BTW guys, was having a chat with Zac about the ghost quarter issue, and in the burning version we decided to use Darksteel Citadel instead (for Grid purposes). However I carried it over to the main version and I like for no other reason than it turns on mox opal on turn 1 (citadel, lantern, opal) So nice to be able to cast lantern and a discard spell or lantern and stirrings turn 1. I think you guys should give it a shot.
What is the point of including The Great Aurora? I have played around with it. Both with Pact (interesting, but unreliable) and in a build like yours. In the latter case it was fun with Ulamog and Ugin - felt kind of like the Karn mini game. But I wasn't clear what benefit it actually provides, so I abandoned my testing. Certainly it clears the board, but by that time life was often low enough to be in very real danger from the handful of cards I just gave my opponent. What am I missing?
Aurora is actually a savior when you're at low life because you're running both retreat and nissas renewal. If you have 9 mana of more (most of the time i have some floating) and you're in danger of dying you reset board state and cast retreat and use all remaining mana to reramp, gaining tons of life in the process. Just casting retreat and then renewal after aurora is a gain of 13 life by itself. Even casting retreat and then only explosive veg is good enough to get you out of the red zone if they aren't running haste creatures. You only need to survive one turn because after aurora you almost certainly have ugin or ulamog which gets played the second turn after you ramp. Its especially great after they unload their entire hand back on the table and you immediately wipe it with ugin. Absolute worst case scenario, you winds and buy yourself a turn afterwords. In almost 70 matches played I've only lost 3 times total where I resolved an Aurora.
In that game opponent disconnected so he lost on time. However, he was definitely beat since we already had a library advantage on him and he had no way to escape from leyline since blood moon turned off his academy ruins and abrupt decays.
I think the list has good potential, will be hard to beat some of the winrates of the old lantern list, but I will say that I'm 3 for 3 vs burn matches so far and felt in control in pretty much all of the games. The burn really stops the small creatures until bridge comes out and then with lock in place we just out burn him by drawing all our burn and not giving him any of his. And obviously leyline and bridge is insta win. Also against jund, we can now just cast blood moon which causes jund lots of problems and their problem cards like liliana and gyof now get handled with our burn.
A little bit of an update on my Great Aurora deck. I made some small tweaks, which include dropping the 4xJaddi Offshoot as a start. While I like the card, the fact is I didn't feel like I was getting enough life gain from it to warrant it having a slot. I was running both it and retreat to kazandu and I had to decide which one would be more beneficial to have and I settled on retreat. On average I was only getting 4-5 life out of Jaddi before he either died or I died, and while retreat was slower if I could get it on board I gained a lot more life and survived a lot longer on average. I also drop the 2 hangarbacks and added 3xWhisperer of the Wilds That gave me 3 open slots from dropping jaddi, and I filled it with 3x Winds of Qal Sisma. I think having winds maindeck really gives me a chance to survive to Ugin/Ulamog than jaddi, as normally when I die, I'm only one turn away from dropping my threat. The deck list is now this:
I now have 3 slots open in the sideboard, I'm really not sure what I want to put there, so any suggestions would be great.
Since making the adjustments I've gone 9-1 in my matches and won a few vs Abzan which has been a pretty hard match so far. Still remains to be seen how the deck is going to fair against RDW but with 3 more open sideboard slots I should be able to at least make it a winnable matchup. I'm also 6-1 vs the mirror (both R/G and U/G variants, Aurora really gives me a solid advantage in those matches)
I wasn't running Sanctum because with Aurora I end up having a threat in hand after casting, so early game I usually have a finisher or a way to get one in my hand. I think the biggest problems I'm seeing is getting stuffed early game, so that's why I was thinking of adding a fewWhisperer of the Wilds or Visionary instead of the hangarbacks. I also thought about adding From Beyond but maybe that's just a little too slow to help with getting off the ground as opposed to some of the other options. Maybe I'm just missing value with no Sanctum, I definitely love blighted woodland, just don't know what the other nonbasic should be.
