Thanks!
I actually haven't played much lately due to personal life stuff, but I hope I can attend FNM this week and would try out this list (given I get my hands on Dire Fleet Daredevil until then):
Obviously looking forward to test out Daredevil, but I'm also curious on how Huntmaster will be in the maindeck (haven't had him there in a long time).
Regarding sideboarding I don't have a good write up at hand, but that's actually something that would be interesting to write down and share here, as I'm also not always a 100% sure if what I'm doing is correct. So I'll try to find the time to write one!
Since there's been some discussion on Traverse the Ulvenwald over the last few posts, here are my two cents:
I've been playing with a singleton of the card for over a year now and have been pretty happy with that configuration. It lets the deck go down to 20 lands while adding another copy of each creature usually from around turn 5 onwards while simply acting as the 21st land before that.
So the upside of the card is cleary its flexibility, drawing lands late in the game sucks, not drawing them early sucks even more and it can act as several different creatures.
In reality I most often searched for E-Wit/Snap to start a value chain with it (a very good option in grindy MUs like UW control or Jund) or Huntmaster to stabilize (brutal creature MUs like DnT or Humans). Scavenging Ooze (which is arguably the most silver bullet card in the maindeck) I surprisingly didn't search for as often you'd probably think. Problem here is that searching him up on turn 5+ is simply way too slow against the decks Scooze is best against (Dredge, Living End) while being quite easy to kill in for Snapcaster decks and thereby a gamble to search for.
This shows me something very important, if you're thinking about building a deck more focused on Traverse, make sure that your silverbullets are impactful if they hit the board on turn 4+ (because even if you run stuff like Mishra's Baubles you won't be able to reliably have Delirium before turn 4 without deluting the deck too much). Running Ethersworn Cannonist in a Bant version won't help much against Storm as the deck can just go off before you get to search for it. Cards to stabilize like Huntmaster or Izzet-Staticaster are great. E-Wit/Snap for lategame grinding value are great. Not sure how Daredevil will do regarding this, but searching for an 3 mana value Shadow killspell seems like a nice option to have.
The downsides of Traverse are that it is another graveyard dependent card, which isn't too bad if you just think about as land 21. But it's pretty bad at simply being a land, only taps for one colour, comes in tapped and if you're keeping a hand with no green manasources you can't really treat it as a safe 2nd or 3rd landdrop.
Dire Fleet Daredevil seems sweet as well. Could be a 1-2 of in the mainboard. Has a lot of potential and a lot of ways it could fail miserably--as rayo mentioned before. Deserves testing. I guess if it only improves our better match-ups it might not be the right way to go.
The sweet thing about Daredevil is that it's potentially good in usually even to slightly unfavored MUs (Grixis Shadow, Jund/Junk and Burn are my big hopes). It won't do much against Tron/Eldrazi Tron/Bant Eldrazi, which I consider to be our rather bad MUs, but it potentially offers us something we didn't have before/couldn't do efficiently before so my hopes are actually quite high to get another playable.
ouh that's something I didn't even think about yet. Block, deal first strike damage then bolt a Tasigur? not too shabby. And yeah the first strike is definitely relevant. Think I'm getting two copies for now, one main for a scooze and one in the side and then see how testing goes.
I'm not sure if it's really maindeckable. What does it do against Tron, RG Valakut, Affinity, Merfolk, Elves, Humans, Company decks, Lantern, DnT, Living End...
All that said I'm also maindecking 2x Scavenging Ooze which are not really good in some MUs. I guess I'll give it a try anyway because we don't get new promising cards very often, but I tend to think it's better as a SB card.
Hey guys, spoiler season is upon us and so far I've spotted 2 interesting cards for us: Warsail Marauder
1U
Creature - Human Pirate
Flying
When ~ target creature an opponent controls has base power and toughness 0/1 and loses all abilities until end of turn.
2/1
I really wish this would happen upon etb instead of whenever it attacks, but a flying 2/1 body should get some attack in and it offers a much needed way to interact with opposing Shadows, Tasigurs and even otherwise annoying stuff like Smashers or Wurmcoils.
