I've tested a lot against bant spirits before recent sets and it was a pretty easy matchup. They could only win if they had a fast Geist or really went back to back spell quellers with a lord thrown in.
I don't like eidolon in the matchup because they easily block it or fly over it so with vial or coco it's just you who gets punished. Boarding in more searing effects and maybe a few paths is the way to go as it keeps their board clear while you kill them. In case of Bant spirits, make sure to kill the Noble to slow them down a lot and not allow a fast Geist or early queller.
So I've been reading up on this topic for a while and still have multiple pages to go, but felt like posting as I won a PPTQ (47 players) with Burn last weekend. I've been playing Modern Burn since early 2015 (though not continuously), mainly Naya (Atarka's Command, no Nacatl). I did fairly well with it in the past, as in multiple PPTQ top 8s, but never won with it. Then Eldrazi Winter happened and I stopped playing burn for a while. Recently, I picked it up again, now playing Boros (splash G for Revelry) and it felt solid, but something annoyed me that already annoyed me before: the curve is too high. There are multiple spots in which I felt I got 'stuck' with all these 2 mana spells in hand and only 1-2 land, allowing me to play 0-1 spells a turn, which is just not good enough against the majority of Modern.
The obvious answer to this problem is substituting for cmc 1 spells, which leads to playing black for Bump in the Night and, if you want to really go for it, Gonti's Machinations, as well as a land less. I do think it should be Mardu, because Boros Charm is 1 of the strongest cards in the deck due dealing 4 in 1 card, and it allows for white sideboard cards. After going 4-0 in an FNM with this list, I replaced the last Ensnaring Bridge with the 2nd Crackling Doom in the sideboard and took it to a PPTQ. I played rather poorly and scrubbed out, but took the same 75 to another PPTQ last Saturday and played reasonably well to a winning finish:
The rationale here is that I want R/B on turn 1 most, because it allows me to cast almost everything in the deck and allows me to first cast Gonti's Machinations and then fetch and/or shock to get energy. Also, it's nice to not take infinite damage every game due to being 3 colors main.
Beyond that I think that Grim Lavamancer is great (certainly now) and is the only card that I tolerate in the deck that never deals damage as a topdeck.
The tournament itself went pretty smoothly and started out in a telling manner.
Round 1 Hollow One
He mulls and discards all the wrong cards which makes my bad hand good enough (I put him on another deck) to win G1. G2 the one choice I had was to attack into Gurmag Angler and bolt it or not and I decide to do it because he also has a flamewake to get back and doesn't have much else going. He blocks, I kill it and a few spells later he's dead without much pressure on me.
Round 2 Elves
She's not fast out of the gates with me on the play and even shocks in a temple garden for no reason giving me exactly lethal in an easy game. G2 I see no Searing effects, but control her board while attacking. I flood out horribly enough to not get her below 6 life despite her mulligan to 5. Oh well. G3 I again see no searing effect but enough burn to easily put her away. Don't think I've ever lost to Elves with Burn.
Round 3 Bant Spirits
This was pretty brutal. I open on swiftspear after he lays tapped Hallowed Fountain and that plants the idea of UW or Jeskai Control in my head. He then plays Botanical Sanctum but I don't add it up to Bant Spirits so I'm not sure what to do. I decide, with my hand of spike, 2 bolt, 2 rift bolt, to just play land and attack. He does nothing and takes 1, I suspend 2 rift bolts. He plays Rattlechains EoT which makes clear what he's playing so I assume he's on Spell Queller when he plays land 3 and passes after attacking. I rift bolt him twice and go for a spike. He quells, I bolt it and bolt his face for a turn 3 kill from 20 life with 1 overdamage.. 7 power swiftspear, not sure I've seen it that high ever before hehe.
G2 I Sear him out of the game, basically. Think we were done in 10 mins tops.
