I think it's funny that they have an Exhibition Lantern-mirror best of 5 match played at 1/3rd of the speed. If I was that kind of person, I'd probably type "LOL" onto the internet.
A good display of "getting it" from the coverage team.
How do you reliably get RRR on turn 5?
Even more so if you wanna be able to hit the 5th land on turn 5, I think 20 lands is greedy even with 2x Traverse.
How are the 2x Huntmaster maindeck? I've been playing with the thought of maindecking one.
Since I hit the 150 matches mark I'd thought I'd give another update on my tracked match results:
First of all the most impressive thing:
I'm 110 wins vs. 45 losses so far. That's a 71% win percentage and quite a bit higher than I thought it would be.
Sample is still not huge though and the matches I play are either FNMs or testing with buddies, which can include playing against people who are not very experienced with their decks. I still think that this speaks quite a bit about the viability of this deck.
Some more detailed stuff:
I'm 10-3 against Jeskai Control/Tempo. That's even a little bit better than I expected but overall reflects my feeling for the MU. Vials come in huge here and we are usually able to outvalue them unless they manage to outplay us with multiple Spell Quellers or we can't answer Search for Azcanta (I'm happy to have the 3rd Spreading Seas in the board now).
6-5 against Burn. Always felt like a very even MU to me, so it's nice to see this fits my feeling. Goyf pulls a lot of weight as an early blocker here, Vial and Cryptic make Eidolon less aweful and our big amount of counterspells and recursion as well as Scooze help to stabilize.
7-3 against Death and Taxes. This includes all DnT variants (Eldrazi, GW, Mono W) although most matches I played where against the Eldrazi Version. I thought this one would be closer to be honest, because sometimes they just get their value chain rolling and we just get outtempoed. But they don't always get rolling very fast and Bolt/Snap/Bolt are pretty damn good then. Also Goyfs provides a serious roadblock and Electrolyze is just pure value here. 3 sweepers and Huntermasters out of the board are very relevant here too (I've won multiple games through Rest in Piece thanks to Huntmaster now, card is a beast in these creature MUs).
I'm pretty sure I'll remove Roast from the maindeck again. Card is really only ok against Jund/Junk and Grixis Shadow, but wasn't very useful against Eldrazi Tron or 5 color Shadow and it feels really awkward against Jeskai, which got a lot of traction in my LGS lately.
Option for replacement are: Dismember I never really liked this card in our deck because recasting it is a very steep cost, but maybe it's time to give it another try. Engineered Explosives. The was a RUG Midrange list that won an SCG event like a week ago and it played 3x EE maindeck. It can be awkward with our own Vials but offers a lot of flexibility, being obviously awesome against go wide strategies while also handy to remove troubling permanents (Death's Shadow). Spreading Seas/Ghost Quarter: I really like Seas in the meta right now and having some maindeck land destruction comes in handy in a lot of MUs. Shadow of Doubt: Old pet card of mine, but between Storm, Eldrazi Tron, RG Valakut and Shadow decks the meta could be fine to let it blow out some people again. Tarfire: Getting Goyf to be a 5/6 is super relevant against Eldrazi Tron and having another removal spell against deck like DnT, Humans or Affinity can't be bad.
Any opinions or other suggestions are very welcome!
While I generally think experimenting with new cards is a good thing, I don't see how Thassa has a place in this list. She will never be a creature, which makes her a bad 3cmc enchantment, with the only upside being you can vial her in. Just go with another Huntmaster for grindy MUs.
I generally prefer Stone Rain over Fulminator Mage because you can go T3 Stone Rain into T4 vial in Snap/E-Wit and play Stone Rain again, which usually wrecks Tron. Overall Spreading Seas has been better than Stone Rain though, simply because it's cheaper to cast, being able to flash back SR can be backbreaking though.
Regarding UW Control:
I haven't seen many version with Search for Azcanta yet, but find the MU to be quite good (just looked, currently 5-1 according to my recorded matches).
Game 1 we try to tempo them out because we besides Vapor Snag we don't have good answers to their lategame Colonnades.
G2 and G3 I go full value though. sb out Goyfs (no net value, get completely hosed by RiP) and get in some Spreading Seas, Huntmasters, Natural State to deal with incoming RiPs or Detention Speres.
I don't play Mana Leak, Remand stays relevant until the lategame though. It's awesome against opposing Snaps and remanding your own Cryptic, which they attempted to counter with their own Crpytic is a brutal value play in this MU.
When it comes to what to play on turn 1, it's pretty much always Vial if you have that in your opening hand. You keep Spell Snare up when you have reason to expect devastating cards like Rest in Piece. Other exemptions I could think of would be against Affinity (especially game 1, as they have a lot of devastating two drops that are hard to interact with) or possibly decks like griselshoalbrand if they put their namesake card in the bin on their turn 1.
