Challenging the norm and taking out a key card in the engine of the deck are two completely things. "Hey guys, what if we don't play exarch in twin?" "Hey guys, does Tron really need Ancient Stirrings?" "You know what we should take out of burn, Lightning Bolt."
I don't get this. Could you explain? How does cutting Urborg and going to 4 GQ help cast spells? GQ can tap for colorless either way. But it can't tap black w/o Urborg. Urborg also turns on the stolen enemy fetches that we can't otherwise use. What color variant are you thinking about here? (I wish people would ID their decks, I lose track of who is who.)
It has significantly improved my mana consistency, though it is still not perfect, at 13 B and 10 W instead of 14/12, with only 3 basics. Could cut one more Swamp for +1 Caves of Koilos to go to 13/11 and still have one of each basic. This comes at at the cost of weakening the game against Inkmoth/Tron by cutting GQ. My low basic count also feels pretty marginal in a meta full of Path, Blood Moon, and GQ.
BW is already pretty good against Inkmoth but Tron is everywhere and is so hard to beat without a good dose of luck. 2 more GQ and 2 Crucible of Worlds in the board would help a lot.
How is Mono-B vs. Tron? Vs. Affinity and Infect? Anyone want to post reports on these match ups from either or both perspectives?
The key is in the details
"Ok I'm thinking out of the box here. What if... we dont play Urborg, tomb of yawgmoth but instead put in duallands or utility cards in that spot? then we could play 4 of Ghost Quarter no problem, we would be able to play our spells on time consistently. "
Eldrazi Temple 4
Ghost Quarter 3
Marsh Flats 4
Eye of Ugin 3
Godless Shrine 4
Swamp 1
Plains 1
Caves of Koilos 4
= 24 lands
Gives you 13 of either black or white source (one to many white, one too few black). Or if you prefer 2 eye of ugin - then you could play 4 Ghost quarters.
Ah enemy fetches, yes there is a reason to run Urborg. That might also be a reason why you should run Expedition maps.
What? You're cutting Urborg to add more Godless shrines? What? Dude, what?
Ok I'm thinking out of the box here. What if... we dont play Urborg, tomb of yawgmoth but instead put in duallands or utility cards in that spot? then we could play 4 of Ghost Quarter no problem, we would be able to play our spells on time consistently. And we only need one coloured source for our spells (barring the possible future inclussion of the 1BB sweeper) so the lands we steal with Oblivion Sower doesn't really help us that much in casting our spells in colour anyway, most of them are colourless.
The only thing we give up is the potential ramp of 1 mana IF we already have an Eye of Ugin in play, and that cards is legendary so we can never gain more than 1 mana ramp from it. Comparing that to tron where every piece can be played in multiples and give additional mana if they are combined, Urborg just doesnt offer that much to us compared to consistency and utility land options.
People seem to have giving up on this being a ramp deck and removing expedition map from the deck. Instead focusing on discard and removal - all of which are coloured spells (although black, so this doesnt really matter) - but adding duals (for easier time casting our offcolour spells) or GQ which help against some of our difficult matchups - tron, affinity, infect.
With the exclusion of Urborg we might even dabble with tri-colour variants...
Thoughts?
If it entered tapped I think I would be more against it as a one-of but I think its fine as is for a one-of. I think the only downside is the susceptibility to non-basic land hate but quite frankly, our deck has enough targets that it really isn't that big of a deal.
The only reason why you'd include it is as a little insurance against blood moon because it IS a basic land.
Disenchant, Celestial Purge, and EE are the ones I go to. Otherwise, playing 6 lands and casting sower is pretty solid. Their fetches become your mountains. Blood Moon typically always hurts both sides. You can sometimes just let it hurt them more than it hurts you with the right draws.
Id consider a basic wastes to be a pretty big downside in lots of matchups, actually.
I'm only speaking on behalf of mono-B here, but what downside is there to including one wastes in any one individual matchup?
