I like running extra Wurmcoil right now, but I'm preferring a 1/1 split in the main and side. Many times you only need the one, but in matchups like Jund you want to be resilient to discard.
Mind Stone is really good right now, I ran up to 3 copies in a league but once I had two of them in an otherwise great opening hand I realized that's why we don't want too many copies. One is perfect to see in the opener, but anymore makes the hand do less and become too slow. I think it's perfect as a two-of.
The reason I'm wary of Batterskull in the 75 and Collar in the maindeck is one card. Ancient Grudge. It's everywhere right now, Dredge and Hollow One are milling into their own yards, Jund always seems to draw at least a copy post-board, etc. It's such a cheap answer to these cards. That, and a lot of removal meaning there's nothing to equip the collar with. However, if you are using 2x Collar in the 75, may as well be a 1/1 split so you can snag free wins off the Collar + Ballista or Bringer combo.
Since you don't have Caverns at the moment, going up to 4x Ghost Quarter to help against Affinity and GX Tron will be better than going up to 3 Sanctums. I've ran Sanctum of Ugin for a long time and played hundreds of matches with it and I can count on one hand the number of times where I would have wanted a second Sanctum of Ugin in a game, whereas there's been plenty of times I wish I had room for one or two more Ghost Quarters as I'm failing to naturally draw them early against Affinity and Tron.
Ugin is a card I really really like, but I'm pretty afraid of it being a dead card in hand because I fail to get tron active. The meta is looking prime for it though. I would prefer to have my 2x dust in the main and Ugin in the side for when he is so good it's worth being risky with how expensive he is.
Wails in the maindeck are also really good against a lot of Tier 1 and 2 decks, they have been for some months now. Previously the only deck they were 'bad' against game 1 was Grixis Shadow, now that deck is Jund. Except as you said, now it can be used to exile Bob, and can also be used in response to a Liliana downtick as a 'gotcha'. Can also counter a discard spell. Against the other top decks it is really good, often trading for a 2 mana or higher card which is some great tempo to make use of on an otherwise passed turn. I was up to 2x wails main and 2 more in the side at one point, but right now I prefer two in the main with no additional copies in the side. Spatial Contortion replaced the two copies in the side, for Mantis Rider, Spell Queller, and to bring in against Eldrazi Tron because we are siding out 8 cards (2x dust, 2x wail, 4x chalice). Contortion is also good against Taxes decks and affinity. I definitely prefer contortion to gut shot and I'm not sure why more people don't other than to copy what Sam Pardee I think ran in a large tournament.
Four chalice is really strong right now. In both paper and MODO the amount of wins Ive had where afterward the opponent revealed a hand of 1-drops is staggering. The only downside to running four maindeck chalice is it has collateral damage in only four of our own cards (and in a few corner cases our 2-drop Mind Stones and Wails). When you look at the matchups where a chalice on 1 is good, you're talking about the opponent having absurdly way more 1-drops than you, like 14-20+ copies to your 4, the percentage of games where you blank multiple cards from them is going to outweigh the times it happens with 1 or more expedition maps, by a large margin. You can also sequence around it as well. And on top of that the only time when it feels really bad is when you draw map after chalice and are also short on land drops to where that map is necessary. Sure it feels bad, but the odds of chalice benefiting us game 1 are greatly in our favor. And we get to throw all 4 copies away in matchups where chalice is bad after game 1. Its just too strong of a card to not make use of.
I have been playing MODO against recently for the first time since around Christmas (I was always playing paper 1-2x a week), and even though the deck is 'poorly positioned' if you look at the metashare, I have been doing pretty well and even had a 5-0 competitive league last night. I'll do a report of the league when I get time possibly this weekend and if not then next weekend, but for now here is the list I used for the 5-0:
I actually was an idiot and had a 14 card sideboard for it. What happened was I was lacking a second Grafdigger's copy and a second Wurmcoil or third All is Dust copy for the two slots I had warping wail taking up in the side. Right before I queued into the league I now remember I was starting to cut the wails, and realized that I was missing the cards I wanted to run and said '**** it, lets go' because it was late at night and I couldn't buy them. I must have removed a copy of wail sometime during all of this.
