Because it exiles rather than mills so you can't get screwed by Emrakul, Academy Ruins or the like. In some cases you can also just win the game on the spot with their deck.
In the match against Eldrazi & taxes he had a burrenton forge-tender in g2 but I could fly over with delver and stormchaser mage. Wouldn't have been a big difference if it was kor firewalker because all cantrips are blue. I won that game on the back of blood moon limiting him to 1 white spell a turn because he could ghost quarter a land in response.
Sadly, I sequenced game 1 poorly after seeing his hand with probe so could perhaps have won that. Thinking about that match, it seems that blood moon is a pretty important piece of the puzzle. Especially on the play, it cuts off quite a part of their game plan. A sweeper of some kind may also be useful. Pyroclasm only kills delver, but kills pretty much everything in their deck except thought-knot seer, so that may be a useful sideboard card. Thing in the Ice may also work. It's a nice combo with blood moon (bounce board they can't replay).
I lost narrowly to Abzan Coco (not flipping a T1 delver 3 turns.. sigh) and got crushed by Eldrazi & Taxes. Fairly easily beat affinity and crushed BTL scapeshift and some UB lantern control deck.
I flooded way too much so will definitely cut at least 1 land. Seeing even 17 land lists in here I might cut another but with both TBR and reveler in this list, I doubt I really want to go below 18. Everything else felt pretty good. No idea how to beat Eldrazi & Taxes, though..
It's great against BGx decks that try to trade with your stuff 1 for 1 and strip your hand. It's basically treasure cruise with a 3/4 prowess attached to it that can't be decayed against them.
@R3doxNL, I think that not playing the full set of Faithless Lootings is a mistake. Whats the reason behind that decision? Also, what did you substitute it for? Sorry if you've already explained it.
I took them out for Bedlam Reveler as they functionally overlap. In the WMCQ I actually removed all Remands instead of the Faithless Lootings, but I wasn't really happy with that because that's a lot of the same(ish) effect and Remand can do some pretty useful things in this deck besides slowing the opponent down. I think the problem I have with looting is that it's pretty high variance, ranging from abysmal to awesome. When you have a bad-card heavy hand, for whatever reason, it's basically a draw-2 with flashback. When facing discard, it's like committing suicide. What I found is that it's mostly important to have looting in land-light hands to dig deep for a land with upside for Ascension, but in many cases it's just -1 card for little value. Reveler, on the other hand, is very good against BGx which infests the meta at the moment. However, I've convinced myself that 2 reveler main is good enough and that I have room for 1 looting, relegating the 3rd reveler to the side instead of Engineered Explosives which has always been awkward in this deck and overlaps too much with Path. This is not a deck where you want to sideboard a lot so I prefer to keep the packages small.
@R3doxNL, Path is practically a must include in the deck.
A full set of Faithless Lootings is needed, to fuel the ascensions and filter what you don't need.
Have you thought about running Snapcasters if your ascensions keep getting exiled/destroyed?
Why the remark about Path? Snapcaster definitely doesn't belong in this deck. It's not even a 2-drop, really.
Full set is definitely way too much. I've seen lists with 4 but they are in the minority and I cannot fathom it's correct. The problem is that you can only filter what you don't need when you have cards in hand and this is -1 card. I've never liked this card in decks like these, be it UR Storm or Jeskai Ascendancy.
Sweet list. I thing going UWR or UR is somehow a meta call. I dont like the Rest for the Weary. I just don't like the card. Besides that talking about Prowess. The thing about Prowess. While Bedlam Reveler and Monastery Swiftspear pressure the opponent to bait removal they are important to insure damage. Both get stronger for drawing thorugh your deck AND Bedlam Reveler also refills your hand. Yes, both are creatures, but I am really really happy if my Monastery Swiftspear eats a Abrupt Decay
Hey man, I konw. It's with every engine in MTG ever. If you get it online you can swag away 19 life. Did I tell you the story? Once I flipped a thing and cast two bolts and did 19 damage in one turn ... on turn 3. To be fair I had three Manamorphose to turn on the Ascensiob, but yeah. Our deck works essentially like a combo deck unless it fizzles. The strength I see is that we can generate value until we combo off. We don't need to combo on turn 4, but we can often. This is strength.
Okay. I hope I don't forgot one post from you guys and gals. Honestly I am quite drunk already. Gonna reply tomorrow. I don't want Toprf, Lantern or ktkenshinx kill me for trolling
See you tomorrow,
King.
A pure life gain card has to be pretty good to be playable, I agree. Gain 8 for 2 mana at instant speed with the potential to be copied by ascension fits that bill though. Sadly, today it also proved that it's not enough to beat burn by itself. If they decay your swiftspear, that's great of course, but when do they do that? Probably not when it's a 1/2. I don't really see how you could kill on turn 3 with that, btw. You can't have both a non-summoning sick thing + active ascension on turn 3. Still, the point is that this deck is much more resilient than regular UR storm, indeed. Just a pity that an early chalice on 1 is still insane against us.
I played a PPTQ today, which went quite poorly. I didn't want to play Burn again (did that in a pptq yesterday, which also went poorly, after 2 top8s in a row :() because people were starting to hate it quite a bit. Funnily enough, there were 4 burn players in a field of 23 anyway.
R1 I played against Affinity and mulled to 4 game 1 (bad 1 lander into 2 bad 0landers) and he had the one thing that really was unbeatable game 1 with such a measly hand: Master of Etherium. Any other payoff spell that was susceptible to helix/bolt would have been fine but a double memnite/ornithopter + mox into t2 master hand I couldn't beat. G2 I easily win on the basis of tons of (copied) removal. G3 was looking very good, having just found and played an ascension after clearing out his threats, until he drops a chalice on 1, shutting down my entire hand. Also couldn't trigger the ascension due to no overlap between hand/gy so I had to draw into something. He only had 2 vault skirges as pressure so that seemed fine, but after chalice he immediately draws plating and I die in 2 turns.
R2 against Bant Eldrazi. He has a slowish draw without noble or temple and goes spellskite into displacer while I find an ascension. He then plays explosives and destroys both his spellskite and my ascension. Being left with a TKS and displacer, but tapped out, I helix his displacer and take a hit from TKS. I find a new ascension and activate it with a cantrip, but draw land and he plays smasher to finish me off.
G2 he has t2 chalice into EE on 2 for my thing that I just flipped in order to hopefully get somewhere despite throwing all my 1's into it. Just cannot catch a break today.
R3 bye.. yeah..
R4 against burn. I mull to 6 and have a slowish hand while he has not much. I probed his hand t1 and see wooded foothills, lava spike, swiftspear, rift bolt, searing blaze, bloodstained mire and copperline gorge. Seems fine, not much pressure, almost dead card in hand. Then, of course, he rips eidolon and I die. It didn't help that I forgot an ascension counter while trying to activate through the eidolon but without a bolt/helix to immediately kill the eidolon it was game over.
G2 I keep a hand with manamorphose, rest for the weary and lands. Probably a bad keep. I even rip helix and 2nd rest as well as an ascension to gain a total of 19 life and die horribly anyway because he has the full creature draw with nacatls, goblin guide and eidolon and I find no anger. To really rub it in, he also revelried my ascension.
R5 against Abzan
G1 he goes Inquisition into goyf and I probe him to see decay and 3 land. I play ascension into his decay and cantrip into a new one next turn, but he finds another goyf and path to increase the pressure and get rid of my thing.
G2 he has some pressure but no removal and I kill him with bolts/thing. Don't remember any specifics here. Reveler was good though.
G3 I mull to 6 and keep a hand with 3 land and 3 cantrips. He thoughtseizes and doesn't really know what to take because I don't have any payoff yet. Love that against those decks ;). He's very slowly increasing pressure with a tiny goyf and some spirits when he plays a leyline of sanctity. Great. I didn't board in my wear//tear so there's no way to get rid of it. In this game, Revelers really shine, though. I draw and played 2 in a row while activating ascension and double helixing to get rid of a liliana and stay alive. In the end I have a big combo turn during turns in which I bring a bedlam reveler to 12 power to swing for the win.
It's funny how I haven't lost to BGx so far, despite it being traditionally a bad matchup for ascension decks. Mostly due to reveler and path to exile, of course, but thing has been pretty good as well. He played the new BG fastland, so he didn't take as much damage as they used to, but it still doesn't take too much to kill them with a thing/reveler and bolts. For G2, I brought in 1 blood moon to mise, but even without seeing it he was fetching around it so I took it out for g3. Unless you play against inexperienced players, blood moon to screw BGx is just not worth it imho. If our deck would be 100% fine with it in play, you could argue it's always ok to at least hamper them and turn off their manlands, but that's not quite the case. At least not in the jeskai version, straight UR has a much easier time under blood moon, of course.
I had awkward draws etc, so I didn't play all that much magic today, but it still seems to me that Faithless Looting might need to be in the deck. Perhaps a 2-1 split of reveler/faithless looting. The reason for this is the fact that 1-landers are much easier to keep when you can dig for land with looting, which reveler doesn't do. Also, drawing a 2nd or 3rd reveler is 100% dead and it's not fast enough to need to draw it early. I'd love to be able to have 3 revelers after side against BGx, though, also because there I definitely don't want looting, but I have no idea what to take out of the sideboard. Maybe the explosives. They've never been particularly useful so far, even though they should be. It has quite some overlap with other cards in the side, though (anger, path, wear//tear), so perhaps it can go. It also doesn't help that you basically can't ever set it to 2 without wrecking yourself.