Round 4 Humans
I'm on the play, which means that his Thalia's Lieutenant + double Phantasmal Image is a turn too slow. I played around Meddling Mage best I could (really don't want to suspend Rift Bolt into it) and can resolve all spells in hand for the win.
G2 he keeps a reasonable 6 on the back of a Thalia, Guardian of Thraben but I have a bolt on t2 to keep attacking and playing spells so that I can double boros charm him to win the race.
Round 5 ID with Jeskai Control
I had a 50/50 on being paired with a fellow x-0 and got lucky. Even luckier that my bad matchup agreed to draw.
Round 6 ID with Naya Burn
I intended to play this round for seeding but due to the other x-0 losing the downpair in R5, IDing would guarantee 2nd or 3rd spot, which I'd take any day over a chance at 1st or maybe dropping out on breakers (mine weren't great).
I get into top 8 as 2nd seed together with, in order, Bogles, me, Jeskai Control, Humans, Infect, Naya Burn, Jund and G Tron.
Top 8 Jund
He thinks it's a good idea to play Dark Confidant against me and is soon explained the error of his ways when he immediately takes 3 from flipping Liliana. He gets lucky enough to not hit a non-land for 2-3 turns after that, though, which would have made it a very easy win, but the fact that I rather discard Blaze to his Kolaghan's Command than hold it for a potential land draw should make it pretty obvious to him that I like him having confidant in play.
Interestingly, I had a Gonti's in play with 1 energy and at first he doesn't even attack with Bob, but then, after having played Lili and dealing with my board, he decides it's time to attack and put me to 2 energy while he's at 4. Now he's dead to any non-land, non-lavamancer draw and promptly dies.
G2 he has a Collective Brutality but he only escalates once and still doesn't do much. Double Gonti give me enough life to race him.
Top 4 Naya Burn
My R6 opponent and now we have to play, but I'm on the play so I'm feeling pretty good. He might play Kor Firewalker and will probably take less damage of his mana base, which would make it much worse, but in principle I'm faster (especially on the play) and only need to dodge his helices.
G1 I have a good hand with 2 lands, haste creature, blaze and burn spells and flip a 2nd searing blaze to his GG. I Blaze and attack and he turns out to have a creature heavy hand, going GG Swift on T2. On my turn I play 3rd land and have to decide on which creature to kill. I choose his Spear as with GG he needs triple bolt exactly to kill me from 11 and with at least 2 spells, spear is bigger than guide. He tells me afterwards he would have had lethal if I killed his GG instead.
G2 I have multiple Helix and Gonti and put him in a spot where he has to shoot first. He does and I burn him out in response.
Top 2 G Tron
As you can see, the Top8 has gone very well for me, and not just in my matches. Tron beat Bogles, Burn beat Jeskai Control, then Tron beat Humans. Fun fact: this exact (well, I played Boros Burn) finals happened before in a big Dutch tournament (Dutch Open Series) in May, which I won. That one was hardly a match, but this one was.
G1 he has the absolute nuts with T3 Wurmcoil T4 wurmcoil. Could have beaten the first one if he didn't have a blocker (or removal for a creature) but sadly he did and I was down a game in a very good matchup.
G2 he mulls to 5 like Tron should in such a matchup and only has T4 tron. He digs for a payoff which only appears on T5: double wurmcoil. Nice. Well, fortunately I got him down to 7 before and go Crackling Doom, untap, Crackling Doom, Skullcrack for the win. The hand was a bit awkward but it got the job done, while he could almost taste victory already. Sorry Dave ;).
G3 I mull to 6, tossing a 3lander without creatures, for a solid 1-lander. He again mulls to 5 and has T4 tron or such. His payoff is a mere Worldbreaker, which I don't care about and as he's tapped out, I can burn him out with charm and crack.