My ideal sideboard right now would have two Cages instead of one, and a Wurmcoil or All is Dust or even Ugin instead of the Warping Wail. But once Karn, Scion of Urza comes out that will change. I know I want him in the 75, 1-2 copies, but I don't know if it's maindeck or sideboard yet. My current thinking is it comes down to Warping Wail. Do I want 2x Wails maindeck and 2x New Karn in the side? Or swap them, and have Karns in maindeck and Wail in side? New Karn will be so good in slow, grindy, mid-range or control matchups, but will be pretty bad in aggressive, go-wide matchups where we want to be playing creatures every turn to keep up on the board.
A question for side boarding considerations. Does anyone bother siding in Pithing Needle against Jund? The two targets that I have considered are Fulminator Mage and Liliana of the Veil. I know they have main deck artifact destruction but I was wondering if needle helps that much.
Those are the exact cards I bring it in for, and I think most people consider it worth it.
What are your guys' thoughts on swapping back to Tectonic Edge over Ghost Quarter? The most important matchups for the card are GX Tron, Titanshift, then to a slightly lesser extent Affinity and Eldrazi Tron. Outside of that it's largely used for manland destruction. With GX Tron and Titanshift, Ghost Quarter can be quite underwhelming because it ends up making us behind a land if they have a basic to fetch. Not only that, but it does not answer a resolving Scapeshift unless the Titanshift player has no basic mountain left in their deck. We now have mono Green Tron being the most popular flavor, which has a bunch of Thought-Knots and Thragtusks in the side. What that means is post-board is simply is not enough to slow their assembly of tron, all they need are 4 or 5 lands to establish plenty of board presence to buy them the time to hardcast a Wurmcoil or Karn. They have 4 or 5 basic forests, and I'm thinking a better approach to both of these matchups can be Tec Edge, which will actually slow down their land drops. The downside is it only costs 1 more mana to activate over Quarter, and the upside seems like a step in the right direction for two of our roughest matchups.
Another route to take would be Field of Ruin and bumping the waste count higher, but I'm not at all a fan of that strategy as it doesn't take maximum advantage of our playset of Expedition Map.
In addition to those points, this would make Crucible of Worlds a more legitimate 1-of in the side. For GX tron and Scapeshift, Tec Edge + crucible can totally shut them down from playing lands. They literally need to draw lands to keep up, and once they don't draw a land we continue developing a board with other lands. Crucible has value against really hard control decks like UW control and Jeskai (no queller) control, which IMO wasn't enough reason to run the card since those are decent matchups but with Tec Edge in the main deck I can see Crucible being quite playable. I currently only have 14 cards locked in for my sideboard and I'm quite interested in trying out this configuration for a couple tournaments. What do you guys think? Any support or counter-points?
I can also see Blight Herder being even better than I previously mentioned before the BBE unbanning. I likely won't be testing it maindeck because I don't and won't run relics maindeck, but that 15th slot in the sideboard could indeed become Blight Herder over Wurmcoil #2, which it currently is.
Sometime over the weekend I'd like to get some discussion on sideboarding for a few matchups, will post that when I get the time.
Eldrazi tron moves sure on middle of Tier 2...or hated out complete. If you say it is OK, no Problem...if not, sell your chalice bevor all realize it too
Selling our Chalices doesn't sound very wise. The deck may be becoming less played but there is no reason to start selling off pieces at this time. We may even get a slight bump in players/play when the new Karn comes out as well.
