I like a lot of the strategies u guys are talking about with fulminator, the idea of a couple fulms and a single sowing salt seems pretty attractive tbh, hard to make room in the board for it but I think a single sowing salt seems very interesting tbh. Mostly because fulminators come in vs. much more matchups than just tron, but sowing salt, i mean cmon thats only coming in vs. tron lol. So yeah I like the idea of having just ONE card dedicated to JUST tron and for it to be a lights out card generally speaking anyway. But to also have a couple more that are pretty strong but also much more versatile. Also Shadow of doubt is obviously insanely good to mainboard like a single copy of right now if you're expecting a lot of Tron and Amulet bloom (which is very reasonable to expect especially bloom).
I don't actually think extraction is all that bad vs some decks like tron but its always been one of those cards that for some reason just doesn't seem consistent enough for whatever reason. I'd have to try it to really say but thats my initial impression anyway.
Also in general I think if you guys are trying to focus on strategies vs. tron you should focus on Green/Red tron only, the blue version seems a ton weaker vs a lot of the other decks out there than the Green/ Red one due to being far less consistent at assembling tron. So i'd say just don't even pay attention to the Blue version tbh, its not worth it.
The deck that gives me the most trouble is Zoo/really aggressive decks. Since those decks were giving me the most trouble I decided to move an anger from my sideboard mainboard and free up another sb slot. So 1 damnation 1 anger main. So far it's worked out well, it makes the deck weaker v. combo/control but not by that much and its only game 1. I'd rather have a better shot with such an important spell mainboard like anger which can really swing a game v. those aggressive decks than have that tiny edge vs control/combo which aren't the worst matchups, especially post board.
I still really really hate rakdos charm as a card. I much prefer relic. If you play mystical teachings I have to say rakdos charm is better, but outside of that I am not a fan. With all the love Tasigur, the golden fang is getting I'm very surprised people haven't started to adopt relic of progenitus they have some anti synergies but they also have some Very powerful synergies since you can target yourself with the relic to get bad/dead cards out of the yard making it much more likely to get a good card every turn from tasigur. Really think y'all should try more relics.
Sunken ruins seemed unnecessary now tbh. If you just run 3 or so checklands, like sulfur falls or drowned catacomb instead you can still have a decent amount of resiliency to cards like choke and boil while also smoothing out your mana to cast things like terminate. If you have ever had a terminate in hand and a sunken ruins and steam vents in play you will know what I mean, it is really frustrating. Sure it helps to cast damnation, cruel, and cryptic command but imo people used to play sunken ruins over checklands because we didn't have that great of a manabase to cast cruel ultimatum. Like we used to play 4 Scalding tarn and 3 misty rainforest. The mana was worse and so we needed sunken ruins to pull it all together. Now that isn't true anymore. Our manabase is much better and with 7-8 on color fetchlands we can reliably cast cruel ultimatum with almost no problems (unless something is really out of whack with your manabase).
Finally I had an idea that since you all seem to want to test with people who aren't random people on cockatrice, Why not test with each other? I assume you all use the woogerworks server and can just add each other on there. I would be willing to play some test matches myself if anyone wants to get some good testing in. What do you all think about this.
Yeah I would say I kind of agree amalek. Although I guess since Magic online (probably better for testing) can cost quite a bit to maintain a collection on people are limited to what they can get. I think that as long as people take cocka with a "grain of salt" then it can be alright for testing.
I like liliana I really do I just think that, like others have said, she is at her best in a midrange shell. This is because she sort of "Freezes" the game at around turn 4-5 in terms of power spiking. This is because she make both players discard cards(generally land cards at first) so that they are restricted on mana of course. So jund/junk loves her so much since she can freeze the game at around this level when they also Spike the most in power. A hard control deck like one that plays cruel ultimatum (7 mana) spikes at, you guessed it, 7 mana. So this is why they are a bit nonsynergistic. Also in a game where players dont play that many creatures, I think her card advantage only kicks in when she ultimates, since she cant make use of the edict effect. She can actualyl be pretty decent against infect since they like to sit back on a bunch of protect/permission cards to protect their infect creatures. I cant imagine shes good against affinity though, like edicting an ornithopter and then having lili get killed the next turn doesn't sound that good. Regardless of the bad matchups though she's proven to be worth mainboarding in the jund strategy as she is basically the 2nd strongest planeswalker printed in general. So yeah lili is actually good, just not in the "hard control" strategy for the reasons listed above.