They all have in common that their important play has cmc 2, which means we can still easily roll out Vial on turn 2 while still holding a relevant counter up.
Hey, all. I love AEther Vial. Merfolk is my primary deck in Modern and I've dipped my toe into Eldrazi and Taxes as well, but what I haven't done is play the sweetest Vial deck in Modern. So here I am, throwing together a build to bring to my LGS. The choice between RUG and BUG was a tough one. I like RUG's burn a lot, but I like BUG's removal much better. Plus...BUG gets Hostage Taker, which I've been wanting to play in Modern since the day it was spoiled, going so far as to brew up an abominable lovechild between a Death and Taxes and Esper Flicker build.
So, here's the list I came up with. It's based on Todd Steven's list from above, but adding some of the stuff from more traditional RUG builds that he eschewed (Remands and Scooze and Opt) as well as trimming down on the Eternal Command package. What do you guys think? The sideboard still needs work, but it's a suitable placeholder until I get my 60 worked out a bit.
Personally I think the RUG version is the better one, but both have it's merits. I would definitely advise you to give it a run on cockatrice/proxy it up before you buy pricy pieces.
All that said the list looks pretty solid from what I can tell. I'd probably be greedy and try to cut a land for another SV. And cut the Rain of Tears for Spreading Seas in the SB. You will not always have doube black on turn 3 and SS costing 1 mana less can be pretty relevant.
I can see running a 4/2 split, especially without Traverse. For now I went 3/2 with Traverse and Roast as additional Sorceries.
You make a good point about Extraction. I guess Spreading Seas is the most solid choice. Good against Tron and also solid in grindy MUs (Jund/Junk as well as Colonnade decks).
Brought the deck to FNM on Friday and went 4-0!
Here's a little report:
Match 1: UR Storm 2-0
G1: On the draw my opponent play turn 2 Strategic Planning, so I drop my turn 2 3/4 Goyf, expecting Storm (or some other combo deck). He cantrips through his deck, while I add more pressure with an Ambush Snap. I remand his first attempt to go off without a Mancer/Baral with him on 10. Put him down to 5, lethal next turn. Cryptic his Baral, he plays some rituals into Gifts. With 2 mana left I let him have Grapeshot but put 2 rituals to grave so he can’t cast Past in Flames and go off but let him kill my board.
Can’t go off with no resources left and Scooze and Snap kill him.
G2: Hold him off with Remand and Bolt and start beating down with a vialed in Goyf. Disrupt him with counters and Clique, he tries to buy some time with 6 Goblin tokens but I tap them down with Cryptic for the win.
Match 2: Mono White DnT 2-1
G1: We gets two Vials online, we trade resources back and forth until he sticks an Eldrazi Displacer and outvalues me with an army of Golem tokens while I’m stuck with useless counterspells in hand.
G2: He opens with Vial again, I destroy it with Ancient Grudge. He doesn’t see a second land for the next 3 turns and skoops it up to have enough time for round 3.
G3: He drops a turn 2 Rest in Peace, but I have Natural State in hand. Just so he can drop another one on turn 4. Huntmaster of Fells doesn’t rely on the graveyard though and takes over the game, producing 2/2 tokens and killing opposing creatures left and right.
Winning through RiP is always sweet, winning through two of them is a first I think.
Match 3: Jund
G1: I haven’t played against traditional Jund in a long time, so seeing a turn one Raging Ravine was kinda surprising and I prepared for a long atrocious battle.
And exactly that happened, we spend the early turns trading resources back and forth until 2x Cryptics and another snapcastered Cryptic put me in the driver’s seat. I play conservative but slowly beat him down with Snaps while he struggles to answer bigger threats.
G2: I mull to 6 and my opponent goes turn 1 Thoughtseize, stripping my Spell Snare into turn 2 Goyf. While I can keep his other threats at bay I simply can’t find an answer to the Goyf and find myself chump blocking fast and skoop it up to have enough time for round 3.
G3: That turned out to be a good decision because this game was a grindfest if I have ever seen one, always back and forth.
Fighting through multiple Lilis and a Huntmaster, his Chandra comes in big and nets him like 2-3 cards and a Goyf of mine. But this deck can grind as well and Traverse is a surprisingly potent value engine. After taking out his Chandra he stairs down 3 Snapcasters on my side and doesn’t find any good answers in time. Great and very close match.
Match 4: 5C Shadow
G1: He rips my hand apart with 3 Thoughtseizes/Inquisitions but fails to find a threat to back it up with pressure, which leaves me with enough time to drop some lands and refuel my hand. I proceed to counter his Shadow and burn him out with Bolt/Snap/Bolt and Electrolyze.
G2: He digs 4 cards deep with Street Wraiths/Baubles but stumbles over his second land drop for 2 turns. I draw 2 more Bolts to add to the first one I had in my starting hand and burn him out when he hits 8 life.
