- Cronax
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Member for 10 years, 1 month, and 22 days
Last active Wed, May, 30 2018 10:12:42
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Posted in: Modern Archives - ProvenQuote from lurplez »How do you feel about it when on the draw against jund/k, eldrazi
Eidolon still good vs jund/junk as they run low cmc cards. Removal dont relevent coz it can hurt your opponent also. Playing against eldrazi would be siding out better coz they run lot of 4cmc above. -
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Posted in: Modern Archives - ProvenQuote from IHEARTCHANDRA »Hello Burn Family,
Quick question: say "IF" Bloodbraid Elf was unbanned would it work for naya burn? please explain the pros and cons. much appreciated all!
Hello IHEARTCHANDRA, I think it's to expensive for our deck because we generally haven't 4 lands to play this card and it would be a dead card. -
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Posted in: Modern Archives - ProvenQuote from Renaud_256 »Could try Ravenous Trap?
Downside is that it only works once
Upside is that it's instant speed & cost 0, so chances are they won't be playing around it
Now that is some spice. I like the cut of your jib sir. -
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lugger posted a message on RGx Energy AggroPosted in: Standard ArchivesQuote from ElCascador »I fail to see what white would bring. There is no energy payout cards nor good energy generating cards in white and the cards you talked about don't bring anything for the bad matchups, namely G/B Delirium and Jeskai Control. Maybe selfless spirit but that's about it.
Gideon, Ally of Zendikar and Archangel Avacyn are the big pulls. Kinda' hard to cast. Which makes me not really want to try skewing a mana base just to play a 4 and 5 drop.
Blue lets you either splash heavily (Confiscation Coup, Whirler Virtuoso) or lightly (SB Ceremonious Rejection, Negate) and gives you 8 speed lands to do so -- which is why I've been a proponent of the Temur decks. -
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JonInWherever posted a message on R/x AggroPosted in: Standard ArchivesQuote from Colt47 »Also had an interesting play against my friend when I blocked two creatures and killed a third by using the gremlin as a blocker, piloted the copter with it, and THEN sacrificed it to kill another attacker before blocking with the copter. That third creature was a Fleetwheel cruiser. Still, I really don't like how that is red's one way to kill artifacts.
I don't think that's actually legal. As far as I know, you can't crew during the "declare blockers" phase - it has to be done as an effect after attacker are declared. So, by crewing your Copter, you were actually moving to effects after blocking, and were saying that you were done declaring blockers. Someone can correct me if I'm wrong... -
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Honestly, if your opponent has a chalice on two, its either because they don't know how to play chalice, or they already have a chalice on one. Chalice on one is MUCH more common.Posted in: Modern Archives - Proven -
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Poopingmypants posted a message on U/R SpellsPost rotation is my aim for moving this deck forward. BG looks to be a big player and this deck is well positioned versus them.Posted in: Standard Archives
I see many posts about running out of gas late or how people hold lands. Instead of trying Anticipate try Take Inventory. I run the full 4 and have no issues having gas late. I almost always discard the first one while digging early and each one after the first is in the grave is actual card advantage. I also play every land I can so when I have just bounce and draw I can still activate my Fumurole for a damage source.
I play a list I posted a while back and it just chugs along on 20 lands. With the amount of draw you should always be able to find your third land and 20 gets you 2 in your opener most of the time.
Once CoCo goes this deck is going to be great. Not to mention that WW will also go away. I'm excited as this deck looks like a great call moving forward. -
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SebT2 posted a message on [Primer] InfectPosted in: Aggro & TempoQuote from PatrickOnTheGo »Hi guys. I haven't posted in a while. I won last weekend's PPTQ-Dublin in our area out of 46 players. I can fly to Taipei or Japan in December for the RPTQ if i get my VISA ready on time. The following were my match-ups:
Round 1: Bant Eldrazi 2-1
Round 2: Junk 2-1
Round 3: Jeskai Nahiri 2-0
Round 4: Bant Eldrazi 2-0
Round 5: Intentional Draw
Round 6: Intentional Draw:
Quarterfinals: Abzan Collected Company 2-1
Semifinals: Ad Nauseam Combo 2-0
Finals: Naya Burn 2-1
I also noticed from this weekend's GP Guanzhou 6 players made Top32 with Infect. 5/6 of them played Andrew Jessup's stocklist. What is it about that list that makes it successful? :/ I cannot get behind it; my list is a tweaked one from Tom Ross's Pro Tour back in 2015 when the deck first got popular.
