Hmm...how important would you say Eternal Witness is? I definitely see its value, but maybe more removal is just better? It can also be hard to cast, and very graveyard dependent.
I think one is fine in a pure GB shell - the 3 drop spot is pretty crowded so I wouldn't want more. I've never had room for it in abzan / jund lists.
Do you actually keep discard spells in the main deck after game 1 against Affinity?
Glad I'm not the only one thinking having them in G2 is odd. I always board out discard for that matchup since many times its essentially dead on turn one. Whats the rationale for keeping them in?
I would 100% try to find room for a Ghost Quarter or Tec Edge if you're running maindeck Excavator. Based on your list, I would drop 2 Blooming Marshes for a Ghost Quarter and a Twilight Mire.
Yea, I think if I'm running excavator I would want to abuse things other than fetchlands and the occasional ravine.
It seems like a very overpriced Damnation/Flaying Tendrils.
Yea, this is why I asked the question because it is the one card he included lately that really seemed odd. Even in these matchups (from @mrc_jr) "I usually bring it in against Elves, Merfolks, Tokens strategies, Affinity." we're talking... 6 cmc to wipe the board of all their 3 and fewer drops. Its nice that it can destroy more than just creatures, but this is a deck that packs 4 abrupt decay and 3 maelstrom pulse and shouldn't have much of an issue there.
As the board options, It seems balanced, I really liked illnes and gaze techs..and the two copies of duress as a complement of the main deck Thoughtseizes.
Going to test and play more with it.
What have you been bringing in the gaze to deal with? I couldn't tell if that was a card he just decided to try out for that event as a EE that could in theory kill things w cmc 3+ or if there's some kind of specific target for it that just escapes my brain.
I've been super interested in trying out Hatto's GB Rock deck--could you explain how the deck is beating E-Tron, it looks scary having to only rely on LOTV, 1 Go for the throat, and 2x Pulses for their threats.
There's also typically 3x Hissing Quagmire in BG builds now too. Most people forget it has DT, similar to forgetting reach on Stirring Wildwood.
Dredging seems a reasonable way to help achieve Delirium. In match-ups where Darkblast is good, it's super good. It practically beats Affinity by itself.
True, but Lili does very similar things ( killing x/1, feeding the gy ) while being good in more matchups in my opinion. To me it just comes down to only having 15 slots in the board.
Question - considering decks for PPTQ this weekend (new to Modern, so I can't play "the deck I have the most experience with") and looking at Abzan. The traverse / delirium versions all run 4x Mishra's Bauble. I don't have any. They seem to be important for delirium (artifact).
If you didn't have any baubles, would you run the Traverse / Grim Flayer version, or just skip trying to hit delirium altogether and run a more traditional Abzan build? If you would run traverse / grim flayer, what would you replace the baubles with?
The short answer is there isn't another card that does what Bauble does in Modern, which is why it's a $30 card. It's simply the best card for the slot. I have had some success running Architects of Will in that spot, but I only did it when I wanted to also run Stony Silence out of the board and Stony and Baubles are an obvious nonbo. Architects are nice because they put two types in the yard for a single Mana, but they still cost Mana where Bauble doesn't and they don't give you free information about the top of your (or your opponent's) deck. The experts (Willy Edel, et al) will say that if you can't run Bauble don't run Traverse, so that would be the best advice, probably.
There's been a lot of good lists posted here lately of the non-Traverse variety, and honestly that's the route I would take without Baubles.
Even with baubles it can be difficult to achieve and maintain delirium. I would echo the advice to look in to building a non-traverse variant first.
Has anyone considered using Darkblast in the 75 for Abzan Traverse? It's been a pet card of mine for some time and I want to try it in a straight Rock Traverse list.
Haven't specifically tried it in Traverse builds, but I haven't ever really been a fan of it. What do you think you would use it for that Liliana, the last hope doesn't solve?