I'm pretty excited for new Karn in our deck. I think it generates really good card advantage while also sticking on the board very well thanks to our creatures to protect it. I think if you exclude the inevitability of the token generation, over the course of a few turns the extra cards you would see with this card will help us get the mana to play our cards, whether it be through finding tron lands our just lands in general. It could help smooth out flooding/screw, which is the single biggest issue the deck has. As someone who already preferred Ulamog to Karn Liberated in the current meta, I can see myself moving wurmcoil to the side and having 2x Bringers, 2x New Karn, and 1x Ulamog for an end game. Maybe going up to 3 or even 4 Mind Stones for further early game mana and artifact synergy with Karn. I'm pretty stoked for a 4 drop through blood moon that guarantees us extra cards. Even just two turns of use is two extra cards, which seems quite likely with 6 loyalty on turn 4 after a +1. As long as the format doesn't turn into a total aggro fest, this card is going to be amazing for our deck.
I haven't been posting much because a combination of things. Work + school is a busy schedule, and right now I'm feeling other than a few cards in the 75 for personal preference the deck is quite figured out.
I will say that 2 Endbringers and an Ulamog top end, with no Karns, feels like a great end game against a surge of blue decks playing jace. I'm not sure if I like 4 endbringers in a meta with Jace bounces, dreadbores, and paths. An interesting card right now is Oblivion Sower, perhaps replacing Wurmcoil maindeck as a way to both guarentee value on cast if you can process and get lands to cast all is dust/Ulamog. Not to mention it can be cast through blood moon, and is at a nice spot in the curve where we currently have a bunch of creatures that that require wastes to cast. The downside of this is you'd probably want 2 relics main to help exile along with TKS, but I've never been a fan of maindeck relics in this deck because I want as few 1-cost cards outside of Exp. map as possible. We also have a great game 1 against Storm, Living End, and Jund/Junk so I don't think we need the extra GY help game 1.
Perhaps Sower is sideboard, to be brought in with relics in certain matchups? One copy of Wurmcoil and 1 of Sower as utility creatures for matchups where they are all-stars. I currently have 1 surgical in my side I could cut to make that happen quite easily.
I definitely like Contortion more than Gut Shot. We already have ballista pings and wails to deal with stuff at 1 toughness. Contortion targets a lot of 2-3 cost creatures meaning it is either equal tempo or a tempo gain. And it's an extra card to bring in in the mirror where we have to side 8 cards out (4 chalice, 2 dust, 2 wail).
I'm also back on Pithing Needle over spyglass. IMO the card is most critical against affinity, and we don't want a spyglass non-bo with chalice on 2. Pithing will go against more Jace and Lili decks now, and I side chalices out against Jund because their cmc is pretty spread and they have 3x K-command. Jace decks run Cryptic which they like to use to bounce chalice back to hand, while they are tapped out cast the needle on their planeswalker. Needle is a lot better against aether vial and expedition map on T1, which are two of the top current decks in GX tron and humans. Spyglass is clearly better in some situations, but I think pithing is better overall.
One thing Im back and forth on is collar or wurncoil main. I don't think we really need wurmcoil game 1 and I want to cast eldrazi creatures with temple, and I like that collar isn't answered by some decks game 1, but many lists use the wurmcoil main with success. Can someone give a case for wurm main?
Hello fellow Etron players! I am a high school student that recently picked up the deck through trading, and I am about to take it to my second IQ on the 11th. I only run 3 chalice of the void as that is all I can afford, but most everything else is pretty stock. The metagame at the game store has lots of abzan midrange, with about 1-2 copies of other tier one and tier two decks. My list can be found here: https://www.mtggoldfish.com/deck/870110#paper . I was wondering if there are any glaring mistakes that pop out to you with my list, and what I could do to fix them. Finally, does anyone have any real guide for sideboarding with the deck? I find it hard to determine when chalices stay in and out, as well as what to take out in matchups. Finding what to put in is rather easy. Thanks in advance for the help!
Other than the Chalice you already mentioned, getting Cavern(s) to help beat down through blue sideboard counterspells should be a high priority pickup. It changes how you get to play the matchup and gives us a large advantage against, say, Jeskai Control and Grixis Shadow. Most of the pro tour lists from this weekend even ran 2 copies instead of 1.
