I think black splash is great. Aside from making all the creatures castable (excluding minotaur) it also allows as to suspend living end which is not irrelevant. Overall, I like changes GlauberT has made to the list. Cathartic Reunion wasn't stellar for me when I was trying out his initial list and 4 main macabres are great. They provide 4 more "free" cyclers making hollow bois easier to cast on t1 with or even without looting as well as maindeck GY hate. The one thing i'm not sure are fatal pushes in the SB. They're probably there for Thing, but I wonder if lightning bolt might be better to have additional reach for plan B (hollow/jackal)
Our deck cannot survive the looting ban, as it gives our deck selection and velocity we need and there is no real alternative in mardu colors. This is an unlikely ban though, and I think looting is going to stay with us
That's an interesting board plan as he seem to not care about the slow clock at all. He also brings in wear//tear, 4th thoughtseize and I assume 3rd moon. I wonder what he takes out for these 8 cards? 1x Terminate, 2x Fatal Push, 1x Forked Bolt, 2x Lightning Helix are easy cuts, but what about other 2? Trim some number of bolts/lingering souls, maybe 1/1?
Nahiri is fine as we often have more than 4 lands in play. It was mentioned before that Selfeisek plays Helix since the beginning and never switched to CB. His 5-0 doesn't mean that Helix is better, than CB. It means that Selfeisek is a good magic player.
Creature based hate against scapeshift isn't optimal as they have 4 bolts and 4 sweltering suns/anger after sideboard against us. I'd try alpine moon - it's cheap (in both aspects), hates tron and valakut.
Thanks for the primer! It's really interesting to read.
A general question about sideboard guide: It's unclear, do all the cards you suggested to board-in are strictly better than the cards you suggested to board-out?
Speaking of Selfeisek's manabase (1 crypt, 2 foundries and plains), I played a little bit with it and quite liked it. Obviously I didn't play any Liliana pw in my 75. I think that having access to basic plains is much more valueble than the risk of having awkward opening hand. UWx getting more popular and them playing Field of Ruins is another reason to have basic plains as we want to cast lingering souls from our hand a lot of the time in the matchup.
What do you guys think of Terminate/Dreadbore split these days? I play 0/2 and it feels ok. What for do we need instant speed clause in Terminate that makes an ability of killing PW less valuable?
On UW matchup (I assume we're talking about UW Control)
Push deals with colonnade
Moon deals with colonnade, Azcanta, Field of Ruin
Kambal doesn't really do anything relevant
So taking this into an account I would do this:
- Terminate (I find it to be more expensive push in this MU)
- Path (I don't think it's necessary)
- 2 Lightning Bolt (not enough relevant targets, trying to burn them out seems like a bad plan).
+ CB (discard their sweepers is important)
+ Liliana
+ Wear//Tear (Azcanta, Seas, Detention Sphere, RiP after sideboard)
+ EE (can deal with enchantments, tokens, and even planeswalkers)
I disagree with that plan a little bit. I would leave in Terminate over Push since Terminate can kill Gideon Jura. The extra mana does not matter in this matchup really. Therefore I think boarding out Push is correct.
I am also not high on all EE vs them when we already bring in Wear // Tear. It feels overloading on enchantment removal which can be stuck in your hand. If I had only 1 Wear // Tear though its prob okay to bring in 1 EE as well.
Blood Moon is quite bad vs straight UW, even if it deals with Colonnade. But Colonnade is not the main problem, its the PW as wincons.
Kambal is not great either, but its a threat against them and the deck basically only consists of noncreature Spells, I think its fine to bring in to increase the threat density. Keep them on the backfoot is always important.
Terminate can kill Jura only if it's attacking. If UW opponent goes aggro against our deck, then we probably already lost. I see push as a more efficient removal for their blockers/manlands
I only suggested EE because he doesn't have second Wear//Tear in his 75. I wouldn't board it otherwise.
Blood Moon not only deals with Colonnade, but with flipped Azcanta as well, which is much more threatening imo.