I've been bouncing between Jund and Abzan for the last couple of weeks, and the conclusion I've come to is that I wish I could run both Terminate and Lingering Souls in the same deck, and I'm 100% Terminate > Path because of the issue Reid speaks to. I'm a little concerned about Murderous Cut alongside Dark Confidant, but I like what his list is aiming for and at one point we did play Confidant alongside Tasigur in Jund.
If Lingering Souls is what's drawing Reid to Abzan, I wonder if a Jund list with 2 main deck Bitterblossom, or more Pia and Kiran Nalaar, might be a way to try to get the best of both worlds.
So I think I have a really ridiculous idea: What about Hangarback Walker and/or Memnite? The advantages of both include: Painless to Bob flips, serve as Lingering Souls-esque blockers against DS, have a relevant card type that we'd love to see in the graveyard so we actively want to trade with them, and they have increased utility when combined with Pia and Kiran Nalaar to give us more artifacts to sac for late-game reach.
You would know better than me if anyone had tried this out of Jund before. I've actually been thinking a lot lately about moving into Jund from Abzan, and the lack of lingering souls in today's meta has been holding me up. Is this at least worth a test run?
EDIT: After some more research I guess there was a time where this was tried, including Brad Nelson playing three Hangarback Walkers in his Jund deck at World's 2015. Obviously this has fallen out of favor, but could the metagame have shifted enough that this makes sense again?
I've tried Hangarback Walker in Jund before with builds utilizing Grim Flayer and it was sort of underwhelming. While its painless to flip to Bob and has a few types on it it is also really low power on its own and fairly slow / expensive to get it to a point where its on parity w lingering souls or pia and kiran.
He has some very interesting card choices such as bloodghast, 3 Lilly, unravel the aether, slaughter pact, shadow of doubt
The only one that I can't figure out a purpose for is the Bloodghast. All others have been in and out of bgx type lists before. I assume he brings it in for mirror type situations or control but those matchups have oozes / paths to get it out of the game and a 2/1 on its own doesn't seem threatening to me.
The synergy might be nice but overall and most of the time, this card will just be a worse terminate for 3 mana. If I would want more hard removal I would probably play a fourth terminate over BGH.
Good point. Perhaps it would be better suited in a BG Rock deck as a sub for terminate.
Also able to kill Reality Smasher without needing to discard or pitch it to Smasher's discard clause and take out a TKS, etc. Is it a straight up replacement for Terminate? On paper, no - but given the overall meta, its not a terrible card to think about.
I find myself increasingly at a loss as to why I should still have Fulminators in my 75. Tron is gone and any Scapeshift player worth his salt plays around them anyway.
ETron doesn't give a ***** about them, they're slow against Affinity (which I'm not worried about to begin with), they're dead against Dredge and occasionally alright against Burn. That doesn't warrant three slots, in my opinion. Am I supposed to just bring them in for rogue Townships?
Why do you guys still play them?
I don't.
I stopped using them a long time ago when I realized that most times that I brought them in it was just because I had too much to board out and needed to have 15 cards in my sideboard.
Hey guys, just got back from Tuesday Night Modern after taking my BG list to a 4-0 finish. This puts me at an overall 15-1 in the last two or so weeks. I should preface that with saying that I haven't had to play against any Eldrazi Tron or Scapeshift, and the local meta is all over the place, but the list has been running super great. Here's what I'm currently running:
No grim flayer - This card is sweet, I love this card. This card is not good atm imo. It is smaller than a lot of things in the format, and if he's not swinging every turn he's not generating value. It also makes our deck weaker to graveyard hate, and I hated how RIP would make the abzan version stop in its tracks until we could find a decay/pulse/sage. I've found that 4 bobs is also quite good at fueling delirium since he either dies immediately and puts a creature in the gy (land/instant/sorcery being pretty easy to dump into the gy via interaction normally), or he draws us extra cards and takes over the game all by himself. Win/win.
