As much as Chronicles 2.0 is a secret desire for me and maybe others, I think it's not all that called for with MM.
Unless you were in the market for Goyfs. Or Bobs. Maybe a few other cards past that, but you get the idea. I'm sure my LGS wasn't the only one who assembled a binder chock full of MM cards, so that's something to show for the increase in availability. But Goyfs, man...
Might be easier to find now (maybe... possibly... kind of... perhaps...), but not easier to pay for, that's for sure.
Well, there aren't really any good black removal spells (that I know of) that take care of wurmcoil engine very well. That's why you want to play path to exile in this format if you can.
For the niche he fills (low curve dude that grows in some fashion to cave face in early on), there are things that kinda do that job in some capacity, but better.
Steppe Lynx, Loam Lion / Kird Ape, Experiment One, Student of Warfare, and Figure of Destiny come to immediate mind.
Worrying about mill is perhaps a sign of being too paranoid, even for someone playing UB.
Just saying.
That said, Elixir is usually a cool choice when you venture into the silly world of Trinket Mage trinket tutoring, which is in of itself an amazing adventure in things that you can cheese alongside Academy Ruins, though IMO that route lies the way of unexplored territory for a UB midrange concept.
Yes... and no. At least, for what Rjl seems to be aiming for, it's perhaps more in his interest to go green (AD and LftL ftw? ftw!), but you do have a point that for spot removal and SB options, red brings some solid stuff.
Then again, so does white.
No wonder UWR is a thing.
And you're kinda on the ball regarding black's contributions to a control deck; a lot of what it brings rewards you for knowing how to attack each matchup, rather than saving your ass in the face of arbitrary play #8675309.
I want to say something to the effect of not everything needs to be met with a Lightning Bolt on sight (except for Dark Confidant, he always merits an early grave). That there's a distinction between stuff that's good for the opponent and stuff that impedes your ability to win. That, ultimately, some things can and should be ignored because it's irrelevant to the advancing of your game plan.
But there's no one way to look at it, and so going Grixis is an option. Different school of thought to Rjl's strategy, but killing everything that moves is a fair enough plan if that's how you want to go.
There are, at least in my opinion, better things to be casting with that red inclusion than Electrolyze, though, unless you still see a lot of Lingering Souls tokens in your meta or something else heavy in the x/1s. Great card when you're maxing out its value, but anything less and it's just ugh.
It's servicable.
Yes it's a port of ZenScars' UBC outing, but I find it to get the job done, especially when you start including some of the cards that weren't legal in that seasons' time (I would really love to get some CrypComs and Thoughtseizes, but it's not killing me all so much yet).
Mystical Teachings is good... except for the part where outside a Teachings deck build it's honestly kinda janky.
Gifts Ungiven is slightly better since you can rig your piles with the right card choice, and I like Noxious Revival as a sort of pseudo-tutor effect, but the problem I have with Teachings is the 4cmc premium for setting up a followup play. It's a fair price to pay if you're taking a toolbox approach, but I can't really condone it outside of that. Hell, I'd be more inclined to play Merchant Scroll over it, personally.
I suffer from that with janky workarounds like cheesing Halimar Depths, though, and to be fair it's not the most pretty method available.
Personal rambling aside, you eke more value out of Teachings what with Mr. Tiago being tutorable through it. And Tiago is a very good value card for Ux decks.
Honestly, my approach was
>people play efficient beats
>people play efficient removal to stop efficient beats
>so why not disrupt their plan and then play big annoying nigh-untouchable fatties instead?
The thing with this, and it's probably a common pattern you'll see in UB decks period, is that it plays a slow and grindy game. You'll have to swallow the loss to RDW-speed decks, it's just part of being the controlliest of control.
I thought it's that they ban combos that aren't disruptable Voltron types.
It's the stigma of playing solitaire; I want people to have fun as I show them a cool trick that I myself enjoy, but the fact is that not a lot of people like it when you storm out for lethal Tendri- err, Grapeshot.
