I don't have access to MTGO, so I'm curious for those who do how this deck fares with the london mulligan rule? Starting a game against an opponent who went to five with IoK or Thoughtseize feels so big, especially as synergistic decks try to take over. However, those synergistic decks are getting better.
So far it has been great for me. Too many people mulliganning way too aggressive because they can and then they get hit by a turn 1 discard spell and their hand just gets torn apart. It has been strangely funny against Boggles. I don't play with any edict effects on my 75 but now they are force the mulligan to get the Leyline of Sanctity and I just outrace them soooo easily because they lack the cards to make a threat big enough to kill me. It only gets tough if they mulligan to Leyline into RIP. That makes it really hard to race because they can just durdle a while and set up an alpha strike. Luckily they haven't been approaching the matchup this way.
I'm also eager to try out Baby Jace in both legacy and modern Shsdow lists, glad he worked out for you!
The only critism i have is why only 3 thought scour? With Jace as a filter outlet, Looting seems out of place in your list and i would ditch it for the 4th scour.
Edit: I've been trying out Sleight of Hand over Visions in a couple of games and i cannot complain so far
I'm going to be honest with you. I was playing 61 cards with the 4th Scour in. To be honest I'm not 100% set on the cantrip suite I should have. I had too many times where I had too many TScours in hand and looking for that specific card, typically a land, and Looting helps more than TScour in that. Looting is a Dark Ritual for Angler like TScour is, while having the chance to filter your hand and get rid of dead cards which is particularly interesting on G1.
It has its merits and its flaws. Jace is a good filter but it's susceptible to removal so I avoid getting it out on curve, while the Looting doesn't have that problem.
On SV thing, I hate the card with so much passion, but it works wonderfully on this deck. I play UW Control and I refuse to play it ever since Opt got printed. On GDS it's a really amazing card. The drawback of drawing before scrying is mitigated by the fact that we are super mana constrained that it has little impact. For a Control deck it's way more important to draw the right card right away, but for us it doesn't matter. Sleigh of Hand feels really subpar, it's a combo card because there's not enough good cantrips in the format. That's my take on it.
So far the JtVP has been amazing. It has been overperforming a lot. This past weekend I played a ~50 player tournament where I went 4-2 (technically I went 3-3 because I gave the win to a teammate of mine in the win and in but I won the match anyway) and the Jace was incredible.
Round 1 - 2-0 Humans: Game one - I had a turn 1 Thoughseize to take his Freebooter to protect my 2 Fatal Pushes. He had Double Thalia hand so I had to navigate around that. I dropped a turn 2 Angler and clogged the board. He develloped his board without attacking while I dropped myself to 7 with Angler and double Shadow. He went for the alpha strike where my only out was double removal. I proceded to block and kill the Thalia and another attacker, went down to 3 life and swung back for >20. Game two - I made a "transformational board plan" and proceded to grind. I overloaded him with removal even through a lot of Buglers. I managed to flip a Jace that together with a LtLH helped me control his board and gain virtual card advantage. I won with back to back TBR, using Jace to flashback it.
Round 2 - 2-1 BW Eldrazi: Game one - I kept a decent 7 without a threat. Since I had so many cantrips I figured I'd eventually get there, but my deck was unable to find a threat in time. He went really fast while I got stuck on two lands with pretty much nothing relevant in hand. After I managed to get my three mana I started to develop but he clogged the board with Lingering Souls. I failed to draw into the TBR or DS while he was hitting me with some spirits. He was really close to dead when he killed me and I had TBR on top Though beats... Game two - He kept a good hand with turn 1 Relic of Progenitus, then had also 2 Stranglers, 1 Lingering Souls. It was really tough to fight through the Relic because I kept a turn 2 Angler with a Snapcaster hand. My plan was to force his Relic with my Snapcaster and avoid losing too much to the Relic so I used my TScour on him instead of myself. He popped because I flashed in the Snap to use a removal and I managed to put an Angler on the table on the following turn. After that he played a bunch of lingering souls to chump my angler until he drew blanks and was unable to keep the defenses up. Game three - This game was really close. He had a lot of hand disruption to keep me off of developing my board. We went back and forth until I managed to stick the Jace and flip it to reuse a removal on a Tidehollow Sculler to get the TBR for the win over his Lingering Souls tokens.