I'm not sure you meant me when you said "I think that you are quite hyperbolic", but in case you were: why? Maybe you misunderstood what I tried to say in the comparison with blue moon and UR storm vs tron. From the perspective of the respective deck vs tron, blue moon has an unwinnable matchup against tron and UR storm an unlosable one (say, 80/20 or even more lopsided) and Thing Ascension is much closer to storm than to blue moon. This is why I think that blood moon is fine in our deck against tron and we don't need molten rain or the like.
The reason I like blood moon in this deck is because it completely hoses some strategies that could race us with the added benefit of being good against 3 color non-red decks with few basics. Depending on how they fetch g2, you can take out/bring in blood moon for g3. If they fetch around it while you don't have it in your deck anymore, that's great and if they don't while you do, that's also great. It's just pretty bad to have blood moon in your hand/deck when they fetch around it, especially if you don't have ways to discard it profitably (looting, reveler).
Also, for what it's worth, I actually think the deck should be called Thing Ascension. It's been a hugely important card for me and won games that would take a perfect storm (hehe) to win with ascension. I also don't see any lists that don't run it and those that have it in the side have swiftspear or reveler main instead so they also don't fully depend on ascension. Turn 2 thing, turn 3 flip and attack can lead to an easy t4 win while disrupting the opponent and there are quite a few matchups where it's a straight race. UR storm is already more of a turn 4 than a turn 3 deck and we're way slower than that with ascension due to the lack of rituals, electromancer, past in flames or grapeshot.
Cryptic command sounds pretty cool to copy but Remand seems more flexible to me. I guess flame slash is the next best option if you don't run white for helix, but it not going to the face seems rough.
I've ran 3 bedlam revelers in every iteration so far but I might go down to 2 in the main and put the 3rd in the side. It's useless to have 2 in hand and you don't really need one early as long as you have 4 thing and 4 ascension in the deck. The issue is that I don't know what to take out of the board and what to put in the main. A 1-off spell seems awful with ascension and the 4th remand also doesn't seem great.
I've played a few FNMs since the WMCQ and think that you definitely want to have the white splash for helix and side board cards. Effectively having 8 bolts, 4 of which gain you life, has been incredibly important and I don't see how you could play this without them.
Prowess can substitute for the Helix. Also you can take less damage without the Wsplash in the first place. Whats your list?
Greetings
King
Hm, not really. Prowess means a creature has to get through unopposed, which isn't quite as easy as simply burning someone out with copied bolts. At least, in many games I win, I won by 'comboing off' on the last possible turn and bolting them for 18+ without a creature that could even attack. I suppose it's easier if you play Monastery Swiftspear, but creatures are still more easily dealt with than bolts. Also, 1 helix more than pays for the untapped shock already and all subsequent ones gain you 3 life. With Ascension, you can get pretty obscene amounts of life that easily keeps you alive in aggro matchups. Not losing as much life isn't quite the same as gaining tons.
This is my current list, btw. I'm a bit on the fence about the new fastland. Land #4 has been important enough so far that I prefer the Sulfur Falls as not many 1 landers are really keepable anyway. It's not like burn where you can go GG into GG and burn them out with a few bolts. Bricking on land 2 has so far cost me the game in the majority of cases, as far as I can tell.
Hey guys, I've been watching the deck, looks great, and thank you Kinfuzius for starting the primer. I'm not playing it right now, but I have a few questions, I was reading from the old thread, and haven't actually seen the tron match up yet, but has any body tried stone rain, or any other 3 mana land destruction in place of blood moon? It seems pretty awesome with ascension on line, I played skred for a while, and bloodmoon just doesn't do enough in that match up.
I've played against Tron twice so far (both Gw, funnily enough, never played against that version before that I can remember) and the matchup is not as bad as I thought it was (even though I lost and drew against them, odd games). Between blue moon on the one hand (unwinnable) and UR storm on the other (unlosable), we're much closer to storm than blue moon so they are quite pressed to get karn out quickly and if they don't, they're likely dead. If I played against regular Gr tron instead, I would have easily won in at least one of the matches and would have had a very good chance in the other, because path to exile is way better than any red spell against us.
Anyway, the point is that blood moon is fine against them because our game plan is fast enough to not allow them to just get to 7 land (or even 5, for stone) and I think it's necessary for enough otherwise probably not very great matchups that I wouldn't want to cut them. I just see them as a hoser of a strategy (valakut, eldrazi, tron, etc) and not a 'let's hope they don't fetch around it' mana screwer. In a matchup like esper control I would bring them in because I wouldn't bring in Path, but if I want path (for goyf, fx) I don't bring in moon unless it also hoses them completely and they can't fetch around it (valakut and eldrazi is pretty much it where I would bring in both, from the top of my head).
I've played a few FNMs since the WMCQ and think that you definitely want to have the white splash for helix and side board cards. Effectively having 8 bolts, 4 of which gain you life, has been incredibly important and I don't see how you could play this without them.
Been reading this topic a week or so now and recently played the deck in the Dutch WMCQ last sunday to a 5-2-1(ID) finish for 19th out of 140 players. I was pretty pleased with this, seeing it was the first tournament I ever played it in and only goldfished maybe 10 games with it before.
This is the list I played, which is based on Tamada's list but with some notable changes:
While goldfishing it really felt way too high risk to me to run only 1 Steam Vents and when I later swapped all Remands for Bedlam Revelers the extra red source also made sense. Even though I think Remand is pretty good in this deck, I expected that Reveler would be much better in the meta (quite some BGx) and it was the cleanest swap I could make. On hindsight and re-evaluation, though, I think it should have cut Faithless Looting for it instead because Looting is pretty horrible against them and even overlaps in function with reveler. I also only wanted 3 reveler because multiples don't do anything and it's not as important to have one early as it is for ascension or thing, so a 3-off was perfect.
Due to playing reveler, I decided on swapping Visions of Beyond for Sleight of Hand as I didn't want to become that dependent on the graveyard. Sure, the usually played Grafdigger's Cage basically does nothing against this deck, but there are also Leyline of the Void, Rest in Peace, Relic of Progenitus and more such cards to worry about. I've played Visions before in Ascendancy Combo and was always a bit underwhelmed by it. Even without hate, 20 cards is quite a lot and when trying to set up, Sleight is way better selection than just a blind draw. I do agree that Visions being an instant is much better with Thing and Ascension, but unlike the Ascendancy list I played (the Glittering Wish version) it's just one out of many instants in the deck so I wasn't really worried.
The sideboard I left as is because it lined up well with what I wanted to do. I often boarded out the Revelers when they wouldn't be fast enough for the appropriate hate. I also boarded out Looting quite often because it's card disadvantage and I think the worst spell in the deck in most case. When I board in Blood Moon I usually do leave it in because it's at least castable.
In the 6 rounds I actually played, this is more or less what happened:
Round 1 against Gw Tron (0-2)
G1 I mull to 5 and keep a hand that finally has some land but then draw only land while he has t3 karn on the play. In the mean time I only played tarns and fetched steam vents with them so I scooped hoping he'd put me on some kind of control deck rather than combo.
G2 I have a more functional hand on 6 while he goes t1 and 2 tron piece + map. T3 I probe him and see no 7 drop he could cast (only World Breaker) and cast Blood Moon anyway, thinking as I do it that maybe I should wait a turn and wait for him to fetch his missing tron so he can't get forest. Sadly, he indeed gets forest instead and I don't really lock him out. I proceed to draw abysmally and he eventually hits 7 lands to play the world breaker to remove one of 2 Ascensions that actually already had a counter. He then plays another and kills me through my reveler that also drew nothing.
Well, that was a promising start of the day..
Round 2 against Elves (2-1)
G1 I try to control his board and eventually find Thing to bounce everything, but can't bounce Spellskite so he chumps. Next turn he vomits out his hand again so I'm still probably dead next turn. Fortunately, I also have an ascension online now and am able to string together a bunch of spells to both find and flip a new thing to attack for the win and burn him out. At this point I was starting to feel pretty good about the deck ;).
G2 I'm a bit slow and he chords for an Eidolon of Rhetoric which slows me to a crawl and stops me from actually being able to race him.
G3 I bring in Wear//Tear to answer both his eidolon and spellskite and end up simply killing everything until I flip a Thing that kills him in 2 turns.
Round 2 against Jund (2-0)
G1 I mull to 5, keeping a hand of mountain, sacred foundry, 2 sleight and ascension. He's on the play and takes my ascension with an inquisition or the like, but I topdeck another one and play my foundry tapped, hoping he wouldn't inquisition again because I basically can't do anything anyway. He indeed doesn't and I get to play my ascension. I then draw a fetch to get blue and start cantripping and quickly activate ascension while he doesn't have an answer to it and instead has a Courser of Kruphix with very little else. His life total slowly creeps up and he finds things like liliana and kalitas, but I am able to bolt or helix them down, both controlling his board and keeping me alive. I ended this game at 2 life so the copied helix was pretty useful here ;). In the end I'm left facing a lethal board with him at 24 life and me only having left 2 helix and a bolt in the deck. Fortunately I have 2 active ascensions and am able to draw enough of my deck to draw them and cast them for lethal. Now I feel pretty awesome about the deck ;).
G2 was quite exciting as well, though much shorter. He has a draw with multiple Raging Ravines but I manage to get an active ascension again which is able to double path ravine and an ooze and another ravine, leaving him with nothing. I find a reveler that can kill him in short order shortly after, despite being at 3. If he had forced me to path just a single creature by attacking for lethal with just 1 creature, I wouldn't have had removal for his last one and probably would have died, so that was fortunate.