Very fun and successful night, deck is still a blast to play!
Questions and recomendations are always welcome.
Haven't been active here in a while, but I wanted to leave some thoughts.
First of all it's sweet to see Eternal Command putting up results every once in a (long) while!
Interestingly a 'traditional' RUG list and no BUG or Bant, like many others here are trying out.
I am personally very skeptical regarding the 3x Vials and Goyfs. Vial is at it's absolut best on turn one and gets worse and worse as the game goes on. So you want to maximise the probability of having one in your starting hand (around 40% vs 32% I think). There's a reason every deck that plays Vial plays the complete playset. Vial is similar to mana dorks in that regard and decks that play dorks usually play even more than 4x, to maximise chances of having one in the opener.
Regarding Goyf I could see cutting him down to 3, if I expect a very grindy meta full of Fatal Push decks and Jeskai, but in an open meta? Goyf does way too much for this deck. He's the primary weapon to add pressure against non interactive decks combo/big mana decks a la Storm, Ad Nauseam, GR Valakut and Gx Tron.
He's an important roadblock against aggressive decks like burn and one of our better ways to stall opposing big creatures until we find answers to them. And he's just good in multiples, drawing a second copy rarely feels bad.
I mean it obviously worked out for him but Shouta's list worked out for him too and I think we all agree by now that list wasn't optimal (2x Thirst for Knowledge over the full playset of SV).
On another note I started recording the matches I play about 2 months ago. This includes FNM and matches played against buddies playtesting. I'm at almost 130 matches now, which doesn't leave very big sample sizes for individual MUs, but it indicates trends and we can compare them to subjective MU opinions.
I wanted to share some stuff I found to be interesting so far:
5-5 Grixis Shadow
This solidifies my opinion on this being a very even MU.
8-1 against RG Valakut
Always thought this was a positive MU, this makes it look even better than I thought, but that's possibly due to sample size.
3-6 against Affinity
This surprised me a little, I thought the MU would be even to slightly favorable, since Affinity generally has a tougher time against Bolt/Snap/Bolt decks. Again, might be due to sample size.
Also I'll be bringing RUG EC to FNM again tonight. This is my current list:
As you can see I'm currently running a 3-2 split between SV and Opt, which has felt pretty good so far (being able to play Snap EoT for value with Opt is sweet). How are your opinions on Opt vs. SV by now?
I also still have a flex spot in my SB, any opinions on what to put in there? Thinking about another piece of land hate or a 2nd Surgical Extraction.
Edit: What do you guys think about Pia and Kiran as a third haymaker? Multiple bodies is nice, the reach it provides could be good against Death Shadow decks and I've even seen people bringing it against Affinity.
Throwing excessive Vials at opponent's creatures and faces is a nice bonus.
Welcome TheProdigy!
Off color blue fetches are definitely better than green ones. This deck is mostly blue, then green and pretty much only splashes red.
4x Aether Vials don't go well with Delver flips. Even with less lands and more cantrips you'll end up with aruond 22 instants and sorceries, which is on the low end for playing Delver.
Since you are knew to the deck, I'd suggest to try a more established version (if you can actually say that about this deck) first, get a feel for it and then try out different versions.
Hey guys. Been lurking around this thread from some time now. Decided to jump in and buy the vials to complete the deck. I was wondering(and looking for ideas) on what is the best way to fight Eldrazi decks(tron and bant)
My initial strategy is extra roasts and spreading seas in the side. Would blood moon be an option by going up to two forests?
Welcome and awesome to hear you wanna give the deck a spin!
Going up two forests would ruin your chances to cast Cryptic on turn 4 and make stuff like Clique on turn 3 or Snap into any 1cmc blue spell harder as well. This deck is greedy so Blood Moon is not really an option.
Let me tell you up front that the Bant Eldrazi MU is bad...our worst MU bad. They play a playset of Cavern of Souls and are a lot more likely to land turn 2 TKS. Thankfully the deck is not very prevalent right now.
Eldrazi Tron is still not an easy MU but a lot better than Bant Eldrazi. They only play 1-2 Caverns which makes our counters a lot better, barren god hands their manabase is slower than Bant Eldrazi's and it's actually easier to counter their lategame (Karn) for us. Spreading Seas is very good (Caverns are usually top priority, before Temples and Tron lands) and also solid in many other MUs. Ceremonious Rejection is good, you can bring in your Ancient Grudge that you should play at least 1x against Affinity anyway.
Another card I've really found to like is Basilisk Collar.
I don't like Roast against them. TKS will usually strip it away before you cast it and it's aweful against Smasher.
I feel like going down to 17-18 lands and cutting the cryptic is where you want to be.
With the space you get, I'd play a bit more interaction, another remand, another ruse, etc.
