MTG Salvation

UW Tron Primer, Post-DRS

 

Since the banning of DRS and the overwhelming change to the format, it’s time to revamp the primer. A lot of the old information is still relevant though, so we’ll just write what is needed and get content out.

Sideboards

 

In creating a sideboard, we need to analyze a few things:

 

1. What decks are we scared of?

2. Are there any decks we will lose to automatically?

3. What decks do we automatically beat and not need to board for?

4. Are there any new decks to account for?

 

So to start this out, here are the decks we consider as tier 1 and that we need to be prepared for:

 

Burn

Affinity

Zoo

Merfolk

Jund

BGx Rock

Melira Pod

Kiki Pod

Twin

Scapeshift

Living End

RG Tron

Faeries

UR Delver

UWR Midrange

UWR Control

 

Note that this is basically just taking the tier 1 lists from MTGS and adding in Faeries. I’m not particularly going to spend my time speculating.

 

1. We’re scared of Zoo, Merfolk, Twin, Scapeshift, RG Tron, UR Delver, BGx Rock and UWR Midrange.

 

2. We’re going to auto lose the RG Tron matchup more or less. It’s possible you decide to just punt this matchup because: a) the pairing is unlikely for you at a large tournament, and b) even if you do spend the board spots for it, there’s no guarantee you can win. It would still be in their favour.

 

UWR Midrange (basically any Geist deck) shows to be a bad matchup. You’re going to get like 60-40 or 65-35 with a standard setup - it’s not that good for you. The new Zoo + Faeries infested meta hopefully makes the deck not as good, aka we see less Geist. Blocking Geist all day with 2/3s and 3/3s seems bad for Geist decks. We’ll still go over Geist and what our deck would look like to handle it, but I think overall, we’re hoping to see fewer Geists.

 

3. We can auto beat UWR Control only. I think it’s nigh impossible to lose this matchup. Perhaps only post-board if they Sowing Salt us. Affinity, Pod, Burn, and Living End should all be highly favourable matchups for us. I say this mostly from experience, I’ve rarely lost any of these matchups.

 

4. Since the last iteration of the primer, we’ve introduced Zoo and Faeries. We’ve also changed our Delver to be UR (no more Geist), but now have split UWR into Midrange (Geist) and Control (no Geist). The format overall became faster with more aggressive decks showing up. And again, without Deathrite MB the deck is overall better positioned.

Our stock sideboard is going to try and beat the following decks, and prioritize them in this order:

 

Zoo

Twin

UWR Midrange

BGx Rock

RG Tron

Merfolk

UR Delver

Scapeshift

 

This is based on a number of factors, including how likely you are to see the deck and how hard it is to board for them, as well as how bad the matchup is.

 

Here is some general advice about what we need to do for each of those matchups.

 

Zoo: We want to have some good early game cards to stop their threats. We should already be playing 4 Path, 2 Wraths, but we want additional cards to interact. We need to remember that Boros Charm is a card, because we don’t want them to blow us out after they blank our Wrath. We also need to note that just comboing out a Wurmcoil or Elesh Norn isn’t going to save us from Paths that they play.

 

Twin: We need counters and any cards that can interact with red or blue based permanents, as those are their win conditions. We’re not particularly scared of the tempo-based versions, mostly the control ones.

 

UWR Midrage: We need ways to deal with turn 3 Geist. It’s hard to answer effectively for us.

 

BGx Rock: 4 Tectonic Edge + 4 Fulminator Mage can be a problem.

 

RG Tron: We need ways to stop Tron early. Our Gifts Combo is actually useless here if we’re not playing Terastodon, and we still need to be careful going for it since they can interact with it.

 

Merfolk: We need ways to guarantee things don’t get out of hand. Wraths are generally just insane against them. They’re going to be attacking us where we can’t block, so just assuming Timely solves the issue out of the gate isn’t good.

 

UR Delver: Similar to how the Geist matchup plays out, or particularly old Delver with Geist, this is going to be a pain. While there’s no Geist we can’t interact with, the tempo provided by cheap counters and interactive spells is going to suck, plus they reasonably put a clock. We need to be able to deal with cheap creatures, and early.

 

Scapeshift: It’s not as popular as it once was, but it was always something like a 50-50 matchup. The problem was always that there’s no good answer to Scapeshift we can provide. Probably Aven Mindcensor is solid. We can’t play Shadow of Doubt, or at least it seems a lot sketchier than Mindcensor. SoD is the kind of card that you want to have the option of casting it on turn 2 to blow them out by stopping the fetch. I’m sure it’d be tech out of our deck, I’d never expect it, but that’s for good reason. Anyways, I think Mindcensor is what you’d want here. I actually don’t think there’s much else. Jester’s Cap is the absolute nuts against them. They’re really slow and will let us resolve it, and you can hit the Valakuts and basically never lose this matchup.

Trying to maximize our odds against all decks is the goal, but we’re going to go for something that’s fine in as many scenarios as we can. We’re also not going to forget the matchups that we don’t care about, because we’ll still play them and still have to decide what happens.

 

First off, let’s go over a typical sideboard that we might play and analyze how it will hold up against these decks. For reference, I assume you play an Academy Ruins in your MB, 2 Timely, and Gifts Combo with Elesh Norn + Iona as the choices (whether you play Mindslaver doesn’t matter at this point).

 

Sideboard: 15

2 Negate

1 Disenchant

2 Relic of Progenitus

1 Torpor Orb

1 Suppression Field

1 Wurmcoil Engine

1 Sundering Titan

1 Terastodon*

3 Spreading Seas

1 Celestial Purge

1 Engineered Explosives

 

*Note that having reviewed the format, I think Iona MB is going to be better in the format. Terastodon was, at one point, a better MB option. But given the current situation, with fewer combo decks where it’s good, I think I’d rather have Iona main. She comes in way too often.

 

Burn - Wurmcoil, Celestial Purge, Explosives

Affinity - Explosives, Wurmcoil, Spreading Seas, Suppression Field, Disenchant

Zoo - Wurmcoil, Purge, Explosives

Merfolk - Disenchant, Wurmcoil, Explosives

Jund - Wurmcoil, Spreading Seas, Purge, Explosives

BGx Rock - Wurmcoil, Purge, Explosives

Melira Pod - Explosives, Purge, Suppression Field, Torpor Orb, Disenchant, Relic

Kiki Pod - Explosives, Purge, Suppression Field, Torpor Orb, Disenchant

Twin - Negate, Disenchant, Purge, Torpor Orb, Suppression Field

Scapeshift - Negate, Spreading Seas, Sundering Titan

Living End - Negate, Relic, Suppression Field

RG Tron - Negate, Suppression Field, Terastodon, Spreading Seas

Faeries - Negate, Torpor Orb, Wurmcoil

UR Delver - Negate, Wurmcoil, Explosives

UWR Midrange - Negate, Sundering Titan

UWR Control - Negate, Sundering Titan

 

Note that the above is just a list of cards that are good in the matchups. This does not necessarily indicate what final boarding would look like, as we may decide certain cards don’t have a high enough impact to be worth it.

Looking at the list of what we bring in, we look at some decks as concerns, and some cards as concerns. First we’ll look at deck concerns:

 

Zoo: We might not board enough. Only 3 cards and they have varied impact. It’s probably enough, but if we can fit another card, that’d be ideal. Considering the list has 2 Wraths, 4 Paths, 2 Timely in the MB, I think the matchup is still okay. We can’t really rely on Gifts so much, but I think we might just have enough to stall. Iona naming white seems okay, I can probably stop enough of their dudes to make it work. I think Elesh Norn is going to be bad just because if they play 3-4 Paths, I can get blown out. When I can’t kill Kird Ape, Loam Lion, Goyf, Nacatl, it’s not worth it.

 

Melira Pod: We board a lot for a favourable matchup. It may be time to revisit all the cards we brought in and decide that we don’t need to play all these cards, or we may just be boarding a lot of cards in against them where we shouldn’t (like maybe Disenchant isn’t that great to hit only Pod).

 

Scapeshift: It’s hard to really interact with them, and we’re more so just trying to get value. The only point to bringing in Spreading Seas here is that we draw a card off it and we can sometimes mess up math if they go the Primeval way. We probably have enough cards to board out for them though. And even if we don’t board Spreading Seas, we’re just not doing much against them.

 

RG Tron: This is probably fine for us, but the matchup still sucks a lot. Like I’ve pointed out before, we might just want to scoop this matchup. It would have to make up more than 10% of the meta for me to care, and I don’t think it will. Stats from GP KC showed it at 6.67%, GP Prague at just under 6%. Reasonably speaking, those are odds where I’m actually willing to scoop the matchup.

 

UWR Midrange: We still lose to Geist plain and simple. We didn’t actually accomplish making that matchup better. That said, I’m really hoping the card sees less play.

Card Concerns:

 

Relic: This card ends up under performing. We’re boarding a card here that’s being boarded in against two decks, both of which we have favourable matchups for. It may be time for us to decide that we don’t actually need to grave hate. In a completely open meta, it’s hard not to, but if we’re expecting these decks to show up, it’s likely the wrong card to bring. I really need to see where the format goes because if people start playing decks like Dredgevine and Loam again, I may reconsider. If people are playing just the above, then I’m not in a mood to care.

 

Sundering Titan: This card is under question as well. We just de-facto bring it in against any 3+ colour deck where Iona/Elesh Norn doesn’t seem strictly better. It’s a little bit clunky since it offers itself no protection, and basically just tries to be fat and get in the way. If they Path it, they could just win on board potentially. It seems like it doesn’t pull its weight. While initially it wasn’t that bad, the fact of the matter is, we may not get enough ahead off it, or they can work around it. Extremely aggressive decks can perhaps still work around. In lieu of that, we may want to consider something else that just does work. Inkwell Leviathan would be my first suggestion. It’s good against Geist (insanely good), and can efficiently attack into people. And like the other cards, it protects itself. Against a deck where a few key creatures getting in is important, one giant blocker can do some work.

Wurmcoil: This came in roughly half the matchups. It may be worth reconsidering whether we want it MB or SB. It’s a solid enough card on its own, and even though it’s not spectacular in some matchups, it’s almost never going to be downright bad. A 6/6 lifelink + deathtouch for 6 is never a bad thing.

 

Negate: This also came in roughly half the matchups. We may want to reconsider our deck in two ways. First would be having some sort of hard counter in the MB (if we don’t have one), and second would be whether the card is too vague or not. It may turn out it doesn’t actually solve any of our problems, just sort of helps against decks randomly. It’s a very vague card in that it’s use is very wide.

 

Explosives: This came in more than half the time. It actually suggests, on average, the card is better in the deck than not. Considering that we can try to facilitate fetching for a guaranteed Wrath, this is actually looking better in the MB than in the SB. One caveat to that is that we may want to play a black source to facilitate x=3. It seems like a bad idea given what it’ll do for our deck, but at some point we may just do the math and figure out exactly how much strain on the mana we cause.

So trying to find better answers, we look at the decks we want to crush again:

 

Zoo

Twin

UWR Midrange

BGx Rock

RG Tron

Merfolk

UR Delver

Scapeshift

Zoo

 

Against Zoo, we’d like to have Wrath effects and general creature stall. We also wouldn’t mind spot removal as well, we just need to deal with them playing a bunch of dudes.

 

Timely

Explosives

Hallowed Burial

Porphyry Nodes

 

Playing more Timely is never going to be bad if we want to beat aggro. It comes down on turn 3 and it’s a reasonable card. It stalls for two turns on average and I’m quite happy about that. It also synergizes well with Elesh Norn if you get lucky to have that happen. I’m a huge fan of it and there’s a reason we play it MB a lot.

 

Explosives / Hallowed Burial are just options for more Wraths. They offer different cases for us. Explosives is really great against the Small Zoo iterations playing a bunch of 1-drops. It can also be cast much sooner, as early as turn 2. It’s also quite good against other decks like Affinity, where it can hit multiple targets on something like x=2 and hit non-creature permanents (Cranial Plating is a big one). Hallowed Burial, on the other hand, is great against Melira Pod and Living End, since it gets rid of things for good. It also costs more, and has to be cast at once, so it’s a bit slower against these aggressive decks like Zoo.

 

Porphyry Nodes happens to just be a card I think will be solid here. It causes an opponent to decide whether they can race it or lose out on an entire turn. So slowing down a deck like Zoo one full turn is great. Combined with Timely, we can force a lot of bad situations for them. Yes, it’s a little slow, and yes, sometimes it will suck. But on average, it’s likely going to do some work and hit multiple things. I’m quite happy to go turn 1 Porphyry Nodes on the draw and make them sac their Nacatl or whatever.

Twin

 

Twin is odd because there’s so many things we can do. Since we’re light on removal and counters, I suspect they don’t try to tempo us out of the game. Post-board they’ll side out Bolts in favour of more counters. I’m okay with that I suppose, I’ll play proactive cards:

 

Torpor Orb

Suppression Field

Negate

Disenchant

Celestial Purge

 

Realistically, I want to just bring in cards that interact with the combo. These are the best I can come up with. Torpor Orb and Suppression Field happen to stop the combo completely, and are proactive. The best part about Torpor Orb is that it doesn’t interact with us, since we have no ETB, and it costs only 2, so we can get it down way before they go off. Suppression Field costs more, but interacts in other ways with other decks, though still stopping the Twin player.

 

Negate is just a general purpose card for us here, since they typically play 4 Twin, and 0-2 Kiki, but play a ton of counters that we’d love to interact with. Negate is more relevant in the control version, so it is more version dependant than the other two. Especially against us though, I suspect they will go for a controlled approach (post-board) and try to win from the combo. They don’t have time to stall out a tempo win since we clock them.

 

Pithing Needle isn’t as good as it seems here. You’re forced to name Kiki, Pestermite, or Exarch. Depending on the list though, it could be very good. Some lists play fewer Pestermites so you’re better off naming Exarch. The list Kachapow ran at GP Prague had 4 Pestermites, 2 Twins. So really, it’s difficult to accurately name. You’d love to be proactive with Needle but you can’t particularly afford it. Especially if there’s a Kiki in the list (Kachapow had none), then two choices becomes three and it’s just a mess.

 

Disenchant and Celestial Purge both accomplish the same thing in this matchup. On one hand, Purge hits all the combo wins, and on the other hand, Disenchant hits Spellskite as well. Both hit Blood Moon, which is really nice.

UWR Midrange

 

For this deck, I’m primarily scared of Geist and Remand. Geist for the fact that it’s 6 damage with hexproof and we don’t play blockers. For Geist, this is like the ideal deck. Remand I’m scared of because it blanks flashback on Unburial Rites. I’d like to just play cards that profitably interact with Geist

 

Mana Leak / Condescend

Porphyry Nodes

Timely

Supreme Verdict

 

While I generally think hard counters are bad for us, or rather not as good as their potential, I think it might be good in this matchup. Stopping Geist indefinitely is something we want to accomplish. It can get out of hand really easily.

