, you will only face it once, and you don't get points for "overkill". Example: the one where every row in A is 0.7, 0.4, 0.4. This team has a combined match win probability of 2.1 against the opponent's deck 1 (the average is 1.5), but has 1.2 against the opponent's decks 2 and 3. This puts its round win probability at 0.496.
TL;DR play whatever you want as long as you can stick to the Unified rule
I think most of you are looking at deck selection wrong; determining what decks lose the least under the "unified" construction rules is actually just level 0, but it's most likely to impact a large portion of the field. Modern is expensive, so most teams at a GP are going to be in one of two camps: Either players form a team, and then play whatever they're forced into (each player only has 1-2 decks, so because of overlap they only have 1 or 2 possible configurations their team can even play, with some suboptimal build choices), or teams have effectively no restriction on what they play (pro teams or serious grinders who have access to everything and can make their choices based 100% on best strategy). Furthermore, there are no byes.
Presuming we're in group two (looking to build an optimal team composition regardless of card availability), we can gain a few distinct metagame edges.
Premises:
1. Decks with low overlap in card selection will see higher prevalence.
2. Linear decks tend to fold either to targeted hate or overwhelming spot removal/value generation
3. Teams with constrained options will tend towards aggressive linear shells because there is only a 33% chance to face lightning bolt as compared to a 50% chance normally.
This actually gives us a lot to work with. Basically, assumption one means we're going to see an increased presence of the following classes of decks:
Tron decks (RG primarily, although UW tron can pair well if you have a grixis player on the team and mono blue can work well if you're pairing with two other linear decks but one of them wants bolt)
Affinity/Infect: I would expect there to be a greater than 50% chance that a given team has one of these decks on its roster. Infect is pretty much the only blue/green deck in the format, and it can use whatever green fetches your three color reactive/value/whatever deck doesn't use, while affinity pretty much has zero overlap with anything else in the format, sideboard considerations aside.
Tribal decks: Merfolk, elves, and more obscure things like allies rarely overlap with other decks in the format--they're linear, they can beat down, they benefit from reduced lightning bolt breaking up their synergies, and three color fair decks are going to be less common since the unified restriction means it's impossible to really have more than one three color deck on a team, there's going to be a bias towards having that be something linear (like ad nauseum or some other combo deck like kiki chord), and so there won't be as many wrath effects in the format.
This leads us to a few second tier conclusions:
Affinity and Infect will combine to >16% of the metagame from the perspective of a given player on a team. If we say it's 60% that a given team has infect or affinity, and it's evenly split, then 10% of the decks a given PLAYER (not team, PLAYER) has in an event are affinity and 10% are infect.
Decks like grixis delver, the three color aggressive but not linear decks are going to be less common; the incentive is to have a more controlling build (a la jeskai nahiri) or a build with more flexible options with respect to impacting the rest of your team (kiki chord/abzan coco).
Consequently, playing decks that are incidentally weak to affinity hate (anything with vedalken shackles, combos like eggs, etc) is a poor option.
Take all of that information, and we can condense it to a few, more actionable points:
1. every deck needs a reasonable to positive matchup against infect and affinity
2. every deck we play against is either fundamentally linear and aggressive, fair and grindy, or is an unfair deck in a multicolor mana base (ad nauseum, dredge, living end). Three color grindy decks will be fundamentally reactive or toolboxy in nature (jeskai nahiri, abzan coco, kiki chord) rather than more aggressive (bant based knight of the reliquary, aggressive naya collected company decks, etc).
What this says to me is that the first thing I want to look at is actually the REMOVAL available to my team;
I probably want bolt and path to go in different decks; path can be backed up by blessed alliance and condemn with wrath of god type effects as well. Lightning bolt can pair with disfigure, kolaghan's command, or terminate. However, white also has the best sideboard options in this type of format in particular, so I probably want to pair white with blue in order to take advantage of that sideboard more efficiently. Because we want to pair white and blue, but red really pairs with black, we're kind of locked out of playing UWR, but we're also locked out of playing grixis. Therefore, the natural separation is UW of some flavor, and BGr of some flavor. This separation somehow has to turn into three decks (and remember, we want to avoid playing infect or affinity because it will be over-represented, so the better teams will have a strong plan against it).
My solution there ends up being this: Play UW midrange as one of the decks. You probably aren't playing a full set of snapcaster mage, but path to exile and blessed alliance shore up all of your boggles/burn/zoo/death's shadow/infect woes, sideboard stony silence, rest in peace, runed halo covers all of your linear/combo matchups, and you can mainboard wall of omens/resto angel/kitchen finks to absolutely demolish the fair decks in the card advantage war. Probably actually go all in: we're playing UW titan value, with at least 4 wraths in the 75 (possibly five; go hard or go home on your matchup hedging), a full playset of stony silence (it wails on tron AND affinity), and at least 2 or 3 rest in peace (frees up more narrow grave hate options for the rest of your team and is blanket effective against graveyard decks). UW titan can certainly go over the top of any fair deck besides tron, and against tron you have access to mana leaks/remands/negates and a fast clock via vendilion clique and kitchen finks.
This gives you one deck that has solid all around matchups. The predators of this deck (combo decks like ad nauseum, or infect in particular) are something you're OK throwing away because if you have a bad matchup, it means the rest of your team is almost certainly playing against something they're well prepared for. Basically, UW titan is a really good archetype for the shell game of matchups, where the decks that are good against it shoehorn the rest of the opposing team into playing decks you're prepared to beat with the other two.