I'd also cut the clique (maybe move it to the board) for another snapcaster.
Otherwise, I like it. I'm not sure if chart a course is actually strong enough for modern, or for this deck, but its definitely tempting.
Even with 8 cantrips, 17-18 lands sounds like not enough for me. In general I'm a lot less in favor of that cutting Cryptic and lands idea. We give up one of our best tools that serves CA and tempo purposes and try to play more of a tempo game. Even with the proposed changes the deck's average cmc isn't low enough to effectively run on 2 lands. The turn 1 Vial games will obviously still be sweet but playing Eternal Witness in a 17 or 18 lands deck? That wants to play a tempo game?
I could playtest my 3/3 SV/O split with 2x Pyromancer against a buddy yesterday. It was sweet against Grixis DS, helping to recover from discard, producing tokens to gain time against their beaters, felt rather bad against Burn (the chumpers don't really do that much, more cantrips feel bad with an Eidolon out, but I knew I made that MU weaker by putting out Finks and a Scooze) and was ok against Eldrazi Tron (bad if they have a Chalice out, neat to have tokens against attacking TKS which I could then Bolt).
So I will definitely need more time to come to a conclusion here.
What are your thoughts on Roast in this meta, having another Sorcery to feed Goyf is nice and we have run the card before. I just feel it's bad against Eldrazi Tron (explained that earlier) and is only ok against Grixis DS. I currently run Vapor Snag in it's spot and feels so much more versatile (and being able to hit Celestial Collonade has been huge and won me several games against UW Control).
I'm intrigued by the 8 cantrip lower to the ground version. Not sure if it will end up better, but I want to at least try it out (and I'll use any excuse to up my Ruse count again).
I'm very hesitant to completely drop Cryptic though. It such a versatile card and shines in this deck like in no other on my opinion. The tap mode is also sweet synergy with Pyromancer (many decks that can't remove him early tend to be able to stall the board).
I can actually see playing the new Siren in that build a lot more than in the traditional ones. Pyro profits from protection more than Goyf and upping the Ruse count makes a 1-drop creature a lot more desirable (even though there's no great synergy between the two, simply having Ruse online turn 2 is pretty good).
If we keep 2x Cryptics, I don't think we can afford to cut Remands for Mana Leak, as the additional draw seems necessary to reach 4 lands by turn 4-5.
So my idea would look something like this:
Not sure if the amount of actual action spells in there is big enough, maybe the whole Vial package is just too much but I'd give it a try.
Ixalan seems to shape up to be the best set Wizards has done in a while. I'm actually considering to look into Standard again.
I wouldn't call the synergy between Ruse and Peezy amazing. The bounce clause is an additional cost. Pyromancer doesn't create the token until you cast the spell, so you already need to have a token in play to get the result you described Kathal.
That's 4 cards of our whole deck and cards we hope to either play before Pyro resolves or usually try to not draw (scry away) after he resolves.
Sure it would have been awesome if Peezy could make use of otherwise more or less useless Vials, but I don't see a problem here.
If anything the questions if our spell count if high enough with about 22. Grixis Delver lists of old definitely played more spells. But some 18 lands Shadow lists adopted the card and they play about 24 spells usually, so it's not that much of a stretch.
I just mean when looking for slots.
Its possible we want to be some 8 cantrip, low to the ground deck.
Maybe siren turns out to be super good, and we want several.
Maybe that means we cut a lot of the extra creatures (cutting cliques, for example) or shaving down on countermagic, or whatever.
I see what you mean.
Thinking longer about it, Opt might actually turn out better in this deck than SV. Visions still digs a card deeper which is relevant if we really need to find a Cryptic or E-Wit for the lock, but being able to Snap it back, hold up Remand on turn 2 (or Pierce/Snare turn 1) without risking to lose too much tempo, digging for stuff to vial in at instant speed, being able to scry away excessive Vials or lands before you draw them...there's tons of upsight in this card.
We need a certain amount of Sorceries to have Goyf be an efficient beater often enough though. I can see cutting 1x SV max.
Running more solid cantrips could indeed throw our numbers over a little bit, allowing us to play 1-2 creatures less. 15x creatures is already incredibly low for a Vial deck though.
I personally will only test Opt at first, not the Siren. Gives you a better feel to evaluate the card. Probably cutting a Spell Pierce, a Remand and either the Kitchen Finks or a SV.
If we end up upping our cantrip count to 6+ (which I think we will) another card to consider again is actually Young Pyromancer. I've been trying it out from time to time but it always felt lackluster in Modern (no free counterspells), especially since the Probe ban. But with the ability to vial it in while having counters up, it could provide another threat that's solid on both offense (especially with Cryptic) and defense (buying a lot of time against Death's Shadow if unanswered, exactly what we want to sculp our hand for a final attack) while not relying on the graveyard, which is awesome.