Over the tournament (and other games I played so far) I've really liked this version. Gonti hasn't been a dead topdeck yet (always farm energy) and now that Ensnaring Bridge is such a known quantity in Burn, I like Crackling Doom instead. I made the conscious decision to a) not play enchantment removal and b) include shattering spree to only deal with solvable problems (Chalice, affinity/lantern). I might play 18 land for the 4th Charm because the deck is so good at spitting out cmc1 spells, I really can operate on fewer lands than Boros Burn. The reason I haven't yet is because of having keepable opening hands and landfall for Searing Blaze, but maybe that's just mathematically incorrect. This is a side I like about the deck, by the way: it's very easy to objectively point out the correct play/composition of the deck because everything pretty much does the same thing and all you care about is efficiency. I like operating under such restrictive conditions, which gives the deck a lot more play than it appears to have on first glance.
After losing too much against fast decks I have sort of given up for now. I have to admit that Jace, TMS doesn't seem great here, or, better said, he's great in the wrong matchups because those we generally win already anyway. 4 mana brainstorm isn't good enough against the problematic matchups, and sadly 4 mana triple unsummon also isn't good enough there because they either burn us out or have too wide a board.
Looking at the posted results of others, it seems better to go for cheap interaction and speeding up the combo. I still don't like Street Wraith in this deck because it's so bad against the fast decks that pressure your life total, but Nimble Obstructionist has been pretty great. It's very good against fx Storm, which is a pretty poor matchup as they're just a much faster combodeck. Having main deck spell pierce in addition to path would help a lot of course.
However, I thought of just going full-on combo, with a combo that wins the game on the spot (Kiki-Jiki, Mirror Breaker + Deceiver Exarch) but can also be played normally to circumvent graveyard hate. Online I found a video (by Oren Lagziel, search for UR Living End Kiki) of someone playing a middle ground version of these 2 concepts by playing only 2 kiki and 4 untap creatures in a shell of 12 cyclers. I don't know what is better, but I first want to try this sort of all-in version:
I'm not playing Goryo's Vengeance and Griselbrand because they also (fully) rely on the graveyard and that makes it way weaker against graveyard hate as well as more a much more painful manabase. A quick Blood Moon also wins games which is not possible in a 3 color deck.
So far it goldfishes nicely to either a quick blood moon or combo kill, but the first real game I can play with it will be Thursday.
@brandioo1
Your Solemnity opponent seems to have had a nombo in their deck. Devoted Druid and Solemnity don't work together because the solemnity prevents you from being able to use the untap ability of the druid.
It went and felt much better with this version than what I posted before, though some issues were identified. Basically, it's a Blue Moon deck with a slightly less glacial win con and more removal rather than counterspells.
R1 against Merfolk (2-1):
Game 1 he's not doing much and what he does I kill. Eventually I find multiple Sphinx's Tutelages and Skred a Swans of Bryn Argoll to mill him out easily.
Game 2 I'm stuck with only 1 red and multiple red spells in hand. He has Spellskite which stifles my ability to control his board because I can't skred it away in time and I can't play Anger to leave him with just spellskite and a bare Master of Waves so I lose.
Game 3 he lands a T2 Chalice on 1 and some turns later a Chalice on 2. He has a vial going already so he can still put some stuff on the table, but it doesn't really match up against my pyroclasm (before 2nd chalice) into anger. I even find my engineered explosives but I rather lock him out and beat him to death with a swans and Batterskull, hehe.
R2 against Gr Tron (0-2):
Well, I expected Tron to be a poor matchup (hence the Sowing Salt in the SB) and it showed.
Game 1 he's on the play and has T3 Karn Liberated while I look at Blood Moon in hand...