The RGB side of things is where it gets interesting. There's two ways to approach this: go fair (basically Jund 'em out), or go unfair. If you go fair, remember there's likely to be a higher presence of tron, and that's just not a matchup you want to try and fight. Therefore, my inclination is to go with something unfair. Now, we mentioned that we're using blue in UW titan, but one advantage that deck has is that it doesn't need serum visions, and it doesn't need flooded strand/hallowed fountain--you can actually have a quite reasonable mana base with things like mystic gate and glacial fortress/celestial colonnade. So, one option here that I like a lot is to play the grishoalbrand/goryo's vengeance deck in this slot. You can dedicate the fetch-shock manabase to this slot, you can give the blue cantrips to this deck, and you can also give it the discard + extraction package against opposing combo decks. Your game plan against affinity becomes to just kill them, your game plan against infect is to just kill them, and against fair decks you have time to sculpt the perfect hand and go off.
Because grishoalbrand plays mostly in grixis colors, this means you have all of the naya shocklands and fetches available, which means you can play full power burn, losing only path to exile from the sideboard. Consequently, I would instead spend those slots on sudden shock and further tune the board towards beating affinity and tron. Fast combo just gets raced, graveyard decks get met with relic of progenitus or grafdigger's cage.
Breakdown:
UW titan:
1. strong against all of the 3 color fair decks because value city
2. Strong against all of the linear agro except infect because of incremental life gain and removal
3. strong against all of the various tribal decks because of wraths
4. strong sideboarded games because of the white base, so combo matchups in general are very incidentally favorable
Grixis goryo's vengeance combo:
1. has the discard + extraction package for combo mirrors
2. has a speed advantage over most linear decks
3. grave hate is spread thinner
4. the likely fair decks going later in the tournament are not attrition based, so hand sculpting is relevant
Naya Burn:
1. fast, powerful, consistent
2. few terribly lopsided matchups--those that are mean your teammates are having probably good matchups
3. the unfavorable matchups that exist are actually going to be over-represented (infect/affinity) so you can over-prepare and over-sideboard for them to swing them back around, because the field in general is just narrower--sudden shock and ancient grudge/smash to smithereens
And, of these decks, only burn actually is an expected tier deck, which means your average opponent is less likely to be individually well-prepared for matchups against your team; you get to next level the field with your own sideboarding while dodging opposing sideboard tech. Random brews from more "casual" teams are going to run up against either brutally fast and efficient kills (burn/grishoalbrand) or a deck that can present a quick clock with cheap countermagic/lock pieces, or a very grindy value engine that can go over the top of whatever your brew is doing. In other words, you get to still present a "fun police" lineup, while dodging the hate the expected metagame will produce.
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Yes, I am a local area mod. WELP. GOOD LIFE CHANGES ALL HAPPEN AT ONCE AND SOME ARE MUTUALLY EXCLUSIVE
Primary Decks:
Modern: Esper Draw-Go
Legacy: RUG Lands
EDH: Sidisi turn-3 storm
great response. I like that combo but you do have the problem of not getting access to PtE in the Naya Burn sideboard.
I kind of specified that you lose only path to exile, and replace it with sudden shock to further improve the infect and affinity matchups. I kind of thought this through a lot =)
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Yes, I am a local area mod. WELP. GOOD LIFE CHANGES ALL HAPPEN AT ONCE AND SOME ARE MUTUALLY EXCLUSIVE
Primary Decks:
Modern: Esper Draw-Go
Legacy: RUG Lands
EDH: Sidisi turn-3 storm
I also did some work in Excel to find out which decks were "player B" decks and which were "player A/C decks" (see the last part of the first article for the difference). Here are those that are seemingly more suited for one or the other:
Player B:
Abzan, with 11/17
Player A/C:
Dredge, with 26/31
Affinity, with 16/19
Ad Nauseam, with 6/7
Merfolk, with 5/5
Death's Shadow Zoo, with 4/4
GW Tron, with 3/3
It makes sense--I pointed this out I think in this thread (might have been in a different forum), you put the linear combo deck in your lineup in the middle slot because the 50/50 deck is more likely to have mulligan decisions that require help/is the more experienced modern player, and therefore more likely to fork out for goyfs/more likely to be the player able to help the more linear teammates make decisions, so you put your best BGx matchup in seat B.
I also point out that I think my proposed lineup actually translates super well to this event--the literal naya burn deck is fine against all the inkmoth nexus decks (hooray sudden shock) and the goryo's vengeance deck is also fine against both the inkmoth nexus AND lightning bolt decks. The only question is if UW titan or some other build/deck is better against the field than emeria titan, and I think that the answer is no--UW titan has a really good affinity matchup and an iffy infect matchup, so the "inkmoth nexus" slot is 50/50, it's great against all the midrange value decks like jund and abzan because it goes waaay over the top, and it's reasonable at worst against all the lightning bolt decks.
Examining the removal and the mana bases pretty much was the team breakdown of this event--players either played a bolt deck with path, or they played a bolt deck + abzan with path to exiles.
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Yes, I am a local area mod. WELP. GOOD LIFE CHANGES ALL HAPPEN AT ONCE AND SOME ARE MUTUALLY EXCLUSIVE
Primary Decks:
Modern: Esper Draw-Go
Legacy: RUG Lands
EDH: Sidisi turn-3 storm
If you do not run the Chalic version, than Path and Bolt. If you do run the Chalice version you still have the Arid Mesas, RW Shock, Anger of the Gods and especially the W SB cards.
So yes, it cuts into your card pool quite a lot.
Greetings,
Kathal
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What I play or have:
Modern/Legacy
either funpolice (Delver, Deathcloud, UW Control) or the fun decks (especially those ft. Griselbrand)
If you do not run the Chalic version, than Path and Bolt. If you do run the Chalice version you still have the Arid Mesas, RW Shock, Anger of the Gods and especially the W SB cards.
So yes, it cuts into your card pool quite a lot.
Greetings,
Kathal
Not quite sure I understand your post, care to rephrase?
The WR "Sun and Moon" deck has a couple of different versions. Depending on which version you want to run, it also depends on how deep you cut yourself into the available cardpool (aka, what other decks of your team can play).