An entire turn's worth of tempo. As a fish deck, we want to put higher value on the board than our opponent can deal with. We do this by synergizing our lands with our creatures such that we can get 6 CMC of creature on the board for as little as 3 lands. A basic wastes instantly bumps this to 4 at which point our opponents have their own 4 mana worth of answers. Our creatures aren't all that good on a natural curve. There are many more busted things to be doing with natural 5/6 mana. The closer you push our creatures to being naturally on curve, the less explosive and threatening they are. Wastes is an on curve land in an off curve deck, and unless you have some way of turning this sea gate land on, it is a worse wastes. My testing has shown that dumping our hand is a very difficult task.
I didn't say full grip, but Im almost never hellbent. Start taking note of how many times you actually run out of cards completely. This deck doesn't dump its hand. It typically plays 1 giant threat at a time. Also, as for LotV, you should really test her in the BW version. She's an additional discard spell and an additional removal spell stapled together, but I don't think I really need to be explaining how good the best PW in modern is.
This card doesn't help UB any more than it helps any other variant. As for not jamming LotV with Sea Gate, I think that is a huge mistake. I play this deck a lot, and I am very VERY infrequently without cards in hand. LotV is a very strong magic card and a natural inclusion when her +1 becomes "Pay 4 mana, draw a card and your opponent discards a card." Otherwise, Sea Gate will too often be a basic wastes in our deck, and thats not a card worth playing.
Parity specifically means number of cards. Obviously parity isn't what matters here, but quality and selection. Path is not a parity card, but you trade a spell to turn their creature into a land. In the case of clique like effects, you take their best card and turn it into a random card. Its always pretty good.
I said this in the BW thread, but this new Bearer of Silence guy is really bad. He gets 0 benefit from our lands. Eye of Ugin only reduces his cost by 1, so its like a normal land drop. His ability isn't activated so temple doesn't help. Since he is 1B, you can't even tap temple to cast him since it would just be for the 1 mana. Outside of the fringe Eye+Urborg+Temple, case, he's not castable till you're paying full cost for him. And if you have Eye+Urborg+Temple, you could be getting 6 mana worth in value, not 4. He just really isn't that good.
I think it's a good 1-2 of in the sideboard for matchups where Strangler can't kill anything like Tron or Boggles, but I agree that it's probably not main deck material.
Yeah, i do agree, side might be the better option for him
I disagree. For all of this deck's land mechanic it is NOT an eldrazi, it has ZERO upside in our deck. He is only being discussed because he has creature type "eldrazi" but this is completely irrelevant for all of this deck's purposes. If you are looking for an edict effect there are already a lot available that are just better. For bogles just pack a couple of spellskite plus ratchet bomb for mono black or engineered explosives for b/x and call it a day (and they also don't get screwed by the opponent fetching dryad arbor or just playing a second bogle).
The real question is would you play a 4 mana 2/1 that can't block and has an edict effect, but isn't an eldrazi?
Echoing my thoughts exactly. Just because he is an eldrazi, doesn't mean he deserves testing. He benefits 0 from the way our deck is set up. I think its a pretty easy auto non include.
What? You're cutting Urborg to add more Godless shrines? What? Dude, what?
Absolutely not
We are talking about sea gate.
An entire turn's worth of tempo. As a fish deck, we want to put higher value on the board than our opponent can deal with. We do this by synergizing our lands with our creatures such that we can get 6 CMC of creature on the board for as little as 3 lands. A basic wastes instantly bumps this to 4 at which point our opponents have their own 4 mana worth of answers. Our creatures aren't all that good on a natural curve. There are many more busted things to be doing with natural 5/6 mana. The closer you push our creatures to being naturally on curve, the less explosive and threatening they are. Wastes is an on curve land in an off curve deck, and unless you have some way of turning this sea gate land on, it is a worse wastes. My testing has shown that dumping our hand is a very difficult task.
Echoing my thoughts exactly. Just because he is an eldrazi, doesn't mean he deserves testing. He benefits 0 from the way our deck is set up. I think its a pretty easy auto non include.