Round 3 - 0-2 Dredge: Game one - He had the worst draw I've ever seen a Dredge player have... I managed to keep him off of doing anything relevant and he never dredged the entire game. My deck failed to give me a single threat the entire game and I lost to him hardcasting Bloodghasts and Prized Amalgms... it felt so bad Game two - I TS him on turn 1 to take away a Looting. On turn 2 I IoK to take his Catarthic... he top decked another one and went off... I failed to find any GY interaction/Anger of the Gods... until it was too late. I tried to defend with an Angler and a DS but he ended up Creeping Chilling me to death while I had no Denial ready to protect myself... He was dead on board though...
Round 4 - 1-2 Boggles: Game one - I knew he was on Bogles because he played next to me in the previous round. So I was already sad from getting this pairing. He had a turn 1 Leyline of Sanctity on G1 that really surprised me... He also had a ton of creatures and only 1 aura that I countered. He was hitting me for 1 or 2 a turn for a while until I played an Angler and he started to be on chump block duty. He failed to draw anything useful for a couple of turns and I stole that one. Game two - This game both our decks did nothing. I got rid of his auras with discard and he failed to produce any meaningful threat. I didn't draw a DS so I had just an Angler live... He pathed it and resumed to hit me... I drew no threat and he managed to kill me... Game three - Another depressing game where our decks didn't do anything particularly interesting... His hand was bad and mine didn't do that much either. He had a Bogle with the flying enchant and was chipping me for three a turn. He had a RiP online and I was full of Anglers in my hand. The DS didn't come in time even after I got rid of two boggles with an Anger of the Gods. I tried to dig for a threat and none came. I had to hardcast 2 Street Wraiths to try and "race him" but he removed them with the Paths he was hoarding in his hand...
Round 5 - 2-0 Hardened Scales: Game one - I knew he was on HS so I kept a 1 lander with double removal and double discard and a Serum Visions and a SWraith. I went for his hand and stripped him off of anything useful. I killed every single threat he had and dropped two shadows that one shotted him with TBR. Game two - It gets even easier. I overload with removal while taking out the SWraiths. We went back and forth with Discard and him buying off of Canopies. He extented into an Anger of the Gods that took 3 creatures of his. He started to hit me for Infect. I dropped a LoTV to hold the board and a Jace to get back my removal. I dropped an Angler and a DS on one turn. On the following turn used Jace to flashback a TBR and went in, Dismembered for 4 life his only blocker into a TBR on my DS for a 27 lethal life swing.
Round 6 - 2-0 Hardened Scales: Game one - This was against a friend of mine that I gave the win to and split the prizes. I was kinda tilted from the tough losses against Dredge and Bogles that I didn't feel like playing the Top8. We proceeded to play to see who was the more deserving one. The game one was kinda easy, I got rid of his tougher threats and killed everything else on site. I dropped two DS after dealing with his board and swung for the win. Game two - This one was ridiculous I kept a really risky hand with one land. After the first draw I told him... "Rewarded" there was my second land. I had a TSeize, 1 Kommand, 1 Abrade, 1 LtLH, 1 Jace, 1 Anger of the Gods. I told him... "if you knew how good my hand is you would concede right away". He didn't but I managed to kill every single threat and dropped 1 DS that I rode to victory with.
To summarize, the Jace was stellar the whole tournament. It's such a really versatile card. It's a removal magnet that also helps turning the corner without being that as mana taxing as Snapcaster. I really love him. It's a 100% really better Looting. I'm considering removing the one Looting for the second Jace but that is probably too clunky. The Grim Lavamancer was really unimpressive and has been every time I played it. I'm considering dropping it for a Staticaster or another Ravenous Trap. The Trap has been amazing. 100x times better than the Surgical Extraction, specially against Dredge. Since we have a real clock we can handle the card disadvantage and really hit them hard. Against Phoenix it plays the same role as Surgical so I don't really mind the swap to improve the Dredge matchup a bit.
Hoogland had an interesting take on this yesterday: All it will do is reduce variance. And reduced variance means that mediocre decks which win due to that variance will be hurt. A lot of "almost there" decks get worse while established strong decks get considerably better.
I dunno how much I agree, but I can definitely say that even if I stacked my opening 7, there are many decks' nut draws that I simply have no meaningful counterplay to.
While it hurts a lot to agree with Hoogland, my view on this mulligan rule is exactly the same. I don't really buy into the Combo Winter that everyone is afraid of. I seriously think that decks that are good will still be good (or slightly better) because we're reducing the number of non-games that occur, and decks that are objectively bad will be worse because they won't have the free wins that boost their apparent win rate.