Game 2 I go T3 moon into T4 Sowing Salt, but he dropped Oblivion Stone as a followup to my moon (he'd have had T3 tron again) which made it pretty awkward. I couldn't really force him to use his stone because I only had 1 tutelage and found a swans when he already had mana for a Wurmcoil Engine. I did follow up my T4 sowing salt with a T5 Keranos, God of Storms but unfortunately I was revealing land and drawing land. Eventually, I skredded his wurmcoil, negated a Karn but he topdecked an Ugin, the Spirit Dragon to exile my board. From there I was pretty dead. I'm currently watching the SCG Charlotte Modern Open stream and saw a deck tech with Shaheen Soorani's Esper Mentor. He plays Bribery in the sideboard against Tron and it seems that this is by far the best answer. It deals with their ability to reshuffle their deck and gives me a quick way to win. They can still deal with it using Karn or O-stone so it's not necessarily unbeatable, but together with counterspells and blood moon, it should be a better plan than trying to win a slow game with sowing salt.
R3 against Jund (0-2):
Right, so this was pretty painful. He shredded my hand with tons of discard (not lily) and even though he was on a 100% non-basic mana base, I couldn't find a moon. I actually flooded a bit and didn't even find a skred to easily kill his lonely Tarmogoyf he was clocking me with. I just didn't do much here, which was helped along by the discard even though I played it such that he didn't get all that much value out of it. I played T5 swans with Dispel up which I had to use when he wanted to Lightning Bolt my swans, which he responded to with Terminate. Rather painful damned if you do, damned if you don't situation.
Game 2 I had blood moon in my opening hand, but he had T1 Thoughtseize so that went away quickly. I had T3 tutelage which he answered with Maelstrom Pulse and I followed it up with another tutelage and swans, while holding Skred and Harvest Pyre. Unfortunately, he went bolt into bolt, untap, terminate swans Abrupt Decay tutelage and as you can imagine, I did not win that game..
Against the Jund variant of BGx, Swans seems a bit of a liability :p. Perhaps I don't need it here and I should just board them out for more control to slowly mill them out.
R4 against Goblins (2-1):
Game 1 I mulled to 5 and he quickly beat me down + Goblin Grenaded me down to burn range such that I couldn't stabilize. I also wasn't milling him at all.
Game 2 I milled him out pretty brutally with T3 tutelage followed by Swans while he was hanging on land. When this deck has sweepers, spot removal and counterspells to spare to clear the board + draw cards from swans, it's not hard to win haha.
Game 3 I could cast sweepers into Batterskull which easily went the distance.
So I'm thinking about trying Bribery against Tron (and other Emrakul-containing decks) and another board plan for Jund, but the Skred + Swans felt pretty good. The mana base was also quite ok though I could maybe use a red source more. Shatterstorm should perhaps be Vandalblast to be able to be brought in against more matchups other than just Affinity. Fx, agains Tron it's fine to have it to deal with O-stone early and there's enough removal to contain Affinity to 5 mana or even just destroy an early Cranial Plating. It does interact less favorably with Welding Jar, but I think that's ok.
I didn't like Faithless Looting much in this version, as expected. This is too controlling to just dump cards and by far not enough 'combo' to really care about the extra draw triggers. I also never really had spare 'bad' cards to pitch. The only really dead cards in the main deck are the 2 blood moons, for which Desolate Lighthouse and Izzet Charm seem good enough. This slot will probably become more control because there isn't really a very interesting draw spell to replace it with. Perhaps it could become Electrolyze, together with 1 of the sweepers.
Either way, this didn't feel hopeless and if possible to be turned into blue moon a bit more, probably quite viable. One might wonder why blue moon wouldn't just be a better deck then, but I'd say that's because this deck is more proactive and its wincon is an enchantment that is not dealt with easily. Except by BGx, of course, my eternal nemesis :(.
1
I don't like eidolon in the matchup because they easily block it or fly over it so with vial or coco it's just you who gets punished. Boarding in more searing effects and maybe a few paths is the way to go as it keeps their board clear while you kill them. In case of Bant spirits, make sure to kill the Noble to slow them down a lot and not allow a fast Geist or early queller.