Not sure if needing to attack is to clunky, but it's something to consider.
Dire Fleet Daredevil
1R
Creature - Human Pirate
First Strike
2/1
When ~ etbs, exile target instant or sorcery from an opponent’s graveyard. You may cast that card this turn and you may spend mana as though as it were mana of any color. If that card would be put into a graveyard this turn, exile it instead.
Spicy red Snapcaster variant. Will definitely try one or in the side. Killing opposing Shadows with their own Pushes seems sweet. Bonus points for vialing it in in response to a Snapcaster target.
Card could be solid against Burn too, getting a Lightning Helix is very sweet, but a Bolt isn't bad either and the body (First Strike!) is relevant.
Other MUs where
There are more intriguing cards like Journey to Eternity (i'd like to try it first in a Sultai deck with Snapcaster Mage, Grim Flayer and Tarmogoyf), Enter the Unknown who might please Gx Scales brews or some ramp decks (Gx Devotion brews), and Form of the Dinosaur as a potential target in Enduring Ideal. They look bad to me at first sight, but fun to try !
Pretty sure Journey to Eternity wants to be played with Sakura-Tribe Elder. Get's it online right away and ramps you straight into using it the next turn. All that said I don't think a 3cmc aura is really playable in with all the instant speed spot removal in Modern. Sweet card though.
Snare is good in pretty much every MU that is not GDS or Eldrazi Tron...and maybe Vial decks but that's not where Pierce shines either. It really shines against Affinity, Jund, Abzan Company, Snapcaster.dec and I'd argue it's better than Pierce against Storm and RG Valakut.
I agree that the card wasn't very good this summer (since GDS and Eldrazi where everywhere). But the meta has adjusted back.
Helping to get Delirium/grow Goyfs would be a sweet upside, but not a necessity.
Nice to have you on board with Eternal Command!
For local meta I'd say it's pretty diverse, just had a look at my spreadsheet where I track my matches since the end of August and I faced 43 different decks since then (either on FNMs or playstesting with buddies).
3 matches against Abzan Company decks and only 2 against Dredge.
I'm fine with my burn MU right (7-5 since I started tracking). I see that you don't play Spirebluff Canals which help a lot in getting early pain free red mana. I'm actually not sure if you should run 2 Sulfur Falls together with 2x Flooded Grove. A starting hand with any combination of the 4 as your only lands seems pretty awkward. I played 2x Flooded Groves for a long time, cut one when I went down to 20 lands and I'm not looking back. It's nice if you draw it later in the game, but very awkward as your 1st or 2nd, sometimes even as your 3rd land drop.
Scavenging Ooze also comes in pretty big in the Burn MU by the way. Regurarly nets me 3+ life. Have you given Spell Snare a try? It's a lot better than you seem to acknowledge.
I agree that I could probably cut the Ruse, but it's grown dear to my heart, does heavy work in some MUs and I always love some spice in my decks. I don't agree with cutting a Remand. 3 copies are perfect for this deck unless you know your meta is really hostile to it. The card draw is super valuable and is usually better against Gx Tron or Valakut decks and at least cantrips in attrition MUs (if it's not value countering flashbacked stuff against Snapcaster and Souls decks). Against aggro decks it's obviously not as good, but that's what the 1 cmc counters are for.
Staticaster is surprisingly solid against dredge actually. Kills their Bloodghasts every turn while you blocks their amalgams with goyf to stall a little until you find a cryptic for an big strike. Obviously not as good Anger in this particular MU, but so much more versatile. Also Angers double red cost can be an issue and you can search up Staticaster with Traverse.
Played some matches with Engineered Explosives main now. I'm not really convinced yet. Any other suggestions? Should be either a creature or some form of kill spell. Tarfire, Burst Lightning, Forked Bolt, Narnam Renegade possibly? Really not sure.
First of all thank you for the time and effort of you reply.