If you play the Chalice of the Void version (with SSG ofc), your need for one mane interaction goes down, since they are pretty "useless" in that shell (cause of Chalice). Hence, you want to play more two mana removal spells (Lightning Helix, Declaration in Stone, Blessed Alliance,...) and especially sweepers (Anger of the Gods, Wrath of God, Day of Judgement, Hallowed Burial,...).
However, since you want all those spells in that shell, you do not have them in other decks which is especially problematic with Blessed Alliance and Anger of the Gods (Blessed Alliance for Junk/Bant Eldrazi, Anger for Jund/Jeskai Control (you can build a manabase without Arid Mesa and Foundry)). Also, your finishers (Nahiri and co) and the manabase (Arid Mesa and Foundry) are cards, some decks really want. Also, do not forget about SSG, a card both Goryo's Vengeance decks and ADN wants. Blood Moon is also a card several decks want to have at least in the SB, so this is also a "problem".
However, as soon as you do not run the Chalice version, you want to run Bolts and Path. Since those are the two best removal spells in the format, other fair and interactive decks will be harder to play, since they are missing those crucial cards.
The SB makes the whole thing even more "worse" due to the nature of the W SB cards (they are the best of the best but only one deck can run them). This "basically" prevent any other W based fair deck to see play.
Conclusion: Sun and Moon with the Chalice build allows other W fair decks to see play (Bant Eldrazi, Junk, Jeskai Control (the non Nahiri version)) but the non Chalice build does not allow this, since it wants/needs both Bolt and Path. However, both version result into a problem for the SB cards with each of the other possible W decks.
Note: It would have been possible to run 3 fair decks, if you would have wanted to (Bant Eldrazi, Sun and Moon/Skred Red, BG Oblitorator Rock). Would this set-up be better than the played ones of 2x aggressive and 1x something else? Hard to say.
Greetings,
Kathal
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What I play or have:
Modern/Legacy
either funpolice (Delver, Deathcloud, UW Control) or the fun decks (especially those ft. Griselbrand)
The WR "Sun and Moon" deck has a couple of different versions. Depending on which version you want to run, it also depends on how deep you cut yourself into the available cardpool (aka, what other decks of your team can play).
If you play the Chalice of the Void version (with SSG ofc), your need for one mane interaction goes down, since they are pretty "useless" in that shell (cause of Chalice). Hence, you want to play more two mana removal spells (Lightning Helix, Declaration in Stone, Blessed Alliance,...) and especially sweepers (Anger of the Gods, Wrath of God, Day of Judgement, Hallowed Burial,...).
However, since you want all those spells in that shell, you do not have them in other decks which is especially problematic with Blessed Alliance and Anger of the Gods (Blessed Alliance for Junk/Bant Eldrazi, Anger for Jund/Jeskai Control (you can build a manabase without Arid Mesa and Foundry)). Also, your finishers (Nahiri and co) and the manabase (Arid Mesa and Foundry) are cards, some decks really want. Also, do not forget about SSG, a card both Goryo's Vengeance decks and ADN wants. Blood Moon is also a card several decks want to have at least in the SB, so this is also a "problem".
However, as soon as you do not run the Chalice version, you want to run Bolts and Path. Since those are the two best removal spells in the format, other fair and interactive decks will be harder to play, since they are missing those crucial cards.
The SB makes the whole thing even more "worse" due to the nature of the W SB cards (they are the best of the best but only one deck can run them). This "basically" prevent any other W based fair deck to see play.
Conclusion: Sun and Moon with the Chalice build allows other W fair decks to see play (Bant Eldrazi, Junk, Jeskai Control (the non Nahiri version)) but the non Chalice build does not allow this, since it wants/needs both Bolt and Path. However, both version result into a problem for the SB cards with each of the other possible W decks.
Note: It would have been possible to run 3 fair decks, if you would have wanted to (Bant Eldrazi, Sun and Moon/Skred Red, BG Oblitorator Rock). Would this set-up be better than the played ones of 2x aggressive and 1x something else? Hard to say.
Greetings,
Kathal
Ok I see what you are saying now but running the chalice version has almost no overlap. Anger of the Gods has plenty of functional replacements (pyroclasm, and the RG hybrid one for example)if you team has need for it, which it doesn't . White sideboard is diverse and SOMEONE has to use the cards on your team so why shouldn't it be RW lockdown?
In the non chalice version Lightning Helix frequently eclipses bolt since fast aggro is what the deck is made to destroy. Either version can abuse the hell out of Ensnaring Bridge as well. RW lockdown can use cards like Nevermore and Journey to Nowhere as well.
The only overlap card that I would even consider a meaningful loss would be path, and it's not that big of a loss in a deck made to sweep the board as early as turn 2. More importantly is the type of (silly) meta this format creates. It'll be all critters all the time. RW lockdown loves this.
What you are forgetting is: All replacements of Anger (be it Firespout, Volcanic Fallout, Pyroclasm or Slagstorm) are garbage vs Dredge where you both really want and need sweepers.
You are not running Anger because it is a 3 mana 3 damage sweeper in this format. You are running Anger cause it hates on Dredge. That is a VERY important difference.
As for the other cards, as somebody who played RW Control (back with Resto, Wall and Kiki (aka pre Nahiri)) you do not want to play against Infect, when you only have access to thinks like Nevermore, Journey to Nowhere and Lightning Helix. Heck, even Affinity is problematic as long as you do not draw the sweepers (aka Angers).
Sure, the deck is good against FAIR aggressive decks like Zoo and Meerfolk. But against Infect? Death Shadow Aggro? Burn? Suicide Bloo? Those are match-ups you do not really want to play against IF you do not have Path/Bolt.
Also, being able to sweep on turn 2 requires a SSG since Pyroclasm does not cut it (close to every important threat survives it but Affinity).
I just think, that you are overestimating on how good the Aggro match-up for RW Control is without Path/Bolt/Anger.