2
The obvious answer to this problem is substituting for cmc 1 spells, which leads to playing black for Bump in the Night and, if you want to really go for it, Gonti's Machinations, as well as a land less. I do think it should be Mardu, because Boros Charm is 1 of the strongest cards in the deck due dealing 4 in 1 card, and it allows for white sideboard cards. After going 4-0 in an FNM with this list, I replaced the last Ensnaring Bridge with the 2nd Crackling Doom in the sideboard and took it to a PPTQ. I played rather poorly and scrubbed out, but took the same 75 to another PPTQ last Saturday and played reasonably well to a winning finish:
4 Arid Mesa
4 Bloodstained Mire
1 Scalding Tarn
4 Blackcleave Cliffs
2 Blood Crypt
2 Sacred Foundry
2 Mountain
Creatures (14)
4 Goblin Guide
4 Monastery Swiftspear
2 Grim Lavamancer
4 Eidolon of the Great Revel
4 Lightning Bolt
4 Lava Spike
4 Bump in the Night
4 Gonti's Machinations
4 Searing Blaze
3 Boros Charm
4 Rift Bolt
2 Crackling Doom
3 Skullcrack
1 Shattering Spree
2 Smash to Smithereens
2 Searing Blood
1 Rest in Peace
2 Exquisite Firecraft
2 Lightning Helix
The rationale here is that I want R/B on turn 1 most, because it allows me to cast almost everything in the deck and allows me to first cast Gonti's Machinations and then fetch and/or shock to get energy. Also, it's nice to not take infinite damage every game due to being 3 colors main.
Beyond that I think that Grim Lavamancer is great (certainly now) and is the only card that I tolerate in the deck that never deals damage as a topdeck.
The tournament itself went pretty smoothly and started out in a telling manner.
Round 1 Hollow One
He mulls and discards all the wrong cards which makes my bad hand good enough (I put him on another deck) to win G1. G2 the one choice I had was to attack into Gurmag Angler and bolt it or not and I decide to do it because he also has a flamewake to get back and doesn't have much else going. He blocks, I kill it and a few spells later he's dead without much pressure on me.
Round 2 Elves
She's not fast out of the gates with me on the play and even shocks in a temple garden for no reason giving me exactly lethal in an easy game. G2 I see no Searing effects, but control her board while attacking. I flood out horribly enough to not get her below 6 life despite her mulligan to 5. Oh well. G3 I again see no searing effect but enough burn to easily put her away. Don't think I've ever lost to Elves with Burn.
Round 3 Bant Spirits
This was pretty brutal. I open on swiftspear after he lays tapped Hallowed Fountain and that plants the idea of UW or Jeskai Control in my head. He then plays Botanical Sanctum but I don't add it up to Bant Spirits so I'm not sure what to do. I decide, with my hand of spike, 2 bolt, 2 rift bolt, to just play land and attack. He does nothing and takes 1, I suspend 2 rift bolts. He plays Rattlechains EoT which makes clear what he's playing so I assume he's on Spell Queller when he plays land 3 and passes after attacking. I rift bolt him twice and go for a spike. He quells, I bolt it and bolt his face for a turn 3 kill from 20 life with 1 overdamage.. 7 power swiftspear, not sure I've seen it that high ever before hehe.
G2 I Sear him out of the game, basically. Think we were done in 10 mins tops.
Round 4 Humans
I'm on the play, which means that his Thalia's Lieutenant + double Phantasmal Image is a turn too slow. I played around Meddling Mage best I could (really don't want to suspend Rift Bolt into it) and can resolve all spells in hand for the win.
G2 he keeps a reasonable 6 on the back of a Thalia, Guardian of Thraben but I have a bolt on t2 to keep attacking and playing spells so that I can double boros charm him to win the race.
Round 5 ID with Jeskai Control
I had a 50/50 on being paired with a fellow x-0 and got lucky. Even luckier that my bad matchup agreed to draw.
Round 6 ID with Naya Burn
I intended to play this round for seeding but due to the other x-0 losing the downpair in R5, IDing would guarantee 2nd or 3rd spot, which I'd take any day over a chance at 1st or maybe dropping out on breakers (mine weren't great).