On some points I agree with you, on others I'll have to kindly differ from your opinion.
Also for the record I've been playing this deck for a long time now, several years actually. On an off obviously but I always come back to it in the end, it's just too much fun to play and perfectly fits my playstyle.
You seem very engaged in the deck? How often do you play it? Do you attend FNMs or other 'tournaments' with it?
After some more thought I agree with you on the Blood Moon idea. While certainly good in some MUs it sucks to warp our manabase (and fetch basics) for a card that we won't even draw half of the time.
I'm back on the Spreading Seas plan, but replaced one with a Stone Rain, since Gx Tron seems to be coming back a little and Rain really shines in the MU.
I also agree with you on Roast. The card was solid some time ago and I liked the idea of having a 5th sorcery to grow my Goyf more reliably. It's just not good in the current metagame with all those Shadows, huge Goyfs, TKS and Smashers. I took some inspiration from Fabianos RUG Moon list and am currently trying out 1x Engineered Explosives main. Expensive but very versatile card that also grows Goyf and even enables Delirium. Haven't gotten enough matches in to speak a verdict on it yet.
All the suggestions you are making increase the overall cmc of the deck (out: Opt, Snare and Pierce, in: Thirst, Leak) and I don't like it. This deck is not a control deck that is very good at coming back from a bad boardstate. We don't have real sweepers. We don't even have real removal spells. Thirst for Knowledge is too clunky for my taste and I'm very fond of my 5 cantrips. Their good to have in deck with only 20 lands.
Mana Leak isn't comparable at all to Ruse in my opinion. Leak is best between turn 2 and maybe 5, while Ruse gets online on turn 3-4 and pretty much gets better the longer the game goes. I agree that Ruse is kinda hit or miss, but it's a pet card of mine that definitely shines in some MUs.
I've been playing without a Basic Mountain in my manabase for more than a year now and like it. The scenario where it would be critical to fetch for painless untapped red mana really doesn't come up very often and it minimizes the chances to not be able to play Cryptic on turn 4.
Regarding SB choices, the simply aren't many Dredge or Company decks in my meta, so Cage is not necessary. Big mana decks are known as rather bad MUs for us. You can get by playing only 2 pieces of land destruction, but I really don't see how a 3rd piece can hurt, especially since Spreading Seas are also very relevant in Midrange MUs (shutting down manlands and annoying their manabase while cantripping is pretty good).
You can't really treat Staticaster as a wrath. It can act as one against tokens but it's also huge against decks like DnT or Infect since it's a repeatable effect.
You can make a point for running the second Anger over Kozilek's Return, but as I said I don't have many Company/Dredge decks in my meta while there's quite a bit of Affinity (which has turned out to be a worse MU than I thought after I started tracking down my matches in August).
Thanks for the input MeraSC!
After some more thinking about it and paying more attention to how I usually fetched during my matches, I think I'll postpone testing it out for a little longer. Seas have been very solid and unless Bant Eldrazi emerges as a topdeck again (where Blood Moon really shines and one of our worst MUs) I'm not sure Moon's risk is worth it.
@BadMcFadden
Knuckleblade has usually simply been another, worse Goyf in my experience. Sure he has some upside, especially with Vial, but his abilities are just a tad too expensive and he gets a lot worse without Vial.
My list is also heavy on the 2 drop slot, which means I usually only uptick Vial to 3 later in the game (if at all).
Ugh, I'm a Jund player and even I hated the DRS era, DRS was so obviously broken - I swear, when WotC was designing DRS they must have had a discussion like:
Head Designer: "what are the best 1 drops in every format?"
Head Designer: "Great!, now lets make it have all of those abilities toned down!"
Rest of Designers: "HUH?!"
Head Designer: ... "also, lets make it easier to cast by making it Black or Green... and hate on graveyards like a slightly better first ability of Relic of Progenitus."
Anyway, I agree with you that I'd like to see more than BBE unbanned too. The way I see it that if they don't unban BBE, there is little chance of anything else coming off the list as I'd argue BBE is significantly less risk than any of other cards on the list.
