Split top 4 at a GPT today. Here's a quick breakdown:
Round 1 - Jund (2-1)
Game 1 we trade resources for a while, and eventually he runs out of removal and I combo him out. Game 2, i keep a one land hand on the draw, the inquisitions my serum visions and i brick the rest of the way.
Game three, he rips apart my hand, but i manage to draw removal for his threats. Unfortunately i did a misplay and grabbed a basic island with a fetch instead of a steam vents, which cost me a turn 4 win. Instead, the chains fulminators and Kommands to keep me off my second red, and i get stuck in a topdeck war, which i am losing as he has an active bob. Luckily, i draw my second red before he draws any answers or removal, and win the match.
Normally i would take out 4 exarchs and 3 twins, but since i saw people managing to one up jund players by leaving in the combo when the opponent expects you to take it out, i tried something in between. I did get punished for it game 2 as a opened with 2 twins in hand that were useless. But it helped me win game three because he managed to discard one twin, but i kept in a second copy. I think i like this sideboard plan going forward, and will try keeping in two twins against BGx decks.
Sideboard for game 2(on the draw):
-2 Splinter Twin
-2 Pestermite
-2 Deceiver Exarch
+ Grave Titan
+ Keranos
+ Slay
+ Countersquall
+ Jace, Architect of Thought
+ Spellskite
Sideboard for game 3(play)
+ Deceiver Exarch
- Spellskite
Round 2 - Infect (0-2)
Game one i don't draw my interaction, and he just steamrolls me. Game two i manage to trade evenly with his creatures with him, and get to a point where i had curse of deaths hold and needed to resolve it for the free win. I spend too long digging for the second black, and die the turn before i find it.
Just a home brew with obliterators, geralf's messsenger and the like. both games i just remove his threats, and combo off while he fails to draw enough removal.
I don't know how to summarize the burn matchup. You need a bit of luck on this one: you need to have your answers line up with their draw. In game 2 of the round 4 match, i draw a bunch of dispels and spell snares, but he just beat me down with 3 goblin guides and swiftspears. but in the matches i won, it's because i drew just enough removal to deal with the creatures, and then had the counterspells for the rest of the way.
Against burn it's always better to assume that they don't have an answer to your combo. if you play around them having an answer, you'll just die eventually. generally, if you can't combo, it's very hard for you to win the long game unless they had a bad draw and you manage to stabilize above 5 life. Tasigur is amazing in these situation since it's good wall, and it's a fast clock too.
Also, i realised that against burn snapcaster is often just a blocker on turn two, and i just use it to trade for their goblin guide/eidolon. having snapcaster serve as another 2 mana removal spell often saves you more life than if you had waited to flashback something with it.
This matchup was hard because it skews the idea of card advantage. It's not instinctive to think that it's worth trading a card to prevent two damage, but in this matchup trades like these matter a lot.
You meta doesn't really need you to have a batterskull, in that slot, as a finisher i think grave titan if you want a big finisher or wurmcoil if you want the lifelink are better options. at least these can also be recurred with kommand too.
except, when we play control we don't do it with fishes. grixis control play the fish because they have 4 thought scours, and can run away with games where they play turn 3 fish with protection.
we don't have any chance of that. Since we're rarely gonna rush out a fish, good old finishers like olivia and grave titan are much better.
i'm not a fan of keranos despite his necessity. sure, he wins games singlehandedly but he does it so slowly.
I don't think we really need teferi because access to black gives us so many threats that take over the game completely. Olivia, Grave Titan. Teferi doesn't really do that very well
UR twin has a much lower threat density post board, and teferi bolsters that by making their combo a lot more threatening.
I do like the prospect of instant speed tasigurs. But given that we have a tendency to sideboard out the combos for much stronger late game options postboard, I don't see teferi doing that much beyond that.
If you rarely take out the combo, he's a good addition. otherwise I don't see the value over our existing sideboard options
I've found that with this many cantrips in a blue deck, mind's desire becomes very good. Just add in a time warp/temporal manipulation and mind's desire will generally win the game with enough storm.
