This is probably the most tuned control list from the pt. Everything is instant except teferi, and ascanta and nothing can really be played around. It is hard to know to not play scarab god since the card is super strong but the creator of this list knew to just stick with hulks and teferi.
If anyone is interested, Jim Davis is playing Guillaume's list on stream now. Should be in a vod later.
I highly recommend that list over all other teferi decks. I tried them all and that one has the least glaring weaknesses. The black removal is better against aggro than settle the wreckage is and the mana is solid.
I was listening to Todd Anderson's commentary in the SCG event this weekend (pre show) and he was talking about really liking Approach atm. As it just closes games instead of the stall outs that seem to happen. With the 7 life being just enough of a buffer.
Do you think we could look at that in the board as a 1 or 2 of? Specifically in the UB Teferi lists. Just as a way to diversify as the WW for Lyra could be problematic if people are going that route.
EDIT: Autocorrect...
That was a call for the PT because his team felt like constrictor decks would be more popular. Uw has a major problem vs that decks board plan because they do not need to attack to beat you anymore so settle and seal away become blanks. If you are base ub you do not have those problems. In my opinion ub should be a gearhulk deck so you can close games out with gearhulk unlike the no wincon teferi decks.
Uw control had insane records in this event but a lot of the pilots did not do well in draft. This event confirmed to me that Teferi is insane. Brad Nelson went undefeated in games not matches games with the deck.
I'm with most of you guys : he's not bad at any means. It's juste that the hype was so strong, like it would be the savior of control decks and turn the tide around every time you'd play it. He's for sure to be included in a control deck, but 1-2 copies mostly. He really needs help and Legacy helps him with the card pool. Having more creatures also is a gambreaker for him (as well as failing the bolt test). But when he works, he works very well. I'm happy at 1 copy, could go up to 2, but I'm satisfied with a 1/1 split with Teferi.
This. No one is saying he is unplayable. His 0 is still the strongest effect printed on walker. The thing is within the context of the format his strength does not shine. I played with Jace in every format he has been legal in and he just feels like a different card in modern. The situation is similar to when he was barely played in standard when jund was the deck. Jace did not become the oppressive beast he was in standard until Alara block rotated out. Currently modern is too creature focused and is based on mana efficiency more so than card advantage and spells. We live in a world where jund is considered clunky and bad because its spells are too expensive.
People are hard on jace, IMO. He's still a fine card to play, and he provides a lot of value if you can keep him in play.
He's fine. But ''if you can keep him in play'' might be the issue. Honeymoon is pretty much over, Teferi took over in several builds. He's still one of the best planeswalker we ever had, for sure. It might just be that we had such great expectations that are now deceived, that's maybe why we feel he's not up to the test.
People who said Jace would wreck modern just did not look at power level in the context of a format. Planeswalkers are generally stronger in slow formats like standard and more non creature spell based formats like legacy and vintage. Tapping 4 at sorcery speed without cheating mana, affecting the board, or having free counterspell backup is just asking to die in modern.
Wasn't the main reason Smuggler's Copter was banned was that it could be a 4 of in legit any deck that played creatures? Now we have a card pushing 60 dollars that can be a 4 of in every single standard deck if you want to play it. I realize it will come down some, but 200 some odd dollar playset of anything should not be a thing in standard. If anyone is actually paying close to 500 dollars for standard I implore you just play a different format. You can buy good modern decks for that price.
That price tag is mostly because Karn is good in Vintage. Teferi is the better card in standard.
Looks like Ben nikolich is in top 8 with his jeskai draw go list, I seen he was on nahri over ajani which is interesting.
List is here. I actually greatly prefer this version to the Queller versions that have been springing up lately. I wish I could talk to the guy to get some insight on it. Particularly Search for Azcanta. I know a lot of pros have their eyes on it, I saw Ali Antrazi playing it at the team constructed open in Baltimore and Shaun put out some videos on it over on SCG. I'm just still not entirely sold though. Everyone thought Nahiri+Emrakul was amazing until the metagame got smart to it and then we heard similar things about how As Foretold was going to revolutionize control. Admittedly Search looks way better than either of those but I haven't played enough games to be sure of it myself.