 

I’m actually quite fine with Porphyry Nodes as an answer. Sure, I take 6, but they’re losing that Geist for sure, which I want to happen.

 

Timely is still very good here. I always triple block to be sure, knowing that Eletroylze sucks. I’d rather take the chance Geist dies than prevent 6 damage when I’m taking 12 in the air.

 

Supreme Verdict is particularly good because it must resolve. While it’s often a tad slow, I think the deck can support it. Generally speaking, the decks I want a Wrath against aren’t blue so the uncounterable isn’t so relevant. But if we really do want a third Wrath, this might be the one to consider.

BGx Rock

 

This is actually a difficult matchup to board for because they do a lot of different things. Goyf is quite strong against us, especially since we want to discard artifacts that make it better. We have to deal with 4 Fulminator Mages post board in addition to the 4 Tectonic Edge main, and probably Oozes at some point as well.

 

Crucible

Wraths

Mana Leak/Spell Snare

 

It’s really not easy to board for this deck to be quite honest. They don’t exactly play a linear strategy that you can easily counter. So in general I just want cards that would be good in certain situations.

 

Crucible is good for the LD problem. It’s still the best answer we have there. If you’re playing it main then that’s even better. Especially since the DRS ban, you’re basically fighting off Ooze for Mindslaver lock. It’s not exactly ideal there but it’s not horrible either.

 

Wraths are just generally going to be good against Scavenging Ooze and Goyf. They’re big creatures that basically only get solved from Path. I guess Explosives is fine here, they play a solid number of 3 drops but we’re more scared of Ooze, Goyf, and Bob than the Finks or whatever else we’re going to see. We could play something like Mana Leak or Spell Snare, but we don’t particularly want to pass turn 2 not doing anything. That said…

 

Spell Snare is pretty solid here. It should hit 12 creatures, each of which we want to get rid of (Goyf, Ooze, Bob). So the Spell Snare will do some solid work in fending off three key cards. Mana Leak would be just as solid but it’s worse of a top deck and more expensive. The biggest problem is us wanting to tap out early. I want to go turn 1 Map, turn 2 Signet, or turn 2 crack map. I guess I can go turn 1 Colonnade into turn 2 Map + Snare, it’s not exactly ideal. I suppose Snare is better on the draw since we cast it with 1 mana. But there’s a legitimate concern about the mana cost being castable, since we probably only have 4 or so untapped blue sources on turn 1, you’d have to pay for Fountains.

RG Tron

 

The goal is to not die to Karn. The ways to accomplish that are countering Karn, proactively stopping it, or stopping Tron.

 

Ghost Quarter

Pithing Needle

Aven Mindcensor

Spreading Seas

Terastodon

Vedalken Plotter

Negate

 

GQ for them is the same way as for us: they play few basics and even more so than us, don’t need colour. So I’m really pleased with every time I use it in that matchup. It buys you a turn, and honestly, our GQ for stopping Tron and delaying Karn is worth it every time.

 

Pithing Needle is another nifty card because of how well it interacts. You can stop Map (though it hurts us equally I suppose), stop Karn, Mindslaver, Academy Ruins, Eye of Ugin, there’s enough that’s for sure. I think Karn is almost always the right play into an empty board unless you have other answers for it.

 

Aven Mindcensor, I think, is going to be a turn too slow. On the draw, they’ll have Tron before we can cast it. On the play, they’ll potentially have Tron or have the last land in hand. So it’s just not ideal for us. Yeah we blank them later but honestly, playing this, it’s just too slow. It’s not Shadow of Doubt, that’s for sure.

 

Spreading Seas has been wonderful for me. Turning Tron lands into Islands is pretty good for a deck that can’t use Islands. It’s an early enough play like the Shadow of Doubt and also draws the card, like Shadow of Doubt. Against them it might as well be the same card. They have ways to kill it, like Karn or O-Stone, so it’s not strictly better. But for the most part I’m not concerned if their play is something like Karn exile the Seas, or O-Stone to blow up a Seas.

 

Terastodon is quite clearly the nuts. Blowing up lands is exactly what we want to do. It doesn’t always win but it’s the best bet and only takes up one slot. Gifts happens to be really slow here if you don’t interact otherwise though, so without something early like Spreading Seas there’s going to be some luck to get him down. I’m a decent enough fan of running the one slot for it, because without anything, you’re losing this matchup.

 

Vedalken Plotter seems really strong. It’s a bit slow but hey, it’s insanely powerful. You basically trade them an Island for a Tron land. It lets you assemble your Tron and leave them wanting. It fares pretty well to be honest. There’s not a lot 3-mana cards can do against turn 3 Karn, but as far as this goes, it’s quite good. And let’s be real, most of the time it’s turn 3 Tron, turn 4 Karn.

 

Negate is surprisingly good here. I just want to stop Karn, but stopping random crap like O-Stone, Sylvan Scrying, or even just a Map can be quite good. I don’t want them to keep advancing their game. And with Negate, it’s a nice general board card. It’s great in enough other matchups that I often end up playing some number of them. Since we really just need to stop Karn, we can afford to make room for them.

Merfolk

 

This matchup is one where we really don’t want Timely. In fact, we want exactly two things. Something that can kill a multitude of blue creatures, particularly in the 2-drop slot, and something that can stop turn 1 artifacts.

 

Pithing Needle

Engineered Explosives

Disenchant

 

Pithing Needle is INSANE against Aether Vial. You simply stop the Vial completely, on the spot. It doesn’t get to activate, they get no free creatures. Now you’re probably thinking “but what if they don’t draw turn 1 Vial, then what?”. We can hit Thassa, or we can hit Mutavault. So with a possibility of 10 cards it can hit (1/6th of their deck), I’m completely okay with this card. More than okay, I think this is probably the best possible card.

 

Explosives for 2 is also quite good. Most of their lords are 2-drops. Roughly half their creatures are 2-drops so I’m happy to cast that. Sometimes you might want to hit the Vial at x=1 and hope to catch their Cursecatcher or something, and it even has implications at x=0 to hit Master of Waves tokens.

 

Disenchant is a de-facto answer to Vial. It’s not my go to card, but if we’re already running one, I’ll bring it in. I wouldn’t add this to my board explicitly to hit Aether Vial, it’s not that great, and there are better answers like Pithing Needle.

UR Delver

 

My concern with this deck is how much tempo they’re capable of. Racing us with burn and a protected Delver is a real threat. Especially in the board when they can bring in Blood Moon, Spellskite, Negate, etc, they can really just tempo us out of the game.

 

Spellskite

Wraths

Timely

Wurmcoil

 

The problem in this matchup is boarding relevant threats. Iona naming blue is still very good for us.

 

Timely is so obviously insane here. They’re basically playing cheap creatures and Bolting us. I’m basically always gaining 6 and getting 3 creatures, which can now block and trade with an assortment of creatures. Similarly the Wurmcoil should be good. Not enough of their creatures have flying and they have to double Bolt a Wurmcoil or Vapor Snag it, and I think the Snags should come out since they can’t hit our face with them.

 

Spellskite will block a lot of things for us. Not just creatures but spells too. Sometimes leaving up a blue to fog a Bolt is going to be relevant.

 

Wraths are going to be nice since they often swarm the board with Pyromancer and tokens. You just can’t justify boarding into Negates when they play a lot of creatures.

 

It’s possible Mana Leaks are solid enough. We need to stave off early game against them. However, unlike some decks, this deck should still perform okay against us if they fall behind. I really just want to guarantee my Iona comes into play, because naming blue should be brutal. As much fun as naming red could be, Vapor Snag is a card. They should probably actually board it out against us though.

 

Explosives is still a card, but significantly worse than normal. The typical list is going to play Delver, Lavamancer, Snapcaster, Pyromancer, and Clique. It’s just too spread out of a cmc range to want to bank on it. I’ll probably still bring it in if my board has it, but this deck isn’t going to make me want to play it. Remember that Delver flipped has a cmc of 0, so you’ve really just got a broad spectrum. You’ll almost always hit something but whether it does enough is up for debate. I honestly think Pyromancer should come out against us since we play Wraths. So if they just go Delver, Snapcaster, Clique, that’s just way too spread out for it to hit enough cards.

Scapeshift

 

This seems like one of the more difficult decks to board for. Let’s assume they’re playing a stock Titanshift list, so they’ve got 4 Primeval Titans 4 Scapeshift. What exactly do we do? I guess we need to leave in Paths or Wraths, something to deal with Titan. Fine. But then we also need to board into counters to interact with them.

 

Negate

Sundering Titan

Aven Mindcensor

 

Negate is just a general card, yet again. It stops Scapeshift and that’s what matters. It would suck if they cast a Counterflux but yeah, not much to do about that.

 

Sundering Titan is potentially great. They have a very fine balance around their lands, so destroying even a single Mountain can be relevant, and it’s possible to hit 3 off of Sundering Titan and shocks. Especially if they play the Prismatic Omen version, then it’s just a complete blowout.

 

Aven Mindcensor is actually one of the few cards that’s good here. It stops both Scapeshift and Prime Time, it attacks them, and it is hard to deal with. They probably board out Bolts against us, so there’s just maybe 3 Izzet Charms, and even they seem meh against us. I’d probably keep those in if I were them just because of the flexibility.

So after all of this is done, what do we find?

 

Some amount of additional Wraths are good. Which ones? It’s hard to say, really. We want a mix of them for different decks. Supreme Verdict is good against UWR Midrange, Explosives is good against Zoo and Merfolk, and against BGx Rock any Wrath seems good, and I guess Explosives is solid enough. If we consider Timely, it’s also good against various decks.

 

I think I would propose moving Explosives to the MB actually. Third MB Wrath seems powerful and it’s fairly easy to turn on. I don’t like a lot of other options for the Wrath. Supreme Verdict seems unreliable and Hallowed Burial is slow. I’d probably still want 2 Timely in the 75. A Gifts package of Wrath, Day, Explosives, Timely seems quite powerful. Depending on where the meta ends up, Supreme Verdict might be worth it. I can do the math and see that it’s going to be unreliable to cast on turn 4, but if we’re okay waiting an extra turn, it may end up okay. I think though, I’d rather have an extra Timely in that slot. Particularly against Geist decks, I’m expecting to take a Geist hit and then resolve this, gaining all the life back. Again, the decision on how many and of what we play depends largely on what the lists look like. If Geist decks are running a lot of Electrolyzes, the Timely is less desirable.

 

Porphyry Nodes seems like it might actually work out in some matchups. It at least seems solid enough for me to want to test it. I can’t really say whether it’s a good idea or not without generating some results out of it. In particular, I need to see how good it is against the average Zoo matchup.

 

I think I still want some number of Torpor Orb / Suppression Fields. I’ve always been a fan of 1-1 as opposed to 2-0 simply because Suppression Fields can hit a number of cards Torpor Orb can’t (like anything with Cycling).

 

Pithing Needle can be a very good card. It’s possible 1-2 make it into the board this time around. Even in matchups where I don’t exactly want it, it can be okay. Even against BGx Rock, I can name Lili, Tec Edge, Fulminator Mage, Scavenging Ooze - okay, maybe I actually do want it in against them. I’m probably at least considering it as a 1-of.

 

Celestial Purge vs Disenchant is a real debate. Disenchant hits a large number of cards Purge can’t, like anything in Affinity, Spellskite, and Aether Vial. Purge hits a lot of things Disenchant can’t though, like Bob or any red creature in RDW. My inclination is to say a 1-1 split is best, particularly because of Gifts. A lot of the time that I’d fetch them, they’re acting as spot removal. So if I were to fetch Purge against something like Twin, I’m fetching Purge, Disenchant, Path, and guaranteeing some card that interacts with their combo.

 

Hard counters out of the board seem solid. Maybe it’s possible we want to try out Spell Snare. More Condescends out of the board also sound reasonable. While Mana Leak can be good, I think I’d generally rather avoid it since it’s a bad top deck. I think we’re getting better value from Condescend since we’re likely to hit them as they tap out anyways and it scales better.

 

I feel like punting the RG Tron matchup. I’m going to board nothing for it and hope other cards are solid. I may consider boarding Aven Mindcensor for the Scapeshift matchup, which I’ll bring in against Tron. I’m not particularly upset about this either. The 4 Spreading Seas is a lot of a board requirement for this.

 

I’m not overly impressed by Sundering Titan. I have to reassess how it performs in those matchups. If it does well, that’s great, if not, I’ll cut it.

 

Going forward, here’s my sideboard:

 

1 Timely / Supreme Verdict / Hallowed Fountain

1 Pithing Needle

1 Celestial Purge

1 Disenchant

1 Torpor Orb

1 Suppression Field

1 Wurmcoil Engine

2 Relic of Progenitus

3 Negate / other hard counter

2 Porphyry Nodes / Aven Mindcensor

1 Sundering Titan / Filler

 

Again, for everyone interested, I’m going to update this again once I see the results of the PT.

 

So I finished watching Code Geass and what I have to say is, how do people think this anime is so good? It's okay, but I didn't think it was special and it has a lot of problems that prevent me from liking it further. Foremost is the characters and how they are irrelevant. The story is supposed to involve the characters, and how [spoiler]Lelouch is upset that his mother died and his father didn't do anything, wanting to get revenge on the empire [/spoiler]but obviously the plot derails way too much and introduces way too many irrelevant characters. Shirley is the epitome of this issue. She is your average support character, she likes the main character and is a classmate of his. However, later in the show she starts to become more important[spoiler] as she finds out that he is Zero[/spoiler]. The problem is, when she becomes more important they basically discard her when it's all done. What they do to her is supposed to be some pinnacle and exciting point, but they resolve it in a really stupid way. She basically is never heard from again in the show. They went through all this trouble to put in a plot for her and then just abruptly ended it. Especially with the climax it had, I was just sitting there like "well, gg". Shirley might even be the best character in the story. She shows raw emotions and actually does things. She's the one character that seems real. All the other ones just don't show enough emotion for me to really care about them whatsoever, which is extremely problematic. You really need to make me feel for you to captivate me in a story. Another is Milly and Lloyd's story. They just randomly decide the two of them will get married. It's really spur of the moment, he asks her like on the first time they meet. Old school style like "I'm high ranked, and you're looking to get back some power to your family". They don't know each other or anything and it's just like, why would you even put this in here. It bears absolutely no relevance to the story, and after it happens, you continue as if it never did. There's exactly one scene where they bring it up and one person is like omg and that's it. I understand they need some sort of filler content with the supporting characters to round out the story and world, but damn, this is the worst I've ever seen. Out of nowhere they also introduce another random Geass user. I mean, sure, it kind of had to happen at some point for him to understand how he can use his. It also had to happen so we wouldn't be so surprised when Lelouch lost control of his Geass. It also happened abruptly in a very small side-plot. He showed up during Shirley's 5 minutes of fame, then went away. He showed up again for his own 5 minutes of fame and then went away. It just felt like the author couldn't find a better way to introduce him and integrate him into the story. As for the story itself, I was somewhat let down. The climaxes were not satisfying and I wasn't engaged enough. I suppose it's mostly because I don't give a crap about the characters. They sucked. All of them. I don't even like Lelouch that much. More than a decent amount of animes, his personality has vast differences. There's a side of him that's all "let's stop the empire" and he just goes completely insane trying to destroy them. Then there's the schoolboy side of him where he acts completely normal. And then there's a side of him where he's in the middle, which happens when he's with his siblings from the empire (remembering that he's technically a prince of the empire, so Euphemia is his sister). The biggest problem is that we never really got heartfelt moments with him. He never really displays any weaknesses or raw emotions other than straight anger. So I really don't feel connected to him at all. Characters: 4/10 - You all stink Plot: 5/10 - You never really captivated me ever and didn't have good filler. Production: 9/10 - The production quality is good, looks like they spent a lot of money for nothing Overall: 6/10 Ultimately the story is a huge let down for me. I expected a lot more when it comes recommended to me having liked Death Note and Steins; Gate. I really expected more.

