Even though it's not like eldrazi tron got a new card from the BBE and Jace unbannings- I actually think our position in the modern metagame improves with this unbanning. Eldrazi tron is fairly resilient against control decks and has an excellent jund matchup. I don't think BBE does anything to significantly improve their matchup vs. us. More fair, midrange decks in the format will mean more decks that we can prey on.
Even though it's not like eldrazi tron got a new card from the BBE and Jace unbannings- I actually think our position in the modern metagame improves with this unbanning. Eldrazi tron is fairly resilient against control decks and has an excellent jund matchup. I don't think BBE does anything to significantly improve their matchup vs. us. More fair, midrange decks in the format will mean more decks that we can prey on.
Reality Smashing Jace will be real satisfying but on the other hand getting TKS and Endbringer bounced is by -1 is ridiculously bad for us. Jace definitely makes our control matchup worse.
Also if there's a bunch of fast aggro decks popping up to get under Jund and Jace decks, that's bad for us too.
Reality Smashing Jace will be real satisfying but on the other hand getting TKS and Endbringer bounced is by -1 is ridiculously bad for us. Jace definitely makes our control matchup worse.
Also if there's a bunch of fast aggro decks popping up to get under Jund and Jace decks, that's bad for us too.
They can even play around that by having 5 mana, a Path, and a fresh card to discard after Brainstorming.
I'm going to try 1x Lightning Greaves in the version with 4x Endbringer. Looks promising vs Jace/BBE decks. Not sure if it belongs to the main deck because hyper aggro decks are still a thing, but the card looks fine to me as a 1-of.
I don't think Lightning Greaves is worth a slot, that is either better filled with threats or answers.
Concerning the treand to more consistency. I've been playing this deck for a while now. I mainly play on Cockatrice due to there being no local game store in my area. That means I don't have a meta that is very static. I've been having a lot of success playing with one wurmcoil maindeck and only 1 karn in sidebord for the colorless matchups.
What I am currently thinking about is replacing the Sea Gate Wreckage with Arch of Orazca. However getting to the city's blessing might be too difficult. What do you guys think?
This post is interesting, in the first sentence you don't consider Lightning Greaves worthy in the 75 and in the last you consider Arch over SGW?
I'm certain you have played a lot of games with this deck... do you find yourself empty handed and needing gas or with a board of 10+ permanents and needing gas?
Don't get me wrong, I like Arch... I had pre-ordered a pair of foils, just in case.
If only the deck were playing more low cost artifacts that stayed on the board... perhaps we could reliably hit the Blessing.;)
To be fair, I like the idea of the Greaves in the highly interactive lists, giving any of our creatures Haste&Protection can give us ridiculous closing speed. And some decks just will never beat a hexproof Endbringer. I'm intrigued, and bored, enough to try one in my 75 for a few weeks. I often run 3 chalices and fun of just because chalice is often a depressing late-game top deck.
I'm doing well with Eldrazi Tron on mtgo in this transitional period. People are clearly confused about how to utilize Jace; I've played against 4 different flavors of control containing him and won every time. Reality Smasher gets there. Jund is still a good matchup in spite of BBE. Burn is ticking up to fight the aforementioned decks and our matchup there is good. Big Tron is still challenging though, and I got steamrolled by Dredge and Hollow One, which I think will be popular. Don't shave the graveyard hate.
Playing since 1994: Currently MAGS (HomeBrew),Standard & Pauper (Pioneer and Modern are degenerate trash formats)
STOP using "dude/bro" as a pejorative or insult. Grow up.
Margaret Thatcher: “The problem with socialism is that you eventually run out of other people's money.”
Benjamin Franklin: "Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety."
Martin Luther King Jr.: "I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character."
Well Manges pulled a 2nd place with ETron losing to GDS. Boo!!!
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Playing since 1994: Currently MAGS (HomeBrew),Standard & Pauper (Pioneer and Modern are degenerate trash formats)
STOP using "dude/bro" as a pejorative or insult. Grow up.
Margaret Thatcher: “The problem with socialism is that you eventually run out of other people's money.”
Benjamin Franklin: "Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety."
Martin Luther King Jr.: "I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character."