P.S. 2 Wild Defiance maindeck is such a house; blanked my opponents in Round 2 and Finals, and won with raw damage in three games that day.
Could you share your decklist please? I'm interested to see what changes you made to Tom's list since I'm running something similar as well! -
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PatrickOnTheGo posted a message on [Primer] InfectHi guys. I haven't posted in a while. I won last weekend's PPTQ-Dublin in our area out of 46 players. I can fly to Taipei or Japan in December for the RPTQ if i get my VISA ready on time. The following were my match-ups:Posted in: Aggro & Tempo
Round 1: Bant Eldrazi 2-1
Round 2: Junk 2-1
Round 3: Jeskai Nahiri 2-0
Round 4: Bant Eldrazi 2-0
Round 5: Intentional Draw
Round 6: Intentional Draw:
Quarterfinals: Abzan Collected Company 2-1
Semifinals: Ad Nauseam Combo 2-0
Finals: Naya Burn 2-1
I also noticed from this weekend's GP Guanzhou 6 players made Top32 with Infect. 5/6 of them played Andrew Jessup's stocklist. What is it about that list that makes it successful? :/ I cannot get behind it; my list is a tweaked one from Tom Ross's Pro Tour back in 2015 when the deck first got popular.
P.S. 2 Wild Defiance maindeck is such a house; blanked my opponents in Round 2 and Finals, and won with raw damage in three games that day. - To post a comment, please login or register a new account.
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As to the conversation about land, personally in most matches I play I am quickly sitting on 4-5 land and I tend to end games with 7-8 land. I play 18 land in my list. I've been playing the deck regularly for months now and can count the times I've gotten mana screwed on two hands. I am aware this may be observational bias or statistical anomalies at work but over such a long period of time that seems unlikely.
About Lightning Helix I don't think cutting it is a good idea. The fact that it gains life, deals damage and can hit either creatures or the face makes it a very versatile card. Even against more control-oriented deck it feels like the card helps me stave off their finisher long enough for me to kill them.
In the meta I expect to face at tournaments I go to, I expect to see a good deal more Ad Nauseam, which is a terrible matchup for my version at the very least, so I'm going to try making room in my sideboard for two copies of Counterflux.
Similarly, it feels like I need more 'hard' counters so I'm going to drop my 3rd Remand and something else for Logic Knot. I feel like I fill up the graveyard quickly enough to make use of at least two copies and I don't think the deck can afford another narrow counter i.e. Negate or Dispel.
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I think Jeskai Tempo has been my 'gateway drug' towards control decks because while my Naya Burn deck was a 'better' deck tier-wise, with tempo and control decks I feel like I have a lot more control over whether or not I win the match and my skill at playing the deck and knowledge of the meta feel like they have a lot more impact.
Having said that, I think my current list is fairly well tuned and does a lot of work. Here's what I played today:
4x Monastery Swiftspear
4x Snapcaster Mage
3x Geist of Saint Traft
4x Lightning Bolt
4x Lightning Helix
4x Path to Exile
4x Serum Visions
3x Remand
2x Spell Snare
2x Mana Leak
2x Vapor Snag
2x Slip Through Space
3x Arid Mesa
1x Sacred Foundry
1x Hallowed Fountain
1x Steam Vents
4x Spirebluff Canal
1x Seachrome Coast
1x Mountain
1x Island
1x Plains
3x Deflecting Palm
2x Anger of the Gods
2x Tormod's Crypt
2x Dispel
2x Electrolyze
2x Wear // Tear
2x Bedlam Reveler
Some possible substitutions are in the Fetches, if you have Scalding Tarns they should probably be your first choice of fetch since the deck mainly needs blue and red mana. The rest of the manabase is pretty finely tuned, you can't really do without any of the shocks or basics and the number of fetches feels correct.