Across the variety of watercooler environments I've chewed the fat with, there was the interesting suggestion of introducing Modern to Force of Will, but that's likely a discussion saved for a more relevant thread...
My hope is for Theros to have an agenda for sculpting combo opportunities, not going overboard with them and instigating a Combo Winter, but to offer some crazy things that give everyone a fair laugh as we scramble to assemble the kill cannon and have fun with it.
So far I've either piloted, played against, or have seen at my LGS stuff like:
>UTron
>RGTron
>Bogle
>Bump-Burn
>Boros Landfall (me)
>Boros LD
>Affinity
>Soul Sisters
>Scapeshift
>Mel Pod
>UWR Midrange
>UB Control (me)
>JankyMonoblackGoodstuff.dec
>Domain Zoo
>Living End
>Assault Loam
>Post-ban Eggs
>ZhurTaaDruid.dec
Factoring in that competitive level, +/- prize offerings, is the variable that dictates trends in what decks tend to be chosen (ie the more competitive an event is, the more people will gravitate away from homebrew pet projects in favor of popularized lists and winning flavor of the season), I'd say Pod is one of those near-guaranteed decks to run into what with it having that relatively recent tournament win or whatever it was back in... May, right?
In practice, I've seen more than my fair share of Tron. Makes sense; according to the archetype's primers, Tron's pretty cheap for a competitive deck. Low financial cost combined with fat that eclipses a lot of the standard issue removal in Modern makes for a deck that can get stuff done once it Voltrons out with the Urza lands. For all the fun I've ever had slamming a Grave Titan of all things on the board in the format of low-curve beats, Tron makes bread and butter plays out of that kind of stuff.
Anyway, to sum it all up, people play what they can get their hands on, and as you go up the ladder for competitiveness and prize offerings, people will scramble towards the best deck they can acquire. For some, it's the one with the best performance history, for others it's the one they know most intimately, and then there are even others that opt to field what's strongest in the anticipated meta. The best I can offer as advice is to expect whatever has won the most recent heavy-coverage event (as of this post, that appears to be Pod's triumph at GP Portland), along with the token RDW/Burn player or 2, followed by some mix of Jund/Midrange, Zoo and Tron.
Roughly.
If you want something less driven by guesstimation, you'll need to scout the area yourself, maybe play a few games to learn the lay of the land.
Nothing beats gathering some on-site intelligence.
I've seen that there have been a bunch of tops with Scapeshift lately, however, I cannot seem to grasp the deck. I see it's kill potential, but it almost seems a bit too slow for me. If your Scapeshift gets countered, you are forced to slowroll, and if it gets to that point, there is a good chance that your opponent will be faster than you. I don't know if it's just that I don't have that much experience with it or what, but I don't honestly see why Scapeshift is that good.
The trick is that Scapeshift is actually a control deck under the disguise of a ramp deck.
Eh, first you say you don't need them, and then you find yourself for reasons unfathomable being penalized for not having your basic plains and mountain out (yeah Blood Moon isn't exactly -that- painful for us, but still...)
Appreciate the fact that Arid Mesa isn't an Island/x fetchland. And that MesaGhostFlagstones is a pretty solid substitute for a 12fetch land base at a fraction of the cost.
I get VolFall and Explosive sabotaging me in a sense, but the former at the least was because I wanted an insurance plan against Geist scenarios and/or swarm tactics.
I also don't see what's to worry about RDW, they'd have to burn a lot of burn on my dudes or risk getting facepunched in full force, is that not right?
You want to do a blend of whatever killspells you pick, but as a general rule of thumb Smother is your go to primary killspell, and what you choose for a secondary should be based on the idea that you want to minimize how often either it or Smother are dead in a given matchup. Essentially, you never want to be in a place analogous to "playing against Tron, and all my killspells are Smother and Go for the Throat."