Haha wow this thread died. I'm still playing the deck now and think it's underrated. Based on my mtgo grinding lately Burn is the most played deck, which makes sense as it's policing the wild-west format we have right now. Our MD Chalices and TKS do a good job against Goblin Guide and friends. Burn being popular is also pushing out Gx Tron, which is what we want to see. There are a lot of Blood Moons atm as well, and I'm fighting that with 3 Wastes and 3 Mind Stone. Winning 60% of my matches right now.
I've recently taken the plunge and bought this deck on MTGO (which was relatively easy, given the overlap with some of my other decks), and I find myself wondering whether the Chalices should be in the main right now. I think Relics are better at combating the current field of control/midrange and fast graveyard-based decks, so they could potentially switch places in the 75. Thoughts?
I had the same thought process and tried it for a couple leagues but came to the conclusion that it was too important to have the strong G1 against Burn, so I put them back in the main. It's also necessary to win against Boggles which has seen an uptick. Also shutting off Path with X=1 against the white control decks is more valuable than turning off their graveyard interactions with Relic. I think there's good arguments for each configuration but personally the amount of Burn I'm seeing has my Chalices main for now.
Chalice is very good in almost all of the fair, midrange matchups- not sure where this thought is coming from- it stops bolt, path, push, IoK, thoughtseize, serum visions. These are 6 out of the top 7 most popular cards in the format according to MTG goldfish (https://www.mtggoldfish.com/format-staples/modern). Most midrnage decks run about 12-16 of these cards in them- which means that you brick wall them from being able to play 1/5 of their deck while we only shut off our expedition maps- this is a very profitable tradeoff. Chalice also provides the only avenue we have to being able to fight some of the more unfair decks in the format- burn, storm, and ad naus would basically be unwinnable matchups without it in game 1. You will want to pull chalice out versus aether vial and collected company creature decks- they typically are very 2+ cmc drop dense moreso than decks like grixis, jeskai, mardu, jund, abzan, esper, sultai, or U/W. Also consider shaving a chalice or two versus 4x k-command grixis decks. Metagaming your mainboard and understanding how to use chalice are the two steepest learning curves of eldrazi tron. Chalice is too critical for too many of modern's matchups to discount it from the main.
I haven't been posting much because a combination of things. Work + school is a busy schedule, and right now I'm feeling other than a few cards in the 75 for personal preference the deck is quite figured out.
I will say that 2 Endbringers and an Ulamog top end, with no Karns, feels like a great end game against a surge of blue decks playing jace. I'm not sure if I like 4 endbringers in a meta with Jace bounces, dreadbores, and paths. An interesting card right now is Oblivion Sower, perhaps replacing Wurmcoil maindeck as a way to both guarentee value on cast if you can process and get lands to cast all is dust/Ulamog. Not to mention it can be cast through blood moon, and is at a nice spot in the curve where we currently have a bunch of creatures that that require wastes to cast. The downside of this is you'd probably want 2 relics main to help exile along with TKS, but I've never been a fan of maindeck relics in this deck because I want as few 1-cost cards outside of Exp. map as possible. We also have a great game 1 against Storm, Living End, and Jund/Junk so I don't think we need the extra GY help game 1.
Perhaps Sower is sideboard, to be brought in with relics in certain matchups? One copy of Wurmcoil and 1 of Sower as utility creatures for matchups where they are all-stars. I currently have 1 surgical in my side I could cut to make that happen quite easily.
I definitely like Contortion more than Gut Shot. We already have ballista pings and wails to deal with stuff at 1 toughness. Contortion targets a lot of 2-3 cost creatures meaning it is either equal tempo or a tempo gain. And it's an extra card to bring in in the mirror where we have to side 8 cards out (4 chalice, 2 dust, 2 wail).
I'm also back on Pithing Needle over spyglass. IMO the card is most critical against affinity, and we don't want a spyglass non-bo with chalice on 2. Pithing will go against more Jace and Lili decks now, and I side chalices out against Jund because their cmc is pretty spread and they have 3x K-command. Jace decks run Cryptic which they like to use to bounce chalice back to hand, while they are tapped out cast the needle on their planeswalker. Needle is a lot better against aether vial and expedition map on T1, which are two of the top current decks in GX tron and humans. Spyglass is clearly better in some situations, but I think pithing is better overall.