Modern Ban List Post-Discussion

 

The Modern ban list changes saw three changes:

 

Deathrite Shaman banned

Wild Nacatl unbanned

Bitterblossom unbanned

 

These are some big changes that are going to shake up the format and make it new and exciting. For the record, I am pro every choice they made.

 

My predictions were all of the above plus a Preordain unban. I sadly only got 3 of 4 but hopefully next time around they recognize blue is getting shafted a bit. I know exactly where they want to push the format and let’s just say they had better not. The format needs to be diverse and they’re moving it to a “turn my guy sideways” format. But we’ll deal with control being shafted when we see results from the format.

 

Let’s examine them a little closer:

 

Deathrite Shaman ban:

 

Deathrite being banned means the format is no longer a slave to Jund, or just BGx in general. Deathrite Shaman is perhaps the best 1-drop ever printed, it’s so efficient and has basically everything you could ever want for. It costs hybrid mana, it ramps, it’s a 1 / 2 and it has two relevant abilities to interact with grave-based decks.

 

While their decision was basically the above, that it’s too powerful of a card, what really made the difference is how degenerate the format became. Deathrite made BGx a powerhouse. It’s such a strong card because it allows them to curve nicely, ramps their mana, and still deals damage. At the end of the day, your Birds of Paradise is just a 0/1 flier that makes mana, or your Llanowar Elves is just a 1/1 that makes mana. Deathrite happened to be a 1/ 2 that not only made mana but could also deal 2 damage or gain 2 life. While Jund would never play a Birds or something, it’s definitely willing to play a card that still deals damage and ramps. Simply put, it was the right card for Jund to complete them.

 

What it also did was provide grave hate from the MB. Honestly, from the MB is really problematic. Decks like Storm can’t really deal with them exiling the spell they need to win, and Deathrite let them do that. Where combo decks could hope to win game 1 without seeing hate, now they face some hate MB. We saw Storm and Eggs leave the format for other reasons, but did we pay attention to other grave decks? Loam, Dredgevine, and UW Tron all left the format promptly after major win conditions were stifled by Deathrite. The fact that the MB matchup wasn’t bad really struck home. It basically pushed out a ton of decks that were perfectly fair, and stopped any creation of grave-based decks.

 

Ultimately I’m quite happy to see it go. It caused so much inflation of BGx as an archetype and I’ll be happy to see the format adjust.

 

Wild Nacatl unbanned:

 

Wild Nacatl got banned before because it made the format degenerate. Zoo with the Punishing Fire + Grove of the Burnwillows combo made the format just mirrors. We saw the one event where this was most of the field and they really didn’t like it. To be fair though, it was at the World Championships while people were preparing for multiple events. Zoo just seemed to be solid enough with no testing. It certainly doesn’t seem broken in the format right now.

 

I don’t think a 3/3 for 1 is inherently powerful. I don’t think it’s more degenerate than anything else the format could do. Since the format’s aggro mostly relied on Affinity, I’m glad to see the diversification. While people could board Stony Silence as aggro hate and be done with it, cards like Timely Reinforcements are going to make a shine again.

 

I like having this diversity. I like change, at least for the format. I’m also going to have fun playing Firespout / Anger of the Gods.

 

Bitterblossom unbanned:

 

First off, I just want to say how ridiculous it is that the unbanning quadrupled the price. I’ve see it at 70s and that’s absurd. Wizards pls.

 

Anyways, I think this card is also quite fair. The whole reason it got banned was based on its strength in Standard. What Wizards failed to realize is that this isn’t Standard. The card pool is more extensive, and decks are better. While BB is still a solid card the fact remains that using Standard to predict the Modern power wasn’t good. The way I like to see it is that if it isn’t extremely powerful in Legacy and hasn’t been banned in Standard, seems fine. Most cards on the list are banned because we know exactly how powerful they will be. We know what Jace and Stoneforge will do, or Skullclamp and the artifact lands. We even know what Seething Song does, or how Second Sunrise makes a turn 3 win viable. With BB what exactly are you going to do?

 

UB Faeries becomes playable, which seems cool. I’m totally down to see a Faeries list and play some tempo games. I think it’ll be quite strong and make a good impression early. While it’s not the draw-go control I’d hope for, a tempo deck returning seems cool after Delver basically got mangled.

 

It’s also likely to be the Deathrite replacement. I feel like BB is worse than Deathrite but it’s not a bad option. They’re not going to need to splash white anymore either, since BB produces enough fliers. It also inherently makes Goyf better as there’s more enchantments and tribal types to buff it.

Why I thought Preordain should have been unbanned:

 

Preordain isn’t inherently broken right now. If we recall why it got banned in the first place, everyone was playing Storm and Twin. Storm had Ponder and Preordain, as did Twin, and Storm still had Seething Song back then too.  You had a lot of consistency and it was clear the decks were too strong. But look at the format now:

 

1. Storm is banned out. Reprinting Ponder probably wouldn’t fix that. Seething Song was just too much for competitive viability. Maybe part of that has to do with Deathrite main, so perhaps a combination of Preordain unbanned and Deathrite banned makes it at least playable. Seething Song seems better than Preordain to me, so the deck getting a bit stronger again seems fine.

 

2. Twin gets stronger. I think the marginal increase from Serum Visions to Preordain isn’t enough. Preordain is a lot better, you’re no longer blindly drawing. That said, fixing your draw once or twice a game isn’t exactly game breaking. Twin isn’t broken, but I think this change makes it a real contender for best deck. I’m also okay with that because it’s easy to hate out the combo. There are so many cards like Torpor Orb that just crush it and I think I can live with that.

 

3. Control gets stronger. I dislike how control plays no 1-drop sorceries. On the play you basically slam your Colonnade and pass, or fetch for a tapped land. The first advantage I get is a Think Twice on turn two, and I’m potentially facing mass threats. A good 1cmc card to draw would be nice. It would just be nice to have a bit better selection for us to ensure we consistently draw what we need.

 

4. Delver gets better. I always thought it was problematic that Delver never played Serum Visions. Serum Visions is just so bad that unless you need a combo piece you can’t justify it. Delver in Legacy would sometimes run more than 8 deck manipulation spells, and for them to completely avoid them in Modern speaks to how bad Serum Visions is. Preordain might just make it playable again.

 

It’s quite possible they tested it and found out Twin becomes too strong. It’s legitimately a concern and I accept that. I can’t ever say whether they did or didn’t, and I suspect they didn’t. Still, I’m definitely concerned that it may result in them never being able to make good CA for control decks.

 

Ultimately I’m still left feeling like there needs to be a good non-combo blue card. Maybe Jace is the answer? I don’t think Twin wants to play it and it makes control good once again. I’m not exactly sure where control is right now, we’re going to have to wait and see where the format goes. My inclination is that UWR stops playing Geists and goes to 4 Bolt, 4 Helix, 2 Firespout, 2 Electrolyze, and just try and grind out Zoo. I think Firespout is going to be very good, since it can kill everything without 4 toughness.

After the bans I’m left satisfied. I’m much happier to see the changes they made rather than no change. The format needs to change and not remain stagnant, and this definitely shakes it up. Again, I’d like to see a solid blue card enter the fray but at the end of the day this is certainly a good change.

 

I'm more than half way through now, time to document what I think. At the time of this I'm finished episode 14.

I started watching the anime because it is recommended for people who like Steins; Gate and Death Note, two of my favourite anime. While I've said what I think about Steins; Gate, I think Death Note might actually be my all-time favourite. At least up until the main arc ends anyways. I watched the entire 30-somewhat episodes in 24 hours, it was that captivating. Anyways, time to get back to the review...

I like the setting. A futuristic Japan after a takeover by Britannia. It seems much like what I wanted out of Steins; Gate, to see the future. I imagine this is much like what the Steins; Gate future was, although toned down a little bit. This much, I like.

Lelouch is meh to me as a main character. I always have a soft spot for these brilliant main characters, but other than that I don't care much for him. He hasn't really done much to make you care for him, especially since as Zero he implores a lack of emotion.

The rest of the main characters all seem quite dull. I don't particularly care for any of them and they haven't really interacted in ways to make me care. You know, right now I can sit back and say "yes, I actually do enjoy the characters from Steins; Gate", but I can't really think about these ones the same way. They really just don't make me feel anything for them at this point. They all seem to have a lack of unique personalities as well. The ending of episode 14 is probably the first chance you get to have a real emotional experience, but because I didn't care enough about the characters involved I just didn't care. Steins; Gate had spent enough time developing characters that I cared when it happened at roughly the same point in the story.

There's also an abnormally large cast for such an anime. It's mostly to facilitate the story but it feels largely rushed to me (in the sense that the plot moves quickly and is not fleshed out). Like I'm just watching them go from point a->b->c and there's no divergence. I suppose Steins; Gate is horrible to compare to because of the actual story and how non-linear it is, but it's not the only show that has a non-linear plot.

Again thinking back to Steins; Gate, what I really appreciate are the small quirks characters had. Okabe believing he was some mad scientist or Mayuri saying "too to roo", those are what make me care about the character, even if they can get annoying.

You see, the story takes such a precedent in this anime. The characters aren't given enough time to interact and just show their personalities. You need to actually spend time developing characters to a point that I can care about them. This was exactly the reason why the famous book The Eye of the World by Robert Jordan took me forever to finish; I just couldn't get behind the characters. It wasn't the only reason it took so long, let's be clear, but it was one of the leading reasons. What got me through was how solid the story was.

The story in Code Geass doesn't impress me enough. It all seems so removed at times and a lot of it doesn't connect well. Lelouch being in school and being Zero don't really mesh well together. Oh, they tried, but I actually didn't care that much when it happened.

At this point there's only 11 episodes left and I might as well continue. I've heard so many good things that I can afford to invest another few hours to finish it. Ultimately I'm let down, but you normally are when you have high expectations. Still, I seem more let down than normal. Like I'm somewhat let down with Fairy Tail since it's so highly praised, but at least the anime is solid enough that I have little in the way of complaints.

Let's revisit when I finish this in the coming days and can decide whether I ultimately enjoyed it or not.

So this isn't a Magic blog, I just need somewhere to write about this. Just finished watching this anime and wanted to write a review about my thoughts on it.

Story: 8/10

The story is about a teen named Okabe and his friends who discover they have a microwave that can transport messages to the past. However, they need to learn how to use it without getting caught by SERN, a company that has also been prying into learning about time travel.

I thought the story was very solid. At times I was very impressed with it, other times it was just okay. The story definitely has its gripping moments, and there were some where I needed to sleep but had to continue watching, and a few moments that gave me goosebumps. For sure my jaw dropped once in shock.

Since science played a large role I was quite impressed with how factual it seemed. They seemed to have put a solid effort in researching things to make it seem real enough.

Characters: 7/10

Maybe I'm sentimental, but I enjoyed the characters. They seemed to be a good mix, and I suppose I enjoyed them more since they seemed relatable, being teens and all. At the same time, the characters seemed quite one-dimensional at times. You could pin-point their reaction to a situation and it felt a little lacking. I cared reasonably enough when some things happened, though I suspect I could have cared a lot more if they had given me the time and characterization. You get to care for characters very easily in story-driven stories simply because you spend the entire time around the few characters and have no world building. So for the characters in this story, it's very easy to want more from them.

Length: 6/10

I feel like the length was a problem. The story pacing seemed to be off for me. At some points things just went blistering fast. I guess I wasn't too upset with the slow moments, though comparing to the highs, it felt a lot worse. I know a good story needs these lows though, and I suspect we could have had longer lows to build up the impact and get in the development the story desperately needed.

The show is also only 25 episodes long, so it felt extremely short. Like it was a short story and that was it. These always upset me because once I start enjoying the characters I want more.

Production Value: 9/10

I was quite impressed with the production. The animation was good and the dubbed voice acting was very solid.

Overall: 8/10

If you're looking for some story about time travel, look no further. It's definitely worth your time to watch, I enjoyed it for sure.

----------------------

Spoiler Review:

For anyone that's seen it, this is a review of it with actual information about the show. Don't read this if you haven't watched it, it will contain massive spoilers.

[spoiler]

Story:

I actually did enjoy the story and think it was good. A bunch of teens who discover time travel is interesting. I felt like some execution was off though.

One thing I hated was for a story about time travel, there was very little of it. I would have loved to see an alternate future flesh out. There are two futures in particular, the one where SERN controls the world and the one where WW3 happens. I would have enjoyed watching either of them with these characters and see what happens. I suppose the latter may not make a good story, since it's relatively quickly that WW3 happens and our cast probably isn't relevant in such a future, given Kurisu dies and no time travel from their end comes about. The former though, where SERN controls the world, would be interesting. Kurisu, Daru, and Okarin are all relevant people in that future, as Kurisu becomes the mother of time travel, Okarin tells us how to save the future (and presumably is an important figure in time travel development), and Daru invents his own time travel machine as well. Plus Okarin and Kurisu die as well.

Going towards the highs, the first excitement happened on episode 12 when Mayuri dies. When that happens I was really hooked, it's supposed to be a gripping event. That said, I was hooked more for the fact that "OMG plot twist" as opposed to "OMG Mayuri died". Which is really telling about just how much I care for the characters. Oh, I still like them decently enough and wish there were more episodes right now, but at that time, I just didn't care enough. I felt like such a huge plot twist came a little too fast. I would have liked to get a better feel for the characters when that happened.

I think from the point they get the IBN and start hacking SERN up until Mayuri's death episode and finding out Suzuha is Titor, the story drives itself forward. The characters honestly just go through the motions and you never really flesh them out. Yeah we see Okabe struggle with seeing the jelly people, but there could have been so much more. No hesitation making the time leaper? No soliloquies or flashbacks? They could have easily added an episode or two and give me some time. If the story just goes too fast, then I can't enjoy it fully. For that reason, I really enjoyed the last episode where they go to America. Despite the story being over, it gives us a chance to get to know the characters, and it also gives us some closure.

Obviously right now I'm going to want more from these characters. I just finished watching a series, and you always want more from them. I think in a few days I'll start to forget about them. Maybe because I normally don't want anime that takes place in reality, I normally don't relate to the characters enough. As a programmer, Daru seems very similar to myself, so it's sort of in the feels.