Only card from Phoenix I would want under a watchlist is Manamorphose, not Faithless Looting. It's really the card that enables the fast phoenix starts, quick Awoken Horrors, and makes Pyromancer's Ascension go crazy. Deck is still perfectly viable without Manamorphose, just slower.
Besides, I'd rather kill only storm than kill off dredge, mardu pyromancer, griselbrand decks, UR Livind End, Hollow One and the many other decks that currently or may in the future use looting.
And even then, storm always seems to bounce back from getting its cards banned (Rite of Flame, Seething Song, Ponder + Preordain, Gitaxian Probe).
Again, just something for the watchlist. I think it's too soon for any action to be taken yet.
It feels good to see that there's actually someone else that thinks like me on this. Everyone at my LGS says I'm crazy for thinking that Manamorphose should be banned. I really think it's the biggest offender we have in the format, making the deck thinner like it does is too dangerous.
One could argue that we have more 0 mana cantrips but if you think about it, Bauble has a delayed draw and SWraith costs 2 life, and neither of them is a sorcery/instant, which is a huge difference since most of the Xerox decks care about it.
That's the reason why LoTV isn't that widely played right now. It's on an all time low. I play GDS as well and I don't ever consider playing it unless there's Bogles in the meta. (With the new Edict I'll play the Edict before playing LoTV).
LoTV is still played on BGx because of the way the deck operates. It deals with the hand and the board with discard and removal on turns 1/2 and then deploys Liliana. UW Control, plays a tap land into a path. It's not really the same as BGx.
UW on turn 3 usually faces a more developed board than BGx decks, that's why Teferi -2 leaves him way more vulnerable than LoTV does.
On the vacuum it looks like it's the same but the way the decks actually operate really changes the way the card ends up positioned.
The thing this Karn does is give a more Prison style approach to Gx Tron. It also boosts Whir and other Artifact based decks but the fact that gives another angle to a already powerful archetype can't be ignored.
Interesting that you guys find the new teferi (which is now confirmed) to be better vs control and combo. I think it's actually better vs creature decks; the -3 is absolutely absurd against creatures - the Hallmark of good walkers have always been that they have the ability to protect themselves and the ability to draw cards this does both on the same turn. For 3 Mana. The +1 and the static ability are mediocre against creature decks but still nice to have and that initial tempo boost from the -3 is exactly what we want.
Vs control and combo it's more of an easier to kill enchantment than a planeswalker since you won't really be drawing cards off of it.
I think it does actually solve problems for us,it gives us an early game proactive plan, which is something we don't have outside of Azcanta and Azcanta doesn't impact the board.
The way modern is... if you drop it on 3 and minus it will just die to a sneeze. You won't get to untap with it. If you want a 3 mana bounce with cycle that gains you 2/3 life it's fine. I don't think we're in the market for that. Against Combo/Control is when he shines because you really tax their ability to answer your gameplan. If you resolve this Teferi and untap with it against Combo/Control you'll hardly lose that match. The issue is that he does nothing against Aggro/Creature Combo, he just instantly melts.
The Veto is really good for the mirrors and against Ux decks. This card probably makes Dispel worse and makes Remand better. It's a strict upgrade over Negate and there's no reason to not play it over Negate. UW is pretty much the same as U1 for strict UW... With that being said, playing with FoR makes that there's a bigger than zero chance for us to be color screwed but those hands probably shouldn't be a keep in the first place.
The new Teferi fills the role of GoTrials... It's great against spell based combo decks and it's fine on the Mirror. IMHO I think it's too cute and it doesn't answer a problem we currently have.
I mean how fast does Tron usually get 10 mana? Yes a 10 mana combo is irrelevant usually but that is because most decks don't get that much mana ever but that is not true for Tron.
They can go T3 new Karn, T4 Lattice. If left undisrupted, this shuts down an opponent's mana completely. But what does that do for Tron? That seems good against midrange and control, but Tron is already good against midrange and control. It doesn't do anything to stop Burn or Dredge or H1 or HS Affinity or the other aggressive decks that actually cause Tron issues. It's a small edge in an already favorable set of matchups, I.e. totally fair and appropriate for Modern.