This is the first time in ages we get something that could actually make this deck better for a solid amount. I'm hyped guys! haha
I feel like there are enough new cards to totally change the deck, potentially.
I'd highly stress to everyone who brewing to remember that eternal command is about the soft lock in a deck capable of doing something else, be it in red, white, or black, or even just U/G.
Don't get too pigeonholed trying to tweak current lists.
Which cards are you referring to? Opt is definitely pretty big for the deck and Modern as a whole. Then we have the Siren that has potential...I don't see these two 'totally changing' the deck. Do I miss something?
Title says it all, here's the source. All three to see at around 4:27.
Opt in the Modern cardpool guys! A real 1cmc blue cantrip in Standard again! What do you think?
Edit: Duress, Slice in Twain, Opt
Yeah that was sweet!
Does anybody know the record of the guy?
I would love to see the decklist!
Even more so if you wanna be able to hit the 5th land on turn 5, I think 20 lands is greedy even with 2x Traverse.
How are the 2x Huntmaster maindeck? I've been playing with the thought of maindecking one.
First of all the most impressive thing:
I'm 110 wins vs. 45 losses so far. That's a 71% win percentage and quite a bit higher than I thought it would be.
Sample is still not huge though and the matches I play are either FNMs or testing with buddies, which can include playing against people who are not very experienced with their decks. I still think that this speaks quite a bit about the viability of this deck.
Some more detailed stuff:
I'm 10-3 against Jeskai Control/Tempo. That's even a little bit better than I expected but overall reflects my feeling for the MU. Vials come in huge here and we are usually able to outvalue them unless they manage to outplay us with multiple Spell Quellers or we can't answer Search for Azcanta (I'm happy to have the 3rd Spreading Seas in the board now).
6-5 against Burn. Always felt like a very even MU to me, so it's nice to see this fits my feeling. Goyf pulls a lot of weight as an early blocker here, Vial and Cryptic make Eidolon less aweful and our big amount of counterspells and recursion as well as Scooze help to stabilize.
7-3 against Death and Taxes. This includes all DnT variants (Eldrazi, GW, Mono W) although most matches I played where against the Eldrazi Version. I thought this one would be closer to be honest, because sometimes they just get their value chain rolling and we just get outtempoed. But they don't always get rolling very fast and Bolt/Snap/Bolt are pretty damn good then. Also Goyfs provides a serious roadblock and Electrolyze is just pure value here. 3 sweepers and Huntermasters out of the board are very relevant here too (I've won multiple games through Rest in Piece thanks to Huntmaster now, card is a beast in these creature MUs).
I'm pretty sure I'll remove Roast from the maindeck again. Card is really only ok against Jund/Junk and Grixis Shadow, but wasn't very useful against Eldrazi Tron or 5 color Shadow and it feels really awkward against Jeskai, which got a lot of traction in my LGS lately.
Option for replacement are:
Dismember I never really liked this card in our deck because recasting it is a very steep cost, but maybe it's time to give it another try.
Engineered Explosives. The was a RUG Midrange list that won an SCG event like a week ago and it played 3x EE maindeck. It can be awkward with our own Vials but offers a lot of flexibility, being obviously awesome against go wide strategies while also handy to remove troubling permanents (Death's Shadow).
Spreading Seas/Ghost Quarter: I really like Seas in the meta right now and having some maindeck land destruction comes in handy in a lot of MUs.
Shadow of Doubt: Old pet card of mine, but between Storm, Eldrazi Tron, RG Valakut and Shadow decks the meta could be fine to let it blow out some people again.
Tarfire: Getting Goyf to be a 5/6 is super relevant against Eldrazi Tron and having another removal spell against deck like DnT, Humans or Affinity can't be bad.
Any opinions or other suggestions are very welcome!
I generally prefer Stone Rain over Fulminator Mage because you can go T3 Stone Rain into T4 vial in Snap/E-Wit and play Stone Rain again, which usually wrecks Tron. Overall Spreading Seas has been better than Stone Rain though, simply because it's cheaper to cast, being able to flash back SR can be backbreaking though.
Regarding UW Control:
I haven't seen many version with Search for Azcanta yet, but find the MU to be quite good (just looked, currently 5-1 according to my recorded matches).
Game 1 we try to tempo them out because we besides Vapor Snag we don't have good answers to their lategame Colonnades.
G2 and G3 I go full value though. sb out Goyfs (no net value, get completely hosed by RiP) and get in some Spreading Seas, Huntmasters, Natural State to deal with incoming RiPs or Detention Speres.
I don't play Mana Leak, Remand stays relevant until the lategame though. It's awesome against opposing Snaps and remanding your own Cryptic, which they attempted to counter with their own Crpytic is a brutal value play in this MU.