Search for ascanta is pretty much a planeswalker that cannot be attacked. It is probably the best card to have in any fair matchup in modern but it is a turn 2 do nothing vs anything aggressive. 2 is probably the right number for this card because you do not want too many cards that do not affect the board early on but it essentially breaks grindfests.
This list is something I've been working on for about a month solidly, I was playing the "Stock" Esper Control list about a year ago, before switching to USA to fight Eldrazi Winter, Then after the banning went back to Esper Control this time adding in Thopter Foundry and Sword of the Meek as well as support pieces like, Engineered Explosives and Academy Ruins to the main as well as another copy of EE in the board. With Thopter Sword in the deck my win-rate with the deck increased so much so as winning a GPT beating Infect in the finals, Coming in second at a following GPT losing to the mirror that also had Tron Lands and Crucible Of Worlds and proceeded to lock me out with Ghost Quarter. I then played in PA State Championship and finished top 16 of 82... Later that year I took it to GP Charlotte 2016 and finished Day 1 5-4, not bad for a "bad deck" and my very first GP experience. After this, what I felt was a failed deck, I switched to Grixis Control. Then I left Magic earlier this year and am now coming back. With my first love Esper Control W/Thopter Sword combo included. I would like to hear the feedback on this deck. And if any of you fine gentlemen/ladies would make any changes. So far in my online testing I have yet to lose to DS of any flavor, UW Control, Tron, Company.dec, or Eldrazi of any flavor. Of course I take this with a grain of salt as most pilots online aren't top level and also this deck isn't a known quantity as most people forgot Thopter Sword was even a combo... I'd love to hear questions and ideas about my deck... Please please Drill me and tear this list apart! I want to make it as best as I can and would love it if you guys even tested it out to see how it feels to play and give me some feedback. Thanks!
-ECFIII
What you are experiencing is being the one to ask questions rather than only answering those questions. Although I love esper draw go I cannot imagine myself not playing something proactive in an eternal format as diverse as modern. My current go to deck is jeskai copycat for that very reason.
Anyway thopter/sword is a bit better now that abrupt decay is non existant in tier 1 and barely even in tier 2 decks ever since twin got banned and we got passed the eldrazi, and aggro combo nonsense. I would suggest you take your deck into a bit of a more proactive approach and abuse your artifacts more. Also to take your discussion to another thread because at that point it is a totally different deck but it is better than jamming thopter sword into esper draw go.
Misstep is only good against a few of the top decks but would help out Ux control immensely, and elf would help revitalize the dying Jund archetype
You know there's nothing going on in Modern ban/unban land when Misstep is on someone's radar. The card is super duper busted and disproportionately helps unfair strategies. What do all the following Modern regulatory spells have in common: Push, Path, Thoughtseize, Inquisition of Kozilek, and Bolt. Yeah, I'll pass on Misstep. I swear, people who suggest this don't seem to have experienced that card in action.
It's a doubly perplexing suggestion with DS doing so well. Can you even imagine the DS mirror when 50% of the format is playing Misstep DS decks? Dear god. I'd rather we go back to the Twin conversation than entertain Misstep conversation.
I normally agree with just about everything you say, but in this case I am going to have to respectfully disagree. I think you are overestimating the card.
DS mirrors with Misstep would play out more or less the same as these mirrors already do with players trading resources via Thoughtseize, Inquisition, Fatal Push, ect. The main difference is that turn 1 Thoughtseize can now be countered on the draw. Is this really that much different?
Also please tell me which unfair strategies would run Misstep? Here are the decks that would most likely not play it: Burn, Affinity, UR Storm, Counters Company, Goryo's Vengeance, Cheerios, Gx Tron, Eldrazi Tron, Dredge, Ironworks Combo, Infect, RW Prison
Remember in legacy Misstep actually pushed combo out of the format. The decks that ran it were mostly aggro-control or pure control strategies.