I only sided in 3 path to exile and engineered explosives in this match because Jund is punished much less by it and I expected him to fetch around it + path defeats the purpose of moon anyway and I valued that more highly than hoping to screw him. I didn't draw the explosives in this game, but in later games I realized that explosives is actually pretty bad in this matchup because the usual number is 2, which also maximally punishes myself. It seems that if you want to set explosives on 2 in the matchup, it better be game-winningly awesome or you shouldn't board it in.
R4 against grixis goryo's vengenace (2-1)
G1 at first it almost seems like the mirror match until he plays t3 bloodstained mire. He proceeds with emrakuling me so it's pretty obvious what he's on.
G2 I (mistakenly) side out 2 Things and a reveler for counters and then proceed to quickly beat him t4 with a flipped thing. Justice.
G3 I side in all things again and remove an ascension and a reveler instead. Maybe reveler should have just been completely cut here, but killing him quickly was the plan which I thought reveler would help with more than 4th ascension. In this game I end up in the situation with a thing on 1 and a thing on 3 counters with a castable instant in hand vs a hand of breach, dispel and unknowns after discarding 2 Griselbrands to a looting. As I contemplate how to actually clock him, I draw dispel and with him on just 5 land I go for lethal with 2 things and dispel backup.
R5 against Abzan (2-1)
G1 he has goyf and anafenza while I have thing and ascension on the play. T4 I play the ascension and cantrip a bit to flip thing and bounce his board but forget to attack because I somehow forgot that I played it already last turn. Fortunately I find another ascension, get it online and burn him out easily anyway, trolling my opponent a bit with 'still had all these' ;).
G2 I don't really remember and have no notes, but I lost it.
G3 he triple thoughtseize/inquisitions me but has no clock so I double bolt him down in the end. It's so nice how this deck can actually bounce back from all that discard thanks to reveler and all the cantrips.
He played the grim flayer noble hierarch version so I only boarded the paths and didn't bring in blood moon. I also expected him to fetch basics anyway.
R6 against Infect (1-2)
G1 I keep a 1lander and can't play a 2 drop on t2, which loses me the game. I'm always 1 step behind and he even has spellskite to stop my bolts.
G2 I kill his infecters at safe times and finish him easily.
G3 he mulls to 6 and plays t1 noble. I probe and see glistener elf, apostle blessing, pendelhaven and a fetch, so I feel pretty good about this game. He plays land elf and I play thing. He EoT Twisted Images my thing and plays pendelhaven attack for 3 poison. I probe him again after playing a 2 drop and see his draws were groundswell and become immense so I die. Great.
R7 against Bant Eldrazi (2-0)
G1 his hand is pretty slow and only has eldrazi skyspawner t3 and thought-knot seer t4. He can't really take something exciting and I find a thing, which flips and kills him together with some bolts.
G2 he has a fairly quick TKS despite bolting his first 2 nobles. I topdeck blood moon and probe him to see he has another TKS and a skyspawner so I decide that it's better to screw both of us (all non-basics here) than face another TKS. He beats me to 6 before I find a reveler, which draws me 2 bolts and a land. He attacks anyway as he can't do anything and I bolt him to eat his TKS. He drew plains, though, and paths my reveler before I can kill him. Fortunately I hit manamorphose to enable the helixes in my hand and finish him off. This is where blood moon felt pretty useful.
The only cards I never boarded in were Rest for the Weary, but I don't really know how badly I need them against burn. I think they are probably the best anti-burn spell I can use because they are instant and cheap. Timely seems worse because it's both 3 mana and sorcery and not as exciting to copy because it's quite likely that the 2nd one won't even gain life and very likely that I won't get tokens. The rest I was pretty happy with. Due to the revelers main I didn't feel like I need any token makers against BGx and I think the synergy between the deck and revelers is higher than with token makers anyway.
Going forward (and after playing in another small tournament) I'm looking to cut looting for remand. I see some people advocating Izzet Charm but I think that's just bad. It's an expensive looting you can't flash back, an expensive bolt that can't go to the face and a very mediocre negate. Remand buys time against anything, cantrips, comboes with ascension to activate it and can even go infinite with 2 active ascensions and a manamorphose to draw your deck and presumably win from there. It's a pity that it isn't actual infinite otherwise I might be tempted to have a grapeshot in the side to beat infinite life, but I don't think either going for Noxious revival or just the 'value' (?) grapeshot is worth it. I also didn't feel like I needed the drawing power of Visions in the late game because of the revelers so other than the looting/remand swap, I'm pretty comfortable with this list.
Lastly an aside on the white splash in this deck. I think that it's worth it. Not only does helix give you a great tool to gain life against aggro, it's also bolt 5-8, making it much easier to actually bolt someone out. Path from the side is also great, just don't board them in together with blood moon. Only side blood moon when it cripples their strategy. This is not blue moon. With manamorphose, the mana felt fine to me and blood moon is also doable. When I first put the deck together I couldn't fathom the idea of playing blood moon without basic plains but I quickly found out that plains is awful in this deck and that manamorphose is enough to play your white spells under blood moon. This is another reason not to side in path and blood moon together, btw. What does the UR-only version 'gain' that would make it better?
I was under the assumption that ideally you would cast a pact on turn 4 and go searching for offering for the next 3 turns, which would make you susceptible to your own loss to pact, but If you say it hasn't been a problem I'll take your word for it. I suggested taking out bolts for more air and speed on the combo, but considering finding offering or bouncing pact isn't a problem along with the pact-helix for dmg wins, its a moot point.
I guess if you're considering AV in the side as a 1 for 1 for inquisitions, I would argue that Anticipate would be better than choosing AV, or maybe sleight of hand just because of the snap interaction. my question would be, what decks does that come in against?
IF you want the AV, i'd almost run it main with GDD instead of tasigur, especially if you're not looking to cast tasigur until past turn 4-5, or turns you would cast GDD. but if you're looking to go ensnaring bridge, I would try and consider going something like grim lavamancer or of that sort instead of a heavy beater. just stating the options
if you are having trouble with tron/liliana I would suggest either pithing needle or my personal favorite for dealing with planeswalkers, vampire hexmage in the side.
im actually looking forward to testing this some myself. the pact interaction seems like it really could come up and surprise some people.
Well, in a perfect world I can cast it t4, but tapping out for something that doesn't do anything immediately is pretty dangerous unless you know it's safe so I rarely do that, but turn 5 is likely (after a t4 cryptic or snap-terminate, etc). Because the combo is so slow (t7 at the fastest), you really can't view it as a combodeck. I've been thinking real hard about whether I could play Remand in this deck instead of mana leak. Stalling for time is good enough as the pact ticks down and it draws a card, which is great. Leak, on the other hand, actually deals with an early play but is almost dead in the late game. A case could be made that remand is even better in the late game because I could remand my own offering to recast it whereas leak might be easily paid for by the opponent. Guess I'll try it. Remanding your own spells is great :).
I'd side in Ancestral Vision against grindy decks. So any BGx midrange or any flavor of control (against control I'd side something other than inquisitions out, though). Because it's so slow and you can easily die before it comes off suspend in many matchups, I prefer to have it in the sideboard with inquisition main. Then a GGD can also come in for extra value, but I think the main deck value of Tasigur is much higher because it finds me an offering and is an early blocker.
Liliana is always a problem for control decks, but I think this deck is fairly ok against it. Vendilion Clique is certainly great against it and is also decent against tron, so it may warrant a sideboard slot. In general, though, I'm ok with just conceding the tron matchup and hoping to get lucky because it's a fairly small % of the meta (it used to be pretty popular here in the Dutch meta, but not anymore). Hexmage is good against planeswalkers, of course, but I think the general value of Dreadbore is higher. Dreadbore can be flashed back for a total of 4 mana with snapcaster whereas hexmage can be replayed using Kolaghan's Command for 5 so dreadbore also seems more efficient.
@NialllHoran69
I haven't, really, no. It could be a neat trick to side into regular grixis control (or even delver) when they side out their creature removal, but that takes up so many slots that I'm afraid I just lose too much % against other decks that don't care about that. Can't have a regular grixis (delver) deck and still have a complete sideboard.
I can see how you beat bant Eldrazi with 4 Damnation in your deck ;). To be honest, I think Kalitas, Traitor of Ghet should also be in my 75 somewhere as it's great against dredge and fairly decent against burn (t4 and having to block is pretty late) and applicable in other matchups, but I'm not sure what to cut and I don't currently own one either.
To be honest, I'm not sure how you can play this deck without serum visions. It sets up your early draws to fix either lands or finding spells and is great with snapcaster as well. The fact that you can run fewer lands thanks to visions makes it well worth it to me. Serum visions is a good topdeck whereas ancestral is awful. It's no preordain (it's pretty infuriating how much better preordain is) but it makes so many 1-2 landers keepable that you could argue it's actually card advantage rather than just a cantrip.
Which discard/planeswalker rule of PV do you mean, btw?
I just don't think that combo works well without some way to destroy demonic pact yourself, and recur it from the graveyard. maybe grix aint the place for it. especially when you take out lightning bolts.
My question would be, how often do you find yourself winning with snapcaster/tasigur beats and tar pit? because if its more often than the combo, you might as well go delve/delver creatures, take the combo out and run lightning bolts. if you win more with the combo, it seems like it just wouldnt need tasigur or tar pit at all. then you could run something like ensnaring bridge to deal with those bad creature rushing decks, and your opponent would have to deal with ensnaring AND your combo pieces. maybe you could then run something that you could give harmless offering to them that makes them take damage that just isn't demonic pact. I guess my point is, with this combo, its not really the same deck at all, but thats just my opinion. (maybe splash green or white? this would help you against discard too)
it just seems like throwing this combo in with a few pieces of grix with tasigur and tarpit is more like a split strategy than just making one strategy work really well.
but, if your hell bent on keeping it grix and having the split win con with your shell, I think anticipate would be a better choice than ancestral visions to add, ancestrals not in your opening hand are bad, especially when your on a 4 turn clock with all your piecies in place. on top of that, you can snap back anticipate, which you can't with ancestral.