If I remember correctly, DRS was originally intended to only be able to use your graveyard (which would have created a solid, but a lot less overpowered card). They changed it last minute before the cards went to print.
It seems like I didn't make that clear:
I don't want to play Blood Moon maindeck but in the SB. I don't think we can support him while also playing E-Wit.
Supposed changes would probably look like this:
MD:
-1x Scooze, -1x Lumbering Falls
+1x Island, +1x Wooded Foothills
SB:
-3x Spreading Seas
+3x Blood Moon
The questions is how good is Moon against Decks like Gx Tron or Eldrazi Tron?
And does it actually make sense to board out awesome grindy cards like E-Wit to be able to bring in Moon against decks like Abzan (where Moon definitely shines, but Seas is also very solid).
I have tried both Fulminator Mage and Stone Rain. Didn't really like Mage because it's hard to cast and hard to recurr. Stone Rain is definitely very good against Gx Tron, but can be simply too slow against Eldrazi Tron and Bant Eldrazi. I also like Seas a lot against decks with manlands. Could see replacing 1x Seas with a Stone Rain though, since Gx Tron seems to be on the uptick right now (if I'm not completely switching to Moons to try that out).
Spell Snare is great if you expext Affinity, Storm and Goyfs. If your meta is full of Grixis Shadow, Gx Tron and EldraziTron Spell Pierce tends to be the better card. I'm happy with my 1/1 split currently.
So I just watched Gerard Fabiano playing his RUG Moon list (this one). He won some SCG event recently with a similar list.
Playing this card could easily improve some of our rather bad MUs like EldraziTron, Gx Tron and Bant Eldrazi and blow out people on 3 colour decks, because they would never expect it.
The problem is obviously our own manabase. So the question is can we tweak to accomodate Blood Moon? Maybe I'm totally crazy here but I was always surprised on how much I didn't care about Moons from decks like Skred Red or RG Ponza if I had one basic Island and a threat or Vial out.
Against decks like EldraziTron, Gx Tron and Bant Eldrazi it seems reasonable to me to side out E-Wits and Scoozes if that means I can side in Blood Moons.
Add some tweaks in our manabase (go up to 21 lands to add another basic island and replace another land with a 9th fetch) and maybe, maybe we can support Blood Moon.
What do you think? Is it worth trying it out? Is it better than simply going with 3x Spreading Seas in the board? Does it make sense to side out E-Wits against decks like Abzan (where Moon definitely shines, but so does E-Wit)?
Anybody of you got some experience with Moon in RUG shells?
Would love to hear some opinions before I invest the time and money to try that out.
I actually haven't played much lately due to personal life stuff, but I hope I can attend FNM this week and would try out this list (given I get my hands on Dire Fleet Daredevil until then):
4x Tarmogoyf
4x Snapcaster Mage
2x Eternal Witness
1x Scavenging Ooze
1x Dire Fleet Daredevil
2x Vendillion Clique
1x Huntmaster of the Fells
4x Aether Vial
3x Remand
3x Cryptic Command
3x Serum Visions
2x Opt
4x Lightning Bolt
1x Familiar's Ruse
1x Traverse the Ulvenwald
1x Electrolyze
1x Vapor Snag
1x Spell Pierce
1x Spell Snare
1x Forest
1x Steam Vents
1x Stomping Ground
2x Breeding Pool
4x Scalding Tarn
4x Misty Rainforest
2x Spirebluff Canal
1x Flooded Grove
1x Lumbering Falls
2x Spreading Seas
1x Anger of the Gods
1x Kozilek's Return
1x Ancient Grudge
1x Abrade
1x Ceremonious Rejection
1x Engineered Explosives
2x Huntmaster of the Fells
1x Dispel
1x Dire Fleet Daredevil
1x Natural State
1x Izzet Staticaster
1x Scavenging Ooze
Obviously looking forward to test out Daredevil, but I'm also curious on how Huntmaster will be in the maindeck (haven't had him there in a long time).