One thing I can suggest is not having so many dismembers maindeck. Especially if you're seeing a lot of Goyf decks, I think a Basilisk Collar maindeck and 2 dismembers would be better for you, you get to wipe their board with pings from Collar and Bringer and they have next to no answers to collar pre-sideboard. The third copy of dismember is often in the sideboard, to be brought in against the mirror where 4/4's and 5/5s are aplenty, and storm where we can afford the -4 life loss if it means we kill their Baral or Electromancer.
Since you have a manabase that has 4x Quarter and 3x Wastes, it seems a perfect candidate for dropping 1 ghost quarter for 1 copy of Field of Ruin. There are more than a handful of times where it would be a preferred target from a mid-game expedition map tutor, but mosts lists can't afford to trim Quarters any further than they already do to accommodate Cavern of Souls.
As far as sideboarding guides go, you can find quite a few matchups done in articles written by pros, and I am a big advocate for learning as many decklists in modern as possible other than the one you're currently piloting (especially the cards they use to win in maindeck/signature cards of the deck, know their sideboard cards and plans so you can sideboard around it (i.e. don't side into an absurd amount of artifacts into a Stony Silence), and as far as chalice goes literally count their number of 1 and 2-cost cards maindeck. If they have something around 14 or more of the same cost, chalice becomes better and better the more they have. Some decks have 20+ of 1 or 2-cost and those are the ones you not only want to keep it in post-board, but try to have it in the opening hand as well as other early game plays to curve out well. Some obvious times to side it out are decks that use Aether Vial and/r lots of Cavern of Souls, like Merfolk, Elves, Humans, and Taxes decks. Always keep in mind when you're bringing in a lot of 1-cost sideboard cards, like a bunch of relics and cages, or pithings and Gut Shots, that you take out chalice unless it is REALLY good against your opponent. Also keep in mind for times when double chalice in the opening hand is the nuts, such as against Grixis Shadow and Lantern, which both have T1 discard potential on the first chalice copy and both have an absurd number of cards that cost 1 mana.
I would suggest going through the new decklists from this weekends pro-tour both on mtggoldfish - modern metagame webpage and on this reddit link of people that did well in the modern portion of the tournament. Create a written or mental in/out plan for as much of a percentage of the meta as you can, and in doing so you'll have to look at as many 75's of decks seeing play in the format. Never take anyone else's sideboard guide/suggestions as fact, and be ready to deviate from your predetermined sideboard plans when an opponent pulls out some spicy tech.
He talks about his thought process on cutting the cards that are just not viable without tron online (i.e. karns, ulamog, wurmcoil) in his dec 19 video. I also typed it out in my words here a couple of posts back. But yeah, it's basically because we shouldn't be playing around getting tron online. I see it more like a "bonus" situation we can get ourselves in. Like it's cool if we draw 2/3 of them at a time, then sure go fetch that third one with your map. Otherwise, going by his logic, I find myself fetching for the temples and a cavern (vs blue obv) most of the time. The deck has started to feel more consistent for me since.
I was just looking at this last night, it seems against many of the most popular decks at the moment Karn is just not very good even game 1.
Grixis Shadow has Stubborn Denial and Snapcaster to flash it back, Storm has Remand to totally blow us out, it's terrible against affinity and humans because we are hardly casting it on turn 3, a turn 5, 6, or 7 Karn is much too late against wide aggressive decks. Jeskai Control and pretty much any other blue deck in modern is using Stubborn Denial, Ceremonious Rejection, and Disdainful Stroke which are all big tempo losses. It feels like smashing uncounterable Eldrazi is going to be a better pre-sideboard plan than casting Karn and hoping to resolve it (early enough). Really outside of the mana decks (E-Tron, GX Tron, and Titanshift), and Ensnaring Bridge, Karn really isn't a card that we need to see to win by any stretch of the imagination. Even against a deck like Smallpox which runs Bridge, they won't let us get to 7 mana easily for a Karn to remove it and we might be more likely to get there through Endbringer and Ballista. Anyone have any thoughts on Karn, am i missing some of the cards utility/necessity in the deck?