I'm not sure I understand, why would I take out lightning bolts and why would I want to destroy the pact? I already have 3 offerings to give it away and 3 cryptics to bounce it for value + 4 snapcaster to recur those and a dark petition to find one.
I have won on damage, but it's not the default by far. I've joking called this deck New Twin before, but it's not completely unreasonable. The point is that it's a control deck that happens to have a combo finish as an option. It's also great to have a win con that simply says the opponent loses which means that infinite life doesn't actually stop me from winning. When I win on damage it's likely that a pact-helix has helped with that, similar to how a pestermite from twin played beat down while they were afraid to tap out. Tasigur and tar pit aren't there simply as alternative win con. Tar pit is pretty decent against planeswalkers and Tasigur is a great roadblock against aggro + grind machine late game. The synergy between snapcaster and tasigur is also pretty clear. They also help switch to a damage based win con after boarding, but it's not the main reason why I put them in the deck. The strategy is to be 100% control and have a hard-to-deal-with win con. Sure, my fastest gold fish is turn 7, but at least their removal are pretty much dead draws.
I have considered anticipate but I'm not sure what to take out for them in the main deck and they aren't very useful in the sideboard. I've also tried to keep the air to a minimum to avoid do-nothing hands that just get run over so I probably don't want to run anticipate next to serum visions. Ancestral from the board would come in in the grindy matchups where I don't want inquisitions anymore, but maybe I just don't need the help there. Jund seems favorable so far. Only thing I've lost to (besides horrible flood/screw) is the perfect curve of discard, 2drop, liliana and not drawing anything to deal with liliana. On the other hand, jund (well, BGx midrange in general) is prevalent enough that it wouldn't be bad to crush them.
Considering I don't really want to attack, ensnaring bridge seems like a great option :). The only issue might be getting my hand empty enough to actually stop them from attacking because except for Eldrazi, most things will still attack if I have 3 or more cards in hand and with all the cantrips I don't really dump my hand that fast (nor do I want to, really).
I've posted in another topic before but as the deck evolved, it became more and more grixis control with a few deviating cards, so I thought I'd post it here to get some more input. This is my list, which I've dubbed Harmless Control:
I've played quite a bit with it already and been doing ok. I mainly lost to not finding an answer to a threat in time (I guess this sums up every lost game with a control deck lol) but rarely to my own pact in an otherwise non-lethal boardstate (I have, in testing, but not in actual competitive play). I've fluctuated between 3 and 4 offerings, 2-3 pacts, even had 2 Colfenor's Plans and an Immortal Coil in the deck in the beginning but am currently pretty happy with 3 pacts, 3 offering and a petition. There's enough control to realistically cast petition for the missing piece at some point or for fx removal on t5 (dismember) or a silver bullet (crypt incursion, spellskite, etc) and because pact puts an actual clock on yourself, you really need to be able to find an offering in time.
About card choices:
I like this approach more than the usual big delve creature plan because demonic pact doesn't die to terminate, path or other removal and isn't sensitive to graveyard hate. Also, a 4 mana enchantment is pretty hard to remove (certainly main deck), even by Jund, and pact actually does some pretty useful stuff. The ideal scenario is playing it on t4 with an answer in hand (offering, petition or cryptic) and a non-threatening boardstate thanks to early removal and counters, then drawing cards/helixing until you make them discard their hand and offer it to them. The inquisitions and kolaghan's command pull double duty there to reduce their handsize to 2 or fewer before this point. Contrary to splinter twin, you can't get 2-for-1'd very easily and even if they counter or discard the offering, you can snap it (or petition or cryptic) back.
Desolate Lighthouse used to be a 3rd island, but rather than trying to play around Blood moon super hard, I prefer to rely on Engineered Explosives and be able to loot away useless offerings or be able to dig for offering.
Jund seems a fairly easy matchup because the deck grinds like crazy and their maindeck is quite bad against this with little extra help in the sideboard. I'm considering putting 3 Ancestral Vision in the side board to swap 1-for-1 with Inquisitions post board in the grindy matchups but I'm not sure yet what to cut. Their scariest card is Liliana of the Veil which is one of the reasons there's a dreadbore in the list. Fortunately the burn and tar pits are also good at keeping lili in check or goold old ambush viper.
So far the absolute worst matchup has been Tron, but that's no particular surprise I suppose. They have multiple good answers to pact itself and I can't really stop them from doing what they want to do so I haven't even bothered putting fulminators in the board. A Crumble to Dust might be warranted, though, also considering the uptick in Valakut decks.
My main issue so far is that the sideboard is just a collection of good cards in various matchups, but not really a solid plan. In some matchups I board out the combo completely (burn, infect) because surviving to the point that I could cast them usually means I win already anyway and before them they're dead draws. Mostly I do shave a pact and an offering or 2 to make it a late game plan after gaining full control and depleting their resources or exploit the fact that they took out creature removal in favor of answers to pact.
Immortal Coil is what I started out with (as I wrote) but I quickly found out that's an entirely different deck than the grixis control shell I put pact/offering in now. Unless you self mill a lot (thought scour, faithless looting) your graveyard is just not going to be very impressive on t4. So you need to be more 'all-in' on the combo and also run a good amount of graveyard removal, but I rather went for the pact because a 4 mana enchantment is significantly harder to remove than a 4 mana artifact. Also, you instantly lose when they have graveyard removal, which is pretty likely at this point with dredge rising in popularity.
I played another FNM yesterday with the above list and went a middling 2-2 this time.
I beat Esper Thopter/Sword pretty easily. His draws weren't great and his game plan just doesn't matter to me. I suppose this is one of the nice parts of having a win con that simply says the opponent loses the game. Repeated life gain (even infinite) doesn't win the game against pact/offering. Anyway, in the sideboarded game I sided out 2 offering and 1 pact because I expected him to have multiple answers to pact (saw main deck o-ring already, then disenchant/purge and who knows what else after side) and expected to not really go for pact unless I had full control. This made me weaker against thopter/sword but being at 1-0 already I wasn't too concerned. He ended up having a fairly poor draw made worse by my discard.
Second round against skred red, I could take blood moon with inquisition g1 so I could keep playing. Ended up giving him a pact as his deck has a lot of air (definitely against me) and he didn't draw a koth very quickly. G2 I kept a risky 1-lander based on IoK and serum visions and ended up getting there on land, but he had triple molten rain (1 countered) which was 1 too many. G3 was pretty easy win again because he's so threat light compared to my ton of removal and mono red isn't exactly known for being able to remove enchantments or stop sorceries from resolving.
Then it all went downhill against Jund as I just drew fairly poorly in g1 where he had a good draw and abysmally in g2 while his draw was mediocre. G1 I waited until the last moment to cast pact but didn't find an offering or snapcaster. I played to my outs (shooting ooze to preserve my offering in gy from his discard) and ended up with snappy on top when I died to his board. G2 I kept bolt, 2 leak and land and drew only lands and 3 bolts from there on out. If he didn't topdeck a bolt at some point I'd have raced him even but sadly this wasn't good enough. Still seems like a reasonable matchup because so many cards are blanked and we have so much card advantage and live removal.
Last round was against burn and despite losing the die roll and a t1 gg, g1 was a pretty easy win. A combination of bolt, inquisition and leak allowed me to tap out for pact on t4 on an empty board and with an empty handed opponent with me at 6 life, cryptic command in hand and the mana to cast it. Couldn't lose anymore from that point (already had offering). G2, however, he overloads me with 1 mana burn of which a lot can't be redirected to spellskite and I die. I could have played it safe and went for EoT bounce eidolon with cryptic rather than countering it to play around sorcery burn, but I'm not sure I had a good answer to eidolon after that. G3 I fully control the game and the moment I know he has nothing and tap out (don't remember for what, though) he topdecks eidolon which kills me. In many turns, I find no removal and he slowly burns me down as I had spellskite to block and didn't even feel so bad about his eidolon at that point. Tons of outs but not drawing any and not really being able to find them due to the eidolon was a bit unfortunate. This was a nice example of how great the manabase is now, though. I took at most 4 damage from my mana base despite being able to cast bolts, inquisition, leak, cryptic and pact on curve.
To me, it seems like the deck mainly needs some tuning for an expected meta, but otherwise feels quite solid.
well make a modern mana base if this shell is viable.
I don't want to be a naysayer all the time, but this is far from workable in Modern. The reason this list looks like it does is because of Dromoka's Command which is ubiquitous in standard and very rarely seen in modern and then even only in tier2 or lower decks. Liliana also doesn't really do anything (LSV questioned their presence in the standard list even) and silumgar's command is pretty much strictly worse than cryptic command.
On a more positive note: I was able to do some testing against Jund (3-2), Infect (2-1) and Abzan Company (4-2) yesterday. This is my current list:
I was quite happy with the switch to dismember and dark petition. The desolate lighthouse worked mainly against me (could have cast cryptic if it was the island it replaced) but I think the sacrifice is worth it for those games in which you (offering) flood or just need to find something. The games against Jund were interesting and even though it was only 3-2 in my favor, the games I won were quite comfortable and the games I lost were 'let's just try this' with an early pact without actual pressure on me and dying to it or his nutdraw with liliana to finish me. In another game I actually beat 3 liliana's thanks to dreadbore and tar pit. It seems that as long as we're mostly trading 1-1 and he doesn't have a confidant or goyf in play (too long) I feel favored. It's pretty hard for them to beat snapcaster recursion with kolaghan's command etc especially because this deck blanks so many of their cards preboard.