The Slip Through Spaces are there to help keep Geist of Saint Traft alive, since once it resolves it's mainly threatened by blocks. You could replace them with Artful Dodge or Distortion Strike depending on your preferences.
The sideboard is tuned to a wide meta. The only questionable inclusions are Electrolyze and Deflecting Palm. Deflecting Palm is my pet card, I just love smacking people to death with their own fatty, but it may not be good enough in this deck. The Electrolyzes are there for decks that play a lot of 1-toughness creatures or tokens but could probably be replaced with Forked Bolt, I just like the cantripping aspect. Decks that play Lingering Souls or Spectral Procession are where you really want them, but Anger of the Gods combined with our regular removal is probably plenty.
With Dredge's popularity taking a nosedive, I no longer feel like I need the raw power of Rest in Peace and instead want graveyard hate that I can play without having to interrupt my regular plan. I considered Ravenous Trap instead but I disliked how it relies on your opponent filling the graveyard a lot in a single go. Relic of Progenitus was another consideration but it makes Snapcaster Mage actively terrible, which wasn't worth it for me.
Bedlam Reveler is my answer to decks that manage to force us into the long game, a single copy backed by a Remand or Mana Leak gives you enough gas to close out the game before the opponent can stabilize. I could see playing them in the main deck and dropping 1x Lightning Helix and 1x Remand but that would require a lot of testing against a large variety of decks to make sure the 'reload' is worth the slight drop in consistency that comes from dropping the copies of important cards.
On the whole, I think this version is the strongest of the variations. The full aggro version with more Prowess creatures feels like a worse version of Burn or Zoo. Cards like Monastery Mentor change the plan too much since they stimulate playing your cards on your own turn in a deck that mainly wants to delay the opponent's game plan long enough to build up a decent life total lead and then close out the game with creatures and burn. The slower version seems like a control deck that's trying to be one step faster than other control decks, but it loses to slower decks in card quality and to faster decks because it lacks closing speed. I also want to mention that the numbers on the cards are pretty finely tuned. I dislike playing more singletons that have the same core functionality because it raises the complexity of the deck without providing enough reward for that complexity. Part of the reason why a deck like Burn is still hard to play well is that while it may consist of cards that are the same in base function (deal 3 damage for 1 mana) the minor differences actually mean that you have to be really good at judging which one you need to cast in a given situation.
Having said all that, if anyone has any well-founded counterpoints I'm all ears.
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I think a transformational sideboard could be done even on 18-19 lands if you just add Celestial Colonnade instead of a nonland card. Take out some creatures and side in some more counterspells and there's your control shell. My experience with the deck is that we end up with plenty of land anyways, I rarely end games with less than 6 mana. That may not be enough for a Jeskai Nahiri style control deck but I think Sphinx's Revelation and Cryptic Command along with some stuff like Dispel and/or Negate can do wonders. Snapcaster Mages can stay in, as can Delver of Secrets. Monastery Swiftspear would come out first along with possibly Path to Exile if it has no/too few targets and otherwise I could see dropping some amount of Delvers/Geists to make room for what you're bringing in. The main difference between our more aggressive style and full control style is how they plan to win vs how we plan to win but the shells are similar enough for a transformational plan I feel.
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Electrolyze comes in against decks that play Lingering Souls or generally have enough targets. I might try Echoing Truth in place of the Skullcracks.