Greetings,
Kathal
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What I play or have:
Modern/Legacy
either funpolice (Delver, Deathcloud, UW Control) or the fun decks (especially those ft. Griselbrand)
What you are forgetting is: All replacements of Anger (be it Firespout, Volcanic Fallout, Pyroclasm or Slagstorm) are garbage vs Dredge where you both really want and need sweepers.
You are not running Anger because it is a 3 mana 3 damage sweeper in this format. You are running Anger cause it hates on Dredge. That is a VERY important difference.
As for the other cards, as somebody who played RW Control (back with Resto, Wall and Kiki (aka pre Nahiri)) you do not want to play against Infect, when you only have access to thinks like Nevermore, Journey to Nowhere and Lightning Helix. Heck, even Affinity is problematic as long as you do not draw the sweepers (aka Angers).
Sure, the deck is good against FAIR aggressive decks like Zoo and Meerfolk. But against Infect? Death Shadow Aggro? Burn? Suicide Bloo? Those are match-ups you do not really want to play against IF you do not have Path/Bolt.
Also, being able to sweep on turn 2 requires a SSG since Pyroclasm does not cut it (close to every important threat survives it but Affinity).
I just think, that you are overestimating on how good the Aggro match-up for RW Control is without Path/Bolt/Anger.
Greetings,
Kathal
I can tell by this that you aren't personally familiar with the RW lockdown or its matchups. You are also ignoring the ability to Wrath on turn 3. Also you ignore the things that Bridge does for the strat. You are worried about dredge? Rest in Peace works pretty nice. I'm going to have to respectfully disagree with your assessment. I think RW lockdown is the perfect choice for an aggro / criter based meta. I mean that's what I designed the deck to beat in the first place.
Rest in peace is unreliable for beating dredge on its own, and it's far too costly to run a full playset of them.
The other answers available to stop dredge, namely ensnaring bridge, lose to the ancient grudges that they WILL bring in. Without anger of the gods, beating dredge is actually extremely difficult for RW lockdown. I've played both decks (modern dredge less extensively, but I have multiple top 32 finishes at GP's with legacy and extended dredge), and I really wouldn't bet money on lockdown even winning any games against dredge without anger of the gods.
Like others have said--it's not that RW lockdown isn't good against the metagame in team unified modern (it's actually a really solid deck because the field is narrower than a typical modern event), but because it eats too many critical resources. The deck either has to take both wrath of god and anger of the gods, or it has to take both path and bolt. Either way, it also takes stony silence, leyline of sanctity, rest in peace, and sacred foundry, which means the OTHER white deck is mostly gutted by default, basically only leaving path to exile available, and also potentially the other red deck is gutted by not having bolt.
It's like I pointed out in my analysis earlier--there are two good removal spells: path to exile and lightning bolt. IF you don't split them up, then the deck playing both of them HAS to be able to beat all of the linear decks--because none of your other decks are going to have a better shot than racing. This means pretty much only UWR or naya burn exist as reasonable RW choice, and UWR can't reasonably beat dredge, so the best option becomes to split your paths and bolts or to play burn. If you look at the breakdown, virtually every team either split path and bolt, or played jeskai or burn. Jeskai didn't do so hot. Burn did marginally better.
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Yes, I am a local area mod. WELP. GOOD LIFE CHANGES ALL HAPPEN AT ONCE AND SOME ARE MUTUALLY EXCLUSIVE
Primary Decks:
Modern: Esper Draw-Go
Legacy: RUG Lands
EDH: Sidisi turn-3 storm
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http://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/archive/news/pro-tour-eldritch-moon-organized-play-announcement-bookkeeping-2016-08-02
For those who don't know, the rule of Team Unified is that other than basic lands, no two decks on the same team may contain the same card. All other deckbuilding restrictions apply. So if team member 1 plays Lightning Bolt, team members 2 and 3 cannot play any Lightning Bolts, even if team member 1 played less than 4 copies.
This rule makes choosing decks a little harder. For starters, decks with non-fetch mana bases such as Affinity, Tron and Merfolk offer more options for the other two decks. So it's probably a good idea to have one or more of those decks on your team. Conversely, 3-color decks restrict the other two decks on the team.
Sideboards are also a consideration. Modern decks are known for having many 1- or 2-ofs in the SB, and with 3 different decks there may be some overlap. It's good if your decks don't eat into each other's SB slots - for example, Living End will play Ingot Chewer as its artifact hate, so that frees up Ancient Grudge for one of the other two decks. Having to split SB cards also makes certain strategies more dangerous - again Living End is a good example, since you could be paired up against a deck that chose to use Grafdigger's Cage as its SB hate while the other two decks on the opposing team each chose to use Relic of Progenitus and Rest in Peace.
What 3-deck combination would you choose for a Team Unified Modern event?
| Ad Nauseam
| Infect
Big Johnny.
EDIT> I'm pretty sure Affinity/Infect/Burn destroy this format. (Although I'm probably wrong with my 20 second analysis )
Premodern - Trix, RecSur, Enchantress, Reanimator, Elves https://www.facebook.com/groups/PremodernUSA/
Modern - Neobrand, Hogaak Vine, Elves
Standard - Mono Red (6-2 and 5-3 in 2 McQ)
Draft - (I wish I had more time for limited...)
Commander -
Norin the Wary, Grimgrin, Adun Oakenshield (taking forever to build)(dead format for me)I would probably choose Infect, Affinity, and Burn.
Edit: infect and affinity both use Inkmoth Nexus. Probably one of those two with Burn and Merfolk then. The point is there's not a shortage of options and most decks will need almost no downgrades (which is supposed to be the point of the restriction). Hell, if you're not playing another UR deck you could play Storm. You definitely don't want to be playing an answers deck.