I wanted to share my deck list here and get some feedback. My deck is a MonoG ramp running Ulamog and Ugin but the powerhouse card is The Great Aurora. I think people have missed the mark on how powerful this card really is.
The point of The Great Aurora is to get as much permanant dominance before casting. My games start as normal ramp with Rattleclaw Mystic, Nissa's Pilgrimage, Explosive Vegetation, and Nissa's Renewal. I also run Jaddi Offshoot and Retreat to Kazandu because the life gain I gain from lands coming in when I ramp keeps me alive vs the more aggro decks. Depending on my opening hands and draws, once I get to 9-10 mana, I have a few options. I can drop Ulamog and start winning the game if I don't have Aurora in my hand. But the real goal is not to take any risk and get to 9-10 and reset the board. When you cast Aurora, you will basically have a board state after that is incedibly favorable for you, most times I have 8-12 lands in play and my opponent has 5, plus any mana that I had floating from the casting (you always tap out to cast Aurora) and a handful of threats. At this point I can lead my life gain cards like Jaddi and Retreat, and reramp all over agin, gaining massive amounts of life in the process (A lot of my games finish with me over 60 life). Or you can Aurora and then drop Ulamog and hit their lands even further. To put it simply, I have never lost a game where I got to cast Aurora.
The mana base is very open, currently I'm running 25 with Blighted Woodland being my only 4 of nonbasic. I was running Sanctum of Ugin, but I haven't really had the need to chain so far, but I'm open to adding it back. I also have 2 Shrine of the Forsaken Gods, but only 2. I don't want to run 4 of both, as it is I already get some starting draws that are kind of iffy with too much colorless mana. I just don't know which one I want 4 of.
As far as the sideboard goes, I'm kind of up in the air about it. I've got Winds of Qal Sisma to give me that extra turn alive when I need it. I've also got Whisperwood Elemental for the aggro match, Gaea's Revenge for the counter match, Orbs of Warding for the discard match, and Void Winnower for the mirror match (love this card, I end up siding it in a lot).
I've played about 100 games so far and I'm starting to get really solid results, once I figured out what hands to mull and how to sideboard. I think this deck has a ton of potential and is pretty consistant, I feel it just needs a few tweaks to really be a star. Any suggestions are appreciated, thanks!
Sounds like you could tell us more about the ramp archetype than we could tell you. 2 hangar back walkers seem odd. Esp. in the late game when you don't have a sanctum to trigger your eldrazi. And tell me how sad you get because people are always killing your mystic the turn in comes into play.
I agree that the hangars seem odd, I have them in my flex spot. It's nice that they chump for me sometimes and every now and then I get a huge one out, but for the most part I feel like they don't do much. I was thinking about pulling them in favor of another mana dork, or maybe running elvish visionary in that spot. I guess I could also run 2 winds in that spot to try to keep me alive if things go south in game 1, just not sure which would be more beneficial. And yes, I hate when my mystics get axed right off the bat lol
I wanted to share my deck list here and get some feedback. My deck is a MonoG ramp running Ulamog and Ugin but the powerhouse card is The Great Aurora. I think people have missed the mark on how powerful this card really is.
The point of The Great Aurora is to get as much permanant dominance before casting. My games start as normal ramp with Rattleclaw Mystic, Nissa's Pilgrimage, Explosive Vegetation, and Nissa's Renewal. I also run Jaddi Offshoot and Retreat to Kazandu because the life gain I gain from lands coming in when I ramp keeps me alive vs the more aggro decks. Depending on my opening hands and draws, once I get to 9-10 mana, I have a few options. I can drop Ulamog and start winning the game if I don't have Aurora in my hand. But the real goal is not to take any risk and get to 9-10 and reset the board. When you cast Aurora, you will basically have a board state after that is incedibly favorable for you, most times I have 8-12 lands in play and my opponent has 5, plus any mana that I had floating from the casting (you always tap out to cast Aurora) and a handful of threats. At this point I can lead my life gain cards like Jaddi and Retreat, and reramp all over agin, gaining massive amounts of life in the process (A lot of my games finish with me over 60 life). Or you can Aurora and then drop Ulamog and hit their lands even further. To put it simply, I have never lost a game where I got to cast Aurora.