When it comes to what to play on turn 1, it's pretty much always Vial if you have that in your opening hand. You keep Spell Snare up when you have reason to expect devastating cards like Rest in Piece. Other exemptions I could think of would be against Affinity (especially game 1, as they have a lot of devastating two drops that are hard to interact with) or possibly decks like griselshoalbrand if they put their namesake card in the bin on their turn 1.
They all have in common that their important play has cmc 2, which means we can still easily roll out Vial on turn 2 while still holding a relevant counter up.
Personally I think the RUG version is the better one, but both have it's merits. I would definitely advise you to give it a run on cockatrice/proxy it up before you buy pricy pieces.
All that said the list looks pretty solid from what I can tell. I'd probably be greedy and try to cut a land for another SV. And cut the Rain of Tears for Spreading Seas in the SB. You will not always have doube black on turn 3 and SS costing 1 mana less can be pretty relevant.
You make a good point about Extraction. I guess Spreading Seas is the most solid choice. Good against Tron and also solid in grindy MUs (Jund/Junk as well as Colonnade decks).
Brought the deck to FNM on Friday and went 4-0!
Here's a little report:
Match 1: UR Storm 2-0
G1: On the draw my opponent play turn 2 Strategic Planning, so I drop my turn 2 3/4 Goyf, expecting Storm (or some other combo deck). He cantrips through his deck, while I add more pressure with an Ambush Snap. I remand his first attempt to go off without a Mancer/Baral with him on 10. Put him down to 5, lethal next turn. Cryptic his Baral, he plays some rituals into Gifts. With 2 mana left I let him have Grapeshot but put 2 rituals to grave so he can’t cast Past in Flames and go off but let him kill my board.
Can’t go off with no resources left and Scooze and Snap kill him.
G2: Hold him off with Remand and Bolt and start beating down with a vialed in Goyf. Disrupt him with counters and Clique, he tries to buy some time with 6 Goblin tokens but I tap them down with Cryptic for the win.
Match 2: Mono White DnT 2-1
G1: We gets two Vials online, we trade resources back and forth until he sticks an Eldrazi Displacer and outvalues me with an army of Golem tokens while I’m stuck with useless counterspells in hand.
G2: He opens with Vial again, I destroy it with Ancient Grudge. He doesn’t see a second land for the next 3 turns and skoops it up to have enough time for round 3.
G3: He drops a turn 2 Rest in Peace, but I have Natural State in hand. Just so he can drop another one on turn 4. Huntmaster of Fells doesn’t rely on the graveyard though and takes over the game, producing 2/2 tokens and killing opposing creatures left and right.
Winning through RiP is always sweet, winning through two of them is a first I think.
Match 3: Jund
G1: I haven’t played against traditional Jund in a long time, so seeing a turn one Raging Ravine was kinda surprising and I prepared for a long atrocious battle.
And exactly that happened, we spend the early turns trading resources back and forth until 2x Cryptics and another snapcastered Cryptic put me in the driver’s seat. I play conservative but slowly beat him down with Snaps while he struggles to answer bigger threats.
G2: I mull to 6 and my opponent goes turn 1 Thoughtseize, stripping my Spell Snare into turn 2 Goyf. While I can keep his other threats at bay I simply can’t find an answer to the Goyf and find myself chump blocking fast and skoop it up to have enough time for round 3.
G3: That turned out to be a good decision because this game was a grindfest if I have ever seen one, always back and forth.
Fighting through multiple Lilis and a Huntmaster, his Chandra comes in big and nets him like 2-3 cards and a Goyf of mine. But this deck can grind as well and Traverse is a surprisingly potent value engine. After taking out his Chandra he stairs down 3 Snapcasters on my side and doesn’t find any good answers in time. Great and very close match.
Match 4: 5C Shadow
G1: He rips my hand apart with 3 Thoughtseizes/Inquisitions but fails to find a threat to back it up with pressure, which leaves me with enough time to drop some lands and refuel my hand. I proceed to counter his Shadow and burn him out with Bolt/Snap/Bolt and Electrolyze.
G2: He digs 4 cards deep with Street Wraiths/Baubles but stumbles over his second land drop for 2 turns. I draw 2 more Bolts to add to the first one I had in my starting hand and burn him out when he hits 8 life.
Very fun and successful night, deck is still a blast to play!
Questions and recomendations are always welcome.
First of all it's sweet to see Eternal Command putting up results every once in a (long) while!
Interestingly a 'traditional' RUG list and no BUG or Bant, like many others here are trying out.
I am personally very skeptical regarding the 3x Vials and Goyfs. Vial is at it's absolut best on turn one and gets worse and worse as the game goes on. So you want to maximise the probability of having one in your starting hand (around 40% vs 32% I think). There's a reason every deck that plays Vial plays the complete playset. Vial is similar to mana dorks in that regard and decks that play dorks usually play even more than 4x, to maximise chances of having one in the opener.
