Card is okay, but doesn't feel incredibly Mythic to me. But the tempo swings could be real with this card... Bounce an attacker, deal 4 damage to another attacker, dig 4 deep for answers... Or bounce a blocker, add 4 flying power to the board, look for reach or more threats...
Sounds like an extremely universal card in its applications!
Why is the ordering of triggers on Niv-Mizzet like this? Wouldn't it have been more convenient to have the trigger that lets you draw cards as the upper one and the lower trigger that does damage when you draw cards as the lower one??? Weird!
It's not a bad thing, but honestly players who are trying to play test for a GP or some other big event won't get any value from playing against your deck. They won't face it in those tournaments, so there is not much of a reason to know how to play against it.
This is an argument I don't buy. If they and their chosen, fine-tuned net deck can not reliably beat home brews then maybe, just maybe they should stick to their FNM and not a GP... And given that Magic has such a wide card selection for deck building, allowing up to four of any given card, I even find it unlikely that a 'solved' format has actually the 'best' (this term is even more debatable because of preying on the metagame) decks. It is just as likely that nobody has the 'best' decks, since the meta game decks are only some fractions of percentages worse. So challenging the established decks is probably better for the pilots of the meta game decks, since they can gain experience against random piles. And if they then can't beat the home brews, they should build their decks different or go back to square one. I mean, net decks should always be favored against home brews, since the percentages against the other metagame are observable. So they should never be hugely disfavored against each other, since this would eliminate them one after another. So the only reason left to really play a net deck is because it should be better against most of self-tinkered home brews. If the net deck isn't, either somethings wrong with the net deck or with the player...
I really love Brian Weissman's videos (and yeah, it is THE Weissman of The Deck). He mostly plays one on one and all his decks are competitive, but his explanations of each of his actions is so thorough, that I have yet to see anyone explaining control style of decks so well. Sadly, the videos need to be watched, but he has a great voice and explains very calmly. One of the best content creators out there.
This is just my untested opinion, but: Aren't we just a worse version of Tron when being 'fair'?
The other point brought up by ellomdian earlier is also valid: Why play a Wurmcoil Engine and ride that to victory, when you just can kill the opponent with the combo? And Stony Silence will be a huge problem for both plans anyway, so even there it doesn't have that much more merit.
And turn 2 Jace is incredibly strong, but doesn't autowin the game.
I mean, if there is a great alternative road for the deck I'm all in on that, but all of them sound that much convincing to me. But I will have a closer look on the Eldrazi of redbaron, because that sounds really great with a Jace. By the way: What does the up to date list of yours look like?
The problem is that any four drop is really bad (and I mean game-losing bad) when you start to go off and draw into them. (Yes, this naturally also applies to Otherworld Atlas and PE as well.) Yes, stalling with Jace and then setting up sounds good. But he does so little when we try to combo as fast as possible. Maybe 2 or 3 in the sideboard? (The exact same argument holds also for Tezzeret.) Honestly, I don't really know. My instinct is that we don't profit from the unbans.
But if my predicition is right, then we will have rough times before us: Bloodbraid Elf incentivizes packing more Kolaghan's Command, which is just sooo good against us. Jace, the Mind Sculptor will make hardcore control into a real deck. We can pray that Miracles really is as strong as I think it is going to be, since Terminus and Entreat the Angels aren't that good against us. Jace in general is not a good card against us, since we can draw through his +2 with Atlas/Bell and his -1 is nearly irrelevant. But the Mana Leaks that come with him are not great.
As a result of both cards, the format will split into midrange/controls running these two and linear fast aggressive decks trying to race them. This isn't looking good, but then again... Grixis Death Shadow wasn't our best friend either. We will see. (LSV predicts that in the middle term Affinity and Lantern will look bad because of this, which is great for us.)
I think you misunderstood. There is no way the deck doesn't play four Opt, but Mana Tithe should get us through Turns 1 to 3. The late game should be won anyway with Jace and Entreat the Angels, but the sole reason that not everyone has lost their minds already is the argument: Well, Modern kills regularly Turn 3, the Jace player is dead by then. Mana Tithe solves exactly this problem.
What about Mana Tithe? It fits nicely with leaving mana open for Opt and Jace can brainstorm away the useless copies in the late game? (I mean, it is the best impression of Daze available in Modern...)
This is really boarder line, because if you are playing at a reasonable pace and taking legal game actions that advance the board state you technically aren't doing anything wrong. I would advise you not to do this.
Thank you for the fast answer. And no, I'm not planning on doing this, but it just came to my mind.
I play a deck using Paradox Engine, which I want to take to a tournament. Another example for the scenario are the Academy combo decks of old.
Problem 1: The turns can take really long. You have to manage between 4 to 5 permanents with increasing counter counts and mana pools between 1 and >100 mana. At some point I'm fairly certain that I will kill using Blue Sun's Zenith, but I still need to dig for the spell which can take time. Do I have to get this done respectively the turn as a whole in a certain or vague amount of time?