Against Infect it's basically as you expect and going forward I'd always board out the combo package. In 1 game I had pact + offering the whole time but never cast it because I'd die if I did and ended up dying because of a top decked vines. If they were simply more answers the game wouldn't even be close and against infect you can easily kill them with snappy/tar pit etc after gaining control.
Against company I lost a game because of underestimating their aggro draw and developing my mana slowly because of it. I died with removal in hand which is pretty much the worst, of course. The other game I lost was on a mull to 5 where he topdecked a chord for redcap combo a turn before pact would kill him, which was sad. I could have played it differenly and possibly have won if I drew a cheap spell to interact with his chord/combo, so that may have been just misplayed.
I at least feel a bit more confident in the deck again and am looking forward to another tournament setting in which to test it. I'm not really sure I dare to try it in a PPTQ again but who knows, there are still quite a few to go in the season.
Sadly, I sequenced game 1 poorly after seeing his hand with probe so could perhaps have won that. Thinking about that match, it seems that blood moon is a pretty important piece of the puzzle. Especially on the play, it cuts off quite a part of their game plan. A sweeper of some kind may also be useful. Pyroclasm only kills delver, but kills pretty much everything in their deck except thought-knot seer, so that may be a useful sideboard card. Thing in the Ice may also work. It's a nice combo with blood moon (bounce board they can't replay).
4 Scalding Tarn
4 Flooded Strand
1 Polluted Delta
2 Steam Vents
2 Island
1 Mountain
1 Sulfur Falls
4 Spirebluff Canal
Creatures (12)
4 Delver of Secrets
4 Monastery Swiftspear
2 Stormchaser Mage
2 Bedlam Reveler
4 Serum Visions
4 Lightning Bolt
4 Gitaxian Probe
2 Forked Bolt
1 Spell Pierce
2 Vapor Snag
4 Lava Spike
4 Manamorphose
2 Temur Battle Rage
1 Electrolyze
1 Blood Moon
2 Blood Moon
2 Dispel
1 Negate
2 Smash to Smithereens
1 Threads of Disloyalty
2 Grafdigger's Cage
2 Ancestral Vision
1 Roast
2 Dragon's Claw
I lost narrowly to Abzan Coco (not flipping a T1 delver 3 turns.. sigh) and got crushed by Eldrazi & Taxes. Fairly easily beat affinity and crushed BTL scapeshift and some UB lantern control deck.
I flooded way too much so will definitely cut at least 1 land. Seeing even 17 land lists in here I might cut another but with both TBR and reveler in this list, I doubt I really want to go below 18. Everything else felt pretty good. No idea how to beat Eldrazi & Taxes, though..
I took them out for Bedlam Reveler as they functionally overlap. In the WMCQ I actually removed all Remands instead of the Faithless Lootings, but I wasn't really happy with that because that's a lot of the same(ish) effect and Remand can do some pretty useful things in this deck besides slowing the opponent down. I think the problem I have with looting is that it's pretty high variance, ranging from abysmal to awesome. When you have a bad-card heavy hand, for whatever reason, it's basically a draw-2 with flashback. When facing discard, it's like committing suicide. What I found is that it's mostly important to have looting in land-light hands to dig deep for a land with upside for Ascension, but in many cases it's just -1 card for little value. Reveler, on the other hand, is very good against BGx which infests the meta at the moment. However, I've convinced myself that 2 reveler main is good enough and that I have room for 1 looting, relegating the 3rd reveler to the side instead of Engineered Explosives which has always been awkward in this deck and overlaps too much with Path. This is not a deck where you want to sideboard a lot so I prefer to keep the packages small.
Why the remark about Path? Snapcaster definitely doesn't belong in this deck. It's not even a 2-drop, really.
Full set is definitely way too much. I've seen lists with 4 but they are in the minority and I cannot fathom it's correct. The problem is that you can only filter what you don't need when you have cards in hand and this is -1 card. I've never liked this card in decks like these, be it UR Storm or Jeskai Ascendancy.
A pure life gain card has to be pretty good to be playable, I agree. Gain 8 for 2 mana at instant speed with the potential to be copied by ascension fits that bill though. Sadly, today it also proved that it's not enough to beat burn by itself. If they decay your swiftspear, that's great of course, but when do they do that? Probably not when it's a 1/2. I don't really see how you could kill on turn 3 with that, btw. You can't have both a non-summoning sick thing + active ascension on turn 3. Still, the point is that this deck is much more resilient than regular UR storm, indeed. Just a pity that an early chalice on 1 is still insane against us.
I played a PPTQ today, which went quite poorly. I didn't want to play Burn again (did that in a pptq yesterday, which also went poorly, after 2 top8s in a row :() because people were starting to hate it quite a bit. Funnily enough, there were 4 burn players in a field of 23 anyway.
R1 I played against Affinity and mulled to 4 game 1 (bad 1 lander into 2 bad 0landers) and he had the one thing that really was unbeatable game 1 with such a measly hand: Master of Etherium. Any other payoff spell that was susceptible to helix/bolt would have been fine but a double memnite/ornithopter + mox into t2 master hand I couldn't beat. G2 I easily win on the basis of tons of (copied) removal. G3 was looking very good, having just found and played an ascension after clearing out his threats, until he drops a chalice on 1, shutting down my entire hand. Also couldn't trigger the ascension due to no overlap between hand/gy so I had to draw into something. He only had 2 vault skirges as pressure so that seemed fine, but after chalice he immediately draws plating and I die in 2 turns.
R2 against Bant Eldrazi. He has a slowish draw without noble or temple and goes spellskite into displacer while I find an ascension. He then plays explosives and destroys both his spellskite and my ascension. Being left with a TKS and displacer, but tapped out, I helix his displacer and take a hit from TKS. I find a new ascension and activate it with a cantrip, but draw land and he plays smasher to finish me off.
G2 he has t2 chalice into EE on 2 for my thing that I just flipped in order to hopefully get somewhere despite throwing all my 1's into it. Just cannot catch a break today.
R3 bye.. yeah..
R4 against burn. I mull to 6 and have a slowish hand while he has not much. I probed his hand t1 and see wooded foothills, lava spike, swiftspear, rift bolt, searing blaze, bloodstained mire and copperline gorge. Seems fine, not much pressure, almost dead card in hand. Then, of course, he rips eidolon and I die. It didn't help that I forgot an ascension counter while trying to activate through the eidolon but without a bolt/helix to immediately kill the eidolon it was game over.
G2 I keep a hand with manamorphose, rest for the weary and lands. Probably a bad keep. I even rip helix and 2nd rest as well as an ascension to gain a total of 19 life and die horribly anyway because he has the full creature draw with nacatls, goblin guide and eidolon and I find no anger. To really rub it in, he also revelried my ascension.
R5 against Abzan
G1 he goes Inquisition into goyf and I probe him to see decay and 3 land. I play ascension into his decay and cantrip into a new one next turn, but he finds another goyf and path to increase the pressure and get rid of my thing.
G2 he has some pressure but no removal and I kill him with bolts/thing. Don't remember any specifics here. Reveler was good though.
G3 I mull to 6 and keep a hand with 3 land and 3 cantrips. He thoughtseizes and doesn't really know what to take because I don't have any payoff yet. Love that against those decks ;). He's very slowly increasing pressure with a tiny goyf and some spirits when he plays a leyline of sanctity. Great. I didn't board in my wear//tear so there's no way to get rid of it. In this game, Revelers really shine, though. I draw and played 2 in a row while activating ascension and double helixing to get rid of a liliana and stay alive. In the end I have a big combo turn during turns in which I bring a bedlam reveler to 12 power to swing for the win.
It's funny how I haven't lost to BGx so far, despite it being traditionally a bad matchup for ascension decks. Mostly due to reveler and path to exile, of course, but thing has been pretty good as well. He played the new BG fastland, so he didn't take as much damage as they used to, but it still doesn't take too much to kill them with a thing/reveler and bolts. For G2, I brought in 1 blood moon to mise, but even without seeing it he was fetching around it so I took it out for g3. Unless you play against inexperienced players, blood moon to screw BGx is just not worth it imho. If our deck would be 100% fine with it in play, you could argue it's always ok to at least hamper them and turn off their manlands, but that's not quite the case. At least not in the jeskai version, straight UR has a much easier time under blood moon, of course.
I had awkward draws etc, so I didn't play all that much magic today, but it still seems to me that Faithless Looting might need to be in the deck. Perhaps a 2-1 split of reveler/faithless looting. The reason for this is the fact that 1-landers are much easier to keep when you can dig for land with looting, which reveler doesn't do. Also, drawing a 2nd or 3rd reveler is 100% dead and it's not fast enough to need to draw it early. I'd love to be able to have 3 revelers after side against BGx, though, also because there I definitely don't want looting, but I have no idea what to take out of the sideboard. Maybe the explosives. They've never been particularly useful so far, even though they should be. It has quite some overlap with other cards in the side, though (anger, path, wear//tear), so perhaps it can go. It also doesn't help that you basically can't ever set it to 2 without wrecking yourself.
The reason I like blood moon in this deck is because it completely hoses some strategies that could race us with the added benefit of being good against 3 color non-red decks with few basics. Depending on how they fetch g2, you can take out/bring in blood moon for g3. If they fetch around it while you don't have it in your deck anymore, that's great and if they don't while you do, that's also great. It's just pretty bad to have blood moon in your hand/deck when they fetch around it, especially if you don't have ways to discard it profitably (looting, reveler).