My list w/o Karn looks like this, which feels pretty great to fit both 2x Mind Stone and 2x Warping Wail in the maindeck, to help smoothe out the deck game 1 against all the Blood Moon and GQ/Field of Ruin running around at the moment.
I've still been doing quite well in paper and mtgo with my Sanctum + Ulamog list, it continues to feel not clunky and pretty powerful to slam T5 Ulamog into concession as I just did against storm to finish 4-1 in a competitive league.
Warping Wail was the MVP in both storm matchups, as was the plethora of removal to remove their T2 and T3 creature drops (4x wail, 2x contortion, 2x dismember post-board). There was a situation in game 2 of the first storm match where I had 12 mana and 2 karns in hand, but the opponent had a remand and pyretic ritual and 1 unknown, so instead of letting them remand a karn and dig deeper for the combo, I beat down with a TKS I played earlier over several turns. Eventually they had to remand their own ritual on my end step to try to dig, which they failed to do and allowed me to resolve Karn on my next turn and seal the game.
In paper over the last 4 events, I've gone 3-1 all four times. Two of those 4 losses (at least) were 1x affinity and 1x Ponza, so I feel pretty good about my current list/build if it's pretty much only losing to our most unfavored matchups and cleaning house against the rest of the field.
I do agree with what another said that Hangarback seems to be a weak SB card atm, it's such a silver bullet against shadow so I can't justify removing both copies but perhaps going down to 1 copy is correct. With the potential free SB slot, it could be another relic/1x surg/some from of GY hate, or a third copy of dismember, which appeals to me for the mirror and a few other creature decks.
Edit: One thing I just remembered on Hangarback, it is one of our better cards against breach/emrakul decks because we can sac the hangabrack to the emmy trigger and then chump block with a thopter. I've won more than 1 game against an emrakul deck after losing 6 permanents, and being near 20 life after that happens increases those odds drastically.
Edit 2: Just did another competitive league this morning, getting some practice in for paper magic tonight and tomorrow
Humans was brutal, they had two vials and drew no more than 2 or 3 lands both games, went wide insanely fast and even though I had 7 eldrazi mana both games I never saw a Dust, which would have been a blowout because they named Ulamog with meddling mage for some reason. I feel like this matchup is near impossible when they draw like that, but if they durdle for even a little bit we can compete. In the mirror the opponent won game 1 with really good topdecks in the early turns of the game, and game 2 I turn 3 karn'd and turn 4 TKS and they conceded, game 3 they mulled to 6 and had a non-explosive opener, I cast T3 TKS, T4 TKS, and they were way short on the 5 mana needed for their two smashers in hand.
Both matches against mardu felt good(they were different players). I never saw a blood moon and I don't know if that was lucky by me or they just weren't running it. Early reshapers and TKS's made it so they couldn't swing in with any non-souls tokens, and late game a dust or huge ballista seals it every time as their hand will be empty by then. I made sure to keep hands that were resilient to T1 discard spells.
Had a 15-16ish person Modern tournament tonight. Record was 4-0 in matches, 8-0 in games, first couple matches were softies.
2-0 against Jund
2-0 against Soul Sisters/Martyr (Ballista MVP, All is Dust for taking out 2/2 flying tokens)
2-0 against Mono white D & T (they saw zero arbiters and Ballista was mvp both games against their 1 toughness creatures)
2-0 against Primal Command/Mono G Devotion - triple temple hand for T3 smasher T4 All is Dust game 1, followed by a T8 Tower topdeck in game 2 taking me from 7 mana to 14, allowing me to all is dust and then Karn on the same turn, sealing the game.