UR ....... WUBR ........... WB ............. RGW ........ UBR ....... WUB .... BGU
Spells / Blink & Combo / Token Grind / Dino Tribal / Draw Cards / Zombies / Reanimate
KnightfallGWUR
Azorius Control UW
Burn RBG
For a three color combination I would run: Affinity, Merfolk, and Naya Burn. Mostly because I like bathroom breaks between rounds and I think that lineup offers a decent chance at some robust bathroom breaks.
I forgot about that. Merfolk then.
Premodern - Trix, RecSur, Enchantress, Reanimator, Elves https://www.facebook.com/groups/PremodernUSA/
Modern - Neobrand, Hogaak Vine, Elves
Standard - Mono Red (6-2 and 5-3 in 2 McQ)
Draft - (I wish I had more time for limited...)
Commander -
Norin the Wary, Grimgrin, Adun Oakenshield (taking forever to build)(dead format for me)Affinity
Infect
Meerfolk
Burn
Mono G/RG Tron
Bogles
Griselbanned
ADN
Dredge
RG Titanshift
CoCo Elves
Those decks need either no fetches at all or ones, which are not that crucial. Furthermore, their SB cards do not overlap. Hence, my guess currently is, that most teams will contain 2 from the above decks plus any mainstay deck, which poses a good match-up vs them (which is nigh impossible).
In general I like the idea of unified X, however, it is just not that restrictive in Modern, than it is in Standard. Hence, good idea, but bad application.
Greetings,
Kathal
Modern/Legacy
either funpolice (Delver, Deathcloud, UW Control) or the fun decks (especially those ft. Griselbrand)
http://magic.wizards.com/en/events/coverage/ptogw/wmc-and-wmcq-changes-announced-at-ptogw-2016-02-07
| Ad Nauseam
| Infect
Big Johnny.
Honestly though, I love the idea of this format. It`s an interesting deck building constraint that might force players to give their decks a twist, and also they are forced to work as a team and agree on these things. Predicting the meta should also be a fun exercise. I`d prepare for Infect and Affinity, not only because they share few cards, but also because only every third player is allowed to run Bolt. Also, I`d prepare on Jeskai decks seeking to prey on all the Infect and Affinity decks.
Stay reasonable, be mindful of your expectations and don't feed the trolls.
Doomsdayin'
Let A be a 3x3 matrix where a_{ij} = probability that team member i on your team will beat opponent j on the other team in a match. Suppose that every team member has an equal chance of being paired against any given opponent. Then the probability that your team wins the round is:
\frac{1}{|S|}\sum_{(p_1,p_2,p_3) \in S}{p_1p_2+p_1p_3+p_2p_3-2p_1p_2p_3}
where
S = \{(a_{11}, a_{22}, a_{33}),(a_{11}, a_{23}, a_{32}),(a_{12}, a_{21}, a_{33}),(a_{12}, a_{23}, a_{31}),(a_{13}, a_{21}, a_{32}),(a_{13}, a_{22}, a_{31})\}
In this case |S| = 6.
Assume the following:
1) all possible decks are perfectly balanced for 1v1, so a_{i1}+a_{i2}+a_{i3} = 1.5, i.e. the average win rate of any deck is 0.5.
2) the opponent's decks are known ahead of time, and we can choose any decks with any matchup spread against them, subject to the condition in assumption 1). However, we cannot choose which opponent each of our team members is going to play against; that is done at random.
3) ignore the deckbuilding constraint of Unified. So, for example, we can have 3 decks with the exact same matchup spread (the equivalent of three identical decks).
*note: paste those equations here for better viewing.
Here are some examples of A, and the corresponding round win probabilities:
0.5 0.5 0.5
0.5 0.5 0.5
0.5 0.5 0.5
RW = 0.5 (obviously)
0.6 0.6 0.3
0.6 0.3 0.6
0.3 0.6 0.6
RW = 0.504
0.6 0.6 0.3
0.6 0.6 0.3
0.6 0.6 0.3
RW = 0.504
0.6 0.6 0.3
0.6 0.6 0.3
0.6 0.3 0.6
RW = 0.498
0.7 0.4 0.4
0.7 0.4 0.4
0.4 0.7 0.4
RW = 0.502
0.7 0.4 0.4
0.4 0.7 0.4
0.4 0.4 0.7
RW = 0.496
0.7 0.4 0.4
0.7 0.4 0.4
0.7 0.4 0.4
RW = 0.496
0.6 0.6 0.3
0.6 0.6 0.3
0.7 0.4 0.4
RW = 0.502
0.6 0.6 0.3
0.6 0.3 0.6
0.4 0.7 0.4
RW = 0.502
0.6 0.6 0.3
0.6 0.6 0.3
0.4 0.4 0.7
RW = 0.496
0.6 0.6 0.3
0.6 0.3 0.6
0.7 0.4 0.4
RW = 0.496
0.7 0.4 0.4
0.7 0.4 0.4
0.3 0.6 0.6
RW = 0.504
0.7 0.4 0.4
0.4 0.7 0.4
0.6 0.6 0.3
RW = 0.504
0.7 0.4 0.4
0.7 0.4 0.4
0.6 0.6 0.3
RW = 0.498
0.7 0.4 0.4
0.4 0.7 0.4
0.3 0.6 0.6
RW = 0.498
1) Changing matchup spreads does not affect the round win probability much. In all the above examples, the round win probability ranged from 0.496 to 0.504. So just play whatever decks you want.
I believe (but can't verify) that a possible optimal A is given by a_{i1}=a_{i2}=0.75, a_{i3}=0 for i = 1 to 3. This gives a round win probability of 0.5625, or 9/16. Of course it's impossible to have a win rate of exactly 0%, since it's possible (but extremely unlikely) that your opponent just doesn't draw well and loses, regardless of how favored his deck is.