The mana base is very open, currently I'm running 25 with Blighted Woodland being my only 4 of nonbasic. I was running Sanctum of Ugin, but I haven't really had the need to chain so far, but I'm open to adding it back. I also have 2 Shrine of the Forsaken Gods, but only 2. I don't want to run 4 of both, as it is I already get some starting draws that are kind of iffy with too much colorless mana. I just don't know which one I want 4 of.
As far as the sideboard goes, I'm kind of up in the air about it. I've got Winds of Qal Sisma to give me that extra turn alive when I need it. I've also got Whisperwood Elemental for the aggro match, Gaea's Revenge for the counter match, Orbs of Warding for the discard match, and Void Winnower for the mirror match (love this card, I end up siding it in a lot).
I've played about 100 games so far and I'm starting to get really solid results, once I figured out what hands to mull and how to sideboard. I think this deck has a ton of potential and is pretty consistant, I feel it just needs a few tweaks to really be a star. Any suggestions are appreciated, thanks!
So after testing a list for a little while thats similar to TacticalCelebrant's list, here's the conclusions that I've come to:
I tried maindecking Gideon, and most of the time I was rather sad he was in my hand. I found him competing with me trying to cast Citadel that turn, or hold up mana for a Stasis, and after turn 4, there just so many other things I wanted to be spending my mana on than him.
I have yet to have Knight of the White Orcid be useful for me. Maybe it's just sample size, but when I'm on the play I almost never find myself behind in lands to where his ability is useful. When I'm on the draw I have to hold up my turn 3 slot to cast him to get the land which is nice, but turn 3 is when I want to be dropping Monastery Siege, which helps us with land problems anyway. Past turn 3 I REALLY can't find time to cast him unless I'm just totally gassed because there so many better cards to be played on turn 4-5-6. My great curve for those spots is turn 4 citadel, turn 5 throne, turn 6 quarantine field for 2 perms, those 3 turns are a game changer. I haven't given Knight the axe yet,but he he doesn't start showing some worth soon, I will.
Narset is a wrecking ball. I'm seriously thinking of running 2 maindeck, just because her +1 is so good for us, and against control, getting off her ultimate is the nuts. Oh and to nobody's surprise, letting your opponent land her with no quarantine field, is certain death for you lol. I also think Displacement Wave is a great sideboard card as well. I want to devote most of my sideboard against control since that seems to be the worst matchup by far, and having displacement wave basically single handedly covers our side in for aggro decks like Atarka.
I also think we should run 25 lands, because I don't like missing late land drops. Yes i know that Knight is "supposed" to help with that but again, casting him late game is always a problem because of so many better casting options, I'd rather just make sure I'm drawing lands when I don't have monastery out.
Let me know if you guys agree or where I'm being stupid at. I think this deck has Tier 1 potential with the right tune, we just need to find out what it is.
There's been some discussion about agressive mulling, and I'm just trying to get a good grasp on what hands we're letting go. Zac, you said you really don't keep any hand that doesn't have a lantern or a bridge in it. Is this a hard rule for you, or can you get by with taking a hand that has some discard and mill rocks but no bridge/lantern against slower or specific matchups?
Aurora is actually a savior when you're at low life because you're running both retreat and nissas renewal. If you have 9 mana of more (most of the time i have some floating) and you're in danger of dying you reset board state and cast retreat and use all remaining mana to reramp, gaining tons of life in the process. Just casting retreat and then renewal after aurora is a gain of 13 life by itself. Even casting retreat and then only explosive veg is good enough to get you out of the red zone if they aren't running haste creatures. You only need to survive one turn because after aurora you almost certainly have ugin or ulamog which gets played the second turn after you ramp. Its especially great after they unload their entire hand back on the table and you immediately wipe it with ugin. Absolute worst case scenario, you winds and buy yourself a turn afterwords. In almost 70 matches played I've only lost 3 times total where I resolved an Aurora.