No kalitas, 2 ooze/tracker - Kalitas isn't as consistently good as scooby/tracker, so I moved him to the sb to squeeze in an extra scooby to help against burn/dredge/DS decks. This also lowers my curve and I don't have to worry about flipping a 4 drop to bob.
GftT+Victim of Night - Need to kill big dudes at instant speed, these are the best options, and running 2 of either one makes us weaker to affinity or gurmag angler/dredge
Hissing Quagmire/Treetop - This is actually still up in the air. Quagmire is basically in there as a 'removal' spell i can traverse for if i need to (actually got to kill an Gurmy with it tonight), and treetop is a new addition to help close out games in a top deck situation. Not sure if I want to keep both since etb tapped lands can set us back pretty far sometimes.
SB choices:
Kalitas is still a house against enough decks that he's worth running in the 75.
Chameleon Colossus absolutely destroys DS decks, and is pretty damn good in the BGx matches too. Super fun to traverse for this wacky card.
How my rounds went tonight:
R1 GW CoCo Hatebears w/ MB crusaders - G1 he actually puts two crusaders into play, but I manage to edict one w/ lilana after killing his 3rd creature in play EoT and dropping a liliana on my turn. We go back and forth for a little bit where I can't swing my 6/7 goyf and he can't swing his crusader for fear of dying on the crackback, until I drop a Tireless Tracker, and draw 4 extra cards off it. The final turn he swings to put me at lethal the following turn, and I crack two clues EoT to draw the removal I need to kill his blockers and swing for lethal. G2 He drops a crusader t3 and it murders me, but G3 he gets stuck on 2 lands and my t2 bob grows my board into 2 goyfs, tracker, and a scavenging ooze before he finally concedes.
R2 Burn - G1 I draw lands and bob while he burns me out. G2/3 I drop bobs + TS for brutalities, kalitas, tendrils, and pulse and procede to drop t2 + 3 goyfs and beat him up before he can burn me out.
R3 Infect - Great matchup for me and I take it pretty quickly 2-0
R4 Grixis DS - G1 we grind for a while and he's decently ahead for most of it.. until he ends up drawing lands for 4 or so turns while I eventually stick a threat and put him in the dirt. He ended that game having seen 18/20 of his lands. Wow. G2 starts off in his favor, chaining snapcasters and kCommands until I eventually traverse for a Chameleon Colossus and smack him for 8 and force him to use snapcasters as ambush vipers to stay alive. He eventually ran out of 2/1s and Colossus finishes him off.
overall this deck feels super sweet, and mb tec edges really help us to punish people for shaky keeps. I'm really liking the 2 color mana base, and don't feel like I'm missing much, if anything by not playing the 3rd color. My mana base is super easy on my life total, allows space for utility lands, and there's almost no risk to dying to blood moon (esp w/ traverse searching for basics). I have considered splashing a single godless shrine/blood crypt to play explosives or some other white/red cards out of the board, but it hasn't felt necessary yet.
Long time BGx player that has never actually run BG sans-X. I used to run gw hatebears and really liked the simplicity on color requirements as well as the utility lands the manabase allowed for, so I am planning on trying out straight old Rock myself. I've been checking out some of Sol Malka's builds from paper and mtgo tourns and getting the handful of random cards I'd need to try this pairing out; comparing his lists to yours, a few questions / comments:
Agree on removing some of the GY dependency as well as the need to connect in combat by having 0 Grim Flayer and instead using Tireless Tracker
No Eternal Witness? Seems like it works well in this style of deck
G1: VIZIR 2-0
G2: INFECT 2-0
G3: BANT ELDRAZI 2-1
G4: LIVING END 2-1
It is a strange list, with strange choices.
About 22 lands: I don't need so much lands with this list. I need only some cards in the graveyard in order to play Tasigur as soon as possible.
About 5 Lilianas: I want to see this one every game. And then, now I can see every match.