Also, for what it's worth, I actually think the deck should be called Thing Ascension. It's been a hugely important card for me and won games that would take a perfect storm (hehe) to win with ascension. I also don't see any lists that don't run it and those that have it in the side have swiftspear or reveler main instead so they also don't fully depend on ascension. Turn 2 thing, turn 3 flip and attack can lead to an easy t4 win while disrupting the opponent and there are quite a few matchups where it's a straight race. UR storm is already more of a turn 4 than a turn 3 deck and we're way slower than that with ascension due to the lack of rituals, electromancer, past in flames or grapeshot.
Cryptic command sounds pretty cool to copy but Remand seems more flexible to me. I guess flame slash is the next best option if you don't run white for helix, but it not going to the face seems rough.
I've ran 3 bedlam revelers in every iteration so far but I might go down to 2 in the main and put the 3rd in the side. It's useless to have 2 in hand and you don't really need one early as long as you have 4 thing and 4 ascension in the deck. The issue is that I don't know what to take out of the board and what to put in the main. A 1-off spell seems awful with ascension and the 4th remand also doesn't seem great.
Hm, not really. Prowess means a creature has to get through unopposed, which isn't quite as easy as simply burning someone out with copied bolts. At least, in many games I win, I won by 'comboing off' on the last possible turn and bolting them for 18+ without a creature that could even attack. I suppose it's easier if you play Monastery Swiftspear, but creatures are still more easily dealt with than bolts. Also, 1 helix more than pays for the untapped shock already and all subsequent ones gain you 3 life. With Ascension, you can get pretty obscene amounts of life that easily keeps you alive in aggro matchups. Not losing as much life isn't quite the same as gaining tons.
This is my current list, btw. I'm a bit on the fence about the new fastland. Land #4 has been important enough so far that I prefer the Sulfur Falls as not many 1 landers are really keepable anyway. It's not like burn where you can go GG into GG and burn them out with a few bolts. Bricking on land 2 has so far cost me the game in the majority of cases, as far as I can tell.
4 Scalding Tarn
4 Flooded Strand
1 Polluted Delta
2 Steam Vents
2 Sacred Foundry
1 Hallowed Fountain
1 Sulfur Falls
1 Mountain
2 Island
Creatures (7)
4 Thing in the Ice
3 Bedlam Reveler
4 Lightning Bolt
4 Serum Visions
4 Gitaxian Probe
4 Thought Scour
4 Sleight of Hand
4 Lightning Helix
4 Manamorphose
4 Pyromancer Ascension
3 Remand
3 Path to Exile
3 Blood Moon
2 Rest for the Weary
1 Engineered Explosives
1 Wear // Tear
2 Dispel
1 Swan Song
2 Anger of the Gods
I've played against Tron twice so far (both Gw, funnily enough, never played against that version before that I can remember) and the matchup is not as bad as I thought it was (even though I lost and drew against them, odd games). Between blue moon on the one hand (unwinnable) and UR storm on the other (unlosable), we're much closer to storm than blue moon so they are quite pressed to get karn out quickly and if they don't, they're likely dead. If I played against regular Gr tron instead, I would have easily won in at least one of the matches and would have had a very good chance in the other, because path to exile is way better than any red spell against us.
Anyway, the point is that blood moon is fine against them because our game plan is fast enough to not allow them to just get to 7 land (or even 5, for stone) and I think it's necessary for enough otherwise probably not very great matchups that I wouldn't want to cut them. I just see them as a hoser of a strategy (valakut, eldrazi, tron, etc) and not a 'let's hope they don't fetch around it' mana screwer. In a matchup like esper control I would bring them in because I wouldn't bring in Path, but if I want path (for goyf, fx) I don't bring in moon unless it also hoses them completely and they can't fetch around it (valakut and eldrazi is pretty much it where I would bring in both, from the top of my head).
This is the list I played, which is based on Tamada's list but with some notable changes:
4 Scalding Tarn
4 Flooded Strand
1 Polluted Delta
2 Steam Vents
1 Hallowed Fountain
2 Sacred Foundry
1 Sulfur Falls
2 Island
1 Mountain
Creatures (7)
4 Thing in the Ice
3 Bedlam Reveler
4 Gitaxian Probe
4 Serum Visions
4 Sleight of Hand
4 Thought Scour
3 Faithless Looting
4 Lightning Bolt
4 Lightning Helix
4 Manamorphose
4 Pyromancer Ascension
3 Blood Moon
3 Path to Exile
1 Engineered Explosives
2 Rest for the Weary
2 Dispel
1 Swan Song
1 Wear // Tear
2 Anger of the Gods
While goldfishing it really felt way too high risk to me to run only 1 Steam Vents and when I later swapped all Remands for Bedlam Revelers the extra red source also made sense. Even though I think Remand is pretty good in this deck, I expected that Reveler would be much better in the meta (quite some BGx) and it was the cleanest swap I could make. On hindsight and re-evaluation, though, I think it should have cut Faithless Looting for it instead because Looting is pretty horrible against them and even overlaps in function with reveler. I also only wanted 3 reveler because multiples don't do anything and it's not as important to have one early as it is for ascension or thing, so a 3-off was perfect.
Due to playing reveler, I decided on swapping Visions of Beyond for Sleight of Hand as I didn't want to become that dependent on the graveyard. Sure, the usually played Grafdigger's Cage basically does nothing against this deck, but there are also Leyline of the Void, Rest in Peace, Relic of Progenitus and more such cards to worry about. I've played Visions before in Ascendancy Combo and was always a bit underwhelmed by it. Even without hate, 20 cards is quite a lot and when trying to set up, Sleight is way better selection than just a blind draw. I do agree that Visions being an instant is much better with Thing and Ascension, but unlike the Ascendancy list I played (the Glittering Wish version) it's just one out of many instants in the deck so I wasn't really worried.
The sideboard I left as is because it lined up well with what I wanted to do. I often boarded out the Revelers when they wouldn't be fast enough for the appropriate hate. I also boarded out Looting quite often because it's card disadvantage and I think the worst spell in the deck in most case. When I board in Blood Moon I usually do leave it in because it's at least castable.
In the 6 rounds I actually played, this is more or less what happened:
Round 1 against Gw Tron (0-2)
G1 I mull to 5 and keep a hand that finally has some land but then draw only land while he has t3 karn on the play. In the mean time I only played tarns and fetched steam vents with them so I scooped hoping he'd put me on some kind of control deck rather than combo.
G2 I have a more functional hand on 6 while he goes t1 and 2 tron piece + map. T3 I probe him and see no 7 drop he could cast (only World Breaker) and cast Blood Moon anyway, thinking as I do it that maybe I should wait a turn and wait for him to fetch his missing tron so he can't get forest. Sadly, he indeed gets forest instead and I don't really lock him out. I proceed to draw abysmally and he eventually hits 7 lands to play the world breaker to remove one of 2 Ascensions that actually already had a counter. He then plays another and kills me through my reveler that also drew nothing.
Well, that was a promising start of the day..
Round 2 against Elves (2-1)
G1 I try to control his board and eventually find Thing to bounce everything, but can't bounce Spellskite so he chumps. Next turn he vomits out his hand again so I'm still probably dead next turn. Fortunately, I also have an ascension online now and am able to string together a bunch of spells to both find and flip a new thing to attack for the win and burn him out. At this point I was starting to feel pretty good about the deck ;).
G2 I'm a bit slow and he chords for an Eidolon of Rhetoric which slows me to a crawl and stops me from actually being able to race him.
G3 I bring in Wear//Tear to answer both his eidolon and spellskite and end up simply killing everything until I flip a Thing that kills him in 2 turns.
Round 2 against Jund (2-0)
G1 I mull to 5, keeping a hand of mountain, sacred foundry, 2 sleight and ascension. He's on the play and takes my ascension with an inquisition or the like, but I topdeck another one and play my foundry tapped, hoping he wouldn't inquisition again because I basically can't do anything anyway. He indeed doesn't and I get to play my ascension. I then draw a fetch to get blue and start cantripping and quickly activate ascension while he doesn't have an answer to it and instead has a Courser of Kruphix with very little else. His life total slowly creeps up and he finds things like liliana and kalitas, but I am able to bolt or helix them down, both controlling his board and keeping me alive. I ended this game at 2 life so the copied helix was pretty useful here ;). In the end I'm left facing a lethal board with him at 24 life and me only having left 2 helix and a bolt in the deck. Fortunately I have 2 active ascensions and am able to draw enough of my deck to draw them and cast them for lethal. Now I feel pretty awesome about the deck ;).
G2 was quite exciting as well, though much shorter. He has a draw with multiple Raging Ravines but I manage to get an active ascension again which is able to double path ravine and an ooze and another ravine, leaving him with nothing. I find a reveler that can kill him in short order shortly after, despite being at 3. If he had forced me to path just a single creature by attacking for lethal with just 1 creature, I wouldn't have had removal for his last one and probably would have died, so that was fortunate.
I only sided in 3 path to exile and engineered explosives in this match because Jund is punished much less by it and I expected him to fetch around it + path defeats the purpose of moon anyway and I valued that more highly than hoping to screw him. I didn't draw the explosives in this game, but in later games I realized that explosives is actually pretty bad in this matchup because the usual number is 2, which also maximally punishes myself. It seems that if you want to set explosives on 2 in the matchup, it better be game-winningly awesome or you shouldn't board it in.