One thing Im back and forth on is collar or wurncoil main. I don't think we really need wurmcoil game 1 and I want to cast eldrazi creatures with temple, and I like that collar isn't answered by some decks game 1, but many lists use the wurmcoil main with success. Can someone give a case for wurm main?
I was never on the 4 Endbringer plan - the fact that it provides no value the turn you cast it leads to too many blowouts. There was some time before the unbans that that was an OK configuration, but I never used it for very long. I've pretty much always been and still am on 2 Karns with 2 Endbringers.
Oblivion Sower has always been an interesting card to me, but the conclusion I repeatedly come to is that it just doesnt do quite enough. You really wanna be playing with Urborgs so you can actually utilize the fetchlands you hit, and E-tron can't really accommodate more than 1 copy, even if it were worth it. One positive that you didn't mention though, is that it blocks even the largest Tarmogoyf out of Jund, which is a big problem card for us.
Jund is interesting now. You said we have a great game 1 against it, and that definitely used to be true, but I think BBE has given the deck a bigger shot in the arm than I first anticipated. I just looked back at my data, and amazingly, I'm 0-5 against Jund since they got BBE back. 3 of those matches were yesterday, and my opponents were running fairly hot, but still, I'm pretty convinced this is not an easy matchup anymore, which has to make us question playing E-tron at all How has everyone else been faring against it post-BBE? In any event, this matchup is your case for MD Wurmcoil.
Re: Pithing Needle vs Spyglass - you have some interesting arguments there. You're worried about your Chalice on 2 countering your Spyglass? The earliest you can deploy Chalice on 2 is turn 3, and more likely turn 4, and that's IF you have the luxury of doing so, ie if you won't immediately die to their existing board presence, which will more often be the case. In most cases you'll have already played your Spyglass so you don't die before your 4th turn, so that seems pretty corner case to me. AND if you already have Chalice on 2 on a stable board, do you really need the Spyglass? That being said, I agree that Needle is better than Spyglass against Affinity overall because mana efficiency in the early turns is super important. Needle is also better against Vial decks, as you mention. Not sold on the Tron arguments though. I can understand wanting to Needle their map on T1, but that shuts off our own Maps too. Also we want to Chalice them on 1, which is a non-bo with Needle.
The other thing I want to mention is the Hollow One deck. This matchup is a nightmare for us and we really have no good way of fighting it. Graveyard hate can slow them down a bit, but that's about it. They can still very easily kill us without the graveyard, AND All is Dust is not even a bullet because they get to keep their Hollow Ones and they have multiple haste creatures, recursion, and burn. It's like Humans all over again but Humans still exists too...
Yesterday I lost to Hollow One twice, Jund 3 times, Affinity twice, and 1 loss to Titan Shift. Not feeling too hot on the deck right now to say the least.
I've recently taken the plunge and bought this deck on MTGO (which was relatively easy, given the overlap with some of my other decks), and I find myself wondering whether the Chalices should be in the main right now. I think Relics are better at combating the current field of control/midrange and fast graveyard-based decks, so they could potentially switch places in the 75. Thoughts?
I'm also a Fish player looking at ETron. How has your experience been so far?
To be honest... I'm a little underwhelmed. The deck is clearly powerful, but it isn't very smooth. I've had my fair share of clunky hands that just don't get anywhere good in time. That said, I've lost some matches to decks that I know aren't favored against E-Tron, so bad variance may be playing a role. I'll continue testing, because I do see the potential, but the warts made themselves apparent pretty early on.
0-2 vs GW Tron
2-0 vs UR Delver
2-0 vs GW Hatebears
2-1 vs Affinity
2-1 vs 4c Traverse Shadow
Draw vs Bant Coco
1/4 : 2-0 Vs Mardu Control
1/2 : 2-1 vs RG Ponza
Final : 2-0 vs Burn
RG Titan Scapeshift GR
UBWAd Nauseam WBU
CEldrazi TronC
UBRWGHumansUBRWG
UMerfolkU
Eldrazi Tron
Legacy
WDeath & TaxesW
Pauper
RGoblinsR
EDH
UGMerfolk ComboGU
Standard
UWApproachWU
Also if there's a bunch of fast aggro decks popping up to get under Jund and Jace decks, that's bad for us too.
They can even play around that by having 5 mana, a Path, and a fresh card to discard after Brainstorming.