Against the top decks of the meta - Humans and Hollow One - I prefer the Last Hope and she is also amazing in any attrition-based matchup.
I do also see quite a lot of people cutting Blood Moon from the mainboard, which is a big mistake in my opinion. The card just gives you free wins and we all know how important free wins are in a bigger tournament.
I am going to keep asking this until I get a concrete answer, which no one in this thread has provided: What decks do you supposedly get "Free wins" from by playing blood moon? Everyone says that it gives yo free wins, but no one will ever tell me what decks you get those wins against.
The decks you list - Tron, Humans, Hollow One; none of them care about a turn 3 blood moon - either their mana is so set that it doesn't affect them, or the one deck that WOULD be affected by it can just rawdog their threats on turn 6 and 7 without fear because we aren't able to use the three intervening turns to actually win the game. Young Pyromancer continues to be half of a dragon fodder for the cost, and that's assuming you draw it, which is not at all reliable.
I want to play the deck because the theory behind it looks amazing - but in practice you just loot 5 times, maybe flashback one lingering souls and die to a horde of 4/4s or 5/6s or bigger. It doesn't DO anything proactive.
I don't think there is a concrete answer you want, like "every time you play blood moon on T3 against deck X, you win". It gives time in some matches, a chance of easy win in others with a cost of being a dead card in third (which you can loot away, so no big deal). I keep 1 copy in main and feel fine about it.
I like the deck because it has a game against a major chunk of the field. It is not an easy one to master - sideboard, mulligans, all this adds up to your win percentage. Although it folds to Tron, figuring out an optimal sideboard plan makes it even more interesting for me.
I've played about 20 games with this deck on MO these days. What troubled me most is the mana base. With only 20 lands in the deck, it's usual to see only 1 land and Faithless looting in the openning hand. I thought they were keepable hands, but then I stuck to 1 land and lost quickly for 3-4 times. Any suggestion on that?
Well, that happens. I would keep FLooting + one land only in combination with one mana disruption spell (discard in particular). As for your question, I wouldn't add any more lands because our curve is so low, that we can often operate even with two lands (not ideal, but doable). I added 1 Ghost Quarter as a utility land into the sideboard for particular matches(Tron/Scapeshift) because aside from it's primary usage, it helps resolve 3 mana spell on turn 3 more consistently
Nahiri is just a good grindy planswalker with a build-in enchantment hate and conditional creature removal
What is your sideboard plan against Tron in details - what do you side in and side out? What do you expect in your opener?
A general question about sideboard guide: It's unclear, do all the cards you suggested to board-in are strictly better than the cards you suggested to board-out?
What do you guys think of Terminate/Dreadbore split these days? I play 0/2 and it feels ok. What for do we need instant speed clause in Terminate that makes an ability of killing PW less valuable?
Terminate can kill Jura only if it's attacking. If UW opponent goes aggro against our deck, then we probably already lost. I see push as a more efficient removal for their blockers/manlands
I only suggested EE because he doesn't have second Wear//Tear in his 75. I wouldn't board it otherwise.
Blood Moon not only deals with Colonnade, but with flipped Azcanta as well, which is much more threatening imo.
I haven't tried Kambal tbh, so maybe it's decent.
I don't think there is a concrete answer you want, like "every time you play blood moon on T3 against deck X, you win". It gives time in some matches, a chance of easy win in others with a cost of being a dead card in third (which you can loot away, so no big deal). I keep 1 copy in main and feel fine about it.
I like the deck because it has a game against a major chunk of the field. It is not an easy one to master - sideboard, mulligans, all this adds up to your win percentage. Although it folds to Tron, figuring out an optimal sideboard plan makes it even more interesting for me.
Well, that happens. I would keep FLooting + one land only in combination with one mana disruption spell (discard in particular). As for your question, I wouldn't add any more lands because our curve is so low, that we can often operate even with two lands (not ideal, but doable). I added 1 Ghost Quarter as a utility land into the sideboard for particular matches(Tron/Scapeshift) because aside from it's primary usage, it helps resolve 3 mana spell on turn 3 more consistently