R4 against grixis goryo's vengenace (2-1)
G1 at first it almost seems like the mirror match until he plays t3 bloodstained mire. He proceeds with emrakuling me so it's pretty obvious what he's on.
G2 I (mistakenly) side out 2 Things and a reveler for counters and then proceed to quickly beat him t4 with a flipped thing. Justice.
G3 I side in all things again and remove an ascension and a reveler instead. Maybe reveler should have just been completely cut here, but killing him quickly was the plan which I thought reveler would help with more than 4th ascension. In this game I end up in the situation with a thing on 1 and a thing on 3 counters with a castable instant in hand vs a hand of breach, dispel and unknowns after discarding 2 Griselbrands to a looting. As I contemplate how to actually clock him, I draw dispel and with him on just 5 land I go for lethal with 2 things and dispel backup.
R5 against Abzan (2-1)
G1 he has goyf and anafenza while I have thing and ascension on the play. T4 I play the ascension and cantrip a bit to flip thing and bounce his board but forget to attack because I somehow forgot that I played it already last turn. Fortunately I find another ascension, get it online and burn him out easily anyway, trolling my opponent a bit with 'still had all these' ;).
G2 I don't really remember and have no notes, but I lost it.
G3 he triple thoughtseize/inquisitions me but has no clock so I double bolt him down in the end. It's so nice how this deck can actually bounce back from all that discard thanks to reveler and all the cantrips.
He played the grim flayer noble hierarch version so I only boarded the paths and didn't bring in blood moon. I also expected him to fetch basics anyway.
R6 against Infect (1-2)
G1 I keep a 1lander and can't play a 2 drop on t2, which loses me the game. I'm always 1 step behind and he even has spellskite to stop my bolts.
G2 I kill his infecters at safe times and finish him easily.
G3 he mulls to 6 and plays t1 noble. I probe and see glistener elf, apostle blessing, pendelhaven and a fetch, so I feel pretty good about this game. He plays land elf and I play thing. He EoT Twisted Images my thing and plays pendelhaven attack for 3 poison. I probe him again after playing a 2 drop and see his draws were groundswell and become immense so I die. Great.
R7 against Bant Eldrazi (2-0)
G1 his hand is pretty slow and only has eldrazi skyspawner t3 and thought-knot seer t4. He can't really take something exciting and I find a thing, which flips and kills him together with some bolts.
G2 he has a fairly quick TKS despite bolting his first 2 nobles. I topdeck blood moon and probe him to see he has another TKS and a skyspawner so I decide that it's better to screw both of us (all non-basics here) than face another TKS. He beats me to 6 before I find a reveler, which draws me 2 bolts and a land. He attacks anyway as he can't do anything and I bolt him to eat his TKS. He drew plains, though, and paths my reveler before I can kill him. Fortunately I hit manamorphose to enable the helixes in my hand and finish him off. This is where blood moon felt pretty useful.
The only cards I never boarded in were Rest for the Weary, but I don't really know how badly I need them against burn. I think they are probably the best anti-burn spell I can use because they are instant and cheap. Timely seems worse because it's both 3 mana and sorcery and not as exciting to copy because it's quite likely that the 2nd one won't even gain life and very likely that I won't get tokens. The rest I was pretty happy with. Due to the revelers main I didn't feel like I need any token makers against BGx and I think the synergy between the deck and revelers is higher than with token makers anyway.
Going forward (and after playing in another small tournament) I'm looking to cut looting for remand. I see some people advocating Izzet Charm but I think that's just bad. It's an expensive looting you can't flash back, an expensive bolt that can't go to the face and a very mediocre negate. Remand buys time against anything, cantrips, comboes with ascension to activate it and can even go infinite with 2 active ascensions and a manamorphose to draw your deck and presumably win from there. It's a pity that it isn't actual infinite otherwise I might be tempted to have a grapeshot in the side to beat infinite life, but I don't think either going for Noxious revival or just the 'value' (?) grapeshot is worth it. I also didn't feel like I needed the drawing power of Visions in the late game because of the revelers so other than the looting/remand swap, I'm pretty comfortable with this list.
Lastly an aside on the white splash in this deck. I think that it's worth it. Not only does helix give you a great tool to gain life against aggro, it's also bolt 5-8, making it much easier to actually bolt someone out. Path from the side is also great, just don't board them in together with blood moon. Only side blood moon when it cripples their strategy. This is not blue moon. With manamorphose, the mana felt fine to me and blood moon is also doable. When I first put the deck together I couldn't fathom the idea of playing blood moon without basic plains but I quickly found out that plains is awful in this deck and that manamorphose is enough to play your white spells under blood moon. This is another reason not to side in path and blood moon together, btw. What does the UR-only version 'gain' that would make it better?
Well, in a perfect world I can cast it t4, but tapping out for something that doesn't do anything immediately is pretty dangerous unless you know it's safe so I rarely do that, but turn 5 is likely (after a t4 cryptic or snap-terminate, etc). Because the combo is so slow (t7 at the fastest), you really can't view it as a combodeck. I've been thinking real hard about whether I could play Remand in this deck instead of mana leak. Stalling for time is good enough as the pact ticks down and it draws a card, which is great. Leak, on the other hand, actually deals with an early play but is almost dead in the late game. A case could be made that remand is even better in the late game because I could remand my own offering to recast it whereas leak might be easily paid for by the opponent. Guess I'll try it. Remanding your own spells is great :).
I'd side in Ancestral Vision against grindy decks. So any BGx midrange or any flavor of control (against control I'd side something other than inquisitions out, though). Because it's so slow and you can easily die before it comes off suspend in many matchups, I prefer to have it in the sideboard with inquisition main. Then a GGD can also come in for extra value, but I think the main deck value of Tasigur is much higher because it finds me an offering and is an early blocker.
Liliana is always a problem for control decks, but I think this deck is fairly ok against it. Vendilion Clique is certainly great against it and is also decent against tron, so it may warrant a sideboard slot. In general, though, I'm ok with just conceding the tron matchup and hoping to get lucky because it's a fairly small % of the meta (it used to be pretty popular here in the Dutch meta, but not anymore). Hexmage is good against planeswalkers, of course, but I think the general value of Dreadbore is higher. Dreadbore can be flashed back for a total of 4 mana with snapcaster whereas hexmage can be replayed using Kolaghan's Command for 5 so dreadbore also seems more efficient.
@NialllHoran69
I haven't, really, no. It could be a neat trick to side into regular grixis control (or even delver) when they side out their creature removal, but that takes up so many slots that I'm afraid I just lose too much % against other decks that don't care about that. Can't have a regular grixis (delver) deck and still have a complete sideboard.
I can see how you beat bant Eldrazi with 4 Damnation in your deck ;). To be honest, I think Kalitas, Traitor of Ghet should also be in my 75 somewhere as it's great against dredge and fairly decent against burn (t4 and having to block is pretty late) and applicable in other matchups, but I'm not sure what to cut and I don't currently own one either.
To be honest, I'm not sure how you can play this deck without serum visions. It sets up your early draws to fix either lands or finding spells and is great with snapcaster as well. The fact that you can run fewer lands thanks to visions makes it well worth it to me. Serum visions is a good topdeck whereas ancestral is awful. It's no preordain (it's pretty infuriating how much better preordain is) but it makes so many 1-2 landers keepable that you could argue it's actually card advantage rather than just a cantrip.
Which discard/planeswalker rule of PV do you mean, btw?
I'm not sure I understand, why would I take out lightning bolts and why would I want to destroy the pact? I already have 3 offerings to give it away and 3 cryptics to bounce it for value + 4 snapcaster to recur those and a dark petition to find one.
I have won on damage, but it's not the default by far. I've joking called this deck New Twin before, but it's not completely unreasonable. The point is that it's a control deck that happens to have a combo finish as an option. It's also great to have a win con that simply says the opponent loses which means that infinite life doesn't actually stop me from winning. When I win on damage it's likely that a pact-helix has helped with that, similar to how a pestermite from twin played beat down while they were afraid to tap out. Tasigur and tar pit aren't there simply as alternative win con. Tar pit is pretty decent against planeswalkers and Tasigur is a great roadblock against aggro + grind machine late game. The synergy between snapcaster and tasigur is also pretty clear. They also help switch to a damage based win con after boarding, but it's not the main reason why I put them in the deck. The strategy is to be 100% control and have a hard-to-deal-with win con. Sure, my fastest gold fish is turn 7, but at least their removal are pretty much dead draws.
I have considered anticipate but I'm not sure what to take out for them in the main deck and they aren't very useful in the sideboard. I've also tried to keep the air to a minimum to avoid do-nothing hands that just get run over so I probably don't want to run anticipate next to serum visions. Ancestral from the board would come in in the grindy matchups where I don't want inquisitions anymore, but maybe I just don't need the help there. Jund seems favorable so far. Only thing I've lost to (besides horrible flood/screw) is the perfect curve of discard, 2drop, liliana and not drawing anything to deal with liliana. On the other hand, jund (well, BGx midrange in general) is prevalent enough that it wouldn't be bad to crush them.
Considering I don't really want to attack, ensnaring bridge seems like a great option :). The only issue might be getting my hand empty enough to actually stop them from attacking because except for Eldrazi, most things will still attack if I have 3 or more cards in hand and with all the cantrips I don't really dump my hand that fast (nor do I want to, really).