Also lili is a strong card against us make no doubt about it. Sure you can command it to bounce in response to her plus one (but a seasoned player isn't going to fall for this, they will usually wait and hold a card in hand then plus 1 if they suspect you have a cryptic. Also the reason shes good against us is because we spike in power later in the game and therefore since the game is frozen in the turns 4-5ish where they have their midrange deck has the most power, we are disadvantaged. A really random example, its like fighting someone on their own turf, not smart and you're probably going to lose. The games where you can beat lili are only because, A: you destroyed her, B: you drew enough cards to make her not matter too much and advanced the game back to our home turf (turns 7 etc where cards like opportunity would be at their strongest). Because you could afford to NOT discard land cards, and play a couple more getting closer to your power spike/bigger mana costed cards like cruel ultimatum batterskull etc.
And finally I like remand so much even in a control deck because it does have a use for card advantage. The "Trick" where you remand your own spell for card advantage comes up actually fairly often, also the fact that it hits flashback spells so well too is a huge bonus to it. In general the fact that it costs Two Mana and can sometimes be effectively a cryptic is just too good not to play imo. Any time I've played a deck that played think twices and remands, I've always wished for more remands because the person who has more gets a nice advantage from remanding the flashbacked think twices and in a game of pure card advantage, those edges matter. Finally the fact that remand can work well with your own snapcaster to provide a net +1 card, and tempo at the same time is imo just too good not to play. Sure it has some downsides but the upsides are worth it imo even in a control deck.
Some more notable tricks (you can remand something like emrakul or loxodon smiter or creatures where the opponent has a bunch of cavern of souls in play etc. just to cycle ur remands away, MUCH better than having ur manaleak not be able to do anything at all against these cards).
You can cast anger of the gods or another wrath and if you opponent responds by saccing their creatures to a sac outlet for something like a bunch of scrys from viscera seer(also in the case of anger of the gods, so that they can not have their creatures be exiled, potentially eternal witness'ing them back later on) then you can remand your own wrath for a REALLY nice profit. Something that came up for me was electrolyzing a spike feeder and they sacced it for 2 life so my electrolyze couldn't draw me a card since it would fizzle, then I remanded my electrolyze and used the electrolyze on their other 2 creatures. Remand is just such a great card, it just takes creativity to unlock its full potential, but you Do get rewarded for that.
If you kill the goyf though its actually good because it can help you get ahead in cards v. a dangerous liliana.
If you have a jace going, and they have a liliana going, you almost always win that card advantage fight. esp. if the piles are close and you take the one with more raw card count so you have cards to discard to lili.
Speaking of grixis walkers, I really think Jace is underrated. I really love that card and it seems really great right now. I think its great mainboard though since it seems to be great v. like almsot everything.
If you can get a card advantage engine like a jace for instance, its not that unrealistic. All their midgame bombs are counterable. They don't have a ton of early creatures usually either which makes a planeswalker less susceptible/vulenrable.
I have played against tron a load of times, If you really play against it a lot you can really improve your matchup against it. It's one of those decks that gets a lot easier to play against when you know how it all works. Modern is loaded with decks like these.
Guru I've found that vendilion clique is great v. tron also I do play 2 fulminator mages in my sideboard and side those in v. tron. Generally my plan is to side in thoughtseize, inquisition, (one of each), 2 Shattering spree(to get their expedition map and other things but mostly maps). Then I side out like 1 kill spell or so because shattering spree is almost like a terminate in this matchup and side out a couple bolts since they don't really have mana creatures and bolting to the face is ok but generally theres better cards.