Regarding Goyf I could see cutting him down to 3, if I expect a very grindy meta full of Fatal Push decks and Jeskai, but in an open meta? Goyf does way too much for this deck. He's the primary weapon to add pressure against non interactive decks combo/big mana decks a la Storm, Ad Nauseam, GR Valakut and Gx Tron.
He's an important roadblock against aggressive decks like burn and one of our better ways to stall opposing big creatures until we find answers to them. And he's just good in multiples, drawing a second copy rarely feels bad.
I mean it obviously worked out for him but Shouta's list worked out for him too and I think we all agree by now that list wasn't optimal (2x Thirst for Knowledge over the full playset of SV).
On another note I started recording the matches I play about 2 months ago. This includes FNM and matches played against buddies playtesting. I'm at almost 130 matches now, which doesn't leave very big sample sizes for individual MUs, but it indicates trends and we can compare them to subjective MU opinions.
I wanted to share some stuff I found to be interesting so far:
5-5 Grixis Shadow
This solidifies my opinion on this being a very even MU.
8-1 against RG Valakut
Always thought this was a positive MU, this makes it look even better than I thought, but that's possibly due to sample size.
3-6 against Affinity
This surprised me a little, I thought the MU would be even to slightly favorable, since Affinity generally has a tougher time against Bolt/Snap/Bolt decks. Again, might be due to sample size.
Also I'll be bringing RUG EC to FNM again tonight. This is my current list:
4x Tarmogoyf
4x Snapcaster Mage
2x Eternal Witness
2x Scavenginz Ooze
2x Vendillion Clique
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 Roast
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
2x Ancient Grudge
1x Ceremonious Rejection
1x Engineered Explosives
2x Huntmaster of the Fells
1x Dispel
1x Surgical Extraction
1x Natural State
1x Izzet Staticaster
1x flex
As you can see I'm currently running a 3-2 split between SV and Opt, which has felt pretty good so far (being able to play Snap EoT for value with Opt is sweet). How are your opinions on Opt vs. SV by now?
I also still have a flex spot in my SB, any opinions on what to put in there? Thinking about another piece of land hate or a 2nd Surgical Extraction.
Edit: What do you guys think about Pia and Kiran as a third haymaker? Multiple bodies is nice, the reach it provides could be good against Death Shadow decks and I've even seen people bringing it against Affinity.
Throwing excessive Vials at opponent's creatures and faces is a nice bonus.
Off color blue fetches are definitely better than green ones. This deck is mostly blue, then green and pretty much only splashes red.
4x Aether Vials don't go well with Delver flips. Even with less lands and more cantrips you'll end up with aruond 22 instants and sorceries, which is on the low end for playing Delver.
Since you are knew to the deck, I'd suggest to try a more established version (if you can actually say that about this deck) first, get a feel for it and then try out different versions.
Welcome and awesome to hear you wanna give the deck a spin!
Going up two forests would ruin your chances to cast Cryptic on turn 4 and make stuff like Clique on turn 3 or Snap into any 1cmc blue spell harder as well. This deck is greedy so Blood Moon is not really an option.
Let me tell you up front that the Bant Eldrazi MU is bad...our worst MU bad. They play a playset of Cavern of Souls and are a lot more likely to land turn 2 TKS. Thankfully the deck is not very prevalent right now.
Eldrazi Tron is still not an easy MU but a lot better than Bant Eldrazi. They only play 1-2 Caverns which makes our counters a lot better, barren god hands their manabase is slower than Bant Eldrazi's and it's actually easier to counter their lategame (Karn) for us.
Spreading Seas is very good (Caverns are usually top priority, before Temples and Tron lands) and also solid in many other MUs. Ceremonious Rejection is good, you can bring in your Ancient Grudge that you should play at least 1x against Affinity anyway.
Another card I've really found to like is Basilisk Collar.
I don't like Roast against them. TKS will usually strip it away before you cast it and it's aweful against Smasher.
Even with 8 cantrips, 17-18 lands sounds like not enough for me. In general I'm a lot less in favor of that cutting Cryptic and lands idea. We give up one of our best tools that serves CA and tempo purposes and try to play more of a tempo game. Even with the proposed changes the deck's average cmc isn't low enough to effectively run on 2 lands. The turn 1 Vial games will obviously still be sweet but playing Eternal Witness in a 17 or 18 lands deck? That wants to play a tempo game?
I could playtest my 3/3 SV/O split with 2x Pyromancer against a buddy yesterday. It was sweet against Grixis DS, helping to recover from discard, producing tokens to gain time against their beaters, felt rather bad against Burn (the chumpers don't really do that much, more cantrips feel bad with an Eidolon out, but I knew I made that MU weaker by putting out Finks and a Scooze) and was ok against Eldrazi Tron (bad if they have a Chalice out, neat to have tokens against attacking TKS which I could then Bolt).