4 Scalding Tarn
4 Polluted Delta
2 Steam Vents
1 Watery Grave
1 Blood Crypt
1 Sunken Hollow
1 Darkslick Shores
1 Blackcleave Cliffs
2 Island
1 Swamp
1 Mountain
2 Creeping Tar Pit
1 Sulfur Falls
1 Desolate Lighthouse
Creatures (5)
4 Snapcaster Mage
1 Tasigur, the Golden Fang
4 Lightning Bolt
4 Serum Visions
3 Inquisition of Kozilek
1 Spell Snare
3 Mana Leak
2 Terminate
1 Dreadbore
1 Electrolyze
2 Kolaghan's Command
1 Dismember
3 Harmless Offering
3 Cryptic Command
3 Demonic Pact
1 Dark Petition
2 Engineered Explosives
1 Damnation
1 Anger of the Gods
2 Dispel
2 Countersquall
1 Glen Elendra Archmage
1 Thoughtseize
1 Goblin Dark-Dwellers
1 Spellskite
1 Crypt Incursion
1 Shatterstorm
1 Slaughter Games
I've played quite a bit with it already and been doing ok. I mainly lost to not finding an answer to a threat in time (I guess this sums up every lost game with a control deck lol) but rarely to my own pact in an otherwise non-lethal boardstate (I have, in testing, but not in actual competitive play). I've fluctuated between 3 and 4 offerings, 2-3 pacts, even had 2 Colfenor's Plans and an Immortal Coil in the deck in the beginning but am currently pretty happy with 3 pacts, 3 offering and a petition. There's enough control to realistically cast petition for the missing piece at some point or for fx removal on t5 (dismember) or a silver bullet (crypt incursion, spellskite, etc) and because pact puts an actual clock on yourself, you really need to be able to find an offering in time.
About card choices:
I like this approach more than the usual big delve creature plan because demonic pact doesn't die to terminate, path or other removal and isn't sensitive to graveyard hate. Also, a 4 mana enchantment is pretty hard to remove (certainly main deck), even by Jund, and pact actually does some pretty useful stuff. The ideal scenario is playing it on t4 with an answer in hand (offering, petition or cryptic) and a non-threatening boardstate thanks to early removal and counters, then drawing cards/helixing until you make them discard their hand and offer it to them. The inquisitions and kolaghan's command pull double duty there to reduce their handsize to 2 or fewer before this point. Contrary to splinter twin, you can't get 2-for-1'd very easily and even if they counter or discard the offering, you can snap it (or petition or cryptic) back.
Desolate Lighthouse used to be a 3rd island, but rather than trying to play around Blood moon super hard, I prefer to rely on Engineered Explosives and be able to loot away useless offerings or be able to dig for offering.
Jund seems a fairly easy matchup because the deck grinds like crazy and their maindeck is quite bad against this with little extra help in the sideboard. I'm considering putting 3 Ancestral Vision in the side board to swap 1-for-1 with Inquisitions post board in the grindy matchups but I'm not sure yet what to cut. Their scariest card is Liliana of the Veil which is one of the reasons there's a dreadbore in the list. Fortunately the burn and tar pits are also good at keeping lili in check or goold old ambush viper.
So far the absolute worst matchup has been Tron, but that's no particular surprise I suppose. They have multiple good answers to pact itself and I can't really stop them from doing what they want to do so I haven't even bothered putting fulminators in the board. A Crumble to Dust might be warranted, though, also considering the uptick in Valakut decks.
My main issue so far is that the sideboard is just a collection of good cards in various matchups, but not really a solid plan. In some matchups I board out the combo completely (burn, infect) because surviving to the point that I could cast them usually means I win already anyway and before them they're dead draws. Mostly I do shave a pact and an offering or 2 to make it a late game plan after gaining full control and depleting their resources or exploit the fact that they took out creature removal in favor of answers to pact.
Thoughts?
I played another FNM yesterday with the above list and went a middling 2-2 this time.
I beat Esper Thopter/Sword pretty easily. His draws weren't great and his game plan just doesn't matter to me. I suppose this is one of the nice parts of having a win con that simply says the opponent loses the game. Repeated life gain (even infinite) doesn't win the game against pact/offering. Anyway, in the sideboarded game I sided out 2 offering and 1 pact because I expected him to have multiple answers to pact (saw main deck o-ring already, then disenchant/purge and who knows what else after side) and expected to not really go for pact unless I had full control. This made me weaker against thopter/sword but being at 1-0 already I wasn't too concerned. He ended up having a fairly poor draw made worse by my discard.
Second round against skred red, I could take blood moon with inquisition g1 so I could keep playing. Ended up giving him a pact as his deck has a lot of air (definitely against me) and he didn't draw a koth very quickly. G2 I kept a risky 1-lander based on IoK and serum visions and ended up getting there on land, but he had triple molten rain (1 countered) which was 1 too many. G3 was pretty easy win again because he's so threat light compared to my ton of removal and mono red isn't exactly known for being able to remove enchantments or stop sorceries from resolving.
Then it all went downhill against Jund as I just drew fairly poorly in g1 where he had a good draw and abysmally in g2 while his draw was mediocre. G1 I waited until the last moment to cast pact but didn't find an offering or snapcaster. I played to my outs (shooting ooze to preserve my offering in gy from his discard) and ended up with snappy on top when I died to his board. G2 I kept bolt, 2 leak and land and drew only lands and 3 bolts from there on out. If he didn't topdeck a bolt at some point I'd have raced him even but sadly this wasn't good enough. Still seems like a reasonable matchup because so many cards are blanked and we have so much card advantage and live removal.
Last round was against burn and despite losing the die roll and a t1 gg, g1 was a pretty easy win. A combination of bolt, inquisition and leak allowed me to tap out for pact on t4 on an empty board and with an empty handed opponent with me at 6 life, cryptic command in hand and the mana to cast it. Couldn't lose anymore from that point (already had offering). G2, however, he overloads me with 1 mana burn of which a lot can't be redirected to spellskite and I die. I could have played it safe and went for EoT bounce eidolon with cryptic rather than countering it to play around sorcery burn, but I'm not sure I had a good answer to eidolon after that. G3 I fully control the game and the moment I know he has nothing and tap out (don't remember for what, though) he topdecks eidolon which kills me. In many turns, I find no removal and he slowly burns me down as I had spellskite to block and didn't even feel so bad about his eidolon at that point. Tons of outs but not drawing any and not really being able to find them due to the eidolon was a bit unfortunate. This was a nice example of how great the manabase is now, though. I took at most 4 damage from my mana base despite being able to cast bolts, inquisition, leak, cryptic and pact on curve.
To me, it seems like the deck mainly needs some tuning for an expected meta, but otherwise feels quite solid.
I don't want to be a naysayer all the time, but this is far from workable in Modern. The reason this list looks like it does is because of Dromoka's Command which is ubiquitous in standard and very rarely seen in modern and then even only in tier2 or lower decks. Liliana also doesn't really do anything (LSV questioned their presence in the standard list even) and silumgar's command is pretty much strictly worse than cryptic command.
On a more positive note: I was able to do some testing against Jund (3-2), Infect (2-1) and Abzan Company (4-2) yesterday. This is my current list:
4 Scalding Tarn
4 Polluted Delta
1 Watery Grave
1 Blood Crypt
2 Steam Vents
1 Sunken Hollow
1 Blackcleave Cliffs
1 Darkslick Shores
1 Sulfur Falls
1 Swamp
2 Island
1 Mountain
1 Desolate Lighthouse
2 Creeping Tar Pit
Creatures (5)
4 Snapcaster Mage
1 Tasigur, the Golden Fang
4 Lightning Bolt
4 Serum Visions
3 Inquisition of Kozilek
1 Spell Snare
2 Terminate
1 Dreadbore
3 Mana Leak
1 Electrolyze
2 Kolaghan's Command
1 Dismember
3 Harmless Offering
3 Demonic Pact
3 Cryptic Command
1 Dark Petition
1 Damnation
2 Engineered Explosives
1 Thoughtseize
1 Slaughter Games
1 Spellskite
2 Dispel
2 Countersquall
1 Shatterstorm
1 Anger of the Gods
1 Crypt Incursion
1 Glen Elendra Archmage
1 Goblin Dark-Dwellers
I was quite happy with the switch to dismember and dark petition. The desolate lighthouse worked mainly against me (could have cast cryptic if it was the island it replaced) but I think the sacrifice is worth it for those games in which you (offering) flood or just need to find something. The games against Jund were interesting and even though it was only 3-2 in my favor, the games I won were quite comfortable and the games I lost were 'let's just try this' with an early pact without actual pressure on me and dying to it or his nutdraw with liliana to finish me. In another game I actually beat 3 liliana's thanks to dreadbore and tar pit. It seems that as long as we're mostly trading 1-1 and he doesn't have a confidant or goyf in play (too long) I feel favored. It's pretty hard for them to beat snapcaster recursion with kolaghan's command etc especially because this deck blanks so many of their cards preboard.
Against Infect it's basically as you expect and going forward I'd always board out the combo package. In 1 game I had pact + offering the whole time but never cast it because I'd die if I did and ended up dying because of a top decked vines. If they were simply more answers the game wouldn't even be close and against infect you can easily kill them with snappy/tar pit etc after gaining control.
Against company I lost a game because of underestimating their aggro draw and developing my mana slowly because of it. I died with removal in hand which is pretty much the worst, of course. The other game I lost was on a mull to 5 where he topdecked a chord for redcap combo a turn before pact would kill him, which was sad. I could have played it differenly and possibly have won if I drew a cheap spell to interact with his chord/combo, so that may have been just misplayed.
I at least feel a bit more confident in the deck again and am looking forward to another tournament setting in which to test it. I'm not really sure I dare to try it in a PPTQ again but who knows, there are still quite a few to go in the season.