At the gp modern side events I beat gr tron in 15 minutes. G1 was t2 on the play abrupt decay on expo map, t3 iok on stirrings + goyf, t4 rhino, t5 sorin+1, t6 swing for lethal thru a karn. G2 was much of the same, iok into goyf into thoughtseize goyf, into sorin, into rhino.
I like sorin in that the really screws up combat math in lifelink and the +1/+0. His +1 can also effectively be a fog, and his ult is really good against bogles. Though he is pretty useless with.no creatures on board.
I was looking through your posts and couldn't figure out what your list was.
What's your board plan against G/R Tron? I feel like the match up is so unwinnable that I switched from Junk to Jund.
Junk has the better matchup against Tron actually. Stony Silence and Siege Rhino can actually end the game fast enough to close. You just need to play Silence on turn 2 as often as possible, or draw discard into Fulminator/Lili into Rhino.
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MODERN RGB Jund BGR WGB Junk/Abzan Company WGB
LEGACY RUGB Delver GURB
EDH UW Geist of Saint Traft Aggro-Control WU RUG Riku of Two Reflections Combo GUR BBB Skithiryx Control BB
What are your opinions on Dark Confidant post-FRF? Has he regained his status as a must-have core card, or are there still valid reasons not to run him? Why/what reasons?
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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.
What are your opinions on Dark Confidant post-FRF? Has he regained his status as a must-have core card, or are there still valid reasons not to run him? Why/what reasons?
From the sound of it it's been a far from ubiquitous inclusion in BGx in this tournament. There's just too much burn running around.
So we have 3 BGw decks in the top 8 of the Pro Tour and three pretty different takes on the archetype (is Jacob Wilson's 27 creature build even really a BG midrange deck?!). What are people's thoughts on the relative strengths of the different builds?
Got 8th of about 26 at a modern tourney today with my abzan list. Nothing remarkable in my build; 1 finks 2 path, 4 bobs no pact/dismember.
Round 1: 2-1 win vs twin. Feel like this is a reasonable matchup with the decays. The guy explained after that they often board out their combo in g2/3 so I shouldn't be as scared of it and should probably drop my bobs post board as those games the twin player is basically just trying to chip away at the life total and burn us out.
Round 2: 1-2 loss vs aggro zoo. G1 he flooded out a bit and I had path 2 decays lili - stabilized on an ooze and won. G2/G3 I had shakey keeps with a lack of t1/t2 plays and got smoked. G3 was a virtual t3 kill as I was at 4 and when I had to fetch for a land he bolted for the game. Of note, I thought a hand of lands, timely reinforcements and siege rhino would be excellent. He rampagered over the tokens and then tribal flamesd the rhino... did not end well for me.
Round 3: 2-1 win vs scapeshift. G1 he was dead next turn and topdecked the scapeshift. G2/G3 I had the discard and he kept weak hands. Funny in G3 I thoughtseized and surgicaled the scapeshift on turn 1.
Round 4: 2-0 win vs zoo. This list was slower than the first as it was leaning on steppe lynx and knight of the reliquary. The guy flooded a bit which helped, but more importantly I drew a tonne of paths, decays, inquisitions, and lilianas and just killed everything in sight before dropping the goyfs and riding it out. G2 I had bow of nylea do some work swinging a 5/6 goyf and 3/4 wildwood into a 4/4 kotr and a steppe lynx. Without the deathtouch and the 1/1 counter that's a horrible matchup - with both I was able to kill the kotr and trade wildwood for the lynx, gaining 3 a turn looked nice too but the goyf just flat out won the following turn.
Round 5: draw in to top 8.
Top 8 G1: 0-2 loss vs 5c zoo. He goes t1 hierarch, I t1 IoK removing geist of st traft. He plays pridemage. Next turn he plays another hierarch and hits 5 with pridemage. I flood pretty hard and he has removal for the goyf i play and my treetop - 5/5 pridemage ends me. G2 he paths my t2 goyf, I go t3 timely reinforcements t4 souls flashback t5 liliana + finks. Sadly he goes bird-noble-goyf-rhino-rhino-2x tribal flames. Despite 2 life from finks the 16 to the face was... brutal. Tokens also line up poorly vs rhinos and liliana poorly vs mana dorks. I think if I'd had a darkblast or abrupt decay for an early dork, or my own rhinos, this one would have ended a little closer.
So yeah 3/6 matches were zoo. both of my losses were vs zoo. When I won the zoo game its because I had t1 discard t2 removal t3 removal. When I lost it was because I was not keeping up with the bodies they put out and my tokens failed to stem the bleeding.