2) If you still care about those 0.4s of a percent, avoid 50/50 decks. Playing a single 50/50 deck on your team will lock your round win probability at 0.50. This is relatively easy to prove: without loss of generality, assume that player 1 plays a deck that is 50/50 against all opponents, i.e. a_{11}=a_{12}=a_{13}=0.5. Then the round win probability simplifies to:
\frac{1}{6}\sum_{(p_2,p_3) \in S'}{0.5p_2+0.5p_3}
where
S' = \{(a_{22}, a_{33}),(a_{23}, a_{32}),(a_{21}, a_{33}),(a_{23}, a_{31}),(a_{21}, a_{32}),(a_{22}, a_{31})\}
Notice that the term to be summed is linear. It should be quite obvious that we'll end up with 0.5. A little expansion will confirm that:
\frac{1}{6}(a_{21}+a_{22}+a_{23}+a_{31}+a_{32}+a_{33})
From assumption 1), a_{21}+a_{22}+a_{23}=a_{31}+a_{32}+a_{33}=1.5. So the round win probability is \frac{3}{6} = 0.5.
This doesn't mean that you shouldn't play 50/50 decks. Read conclusion 1) again. What it does mean is tuning a deck (that's 50/50 in 1v1) such that its matchups are a little more imbalanced can help your round win probability. You'll want to consider the other decks on your team and the example As provided when you do this - for example, let's say the other two decks on your team are identical 60/60/30 decks, and the last deck is a 50/50/50 deck that can be tuned to a 60/60/30 or 60/30/60 one. One of these will increase your round win probability to 0.504, and the other will decrease it to 0.498!
3) You can give up on a particular matchup and still have a >0.5 round win probability. The extreme case given in conclusion 1) is a good example - it has a round win probability of 0.5625 despite every single deck losing to the opponent's deck 3! Even if every one of your team's decks loses to a particular deck, you will only face it once due to the nature of Unified, so the worst that can happen is a single match loss. You can still win the round if the other two team-mates win their matches.
However, you should be aware that you may face two opposing decks that have very similar matchup spreads, and this can have the same effect has two identical decks on the opponent's team.
4) Conversely, you don't have to ensure that every deck on your team beats a particular matchup. Again, you will only face it once, and you don't get points for "overkill". Example: the one where every row in A is 0.7, 0.4, 0.4. This team has a combined match win probability of 2.1 against the opponent's deck 1 (the average is 1.5), but has 1.2 against the opponent's decks 2 and 3. This puts its round win probability at 0.496.
TL;DR play whatever you want as long as you can stick to the Unified rule
| Ad Nauseam
| Infect
Big Johnny.
Presuming we're in group two (looking to build an optimal team composition regardless of card availability), we can gain a few distinct metagame edges.
Premises:
1. Decks with low overlap in card selection will see higher prevalence.
2. Linear decks tend to fold either to targeted hate or overwhelming spot removal/value generation
3. Teams with constrained options will tend towards aggressive linear shells because there is only a 33% chance to face lightning bolt as compared to a 50% chance normally.
This actually gives us a lot to work with. Basically, assumption one means we're going to see an increased presence of the following classes of decks:
Tron decks (RG primarily, although UW tron can pair well if you have a grixis player on the team and mono blue can work well if you're pairing with two other linear decks but one of them wants bolt)
Affinity/Infect: I would expect there to be a greater than 50% chance that a given team has one of these decks on its roster. Infect is pretty much the only blue/green deck in the format, and it can use whatever green fetches your three color reactive/value/whatever deck doesn't use, while affinity pretty much has zero overlap with anything else in the format, sideboard considerations aside.
Tribal decks: Merfolk, elves, and more obscure things like allies rarely overlap with other decks in the format--they're linear, they can beat down, they benefit from reduced lightning bolt breaking up their synergies, and three color fair decks are going to be less common since the unified restriction means it's impossible to really have more than one three color deck on a team, there's going to be a bias towards having that be something linear (like ad nauseum or some other combo deck like kiki chord), and so there won't be as many wrath effects in the format.
This leads us to a few second tier conclusions:
Affinity and Infect will combine to >16% of the metagame from the perspective of a given player on a team. If we say it's 60% that a given team has infect or affinity, and it's evenly split, then 10% of the decks a given PLAYER (not team, PLAYER) has in an event are affinity and 10% are infect.
Decks like grixis delver, the three color aggressive but not linear decks are going to be less common; the incentive is to have a more controlling build (a la jeskai nahiri) or a build with more flexible options with respect to impacting the rest of your team (kiki chord/abzan coco).
Consequently, playing decks that are incidentally weak to affinity hate (anything with vedalken shackles, combos like eggs, etc) is a poor option.
Take all of that information, and we can condense it to a few, more actionable points:
1. every deck needs a reasonable to positive matchup against infect and affinity
2. every deck we play against is either fundamentally linear and aggressive, fair and grindy, or is an unfair deck in a multicolor mana base (ad nauseum, dredge, living end). Three color grindy decks will be fundamentally reactive or toolboxy in nature (jeskai nahiri, abzan coco, kiki chord) rather than more aggressive (bant based knight of the reliquary, aggressive naya collected company decks, etc).
What this says to me is that the first thing I want to look at is actually the REMOVAL available to my team;
I probably want bolt and path to go in different decks; path can be backed up by blessed alliance and condemn with wrath of god type effects as well. Lightning bolt can pair with disfigure, kolaghan's command, or terminate. However, white also has the best sideboard options in this type of format in particular, so I probably want to pair white with blue in order to take advantage of that sideboard more efficiently. Because we want to pair white and blue, but red really pairs with black, we're kind of locked out of playing UWR, but we're also locked out of playing grixis. Therefore, the natural separation is UW of some flavor, and BGr of some flavor. This separation somehow has to turn into three decks (and remember, we want to avoid playing infect or affinity because it will be over-represented, so the better teams will have a strong plan against it).