Regarding sideboarding I don't have a good write up at hand, but that's actually something that would be interesting to write down and share here, as I'm also not always a 100% sure if what I'm doing is correct. So I'll try to find the time to write one!
I've been playing with a singleton of the card for over a year now and have been pretty happy with that configuration. It lets the deck go down to 20 lands while adding another copy of each creature usually from around turn 5 onwards while simply acting as the 21st land before that.
So the upside of the card is cleary its flexibility, drawing lands late in the game sucks, not drawing them early sucks even more and it can act as several different creatures.
In reality I most often searched for E-Wit/Snap to start a value chain with it (a very good option in grindy MUs like UW control or Jund) or Huntmaster to stabilize (brutal creature MUs like DnT or Humans). Scavenging Ooze (which is arguably the most silver bullet card in the maindeck) I surprisingly didn't search for as often you'd probably think. Problem here is that searching him up on turn 5+ is simply way too slow against the decks Scooze is best against (Dredge, Living End) while being quite easy to kill in for Snapcaster decks and thereby a gamble to search for.
This shows me something very important, if you're thinking about building a deck more focused on Traverse, make sure that your silverbullets are impactful if they hit the board on turn 4+ (because even if you run stuff like Mishra's Baubles you won't be able to reliably have Delirium before turn 4 without deluting the deck too much). Running Ethersworn Cannonist in a Bant version won't help much against Storm as the deck can just go off before you get to search for it. Cards to stabilize like Huntmaster or Izzet-Staticaster are great. E-Wit/Snap for lategame grinding value are great. Not sure how Daredevil will do regarding this, but searching for an 3 mana value Shadow killspell seems like a nice option to have.
The downsides of Traverse are that it is another graveyard dependent card, which isn't too bad if you just think about as land 21. But it's pretty bad at simply being a land, only taps for one colour, comes in tapped and if you're keeping a hand with no green manasources you can't really treat it as a safe 2nd or 3rd landdrop.
The sweet thing about Daredevil is that it's potentially good in usually even to slightly unfavored MUs (Grixis Shadow, Jund/Junk and Burn are my big hopes). It won't do much against Tron/Eldrazi Tron/Bant Eldrazi, which I consider to be our rather bad MUs, but it potentially offers us something we didn't have before/couldn't do efficiently before so my hopes are actually quite high to get another playable.
All that said I'm also maindecking 2x Scavenging Ooze which are not really good in some MUs. I guess I'll give it a try anyway because we don't get new promising cards very often, but I tend to think it's better as a SB card.
Warsail Marauder
1U
Creature - Human Pirate
Flying
When ~ target creature an opponent controls has base power and toughness 0/1 and loses all abilities until end of turn.
2/1
I really wish this would happen upon etb instead of whenever it attacks, but a flying 2/1 body should get some attack in and it offers a much needed way to interact with opposing Shadows, Tasigurs and even otherwise annoying stuff like Smashers or Wurmcoils.
Not sure if needing to attack is to clunky, but it's something to consider.
Dire Fleet Daredevil
1R
Creature - Human Pirate
First Strike
2/1
When ~ etbs, exile target instant or sorcery from an opponent’s graveyard. You may cast that card this turn and you may spend mana as though as it were mana of any color. If that card would be put into a graveyard this turn, exile it instead.
Spicy red Snapcaster variant. Will definitely try one or in the side. Killing opposing Shadows with their own Pushes seems sweet. Bonus points for vialing it in in response to a Snapcaster target.
Card could be solid against Burn too, getting a Lightning Helix is very sweet, but a Bolt isn't bad either and the body (First Strike!) is relevant.
Other MUs where
Pretty sure Journey to Eternity wants to be played with Sakura-Tribe Elder. Get's it online right away and ramps you straight into using it the next turn. All that said I don't think a 3cmc aura is really playable in with all the instant speed spot removal in Modern. Sweet card though.
I agree that the card wasn't very good this summer (since GDS and Eldrazi where everywhere). But the meta has adjusted back.