I don't like devastation tide, you feel that bouncing all nonland permanents has a possibility of setting you back as well. Considering this cantrip build, temporal fissure/aetherspouts depending on whether you want an instant or sorcery bounce would work better.
If you really like having the temporal mastery/devastation tide, I can't imaing not having sensei's top as well.
the primary combo for now is the twilight's call / living death.
Secondary combo would be triskelion/necrotic ooze/phyrexian devourer/mikaeus the unhallowed
tertiary would be rings of brighthearth/deserted temple with coffers/nykthos/crypt, following up with exsanguinate
I feel like corpse dance is too good to not have, but i'll probably cut a dictate of erebos. I like having the card draw since it digs for combo, and fuels skirge familiar. that card is insane.
I considered tendrils of agony since I can cast my deck pretty easily, but gray merchant is just better everytime.
yea as much as I've played the deck it feels like any non-green aggro matchup is favourable for us. elves as well, since their creatures are all tiny.
The green aggro is tough, because between smiter, KOTR and goyfs you just don't have enough terminates to go around.
BGx and control matchups are very skill intensive. i feel with enough practice, we are slightly favoured in the BGx matchups(decks that build incremental card advantage are inherently better than disruption based decks). The control matchups boils down to who gets the better draws, and to how experienced both players are.
The bad matchups are the combo decks that are faster than us. infect, burn. post board infect can play more of a BGx style disruption game that focuses on disrupting you combo, while threatening to win on the spot.
I haven't played against goryo or amulet at all, so i can't say much about those.
unkicked sadistic taking? I can't imagine losing any three cards would affect me much because I can aim for a different combo easily.
I agree, though the deck dies to it's heavy mana requirements, and if I cannot develop my mana properly I just don't do much of anything at all. not sure where to fit the expedition map in though. I do have a lot of card draw though: ancient craving, read the bones, ambition's cost, promise of power. most of the early game is just drawing cards and hitting land drops. most of the time my first XHD activation is to return one of my draw spells as well.
love the look of your hokori deck btw. but I can't imagine why you would choose it as your first commander.
yea that rarely goes off turn 1. but having buried alive with any reanimation spell threatens a turn 4 win. xiahou-dun after that threatens to combo off every single turn thereafter.
Morality shift is one of my pet cards. It's to black what primal surge is to an all permanents deck, or what genesis wave is to a green deck. Morality shift, sac xiahou dun to get the twilight's call, and reanimate everything. gray merchant alone drains for 60+ when you pull this off. actually, when you pull this off, you go infinite.
So essentially, the 3 one card combos: morality shift, twilight's call, living death
Basically, Living Death/Twilight's Call, XHD, any sac outlet, Priest of Gix/Skirge Familiar+harvester of souls/grim haruspex.
The beauty of the deck is that from turn one, I can combo off any turn.
Turn one, with mana crypt and dark ritual, I can buried alive for triskelion, phyrexian devourer and necrotic ooze, then reanimate necrotic ooze for the win.
Late game, if I have living death/twilight's call in hand, buried alive for grim haruspex, skirge familiar and any sac outlet basically wins me the game as long as I have enough creatures in the yard/in play.
I basically play a normal game, aggroing and protecting myself, and wait for an opening to resolve twilight's call/living death to win on the spot. It's a lot easier when you get one card combos in the deck.
I agree - 1 cryptic is fine, but I wouldn't hesitate to play the 2nd.
I'm currently running 3 remands. I really want a fourth, but the list is really too tight, and I don't have much to take out. Same goes for the 2nd cryptic. This leaves my counter suite at:
One question for anyone with more experience in the burn matchup: Is anger better than terminate post board?
Also what has normally been the maximum number of lands you want in play? Say with a desolate lighthouse, at which point do you decide that you don't need to play lands anymore and can pitch them all away?
From my experience, in any game that is probably going to drag out I feel the right number is always 8 lands, because that lets you activate lighthouse and play twin or hold up cryptic on the same turn.
I want to hear any arguments for or against this though
What? How can anyone be Ever disappointed by Drawing cryptic Command?
I feel that drawing and resolving one is already good enough. If you are a little lighter on the combo, such as lightningbolt550, I definitely would run 2. but if you run the full 10 I think 1 can be enough considering you'd rather try to force out the combo earlier. I'm doing fine on one copy now, but if any card feels like it's not pulling it's weight then the 2nd cryptic would be the first card I throw back in.
I just finished a small 3 round modern event, going 2-1. I beat BW tokens and CoCo Elves, losing to UWR delver.
After this round, i made the sb swap from dismember to slay. I realized in the games against uwr delver and coco elves that i didn't really need to bring in more cheap removal against aggressive decks, and the dismemeber was to kill the big guys, and slay is almost always better for that.
I made the swaps back to maindeck tasigurs, and i liked them. but I'm wondering, has anyone tried 1 tasigur/1 angler split? it's rare but there is still a chance of getting stuck with 2 tasigurs, and it's happened to me a few times after i made the switch.
an interesting thing happened against BW tokens. they brought in RiP against me game two, and it slowed me down enough to let them overwhelm me without my snaps to control the game, and leaving my 2 tasigurs stranded in my hand. With this knowledge that a turn 2 RiP renders our tasigurs almost useless, would you board out the tasigurs, or at least one?
This was how i boarded for game 2:
+ Curse of Death's Hold
+ 2 Anger of the Gods
+ Izzet Staticaster
+ Engineered Explosives
+ Countersquall
- 1 Dispel
- 3 Bolt
- 2 Terminate
I ended up not changing anything for game 3, and won. But i got a little lucky, and my opponent got a little unlucky. i did still get the tasigur stuck in my hand against a turn 2 RiP. what i'm asking is, game 3 would it be better if i swapped out the tasigurs for the grave titan, bolt or either one?
desolate lighthouse is amazing enough in the grindy matchups that i'm considering a single monastery siege in the sideboard. being able to filter through your draws at that rate makes you so much better at closing the game.
The siege also has the advantage of possibly slowing down burn for you to catch your breath, and remand becomes marginally better against them as well.
Looter jace seems strong in that aspect as well, i feel it doesn't really solve the problem of us not having a proactive 2 drop unless we fit in all 4 copies, which i don't think we can do. I like it as the 5th snap though, but the lists are tight, and i'm not sure it's better than clique, or any of our other creatures, both pre board and post board.
I haven't tested it though.
The thing is, one of the advantages of the twin combo is the threat. i think post board, if you show just a pestermite or exarch, until they kill it, they can almost never tap out on their turn again unless they use discard to clear the way first. This is one reason why i only take out 4 of my 6 combo creatures, because forcing them to play around the combo can make things easier for you.
The reason why i still leave one twin in, is that in these matchups, you bring in the grindy cards and more card draw such as your jace, keranos. over the long game, you see a lot more cards, and splinter twin is a card you rarely need more than 1 copy of. so 1 copy in the deck is enough that you have a higher chance of seeing it appear over the course the game. If you focus on just trading resources early on, by the time you get the singleton twin, they may not even be able to fight over it effectively, and this just give you the free win. If you draw it early on, it also means that if they show a lapse in their defenses you can just win on the spot.
Of course, there are also the times where you need the combo to win, at the very least, you still have an out.
Against the mirror, i bring in keranos, dispel, countersquall, rending volley, spellskite, curse. on the play, titan comes in. on the draw, lavamancer comes in. curse is exceptional here: if curse resolves, their only out is to either bounce it with cryptic and counter it on the way down, or rely on 3/4 tasigurs that gets chumped by exarchs or eaten by your own tasigurs. it's less effective against rug variants though.
Against the BGx decks, i bring in the titan, slay, keranos, flashfreeze, countersquall, lavamancer. against jund the spellskites come in, against abzan the staticaster comes in.
either way, i after board i still leave in 2 untappers and 1 twin.
Round 1 - Jund (2-1)
Game 1 we trade resources for a while, and eventually he runs out of removal and I combo him out. Game 2, i keep a one land hand on the draw, the inquisitions my serum visions and i brick the rest of the way.
Game three, he rips apart my hand, but i manage to draw removal for his threats. Unfortunately i did a misplay and grabbed a basic island with a fetch instead of a steam vents, which cost me a turn 4 win. Instead, the chains fulminators and Kommands to keep me off my second red, and i get stuck in a topdeck war, which i am losing as he has an active bob. Luckily, i draw my second red before he draws any answers or removal, and win the match.
Normally i would take out 4 exarchs and 3 twins, but since i saw people managing to one up jund players by leaving in the combo when the opponent expects you to take it out, i tried something in between. I did get punished for it game 2 as a opened with 2 twins in hand that were useless. But it helped me win game three because he managed to discard one twin, but i kept in a second copy. I think i like this sideboard plan going forward, and will try keeping in two twins against BGx decks.
Sideboard for game 2(on the draw):
-2 Splinter Twin
-2 Pestermite
-2 Deceiver Exarch
+ Grave Titan
+ Keranos
+ Slay
+ Countersquall
+ Jace, Architect of Thought
+ Spellskite
Sideboard for game 3(play)
+ Deceiver Exarch
- Spellskite
Round 2 - Infect (0-2)
Game one i don't draw my interaction, and he just steamrolls me. Game two i manage to trade evenly with his creatures with him, and get to a point where i had curse of deaths hold and needed to resolve it for the free win. I spend too long digging for the second black, and die the turn before i find it.
Sideboard:
-Cryptic Command
-2 Spell Snare
-2 Remand
+ Curse of DEath's Hold
+ Izzet Staticaster
+ 2 Spellskite
+ Grim Lavamancer
Round 3 - Monoblack Midrange (2-0)
Just a home brew with obliterators, geralf's messsenger and the like. both games i just remove his threats, and combo off while he fails to draw enough removal.
Sideboard:
+ Grave Titan
+ Countersquall
- Deceiver Exarch
- Splinter Twin
Round 4 - Burn (0-2)
Round 5 - Burn (2-0)
Top 8 - Burn (2-1) against my round 4 opponent.
I don't know how to summarize the burn matchup. You need a bit of luck on this one: you need to have your answers line up with their draw. In game 2 of the round 4 match, i draw a bunch of dispels and spell snares, but he just beat me down with 3 goblin guides and swiftspears. but in the matches i won, it's because i drew just enough removal to deal with the creatures, and then had the counterspells for the rest of the way.
Against burn it's always better to assume that they don't have an answer to your combo. if you play around them having an answer, you'll just die eventually. generally, if you can't combo, it's very hard for you to win the long game unless they had a bad draw and you manage to stabilize above 5 life. Tasigur is amazing in these situation since it's good wall, and it's a fast clock too.
Also, i realised that against burn snapcaster is often just a blocker on turn two, and i just use it to trade for their goblin guide/eidolon. having snapcaster serve as another 2 mana removal spell often saves you more life than if you had waited to flashback something with it.
This matchup was hard because it skews the idea of card advantage. It's not instinctive to think that it's worth trading a card to prevent two damage, but in this matchup trades like these matter a lot.
sideboarding against burn:
on the play:
- 3 Remand
- 1 Cryptic Command
- 1 Kolaghan's Command
+ 1 Countersquall
+ 2 Spellskite
+ 1 Dispel
+ 1 Grim Lavamancer
on the draw:
- 3 Remand
- 1 Cryptic Command
+ 1 Countersquall
+ 2 Spellskite
+ 1 Dispel
we don't have any chance of that. Since we're rarely gonna rush out a fish, good old finishers like olivia and grave titan are much better.
i'm not a fan of keranos despite his necessity. sure, he wins games singlehandedly but he does it so slowly.
UR twin has a much lower threat density post board, and teferi bolsters that by making their combo a lot more threatening.
I do like the prospect of instant speed tasigurs. But given that we have a tendency to sideboard out the combos for much stronger late game options postboard, I don't see teferi doing that much beyond that.
If you rarely take out the combo, he's a good addition. otherwise I don't see the value over our existing sideboard options
I don't like devastation tide, you feel that bouncing all nonland permanents has a possibility of setting you back as well. Considering this cantrip build, temporal fissure/aetherspouts depending on whether you want an instant or sorcery bounce would work better.
If you really like having the temporal mastery/devastation tide, I can't imaing not having sensei's top as well.
Secondary combo would be triskelion/necrotic ooze/phyrexian devourer/mikaeus the unhallowed
tertiary would be rings of brighthearth/deserted temple with coffers/nykthos/crypt, following up with exsanguinate
I feel like corpse dance is too good to not have, but i'll probably cut a dictate of erebos. I like having the card draw since it digs for combo, and fuels skirge familiar. that card is insane.
I considered tendrils of agony since I can cast my deck pretty easily, but gray merchant is just better everytime.
The green aggro is tough, because between smiter, KOTR and goyfs you just don't have enough terminates to go around.
BGx and control matchups are very skill intensive. i feel with enough practice, we are slightly favoured in the BGx matchups(decks that build incremental card advantage are inherently better than disruption based decks). The control matchups boils down to who gets the better draws, and to how experienced both players are.
The bad matchups are the combo decks that are faster than us. infect, burn. post board infect can play more of a BGx style disruption game that focuses on disrupting you combo, while threatening to win on the spot.
I haven't played against goryo or amulet at all, so i can't say much about those.
I agree, though the deck dies to it's heavy mana requirements, and if I cannot develop my mana properly I just don't do much of anything at all. not sure where to fit the expedition map in though. I do have a lot of card draw though: ancient craving, read the bones, ambition's cost, promise of power. most of the early game is just drawing cards and hitting land drops. most of the time my first XHD activation is to return one of my draw spells as well.
love the look of your hokori deck btw. but I can't imagine why you would choose it as your first commander.
here's the list:
http://tappedout.net/mtg-decks/xia-hou-dun/
Morality shift is one of my pet cards. It's to black what primal surge is to an all permanents deck, or what genesis wave is to a green deck. Morality shift, sac xiahou dun to get the twilight's call, and reanimate everything. gray merchant alone drains for 60+ when you pull this off. actually, when you pull this off, you go infinite.
So essentially, the 3 one card combos: morality shift, twilight's call, living death
Basically, Living Death/Twilight's Call, XHD, any sac outlet, Priest of Gix/Skirge Familiar+harvester of souls/grim haruspex.
The beauty of the deck is that from turn one, I can combo off any turn.
Turn one, with mana crypt and dark ritual, I can buried alive for triskelion, phyrexian devourer and necrotic ooze, then reanimate necrotic ooze for the win.
Late game, if I have living death/twilight's call in hand, buried alive for grim haruspex, skirge familiar and any sac outlet basically wins me the game as long as I have enough creatures in the yard/in play.
I basically play a normal game, aggroing and protecting myself, and wait for an opening to resolve twilight's call/living death to win on the spot. It's a lot easier when you get one card combos in the deck.
I'm currently running 3 remands. I really want a fourth, but the list is really too tight, and I don't have much to take out. Same goes for the 2nd cryptic. This leaves my counter suite at:
2 Spell Snare
2 Dispel
1 Cryptic Command
One question for anyone with more experience in the burn matchup: Is anger better than terminate post board?
Also what has normally been the maximum number of lands you want in play? Say with a desolate lighthouse, at which point do you decide that you don't need to play lands anymore and can pitch them all away?
From my experience, in any game that is probably going to drag out I feel the right number is always 8 lands, because that lets you activate lighthouse and play twin or hold up cryptic on the same turn.
I want to hear any arguments for or against this though
I feel that drawing and resolving one is already good enough. If you are a little lighter on the combo, such as lightningbolt550, I definitely would run 2. but if you run the full 10 I think 1 can be enough considering you'd rather try to force out the combo earlier. I'm doing fine on one copy now, but if any card feels like it's not pulling it's weight then the 2nd cryptic would be the first card I throw back in.
I just finished a small 3 round modern event, going 2-1. I beat BW tokens and CoCo Elves, losing to UWR delver.
After this round, i made the sb swap from dismember to slay. I realized in the games against uwr delver and coco elves that i didn't really need to bring in more cheap removal against aggressive decks, and the dismemeber was to kill the big guys, and slay is almost always better for that.
I made the swaps back to maindeck tasigurs, and i liked them. but I'm wondering, has anyone tried 1 tasigur/1 angler split? it's rare but there is still a chance of getting stuck with 2 tasigurs, and it's happened to me a few times after i made the switch.
an interesting thing happened against BW tokens. they brought in RiP against me game two, and it slowed me down enough to let them overwhelm me without my snaps to control the game, and leaving my 2 tasigurs stranded in my hand. With this knowledge that a turn 2 RiP renders our tasigurs almost useless, would you board out the tasigurs, or at least one?
This was how i boarded for game 2:
+ Curse of Death's Hold
+ 2 Anger of the Gods
+ Izzet Staticaster
+ Engineered Explosives
+ Countersquall
- 1 Dispel
- 3 Bolt
- 2 Terminate
I ended up not changing anything for game 3, and won. But i got a little lucky, and my opponent got a little unlucky. i did still get the tasigur stuck in my hand against a turn 2 RiP. what i'm asking is, game 3 would it be better if i swapped out the tasigurs for the grave titan, bolt or either one?
The siege also has the advantage of possibly slowing down burn for you to catch your breath, and remand becomes marginally better against them as well.
Looter jace seems strong in that aspect as well, i feel it doesn't really solve the problem of us not having a proactive 2 drop unless we fit in all 4 copies, which i don't think we can do. I like it as the 5th snap though, but the lists are tight, and i'm not sure it's better than clique, or any of our other creatures, both pre board and post board.
I haven't tested it though.
The thing is, one of the advantages of the twin combo is the threat. i think post board, if you show just a pestermite or exarch, until they kill it, they can almost never tap out on their turn again unless they use discard to clear the way first. This is one reason why i only take out 4 of my 6 combo creatures, because forcing them to play around the combo can make things easier for you.
The reason why i still leave one twin in, is that in these matchups, you bring in the grindy cards and more card draw such as your jace, keranos. over the long game, you see a lot more cards, and splinter twin is a card you rarely need more than 1 copy of. so 1 copy in the deck is enough that you have a higher chance of seeing it appear over the course the game. If you focus on just trading resources early on, by the time you get the singleton twin, they may not even be able to fight over it effectively, and this just give you the free win. If you draw it early on, it also means that if they show a lapse in their defenses you can just win on the spot.
Of course, there are also the times where you need the combo to win, at the very least, you still have an out.
This is the board i'm running now:
1 Curse of Death's Hold
1 Vandalblast
1 Keranos, God of Storms
1 Slay
1 Flashfreeze
1 Spellskite
1 Dispel
1 Grave Titan
1 Grim Lavamancer
1 Engineered Explosives
1 Izzet Staticaster
1 Countersquall
1 Rending Volley
Against the mirror, i bring in keranos, dispel, countersquall, rending volley, spellskite, curse. on the play, titan comes in. on the draw, lavamancer comes in. curse is exceptional here: if curse resolves, their only out is to either bounce it with cryptic and counter it on the way down, or rely on 3/4 tasigurs that gets chumped by exarchs or eaten by your own tasigurs. it's less effective against rug variants though.
Against the BGx decks, i bring in the titan, slay, keranos, flashfreeze, countersquall, lavamancer. against jund the spellskites come in, against abzan the staticaster comes in.
either way, i after board i still leave in 2 untappers and 1 twin.