I try to aggressively kill expedition maps to keep them off of the tron setup. I have found this is really key so if I can trade a mana leak for an expedition map I do so. Same with countering their other search land effects(I do this only if they are possibly off of Tron). Also ghost quarters work excellent here. finally when i get to around 4 mana I try to play a Jace to get really far ahead in card advantage. It acts as a mini personal howling mine, hard to compare these 2 effects but it gives a continuous advantage and once I feel really far ahead I will jsut start plussing it. If they have tron mana though I will play a jace at 6 mana so I can leak/logic knot their big threat while establishing Jace on board to build up my resources with an eventual counterlock since Jace can potentially keep drawing me counterspells. If the Jace engine can't get going for whatever reason I will try to play snaps and cliques and hit them with tar pits. This is kind of plan b though.
Generally with this gameplan I don't have to worry about emrakul since with so much land destruction (between countering their expedition maps, ghost quartering their key tron pieces, and fulminator mage) casting emrakul isn't really that feasible. Also Ultimating Jace AoT to steal an emrakul is a dream I live for =p. Anyway the tron matchup doesn't seem that hard with this gameplan in mind for me :).
I think our best answer in the Tron match is to potentially use Slaughter Games with hopefully a snapcastered Slaughter games to leave them mostly threatless. I think it also can just ruin Splinter Twin forcing them to try to burn you out and well We can handle that strategy better than they can.
Idk if I agree, tron doesn't just have 2 ways to win the game they usually have a bit more than that. If you guess wrong they could play the threat you didn't name and then your pretty far behind. Twin usually sides out the combo v. control decks and plays a value game. If you dedicate card slots to slaughter games it is terrible "tempo" because you tapped 4 mana to not deal with something on board. Which can be fine if you gain a lot of card advantage, but slaughter games doesn't do that. If you use up card slots for slaughter games against twin you risk getting outvalued with things like keranos jace batterskull etc. For isntance your games couldve been a dispel/negate and they are up one of those cards on you in a counterfight. This can lead to them resolving a batterskull or keranos jace etc, and start to pull ahead a lot more.
This is a little random but speaking of lifegain cards, I always was a fan of One of the better U/B ways to gain life back in the old days. Deal with a threat, and gain some life while doing it :). Shame it isn't legal in modern along with a bunch of other great U/B cards from that block.
I don't actually think extraction is all that bad vs some decks like tron but its always been one of those cards that for some reason just doesn't seem consistent enough for whatever reason. I'd have to try it to really say but thats my initial impression anyway.
Also in general I think if you guys are trying to focus on strategies vs. tron you should focus on Green/Red tron only, the blue version seems a ton weaker vs a lot of the other decks out there than the Green/ Red one due to being far less consistent at assembling tron. So i'd say just don't even pay attention to the Blue version tbh, its not worth it.
Ah yes, loving the 2x Jace AoT mainboard. Puttin in some real power :D!
Sunken ruins seemed unnecessary now tbh. If you just run 3 or so checklands, like sulfur falls or drowned catacomb instead you can still have a decent amount of resiliency to cards like choke and boil while also smoothing out your mana to cast things like terminate. If you have ever had a terminate in hand and a sunken ruins and steam vents in play you will know what I mean, it is really frustrating. Sure it helps to cast damnation, cruel, and cryptic command but imo people used to play sunken ruins over checklands because we didn't have that great of a manabase to cast cruel ultimatum. Like we used to play 4 Scalding tarn and 3 misty rainforest. The mana was worse and so we needed sunken ruins to pull it all together. Now that isn't true anymore. Our manabase is much better and with 7-8 on color fetchlands we can reliably cast cruel ultimatum with almost no problems (unless something is really out of whack with your manabase).
Finally I had an idea that since you all seem to want to test with people who aren't random people on cockatrice, Why not test with each other? I assume you all use the woogerworks server and can just add each other on there. I would be willing to play some test matches myself if anyone wants to get some good testing in. What do you all think about this.