I came well prepared for affinity too and just didnt draw the matchup. All zoo all the time! ><
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Modern
* Esper Draw-Go
* Tezzeret Whir
* Blue Tron
So we have 3 BGw decks in the top 8 of the Pro Tour and three pretty different takes on the archetype (is Jacob Wilson's 27 creature build even really a BG midrange deck?!). What are people's thoughts on the relative strengths of the different builds?
I don't think Wilson's deck is really in the conversation because it's not attrition based; it'd be pointless to compare it to the traditional strategy were used to discussing.
I actually think Efro's list is the most interesting. He's running 3 Heirarch, 4 Souls and 2 Gavony Township and running exactly zero LD (no Tec Edge) MB. It feels like going wide early with Souls is something he was very interested in.
Does junk NEED extra card draw? I played junk since the bannings not earlier. So I know only the theory. But the plan was trading 1 for 1 and winning the mid/late game with card advantage and efficient beats. Its like a control deck.
But without bob how do we play this control role? You can not trade everything 1 for 1 and with 25 lands drawing lands with your 1 draw each turn dont feel good after turn 5.
Better play courser or tasigur for a little card advantage? or only sideboard bobs? Phrysian arena mainboard? abzan charm 3times in mainboard?
I think this is exactly the issue. The story of jund/junk was always 1-for-1 and then win with bob, liliana, or manlands or stick a goyf and hope they don't topdeck an answer or anything better. The deck plays discard and a lot of lands, so having bob helped mitigate that topdeck war where you're going to flip a lot of thoughtseizes and fetchlands compared to your opponent.
I don't know how much siege rhino changes this story since it doesn't really fit that plan particularly well - its just its own good card. THe nice thing about goyf was that at 4-5 mana you could drop a goyf and keep your abrupt decay mana up to interact with combo decks. Siege rhino would be a tapout, allowing things like blood moon or splinter twin to resolve unmolested.
Also the 1-for-1 then out-draw plan does not work if you can't actually 1-for-1 them. My problem with the zoo decks was that I could not keep up with the nacatls, dorks, and pridemages because my primary removal costs 2 and they generate more mana and cheaper bodies... and then beyond that we were doing the same things - goyf/scooze/rhino.
If Zoo is big, damnation is probably important. Even there, you may just get blown out by boros charm.
I'll definitely be trying the bobless version though to see how it compares. I was sticking with him just because I hadn't been able to effectively play it since pre-ktk
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Modern
* Esper Draw-Go
* Tezzeret Whir
* Blue Tron
I scoured through all of the lists that had 18+ points in the modern portion of the PT and of the Abzan decks, like three of them ran Bob. I new that he wasn't being used as much as I had predicted coming into the PT but I didn't expect this. For instance, if I were to calculate card usage percentage within the archetype for this tournament I'm positive that we'd see more instances of Noble Heirarch then we would see Bob.
Currently, the discussion is split between these two threads which means that some innovation and ideas are getting lost. Because people are basically discussing the same decks in both threads, it makes sense to merge them into one. If this merge does not work out (e.g. if BG Rock with no splash is not getting enough attention), then we can always split them in a later update.
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Over-Extended/Modern Since 2010
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I was looking through your posts and couldn't figure out what your list was.
What's your board plan against G/R Tron? I feel like the match up is so unwinnable that I switched from Junk to Jund.
RGB Jund BGR
WGB Junk/Abzan Company WGB
LEGACY
RUGB Delver GURB
EDH
UW Geist of Saint Traft Aggro-Control WU
RUG Riku of Two Reflections Combo GUR
BBB Skithiryx Control BB
Stay reasonable, be mindful of your expectations and don't feed the trolls.
Doomsdayin'
From the sound of it it's been a far from ubiquitous inclusion in BGx in this tournament. There's just too much burn running around.
Im curious about the podless pod list...
Round 1: 2-1 win vs twin. Feel like this is a reasonable matchup with the decays. The guy explained after that they often board out their combo in g2/3 so I shouldn't be as scared of it and should probably drop my bobs post board as those games the twin player is basically just trying to chip away at the life total and burn us out.
Round 2: 1-2 loss vs aggro zoo. G1 he flooded out a bit and I had path 2 decays lili - stabilized on an ooze and won. G2/G3 I had shakey keeps with a lack of t1/t2 plays and got smoked. G3 was a virtual t3 kill as I was at 4 and when I had to fetch for a land he bolted for the game. Of note, I thought a hand of lands, timely reinforcements and siege rhino would be excellent. He rampagered over the tokens and then tribal flamesd the rhino... did not end well for me.