Karn into Bridge is much more relevant. Decks that can leverage this synergy will be very successful. Lattice is a cute distraction that generates hype but won't be a significant reason for Karn's success. You can definitely rebuild the Tron engine to abuse new Karn, but Lattice is one of the less relevant factors in that deck's potential viability.
You can go Turn 3 Karn (7mana) into Turn 4 Karn (4mana)+Lattice... This line of play isn't that difficult to come up... if you play 8Karn + 4 Stirrings it's actually quite easy to pull off. There has been a non-zero amount of times that I've been Turn 3 Karn into Turn 4 Ulamog...
Against Burn for example, if you lock them out of burn spells they don't have a good way to get rid of the 4mana Karn. It's not unbeatable but it's really strong.
He's a one card combo in big mana decks. 4 mana Karn, -2, get Mycosynth Lattice, cast it for 6. Enjoy not having lands!
turning every land into an artifact land, and Null Rod Karn to shut them down. I wonder how many turns it would take tron to deploy this lockdown?
Makes me thankful there are no Tron players in the lgs I go to...
It's 10 mana lockdown. It can be deployed as soon as turn 4. Against an empty board is instant win. The +1 bombimb lands and being Affinity/Hardened Scales/Whir hate is broken. It kills Opals with the +1...
While this is true, also remember that Luis Scott-Vargas made a video saying that Grixis Shadow needed to be banned. A few good Human printings later and everything was fine again. I don't think anticipation moves are the right ones in my opinion. Yes, you have some hard feelings while a deck that is too good stomps for a month or so, but at least you don't have hard feelings for cards that never were (Dig Through Time for example, which I personally do feel that it is too good for Modern. Buuuut, I really have next to 0 proof)
The times that I treasure the most in Modern are where a deck is apparently oppressive, but players worked through it without bans. Collected Company was too good at one time. Eldrazi Tron was too good at one time. Lantern was getting close. I am so glad that anyone who wants to play these decks STILL CAN because Wizards was not too hasty.
I think this has to do with the sense of entitlement that the general society has, and magic players aren't any different. Without trying to make a social philosophy post out of this, I really feel that this is actually the reason why the ban mania exists in the first place. To be fair, if Wizards didn't mess up by hastily banning stuff they probably shouldn't, we wouldn't be on this situation because the precedent wasn't there. The problem is now that some things were banned with questionable rationale to support it, every single person feels entitled to make their own version of the modern ban list without any objective reasoning.
Pros, on the other hand, have the responsibility to try and put a stop to this by giving a reasonable approach to this matter and giving statistical reasoning to back up their arguments for advocating a certain ban/unban. Instead they are doing what the rest of the media does, creating really polarized opinions to "sell more". I'm not saying that all of them do, but there are a few that do that and they are actually known for that. The worst part is that these pros have a way more vocal following than the people that are more down to earth and have a more reasonable approach.
To stay on topic, I recently moved from UW back to GDS and I'm having a blast. After a miserable Day 1 at GP Bilbao where I tied the first round playing the mirror and then ending up on the 0-1-0 bracket... Then proceding to lose 2 games because Logic Knot isn't Counterspell I felt so frustrated that I dropped out of the tournament and put the deck on my binder. On the second Day I went out and played a couple of side events with GDS (after more than 1 year of not playing it) and managed to get a couple of Boxes out of it. Now I'm currently rocking the deck to FNMs and local events and it has felt great. It's amazing to have a proactive plan and be the one deciding the game (one way or the other). UW is a bit taxing emotionally because there are a couple of non-games where you're just at the mercy of your top deck and that's a miserable feeling for someone as competitive as I am.
Until CS gets printed in MH1 I'll play GDS or anything but UW Control... While I think that trying to master one deck is a good approach to the format, it's really important to not get burnt out of the format by changing the pace once in a while.
Mystic Reverberation3 Instant
Destroy all artifacts and enchantments.
Doom Blast1 Sorcery
Destroy all creatures.
Landbreaking Sorcery
Destroy target land.
Powerful Surge Instant
Split second
Exile target spell or permanent or card from graveyard.
They are amazing designs. They break the color pie too much to ever see the light of day but they are super balanced while doing that. I don't understand the design behind the last one but that's just me... It does too little for that prohibiting cost. It should also draw a card or maybe just scry.
It’s fetchable, unlike glacial fortress. And if we have two basics there is no reason to not fetch a dual. It gives us more colored mana. Plains plains island let’s us snap path. Plains stream island let’s us snap path or snap opt. In a deck with so many basics I see no treason to not run it over the second hallowed fountain.