Helping to get Delirium/grow Goyfs would be a sweet upside, but not a necessity.
For local meta I'd say it's pretty diverse, just had a look at my spreadsheet where I track my matches since the end of August and I faced 43 different decks since then (either on FNMs or playstesting with buddies).
3 matches against Abzan Company decks and only 2 against Dredge.
I'm fine with my burn MU right (7-5 since I started tracking). I see that you don't play Spirebluff Canals which help a lot in getting early pain free red mana. I'm actually not sure if you should run 2 Sulfur Falls together with 2x Flooded Grove. A starting hand with any combination of the 4 as your only lands seems pretty awkward. I played 2x Flooded Groves for a long time, cut one when I went down to 20 lands and I'm not looking back. It's nice if you draw it later in the game, but very awkward as your 1st or 2nd, sometimes even as your 3rd land drop.
Scavenging Ooze also comes in pretty big in the Burn MU by the way. Regurarly nets me 3+ life. Have you given Spell Snare a try? It's a lot better than you seem to acknowledge.
I agree that I could probably cut the Ruse, but it's grown dear to my heart, does heavy work in some MUs and I always love some spice in my decks. I don't agree with cutting a Remand. 3 copies are perfect for this deck unless you know your meta is really hostile to it. The card draw is super valuable and is usually better against Gx Tron or Valakut decks and at least cantrips in attrition MUs (if it's not value countering flashbacked stuff against Snapcaster and Souls decks). Against aggro decks it's obviously not as good, but that's what the 1 cmc counters are for.
Staticaster is surprisingly solid against dredge actually. Kills their Bloodghasts every turn while you blocks their amalgams with goyf to stall a little until you find a cryptic for an big strike. Obviously not as good Anger in this particular MU, but so much more versatile. Also Angers double red cost can be an issue and you can search up Staticaster with Traverse.
Played some matches with Engineered Explosives main now. I'm not really convinced yet. Any other suggestions? Should be either a creature or some form of kill spell. Tarfire, Burst Lightning, Forked Bolt, Narnam Renegade possibly? Really not sure.
On some points I agree with you, on others I'll have to kindly differ from your opinion.
Also for the record I've been playing this deck for a long time now, several years actually. On an off obviously but I always come back to it in the end, it's just too much fun to play and perfectly fits my playstyle.
You seem very engaged in the deck? How often do you play it? Do you attend FNMs or other 'tournaments' with it?
After some more thought I agree with you on the Blood Moon idea. While certainly good in some MUs it sucks to warp our manabase (and fetch basics) for a card that we won't even draw half of the time.
I'm back on the Spreading Seas plan, but replaced one with a Stone Rain, since Gx Tron seems to be coming back a little and Rain really shines in the MU.
I also agree with you on Roast. The card was solid some time ago and I liked the idea of having a 5th sorcery to grow my Goyf more reliably. It's just not good in the current metagame with all those Shadows, huge Goyfs, TKS and Smashers. I took some inspiration from Fabianos RUG Moon list and am currently trying out 1x Engineered Explosives main. Expensive but very versatile card that also grows Goyf and even enables Delirium. Haven't gotten enough matches in to speak a verdict on it yet.
All the suggestions you are making increase the overall cmc of the deck (out: Opt, Snare and Pierce, in: Thirst, Leak) and I don't like it. This deck is not a control deck that is very good at coming back from a bad boardstate. We don't have real sweepers. We don't even have real removal spells. Thirst for Knowledge is too clunky for my taste and I'm very fond of my 5 cantrips. Their good to have in deck with only 20 lands.
Mana Leak isn't comparable at all to Ruse in my opinion. Leak is best between turn 2 and maybe 5, while Ruse gets online on turn 3-4 and pretty much gets better the longer the game goes. I agree that Ruse is kinda hit or miss, but it's a pet card of mine that definitely shines in some MUs.
I've been playing without a Basic Mountain in my manabase for more than a year now and like it. The scenario where it would be critical to fetch for painless untapped red mana really doesn't come up very often and it minimizes the chances to not be able to play Cryptic on turn 4.