I do a 2/2/2 suite of Smother, Doom Blade, and Go for the Throat, best I can say of it is that no matter what, until the day comes that Wurmcoil Grave Titan becomes a real thing in Magic, let alone Modern, I'll always have at least 2 killspells that continue to stay live pre-board. Changing the numbers enters the realm of calibrating for a meta, so you could drop GftT for more Doom Blades to have better game against Tron's fat, or do the inverse so you can touch the assorted black guys played in various decks, or focus on Smother because many people play small dudes and best of all you can touch Manlands routinely with it (though again tossing the Tron matchup away)...
Beyond playing Smother, it does come down to meta calls as I see it.
Though for a paltry 4 life there's always Dismember, which kills things dead pretty well... except again for a lot of Tron's big stuff.
Long time lurker, first time poster around these parts. Been wondering if the leading place for all things Boros could help me with a bit of an impasse I'm stuck on:
It's to do with the singleton Ajani Vengeant, Pithing Needle and EExplosives. I'm thinking I could use that space for something better. My gut tells me I could drop the two sideboard trinkets for Grafdigger's Cage, what with Pod being a thing and all, but Johnny V is a card that, although I love greatly, I think might be better as something else.
Lightning Helix was, earlier today, Shard Volley, which I'm sure you all know as a pretty tech card in its interaction with Flagstones of Trokair alongside landfall dudes. While I like that card, I found out over time that having it as a 4-of can lead to somewhat shoddy hands where you wish you had something that didn't kill one of your lands as an additional cost. I feel I want to reintroduce 1 or 2 of Shard Volley into the deck, and I'm wondering if popping AV out is the best idea (maybe also one of the Paths, which could get moved into the sideboard in place of one of those two Cages).
Last time I played this deck, the build was significantly different, but still maintained some real explosive capacity. Some of its games weren't all too good though, a combination of gratuitous misplay on my part and some poor board planning exacerbating the problem. That said, I feel that in its current incarnation the deck has an actual game against a lot of common matchups.
Unless you were in the market for Goyfs. Or Bobs. Maybe a few other cards past that, but you get the idea. I'm sure my LGS wasn't the only one who assembled a binder chock full of MM cards, so that's something to show for the increase in availability. But Goyfs, man...
Might be easier to find now (maybe... possibly... kind of... perhaps...), but not easier to pay for, that's for sure.
While not entirely "good" per-se, technically there's Eradicate.
And Sever the Bloodline.
And Unmake.
Interesting albeit unrelated trivia: Appetite for Brains exiles its chosen card. Never noticed that until now.
Steppe Lynx, Loam Lion / Kird Ape, Experiment One, Student of Warfare, and Figure of Destiny come to immediate mind.
Just saying.
That said, Elixir is usually a cool choice when you venture into the silly world of Trinket Mage trinket tutoring, which is in of itself an amazing adventure in things that you can cheese alongside Academy Ruins, though IMO that route lies the way of unexplored territory for a UB midrange concept.
Seeing Gut Shot reminds me how much I wish Deathrite Shaman had 1 toughness instead of 2, incidentally.
Yes... and no. At least, for what Rjl seems to be aiming for, it's perhaps more in his interest to go green (AD and LftL ftw? ftw!), but you do have a point that for spot removal and SB options, red brings some solid stuff.
Then again, so does white.
No wonder UWR is a thing.
And you're kinda on the ball regarding black's contributions to a control deck; a lot of what it brings rewards you for knowing how to attack each matchup, rather than saving your ass in the face of arbitrary play #8675309.
I want to say something to the effect of not everything needs to be met with a Lightning Bolt on sight (except for Dark Confidant, he always merits an early grave). That there's a distinction between stuff that's good for the opponent and stuff that impedes your ability to win. That, ultimately, some things can and should be ignored because it's irrelevant to the advancing of your game plan.
But there's no one way to look at it, and so going Grixis is an option. Different school of thought to Rjl's strategy, but killing everything that moves is a fair enough plan if that's how you want to go.