So please back up your argument that it would "disproportionately helps unfair strategies" when in legacy it actually did the opposite.
Modern lacks the syrgenies that made misstep great in fair decks. Even though misstep is insanely powerful it is still a situational answer that can be a dead card and control does not need more of that. In legacy you had fow and brainstorm to mitigate the situational nature of card when you did not need it while having it for the situations that you did. In modern the decks that will benefit the most are the decks that win through casting more spells per turn or decks trying to protect something vulnerable to commonly played 1 mana answers. Such decks include grixis death's shadow, infect, cheerios, and jeskai saheeli to name a few. Outside of tempo based strategies like shadow or controling combo decks like copycat mm would just help more unfair decks. Control would just sit there with their mm in hand bbeing great sometimes while completely dead at others with no way to shuffle it away or pitch it for a beneficial effect.
If UW Control can dodge the big mana matchups, it looks like a favorable deck choice.
UW does not lose to the big mana decks except maybe Titanshift, which I haven't played enough to have much of an opinion on. Amulet Titan is also dicey once Cavern is online, but that's barely Tier 3. Ceremonious Rejection has totally changed the Tron matchups though, especially with 4 Seas and your Tec Edge/Quarter split. You really can just counter everything Gx Tron does while simultaneously shutting down their lands. E-Tron is closer but feels around 45-55, with that -5% edge going to E-Tron when they get nutty Temple openers.
I always forget that UW Control beats up on Eldrazi, especially with supreme verdict
I imagine the traditional tron matchups are still bad, unless rejection is a huge boon there, too
Tron has not been that bad for control since the eye ban. The main thing that killed you was the eventual emrakul. Now the worse thing that can happen is if you are caught with your pants down and tgey turn 3 karn you or if they cast newlamog early enough to keep you off cryptic. Now with the combination of rejections, and stony silence for game 2 and 3 the match is pretty even because you have a spell that is both great against the threats or slowing down engine and a pernament that shuts off the decks velocity, consistency, and some of its answers.
There are no cards to answer a Jace now? Or is BGx just so damn spoiled by Abrupt Decay that anything at 4cmc that isn't in Jund or Azban, is 'unanswerable'.
It's offensive honestly, as a blue player, to have to hear over and over and over 'no this too good!'
Bull.
I am a blue player and I do not find it offensive at all. I would not like jace in the format. Outside of unfair matchups he would be far and away the best thing to do when play normal magic. Blue does not need to be better against other fair decks because it is already advantaged against those decks. Blue just needs a way to close games against combo/big mana.
I just want Wizards to abolish the reserved list so we can all play Legacy instead. Then we can play all the Jaces, Preordains, Ponders, Stoneforges, Bloodbraid Elves ect we like
Reserved list is the only reason we have modern anyways
Not everyone wants that though. I find modern much more interesting than legacy. As much as people complain about how certain decks push other archetypes out such as big mana with control it is in no way as bad as how fast combo warps legacy. Aggro is barely playable in legacy if it is not tempo because you have 20/80 matchups vs fast combo. Aggro was deceptively viable when legacy was less explored.
We have had some pretty diverse Top 8's short of the breakout event for Grixis Shadow, which didn't surprise me at all as I was saying it was the better of the shadow decks while everyone was idiotically talking about if Misra's Bauble was perhaps to good and needing to be looked at.
We have seen various base W decks performing well with Mono-White hate bears actually looking like a solid deck in the face of spell heavy decks like Grixis Shadow and built in hate against lands matter decks like any flavor of Tron. I think as long as Grixis Shadow and E-Tron continue to be top dogs it should push that deck into the top tables more often, it is a meta-call deck for sure but it isn't as easy for GDS and E-Tron to hate as people like to think.
Blue is doing better obviously with Grixis Shadow, sure its not the deck most of us blue mages wanted but its the one we got.
Black is still king and short of WotC printing slews of powerful utility spells to compete with the discard spells that currently exist nothing is going to change that.
Red has its own deck in burn and is a consistent part timer in various other builds like GDS.