I get into top 8 as 2nd seed together with, in order, Bogles, me, Jeskai Control, Humans, Infect, Naya Burn, Jund and G Tron.
Top 8 Jund
He thinks it's a good idea to play Dark Confidant against me and is soon explained the error of his ways when he immediately takes 3 from flipping Liliana. He gets lucky enough to not hit a non-land for 2-3 turns after that, though, which would have made it a very easy win, but the fact that I rather discard Blaze to his Kolaghan's Command than hold it for a potential land draw should make it pretty obvious to him that I like him having confidant in play.
Interestingly, I had a Gonti's in play with 1 energy and at first he doesn't even attack with Bob, but then, after having played Lili and dealing with my board, he decides it's time to attack and put me to 2 energy while he's at 4. Now he's dead to any non-land, non-lavamancer draw and promptly dies.
G2 he has a Collective Brutality but he only escalates once and still doesn't do much. Double Gonti give me enough life to race him.
Top 4 Naya Burn
My R6 opponent and now we have to play, but I'm on the play so I'm feeling pretty good. He might play Kor Firewalker and will probably take less damage of his mana base, which would make it much worse, but in principle I'm faster (especially on the play) and only need to dodge his helices.
G1 I have a good hand with 2 lands, haste creature, blaze and burn spells and flip a 2nd searing blaze to his GG. I Blaze and attack and he turns out to have a creature heavy hand, going GG Swift on T2. On my turn I play 3rd land and have to decide on which creature to kill. I choose his Spear as with GG he needs triple bolt exactly to kill me from 11 and with at least 2 spells, spear is bigger than guide. He tells me afterwards he would have had lethal if I killed his GG instead.
G2 I have multiple Helix and Gonti and put him in a spot where he has to shoot first. He does and I burn him out in response.
Top 2 G Tron
As you can see, the Top8 has gone very well for me, and not just in my matches. Tron beat Bogles, Burn beat Jeskai Control, then Tron beat Humans. Fun fact: this exact (well, I played Boros Burn) finals happened before in a big Dutch tournament (Dutch Open Series) in May, which I won. That one was hardly a match, but this one was.
G1 he has the absolute nuts with T3 Wurmcoil T4 wurmcoil. Could have beaten the first one if he didn't have a blocker (or removal for a creature) but sadly he did and I was down a game in a very good matchup.
G2 he mulls to 5 like Tron should in such a matchup and only has T4 tron. He digs for a payoff which only appears on T5: double wurmcoil. Nice. Well, fortunately I got him down to 7 before and go Crackling Doom, untap, Crackling Doom, Skullcrack for the win. The hand was a bit awkward but it got the job done, while he could almost taste victory already. Sorry Dave ;).
G3 I mull to 6, tossing a 3lander without creatures, for a solid 1-lander. He again mulls to 5 and has T4 tron or such. His payoff is a mere Worldbreaker, which I don't care about and as he's tapped out, I can burn him out with charm and crack.
Over the tournament (and other games I played so far) I've really liked this version. Gonti hasn't been a dead topdeck yet (always farm energy) and now that Ensnaring Bridge is such a known quantity in Burn, I like Crackling Doom instead. I made the conscious decision to a) not play enchantment removal and b) include shattering spree to only deal with solvable problems (Chalice, affinity/lantern). I might play 18 land for the 4th Charm because the deck is so good at spitting out cmc1 spells, I really can operate on fewer lands than Boros Burn. The reason I haven't yet is because of having keepable opening hands and landfall for Searing Blaze, but maybe that's just mathematically incorrect. This is a side I like about the deck, by the way: it's very easy to objectively point out the correct play/composition of the deck because everything pretty much does the same thing and all you care about is efficiency. I like operating under such restrictive conditions, which gives the deck a lot more play than it appears to have on first glance.