There are, at least in my opinion, better things to be casting with that red inclusion than Electrolyze, though, unless you still see a lot of Lingering Souls tokens in your meta or something else heavy in the x/1s. Great card when you're maxing out its value, but anything less and it's just ugh.
Yes it's a port of ZenScars' UBC outing, but I find it to get the job done, especially when you start including some of the cards that weren't legal in that seasons' time (I would really love to get some CrypComs and Thoughtseizes, but it's not killing me all so much yet).
Mystical Teachings is good... except for the part where outside a Teachings deck build it's honestly kinda janky.
Gifts Ungiven is slightly better since you can rig your piles with the right card choice, and I like Noxious Revival as a sort of pseudo-tutor effect, but the problem I have with Teachings is the 4cmc premium for setting up a followup play. It's a fair price to pay if you're taking a toolbox approach, but I can't really condone it outside of that. Hell, I'd be more inclined to play Merchant Scroll over it, personally.
Or maybe Peer Through Depths.
But that's just my personal philosophy.
I suffer from that with janky workarounds like cheesing Halimar Depths, though, and to be fair it's not the most pretty method available.
Personal rambling aside, you eke more value out of Teachings what with Mr. Tiago being tutorable through it. And Tiago is a very good value card for Ux decks.
Control?
Can I get a "deny ALL the things!" going on here or what?
3x Swamp
3x Island
4x Halimar Depths
4x Watery Grave
4x Creeping Tar Pit
4x Drowned Catacomb
4x Tectonic Edge
Fat
2x Grave Titan
2x Sphinx of Jwar Isle
Spells
4x Inquisition of Kozilek
2x Doom Blade
2x Go for the Throat
2x Smother
4x Into the Roil
2x Black Sun's Zenith
4x Rune Snag
1x Mana Leak
3x Deprive
3x Dissipate
3x Blue Sun's Zenith
3x Spell Pierce
3x Duress
1x Grafdigger's Cage
1x Pithing Needle
2x Ratchet Bomb
1x Topor Orb
1x Black Sun's Zenith
3x Memoricide
Honestly, my approach was
>people play efficient beats
>people play efficient removal to stop efficient beats
>so why not disrupt their plan and then play big annoying nigh-untouchable fatties instead?
The thing with this, and it's probably a common pattern you'll see in UB decks period, is that it plays a slow and grindy game. You'll have to swallow the loss to RDW-speed decks, it's just part of being the controlliest of control.
It's the stigma of playing solitaire; I want people to have fun as I show them a cool trick that I myself enjoy, but the fact is that not a lot of people like it when you storm out for lethal Tendri- err, Grapeshot.
Across the variety of watercooler environments I've chewed the fat with, there was the interesting suggestion of introducing Modern to Force of Will, but that's likely a discussion saved for a more relevant thread...
My hope is for Theros to have an agenda for sculpting combo opportunities, not going overboard with them and instigating a Combo Winter, but to offer some crazy things that give everyone a fair laugh as we scramble to assemble the kill cannon and have fun with it.
>UTron
>RGTron
>Bogle
>Bump-Burn
>Boros Landfall (me)
>Boros LD
>Affinity
>Soul Sisters
>Scapeshift
>Mel Pod
>UWR Midrange
>UB Control (me)
>JankyMonoblackGoodstuff.dec
>Domain Zoo
>Living End
>Assault Loam
>Post-ban Eggs
>ZhurTaaDruid.dec
Factoring in that competitive level, +/- prize offerings, is the variable that dictates trends in what decks tend to be chosen (ie the more competitive an event is, the more people will gravitate away from homebrew pet projects in favor of popularized lists and winning flavor of the season), I'd say Pod is one of those near-guaranteed decks to run into what with it having that relatively recent tournament win or whatever it was back in... May, right?