In that game opponent disconnected so he lost on time. However, he was definitely beat since we already had a library advantage on him and he had no way to escape from leyline since blood moon turned off his academy ruins and abrupt decays.
I think the list has good potential, will be hard to beat some of the winrates of the old lantern list, but I will say that I'm 3 for 3 vs burn matches so far and felt in control in pretty much all of the games. The burn really stops the small creatures until bridge comes out and then with lock in place we just out burn him by drawing all our burn and not giving him any of his. And obviously leyline and bridge is insta win. Also against jund, we can now just cast blood moon which causes jund lots of problems and their problem cards like liliana and gyof now get handled with our burn.
A little bit of an update on my Great Aurora deck. I made some small tweaks, which include dropping the 4xJaddi Offshoot as a start. While I like the card, the fact is I didn't feel like I was getting enough life gain from it to warrant it having a slot. I was running both it and retreat to kazandu and I had to decide which one would be more beneficial to have and I settled on retreat. On average I was only getting 4-5 life out of Jaddi before he either died or I died, and while retreat was slower if I could get it on board I gained a lot more life and survived a lot longer on average. I also drop the 2 hangarbacks and added 3xWhisperer of the Wilds That gave me 3 open slots from dropping jaddi, and I filled it with 3x Winds of Qal Sisma. I think having winds maindeck really gives me a chance to survive to Ugin/Ulamog than jaddi, as normally when I die, I'm only one turn away from dropping my threat. The deck list is now this:
4x Rattleclaw Mystic
3x Whisperer of the Wilds
3x Ulamog, the Ceaseless Hunger
Spells:
4x The Great Aurora
4x Nissa's Pilgrimage
4x Explosive Vegetation
4x Nissa's Renewal
3x Ugin, the Spirit Dragon
3x Retreat to Kazandu
3x Winds of Qal Sisma
19x Forest
4x Blighted Woodland
2x Shrine of the Forsaken Gods
4x Whisperwood Elemental
4x Gaea's Revenge
3x Void Winnower
1x Retreat to Kazandu
3x ???
I now have 3 slots open in the sideboard, I'm really not sure what I want to put there, so any suggestions would be great.
Since making the adjustments I've gone 9-1 in my matches and won a few vs Abzan which has been a pretty hard match so far. Still remains to be seen how the deck is going to fair against RDW but with 3 more open sideboard slots I should be able to at least make it a winnable matchup. I'm also 6-1 vs the mirror (both R/G and U/G variants, Aurora really gives me a solid advantage in those matches)
I agree that the hangars seem odd, I have them in my flex spot. It's nice that they chump for me sometimes and every now and then I get a huge one out, but for the most part I feel like they don't do much. I was thinking about pulling them in favor of another mana dork, or maybe running elvish visionary in that spot. I guess I could also run 2 winds in that spot to try to keep me alive if things go south in game 1, just not sure which would be more beneficial. And yes, I hate when my mystics get axed right off the bat lol
I wanted to share my deck list here and get some feedback. My deck is a MonoG ramp running Ulamog and Ugin but the powerhouse card is The Great Aurora. I think people have missed the mark on how powerful this card really is.
The point of The Great Aurora is to get as much permanant dominance before casting. My games start as normal ramp with Rattleclaw Mystic, Nissa's Pilgrimage, Explosive Vegetation, and Nissa's Renewal. I also run Jaddi Offshoot and Retreat to Kazandu because the life gain I gain from lands coming in when I ramp keeps me alive vs the more aggro decks. Depending on my opening hands and draws, once I get to 9-10 mana, I have a few options. I can drop Ulamog and start winning the game if I don't have Aurora in my hand. But the real goal is not to take any risk and get to 9-10 and reset the board. When you cast Aurora, you will basically have a board state after that is incedibly favorable for you, most times I have 8-12 lands in play and my opponent has 5, plus any mana that I had floating from the casting (you always tap out to cast Aurora) and a handful of threats. At this point I can lead my life gain cards like Jaddi and Retreat, and reramp all over agin, gaining massive amounts of life in the process (A lot of my games finish with me over 60 life). Or you can Aurora and then drop Ulamog and hit their lands even further. To put it simply, I have never lost a game where I got to cast Aurora.