Because it plays way more strange with Celestial Collonade than Hallowed Fountain. There is a non-zero number of games where your 7 contains something like Collonade, Hallowed Fountain, 5 spells... which is a good keep, if you have an Opt or a Search for Azcanta. With Prairie Stream this hand is so much worse that you might just lose because you can't curve out well enough.
I think it does a way better Tundra impression than it does an Hallowed Fountain. Meaning that I'd rather budget my deck into Prarie Stream in legacy than try to get all cute and trade a Fountain for it in Modern.
Wizards isn't going to ban anything with multiple GP and the MC around the corner. Doubly so with MH also coming soon. But I think this might change depending on the MC results. Right now, I would pick Izzet Phoenix as the hands-down frontrunner at the MC. That's not to say it's the best deck: I don't think we have definitive MWP data to prove that. But it is probably perceived as the best deck by pro players, and is the type of turbo-Xerox deck with proactive/reactive elements that pros love. It's an easy pick up with a high ceiling, and given how much time pros have put into Arena and Standard, many will look for the most obvious and immediately appealing Modern contender. This could lead to an over-inflated Phoenix presence at the MC relative to the broader metagame.
This sort of high profile dominance could result in Wizards taking action, especially if preceded by similar GP results. But we need to see those results collectively to make a prediction. It's easy to isolate GP LA as an example of Modern ugliness, but GP Toronto, a mere month earlier, was a lot cleaner. Wizards will likely take a similar view; just look at their treatment of 2018 GP as proof of this conservative approach.
You highlighted one of the main issues Modern has. It's one of the favorite formats of the general playerbase, however not all of the pros play it since Standard is where most of the general action is for them. When they have to play it they usually just pick the so-called "best deck". When the pros flock all to the best deck available usually that decks tends to overperform, not necessarily due to raw power. Pros make less bad decisions, which in turn rewards them, even when playing the wrong deck of the week. This leads to the general population to flock to that deck as well because they feel that if the pros are playing that must be the right choice. This leads to an extreme overrepresentation of certain decks that may lead to the banmaniacs to start typing their angry tweets/posts or just say stupid things on twitch (Hoogland and his crew's M.O.). This happened with GDS last year and is happening now with Phoenix.
I think Phoenix has the potential to generate more polarized points of view than GDS, mainly due to those obscene turn 2 double Phoenix. They may not come up all that often but it certainly makes you feel helpless.
To summarize, I think nothing needs to be addressed up until both War of the Spark and Modern Horizons settle down. We'll have 36 PWs plus a couple of goodies from War of the Spark to pick from, plus over 200 reprints or cards designed for modern to play with that will shake the foundations of the format.
Exciting time to be a Modern player! Those sets couldn't come fast enough!
It has its merits and its flaws. Jace is a good filter but it's susceptible to removal so I avoid getting it out on curve, while the Looting doesn't have that problem.
On SV thing, I hate the card with so much passion, but it works wonderfully on this deck. I play UW Control and I refuse to play it ever since Opt got printed. On GDS it's a really amazing card. The drawback of drawing before scrying is mitigated by the fact that we are super mana constrained that it has little impact. For a Control deck it's way more important to draw the right card right away, but for us it doesn't matter. Sleigh of Hand feels really subpar, it's a combo card because there's not enough good cantrips in the format. That's my take on it.
4 Gurmag Angler
1 Jace, Vryn's Prodigy
3 Snapcaster Mage
4 Street Wraith
2 Dismember
3 Fatal Push
2 Lightning Bolt
1 Faithless Looting
3 Mishra's Bauble
2 Serum Visions
3 Thought Scour
2 Inquisition of Kozilek
2 Temur Battle Rage
4 Thoughtseize
2 Blood Crypt
4 Bloodstained Mire
2 Flooded Strand
1 Island
4 Polluted Delta
1 Steam Vents
1 Swamp
2 Watery Grave
1 Abrade
2 Anger of the Gods
1 Ceremonious Rejection
2 Collective Brutality
1 Disdainful Stroke
1 Grim Lavamancer
1 Kolaghan's Command
2 Liliana, the Last Hope
2 Ravenous Trap
1 Stubborn Denial
1 Surgical Extraction
Round 1 - 2-0 Humans:
Game one - I had a turn 1 Thoughseize to take his Freebooter to protect my 2 Fatal Pushes. He had Double Thalia hand so I had to navigate around that. I dropped a turn 2 Angler and clogged the board. He develloped his board without attacking while I dropped myself to 7 with Angler and double Shadow. He went for the alpha strike where my only out was double removal. I proceded to block and kill the Thalia and another attacker, went down to 3 life and swung back for >20.