Characters:

Okabe: I felt his character was fairly straight forward. It starts to develop a bit at the end but I still think it's linear. On one side we have Hooin who's this mad scientist; pretty typical characterization of him, he's conceited, narrow minded, and convicted. On the other hand, you have Okabe, who's this petty scientist who, when you boil down to things, just wants to be accepted and have some friends. He also cares a lot for his friends, which seems logical for someone who's really just happy he has them. I feel like his personality probably should have had some higher extremes. I'm not exactly happy to have some wishy-woshy lead to fall for.

Kurisu: I think I like her character the most. She's much like Okabe, wanting to be accepted by her father and become an accredited scientist. At the same time, she displays a lot of the same traits with her social awkwardness. Her character seems to have the most flexibility in characterization, which is probably why I like her the most. She's definitely a lead I can get behind.

Mayuri: She seems like she's 10, though she isn't. That's basically her in a nutshell, a 10 year old girl. She likes cosplay and collects a lot of junk. She's also very quiet and reserved, rarely voicing her opinion and feeling out of place a lot. I'm not sure what to make of her since she's really out of place in the story. She doesn't really serve any purpose other than dying for the plot. She has no scientific knowledge and doesn't help otherwise.

Daru: I guess I relate to him the most given he's much like me; a lazy kid who's good with computers. He's also what I envision of a stereotypical 16 year old computer wiz. Ultimately I'm okay with his character, but he was extremely one-dimensional. He can hack and he loves anime, especially cosplay; show him the bewbs and you'll have him like putty.

Moeka: I can't stand Moeka. The story needs someone to play the infiltrator but she had no personality. Well, let's not say no, she was a depressed loner looking for attention and purpose, but that made for a mopey character that did almost nothing. I really thought the future her was out of character and I want to know how things came to be. Then again, we never saw her do anything with regards to FB in the present, so we can't see if her conviction to FB would actually make her become so ordered.

Ruka: Another character I'm fine with. Much like Mayuri she serves a purpose for the plot and that's it. I was really happy to see the date episode though, I thought it did wonders for the characters and my care for them. It's hard to really like characters if all they do is drive a story forward.

Faris: Serves almost the same role as Ruka in driving the plot forward. Both have a D Message to revert and both have some connection to the IBN 5100. I don't care either way really, she wasn't that important.

Suzuha: I like Suzuha. She had a nice upbeat attitude despite knowing what would happen if she failed. I also enjoyed having someone from the future, cause let's face it, the entire story took place in the present. She reminds me a lot of Chie from Persona 4, maybe that's why I enjoy her. Or maybe she's more like Yosuke from P4. Either way, she had a distinct personality that was much different from the rest.

At the end of the day though, I think I will remember the characters. They just hit home with me and I enjoyed them well enough. I'm often more critical than necessary. For all the flak I give them, I do relate to them and I will remember the time spent in the lab. I think mostly because that's the sort of thing I would do: get a few good friends and hang out at some meeting space all the time. I've done it enough at school, just a bunch of us programmers in the lab.


At the bottom line, I enjoyed the story. It was gripping and entertaining, and had an interesting subject. Characters were good enough to keep me wanting to see more of them. I'm a little disappointed at the length, though I see there's some supplementary stuff, so I'll have to check that out.

I'm someone who has played a lot of Modern. I mean A LOT. I almost exclusively play Modern now, aside from drafting when I can, EDH for fun before/after FNM, and the occasional cube. All-in-all, I'd say 90% of the Magic I play is Modern right now. And I've played a ton of Modern in the past too, more than I do now (though lower percentage, aka I played more Magic). Since roughly around GP Lincoln, which saw Assault Loam take first, UW Tron top 8, and Melira Pod make its first splash, I've spammed Modern as much as I could.

Modern appealed to me for several reasons:

1. The format was reasonably cheap. Back then, fetches were still at a normal price (curses for not buying them). You could build a competitive deck for a couple hundred dollars and feel good about it. It was fairly close to Standard prices, or maybe double, which was very good. Back then, I had a somewhat limited budget, almost no cards, and a want to play Standard, Modern, and EDH.

2. It's non-rotating. That means when I invest in a deck, the deck doesn't suddenly become completely unplayable. It could become bad in a given meta, but that's different than "you're not allowed to play this anymore". When you're on a budget, these things appeal. We'd all like to skip and go for Legacy, but it's expensive (and Modern is honestly a nice and healthy format on its own).

3. You can play whatever you want. Maybe a competitive deck in colours X, Y, and Z with cards A, B, and C, and play style D doesn't exist, but if you want to play a certain archetype, it does exist. This is mostly to say you can play combo. Especially when I started, Storm was strong, and later Eggs became a deck. You could reasonably play non-interactive combo, you could play interactive combo (Pod), you had reasonable options. I've seen the format have Storm as top tier, Pod as top tier, Jund as top tier, UWR Control as top tier; basically every kind of deck has been really good, and the meta has shifted a lot. Who remembers the days when everyone brought a Delver variant?

4. Wizards cares reasonably for it. While I don't agree with their bans necessarily, I at least accept they do indeed watch the format. When you ban Wild Nacatl, a card that's just a vanilla creature, it shows they're willing to put an effort into keeping it healthy. They've also stuck to their guns; they wanted a turn 4 earliest win (given reasonable consistency), and have banned all these fast win combos. Again, while I don't necessarily agree, they at least told us this was their intention and stuck to it.

Back when I first started, I could only afford one deck. As many of you know, I bought UW Tron. It took me several months to scrape together cards, learning the deck on Cockatrice, and finally building it for a local tournament, where I proceeded to play poorly (likely nervous of the environment, I remember making silly mistakes). I learned that deck as well as anyone. I felt I had mastered it; I knew all the ins-and-outs, knew what to take from Gifts, and tweaked the heck out of the board. I've gone all the way from 4 Karn MB and no Gifts Combo to Gifts + Mindslaver and every iteration in between. I also played Leylines in the board months before that guy Cifka did it at the Pro Tour. I spent a lot of time playing that deck, and thus I helped write the primer (co-authored). You could say it was my baby, I loved that deck.

But eventually all good things must end. UW Tron got to a point where it could no longer contend. Geist was a real problem for it, and so was Deathrite Shaman and Scavenging Ooze. As new cards came out and the format changed, the deck got worse and worse. If you've read some of my other stuff, you know I scrubbed out of another tournament simply because the deck was poorly positioned, while I started the next one 4-0 after changing to what I thought was a good deck. That deck turned out to be UWR Control. I still like it, and it's what I have on MTGO. That said, it's not as well positioned in the meta as it was when I built it (which was shortly after it won the Player's Championships, albeit a slightly different list than I was playing).

Switching decks was a little bit of a tough transition. UW Tron was what I had known. That's not to say I couldn't play other stuff, I've played dozens of decks in the format and know how every major deck worked. Storm, Pod, Jund, Twin, Goryo's Vengeance, heck even sketchy decks like Puresteel Paladin Storm, I knew them all. Tell me a deck, I'd tell you what they were playing. I was like a Modern encyclopedia. Switching wasn't as bad as I thought, since I could reasonably play control and understood the format.

Now I'm branching out yet again. While I currently have the cards for UW Tron and UWR Control, it's time I change a bit. I'm a blue mage at heart; give me counters and card advantage and I'll be there! Delver and Snapcaster? Just alternate names for value and card advantage. Ponder and Mana Leak? Just alternate names for drawing cards and counter. For as long as I've been back playing Magic (since the start of Innistrad), I've been playing blue in every format. I had Spirits, Delver, and Solar Flare when they were around, then went to Bant Flash Control. Heck, I even play Niv-Mizzet in EDH (yes, I'm a dick), with 10 counters. For the first time since, well, forever, I'm looking to play non-control decks.

Over the Christmas break, I purchased the remaining cards for Affinity and Melira Pod. I now have Affinity fully built and Melira almost built, minus some fetches. I'm going to finally play something different. No longer will I be surrounded by tropical islands, but surrounded by swamps and forests, or in futuristic places where ecozones don't exist. Okay, enough crap, I'm sick of it too, but let's look at the branching out:

Affinity is purely an aggro deck. Slam down cheap creatures, and turn them sideways. Use some fun ways to buff them and give yourself resiliency. It'll be different to play aggro, that's for sure. I'm used to "draw-go", and leaving up mana on their turn. It'll definitely be a change to just go balls deep and hope they can't stop me. I have a solid understanding of the deck, I've played against it a ton of times. I also know they can't beat Elesh Norn, it's a good thing UW Tron isn't popular. But I know it will be fun to try bashing their face.

Melira Pod is a midrange/combo deck. I'm not unused to combo, I've played a ton of them. In fact, I'm not unfamiliar with Pod as a whole, having played Kiki Pod for a rather lengthy time. But the deck is different than what I know. I've always played all-or-nothing combos, and I played Kiki Pod back when it was just "combo or lose". Melira Pod looks a lot different too, I have a playset of Meliras in a binder and am only using 1. This deck is going to take some time to learn as well, since not only is it a different playstyle, but a list you have to know inside out due to the mechanics of Pod. Playing it online is one thing, I can look up the list, but in paper? I guess I'll have to solitaire it a bit.

I'm hoping now that I'll have an opportunity to attend some Modern events. I'm getting comfortable with my work/living situation and the whole "not regularly attending FNM" thing. But I'm sure I can sneak in a tournament every now and then on a weekend. Especially with a variety to choose from, it's going to be nice. On top of those decks, I have access to Storm and UR Twin (fetches as well), though we'd have to make two decks work (and now I'm suddenly glad UW Tron and Affinity play their own separate lands and no fetches).

Maybe I'll sneak into a few more primers. The UW Tron primer is all but dead, and the UWR primer gets a bit crazy from time to time, but the Affinity primer looks pretty calm, and hopefully the Melira one isn't bad. And keep asking for advice on decks to play, I'm still spamming that thread with advice for everyone who needs it!

First off, I just want to say that this is for posterity. I don't care who reads it or even cares, I want to remember the day of my first GP. That's right, it's my first GP.

I got there between 8:30-9, got registered. Since I'm local I ran into tons of friends waiting for it to start. It started quite late, like 11:15 or something. They had 1600 players and a lot of people register in the last two days. On top of that, they wanted everyone to sign in, and the lineup was huge. Thankfully I came early that it was 10 people but everyone else was in a lineup of a few hundred. Yeah, bonkers.

Anyways, we get seated and get our stuff. The guy in front of me opens a Thoughtseize, Elspeth, and Xenagos. Someone will have fun with that pool, since he didn't want to drop with it. The pool I got passed to build with had a Thoughtseize, Whip of Erebos, Mistcutter Hydra, and Reaper of the Wilds.

I ended up building a UGb deck splashing for Reaper and Preaka's Mender. It included 2 Voyage's End and a Griptide, 3 Nessian Asp, and 1 Mistcutter Hydra. I thought it was actually fairly good and that I might actually do better than intended.

I don't play a lot of Theros limited, in fact, I can count the times on two hands. Due to my situation at work I just don't have the chances to go to FNM. I don't feel confident in my ability to play but whatever, I just want to have a good time and enjoy my first GP.


Round 1 vs Michael Binnick:

So I sit down for round 1, play against some blue deck. He's got Thassa and Sea God's Revenge (I saw the latter cause he couldn't shuffle properly). I lose game 1 because I miss land drops and he plays turn 3 Thassa.

Game two goes better for me, he stalls on land and I win with 20 life. Sweet. Game three also goes the same way. He stalls on lands and when I resolve Mistcutter Hydra he really can't stop me.

Record: 1-0

I can't believe I'm actually starting 1-0. Well, I guess I expect a bunch of scrubs to show up but he had me from the start it looked like.


Round 2 vs Alex Boyd

Game 1 I manage a Reaper of the Wilds and Aqueous Form. Yeah, I've done it once before in Sealed funny enough and it's pretty hard to beat. Game 2 I get the same thing but also with a Mistcutter Hydra. Hard to deal with when I run well.

Record: 2-0

If I win next round, maybe I play a pro. That would be cool.


Round 3 vs Chris Stoyles

So we're sitting right beside the artist booth and I see Ochoa in line. He ends up spectating the game a bit. I'm actually a little star-struck cause I pay attention to the pro scene. It's pretty cool to see one watching me play.

Game 1 he mulls and I end up grinding out a win. He takes a lot early and then it just became too hard. He did deal a lot in the last couple turns but I grind it out.

Game 2 he just completely outclasses me. At one point I cast Curse of the Swine for 3 on his 3 dudes. Then he casts a Nemesis of Mortals for 2 when he has 5 grave creatures, but 3 should be exiled. Whoops. In fact, Ochoa comes over and points it out. He looks at the board state for a sec and my opponent says "5 creatures in grave" and he says "Curse of the Swine exiles". Oh right! Thanks Ochoa. We simply correct it, he has mana to pay, that's fine. He still crushes me though.

Game 3. He goes Fleecemane into monstrous in a single turn and just blows me out. That card is a beating when you Voltron it.

Record: 2-1

It's still better than I expected but I am kind of sad that I don't get to play a pro. Maybe if I win my next round and the pro loses it'll be fine. I can hope!


Round 4 vs Shehan Salgado

So this guy was no pro, in fact, quite the opposite. He played very slow (we go to time) and he just wasn't taking it seriously from his demeanor and such.

Game 1 I get a Mistcutter and monstrous my Nessian Asp while he stalls on a couple lands early. Easy win.

Game 2 he gets the Double Strike 1/2 red dude for 3 and then Voltrons it. I don't see removal early enough and he just destroys me. The game goes fairly long though but yeah, it's hard when he just draws better.

Game 3. At some point, a friend Sammy T shows up and his buddy DMac. He spectates as I grind out a win on turn 3 of time. I ask him to play faster when we're running out of time but he really didn't. He was one of those people that are like "umm, do I want to play this or this" and just like mull it over a bit. Really annoying. But yeah, he concedes on turn 3 of time, I probably would have actually dealt lethal on turn 5. I would have been really upset if I didn't win that because he played so slow. My last few turns were like attack, play a guy, go.

Record: 3-1

At this point I'm quite happy. X-1 is better than I projected, and now I can maybe play a pro.


Round 5 vs Adam Trudgeon

Again I face another non-serious guy. It kind of pains me that these people are doing fine at the GP. Like, I understand that it's for everyone, but you need to take the competitive REL event seriously if you're going to show up.

A friend of mine playing at the same table is playing against Melissa Del Tora. Cool. He ends up crushing her too.