Concerning the treand to more consistency. I've been playing this deck for a while now. I mainly play on Cockatrice due to there being no local game store in my area. That means I don't have a meta that is very static. I've been having a lot of success playing with one wurmcoil maindeck and only 1 karn in sidebord for the colorless matchups.
Artifact (9)
4 Expedition Map
1 Batterskull
1 Basilisk Collar
2 Mind Stone
1 Oblivion Stone
Creature (20)
4 Reality Smasher
4 Thought-Knot Seer
4 Matter Reshaper
4 Walking Ballista
1 Ulamog, the Ceaseless Hunger
2 Endbringer
1 Wurmcoil Engine
Instant (4)
2 Warping Wail
2 Spatial Contortion
4 Urza's Mine
4 Urza's Power Plant
4 Urza's Tower
1 Sea Gate Wreckage
1 Cavern of Souls
2 Wastes
4 Eldrazi Temple
3 Ghost Quarter
Planeswalker (1)
1 Ugin, the Spirit Dragon
Sorcery (3)
3 All Is Dust
Artifact (11)
4 Chalice of the Void
1 Oblivion Stone
2 Relic of Progenitus
2 Grafdigger's Cage
2 Pithing Needle
3 Dismember
Planeswalker (1)
1 Karn Liberated
What I am currently thinking about is replacing the Sea Gate Wreckage with Arch of Orazca. However getting to the city's blessing might be too difficult. What do you guys think?
I'm certain you have played a lot of games with this deck... do you find yourself empty handed and needing gas or with a board of 10+ permanents and needing gas?
Don't get me wrong, I like Arch... I had pre-ordered a pair of foils, just in case.
If only the deck were playing more low cost artifacts that stayed on the board... perhaps we could reliably hit the Blessing.;)
To be fair, I like the idea of the Greaves in the highly interactive lists, giving any of our creatures Haste&Protection can give us ridiculous closing speed. And some decks just will never beat a hexproof Endbringer. I'm intrigued, and bored, enough to try one in my 75 for a few weeks. I often run 3 chalices and fun of just because chalice is often a depressing late-game top deck.
STOP using "dude/bro" as a pejorative or insult. Grow up.
Margaret Thatcher: “The problem with socialism is that you eventually run out of other people's money.”
Benjamin Franklin: "Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety."
Martin Luther King Jr.: "I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character."
STOP using "dude/bro" as a pejorative or insult. Grow up.
Margaret Thatcher: “The problem with socialism is that you eventually run out of other people's money.”
Benjamin Franklin: "Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety."
Martin Luther King Jr.: "I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character."
Legacy: Merfolk U; Shadow UB; Eldrazi Stompy C
Pauper: Delver U
Vintage: Merfolk U
Primers:
I will say that 2 Endbringers and an Ulamog top end, with no Karns, feels like a great end game against a surge of blue decks playing jace. I'm not sure if I like 4 endbringers in a meta with Jace bounces, dreadbores, and paths. An interesting card right now is Oblivion Sower, perhaps replacing Wurmcoil maindeck as a way to both guarentee value on cast if you can process and get lands to cast all is dust/Ulamog. Not to mention it can be cast through blood moon, and is at a nice spot in the curve where we currently have a bunch of creatures that that require wastes to cast. The downside of this is you'd probably want 2 relics main to help exile along with TKS, but I've never been a fan of maindeck relics in this deck because I want as few 1-cost cards outside of Exp. map as possible. We also have a great game 1 against Storm, Living End, and Jund/Junk so I don't think we need the extra GY help game 1.
Perhaps Sower is sideboard, to be brought in with relics in certain matchups? One copy of Wurmcoil and 1 of Sower as utility creatures for matchups where they are all-stars. I currently have 1 surgical in my side I could cut to make that happen quite easily.
I definitely like Contortion more than Gut Shot. We already have ballista pings and wails to deal with stuff at 1 toughness. Contortion targets a lot of 2-3 cost creatures meaning it is either equal tempo or a tempo gain. And it's an extra card to bring in in the mirror where we have to side 8 cards out (4 chalice, 2 dust, 2 wail).