Game two - I made a "transformational board plan" and proceded to grind. I overloaded him with removal even through a lot of Buglers. I managed to flip a Jace that together with a LtLH helped me control his board and gain virtual card advantage. I won with back to back TBR, using Jace to flashback it.
Round 2 - 2-1 BW Eldrazi:
Game one - I kept a decent 7 without a threat. Since I had so many cantrips I figured I'd eventually get there, but my deck was unable to find a threat in time. He went really fast while I got stuck on two lands with pretty much nothing relevant in hand. After I managed to get my three mana I started to develop but he clogged the board with Lingering Souls. I failed to draw into the TBR or DS while he was hitting me with some spirits. He was really close to dead when he killed me and I had TBR on top
Game two - He kept a good hand with turn 1 Relic of Progenitus, then had also 2 Stranglers, 1 Lingering Souls. It was really tough to fight through the Relic because I kept a turn 2 Angler with a Snapcaster hand. My plan was to force his Relic with my Snapcaster and avoid losing too much to the Relic so I used my TScour on him instead of myself. He popped because I flashed in the Snap to use a removal and I managed to put an Angler on the table on the following turn. After that he played a bunch of lingering souls to chump my angler until he drew blanks and was unable to keep the defenses up.
Game three - This game was really close. He had a lot of hand disruption to keep me off of developing my board. We went back and forth until I managed to stick the Jace and flip it to reuse a removal on a Tidehollow Sculler to get the TBR for the win over his Lingering Souls tokens.
Round 3 - 0-2 Dredge:
Game one - He had the worst draw I've ever seen a Dredge player have... I managed to keep him off of doing anything relevant and he never dredged the entire game. My deck failed to give me a single threat the entire game and I lost to him hardcasting Bloodghasts and Prized Amalgms... it felt so bad
Game two - I TS him on turn 1 to take away a Looting. On turn 2 I IoK to take his Catarthic... he top decked another one and went off... I failed to find any GY interaction/Anger of the Gods... until it was too late. I tried to defend with an Angler and a DS but he ended up Creeping Chilling me to death while I had no Denial ready to protect myself... He was dead on board though...
Round 4 - 1-2 Boggles:
Game one - I knew he was on Bogles because he played next to me in the previous round. So I was already sad from getting this pairing. He had a turn 1 Leyline of Sanctity on G1 that really surprised me... He also had a ton of creatures and only 1 aura that I countered. He was hitting me for 1 or 2 a turn for a while until I played an Angler and he started to be on chump block duty. He failed to draw anything useful for a couple of turns and I stole that one.
Game two - This game both our decks did nothing. I got rid of his auras with discard and he failed to produce any meaningful threat. I didn't draw a DS so I had just an Angler live... He pathed it and resumed to hit me... I drew no threat and he managed to kill me...
Game three - Another depressing game where our decks didn't do anything particularly interesting... His hand was bad and mine didn't do that much either. He had a Bogle with the flying enchant and was chipping me for three a turn. He had a RiP online and I was full of Anglers in my hand. The DS didn't come in time even after I got rid of two boggles with an Anger of the Gods. I tried to dig for a threat and none came. I had to hardcast 2 Street Wraiths to try and "race him" but he removed them with the Paths he was hoarding in his hand...
Round 5 - 2-0 Hardened Scales:
Game one - I knew he was on HS so I kept a 1 lander with double removal and double discard and a Serum Visions and a SWraith. I went for his hand and stripped him off of anything useful. I killed every single threat he had and dropped two shadows that one shotted him with TBR.
Game two - It gets even easier. I overload with removal while taking out the SWraiths. We went back and forth with Discard and him buying off of Canopies. He extented into an Anger of the Gods that took 3 creatures of his. He started to hit me for Infect. I dropped a LoTV to hold the board and a Jace to get back my removal. I dropped an Angler and a DS on one turn. On the following turn used Jace to flashback a TBR and went in, Dismembered for 4 life his only blocker into a TBR on my DS for a 27 lethal life swing.