Game 1, I cast a creature, and I'm laying it on the table as I announce it, not necessarily resolved yet. Within a split second of me laying it on the table, he casts Voyage's End and names it. I immediately think "you can't do it, it hasn't necessarily resolved yet and even if it has it's my priority". I question him for a sec then call for a judge. The judge tells me that I can implicitly pass priority and that he can indeed do that, even if it hasn't necessarily resolved yet. I figured the judge would wind the game state back anyways, especially since my opponent did announce the intended creature. He ends up getting a Prophet out later and then when I go to Curse of the Swine it, he flashes in the 10/10 Colossus. Next turn, land, Monstrous, hit me to 4. He was such an idiot because he had two 2/2s that would kill me if he attacked (I have like one mana up no creatures). I scoop either way though.

Game 2, I get a Mistcutter and Asp and just beat him down. No 20/20s or crap so it goes fine.

Game 3 he gets mana screwed and I just dumpster him. He takes it reasonably well, seems like he knows he's bad. Probably ate him up inside. I'd have been really mad if he won though because he was so bad and he was just not taking the event seriously. If people like this top'd events people would be disgusted.

Record: 4-1

No pro yet but it's looking better and better.


Round 6 vs Justin Dilley

Again I face some non-serious guys. Is this event even serious? Did no pros show up? I know it's false, I saw a handful including: Reid, Huey, Owen, LSV, Shahar, GFabs, Melissa, Sam Black, and Tom Martell. A bunch of favourites in there (LSV obv :P) and I actually like all of them for a change. I even did better than LSV too :P. Anyways...

I actually have no round notes because I dumpstered him really hard. It was over in 2 and it wasn't that close. He had a Shipbreaker Kraken and I think that's how he got that far, cause his deck just wasn't good.

Record: 5-1

LET ME PLAY A PRO! GOD DAMMIT.


Round 7 vs Yaroslav Babich

Finally someone that's taking it seriously, though still not as much as I'd like (talking out loud about misplays).

Game 1 he casts Heliod and Ashen Rider to kill off my large Mistcutter. Even though I did a fair number he just had better bombs than me.

Game 2 goes very long. He casts Bow of Nylea (Jitte Jr.) against me and grinds out a lot from it. The last three turns are literally top deck Ashen Rider and slam it on my big creature, then top deck Grey Merchant into, you guessed it, another Grey Merchant off the top. Nothing much to say, he was dominating me that game and he just had better cards.

Record: 5-2

Well, looks like I may not make day 2, which is perfectly fine, since I have legitimate things to do on Sunday. Still, it would be cool to make day 2 at my first GP.


Round 8 vs Vincent Laberge

Seemed like a decent guy, he's from Montreal. We have a good laugh before the game starts and it's good to keep positive and have fun at the end of a long day. Still have potentially another round but for now let's take it one game at a time.

Game 1, he goes turn 4 foil Xenagos. Yup, nothing to see here, I got crushed pretty hard. A bunch of dudes and I scooped.

Game 2 went VERY long and consisted of me drawing a lot of key cards off the top. I guess sometimes you just need to get lucky to get there at a GP, and if I was ever going to get lucky it was now. I even killed off the Xenagos this game, and a Mistcuter Hydra.

Game 3 I should have lost. He had a Purphorous in play and I actually passed a turn where any red creature in his like 6 cards in hand will win him the game. He was stalled on lands early so I was ahead, but I did give him that opportunity. He didn't have it though, and was forced into some blocks where he likely wouldn't make a comeback.

He joked about how bad GR was and how his testing with his team showed it was unplayable. I guess he confirmed that despite having Mistcutter, Xenagos, Purphorous, two Magma Jet, and other removal.

Record: 6-2

I can't believe I'm actually playing a "win and in" match. Can you believe it? I don't even play the format!


Round 9 vs Ian Loblaw

I'm at table 6. Cool. They even took my picture at one point.

Game 1 he wins. Divine Verdict, 100 Hands, and a slew of just solid cards. At least it was over in like 5 minutes as we both played fast. I want to just find out now whether I'm going home or not cause it's already midnight.

Game 2 he gets stalled on no black mana and I demolish him. I'm one game away from doing it!

Game 3 he just outclasses me. Grey Merchant, a ton of removal. To be fair, I scooped with my only two black cards and no black sources. Still, he had Sip of Hemlock AND Hero's Downfall in hand, I wasn't going to win.

Record 6-3.

I'm a little upset I had to wait until 12:30 to find out I'm going home but I still had a good time. I never would have guessed I'd do this well at my first GP in a format I don't play, and I really can't complain.


I went home with a friend, grabbed a pizza, then got home and collapsed. I was there for 15 hours, and I actually didn't get a chance to eat all day.

The event really could have been run a lot better. There's almost no coverage still (still ongoing) and I'd love to stream a top 8. It's really stupid but whatever. At least I enjoyed myself and that's what counts. I got my money back just from the cards I opened in my pool, so the experience was free and enjoyable. I'd probably go to another one and definitely plan ahead to bring food and whatnot.



PS. Something really awesome happened while I was there. Before one round they announced the police had apprehended a thief at the event and took him out in cuffs. Congrats to the authorities, I'm really glad to see this. You always hear horror stories from people that they lost their stuff and as a player, you feel for them, because it'd suck for you. At least we can confirm sometimes people DO get caught red handed.

Scrolls is certainly imbalanced. A specific card in the game has been changed in some way that makes it absolutely insane. I am unsure if this is an intended change or not (I don't believe it is). I also don't know when this happened since it has been a long time since I've tried the card.

Currently the deck I (and a friend) are using is busted. It has an insane win percentage in the initial testing. Since then we've refined the list and we hope to crush ranked. There has been no testing with the refined list yet.

This is just a reference post so that when I need to tell someone I knew about it and was playing it, I was and it was then.

My rating as of now is 1568. I am on a 3-game win streak with the deck and have a 75% win ratio in ranked over 4 games, though I attribute the one loss to my lack of understanding of the deck (first time playing it). None of these games are with our finalized list.

Preface

So as many of you know, I've been a die-hard UW Tron player. It's the first deck I played in Modern, first deck I built in paper, and until recently, the only deck I owned. I've always told people how good of a deck I think it is in the format and how underrated it is. Yet now I'm playing a new deck. So I thought I'd run over why I've decided to do this and give everyone some insight.

UW Tron will always be my pet deck. It's something I can call my own (more or less, though credit to LSV where due). I will always think fondly of it and never stop trying to help people with it. That said, I no longer actively play it in the Modern format. It is no longer a very good underrated deck, and it is now just a solid cheapish deck.

So what made me change my opinion? Well, honestly, Ooze just put it over the top for me. There are several bad matchups, but Scavenging Ooze just put a good matchup to a bad matchup and I just can't deal with it. So let's run over some of the bad matchups:

Matchups

Infect
You have to get really lucky, they just go way too fast for you to reasonably interact. Considering there's Vines of Vastwood too, and they can win on turn 3, it's hard to really stop them. So you Path'd there dude and they had Vines? Or you Remanded one spell to still take 5 infect and needing to kill the creature? The thing is, Infect has trouble against something like USA Control with a billion removal spells, but with us having 4 spot removal only, hard to beat.

Nivmagus Combo
Read above. It's mostly the same, except they have Pact or Apostle's Blessing. They protect their dude well enough and win too fast. Good thing Infect sees no play and this sees less. Thank god for Thoughtseize killing this deck completely.

Hexproof Auras
It's hard to beat hexproof creatures in our deck, that's no surprise to anyone. A couple of Totem Armours and the game is done. Cyclonic Rift is HUGE here because it bounces everything at once, but still, that often would come too late and it's only a 1-of at most really.

Twin
Twin isn't terrible, but it isn't great either. Everyone keeps saying it's really quite bad, but I'm not sure I agree. I think it's fairly close to 50/50. You just have spot removal and the thing is, they generally want to wait really long. As long as they don't kill off your stuff (aka Grudge you), you can probably just grind out a game. Iona / Norn straight up win you the game 9/10 times. They don't really play any LD, so you can just grind the game to late game. It's too bad Emrakul is bad in this matchup, but Tron can still Mindslaver lock them fairly reasonably if you go for it.

The last time I played a competitive game against Twin, I know my opponent was good enough at piloting it (he's been to the PT before and he won the event I was playing in) so we basically had about as even as it gets (basically, both good pilots) and just played in terms of the decks themselves. He drew Ancient Grudge opening both games post-board, and I drew only one Purge to answer his Blood Moon, not drawing any Torpor Orbs. I made one misplay fetching for a basic instead of the Tron land to play around Blood Moon, which cost me the game. At the time though, it wasn't even necessarily a misplay since I would have lost to Blood Moon.

Even still, you don't want 50/50 matchups when you have other bad matchups. If you have a lot of decks you can't particularly beat, why do you want more that are still just a coin toss? I'd deal with it, sure, but like, ugh, not another coin toss.

RG Tron
It will always be the worst matchup because Karn kills you. What do you do against t3 Karn? Right, not much. You have probably one hard counter, 4 Remands, and Remand only buys you a turn. The one thing about blue decks is that the small stuff needs to resolve. I can let a Map resolve to counter a Karn, but if they get to the same late game faster, I wonder who wins? The idea is that Gifts combo just blows here because nothing works except Terastodon, which I've played MB before to just deal with it. Got it up to around 40% once, but it hurts you against a lot of other decks I think.

I honestly think it might be worth just punting the matchup if it makes your sideboard better overall, but one Terastodon always tempts me.

UWR Tempo
Geist may as well be 3 mana win the game here. With no hard creature counters, except maybe like a one-of Condescend, and only 4cmc Wraths, it's hard to fight it. You'd need to be on the play and hit all your land drops, or resolve t2 Signet, and then have the Wrath available the correct turn. It's difficult to say the least. With cards like Stony Silence post-board, the matchup becomes a nightmare.

UWR Control
So I'm not sold on how bad this matchup is. It's probably a lot like Twin. That said, it can still be problematic. Every time I've played it, my opponent was able to grind me out just a bit better. Between Tectonic Edge and Sowing Salt, it was easy for them to just go to town on me. I don't get a lot of access to Tron mana making it difficult to do things in the long run. Much like the UWR mirror, I think they can literally burn us out. Probably 50/50, but that's not exactly where I want to be.

Jund / BG Midrange
Bascially the Deathrite Shaman deck that's now also playing Scavenging Ooze. Everything else before was fine, because if anything, the numbers weren't horrible. I do think Twin and UWR are up high in numbers since the last ban, so it really changed things. The meta was shifting to bad matchups. We could count on Jund being okay, but no longer can we do so with Ooze about. Shaman you can play around, it has summoning sickness and taps. Ooze is basically 1 cmc fog your Gifts Combo. It attacks, gets bigger, and is Shaman 5-8 against us. I suppose the matchup isn't horrendous if you play around the Ooze, but it's not exactly fun. Add in that Jund can play Path and it's not pretty.


Testing It Out

So where did all of this put us at? I wasn't exactly in a spot where I wanted to play this deck. It didn't feel like a good choice anymore. As the meta naturally shifted to bad matchups, and good cards against us got printed, I felt like UW Tron was poorly positioned. Still, I decided to take it to a local tournament.

In the tournament I went 1-3 drop. I played against Twin, 2x UWR Midrange, and some homebrew Junk deck. Want to guess which one I beat? The fact of the matter was, UW Tron was a bad choice. I knew it the moment I got there, but it's what I had and I was willing to stick with it. I didn't particularly misplay, and I felt I was playing reasonably well. The only issue were the situations I got forced into.

The game against Twin was extremely close and could have gone either way. I made one decision to play around Blood Moon costing me the game. I got put into a situation where I had one Tron land available and I was fetching for a land, with no Signets or basics in play. If he had played a Blood Moon, it likely resolves and I just instantly lose via no colours. If I get greedy and take the Tron land, I might have a chance to assemble Tron and get to Mindslaver or something. In the end I just lost to no pressure, as he went for combo and I was lacking cards (I may have mulled that game).

The games against UWR Midrange went exactly how I expect. I saw either Stony Silence, Geist, Mindcensor, or some combination. Any of them can really hurt me, but multiples kill me. I saw a lot of t3 Geist into t4 Stony Silence, that didn't go well. I also saw Tec Edges keeping me off Tron, that was cool.

The game I won was so obviously against the homebrew. He also boarded terribly against me. Not much to say, he let me look at his sideboard before scooping, he obviously doesn't play Modern.

So to UW Tron's credit, I played it. I tested it out in the field, and it turned out poorly. I like this deck a lot, and I wish the best for it, but after that, I knew I couldn't continue playing it. I went in to the tournament knowing it was a bad choice. I played it mostly because it's what I had. I got punished for it, and I didn't like that feeling. This helpless feeling, knowing that I'm going to lose because the matchup is bad and not because I'm playing poorly. Yeah, I can beat fringe decks or still have a chance every game, but I just faced UWR Midrange a bunch of times and lost 3 times to turn 3 Geist. In Standard it isn't as bad because the cards are less powerful, and the decks have higher variance. Modern is much less forgiving, and I saw just that.


Determining the New Deck

So at this point I was committed to building a new deck. I had some money now, enough to definitely build a new deck. I was willing to spend quite a bit, probably not Goyf level, but a reasonable amount. I wanted to think about what I wanted to build and make the right choice.

Right around when MM came out, I had been deciding to build Affinity and Melira Pod, having several cards for them already. I also had most of the core for them when I built my new deck. I think I was missing Opals from Affinity and fetches from Pod, minus any Thoughtseize they played. Knowing that I expected a Thoughtseize reprint in the near future (not necessarily in Theros though), I knew I wanted to avoid them. I sort of just started building with no deadline as I had no reason to aggressively build a deck for anything particular.

Fast forward to the tournament I outlined above. At that tournament, they announced there was going to be another for a bigger prize. 100% I was going to play in it, but I had a few weeks to sort out what. I could build Affinity or Pod or basically anything else without Goyfs.

After the Player's Championships, I saw how nobody played Pod. I suspected Pod would be a strong deck, but with Ooze MB for some, and USA for others, it was probably the right choice for them not to play it. I myself realized this as well, that with Ooze I didn't really want to play it, at least not until I could see where Ooze stood. I had begun building before it was announced, so I eventually just accepted that it wasn't the deck I wanted. I also didn't particularly want Affinity either. After MM I had obtained a lot of Affinity cards, since a huge slew of cards were reprinted in it and I obtained a lot of MM. Affinity is not my style, and though I could play it, I knew it just wasn't going to make me feel happy for a deck choice.

So now I was trying to think, what deck would be good and fit me? I really wanted something that wouldn't be bad in some meta. I bought UW Tron a while back, it turned out bad down the road. I wanted something that was hard to hate out and could always be a solid option. Perhaps not always the right decision, but never the wrong decision. I soon realized that I should look to the pros, because UWR Control did phenomenal. It's a deck that's hard to hate out and will probably not go out of style any time soon. Just how Jund became king of Modern, it's hard to hate out the deck that's just "good cards in colours XYZ".

Playing USA had a much steeper cost than the others, I had to buy Arid Mesas and Scalding Tarns. Still, I had money and knew it would be a good investment, fetches are the leading reason why I couldn't play whatever I wanted in Modern, and my friend whom I share with had just bought Misty Rainforests. I had a lot of the rest of the deck, Cryptics, Cliques, Snapcasters, the non-fetch lands, and most of the small stuff. In total the rest of the deck cost me peanuts to build.