Problem 2: Can I prolong this, i.e. play for the entire round (45 minutes) (It's not a repetition of game states, just prolonging the end. Think playing 40 spells, while managing huge amounts of mana and counters, and we want to be correct, don't we?) and just durdle through my deck, play a spell, manage my mana, play a spell, and so on and at the beginning of extra turns draw him to death?
I plan to attend a tournament in one and a half weeks (for SCIENCE and GLORY, not expecting much success), so I need some feedback on my sideboard choices:
Thoughts on this? I agree that a transformational sideboard probably not works in the current maindeck setting. And boarding enchantment removal just against Stony Silence seems weak and suboptimal. So, can Spell Pierce and Echoing Truth rise my chances (should the split be 2 : 2)?
The Elixir of Immortality is there to make the win-con more effective against Burn, but I'm not sure about this approach. Maybe just a fourth Relic of Progenitus?
Thanks for all the answers so far, I really appreciate your thoughts. I hope to write again somthing meaningful next week as I still have to prepare a last talk.
On Storm the Vault: I don't think it mashes well with PE. Flipping at end of turn is just really bad in a deck that wants to go off in one single turn. Also PE doesn't need large amounts of mana, but only enough to go through the critical phase, which then will develop over time into huge amounts while going off.
That said, it could do well in a Dice Factory deck with a focus on Wildfire. But in a situation with five atrifacts, shouldn't you be ahead on mana anyway?
Okay, what I've just written vanished, so here is the gist of things. Yes, Glimmervoid and Spire of Industry are both good cards. If you plan on playing Wildfire or Death Cloud they even become necessities. Only in the non-metagaming goldfishing deck above they become a suboptimal choice. (I see many combo lists here firmly in UG playing them and I think this is just not correct.)
An example for this: One has to deal with Stony Silence somehow and derayling the efficieny of the combo with enchantment removal that you still need to have in the case of Stony Silence is not the way to go. (This is an old MtG discussion, going even back to the Dojo days.) Since I'm very happy with my goldfishing 60, I'm again working on a transformational sideboard:
The problem is that I don't have a way of currently testing the sideboard, since I don't own any Glimmervoid and Tezzeret, Agent of Bolas and I don't have Magic Online. But I would need to test this interactively against a variety of decks to see if this is even a good idea and to tune this.
On the case of Whir of Invention: It just seems to be worse than the digging spells, just as Fabricate. Yes, you can make cases for either of them being better, but I think both are not fast enough.
On the case of Voltaic Key: Just as Whir of Invention and Fabricate, it is a really good card, but the only room I currently see are the two flex slots plus maybe the slot of one Astral Cornucopia (in the case of 4 Cornucopias) or one land (in the case of 17 lands). But including them would make the transformational idea even worse, I think.
Sounds like an extremely universal card in its applications!
This is an argument I don't buy. If they and their chosen, fine-tuned net deck can not reliably beat home brews then maybe, just maybe they should stick to their FNM and not a GP... And given that Magic has such a wide card selection for deck building, allowing up to four of any given card, I even find it unlikely that a 'solved' format has actually the 'best' (this term is even more debatable because of preying on the metagame) decks. It is just as likely that nobody has the 'best' decks, since the meta game decks are only some fractions of percentages worse. So challenging the established decks is probably better for the pilots of the meta game decks, since they can gain experience against random piles. And if they then can't beat the home brews, they should build their decks different or go back to square one. I mean, net decks should always be favored against home brews, since the percentages against the other metagame are observable. So they should never be hugely disfavored against each other, since this would eliminate them one after another. So the only reason left to really play a net deck is because it should be better against most of self-tinkered home brews. If the net deck isn't, either somethings wrong with the net deck or with the player...
The other point brought up by ellomdian earlier is also valid: Why play a Wurmcoil Engine and ride that to victory, when you just can kill the opponent with the combo? And Stony Silence will be a huge problem for both plans anyway, so even there it doesn't have that much more merit.
And turn 2 Jace is incredibly strong, but doesn't autowin the game.
I mean, if there is a great alternative road for the deck I'm all in on that, but all of them sound that much convincing to me. But I will have a closer look on the Eldrazi of redbaron, because that sounds really great with a Jace. By the way: What does the up to date list of yours look like?
The problem is that any four drop is really bad (and I mean game-losing bad) when you start to go off and draw into them. (Yes, this naturally also applies to Otherworld Atlas and PE as well.) Yes, stalling with Jace and then setting up sounds good. But he does so little when we try to combo as fast as possible. Maybe 2 or 3 in the sideboard? (The exact same argument holds also for Tezzeret.) Honestly, I don't really know. My instinct is that we don't profit from the unbans.
But if my predicition is right, then we will have rough times before us:
Bloodbraid Elf incentivizes packing more Kolaghan's Command, which is just sooo good against us.