I do reasonably well against Jund, I was hoping to get another chance to try the deck against the Jund player in my LGS last FNM but he was playing an Abzan list instead. I lost because I drew too many lands in the second match but on the whole I think the deck had ample game against it. I might make some room in the sideboard for Young Pyromancers since I have a playset of those already. I also have Bedlam Revelers but I haven't felt like I needed that kind of 'refilling power' yet, the deck generally does pretty well in topdeck mode for me since there are very few dead draws.
My style of play so far is to use the first few turns to tap out for aggressive plays while the opponent is setting up and then transition into a more tempo/control mode. This approach works well against midrange and control decks so far but I've not had an opportunity to test against a 'real' aggressive deck yet. The only aggressive deck I faced last FNM was a relatively new player with a mono-G Stompy list, where I used my removal aggressively to keep his board clear but I could have gone aggressive with my bolts and helixes since I had one or more flipped Delver of Secrets in play and they don't care about his blockers.
I haven't given much thought to whether I side aggressively or tempo-oriented, I try to evaluate all the cards in the 75 by their merits and then decide what cards are the worst and which sideboard cards would be better in the matchup. I'm probably playing a fairly aggressive style so far since my previous deck was Naya Burn.
On the Monastery Mentor note, I've played some matches with him on xmage and haven't been convinced yet. He tends to eat removal quickly but even when he doesn't I don't usually get to cast enough spells to really make use of him since we run out of gas. I do think there's a list to be made where he can shine though, that list would play more 1-mana spells and perhaps a bit of pump and Temur Battlerage.
Another thing I've been considering is to make room in the 75 for 2 copies of Mutagenic Growth. It can help protect our creatures from bolts, keep Geist of Saint Traft alive against blockers and generally help do those last few points of damage a little sooner. For a aggro/tempo deck, becoming half a turn faster like that seems pretty strong. I don't want too many though or I'd lose the ability to switch between aggro and tempo on the fly.
I think I'm a little too attached to my current sideboard for my own good right now. My experience playing Burn against Dredge has left me unwilling to play anything less than 2 pieces of graveyard hate and since Rest in Peace is the most effective version I'm running that atm. I should probably replace it with another card but I've yet to get a good chance to test my current list against the deck. With two Anger of the Gods in the sideboard as well as the two pieces of GY hate I think I'd probably do pretty well. I've been going back and forth on the Dispels and Negates. Dispel seems really efficient against decks that have enough targets but I haven't been siding it in all that often in actual matches so perhaps I should drop them. Negate is there in case there are no targets for Spell Snare or if I need an answer to planeswalkers but again I haven't felt like I needed them in actual matches so far.
One of the decks I really want to test against is Infect, I think we are probably favoured in the matchup but if that doesn't turn out to be the case I'll try to make room in the sideboard for a Sudden Shock.
Overall, the more I play this version of the deck the more I like it. At first I was a little afraid that the deck might be trying to do too many things at once with the aggressive spells alongside tempo spells and Geists, but the high quality of the spells combined with their versatile nature means that the deck is actually quite good at playing topdeck wars. My perception is that aggressive and tempo decks are generally bad at topdeck wars since by then they're looking to have decided the game already.
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Kor Firewalker isn't really too strong against any other decks except perhaps Skred Red. That's the reason I no longer run them in my sideboard.
Which one is better between Rift Bolt and Lava Spike depends heavily on the context but generally I'd give the edge to Rift Bolt for being able to hit both creatures and players. Both should be a full 4-of in your main deck. When it comes to sideboarding, if you have to be fast then you generally want to cut Rift Bolt first but when you need to have enough removal you may want to cut the Lava Spikes instead.
The trick behind sideboarding is actually understanding your deck and the matchup you're facing. Evaluate all the cards in the deck in the context of the matchup, figure out which card is the worst and replace it with the best cards in your sideboard if those sideboard cards are actually better in the matchup. Then look at the new state of the deck and make sure you've not diluted your main win condition too much. You can read as many sideboarding guides as you like but until you understand the why of it all you'll always be a step behind other players of a deck.