Also lili is a strong card against us make no doubt about it. Sure you can command it to bounce in response to her plus one (but a seasoned player isn't going to fall for this, they will usually wait and hold a card in hand then plus 1 if they suspect you have a cryptic. Also the reason shes good against us is because we spike in power later in the game and therefore since the game is frozen in the turns 4-5ish where they have their midrange deck has the most power, we are disadvantaged. A really random example, its like fighting someone on their own turf, not smart and you're probably going to lose. The games where you can beat lili are only because, A: you destroyed her, B: you drew enough cards to make her not matter too much and advanced the game back to our home turf (turns 7 etc where cards like opportunity would be at their strongest). Because you could afford to NOT discard land cards, and play a couple more getting closer to your power spike/bigger mana costed cards like cruel ultimatum batterskull etc.
And finally I like remand so much even in a control deck because it does have a use for card advantage. The "Trick" where you remand your own spell for card advantage comes up actually fairly often, also the fact that it hits flashback spells so well too is a huge bonus to it. In general the fact that it costs Two Mana and can sometimes be effectively a cryptic is just too good not to play imo. Any time I've played a deck that played think twices and remands, I've always wished for more remands because the person who has more gets a nice advantage from remanding the flashbacked think twices and in a game of pure card advantage, those edges matter. Finally the fact that remand can work well with your own snapcaster to provide a net +1 card, and tempo at the same time is imo just too good not to play. Sure it has some downsides but the upsides are worth it imo even in a control deck.
Some more notable tricks (you can remand something like emrakul or loxodon smiter or creatures where the opponent has a bunch of cavern of souls in play etc. just to cycle ur remands away, MUCH better than having ur manaleak not be able to do anything at all against these cards).
You can cast anger of the gods or another wrath and if you opponent responds by saccing their creatures to a sac outlet for something like a bunch of scrys from viscera seer(also in the case of anger of the gods, so that they can not have their creatures be exiled, potentially eternal witness'ing them back later on) then you can remand your own wrath for a REALLY nice profit. Something that came up for me was electrolyzing a spike feeder and they sacced it for 2 life so my electrolyze couldn't draw me a card since it would fizzle, then I remanded my electrolyze and used the electrolyze on their other 2 creatures. Remand is just such a great card, it just takes creativity to unlock its full potential, but you Do get rewarded for that.
If you have a jace going, and they have a liliana going, you almost always win that card advantage fight. esp. if the piles are close and you take the one with more raw card count so you have cards to discard to lili.
I try to aggressively kill expedition maps to keep them off of the tron setup. I have found this is really key so if I can trade a mana leak for an expedition map I do so. Same with countering their other search land effects(I do this only if they are possibly off of Tron). Also ghost quarters work excellent here. finally when i get to around 4 mana I try to play a Jace to get really far ahead in card advantage. It acts as a mini personal howling mine, hard to compare these 2 effects but it gives a continuous advantage and once I feel really far ahead I will jsut start plussing it. If they have tron mana though I will play a jace at 6 mana so I can leak/logic knot their big threat while establishing Jace on board to build up my resources with an eventual counterlock since Jace can potentially keep drawing me counterspells. If the Jace engine can't get going for whatever reason I will try to play snaps and cliques and hit them with tar pits. This is kind of plan b though.
Generally with this gameplan I don't have to worry about emrakul since with so much land destruction (between countering their expedition maps, ghost quartering their key tron pieces, and fulminator mage) casting emrakul isn't really that feasible. Also Ultimating Jace AoT to steal an emrakul is a dream I live for =p. Anyway the tron matchup doesn't seem that hard with this gameplan in mind for me :).
Idk if I agree, tron doesn't just have 2 ways to win the game they usually have a bit more than that. If you guess wrong they could play the threat you didn't name and then your pretty far behind. Twin usually sides out the combo v. control decks and plays a value game. If you dedicate card slots to slaughter games it is terrible "tempo" because you tapped 4 mana to not deal with something on board. Which can be fine if you gain a lot of card advantage, but slaughter games doesn't do that. If you use up card slots for slaughter games against twin you risk getting outvalued with things like keranos jace batterskull etc. For isntance your games couldve been a dispel/negate and they are up one of those cards on you in a counterfight. This can lead to them resolving a batterskull or keranos jace etc, and start to pull ahead a lot more.