Regarding SB choices, the simply aren't many Dredge or Company decks in my meta, so Cage is not necessary. Big mana decks are known as rather bad MUs for us. You can get by playing only 2 pieces of land destruction, but I really don't see how a 3rd piece can hurt, especially since Spreading Seas are also very relevant in Midrange MUs (shutting down manlands and annoying their manabase while cantripping is pretty good).
You can't really treat Staticaster as a wrath. It can act as one against tokens but it's also huge against decks like DnT or Infect since it's a repeatable effect.
You can make a point for running the second Anger over Kozilek's Return, but as I said I don't have many Company/Dredge decks in my meta while there's quite a bit of Affinity (which has turned out to be a worse MU than I thought after I started tracking down my matches in August).
After some more thinking about it and paying more attention to how I usually fetched during my matches, I think I'll postpone testing it out for a little longer. Seas have been very solid and unless Bant Eldrazi emerges as a topdeck again (where Blood Moon really shines and one of our worst MUs) I'm not sure Moon's risk is worth it.
@BadMcFadden
Knuckleblade has usually simply been another, worse Goyf in my experience. Sure he has some upside, especially with Vial, but his abilities are just a tad too expensive and he gets a lot worse without Vial.
My list is also heavy on the 2 drop slot, which means I usually only uptick Vial to 3 later in the game (if at all).
If I remember correctly, DRS was originally intended to only be able to use your graveyard (which would have created a solid, but a lot less overpowered card). They changed it last minute before the cards went to print.
I don't want to play Blood Moon maindeck but in the SB. I don't think we can support him while also playing E-Wit.
Supposed changes would probably look like this:
MD:
-1x Scooze, -1x Lumbering Falls
+1x Island, +1x Wooded Foothills
SB:
-3x Spreading Seas
+3x Blood Moon
The questions is how good is Moon against Decks like Gx Tron or Eldrazi Tron?
And does it actually make sense to board out awesome grindy cards like E-Wit to be able to bring in Moon against decks like Abzan (where Moon definitely shines, but Seas is also very solid).
I have tried both Fulminator Mage and Stone Rain. Didn't really like Mage because it's hard to cast and hard to recurr. Stone Rain is definitely very good against Gx Tron, but can be simply too slow against Eldrazi Tron and Bant Eldrazi. I also like Seas a lot against decks with manlands. Could see replacing 1x Seas with a Stone Rain though, since Gx Tron seems to be on the uptick right now (if I'm not completely switching to Moons to try that out).
Spell Snare is great if you expext Affinity, Storm and Goyfs. If your meta is full of Grixis Shadow, Gx Tron and EldraziTron Spell Pierce tends to be the better card. I'm happy with my 1/1 split currently.
Playing this card could easily improve some of our rather bad MUs like EldraziTron, Gx Tron and Bant Eldrazi and blow out people on 3 colour decks, because they would never expect it.
The problem is obviously our own manabase. So the question is can we tweak to accomodate Blood Moon? Maybe I'm totally crazy here but I was always surprised on how much I didn't care about Moons from decks like Skred Red or RG Ponza if I had one basic Island and a threat or Vial out.
Against decks like EldraziTron, Gx Tron and Bant Eldrazi it seems reasonable to me to side out E-Wits and Scoozes if that means I can side in Blood Moons.
Add some tweaks in our manabase (go up to 21 lands to add another basic island and replace another land with a 9th fetch) and maybe, maybe we can support Blood Moon.
What do you think? Is it worth trying it out? Is it better than simply going with 3x Spreading Seas in the board? Does it make sense to side out E-Wits against decks like Abzan (where Moon definitely shines, but so does E-Wit)?
Anybody of you got some experience with Moon in RUG shells?
Would love to hear some opinions before I invest the time and money to try that out.
instant
~deals 1 damage to target creature or player
draw two cards, then discard a card
2cmc cantrip that can be CA.