Green is probably in the least represented status it has been at for long time. Still CoCo decks are a real thing and Scapeshift is still a thing.
Colorless is the most represented overall with E-Tron and Affinity. I don't see anything changing their status, Affinity does what affinity does and any deck not running white always run the risk of simply having the robots overload your hate early. Tron decks currently are actually Eldrazi decks and don't even need to assemble Tron to deploy their threats ahead of curve so the usual hate against such strategies doesn't even do much.
Short of something new coming out of the existing card pool or something from a new set injecting a new super problematic deck into the meta-game it looks over all good.
I don't really care much about the discussion regarding "linear" decks as essentially every deck is in some way linear, you only have 75 cards to win the game with and even Reactive control has a very narrow scope of functions that the deck looks to deploy to at some point win the game. I think the major thing that people really don't like is how fast many of the decks can end the game as the game ending on T4-5 on average doesn't afford much in way of time to attempt to do whatever your deck is designed to do. Only the most pure of combo decks don't care much if at all as to what their opponent is doing and those types of decks don't currently rule the format.
Shard based Mid-range like Jund/Junk will continue to be bad as long as the 1-2 combo of E-Tron and DS are as good as they are. One is just a better bigger mid-range deck that goes over the shard based ones, and the other is a aggro deck that uses the same tools the mid-range decks would use to disrupt the mid-range decks for the 2-3 turns they need to win the game.
edit: while i would love for a mid-range/control Blue deck to exist I think Modern is overall to hostel to that type of strategy. 1c.c. targeted discard is by design great against those types of strategies, hurting counterspell based control decks is what Duress was designed to do and we have way better options in TS/IoK and some type of Tap out control seems like the more likely type to ever exist.
That linear discussion is mostly due to people saying linear instead of proactive. Every good deck in a powerful format is proactive which is why things like sfm or twin will help control more than say a better counterspell. People keep wanting these blue decks that only existed in a time when the threats were super bad and the card pool was small or in standard formats. When the card pool got big enough control decks in vintage in legacy were always a compact combo like mindslaver lock timevault or prison deck like miracles.
The control the board to drop an expensive thing was not a good strategy in eternal formats for most of the games history and even "The Deck" evolved into a mana denial prison like deck in the later parts of Weissmans time with it. So yes twin was proactive like any good winning deck but it definitely was not linear and neither is death's shadow like the person you commented to said.
I have to say, despite Grixis being the best deck, the meta in this tournament looks good, it's pretty diverse.
I do also think it's telling that Shadow is very much keeping E-Tron in check, because E-Tron has also been doing very well in tournaments, less people are complaining about it on stream, interestingly enough
I think the fact that shadow preys on E Tron is why it is best otherwise I think E Tron is at a higher power level overall considering the rest of the metagame. Some people believe E-Tron is the actually best deck in modern including myself. Even with GDS being so popular Eldrazi is still putting up good numbers.
http://mtgtop8.com/event?e=19359&d=323145&f=ST&show_pts=Y
This is probably the most tuned control list from the pt. Everything is instant except teferi, and ascanta and nothing can really be played around. It is hard to know to not play scarab god since the card is super strong but the creator of this list knew to just stick with hulks and teferi.
I highly recommend that list over all other teferi decks. I tried them all and that one has the least glaring weaknesses. The black removal is better against aggro than settle the wreckage is and the mana is solid.
That was a call for the PT because his team felt like constrictor decks would be more popular. Uw has a major problem vs that decks board plan because they do not need to attack to beat you anymore so settle and seal away become blanks. If you are base ub you do not have those problems. In my opinion ub should be a gearhulk deck so you can close games out with gearhulk unlike the no wincon teferi decks.
This. No one is saying he is unplayable. His 0 is still the strongest effect printed on walker. The thing is within the context of the format his strength does not shine. I played with Jace in every format he has been legal in and he just feels like a different card in modern. The situation is similar to when he was barely played in standard when jund was the deck. Jace did not become the oppressive beast he was in standard until Alara block rotated out. Currently modern is too creature focused and is based on mana efficiency more so than card advantage and spells. We live in a world where jund is considered clunky and bad because its spells are too expensive.