1
Looking at the posted results of others, it seems better to go for cheap interaction and speeding up the combo. I still don't like Street Wraith in this deck because it's so bad against the fast decks that pressure your life total, but Nimble Obstructionist has been pretty great. It's very good against fx Storm, which is a pretty poor matchup as they're just a much faster combodeck. Having main deck spell pierce in addition to path would help a lot of course.
However, I thought of just going full-on combo, with a combo that wins the game on the spot (Kiki-Jiki, Mirror Breaker + Deceiver Exarch) but can also be played normally to circumvent graveyard hate. Online I found a video (by Oren Lagziel, search for UR Living End Kiki) of someone playing a middle ground version of these 2 concepts by playing only 2 kiki and 4 untap creatures in a shell of 12 cyclers. I don't know what is better, but I first want to try this sort of all-in version:
4 Scalding Tarn
3 Flooded Strand
2 Steam Vents
1 Mountain
3 Island
4 Spirebluff Canal
2 Tolaria West
Creatures (14)
2 Jace, Vryn's Prodigy
4 Simian Spirit Guide
4 Deceiver Exarch
4 Kiki-Jiki, Mirror Breaker
4 Ancestral Vision
4 Living End
4 Serum Visions
4 Faithless Looting
4 Izzet Charm
1 Manamorphose
2 Blood Moon
4 As Foretold
2 Abrade
2 Anger of the Gods
2 Dispel
1 Grafdigger's Cage
2 Lightning Axe
4 Leyline of Sanctity
1 Ceremonious Rejection
1 Blood Moon
I'm not playing Goryo's Vengeance and Griselbrand because they also (fully) rely on the graveyard and that makes it way weaker against graveyard hate as well as more a much more painful manabase. A quick Blood Moon also wins games which is not possible in a 3 color deck.
So far it goldfishes nicely to either a quick blood moon or combo kill, but the first real game I can play with it will be Thursday.
@brandioo1
Your Solemnity opponent seems to have had a nombo in their deck. Devoted Druid and Solemnity don't work together because the solemnity prevents you from being able to use the untap ability of the druid.
1
4 Scalding Tarn
1 Polluted Delta
1 Bloodstained Mire
10 Snow-Covered Island
5 Snow-Covered Mountain
1 Steam Vents
1 Desolate Lighthouse
Creatures
4 Snapcaster Mage
4 Swans of Bryn Argoll
Spells
4 Skred
4 Lightning Bolt
2 Dispel
1 Faithless Looting
4 Serum Visions
2 Deprive
2 Izzet Charm
3 Sphinx's Tutelage
2 Blood Moon
1 Pyroclasm
1 Anger of the Gods
1 Surgical Extraction
1 Dismember
1 Harvest Pyre
3 Rending Volley
1 Keranos, God of Storms
1 Anger of the Gods
1 Engineered Explosives
2 Blood Moon
1 Cryptic Command
1 Negate
1 Spellskite
1 Sowing Salt
1 Vedalken Shackles
1 Shatterstorm
1 Batterksull
It went and felt much better with this version than what I posted before, though some issues were identified. Basically, it's a Blue Moon deck with a slightly less glacial win con and more removal rather than counterspells.
R1 against Merfolk (2-1):
Game 1 he's not doing much and what he does I kill. Eventually I find multiple Sphinx's Tutelages and Skred a Swans of Bryn Argoll to mill him out easily.
Game 2 I'm stuck with only 1 red and multiple red spells in hand. He has Spellskite which stifles my ability to control his board because I can't skred it away in time and I can't play Anger to leave him with just spellskite and a bare Master of Waves so I lose.
Game 3 he lands a T2 Chalice on 1 and some turns later a Chalice on 2. He has a vial going already so he can still put some stuff on the table, but it doesn't really match up against my pyroclasm (before 2nd chalice) into anger. I even find my engineered explosives but I rather lock him out and beat him to death with a swans and Batterskull, hehe.
R2 against Gr Tron (0-2):
Well, I expected Tron to be a poor matchup (hence the Sowing Salt in the SB) and it showed.