Testing it Out

Admittedly I didn't test the deck out as much as I should have. It's hard to find people to test with when I live away from the IRL people I play with during the week. Most of the people I test with on Cockatrice had been somewhat busy as well. I managed to get some games in at FNM but not a lot more than that.

Honestly, I was playing a lot of League instead of testing against randoms on Cockatrice. Then again, randoms do very little for anyone, they're quite often awful. I also somewhat felt that since I came from control in Modern, I was okay to just go for this. I felt like at the end of the day, I could make reasonable decisions as a control player on what needed to live and whatnot. It's probably not ideal, but it was what it was.

One thing I was unsure of was playing Restoration Angels. I played Bant Flash Control in Standard, and the Restoration Angels were the worst cards in the deck. Yeah, they put pressure, but so did the 5/5 Wurms. The Angels were just so bad because you never really wanted to waste mana on them. I did end up playing them in Modern, but I'm still not sure.


The Tournament

Time for the tournament. I was feeling fairly comfortable after two people who top 8'd the last event were not there, and another person (who may or may not have top 8'd, I believe he did) was judging this time around. I know the deck is going to be good and I should hope to have a good time.

I already wrote up this tournament report elsewhere, so suffice to say, I'll skip major portions. After 4 rounds, I'm 4-0. I faced RG Tron, Twin, Burn, and Scapeshift. If I had taken UW Tron, I would have likely lost round 1 and been in a really bad situation. However, I was playing a different deck and getting rewarded. One of my friends, who is new to Modern, was really happy to see me doing well because he knows I play mostly Modern. Honestly, all I could think about was how I was getting rewarded for playing the right deck for a change. It was like, now that I'm doing it, it's working out well. 4-0 was about as good as I could hope for at that point, a single win and I'd make top 8.

Now, it got a little ugly for me and I went 0-3 in the last 3 rounds, missing top 8. What it boiled down to was not drawing the lands I needed. Some unfortunate mulligans and missed land drops and I just couldn't deal with it. I lost to Burn round 5 when they had more lands in play than I did, since I had a fist full of cards without mana to cast them. I lost to Affinity in round 6 when I had triple Bolt in hand and just drew a red source, having to actually Clique away one Bolt to try to find something. And of course, I lost in round 7 to the mirror when I had Clique and every 4+ drop, plus Spell Snare, while I had Steam Vents, Mountain, Tectonic Edge in play.

Ultimately, I was satisfied with how I played. I made a few mistakes to be sure, but so did some opponents. Considering I had only played the deck for a week or two with minimal actual testing, it went well. I started out strong and lost games to the deck itself rather than my misplays. I won't doubt that I could use a lot more work on piloting the deck, especially boarding. Still, it goes to show that I was able to do much better with a different deck. I don't consider myself a strong UWR player, but I do consider myself a strong UW Tron player. UWR was literally just better positioned for the event and the meta, so it was definitely the better choice.


After Thoughts

Looking back at the tournament, do I feel like UWR was a better choice than UW Tron? Absolutely. I faced RG Tron first round, which is UW Tron's worst matchup. As much as I like UW Tron as a deck, I am willing to concede when I know it's not the right deck, and it just isn't right now. With less grave hate or something to help it out, it can do much better. For now, it's simply not what I want to play.

I certainly want to continue playing UWR and learning that deck. Yes, I realize everyone is playing it, but it's for a good reason. The deck is very powerful and boasts a lot of different options. I need a lot of help learning how to board because so many cards do so many similar things, and I probably always boarded incorrectly.

As for UW Tron? I'm certainly not giving up hope on the deck, but I'd like to see where the meta goes. It's changing quite rapidly right now, so we'll just have to wait and see. I'll definitely want to make some changes to the list, starting with not playing Mindslaver. As bad as it sounds, I find there's so much Stony Silence that it's just not as reliable as Emrakul, since both require Tron.

So it's been brought to my attention that people need to be aware of what to win with in what matchup. And since I've got some time, I figure I may as well write it up now for everyone.

Before I get started, the win conditions we have are as follows (taken from my list):

Emrakul
Iona
Elesh Norn
Wurmcoil
Terastodon
Sundering Titan
Mindslaver
Celestial Colonnade

Essentially, it's everything in the deck with P/T and Mindslaver. Remember that every creature except Emrakul would prefer to come from Gifts Combo, except maybe Wurmcoil which is completely reasonable to cast. Mindslaver will also accompany 2 Academy Ruins and a Crucible for the lock. If you need more information on our win conditions and how they work, please view my other blog post on it.

Here's a list of the decks we're going to review:
Jund
Rock
Affinity
RDW
RUG Delver
USA Delver
Zoo
Merfolk
Goblins
BW Tokens
Aura Hexproof
Hatebears
Gruul Aggro
Bant
Boros
Goodstuff.deck
Dredgevine
Mono U Tron
Mirror
RG Tron
Soul Sisters (Martyr Life)
UW Control
UWR Control (Wafo-Tapa)
UWR Midrange
Gifts Control
BUG
RUG Delverless (Eternal Command)
Melira Pod
Kiki Pod
Twin
Storm
Scapeshift
Infect
Living End
Goryo's Vengeance

That's a lot, I shouldn't have decided every deck in the format. Oh well, here goes nothing.


Jund
Jund, if splashing white, is a huge problem. Splashing Path means we can't just slam Iona. If it has no Paths, then Iona naming black is perfectly fine. If it's splashing Paths, then you go for Sundering Titan.

Elesh Norn doesn't do a heck of a lot, they don't lose too badly to her and kill her easily enough. Wurmcoil is great if there's no Paths, you can just slam that because they have to like Lili make you sac, then you get two dudes and kill off Lili.

I think Emrakul's still fine here, especially since the Eye is good. Mindslaver's not awful but I tend to board it out to make room. Of all the decks though, this is one of the fair ones getting punished after a Mindslaver activation.

Rock
Iona naming black is really good here, if you can manage it. With 8 ways to disrupt, it can be hard to get it out. The Wurmcoil is also a really good bet since there's essentially no interaction for it. Emrakul is also still good as a finisher.

Affinity
Gifts into Elesh and win. They generally have no answer for her. It plays almost no removal and they'd have to like draw both Galvanic Blasts with Metalcraft. I've never lost after Elesh. Wurmcoil also still does solid work.

I think the other win conditions are quite bad. They're really slow to race Affinity.

RDW
Iona is clearly the best call here. I still do keep in Wurmcoil and Elesh Norn as well. Sometimes you go for Elesh Norn because you're dead on board even if you have Iona. Hopefully that's not the case. Wurmcoil does a lot of the same work Elesh Norn does, and it's pretty hard for RDW to beat 6 life.

High end stuff all comes out, way too slow. It'd be fun to Mindslaver them, I've done it and it's so sweet. But realistically, you either die before you get there or put the game out of reach.

USA Delver
This is one of the awkward matchups where nothing works as well as you think. I think everything that isn't Mindslaver or Terastodon is good. I think my choice is Sundering Titan though, cause if it resolves it's gonna make it really hard for them. Iona is great if there's no Cryptics but there probably is. I think Wurmcoil is also probably bad, Elesh Norn seems fine since it Wraths.

Emrakul is worth keeping in because they don't interact with it. They probably play a couple Molten Rain but Sowing Salt could be problematic for them to reliably cast.

RUG Delver
Iona is better in this version since blue is the only colour killing us. Sundering Titan is still just as good, but the Iona does actually stop them. Just watch out for Shackles, I have had Elesh Norn and Iona stolen before, and I've seen lists with enough blue sources to steal Emrakul.

Zoo
Iona naming white is best. I tend to not care about things like Bolt and Helix in this matchup. I just don't want Iona to die so naming white is key. Wurmcoil tends to underperform with then having Paths. Elesh Norn is again fine because it Wraths.

Not sure how I feel about the upper end. I'd probably keep one win con but not both.

Gruul Aggro
Iona, Wurmcoil, and Elesh Norn all win the game. They either can't cast spells or their creatures start losing. Watch out for Deglamer in the board, so Iona and Elesh Norn are safer. It all depends on how clogged up the game state is.

Merfolk
Just name blue with Iona. It's been a while since I've seen UW lists. Emrakul is still good cause they're blue.

Goblins
Like Merfolk, naming their only colour with Iona is best. You really can't lose at that point. Board out all the high end stuff, game ends too fast.

BW Tokens
Iona name white. All the black cards we don't really care about and there's not usually a Lili. Elesh Norn is still good simply because it will Wrath most of the time, unless there's an Anthem effect in play. I think one high end card is still fine since they will drag the game a bit.

Aura Hexproof
It all depends on what's in play. If there's nothing, I think Elesh Norn is best. If there's something, Iona might be better naming white, as most cards are white. I can see cases where Wurmcoil blocks more effectively, but there's not a ton, and Ethereal Armour is a pain if you're blocking. Probably Mindslaver is best since you can perhaps dictate how things go. I might just board out all the high-end stuff just because we lose way too fast.

Hatebears
Name white on Iona. No green card they play will kill you. They can still put some dudes in play but you block effectively. Elesh Norn isn't bad either. Just remember that Arbiter and Mindcensor can easily kill you. Mindslaver can potentially blow them out, I think there's no way you get to Emrakul.

Bant
Either Elesh Norn or Iona, it depends on whether you're dead on board. Name white on Iona always. Remember to watch out for Elspeth if you're going for Norn so you don't die to flying + double strike.

Emrakul is good here since they're playing some counters.

Boros
White on Iona. Wurmcoil and Elesh Norn are still good. High-end stuff is probably bad.

Goodstuff
It's actually harder than it sounds. Elesh Norn can board wipe and Wurmcoil should be fine as well. I suppose Iona naming white is best since that's probably the only removal for her.

Dredgevine
Elesh Norn kills most things and makes the Vengevines not so scary. An Iona or Wurmcoil might still perform here. Either high-end is fine, but like, I generally win or lose before it happens.

Mono U Tron
Iona naming blue is insane. They have to go to Mindslaver without help if you do it. Terastodon is also very good at blowing up Tron lands. No point in blowing up your own defensively since the removal is Repeal (x=0 bounce a token, draw). They won't remove Terastodon so you can block and race if you want. Both Emrakul and Mindslaver are still good here.

UW Tron
Terastodon or Iona naming white are acceptable. Just be prepared, you know what's in here. They could Gifts through Iona naming white. With Terastodon you probably need to defensively kill something or be prepared to lose to Path.

RG Tron
Terastodon all the way. It's how the game is winnable. The rest is useless but the Wurmcoil can trade. High-end stuff is good, as with any Tron.

UWR Control
Just go for Sundering Titan. Iona gets bounced too easily. Wurmcoil is bad since they'll leave Path and Cryptic in, as well as board artifact hate, but sometimes they just burn you out and it can be fine. High-end stuff is great.

UWR Midrange
Since they run Geist now, you're best off running the Elesh Norn still as an answer. Wurmcoil is much better here since they're more aggressive and will try to burn you out if Geist doesn't work.

UW Control
It's actually harder than UWR since you can't reasonably Sundering Titan. I like to just leave in Iona, Wurmcoil, and Elesh Norn and see what works best. They're going to have Path and Cryptic either way, so Iona does name white but meh. You just gamble and try to stall with one of them rather than win. The high-end stuff should do its job if you get there.

Soul Sisters
Iona name white, gg.

Gifts Control
Sundering Titan is brutal. Hit 4 lands, none of ours? Iona is bad since there's Path and Lili, and neither are their main colour. Wurmcoil could do some work too potentially.

RUG Delverless
Iona name blue. The green doesn't do a lot, the primary card is Eternal Witness. The red also does nothing.

BUG
Go for Sundering Titan. Iona seems lackluster with Lili and Cryptic. The Elesh Norn could do some work, and I suppose without Path Wurmcoil is pretty solid. Emrakul because there are counters.

Melira Pod
Best is Elesh Norn, as with any creature deck without removal or burn. I will never go for Iona, it's too hard to call the right colour. They quite often board out of combo so the Wurmcoil is likely good too.

Emrakul and Mindslaver are fine as the high-end, but probably Mindslaver is better. If they gain infinite life, Emrakul doesn't really win you the game. Mindslaver lock beats just about everything.

Kiki Pod
Again, Elesh Norn is best. I think Emrakul is bad here because of Deceiver Exarch. I've had it tapped a ton of times before. Mindslaver would be a better win condition, but like, the game will stall out hard at some point in which you may want both. I don't think it's unreasonable to leave both Mindslaver and Emrakul in against any Pod deck.

Twin
Iona naming blue is best. If they can't bounce her or go off, you win. If they have a blue creature in play, name red. You don't want to let them potentially win because you're greedy. Elesh Norn is also good since they can't win through it. Emrakul as the high-end is bad since they can tap him down indefinitely. You want to rely on the Gifts Combo cards to ride out a victory.

Storm
Iona naming blue is best. While red can still win, it's difficult to do so. Maybe if it's turn 15 but the game won't get there. Elesh Norn is still good to potentially blank an early Empty the Warrens. They won't particularly stop you so there's no point in the high-end. Mindslaver would be fun though, you would instantly win and might even kill them.

Scapeshift
Sundering Titan can completely devastate them. Iona is somewhat lackluster when there's a green win condition and blue removal spell. Just be careful. Emrakul is good due to counters.

Infect
Elesh Norn is probably best. There's likely no removal for her and their creatures all die. Be prepared to mull though, you want to not die before you get to Elesh Norn.

Living End
This matchup sucks in terms of win conditions. Maybe Sundering Titan is okay? I had a discussion in the primer where we went over how every colour sucks to name. It's either black or green you name, though either way there's an answer. Black lets Beast Within destroy you, while green lets them still combo into Living End. As a whole, I'd prefer naming green though, simply because I have more answers for Living End in Relic and Remand than I do for Beast Within.

Goryo's Vengeance
I suppose I name black on Iona? If I have Remand though, I could blow out the Goryo's Vengeance. I really like Mindslaver here because you can kill them so easily. Last time I locked and my opponent wouldn't scoop, I just played out the deck and killed themselves.


Hopefully someone gets something out of here. Sorry it's somewhat rushed, I'm lazy.

So I decided to make some fun content for everyone. Today, I've got a pile of openers that I'll discuss whether you should mull or not, as well as discuss how I intend to play out the hand with what I know. I'll put spoiler tags around my notes so you can try and decide for yourself. See if you can get all the answers correct, though these ones, for the most part, aren't too bad.
























I hope this post has been both fun and informative. I'll do it again if people like it and try and find better hands that people have to think about much more seriously.

People keep asking so here's a list for you to feast on:



The MB I am pretty comfortable with. I do prefer playing both win conditions right now, and I think Emrakul is going to be best going forward (as opposed to Mindslaver) since Scavenging Ooze is getting printed. The only slots up for any real debate in the build are the Repeal / Timely slots. The two of them just have to be more value cards. In the past I've run a Wurmcoil over one of them, but it's really up to personal preference. You could run Oblivion Ring, Condescend, Talisman of Progress, it really just depends what your needs are on average and how you feel about that slot.