In practice, I've seen more than my fair share of Tron. Makes sense; according to the archetype's primers, Tron's pretty cheap for a competitive deck. Low financial cost combined with fat that eclipses a lot of the standard issue removal in Modern makes for a deck that can get stuff done once it Voltrons out with the Urza lands. For all the fun I've ever had slamming a Grave Titan of all things on the board in the format of low-curve beats, Tron makes bread and butter plays out of that kind of stuff.
Anyway, to sum it all up, people play what they can get their hands on, and as you go up the ladder for competitiveness and prize offerings, people will scramble towards the best deck they can acquire. For some, it's the one with the best performance history, for others it's the one they know most intimately, and then there are even others that opt to field what's strongest in the anticipated meta. The best I can offer as advice is to expect whatever has won the most recent heavy-coverage event (as of this post, that appears to be Pod's triumph at GP Portland), along with the token RDW/Burn player or 2, followed by some mix of Jund/Midrange, Zoo and Tron.
Roughly.
If you want something less driven by guesstimation, you'll need to scout the area yourself, maybe play a few games to learn the lay of the land.
Nothing beats gathering some on-site intelligence.
The trick is that Scapeshift is actually a control deck under the disguise of a ramp deck.
...well, that's how I see it, at the least.
Appreciate the fact that Arid Mesa isn't an Island/x fetchland. And that MesaGhostFlagstones is a pretty solid substitute for a 12fetch land base at a fraction of the cost.
I also don't see what's to worry about RDW, they'd have to burn a lot of burn on my dudes or risk getting facepunched in full force, is that not right?
I do a 2/2/2 suite of Smother, Doom Blade, and Go for the Throat, best I can say of it is that no matter what, until the day comes that Wurmcoil Grave Titan becomes a real thing in Magic, let alone Modern, I'll always have at least 2 killspells that continue to stay live pre-board. Changing the numbers enters the realm of calibrating for a meta, so you could drop GftT for more Doom Blades to have better game against Tron's fat, or do the inverse so you can touch the assorted black guys played in various decks, or focus on Smother because many people play small dudes and best of all you can touch Manlands routinely with it (though again tossing the Tron matchup away)...
Beyond playing Smother, it does come down to meta calls as I see it.
Though for a paltry 4 life there's always Dismember, which kills things dead pretty well... except again for a lot of Tron's big stuff.
Funny how it keeps coming back to Tron.
4x Arid Mesa
4x Flagstones of Trokair
4x Ghost Quarter
4x Sacred Foundry
4x Mountain
2x Plains
1x Slayers' Stronghold
Creatures
3x Ranger of Eos
4x Plated Geopede
4x Goblin Guide
4x Steppe Lynx
4x Figure of Destiny
1x Goblin Bushwhacker
1x Ajani Vengeant
4x Boros Charm
4x Lightning Helix
4x Lightning Bolt
4x Path to Exile
3x Volcanic Fallout
3x Blood Moon
3x Wear // Tear
2x Stony Silence
2x Relic of Progenitus
1x Pithing Needle
1x Engineered Explosives
It's to do with the singleton Ajani Vengeant, Pithing Needle and EExplosives. I'm thinking I could use that space for something better. My gut tells me I could drop the two sideboard trinkets for Grafdigger's Cage, what with Pod being a thing and all, but Johnny V is a card that, although I love greatly, I think might be better as something else.
Lightning Helix was, earlier today, Shard Volley, which I'm sure you all know as a pretty tech card in its interaction with Flagstones of Trokair alongside landfall dudes. While I like that card, I found out over time that having it as a 4-of can lead to somewhat shoddy hands where you wish you had something that didn't kill one of your lands as an additional cost. I feel I want to reintroduce 1 or 2 of Shard Volley into the deck, and I'm wondering if popping AV out is the best idea (maybe also one of the Paths, which could get moved into the sideboard in place of one of those two Cages).
Last time I played this deck, the build was significantly different, but still maintained some real explosive capacity. Some of its games weren't all too good though, a combination of gratuitous misplay on my part and some poor board planning exacerbating the problem. That said, I feel that in its current incarnation the deck has an actual game against a lot of common matchups.