The mana base is very open, currently I'm running 25 with Blighted Woodland being my only 4 of nonbasic. I was running Sanctum of Ugin, but I haven't really had the need to chain so far, but I'm open to adding it back. I also have 2 Shrine of the Forsaken Gods, but only 2. I don't want to run 4 of both, as it is I already get some starting draws that are kind of iffy with too much colorless mana. I just don't know which one I want 4 of.
As far as the sideboard goes, I'm kind of up in the air about it. I've got Winds of Qal Sisma to give me that extra turn alive when I need it. I've also got Whisperwood Elemental for the aggro match, Gaea's Revenge for the counter match, Orbs of Warding for the discard match, and Void Winnower for the mirror match (love this card, I end up siding it in a lot).
I've played about 100 games so far and I'm starting to get really solid results, once I figured out what hands to mull and how to sideboard. I think this deck has a ton of potential and is pretty consistant, I feel it just needs a few tweaks to really be a star. Any suggestions are appreciated, thanks!
4x Jaddi Offshoot
4x Rattleclaw Mystic
3x Ulamog, the Ceaseless Hunger
2x Hangarback Walker
Spells:
4x The Great Aurora
4x Nissa's Pilgrimage
4x Explosive Vegetation
4x Nissa's Renewal
3x Ugin, the Spirit Dragon
3x Retreat to Kazandu
19x Forest
4x Blighted Woodland
2x Shrine of the Forsaken Gods
4x Whisperwood Elemental
4x Gaea's Revenge
3x Void Winnower
3x Winds of Qal Sisma
1x Orbs of Warding
So after testing a list for a little while thats similar to TacticalCelebrant's list, here's the conclusions that I've come to:
I tried maindecking Gideon, and most of the time I was rather sad he was in my hand. I found him competing with me trying to cast Citadel that turn, or hold up mana for a Stasis, and after turn 4, there just so many other things I wanted to be spending my mana on than him.
I have yet to have Knight of the White Orcid be useful for me. Maybe it's just sample size, but when I'm on the play I almost never find myself behind in lands to where his ability is useful. When I'm on the draw I have to hold up my turn 3 slot to cast him to get the land which is nice, but turn 3 is when I want to be dropping Monastery Siege, which helps us with land problems anyway. Past turn 3 I REALLY can't find time to cast him unless I'm just totally gassed because there so many better cards to be played on turn 4-5-6. My great curve for those spots is turn 4 citadel, turn 5 throne, turn 6 quarantine field for 2 perms, those 3 turns are a game changer. I haven't given Knight the axe yet,but he he doesn't start showing some worth soon, I will.
Narset is a wrecking ball. I'm seriously thinking of running 2 maindeck, just because her +1 is so good for us, and against control, getting off her ultimate is the nuts. Oh and to nobody's surprise, letting your opponent land her with no quarantine field, is certain death for you lol. I also think Displacement Wave is a great sideboard card as well. I want to devote most of my sideboard against control since that seems to be the worst matchup by far, and having displacement wave basically single handedly covers our side in for aggro decks like Atarka.
I also think we should run 25 lands, because I don't like missing late land drops. Yes i know that Knight is "supposed" to help with that but again, casting him late game is always a problem because of so many better casting options, I'd rather just make sure I'm drawing lands when I don't have monastery out.
Let me know if you guys agree or where I'm being stupid at. I think this deck has Tier 1 potential with the right tune, we just need to find out what it is.
There's been some discussion about agressive mulling, and I'm just trying to get a good grasp on what hands we're letting go. Zac, you said you really don't keep any hand that doesn't have a lantern or a bridge in it. Is this a hard rule for you, or can you get by with taking a hand that has some discard and mill rocks but no bridge/lantern against slower or specific matchups?