For the SB, this is pretty much a vacuum meta board. It's hopefully good against a wide range of decks.

For Tron, we have Mindcensor, Disenchant, Negate, and the MB Terastodon. If you're playing against Mono U, Iona is really good as well.

For Twin, we have Torpor Orb, Disenchant, Celestial Purge, Iona, and Negate. You want to call blue on Iona unless a blue creature is in play, in which case you call red. The rest are all self explanatory.

For Kiki Pod, you can bring in Torpor Orb and Disenchant as well as the Mindcensor and Purge, not bringing in Negates.

For Melira Pod, you get to bring in Torpor Orbs and Relics as well as the Mindcensor.

For USA Midrange, we're going to bank a lot on Sundering Titan. I'd take out the other two and swap for Iona Sundering Titan and then bring in Negates as well. You can try your hand with Wurmcoil, your mileage may vary.

For other Midrange, Sundering Titan is the game. Just board whatever seems relevant, Negates are useful primarily in blue matchups.

For Burn, Timely and Purge are good, as are Wurmcoil and Iona. You can leave Elesh Norn in at your discretion, though likely the other two are better.

For Affinity we just need to get Elesh Norn, they can't beat it. You want Wurmcoil most likely and the Timely and Disenchant, the rest seems lackluster.

For Storm we want Relics, Negates, and Purge (to kill Ascension and Goblin Electromancer). Iona is also great.

For Scapeshift we want Iona, Sundering Titan, Negate, and Mindcensor.

I think that covers most of the basics, a lot of the rest should hopefully make sense. I didn't go over what to board out but I think it's fine. We really just want to bring in hate in a lot of the matchups that will let us stall until late game. Remember that it's not often good enough to leave just Gifts Combo as the win condition, and that if you pull out Emrakul, hard graveyard hate can really damper your deck.

Also, remember to leave in enough Signets against red decks to avoid getting killed by Blood Moon.

So people have asked before what are the win conditions and what we can substitute. So while I have some time I though I'd help everyone out and review them. If you already know this deck, this blog is probably not going to give you anything new, but for those that are new, it will give you some insight into the deck.

The primary win conditions for the deck are: Emrakul, Mindslaver Lock, Gifts Combo, and Celestial Colonnade.

Each of them provide different aspects to the deck and different ways to win. Let's go over each of them and examine their uses and why they're used.

Emrakul is extremely obvious in this deck. Emrakul is just the best thing to do with 15 colourless mana. Normally you'd cheat him into play but there's no Show and Tell in this format. The thing is, hardcasting him is extremely powerful because you get to Time Walk and win the next turn. They generally can't stop Emrakul because he: gives you another turn, can't be countered, has evasion, can't be the target of coloured spells (aka difficult to kill) and makes them sacrifice 6 permanents. Even if they manage to deal with the attack and not die, sacrificing 6 things makes it super hard for them to come back. Assuming you have cards to play, you have all the mana in the world to cast things on the extra turn. You sometimes animate Colonnade alongside Emrakul to hit for 19 flying, and in a format with Shocks and Fetches, most people are under 20 late in the game, so that attack wins the game.

A common question people have is, can I substitute something for Emrakul? The answer is NO. There is absolutely no substitute for Emrakul. Emrakul is a one of a kind creature, he's so difficult to deal with and you really can't do anything about that. You can't really find another creature that can't be countered, is difficult to kill, and wins the game before they untap. If you can find one, be my guest, but you won't. Emrakul provides inevitability. When we get to Emrakul range, we can count on him finishing the game and not have to worry about the game going any longer. Most people will even scoop to hardcast Emrakul. We can take a look at the two other huge Eldrazi and see why they don't cut it.

Kozilek I just don't like at all in this format. It costs a lot and all it does is net you some cards. Yes, the following turn will be great, if you manage to see it. The fact that it doesn't change the board state at its ridiculous cost means you'd better be prepared for what's coming. Chances are you tapped out for it, and if you didn't, you probably could have cast Emrakul. Kozilek isn't even indestructible, so it's just so easy to kill him. He dies to basically every removal in the format that isn't damage, because he's too big to Bolt realistically. He's going to die to Path and he's going to die to Liliana. Heck, he even dies to Terminate, and that's a problem. We need this creature to stick and we need it to interact with our opponent. With a field full of things, your opponent can win on their turn knowing you have no mana for follow ups.

Ulamog is much the same as Kozilek, though he is miles better in this format. Ulamog at least does blow up a permanent, so you do sort of protect yourself. That said, he's also vulnerable to Liliana and Path and they can still win on the next turn. Some people choose to play him alongside Emrakul, but he's no Emrakul. You really just need to guarantee a win, and he doesn't. You want people to be unable to deal with the Eldrazi, but they can definitely deal with Ulamog in many ways.

Simply put, you can't really replace Emrakul with a creature. Don't forget that we play an Eye of Ugin, which is one of the key factors to playing him. We now play a way to find him from our deck, so we don't have to just draw him. And with 4 Maps, we also have additional ways to get Eye which lets us find Emrakul. Since he is an end-all win condition, being able to tutor him like that is huge.

I would be remiss if I didn't go over ways to deal with him, because there are a few. First is Pestermite and Deceiver Exarch. They can tap him when they enter, and a deck like Twin can just keep him tapped for a while and never let us attack with him. I've definitely had situations where I cast Emrakul, didn't get to attack with him, and lost the game. Secondly is Zealous Conscripts. They play it in Pod and it can steal Emrakul. It happens in conjunction with the Deceiver Exarch they play, but it sucks when it happens, and it happened to me once. Emrakul is still really good against Pod though, just be weary of this happening. Phantasmal Image and Phyrexian Metamorph can clone Emrakul. I only point them out because Pod plays Chord of Calling, which at instant speed, can let them kill it. I do want to remind everyone that when M14 comes out, they're changing the Legend Rule so that both players can have a single copy in play and only when you control two copies of the same legendary does it die, hence this way of killing him will no longer work. Cryptic Command can also stall him a turn, potentially letting your opponent win on their turn. There's also Cyclonic Rift that can bounce him if overloaded, though I think I'm the only person in like the whole format playing this card. Lastly, off my head, there's Mindbreak Trap. You can't counter Emrakul but you can definitely exile him.


Mindslaver Lock is my favourite way to win a game. Call me what you want, but I enjoy it when my opponent just has to sit there and scoop. I think I'll point out how this win condition works:

We play a combination of Mindslaver and Academy Ruins that creates a soft lock. That is to say, we don't let our opponent play. Mindslaver lets us take their turn, so we play it, and activate it. This costs 10 mana. We can then activate Academy Ruins to place it back on top, this costs Ruins + 1U = 3. So for 13 mana (including the Ruins), we can play Mindslaver, activate, and put it back on top of our deck. We take their turn, draw it again, and then do it all over again. The win condition out of this is that we get to mill them out. Each turn they still have to draw while we draw Mindslaver each turn, effectively keeping us at the same number of cards.

This is only a soft lock because they can play cards on our turn. However, we can tap all their mana on their turn and keep them out of resources on ours. There are very few spells in this format that do things on your opponent's turn for 0 mana. Pact of Negation might be the only one, and costing 5 on their next turn, it's unlikely they kill you, and so you Mindslaver again. On top of that, if you can cast something in their hand, you can just Pact their spell, and when you Mindslaver the following turn, fail to pay.

A couple of friendly reminders here for Mindslaver lock so you don't get in any trouble. First is that your opponent doesn't have to scoop. You are free to ask them if they'd like to, but under no circumstance are they required to do so. Because it can take a long time to manually take their turns and mill them, some people would rather you do this and go to time in the round, potentially staving off a win. Secondly, you can take short cuts. You may leave your opponent's lands tapped and their hand face up in order to keep things going quicker. It would take longer if you had to grab their hand each time, untap their lands, tap their lands, etc. Your opponent is also not allowed to retain priority if you can see there is nothing they may interact with. Since you have perfect information as to what they can play, when they can't play anything, they aren't allowed to say something like "thinking" and take some time for themselves. This is slow play if they do, and you are advised to immediately all a judge. Lastly remember that you can see their cards. This means if you fetch, you can look at their deck, so fetching is advisable whenever possible; you can fail to find the card, so you aren't actually getting them ahead. You can also look at their sideboard which is pretty cool, so make sure to do that and not have any surprises game 2.

With Mindslaver Lock, we are now playing a way to guarantee it from Gifts. We play a second Academy Ruins and a Crucible of Worlds, so we're guaranteeing the lock from it. You then Gifts for Mindslaver, Crucible, Ruins, and Map, and no matter how they slice it, you must get the combo. If you get Academy Ruins, you can just put Mindslaver back on top (assuming it was binned), getting both speeds this up. If you get Map, you can fetch for Ruins and you're in the same spot. If you get Crucible you can get the Ruins they binned and you're in the same spot. There are no permutations in which you don't have access to Academy Ruins. This effectively turns Gifts into a win condition. It lets us find a win that, although takes a turn or two, is a guaranteed win without hate. Before, you'd have to hope they gave you stuff or stall out the game to Emrakul, but this forces the matter.

One thing to note about actually playing the combo is that you don't need to hold onto Mindslaver until you can go off. I commonly play it on 10 or 11 if Ruins is in play with Tron land in hand because I can activate it this turn and use Ruins to put it on top next turn, which I can then play Tron land and play+activate it again. Additionally, Mindslaver is really good as a single use card, so sometimes you should just play it early and activate it for that value.


Gifts Combo is probably the staple of the deck and why we play it. For anyone that doesn't know what it is, you can look at the UW Gifts Tron Primer for how it works. It's such a great win condition because it also turns Gifts into a win condition, but much earlier than Mindslaver. It can occur as early as turn 3 and generally on turn 4 or 5, so it's just so powerful to put someone out of the game at this point while being a control deck. Here are a few creatures we play and why/when they are good:

Elesh Norn is good against creature decks. Affinity and Gruul Aggro basically scoop to her. When all their creatures become really small and most are dead, we won't have a hard time. She's also outstanding in the Pod matchup because they don't play kill spells and most of their dudes die to her. Even for things that don't die, like Restoration Angel, they can't particularly race her, and it stalls the game very well either way.

Iona is good against mono coloured decks, or decks with only one colour of removal. It's honestly really obvious here. Even if the deck would probably lose to Elesh Norn as well, Iona just ensures there's no shenanigans that occur and potentially mess it up. Even a deck like Jund, when they don't play Paths that is, would lose to Iona calling black. They can't actually kill her and it's hard for them to race. Even if they can, you can always just block with her, as long as you play around Bolts adequately. The only time you would ever choose Elesh Norn over Iona is when you are actually dead on board and the Elesh Norn stops that.

Terastodon is the best change this deck has seen in some time. Terastodon deals with all the problematic permanents, and the most problematic is Urza's Tower. Urza's Tower lets RG Tron cast Karn, which is our worst matchup. If we get to Terastodon them, we're so far ahead of them now and we can start to interact with them and even race them. It's also good against combo decks, most decks like Storm or Eggs wouldn't rather have three 3/3s than the three lands you blew up. It's generally good where Iona is good, and in the places where Iona is good and Terastodon is good, Elesh Norn is pretty good. Some examples of that are Goblins and Martyr Proc. Both are mono coloured decks, but creature based as well; while Iona is better, Elesh Norn still probably wins the game.

Wurmcoil is also another candidate, though not usually end-game and generally you don't go for it. Wurmcoil is great against Jund since their removal doesn't deal with it well. It's also great against extremely fast decks like Affinity or Gruul Aggro, though worse than other cards. However, it is still a creature we're playing and so it's worth mentioning it here. I'm almost never going for it as the target, but there are definitely situations you'll get into where you get caught.

Sundering Titan is another solid one. I don't play one but it seems like it would be exceptional in the midrange matchups. Especially against USA Midrange where the rest of them are lackluster (they play two colours of removal, including Path), this card should stand out. Blowing up 3 lands should put is very far ahead and if they do kill it, well, they can lose another 3 lands. They would even play the same coloured lands - THAT VALUE! It's also good against Scapeshift, because if they play Prismatic Omen we'll hit 5 lands guaranteed.


Currently, I am playing the following MB:
Mindslaver Lock
Gifts Combo with Elesh Norn, Terastodon, and Wurmcoil
Emrakul

and am playing the following SB:
Wurmcoil (a second)
Iona


So far it's been going well and I definitely like it. I like Mindslaver lock a lot but I'm not sure whether I like it more than Emrakul. They each come with their advantages and disadvantages. Mindslaver lock is better in a format where Deathrite Shaman is popular, since it can't interrupt it, but at the same time, Emrakul fills a top end slot and is much easier to find, since your Maps turn into Eyes. And of course, having Eye of Ugin lets you fetch for Wurmcoil as well, or Sundering Titan if you play that.


Ultimately, you need to have Gifts Combo and one of Emrakul or Mindslaver in the deck. Gifts Combo is just very good, and despite myself taking it out at one point, it's just really good and it's made matchups so much better. Shaman is also down in popularity as of writing this so the combo is a lot safer. Gifts Combo is the early game and one of the others is the end game. Remember, 4 Gifts Ungiven, and definitely the Crucible and second Ruins if you go for Mindslaver lock. People may get upset to hear me say this, and I've probably said it before, but:

DON'T PLAY THIS DECK WITHOUT EITHER EMRAKUL OR MINDSLAVER, AND DON'T PLAY THIS DECK WITHOUT GIFTS COMBO.

You just need to have this inevitability and there's really no replacement for any of these cards. It may be expensive, it may be difficult to acquire, but there are no substitutes.

So people often say why UW Tron? The answer is the deck has really good average matchups. But what if the deck couldn’t beat another deck? What if you scooped 2% of the time? 5%? 10%? How much is too much? That’s the flaw with this deck; it’s good against most decks but just scoops others. Would you go to a tournament and just hope to avoid the deck? The problem for this deck is RG Tron. As far as I’m normally concerned, it’s just a scoop. I’ll still play it out, you never lose before the game starts, but before this testing I’d never beaten the deck before.

This deck just doesn’t beat RG Tron. They have the same late game inevitability that we do except it comes faster. We’re not going to race them fetching things, so how can we stop them? They can go turn 3 Karn kill you and there’s nothing we can do about it. Exiling two lands puts us so far behind when we’re trying to race, and it’s all about the early game in this matchup. It’s about who denies who earlier and then sustains better into the mid to late game.