Round 6 - 2-0 Hardened Scales:
Game one - This was against a friend of mine that I gave the win to and split the prizes. I was kinda tilted from the tough losses against Dredge and Bogles that I didn't feel like playing the Top8. We proceeded to play to see who was the more deserving one. The game one was kinda easy, I got rid of his tougher threats and killed everything else on site. I dropped two DS after dealing with his board and swung for the win.
Game two - This one was ridiculous I kept a really risky hand with one land. After the first draw I told him... "Rewarded" there was my second land. I had a TSeize, 1 Kommand, 1 Abrade, 1 LtLH, 1 Jace, 1 Anger of the Gods. I told him... "if you knew how good my hand is you would concede right away". He didn't but I managed to kill every single threat and dropped 1 DS that I rode to victory with.
To summarize, the Jace was stellar the whole tournament. It's such a really versatile card. It's a removal magnet that also helps turning the corner without being that as mana taxing as Snapcaster. I really love him. It's a 100% really better Looting. I'm considering removing the one Looting for the second Jace but that is probably too clunky. The Grim Lavamancer was really unimpressive and has been every time I played it. I'm considering dropping it for a Staticaster or another Ravenous Trap. The Trap has been amazing. 100x times better than the Surgical Extraction, specially against Dredge. Since we have a real clock we can handle the card disadvantage and really hit them hard. Against Phoenix it plays the same role as Surgical so I don't really mind the swap to improve the Dredge matchup a bit.
One could argue that we have more 0 mana cantrips but if you think about it, Bauble has a delayed draw and SWraith costs 2 life, and neither of them is a sorcery/instant, which is a huge difference since most of the Xerox decks care about it.
LoTV is still played on BGx because of the way the deck operates. It deals with the hand and the board with discard and removal on turns 1/2 and then deploys Liliana. UW Control, plays a tap land into a path. It's not really the same as BGx.
UW on turn 3 usually faces a more developed board than BGx decks, that's why Teferi -2 leaves him way more vulnerable than LoTV does.
On the vacuum it looks like it's the same but the way the decks actually operate really changes the way the card ends up positioned.
The new Teferi fills the role of GoTrials... It's great against spell based combo decks and it's fine on the Mirror. IMHO I think it's too cute and it doesn't answer a problem we currently have.
Against Burn for example, if you lock them out of burn spells they don't have a good way to get rid of the 4mana Karn. It's not unbeatable but it's really strong.
I think they pushed it a little too much.
Pros, on the other hand, have the responsibility to try and put a stop to this by giving a reasonable approach to this matter and giving statistical reasoning to back up their arguments for advocating a certain ban/unban. Instead they are doing what the rest of the media does, creating really polarized opinions to "sell more". I'm not saying that all of them do, but there are a few that do that and they are actually known for that. The worst part is that these pros have a way more vocal following than the people that are more down to earth and have a more reasonable approach.
To stay on topic, I recently moved from UW back to GDS and I'm having a blast. After a miserable Day 1 at GP Bilbao where I tied the first round playing the mirror and then ending up on the 0-1-0 bracket... Then proceding to lose 2 games because Logic Knot isn't Counterspell I felt so frustrated that I dropped out of the tournament and put the deck on my binder. On the second Day I went out and played a couple of side events with GDS (after more than 1 year of not playing it) and managed to get a couple of Boxes out of it. Now I'm currently rocking the deck to FNMs and local events and it has felt great. It's amazing to have a proactive plan and be the one deciding the game (one way or the other). UW is a bit taxing emotionally because there are a couple of non-games where you're just at the mercy of your top deck and that's a miserable feeling for someone as competitive as I am.
Until CS gets printed in MH1 I'll play GDS or anything but UW Control... While I think that trying to master one deck is a good approach to the format, it's really important to not get burnt out of the format by changing the pace once in a while.
I think it does a way better Tundra impression than it does an Hallowed Fountain. Meaning that I'd rather budget my deck into Prarie Stream in legacy than try to get all cute and trade a Fountain for it in Modern.
I think Phoenix has the potential to generate more polarized points of view than GDS, mainly due to those obscene turn 2 double Phoenix. They may not come up all that often but it certainly makes you feel helpless.
To summarize, I think nothing needs to be addressed up until both War of the Spark and Modern Horizons settle down. We'll have 36 PWs plus a couple of goodies from War of the Spark to pick from, plus over 200 reprints or cards designed for modern to play with that will shake the foundations of the format.
Exciting time to be a Modern player! Those sets couldn't come fast enough!