Game 1 he's on the play and has T3 Karn Liberated while I look at Blood Moon in hand...
Game 2 I go T3 moon into T4 Sowing Salt, but he dropped Oblivion Stone as a followup to my moon (he'd have had T3 tron again) which made it pretty awkward. I couldn't really force him to use his stone because I only had 1 tutelage and found a swans when he already had mana for a Wurmcoil Engine. I did follow up my T4 sowing salt with a T5 Keranos, God of Storms but unfortunately I was revealing land and drawing land. Eventually, I skredded his wurmcoil, negated a Karn but he topdecked an Ugin, the Spirit Dragon to exile my board. From there I was pretty dead. I'm currently watching the SCG Charlotte Modern Open stream and saw a deck tech with Shaheen Soorani's Esper Mentor. He plays Bribery in the sideboard against Tron and it seems that this is by far the best answer. It deals with their ability to reshuffle their deck and gives me a quick way to win. They can still deal with it using Karn or O-stone so it's not necessarily unbeatable, but together with counterspells and blood moon, it should be a better plan than trying to win a slow game with sowing salt.
R3 against Jund (0-2):
Right, so this was pretty painful. He shredded my hand with tons of discard (not lily) and even though he was on a 100% non-basic mana base, I couldn't find a moon. I actually flooded a bit and didn't even find a skred to easily kill his lonely Tarmogoyf he was clocking me with. I just didn't do much here, which was helped along by the discard even though I played it such that he didn't get all that much value out of it. I played T5 swans with Dispel up which I had to use when he wanted to Lightning Bolt my swans, which he responded to with Terminate. Rather painful damned if you do, damned if you don't situation.
Game 2 I had blood moon in my opening hand, but he had T1 Thoughtseize so that went away quickly. I had T3 tutelage which he answered with Maelstrom Pulse and I followed it up with another tutelage and swans, while holding Skred and Harvest Pyre. Unfortunately, he went bolt into bolt, untap, terminate swans Abrupt Decay tutelage and as you can imagine, I did not win that game..
Against the Jund variant of BGx, Swans seems a bit of a liability :p. Perhaps I don't need it here and I should just board them out for more control to slowly mill them out.
R4 against Goblins (2-1):
Game 1 I mulled to 5 and he quickly beat me down + Goblin Grenaded me down to burn range such that I couldn't stabilize. I also wasn't milling him at all.
Game 2 I milled him out pretty brutally with T3 tutelage followed by Swans while he was hanging on land. When this deck has sweepers, spot removal and counterspells to spare to clear the board + draw cards from swans, it's not hard to win haha.
Game 3 I could cast sweepers into Batterskull which easily went the distance.
So I'm thinking about trying Bribery against Tron (and other Emrakul-containing decks) and another board plan for Jund, but the Skred + Swans felt pretty good. The mana base was also quite ok though I could maybe use a red source more. Shatterstorm should perhaps be Vandalblast to be able to be brought in against more matchups other than just Affinity. Fx, agains Tron it's fine to have it to deal with O-stone early and there's enough removal to contain Affinity to 5 mana or even just destroy an early Cranial Plating. It does interact less favorably with Welding Jar, but I think that's ok.
I didn't like Faithless Looting much in this version, as expected. This is too controlling to just dump cards and by far not enough 'combo' to really care about the extra draw triggers. I also never really had spare 'bad' cards to pitch. The only really dead cards in the main deck are the 2 blood moons, for which Desolate Lighthouse and Izzet Charm seem good enough. This slot will probably become more control because there isn't really a very interesting draw spell to replace it with. Perhaps it could become Electrolyze, together with 1 of the sweepers.
Either way, this didn't feel hopeless and if possible to be turned into blue moon a bit more, probably quite viable. One might wonder why blue moon wouldn't just be a better deck then, but I'd say that's because this deck is more proactive and its wincon is an enchantment that is not dealt with easily. Except by BGx, of course, my eternal nemesis :(.