So I finally got some time to test the RG Tron matchup with a more recent build. The list I used to test was as follows:

4 Urza's Mine
4 Urza's Power Plant
4 Urza's Tower
2 Academy Ruins
1 Eye of Ugin
1 Hallowed Fountain
1 Plains
1 Island
3 Seachrome Coast
3 Celestial Colonnade
1 Emrakul, the Aeons Torn
4 Gifts Ungiven
4 Thirst for Knowledge
1 Cyclonic Rift
4 Path to Exile
4 Remand
4 Expedition Map
4 Azorius Signet
1 Mindslaver
1 Wrath of God
1 Day of Judgment
1 Unburial Rites
1 Terastodon
1 Elesh Norn, Grand Cenobite
1 Repeal
1 Timely Reinforcements
1 Ghost Quarter
1 Crucible of Worlds
SB: 1 Iona, Shield of Emeria
SB: 3 Torpor Orb
SB: 2 Wurmcoil Engine
SB: 3 Spreading Seas
SB: 2 Negate
SB: 1 Celestial Purge
SB: 1 Timely Reinforcements
SB: 1 Faith's Fetters
SB: 1 Karn Liberated

I tested this against a UG Tron list actually. The only real difference between the lists is the red removal, and since we’re not playing anything where that removal actually matters, the list is actually better against us. The blue is used for Gifts, so now he can mess around with Mindslaver much better. In terms of testing this matchup, it makes little difference that he’s playing the blue over the red, there’s still frequent turn 3 Karn, Emrakul, and Mindslaver plus all the eggs/ramp. Most games were played post-board. My board plan was as follows:

+3 Spreading Seas
+2 Negate
+1 Faith’s Fetters
+1 Karn Liberated
-1 Elesh Norn
-1 Timely
-1 Wrath
-1 Day of Judgement
-2 Path
-1 Signet

I could leave in Wrath/Day for Terastodon stuff but it’s not worth it. They don’t want to trade and the Paths and bounce spells are fine. I’m boarding out one Signet just to make room, I could easily board out something like Thirst instead, it’s really just down to personal preference. I don’t want to board out Maps, Remands, or Gifts for obvious reasons, and I like leaving a Path or two in just because they do play Wurmcoil. But considering they board it out (or should), I think in hindsight going down to 1 Path main and keeping the Signet is better. In general most lists are running fewer Wurmcoils right now so like, just the single Path is best I think. You can at least keep a 1-of for Gifting purposes.


So what did we find out? That’s what you’re all wondering right? Did I win? I think I won about 40-45% of the time. Not quite half, but not too far from it. Overall the testing was a positive experience for me. It was good to finally be able to take games off of them and to finally not feel like I’m dead before the game even started. Some cards performed better than others, some underperformed and I’ve got the details. Let’s evaluate how each card I was using went.


Terastodon was by far the all star. In basically every game I got it off I won. Blowing up their lands is huge, it really makes a big difference. If you Signet and can guarantee two lands and a Karn, or three lands, you’re looking quite good. They don’t typically want to trade with you, especially MB because you have the removal for their elephant tokens (Wrath/Day, Path, Repeal, Cylconic Rift, etc). The Repeal was a ton of value against the tokens since it’s U, kill a creature draw a card. For that reason, you can just keep everything on board and be happy with it. This matchup doesn’t come down to life totals since the win conditions are Emrakul and Mindslaver with Karn playing a huge role. The one time it might change the outcome is if they Emrakul after hitting you to 14 from the three tokens (assuming you block one). We shock ourselves with Hallowed Fountains anyways, so we really don’t care.

Many lists (my friends included) play Crucible. That means we really have to be careful afterwards because they can still get to Tron. However, if we’re at Tron and they’re playing catch up, we’re still looking quite good. We’ve got Remands to answer bigger spells and time to develop our side. Between Thirst, Gifts, and Map, we can actually get things done really fast if we don’t have to worry about our opponent as much. When they’re off of Tron we could care less about what they’re doing because the deck can’t really function.

I think I lost only one game with Terastodon. I targeted 3 of his permanents and then he Oblivion Stoned in response. This was actually while he had Tron for at least a turn already, he definitely had the O Stone mana up to Wrath in response. He ended up with 3 Elephants and I just couldn’t race when most of our removal is gone. I was hedging almost exclusively on drawing Cyclonic Rift.

I naturally drew Terastodon and Unburial Rites once each, so I got burned a little. One of them I had decent early game and he mulled so it wasn’t so bad, the other time I got destroyed. This is the reason I like having all 4 Thirst still in the deck, you can pitch it and try again later if the game goes long enough.

At any rate, this in the MB makes this matchup something you now have a chance of winning pre-board. Your odds of it don’t really increase post-board, and if you Signet with 4 lands, you can basically guarantee it. Even if you go blow up Karn, land, land, you’re way ahead now and can try to race them.

The Relic does hurt us a lot though, as it’s very good at stopping us. One game my friend had three Relics, so I couldn’t go for Terastodon and I couldn’t go for Mindslaver either. I can play around a single Relic with one or the other, but not two. The game just got to whomever could get Emrakul faster which was a pointless game to play. I really think a Pithing Needle to name Relic there would have been insane. Relic can name Karn, Mindslaver, Academy Ruins, Eye of Ugin, Relic, Oblivion Stone, it’s just SO MANY CARDS TO NAME. Plus with it costing only 1 it’s easy to play before anything happens and can sometimes be played reactively. Since you name after it comes into play, you never get into situations where you, for example, name Oblivion Stone and then they activate it and blow it up. You can generally play it before you need to play spells (aka turn 1) so that you can guarantee the Terastodon. It would suck to try to plan ahead and have them play Pithing Needle one turn before.


Ghost Quarter did some work as well. Cracking to kill a Tron piece certainly does work, and it’s great when you get value on Eye of Ugin or Academy Ruins as well. Considering I don’t feel as if the mana base is significantly hurt playing this, I’m completely down to play it. It’s a lot better than Tec Edge since we don’t care about non-Tron lands. When I was on the play, I could play this turn three and either leave up a counter, play a Signet, or crack the map I was holding on to. They do have quite a bit of resiliency to go and find another ramp spell, but depending on the list, they have to sacrifice part of the ramping or some number of fatties. Either way there’s virtually no downside to this, and there’s also the upside of when someone tries to Sowing Salt you and you destroy your land in response.


Believe it or not, Mindslaver won me the most amount of games. Partly this comes from our deck just being more resilient as a whole and being able to get there, but this card is really good against them. Between the other cards we’ve added, we generally have the time to be able to get to Mindslaver now, and since it’s good against them, we can Mindslaver before the lock just because taking their turn can do a lot. Especially because he was playing Gifts (which now becomes relevant), I get to force Tron lands to grave, Karn to hand, and exile his land. If I have my Colonnade active, I can kill Karn and that’s that. Even if I can’t binning two lands and exiling a land works out really well. I managed one where the Academy Ruins, Crucible, and all the Towers were gone. He already had Emrakul in hand, but either way it wasn’t going to get binned.

Mindslaver is really sweet in a matchup with Karn because you kill them for them. Even if they’re not playing Gifts, you can still waste ramp spells and fail to find, or play eggs to look for the Karn. I think I actually won all games we finished from Mindslaver and I don’t think I ever cast Emrakul. Since we were testing as friends somewhat less seriously, he normally scooped when he had a bad hand after I Karn killed him.

Another useful thing to remember is that with Mindslaver, if you can Gifts on their turn, you get to make the choices. You could bin the Gifts Combo, but I think taking general hate or whatever you need to go off is often better. You really just get to trash two cards you never want and get two cards you absolutely want. It’s really just the best situation. For this to happen you generally need to play Mindslaver before you go off, which is a bit of an issue with Oblivion Stone. If you’ve got the 4 mana to keep it up though, it’s worth considering, because it puts you far ahead. You rarely get to do this in this matchup because


Karn didn’t come down often, but it’s huge when it does. You put them far behind and put pressure on them to put them further, and their only response is their own Karn, which is now further out of reach. Even if they do, they’re trading Karns which still isn’t horrible for us. We can also trade Karns with them, not that it really comes to that (but is probably worth it most times it happens). You’re really just concerned with avoiding Karn until you can answer it. Remember that if exiling our lands is bad, imagine how bad it is against a deck that doesn’t function without them.


Negate is pretty solid as well. It stops Karn and Mindslaver which are huge in this matchup. Depending on their hand (i.e. if there’s nothing in it), countering things like Map and Sylvan Scrying make sense for us. Outside of that, I’m holding it for bigger spells that actually kill me. The biggest problem is that you have to let the ramp resolve, so they basically just get free ramp and then just race us. Still, overall, this card isn’t bad. The fact that it has implications in other matchups is certainly relevant. I don’t think I ever cast Gifts for some counter package, and if I did, it was only like once. The package would be half pressure half counters and they’d have to decide whether they wanted me to be pressuring them or me to get extra time. I’m not sure it’s worth changing Negate to a different spell for the value. Condescend I’m not sure is worth it, it would be my other choice. While it’s going to make the Gifts package nicer, it’s harder to cast against a Karn and we normally lose a turn in the process. Considering one of them is also Remand, we don’t get enough value. Remand is nice to cantrip but they’re just going to replay Karn the turn after. We’d have to make good value of our extra turn for it to actually be worthwhile.

Negate is nice for the same reason I think Cyclonic Rift is nice, it does its job for 2 mana. While the two mana versions are less powerful than the others, the value of the mana is certainly relevant. If I can go like turn 2 crack Map, turn 3 Signet leave up Negate, it’s pretty nice to do so. Turn 4 I may have Tron or just less pressure from an opposing Karn. They’re generally always playing the Karn when they can so being able to stop it is nice.

I ultimately think it’s better to go for Terastodon if you can guarantee it, but sometimes you don’t have Gifts or have a card in hand, and this is just nice to be able to do.


Spreading Seas was AWFUL. After thoroughly testing this card, I believe it’s not worth it whatsoever. Let me go over why first by talking about how I think it is against Scapeshift. Scapeshift is normally playing Prismatic Omen, which means we only get value against Valakut itself. However, they rarely play the Valakut and avoid that best as possible. Even still, there’s counters and bounce spells and stuff, so it’s actually not as good as we think. You might hit a Stomping Ground once or twice but I don’t think it’s actually killing them. The fact that they play blue lands and can make use of it as a blue source is diminishing the value there quite a bit. Drawing a card is and always will be nice, but it doesn’t make up for the fact that this card doesn’t really stop them. It’s certainly nice against them sometimes, but as a whole, I don’t think it’s winning the game and I don’t think we can rely on it to let us win some other way.

Against RG Tron it was extremely lackluster. It’s much the same as Ghost Quarter until they hit removal for it. Oblivion Stone kills it, and so do things like Seal of Primordium and Nature’s Claim. A lot of the time where Terastodon showed up afterwards, they’d play the missing Tron land, kill the Spreading Seas and get back to Tron. It’s really disappointing when you’re killing other Tron lands and leaving this one alone and then realizing that you actually need to kill this one. A common interaction was to (for arguments sake I will name each land but it could be any) have one Tower with a Spreading Seas, two Powerplants and a Mine, with Karn in play. I’d Terastodon the Karn and two Powerplants thinking Spreading Seas was fine, but then he’d go Sylvan Scrying, blow up Tower with Seal of Primordium, and now he has Tron again. I think it’s much better to blow up the land with the Spreading Seas, but that’s actually making me sad that we’re playing this card and then destroying it because it’s not working out. And that’s when I have a follow up play of Terastodon, otherwise it may just get destroyed too fast to actually do something and not give me a chance to progress. It didn’t buy me enough time and certainly wasn’t as good as I’d hoped for. The fact that they’re boarding in all this removal anyways makes a big difference for this spell. I just can’t justify this card enough to want to keep playing it. They can sometimes remove it the same turn I play it and then I get absolutely nothing out of it, except a card, which is cool but not really the point. At that point I’d almost rather a Ghost Quarter and force something, plus they normally only play one or two basics so you get them out of value fast.

I’m not exactly sure what I’d want to play over it though. Aven Mindcensor comes to mind but I don’t think that’s exactly winning the game. It will fill the same role in other matchups (Scapeshift) and provide reach to new matchups (Pod), but I think is overall lackluster here. It does nothing to stop early Tron and can’t interact with Ancient Stirrings which sucks. Mindcensor would just be much better late game than early game. The fact that it costs 3 and has only 2 power means it struggles to fight Karn in every way possible. I might honestly just consider running extra Negates instead of Spreading Seas.

Spreading Seas can be decent against decks like Jund as well, but I’d rather not over board. I want to board only cards that are insane because of how this deck is composed. It’s got limited space for new spells when boarding and you board incorrectly because of this. I often board out cards like Gifts, Thirst, Map, or Signet just to make room for cards, and against midrange I even board out the Remands.

I think what I’d rather try instead of Vedalken Plotter. It does cost one more but it definitively stops their Tron while giving us value (i.e. easier Trons). As long as we get to Signet on turn 2, we’re guaranteed to play this though Karn. Seems fine to me in that case, and was a card that got recommended to me a while back but that I didn’t get around to testing thoroughly. Of course this testing will take some time to get done, but I do plan on testing it. I’m not sure how it would go in against a deck like Scapeshift, and my inclination is not well. They’d have to actually play Scapeshift early for us to get any value, and we’d have to pass them Tron lands to really see the value in it. If they play Prismatic Omen, it would probably just not do anything.


Faith’s Fetters turned out to be much better than anticipated. Since I didn’t die to turn 3 Karn as often, it was great at dealing with it. Again, they can remove it with a Nature’s Claim or Seal of Primordium, but it’s certainly buying us some time. They can’t O Stone it now because Karn dies if they do, so they’d have to trade off. When you cast Faith’s Fetters on the Karn, they also can’t play any future Karns, so it really just makes them have to remove it. I also cast it once on a Map to deny him, it just works wonders when they have that as well as two other lands you get value with. It can also stop an O Stone or Relic which is nice. All in all though, I think Pithing Needle might just be better. You could cast that before Karn and it’s going to stop all the same cards in this matchup. The only difference is Faith’s Fetters doesn’t stop creatures but I don’t particularly think it’s spectacular against aggro in the first place. It would get value against Jund but that’s about it. Yeah, 4 life and blanking a creature is nice, but it does cost 4 mana. Pithing Needle costing 1 means I can play something else the same turn, which is something I quite like doing in this deck.


All in all I got this matchup to a point where you could win it. I still don’t think it’s at 50% but I’m no longer scooping which is a good thing. I do need to find some alternatives to cards and test them as well, but just knowing we can fight them is a good sign.

The matchups quite often got to a grindy state. He’d be top decking and seeing a lot of cards and we’d just be trying to grind out the opponent. At least in that sort of game state, I know I have a chance. It’s really a coin toss at that point which is more than I’d ever gotten before. Still, I think there’s some other cards that will do a lot better in this matchup and provide us more value here. The only issue is how much we sacrifice for one matchup.

My changes initially will be as follows:
-3 Spreading Seas
+1 Negate
+2 Vedalken Plotter

Like I said expect updates to take a while, as I’m testing Standard for a week and I need to find time to get my friend to sit down and test this with me. Hopefully this has been useful for you and you’ve enjoyed my article about my thoughts on testing this matchup. As always, let me know if there’s other content you’d like to see.