My solution there ends up being this: Play UW midrange as one of the decks. You probably aren't playing a full set of snapcaster mage, but path to exile and blessed alliance shore up all of your boggles/burn/zoo/death's shadow/infect woes, sideboard stony silence, rest in peace, runed halo covers all of your linear/combo matchups, and you can mainboard wall of omens/resto angel/kitchen finks to absolutely demolish the fair decks in the card advantage war. Probably actually go all in: we're playing UW titan value, with at least 4 wraths in the 75 (possibly five; go hard or go home on your matchup hedging), a full playset of stony silence (it wails on tron AND affinity), and at least 2 or 3 rest in peace (frees up more narrow grave hate options for the rest of your team and is blanket effective against graveyard decks). UW titan can certainly go over the top of any fair deck besides tron, and against tron you have access to mana leaks/remands/negates and a fast clock via vendilion clique and kitchen finks.
This gives you one deck that has solid all around matchups. The predators of this deck (combo decks like ad nauseum, or infect in particular) are something you're OK throwing away because if you have a bad matchup, it means the rest of your team is almost certainly playing against something they're well prepared for. Basically, UW titan is a really good archetype for the shell game of matchups, where the decks that are good against it shoehorn the rest of the opposing team into playing decks you're prepared to beat with the other two.
The RGB side of things is where it gets interesting. There's two ways to approach this: go fair (basically Jund 'em out), or go unfair. If you go fair, remember there's likely to be a higher presence of tron, and that's just not a matchup you want to try and fight. Therefore, my inclination is to go with something unfair. Now, we mentioned that we're using blue in UW titan, but one advantage that deck has is that it doesn't need serum visions, and it doesn't need flooded strand/hallowed fountain--you can actually have a quite reasonable mana base with things like mystic gate and glacial fortress/celestial colonnade. So, one option here that I like a lot is to play the grishoalbrand/goryo's vengeance deck in this slot. You can dedicate the fetch-shock manabase to this slot, you can give the blue cantrips to this deck, and you can also give it the discard + extraction package against opposing combo decks. Your game plan against affinity becomes to just kill them, your game plan against infect is to just kill them, and against fair decks you have time to sculpt the perfect hand and go off.
Because grishoalbrand plays mostly in grixis colors, this means you have all of the naya shocklands and fetches available, which means you can play full power burn, losing only path to exile from the sideboard. Consequently, I would instead spend those slots on sudden shock and further tune the board towards beating affinity and tron. Fast combo just gets raced, graveyard decks get met with relic of progenitus or grafdigger's cage.
Breakdown:
UW titan:
1. strong against all of the 3 color fair decks because value city
2. Strong against all of the linear agro except infect because of incremental life gain and removal
3. strong against all of the various tribal decks because of wraths
4. strong sideboarded games because of the white base, so combo matchups in general are very incidentally favorable
Grixis goryo's vengeance combo:
1. has the discard + extraction package for combo mirrors
2. has a speed advantage over most linear decks
3. grave hate is spread thinner
4. the likely fair decks going later in the tournament are not attrition based, so hand sculpting is relevant
Naya Burn:
1. fast, powerful, consistent
2. few terribly lopsided matchups--those that are mean your teammates are having probably good matchups
3. the unfavorable matchups that exist are actually going to be over-represented (infect/affinity) so you can over-prepare and over-sideboard for them to swing them back around, because the field in general is just narrower--sudden shock and ancient grudge/smash to smithereens
And, of these decks, only burn actually is an expected tier deck, which means your average opponent is less likely to be individually well-prepared for matchups against your team; you get to next level the field with your own sideboarding while dodging opposing sideboard tech. Random brews from more "casual" teams are going to run up against either brutally fast and efficient kills (burn/grishoalbrand) or a deck that can present a quick clock with cheap countermagic/lock pieces, or a very grindy value engine that can go over the top of whatever your brew is doing. In other words, you get to still present a "fun police" lineup, while dodging the hate the expected metagame will produce.
Yes, I am a local area mod.WELP. GOOD LIFE CHANGES ALL HAPPEN AT ONCE AND SOME ARE MUTUALLY EXCLUSIVEPrimary Decks:
Modern: Esper Draw-Go
Legacy: RUG Lands
EDH: Sidisi turn-3 storm
I kind of specified that you lose only path to exile, and replace it with sudden shock to further improve the infect and affinity matchups. I kind of thought this through a lot =)
Yes, I am a local area mod.WELP. GOOD LIFE CHANGES ALL HAPPEN AT ONCE AND SOME ARE MUTUALLY EXCLUSIVEPrimary Decks:
Modern: Esper Draw-Go
Legacy: RUG Lands
EDH: Sidisi turn-3 storm
http://magic.wizards.com/en/events/coverage/2016wmc/team-unified-modern-metagame-breakdown-2016-11-18
http://magic.wizards.com/en/events/coverage/gprot16/unified-modern-number-crunch-2016-11-20
TL;DR: deck 1 = Inkmoth Nexus, deck 2 = Lightning Bolt, deck 3 = Bant Eldrazi or Abzan
I also did some work in Excel to find out which decks were "player B" decks and which were "player A/C decks" (see the last part of the first article for the difference). Here are those that are seemingly more suited for one or the other:
Player B:
Abzan, with 11/17
Player A/C:
Dredge, with 26/31
Affinity, with 16/19
Ad Nauseam, with 6/7
Merfolk, with 5/5
Death's Shadow Zoo, with 4/4
GW Tron, with 3/3
| Ad Nauseam
| Infect
Big Johnny.
I also point out that I think my proposed lineup actually translates super well to this event--the literal naya burn deck is fine against all the inkmoth nexus decks (hooray sudden shock) and the goryo's vengeance deck is also fine against both the inkmoth nexus AND lightning bolt decks. The only question is if UW titan or some other build/deck is better against the field than emeria titan, and I think that the answer is no--UW titan has a really good affinity matchup and an iffy infect matchup, so the "inkmoth nexus" slot is 50/50, it's great against all the midrange value decks like jund and abzan because it goes waaay over the top, and it's reasonable at worst against all the lightning bolt decks.
Examining the removal and the mana bases pretty much was the team breakdown of this event--players either played a bolt deck with path, or they played a bolt deck + abzan with path to exiles.
Yes, I am a local area mod.WELP. GOOD LIFE CHANGES ALL HAPPEN AT ONCE AND SOME ARE MUTUALLY EXCLUSIVEPrimary Decks:
Modern: Esper Draw-Go
Legacy: RUG Lands
EDH: Sidisi turn-3 storm
So yes, it cuts into your card pool quite a lot.
Greetings,
Kathal
Modern/Legacy
either funpolice (Delver, Deathcloud, UW Control) or the fun decks (especially those ft. Griselbrand)
If you play the Chalice of the Void version (with SSG ofc), your need for one mane interaction goes down, since they are pretty "useless" in that shell (cause of Chalice). Hence, you want to play more two mana removal spells (Lightning Helix, Declaration in Stone, Blessed Alliance,...) and especially sweepers (Anger of the Gods, Wrath of God, Day of Judgement, Hallowed Burial,...).
However, since you want all those spells in that shell, you do not have them in other decks which is especially problematic with Blessed Alliance and Anger of the Gods (Blessed Alliance for Junk/Bant Eldrazi, Anger for Jund/Jeskai Control (you can build a manabase without Arid Mesa and Foundry)). Also, your finishers (Nahiri and co) and the manabase (Arid Mesa and Foundry) are cards, some decks really want. Also, do not forget about SSG, a card both Goryo's Vengeance decks and ADN wants. Blood Moon is also a card several decks want to have at least in the SB, so this is also a "problem".
However, as soon as you do not run the Chalice version, you want to run Bolts and Path. Since those are the two best removal spells in the format, other fair and interactive decks will be harder to play, since they are missing those crucial cards.
The SB makes the whole thing even more "worse" due to the nature of the W SB cards (they are the best of the best but only one deck can run them). This "basically" prevent any other W based fair deck to see play.
Conclusion: Sun and Moon with the Chalice build allows other W fair decks to see play (Bant Eldrazi, Junk, Jeskai Control (the non Nahiri version)) but the non Chalice build does not allow this, since it wants/needs both Bolt and Path. However, both version result into a problem for the SB cards with each of the other possible W decks.
Note: It would have been possible to run 3 fair decks, if you would have wanted to (Bant Eldrazi, Sun and Moon/Skred Red, BG Oblitorator Rock). Would this set-up be better than the played ones of 2x aggressive and 1x something else? Hard to say.
Greetings,
Kathal
Modern/Legacy
either funpolice (Delver, Deathcloud, UW Control) or the fun decks (especially those ft. Griselbrand)
In the non chalice version Lightning Helix frequently eclipses bolt since fast aggro is what the deck is made to destroy. Either version can abuse the hell out of Ensnaring Bridge as well. RW lockdown can use cards like Nevermore and Journey to Nowhere as well.
The only overlap card that I would even consider a meaningful loss would be path, and it's not that big of a loss in a deck made to sweep the board as early as turn 2. More importantly is the type of (silly) meta this format creates. It'll be all critters all the time. RW lockdown loves this.
You are not running Anger because it is a 3 mana 3 damage sweeper in this format. You are running Anger cause it hates on Dredge. That is a VERY important difference.
As for the other cards, as somebody who played RW Control (back with Resto, Wall and Kiki (aka pre Nahiri)) you do not want to play against Infect, when you only have access to thinks like Nevermore, Journey to Nowhere and Lightning Helix. Heck, even Affinity is problematic as long as you do not draw the sweepers (aka Angers).
Sure, the deck is good against FAIR aggressive decks like Zoo and Meerfolk. But against Infect? Death Shadow Aggro? Burn? Suicide Bloo? Those are match-ups you do not really want to play against IF you do not have Path/Bolt.
Also, being able to sweep on turn 2 requires a SSG since Pyroclasm does not cut it (close to every important threat survives it but Affinity).
I just think, that you are overestimating on how good the Aggro match-up for RW Control is without Path/Bolt/Anger.
Greetings,
Kathal
Modern/Legacy
either funpolice (Delver, Deathcloud, UW Control) or the fun decks (especially those ft. Griselbrand)
The other answers available to stop dredge, namely ensnaring bridge, lose to the ancient grudges that they WILL bring in. Without anger of the gods, beating dredge is actually extremely difficult for RW lockdown. I've played both decks (modern dredge less extensively, but I have multiple top 32 finishes at GP's with legacy and extended dredge), and I really wouldn't bet money on lockdown even winning any games against dredge without anger of the gods.
Like others have said--it's not that RW lockdown isn't good against the metagame in team unified modern (it's actually a really solid deck because the field is narrower than a typical modern event), but because it eats too many critical resources. The deck either has to take both wrath of god and anger of the gods, or it has to take both path and bolt. Either way, it also takes stony silence, leyline of sanctity, rest in peace, and sacred foundry, which means the OTHER white deck is mostly gutted by default, basically only leaving path to exile available, and also potentially the other red deck is gutted by not having bolt.
It's like I pointed out in my analysis earlier--there are two good removal spells: path to exile and lightning bolt. IF you don't split them up, then the deck playing both of them HAS to be able to beat all of the linear decks--because none of your other decks are going to have a better shot than racing. This means pretty much only UWR or naya burn exist as reasonable RW choice, and UWR can't reasonably beat dredge, so the best option becomes to split your paths and bolts or to play burn. If you look at the breakdown, virtually every team either split path and bolt, or played jeskai or burn. Jeskai didn't do so hot. Burn did marginally better.
Yes, I am a local area mod.WELP. GOOD LIFE CHANGES ALL HAPPEN AT ONCE AND SOME ARE MUTUALLY EXCLUSIVEPrimary Decks:
Modern: Esper Draw-Go
Legacy: RUG Lands
EDH: Sidisi turn-3 storm