Round 3: 2-1 win vs scapeshift. G1 he was dead next turn and topdecked the scapeshift. G2/G3 I had the discard and he kept weak hands. Funny in G3 I thoughtseized and surgicaled the scapeshift on turn 1.
Round 4: 2-0 win vs zoo. This list was slower than the first as it was leaning on steppe lynx and knight of the reliquary. The guy flooded a bit which helped, but more importantly I drew a tonne of paths, decays, inquisitions, and lilianas and just killed everything in sight before dropping the goyfs and riding it out. G2 I had bow of nylea do some work swinging a 5/6 goyf and 3/4 wildwood into a 4/4 kotr and a steppe lynx. Without the deathtouch and the 1/1 counter that's a horrible matchup - with both I was able to kill the kotr and trade wildwood for the lynx, gaining 3 a turn looked nice too but the goyf just flat out won the following turn.
Round 5: draw in to top 8.
Top 8 G1: 0-2 loss vs 5c zoo. He goes t1 hierarch, I t1 IoK removing geist of st traft. He plays pridemage. Next turn he plays another hierarch and hits 5 with pridemage. I flood pretty hard and he has removal for the goyf i play and my treetop - 5/5 pridemage ends me. G2 he paths my t2 goyf, I go t3 timely reinforcements t4 souls flashback t5 liliana + finks. Sadly he goes bird-noble-goyf-rhino-rhino-2x tribal flames. Despite 2 life from finks the 16 to the face was... brutal. Tokens also line up poorly vs rhinos and liliana poorly vs mana dorks. I think if I'd had a darkblast or abrupt decay for an early dork, or my own rhinos, this one would have ended a little closer.
So yeah 3/6 matches were zoo. both of my losses were vs zoo. When I won the zoo game its because I had t1 discard t2 removal t3 removal. When I lost it was because I was not keeping up with the bodies they put out and my tokens failed to stem the bleeding.
I came well prepared for affinity too and just didnt draw the matchup. All zoo all the time! ><
* Esper Draw-Go
* Tezzeret Whir
* Blue Tron
I don't think Wilson's deck is really in the conversation because it's not attrition based; it'd be pointless to compare it to the traditional strategy were used to discussing.
I actually think Efro's list is the most interesting. He's running 3 Heirarch, 4 Souls and 2 Gavony Township and running exactly zero LD (no Tec Edge) MB. It feels like going wide early with Souls is something he was very interested in.
None of the lists are running Bob.
I think this is exactly the issue. The story of jund/junk was always 1-for-1 and then win with bob, liliana, or manlands or stick a goyf and hope they don't topdeck an answer or anything better. The deck plays discard and a lot of lands, so having bob helped mitigate that topdeck war where you're going to flip a lot of thoughtseizes and fetchlands compared to your opponent.
I don't know how much siege rhino changes this story since it doesn't really fit that plan particularly well - its just its own good card. THe nice thing about goyf was that at 4-5 mana you could drop a goyf and keep your abrupt decay mana up to interact with combo decks. Siege rhino would be a tapout, allowing things like blood moon or splinter twin to resolve unmolested.
Also the 1-for-1 then out-draw plan does not work if you can't actually 1-for-1 them. My problem with the zoo decks was that I could not keep up with the nacatls, dorks, and pridemages because my primary removal costs 2 and they generate more mana and cheaper bodies... and then beyond that we were doing the same things - goyf/scooze/rhino.
If Zoo is big, damnation is probably important. Even there, you may just get blown out by boros charm.
I'll definitely be trying the bobless version though to see how it compares. I was sticking with him just because I hadn't been able to effectively play it since pre-ktk
* Esper Draw-Go
* Tezzeret Whir
* Blue Tron
What are your opinion about batterskull main deck?
Please continue the Junk/Abzan, BGw Souls, and BG Rock discussion in the thread here:
http://www.mtgsalvation.com/forums/the-game/modern/tier-1-modern/511600-abzan-midrange-junk-bgw-souls-bg-rock
Currently, the discussion is split between these two threads which means that some innovation and ideas are getting lost. Because people are basically discussing the same decks in both threads, it makes sense to merge them into one. If this merge does not work out (e.g. if BG Rock with no splash is not getting enough attention), then we can always split them in a later update.