People who said Jace would wreck modern just did not look at power level in the context of a format. Planeswalkers are generally stronger in slow formats like standard and more non creature spell based formats like legacy and vintage. Tapping 4 at sorcery speed without cheating mana, affecting the board, or having free counterspell backup is just asking to die in modern.
That price tag is mostly because Karn is good in Vintage. Teferi is the better card in standard.
Search for ascanta is pretty much a planeswalker that cannot be attacked. It is probably the best card to have in any fair matchup in modern but it is a turn 2 do nothing vs anything aggressive. 2 is probably the right number for this card because you do not want too many cards that do not affect the board early on but it essentially breaks grindfests.
What you are experiencing is being the one to ask questions rather than only answering those questions. Although I love esper draw go I cannot imagine myself not playing something proactive in an eternal format as diverse as modern. My current go to deck is jeskai copycat for that very reason.
Anyway thopter/sword is a bit better now that abrupt decay is non existant in tier 1 and barely even in tier 2 decks ever since twin got banned and we got passed the eldrazi, and aggro combo nonsense. I would suggest you take your deck into a bit of a more proactive approach and abuse your artifacts more. Also to take your discussion to another thread because at that point it is a totally different deck but it is better than jamming thopter sword into esper draw go.
Modern lacks the syrgenies that made misstep great in fair decks. Even though misstep is insanely powerful it is still a situational answer that can be a dead card and control does not need more of that. In legacy you had fow and brainstorm to mitigate the situational nature of card when you did not need it while having it for the situations that you did. In modern the decks that will benefit the most are the decks that win through casting more spells per turn or decks trying to protect something vulnerable to commonly played 1 mana answers. Such decks include grixis death's shadow, infect, cheerios, and jeskai saheeli to name a few. Outside of tempo based strategies like shadow or controling combo decks like copycat mm would just help more unfair decks. Control would just sit there with their mm in hand bbeing great sometimes while completely dead at others with no way to shuffle it away or pitch it for a beneficial effect.
Tron has not been that bad for control since the eye ban. The main thing that killed you was the eventual emrakul. Now the worse thing that can happen is if you are caught with your pants down and tgey turn 3 karn you or if they cast newlamog early enough to keep you off cryptic. Now with the combination of rejections, and stony silence for game 2 and 3 the match is pretty even because you have a spell that is both great against the threats or slowing down engine and a pernament that shuts off the decks velocity, consistency, and some of its answers.
I am a blue player and I do not find it offensive at all. I would not like jace in the format. Outside of unfair matchups he would be far and away the best thing to do when play normal magic. Blue does not need to be better against other fair decks because it is already advantaged against those decks. Blue just needs a way to close games against combo/big mana.
Not everyone wants that though. I find modern much more interesting than legacy. As much as people complain about how certain decks push other archetypes out such as big mana with control it is in no way as bad as how fast combo warps legacy. Aggro is barely playable in legacy if it is not tempo because you have 20/80 matchups vs fast combo. Aggro was deceptively viable when legacy was less explored.
That linear discussion is mostly due to people saying linear instead of proactive. Every good deck in a powerful format is proactive which is why things like sfm or twin will help control more than say a better counterspell. People keep wanting these blue decks that only existed in a time when the threats were super bad and the card pool was small or in standard formats. When the card pool got big enough control decks in vintage in legacy were always a compact combo like mindslaver lock timevault or prison deck like miracles.
The control the board to drop an expensive thing was not a good strategy in eternal formats for most of the games history and even "The Deck" evolved into a mana denial prison like deck in the later parts of Weissmans time with it. So yes twin was proactive like any good winning deck but it definitely was not linear and neither is death's shadow like the person you commented to said.
I think the fact that shadow preys on E Tron is why it is best otherwise I think E Tron is at a higher power level overall considering the rest of the metagame. Some people believe E-Tron is the actually best deck in modern including myself. Even with GDS being so popular Eldrazi is still putting up good numbers.