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I was writing out my decklist off the top of my head, turns out I was wrong: I'd already cut the 4th Geist of Saint Traft for another Seachrome Coast and since I only had 2 Snapcaster Mages when I last played the deck I had 2 Vapor Snag in that spot.
In an effort to lower the mana requirements a little I've replaced the 2 Mana Leaks with Spell Pierces. I've cut a Gitaxian Probe and the 19th land I was playing for the two extra Snapcaster Mages. This leaves me with the following list:
4x Delver of Secrets
4x Monastery Swiftspear
4x Snapcaster Mage
3x Geist of Saint Traft
Cantrips(7):
4x Serum Visions
3x Gitaxian Probe
Removal(14):
4x Lightning Bolt
4x Lightning Helix
4x Path to Exile
2x Vapor Snag
Counters(6):
2x Spell Snare
2x Remand
2x Spell Pierce
4x Flooded Strand
4x Spirebluff Canals
3x Arid Mesa
1x Seachrome Coast
1x Hallowed Fountain
1x Sacred Foundry
1x Steam Vents
1x Mountain
1x Island
1x Plains
3x Deflecting Palm
2x Rest in Peace
2x Skullcrack
2x Wear // Tear
2x Dispel
2x Electrolyze
2x Negate
I'd like to add another land back in but I'm not sure what I'll cut for it, perhaps a Lightning Helix to help lower the curve a little more.
I'm definitely considering Slip through Space if I do decide to stay on the current path, though cutting a counter for it feels bad. I'm not sold on the sideboard yet. Deflecting Palm is a holdover from my Burn sideboard but I'm starting to think that I don't need it in this deck since I can catch Infect with removal and counters and with mainboard Path to Exile Tron decks are a lot less scary so I really only need it against Emrakul/Ulamog decks. I was already looking for a space to stick Anger of the Gods so I'm thinking I might drop Palm for 2 copies and something else. I'd like to make room for the [c]Slip through Space[/s]s as well.
Perhaps my approach to the sideboard is just plain wrong because I'm too hung up on what the Burn sideboard needed...could I trouble the people who play a similar list to post their sideboards so I can get some ideas?
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Eidolon of the Great Revel excels against aggressive decks because you're asking them to take 2 damage for every small creature/cantrip/removal spell they play. This gets them within lethal range really damn quickly. Sure, against Storm it's even better but that's not the baseline for the card, it's already good enough against pretty much any deck that casts spells of 3 CMC and/or under. On the draw, it can be the right choice to side it out against some decks, but it's still the one single card that took the deck from a fringe deck to a tier 1 competitor.
Not playing him is like choosing not to play Snapcaster Mage in a Delver deck...sure, you can do it and sure you may still win some games, but you're leaving behind a lot of the power that makes the deck strong in the first place.
About the same goes for Searing Blaze which was mentioned earlier. In the current meta, it's just never the right choice to not play 4 copies maindeck. Almost every deck has targets for it and if you're facing a deck that has none or not enough, it's easily sided out.
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The reason I like the Jeskai Prowess / Aggro decks are that you get Serum Visions, Lightning Bolt and Path to Exile in a deck with a solid aggressive game plan. I'm still indecisive about picking the exact version and chances are I'll end up with a slightly more mid-range version than most because of my card preferences. Perhaps I'll try a hybrid of our more aggressive build and a more Jeskai Control build.
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I'm also a definite supporter of a singleton Hanweir Battlements, randomly giving things haste when your opponent's tapped out has won me a good number of games.
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I really don't understand how Monastery Swiftspear is lacking in any way. It's a card that has enough damage potential to be played in Burn after all...in an aggressive Jeskai deck, which will have plenty of 1-mana spells and some counterspells to protect her, she's just a house. If you want to go a more controlling route, she becomes slightly worse but then you're not playing an aggressive tempo deck anymore which is the title of this thread. It could very well be that this version is not the version for you, maybe Jeskai Control suits your playstyle better?