I'm also back on Pithing Needle over spyglass. IMO the card is most critical against affinity, and we don't want a spyglass non-bo with chalice on 2. Pithing will go against more Jace and Lili decks now, and I side chalices out against Jund because their cmc is pretty spread and they have 3x K-command. Jace decks run Cryptic which they like to use to bounce chalice back to hand, while they are tapped out cast the needle on their planeswalker. Needle is a lot better against aether vial and expedition map on T1, which are two of the top current decks in GX tron and humans. Spyglass is clearly better in some situations, but I think pithing is better overall.
One thing Im back and forth on is collar or wurncoil main. I don't think we really need wurmcoil game 1 and I want to cast eldrazi creatures with temple, and I like that collar isn't answered by some decks game 1, but many lists use the wurmcoil main with success. Can someone give a case for wurm main?
WG G/W Tron GW
BG G/B Tron GB
GG Mono G Tron GG
RG G/R Tron GR
I was never on the 4 Endbringer plan - the fact that it provides no value the turn you cast it leads to too many blowouts. There was some time before the unbans that that was an OK configuration, but I never used it for very long. I've pretty much always been and still am on 2 Karns with 2 Endbringers.
Oblivion Sower has always been an interesting card to me, but the conclusion I repeatedly come to is that it just doesnt do quite enough. You really wanna be playing with Urborgs so you can actually utilize the fetchlands you hit, and E-tron can't really accommodate more than 1 copy, even if it were worth it. One positive that you didn't mention though, is that it blocks even the largest Tarmogoyf out of Jund, which is a big problem card for us.
Jund is interesting now. You said we have a great game 1 against it, and that definitely used to be true, but I think BBE has given the deck a bigger shot in the arm than I first anticipated. I just looked back at my data, and amazingly, I'm 0-5 against Jund since they got BBE back. 3 of those matches were yesterday, and my opponents were running fairly hot, but still, I'm pretty convinced this is not an easy matchup anymore, which has to make us question playing E-tron at all How has everyone else been faring against it post-BBE? In any event, this matchup is your case for MD Wurmcoil.
Re: Pithing Needle vs Spyglass - you have some interesting arguments there. You're worried about your Chalice on 2 countering your Spyglass? The earliest you can deploy Chalice on 2 is turn 3, and more likely turn 4, and that's IF you have the luxury of doing so, ie if you won't immediately die to their existing board presence, which will more often be the case. In most cases you'll have already played your Spyglass so you don't die before your 4th turn, so that seems pretty corner case to me. AND if you already have Chalice on 2 on a stable board, do you really need the Spyglass? That being said, I agree that Needle is better than Spyglass against Affinity overall because mana efficiency in the early turns is super important. Needle is also better against Vial decks, as you mention. Not sold on the Tron arguments though. I can understand wanting to Needle their map on T1, but that shuts off our own Maps too. Also we want to Chalice them on 1, which is a non-bo with Needle.
This is my current list:
4 Thought-Knot Seer
4 Reality Smasher
2 Endbringer
4 Walking Ballista
1 Wurmcoil Engine
3 Mind Stone
4 Expedition Map
2 Dismember
4 Chalice of the Void
2 Karn Liberated
2 All Is Dust
4 Urza's Mine
4 Urza's Tower
4 Eldrazi Temple
1 Sanctum of Ugin
1 Ghost Quarter
1 Sea Gate Wreckage
2 Cavern of Souls
3 Wastes
2 Grafdigger's Cage
2 Hangarback Walker
2 Ratchet Bomb
3 Relic of Progenitus
2 Spatial Contortion
2 Sorcerous Spyglass
2 Warping Wail
The other thing I want to mention is the Hollow One deck. This matchup is a nightmare for us and we really have no good way of fighting it. Graveyard hate can slow them down a bit, but that's about it. They can still very easily kill us without the graveyard, AND All is Dust is not even a bullet because they get to keep their Hollow Ones and they have multiple haste creatures, recursion, and burn. It's like Humans all over again but Humans still exists too...
Yesterday I lost to Hollow One twice, Jund 3 times, Affinity twice, and 1 loss to Titan Shift. Not feeling too hot on the deck right now to say the least.
I'm also a Fish player looking at ETron. How has your experience been so far?
Legacy: Merfolk U; Shadow UB; Eldrazi Stompy C
Pauper: Delver U
Vintage: Merfolk U
Primers: