I started in RTR/Theroes standard, which I enjoyed. I played Green/Red early, then BoTG and JTN came out and I eventually played Junk Midrange/Control (Blood Baron was OP, so was Abrupt Decay). Overall, great format through-and-through.
Then I played Theroes/Khans, which was fantastic. From start to finish I played Abzan Control (much grinder than the normal builds), in Dragons of Tarkir I played Esper Dragons, then Origins caused me to play Mono-Red. Super fun format, tons of cool decks.
I really didn't like Return to Zendikar, but I played. I played Red aggro with Thunderbreak and Atarka's Command, it was pretty fun. Then I build Mardu Green, which was a great deck, but we'd reached a point where everything was a two-for-one, thus nothing really felt like it produced "true" value. But yeah, it was an OK format.
This standard I don't enjoy at all. I played Bant Company, and got some wins, but I couldn't get behind the format. Just not enough cards that interested me, red is too weak. I also don't feel like investing the money in this format I'd need to play some of the new Black decks from the pro-tour; spending $100 on 3 Liliana's just doesn't particularly interest me right now.
So yeah, I'm displeased with this standard, I've found it the worst of the one's I've played in. It's not just me; my local metagame is without standard right now. We had a strong presence in RTR/Theroes which grew throughout the Khans block. It started falling off with Zendiark, and now it's pretty much totally dead. Very few people even own standard decks, much less play them.
Yeah, I was very disappointed with the block. Both as a return set and in general. I very much disliked return to Zendikar, and this was only slightly better. I'm pretty annoyed with the very low powered standard format it's resulted in as well.
If you just want to crush the mirror, I'd play 3-4 Blood Baron of Vizkopa in the sideboard. It's effectively unraceable and unkillable for this deck. Just save decay's for Ooze when able, and most decks play nothing that can interact with it in any way; creatures, removal; we've got nothing.
Has the upside of being good against Jund, very good against Junk, pretty good against Nahiri decks, playable against Zoo, ect. But against our deck, it steals games by itself.
I'be been working on building Jund burn for about 3 months now. I looked at Naya lists and have previously ran both rw and rb lists, but that's been over 2 years ago. Personally, it came down to turn 2 Bump/Spike/Bolt X2 after a t1 Swiftspear is just too good, plus black in the board has been fantastic. It seems to struggle in the same areas as Naya. Affinity/Infect/Jeskai, perhaps Jund, and Dredge can be a little annoying if they clog up the field with creatures or get out a big troll - not much experience here.
The biggest upside for me is the Sideboard, which I can not nail down exactly, but has been great so far.
My build is more focused on being able to burn face, or clear the board, before burning face, a bit less on basing in with fast efgicient creatures while also burning face. The new card Bedlam Reveler makes me feel more confident about aiming my bolts at a bird, scooze, or Nacatl. Perhaps I'm doing it wrong by not running Guides - *gasp* - but having fewer Creatures has allowed me to be more flexible in my approach, which is what my goal was when deciding on burn to begin with: be as consistent as possible, with as few drawbacks as possible.
My list is as follows:
4 Monastery Swiftspear
4 Eidolon of the Great Revel
1 Bedlam Reveler
The Sideboard I feel needs some tweaking, and perhaps the manabase. It's been nice not taking tons of damage to get the right colors out all the time, but I'm not sure 20 is the right number, and if a 3:1 ratio of Cliffs to Gorges wouldn't be better.
Anyways, I've felt better since dropping Guides and Lavamancers - and Hellspark - in bad matchups, and hasn't made any good matchups that much worse, if any. Though, I haven't tested extensively. I will be playing in a PPTQ this weekend. Any input on this direction would be appreciated before the weekend, otherwise I'll report back after the tournament.
How does the mirror-match treat you? Is it tough without Helix and solid sideboard lifegain options?
I didn't read her backstory, but I just want to say that visually, she's looks really badass. Very stylish, very tough looking. The eyes of a predator, and I very much like her jewelry. Very, very good design/art.
I've been lurking here, and as someone who plays aggressive creature heavy decks, I'd like to say that Ashiok is terrible if you're on the backfoot against anything trying to kill your at all quickly, and pretty strong if you're at parity with them or ahead. If you're playing the card to grind against slower midrange and control decks, I like it. But if you're hoping it'll stop all in aggro or aggressive midrange decks, I'd look elsewhere.
I'm looking at playing Jund next format. I'm probably going to play some amount of dragons, Thunderbreak Regent being the obvious one. I want to play something similar to Mardu Green right now, just cutting out the white and focusing on the value Jund can produce.
The biggest think I worry about for this deck is our life total. Removal is fine, but not especially good against fast aggressive decks. When our card advantage is Read the Bones, Painful Truths, and Ob Nixillis and we're playing almost Vindicate as part of our premium removal, I think we might struggle against the aggressive decks that we typically see early on after rotation.
We could use a few 2-4 drops that help fend off aggro. I miss Soulfire Grandmaster already.
Makes me want to get into Legacy. Then I look at a decklist and see it costs $2000 of dual lands, and I close the tab.
Then look at different deck lists. There are decks that only run a few duals, or in rare cases, zero duals. You can start playing Legacy with a less expensive deck, and still have a great shot at winning. I started with Merfolk back in 2010 for that very reason -- no duals.
I looked at a few Delver and midrangey lists like Shardless BUG, Esper Stoneblade. I have most of the non-lands and the few remaining wouldn't be too troublesome to get. For me, Legacy is cards like force of will, brainstorm, jace, delver, sfm, deathrite shaman. That's what attracts me to the format. If I can't play a deck with stuff like that in it, there's no point.
It's just those bloody ABUR duals. I would be the first person to sign up to no-reserved list legacy.
I don't suppose playing non blue deck is an option for you? I play Junk Stoneblade which lets me plays tons of extremely powerful cards, some of which you mentioned there, and it's great. For Near Mint of my duals I've spend about $500, the rest of my mana base is from modern (fetches and basics). It's pretty competitive, and it's pretty fun.
Now that said, I do respect if playing legacy and not playing blue doesn't interest you.
More on topic, I really do hope the Zendikar fetches get printed here. I think it'd be nice to get a reasonable amount into circulation and increase the overall value of the packs.
Do any of you use the sleeve protector, um...sleeves?
I got some awesome sleeves that I love, but they're kinda hammered and I'd like to be able to use them again.
KMC makes sleeve protectors that you can buy, I can't remember the exact name off the top of my head. I've also seen people put penny sleeves over their artworked sleeves to success.
I think their card "Character Guards", and some people use them for triple sleeving.
This is why I think Commander is by far the worst format in magic. People come to the table with different exceptions and desires waaaaaay more than people do for any format.
Playing at the kitchen table with friends who play casually? Everyone wants to have fun, so play decks that create fun and interesting interactions with the others. Don't play your consistent turn 3 kill combo deck.
Playing at an IQ, PPTQ, or sanctioned FNM? There are prizes, expect people to do everything they can within the format to win and play competitive decks.
Playing a pick-up EDH? Dice roll. Someone's idea of fun is Gaddock Teeg stacks, someone else views all magic as competitive and plays Scion of the Ur-Dragon combo, and someone else loves the lore behind Konda so much he build a dedicated deck that tells a story to him. Unlike other formats, there are no standards at all for what an appropriately strong deck is.
If you play a pick-up game of standard or modern, there is a hard cap as to what decks are able to do. You don't have to ask "so, how competitive are we?" to know if you should play Merfolk or Jund; both decks are reasonably competitive within the scope of modern. For EDH, when you sit down, good luck knowing what's appropriate to play. It might be people casting there favorite 6/7/8 drops, or it might be singleton legacy/vintage.
Yes, you can mitigate some of the weakness of EDH by talking to people. But if someone only owns Ezuri and Scion decks, you basically have to tell them "you can't join this game" if people are playing for fun with casual decks. Or they could borrow someone's casual deck, which is often significantly less fun than playing a deck one built for themselves.
Unlike any other sanctioned format, EDH has an extremely wide level of variance in expectations of power level. If you want to play with a wide range of people, you practically have to own a large amount of decks across the scale of power level. Compare to Modern or Legacy, where having 1 deck is enough to play with anyone and fall within a reasonable expectation of the formats power level. Also compare to Kitchen table with casual players, where you can play whatever you want as long as it creates an interesting and fun game for everyone involved.
I have other issues with the format, but this is my biggest problem with Commander: far too much variety of expectations for power level of the format compared to any other format that Wizards supports.
I'm not really following your statement I think. I'm not choosing between Jace and Goblin Dark-Dwellers or Jace and removal. I'm talking about playing the same Mardu core, but with the splash color being blue for Jace/etc. instead of green for Den Protector/etc. The deck still plays removal and still plays Dwellers, as I talked about earlier with combining Jace with Dwellers.
The decks might generate card advantage in different ways, in some respects, but I think that's just a consequence of the tools available to each deck instead of any significant divergence in game plan.
What I'm talking about for Mardu Blue is a list similar to this:
What advantages do Mardu Green decks have over a list like this? What specifically about green makes it worth playing in this type of deck?
That's what I'm trying to figure out.
The deck is fine, but I think Mardu Green is significantly stronger, and significantly more consistent.
It's not trying to produce Blue on turn 2 and Black Red White on turn 3; it only needs it's splash color on turn 3 for Abzan Charm (sometimes) or turn 4 for Siege Rhino (often). It also never needs 2 of it's splash color, as you do for Dig Through Time.
Your also heavily taxing your graveyard. You want to keep; 1) Action spells for Dark-Dwellers AND action spells for Jace, 2) Creatures for Kolgahan's Command, and 3) lots of fuel for your 4 Delve Spells. I find supporting 2 Cuts, Dark-Dwellers, and Command is already extremely challenging, especially against decks that don't want to go to turn 20, so I can't imagine trying to provide resources for over twice as many spells.
Without Rhino, aggro decks are much stronger against you. You might have a fine match-up against them, but it is without question worse than Mardu Green's is. Playing turn 4 Kalitas, they kill him, turn 5 Dark-Dwellers Kommand or just Kommand back Kalitas, turn 6 cast him is much worse against the various aggro decks in the format than doing the same with Rhino. Getting Kalitas bounced by Reflector Mage also hurts far more than getting Rhino bounced; neither is good, mind you, but Rhino ends up producing value both times he hits the board, while Kalitas amounts to nothing. The same is true of Krasis tapping them; Kalitas has done nothing, Rhino gained you 3 life and bought you more time to bring your heavy weapons to bear.
In short, against decks that are racing you, Rhino is extremely strong. Specifically when you can recycle him with Kommand, which is one of the strongest interactions in the deck.
Those are the major issues I see with a Mardu Blue deck. I do see what you're trying to do, which is make it even more grindy with with Jace + Dig, but I honestly think it makes it less so than it is with Siege Rhino + Abzan Charm. Overtaxing your graveyard makes you more awkward, playing Abzan Charm increases your density of removal while allowing for card advantage (that can be recycled with Dark-Dwellers), and Siege Rhino is just a more threatening card than almost anything else in the deck. Without the ability to recyle Siege Rhino, Kolaghan's Command becomes somewhat worse, especially against aggressive decks.
In the end, I don't feel like Blue is adding much to this deck, specifically nothing worse losing Green over. I don't see which match-ups it improves considerably, as sideboarding 3 counter spells won't do much in my eyes against Rally decks that Hallowed Moonlight won't. And the large Eldrazi have effects that Trigger on cast.
Add in the fact that your aggro match-ups are worse, and I don't see the potentially (in my opinion, rather marginal) gains that Mardu Blue adds over Ramp and Rally being strong enough to make up for that.
Round 1: Abzan Blue
Game 1: He doesn't do that much, and I beat him fairly easily. Crackling Doom + Dark-Dwellers is a ton of pressure on an opponent who stumbles at all.
Game 2: He starts out aggressive but I get stable do to Soulfire + Roast, and then it gets really grindy. To my surprise he ends up casting Treasure Cruise twice in the course of the game. In the end I just played better cards than him, despite his counter spells, and recycling Siege Rhino with Kommand, then doing it again with Dark-Dwellers got me the win. Also nod to Ob Nixilis in really gindy match-ups.
Round 2: Jeskai Black (with Mantis Riders)
Game 1: I kill his turn 2 Jace, we go back and forth for a bit, and in the end I'm a better control deck and win here.
Game 2: I do not kill his turn 2 Jace, he is able to flip it and recast a Jeskai Charm at my face, and is able to aggro me down.
Game 3: I kill his turn 2 Jace, play some threats which he deals with, we both draw a few cards, normal game. Duress takes his counter, Dark-Dwellers Duress keeps him behind.
Round 3: UR Prowess
Game 1: I painful Truths on turn 3 looking for a 4th land, and it's not there. Death is merciful and swift.
Game 2: I got to live the Linvala Dream and slam the door on him ever burning me out. Not much of a game after that point.
Game 3: It's close and he's aggressive, but I'm just able to squeak out of dying with by Dark-Dwellers + Doom to keep him from lethal, then Rhino. He almost had me though.
Round 4: Atarka Red (my brother, a list featuring Thunderbreak main decked)
Game 1: He draws a strong hand, but I still get there. Turn 1 Impulse, turn 3 Doom, turn 4 Rhino, and he's just not able to get enough damage in. Hilariously, each of his Hordling Outbursts was like a 2.5 for 1 or something in his favor. Shout of to Kalitas as being a solid card I could have played without the Rhino to get stable.
Game 2: He mulls to 4. ;-; I wanted to play magic with him.
So the deck ran very well, and it's virtually unstoppable against other grindy decks in my experience. I thought of sideboarding another Abzan Charm, a 3rd Roast, and a single copy of Outpost Siege, but I instead went for more Rally and Ramp hate. I did miss a 2nd Virulent Plague, as I'm really weak to token decks and was lucky to not have played many of them.
Speaking of Rally and Ramp, those are the toughest match-ups for the deck, although I'm firm that they are not unwinable. Infinite Obliteration is great against both decks, the discard available is strong, and Hallowed Moonlight is fantastic against Rally. While Rally does have a plan B of a fair game, we just destroy the fair game in terms of quality of cards and value produced. I'm not saying we're favored against Rally, but it's a reasonable match-up.
Ramp though is the deck I most want to avoid. Our mana is fragile, thus World Breaker is a serious threat. It's a winable match-up when they brick or we draw plenty of Crackling Dooms and Dark-Dwellers, but it's always an uphill battle. There threats are also diverse enough that while Infinite Obliteration is really strong, even casting it twice doesn't leave them lacking in powerful late game plays.
Nevelo: I think cutting Thickets is almost certainly a very bad idea.
As for Painful Truths, i've said it a dozen times before and i'll keep saying it: Abzan Charm is so much better.
I did used to play 2 copies of Abzan Charm in the main deck. It was pretty good and versatile. I think it's better in this metagame, roughly as good depending on other sideobard cards against BGx decks, and worse against Blue decks. So it may very well be the type of draw we're looking for in terms of a 2 of sideboard card, as it's also really good against the Eldrazi.
Hmm. The question is what to cut for Truths and whether or not those decks are even viable enough to warrant slots right now. BGx probably yes, but I think Wilt-Leaf Abzan is quite well positioned against them anyway (Smiter and Liege). As far as blue control style decks, I don't know if they are competitive enough right now to worry that much about.
Yeah I did some hard core testing about 6 months ago vs. Ried Duke's Jund. It was like 70% game one and 55% game two when I sideboared in 2 Thragtusk and 2 Resto, and Jund sided boared in about 9 cards. So even without any card advantage it was a good match-up. Easier, now that I play Celestial Purge, yet harder in the face of Kalitas.
I think as long as Eldrazi are running around, we don't need to worry about card advantage. Our guys do a reasonable amount of producing virtual card advantage anyway. When Eldrazi takes a hit, then we'll have to think about playing a few grindier cards.
Then I played Theroes/Khans, which was fantastic. From start to finish I played Abzan Control (much grinder than the normal builds), in Dragons of Tarkir I played Esper Dragons, then Origins caused me to play Mono-Red. Super fun format, tons of cool decks.
I really didn't like Return to Zendikar, but I played. I played Red aggro with Thunderbreak and Atarka's Command, it was pretty fun. Then I build Mardu Green, which was a great deck, but we'd reached a point where everything was a two-for-one, thus nothing really felt like it produced "true" value. But yeah, it was an OK format.
This standard I don't enjoy at all. I played Bant Company, and got some wins, but I couldn't get behind the format. Just not enough cards that interested me, red is too weak. I also don't feel like investing the money in this format I'd need to play some of the new Black decks from the pro-tour; spending $100 on 3 Liliana's just doesn't particularly interest me right now.
So yeah, I'm displeased with this standard, I've found it the worst of the one's I've played in. It's not just me; my local metagame is without standard right now. We had a strong presence in RTR/Theroes which grew throughout the Khans block. It started falling off with Zendiark, and now it's pretty much totally dead. Very few people even own standard decks, much less play them.
Has the upside of being good against Jund, very good against Junk, pretty good against Nahiri decks, playable against Zoo, ect. But against our deck, it steals games by itself.
How does the mirror-match treat you? Is it tough without Helix and solid sideboard lifegain options?
We could use a few 2-4 drops that help fend off aggro. I miss Soulfire Grandmaster already.
I don't suppose playing non blue deck is an option for you? I play Junk Stoneblade which lets me plays tons of extremely powerful cards, some of which you mentioned there, and it's great. For Near Mint of my duals I've spend about $500, the rest of my mana base is from modern (fetches and basics). It's pretty competitive, and it's pretty fun.
Now that said, I do respect if playing legacy and not playing blue doesn't interest you.
More on topic, I really do hope the Zendikar fetches get printed here. I think it'd be nice to get a reasonable amount into circulation and increase the overall value of the packs.
I think their card "Character Guards", and some people use them for triple sleeving.
Playing at the kitchen table with friends who play casually? Everyone wants to have fun, so play decks that create fun and interesting interactions with the others. Don't play your consistent turn 3 kill combo deck.
Playing at an IQ, PPTQ, or sanctioned FNM? There are prizes, expect people to do everything they can within the format to win and play competitive decks.
Playing a pick-up EDH? Dice roll. Someone's idea of fun is Gaddock Teeg stacks, someone else views all magic as competitive and plays Scion of the Ur-Dragon combo, and someone else loves the lore behind Konda so much he build a dedicated deck that tells a story to him. Unlike other formats, there are no standards at all for what an appropriately strong deck is.
If you play a pick-up game of standard or modern, there is a hard cap as to what decks are able to do. You don't have to ask "so, how competitive are we?" to know if you should play Merfolk or Jund; both decks are reasonably competitive within the scope of modern. For EDH, when you sit down, good luck knowing what's appropriate to play. It might be people casting there favorite 6/7/8 drops, or it might be singleton legacy/vintage.
Yes, you can mitigate some of the weakness of EDH by talking to people. But if someone only owns Ezuri and Scion decks, you basically have to tell them "you can't join this game" if people are playing for fun with casual decks. Or they could borrow someone's casual deck, which is often significantly less fun than playing a deck one built for themselves.
Unlike any other sanctioned format, EDH has an extremely wide level of variance in expectations of power level. If you want to play with a wide range of people, you practically have to own a large amount of decks across the scale of power level. Compare to Modern or Legacy, where having 1 deck is enough to play with anyone and fall within a reasonable expectation of the formats power level. Also compare to Kitchen table with casual players, where you can play whatever you want as long as it creates an interesting and fun game for everyone involved.
I have other issues with the format, but this is my biggest problem with Commander: far too much variety of expectations for power level of the format compared to any other format that Wizards supports.
The deck is fine, but I think Mardu Green is significantly stronger, and significantly more consistent.
It's not trying to produce Blue on turn 2 and Black Red White on turn 3; it only needs it's splash color on turn 3 for Abzan Charm (sometimes) or turn 4 for Siege Rhino (often). It also never needs 2 of it's splash color, as you do for Dig Through Time.
Your also heavily taxing your graveyard. You want to keep; 1) Action spells for Dark-Dwellers AND action spells for Jace, 2) Creatures for Kolgahan's Command, and 3) lots of fuel for your 4 Delve Spells. I find supporting 2 Cuts, Dark-Dwellers, and Command is already extremely challenging, especially against decks that don't want to go to turn 20, so I can't imagine trying to provide resources for over twice as many spells.
Without Rhino, aggro decks are much stronger against you. You might have a fine match-up against them, but it is without question worse than Mardu Green's is. Playing turn 4 Kalitas, they kill him, turn 5 Dark-Dwellers Kommand or just Kommand back Kalitas, turn 6 cast him is much worse against the various aggro decks in the format than doing the same with Rhino. Getting Kalitas bounced by Reflector Mage also hurts far more than getting Rhino bounced; neither is good, mind you, but Rhino ends up producing value both times he hits the board, while Kalitas amounts to nothing. The same is true of Krasis tapping them; Kalitas has done nothing, Rhino gained you 3 life and bought you more time to bring your heavy weapons to bear.
In short, against decks that are racing you, Rhino is extremely strong. Specifically when you can recycle him with Kommand, which is one of the strongest interactions in the deck.
Those are the major issues I see with a Mardu Blue deck. I do see what you're trying to do, which is make it even more grindy with with Jace + Dig, but I honestly think it makes it less so than it is with Siege Rhino + Abzan Charm. Overtaxing your graveyard makes you more awkward, playing Abzan Charm increases your density of removal while allowing for card advantage (that can be recycled with Dark-Dwellers), and Siege Rhino is just a more threatening card than almost anything else in the deck. Without the ability to recyle Siege Rhino, Kolaghan's Command becomes somewhat worse, especially against aggressive decks.
In the end, I don't feel like Blue is adding much to this deck, specifically nothing worse losing Green over. I don't see which match-ups it improves considerably, as sideboarding 3 counter spells won't do much in my eyes against Rally decks that Hallowed Moonlight won't. And the large Eldrazi have effects that Trigger on cast.
Add in the fact that your aggro match-ups are worse, and I don't see the potentially (in my opinion, rather marginal) gains that Mardu Blue adds over Ramp and Rally being strong enough to make up for that.
Here's my deck list;
4x Soulfire Grand Master
4x Siege Rhino
2x Kalitas, Traitor of Ghet
3x Goblin Dark-Dwellers
Spells
4x Fiery Impulse
1x Roast
4x Crackling Doom
3x Kolaghan's Command
3x Painful Truths
2x Abzan Charm
2x Murderous Cut
Planeswalkers
2x Ob Nixilis Reignited
2x Swamp
1x Mountain
1x Plains
1x Forest
4x Bloodstained Mire
4x Wooded Foothills
4x Windswept Heath
2x Smoldering Marsh
1x Cinder Glade
1x Canopy Vista
2x Shambling Vents
1x Hissing Quagmire
2x Nomad Outpost
3x Hallowed Moonlight
1x Virulent Plague
2x Surge of Righteousness
1x Linvala, The Preserver
2x Duress
2x Transgress the Mind
2x Infinite Obliteration
1x Roast
1x Utter End
Round 1: Abzan Blue
Game 1: He doesn't do that much, and I beat him fairly easily. Crackling Doom + Dark-Dwellers is a ton of pressure on an opponent who stumbles at all.
Game 2: He starts out aggressive but I get stable do to Soulfire + Roast, and then it gets really grindy. To my surprise he ends up casting Treasure Cruise twice in the course of the game. In the end I just played better cards than him, despite his counter spells, and recycling Siege Rhino with Kommand, then doing it again with Dark-Dwellers got me the win. Also nod to Ob Nixilis in really gindy match-ups.
Round 2: Jeskai Black (with Mantis Riders)
Game 1: I kill his turn 2 Jace, we go back and forth for a bit, and in the end I'm a better control deck and win here.
Game 2: I do not kill his turn 2 Jace, he is able to flip it and recast a Jeskai Charm at my face, and is able to aggro me down.
Game 3: I kill his turn 2 Jace, play some threats which he deals with, we both draw a few cards, normal game. Duress takes his counter, Dark-Dwellers Duress keeps him behind.
Round 3: UR Prowess
Game 1: I painful Truths on turn 3 looking for a 4th land, and it's not there. Death is merciful and swift.
Game 2: I got to live the Linvala Dream and slam the door on him ever burning me out. Not much of a game after that point.
Game 3: It's close and he's aggressive, but I'm just able to squeak out of dying with by Dark-Dwellers + Doom to keep him from lethal, then Rhino. He almost had me though.
Round 4: Atarka Red (my brother, a list featuring Thunderbreak main decked)
Game 1: He draws a strong hand, but I still get there. Turn 1 Impulse, turn 3 Doom, turn 4 Rhino, and he's just not able to get enough damage in. Hilariously, each of his Hordling Outbursts was like a 2.5 for 1 or something in his favor. Shout of to Kalitas as being a solid card I could have played without the Rhino to get stable.
Game 2: He mulls to 4. ;-; I wanted to play magic with him.
So the deck ran very well, and it's virtually unstoppable against other grindy decks in my experience. I thought of sideboarding another Abzan Charm, a 3rd Roast, and a single copy of Outpost Siege, but I instead went for more Rally and Ramp hate. I did miss a 2nd Virulent Plague, as I'm really weak to token decks and was lucky to not have played many of them.
Speaking of Rally and Ramp, those are the toughest match-ups for the deck, although I'm firm that they are not unwinable. Infinite Obliteration is great against both decks, the discard available is strong, and Hallowed Moonlight is fantastic against Rally. While Rally does have a plan B of a fair game, we just destroy the fair game in terms of quality of cards and value produced. I'm not saying we're favored against Rally, but it's a reasonable match-up.
Ramp though is the deck I most want to avoid. Our mana is fragile, thus World Breaker is a serious threat. It's a winable match-up when they brick or we draw plenty of Crackling Dooms and Dark-Dwellers, but it's always an uphill battle. There threats are also diverse enough that while Infinite Obliteration is really strong, even casting it twice doesn't leave them lacking in powerful late game plays.
Any questions or comment lets me know.
I did used to play 2 copies of Abzan Charm in the main deck. It was pretty good and versatile. I think it's better in this metagame, roughly as good depending on other sideobard cards against BGx decks, and worse against Blue decks. So it may very well be the type of draw we're looking for in terms of a 2 of sideboard card, as it's also really good against the Eldrazi.
Yeah I did some hard core testing about 6 months ago vs. Ried Duke's Jund. It was like 70% game one and 55% game two when I sideboared in 2 Thragtusk and 2 Resto, and Jund sided boared in about 9 cards. So even without any card advantage it was a good match-up. Easier, now that I play Celestial Purge, yet harder in the face of Kalitas.
I think as long as Eldrazi are running around, we don't need to worry about card advantage. Our guys do a reasonable amount of producing virtual card advantage anyway. When Eldrazi takes a hit, then we'll have to think about playing a few grindier cards.