So I will definitely need more time to come to a conclusion here.
What are your thoughts on Roast in this meta, having another Sorcery to feed Goyf is nice and we have run the card before. I just feel it's bad against Eldrazi Tron (explained that earlier) and is only ok against Grixis DS. I currently run Vapor Snag in it's spot and feels so much more versatile (and being able to hit Celestial Collonade has been huge and won me several games against UW Control).
I'm very hesitant to completely drop Cryptic though. It such a versatile card and shines in this deck like in no other on my opinion. The tap mode is also sweet synergy with Pyromancer (many decks that can't remove him early tend to be able to stall the board).
I can actually see playing the new Siren in that build a lot more than in the traditional ones. Pyro profits from protection more than Goyf and upping the Ruse count makes a 1-drop creature a lot more desirable (even though there's no great synergy between the two, simply having Ruse online turn 2 is pretty good).
If we keep 2x Cryptics, I don't think we can afford to cut Remands for Mana Leak, as the additional draw seems necessary to reach 4 lands by turn 4-5.
So my idea would look something like this:
4x Goyf
3x Pyromancer
2x Siren
2x Witness
3x Snap
1x Clique
2x Cryptic
2x Ruse
3x Remand
2x Spell Pierce
4x SV
4x Opt
4x Bolt
Not sure if the amount of actual action spells in there is big enough, maybe the whole Vial package is just too much but I'd give it a try.
Ixalan seems to shape up to be the best set Wizards has done in a while. I'm actually considering to look into Standard again.
I will probably test this with some friends:
4x Tarmogoyf
4x Snapcaster Mage
2x Eternal Witness
1x Scavenging Ooze
2x Young Pyromancer
2x Vendillion Clique
4x Aether Vial
3x Remand
3x Cryptic Command
3x Serum Visions
4x Lightning Bolt
1x Familiar's Ruse
1x Traverse the Ulvenwald
1x Electrolyze
1x Vapor Snag
1x Spell Pierce
3x Opt
1x Forest
1x Steam Vents
1x Stomping Ground
2x Breeding Pool
4x Scalding Tarn
4x Misty Rainforest
2x Spirebluff Canal
1x Flooded Grove
1x Botanical Sanctum
2x Spreading Seas
2x Anger of the Gods
1x Ancient Grudge
1x Ceremonious Rejection
1x Engineered Explosives
2x Huntmaster of the Fells
1x Dispel
1x Surgical Extraction
1x Chameleon Colossus
1x Natural State
1x Basilisk Collar
1x Izzet Staticaster
Get some testing in and then see how to go from there.
Sure it would have been awesome if Peezy could make use of otherwise more or less useless Vials, but I don't see a problem here.
If anything the questions if our spell count if high enough with about 22. Grixis Delver lists of old definitely played more spells. But some 18 lands Shadow lists adopted the card and they play about 24 spells usually, so it's not that much of a stretch.
I see what you mean.
Thinking longer about it, Opt might actually turn out better in this deck than SV. Visions still digs a card deeper which is relevant if we really need to find a Cryptic or E-Wit for the lock, but being able to Snap it back, hold up Remand on turn 2 (or Pierce/Snare turn 1) without risking to lose too much tempo, digging for stuff to vial in at instant speed, being able to scry away excessive Vials or lands before you draw them...there's tons of upsight in this card.
We need a certain amount of Sorceries to have Goyf be an efficient beater often enough though. I can see cutting 1x SV max.
Running more solid cantrips could indeed throw our numbers over a little bit, allowing us to play 1-2 creatures less. 15x creatures is already incredibly low for a Vial deck though.
I personally will only test Opt at first, not the Siren. Gives you a better feel to evaluate the card. Probably cutting a Spell Pierce, a Remand and either the Kitchen Finks or a SV.
If we end up upping our cantrip count to 6+ (which I think we will) another card to consider again is actually Young Pyromancer. I've been trying it out from time to time but it always felt lackluster in Modern (no free counterspells), especially since the Probe ban. But with the ability to vial it in while having counters up, it could provide another threat that's solid on both offense (especially with Cryptic) and defense (buying a lot of time against Death's Shadow if unanswered, exactly what we want to sculp our hand for a final attack) while not relying on the graveyard, which is awesome.
This is the first time in ages we get something that could actually make this deck better for a solid amount. I'm hyped guys! haha
Which cards are you referring to? Opt is definitely pretty big for the deck and Modern as a whole. Then we have the Siren that has potential...I don't see these two 'totally changing' the deck. Do I miss something?
Opt in the Modern cardpool guys! A real 1cmc blue cantrip in Standard again! What do you think?
Edit: Duress, Slice in Twain, Opt