Jace, the Mind Sculptor will make hardcore control into a real deck. We can pray that Miracles really is as strong as I think it is going to be, since Terminus and Entreat the Angels aren't that good against us. Jace in general is not a good card against us, since we can draw through his +2 with Atlas/Bell and his -1 is nearly irrelevant. But the Mana Leaks that come with him are not great.
As a result of both cards, the format will split into midrange/controls running these two and linear fast aggressive decks trying to race them. This isn't looking good, but then again... Grixis Death Shadow wasn't our best friend either. We will see. (LSV predicts that in the middle term Affinity and Lantern will look bad because of this, which is great for us.)
Thank you for the fast answer. And no, I'm not planning on doing this, but it just came to my mind.
Problem 1: The turns can take really long. You have to manage between 4 to 5 permanents with increasing counter counts and mana pools between 1 and >100 mana. At some point I'm fairly certain that I will kill using Blue Sun's Zenith, but I still need to dig for the spell which can take time. Do I have to get this done respectively the turn as a whole in a certain or vague amount of time?
Problem 2: Can I prolong this, i.e. play for the entire round (45 minutes) (It's not a repetition of game states, just prolonging the end. Think playing 40 spells, while managing huge amounts of mana and counters, and we want to be correct, don't we?) and just durdle through my deck, play a spell, manage my mana, play a spell, and so on and at the beginning of extra turns draw him to death?
4 Astral Cornucopia
4 Coretapper
4 Everflowing Chalice
4 Surge Node
The Broken one:
4 Mox Opal
The Engine
4 Otherworld Atlas
4 Paradox Engine
The Oil:
4 Ancient Stirrings
4 Glint-Nest Crane
4 Serum Visions
2 Blue Sun's Zenith
Flex Slots:
1 Repeal
1 Spell Pierce
Lands(16):
4 Botanical Sanctum
4 Darksteel Citadel
2 Inventors' Fair
2 Island
4 Yavimaya Coast
1 Spell Pierce
3 Echoing Truth
3 Ceremonious Rejection
3 Relic of Progenitus
2 Sun Droplet
2 Defense Grid
1 Elixir of Immortality
Thoughts on this? I agree that a transformational sideboard probably not works in the current maindeck setting. And boarding enchantment removal just against Stony Silence seems weak and suboptimal. So, can Spell Pierce and Echoing Truth rise my chances (should the split be 2 : 2)?
The Elixir of Immortality is there to make the win-con more effective against Burn, but I'm not sure about this approach. Maybe just a fourth Relic of Progenitus?
On Storm the Vault: I don't think it mashes well with PE. Flipping at end of turn is just really bad in a deck that wants to go off in one single turn. Also PE doesn't need large amounts of mana, but only enough to go through the critical phase, which then will develop over time into huge amounts while going off.
That said, it could do well in a Dice Factory deck with a focus on Wildfire. But in a situation with five atrifacts, shouldn't you be ahead on mana anyway?
An example for this: One has to deal with Stony Silence somehow and derayling the efficieny of the combo with enchantment removal that you still need to have in the case of Stony Silence is not the way to go. (This is an old MtG discussion, going even back to the Dojo days.) Since I'm very happy with my goldfishing 60, I'm again working on a transformational sideboard:
3 Astral Cornucopia
4 Coretapper
4 Everflowing Chalice
4 Surge Node
The Broken one:
4 Mox Opal
The Engine
4 Otherworld Atlas
4 Paradox Engine
The Oil:
4 Ancient Stirrings
4 Glint-Nest Crane
4 Serum Visions
2 Blue Sun's Zenith
Flex Slots:
1 Repeal
1 Spell Pierce
Lands(17):
4 Botanical Sanctum
4 Darksteel Citadel
4 Glimmervoid
2 Inventors' Fair
1 Island
2 Spire of Industry
4 Etched Champion
4 Master of Etherium
3 Tezzeret, Agent of Bolas
4 Herald of Anguish
-4 Paradox Engine
-4 Otherworld Atlas
-4 Surge Node
-3 Astral Cornucopia
+ everything in the SB
The problem is that I don't have a way of currently testing the sideboard, since I don't own any Glimmervoid and Tezzeret, Agent of Bolas and I don't have Magic Online. But I would need to test this interactively against a variety of decks to see if this is even a good idea and to tune this.
On the case of Whir of Invention: It just seems to be worse than the digging spells, just as Fabricate. Yes, you can make cases for either of them being better, but I think both are not fast enough.
On the case of Voltaic Key: Just as Whir of Invention and Fabricate, it is a really good card, but the only room I currently see are the two flex slots plus maybe the slot of one Astral Cornucopia (in the case of 4 Cornucopias) or one land (in the case of 17 lands). But including them would make the transformational idea even worse, I think.
Still terrible though!
Edit: Okay, they were only restricted, but come on.
Source: Here