So, I think that I'll receive a lot of bad comments about my list hahaha, but you should try it =)
Obvious trepidation of flipping Tasigur to Bob aside, I like the main deck if for no other reason than I have a desire in my builds to never go below 3 bolts. Do you find that the more versatile but not as good Rakdos Charm and Jund Charm are better than options like Grafdigger's CageAncient GrudgeNihil Spellbomb, etc? I realize that since you're running 3 of each Fulminator Mage and Kitchen Finks that your space is tight so was the thinking "well i only have 2 slots so I'll go w charms here"?
I think one is fine in a pure GB shell - the 3 drop spot is pretty crowded so I wouldn't want more. I've never had room for it in abzan / jund lists.
Glad I'm not the only one thinking having them in G2 is odd. I always board out discard for that matchup since many times its essentially dead on turn one. Whats the rationale for keeping them in?
Yea, I think if I'm running excavator I would want to abuse things other than fetchlands and the occasional ravine.
Yea, this is why I asked the question because it is the one card he included lately that really seemed odd. Even in these matchups (from @mrc_jr) "I usually bring it in against Elves, Merfolks, Tokens strategies, Affinity." we're talking... 6 cmc to wipe the board of all their 3 and fewer drops. Its nice that it can destroy more than just creatures, but this is a deck that packs 4 abrupt decay and 3 maelstrom pulse and shouldn't have much of an issue there.
What have you been bringing in the gaze to deal with? I couldn't tell if that was a card he just decided to try out for that event as a EE that could in theory kill things w cmc 3+ or if there's some kind of specific target for it that just escapes my brain.
There's also typically 3x Hissing Quagmire in BG builds now too. Most people forget it has DT, similar to forgetting reach on Stirring Wildwood.
True, but Lili does very similar things ( killing x/1, feeding the gy ) while being good in more matchups in my opinion. To me it just comes down to only having 15 slots in the board.
Even with baubles it can be difficult to achieve and maintain delirium. I would echo the advice to look in to building a non-traverse variant first.
Haven't specifically tried it in Traverse builds, but I haven't ever really been a fan of it. What do you think you would use it for that Liliana, the last hope doesn't solve?
I've tried Hangarback Walker in Jund before with builds utilizing Grim Flayer and it was sort of underwhelming. While its painless to flip to Bob and has a few types on it it is also really low power on its own and fairly slow / expensive to get it to a point where its on parity w lingering souls or pia and kiran.
The only one that I can't figure out a purpose for is the Bloodghast. All others have been in and out of bgx type lists before. I assume he brings it in for mirror type situations or control but those matchups have oozes / paths to get it out of the game and a 2/1 on its own doesn't seem threatening to me.
Are you still testing out Anathemancer in the board? I'll have my Claim // Fame this week and will give the build a whirl then.
Also able to kill Reality Smasher without needing to discard or pitch it to Smasher's discard clause and take out a TKS, etc. Is it a straight up replacement for Terminate? On paper, no - but given the overall meta, its not a terrible card to think about.
I stopped using them a long time ago when I realized that most times that I brought them in it was just because I had too much to board out and needed to have 15 cards in my sideboard.
Long time BGx player that has never actually run BG sans-X. I used to run gw hatebears and really liked the simplicity on color requirements as well as the utility lands the manabase allowed for, so I am planning on trying out straight old Rock myself. I've been checking out some of Sol Malka's builds from paper and mtgo tourns and getting the handful of random cards I'd need to try this pairing out; comparing his lists to yours, a few questions / comments:
If you're only running 1 bolt, any thought to just putting Grim Lavamancer there instead?
Obvious trepidation of flipping Tasigur to Bob aside, I like the main deck if for no other reason than I have a desire in my builds to never go below 3 bolts. Do you find that the more versatile but not as good Rakdos Charm and Jund Charm are better than options like Grafdigger's Cage Ancient Grudge Nihil Spellbomb, etc? I realize that since you're running 3 of each Fulminator Mage and Kitchen Finks that your space is tight so was the thinking "well i only have 2 slots so I'll go w charms here"?