Edit: Collar equipped on Bringer won 2 games, I really like having access to Collar game 1 because so many decks don't have their artifact hate until post-board. Feels safer to me than a 6 mana Wurmcoil that can eat a Path.
Interesting I thought of it as a mid game aggro strategy as it just plays seriously aggressive and big creatures mid game
But i can see the combo aspect too
I agree with you, I don't think Eldrazi Tron is really a combo deck. It is much more of a ramp-midrange deck because it is not so dedicated to assembling the tron-land combo in the first few turns. GX tron has 7-9 threats, 2-4 spot removal, 9-10 other removal in Karn/Ugin/O-stone, and the rest of the nonlands are dedicated to digging through the deck, tutoring up the combo lands or a threat, and drawing extra cards. This deck is not a combo deck because it does not assemble any combo regularly. Assembling tron mana in Eldrazi Tron is a nice bonus, and lets us throw up our hand onto the battlefield faster, but is not necessary for the deck to operate or win games. The deck is more-so a really flexible mid-range deck, capable of far more explosive aggressive openings than other midrange decks like Junk and Jund. The big threats and above average mana ramp make it better than other midrange decks at beating down hard control decks and going over the top in the midrange mirror. I think to generalize what Eldrazi Tron is, I'd call it a midrange deck with a bit more variance and volatility because of inconsistent mana ramp game to game and the occasional blowout by T3 Karn or T2 TKS --> T3 smasher.
I would like if someone could look at my list on Page 81, please. I would like your opinions on my reasoning.
You absolutely need to swap your contortions and Dismembers. Dismembers are a necessity maindeck because often times that 4 like paid does not decide the game, meaning you paid 1 mana for a -5/-5 removal and that is a great tempo play. It catches more creatures and is dead less often than contortion, which is why you always see Dismembers maindeck and contortions in the side. Even paying 4 life on turn 1 to kill an attacking goblin guide is only two more damage taken than contorting it on turn 2. Contortion does not hit enough stuff, it's dead against eldrazi, delve threats, and hollow one to name a few.
3 Cavern of Souls is 1 too many, because we have 4x Expedition Map to give us even more copies of the card. If you are intending to swap Kozilek with Ulamog, Ceaseless Hunger, cut a cavern for a copy of Sanctum of Ugin. More utility lands to make use of Exp. Maps is more value and more ways to win as the game goes on. If you are running a titan you are much less effective at casting that titan if you don't have Sanctum of Ugin to tutor it to hand.
Your oblivion stones over All is Dusts in the main is going to cost you more games than you would be happy with. You're going to blow up your own chalices and creatures way too often All is Dust is good against 85-90% of the meta and gets sideboarded out where its dead. The fact that it's such a 1-sided blowout almost 9 games out of 10 makes it worth the few times where it is a dead card game 1 against the mirror, affinity, or lantern. All is Dust is essential to any elrazi tron build, oblivion stone will screw you out of games where you're winning on board state but the opponent has a permanent you have no other way of answering besides o-stone. You are legitimately better off keeping the Dusts in vs. aggressive decks and hoping to assemble tron mana fast enough, or even multiple temples to ramp. When you try to hold off aggro with o-stone, they just hold their threats in hand and beat down with 1 or 2 creatures, meanwhile you can't play any of your own cards into the o-stone. The only reason o-stone maindeck works for GX tron is because they aren't killing their own permanents with o-stone. When a card in your maindeck does too much splash damage to yourself it's not worth a slot. Overall I don't think you need to change maindeck cards too much to fit aggressive metas, format your sideboard to be better after game 1 and try to execute your decks game plan game 1.
Edit: Here is my most recent list that I updated today to reflect the Modern GP over the weekend. I think Eldrazi Tron is quite a flexible midrange deck; and while people are trying to go underneath GX Tron and Titan decks in the coming weeks (Mono G tron, GB tron, and Titanshift wrecked the tournament), E-tron should be able to hang with the people bullying up on the big boys. Eldrazi Tron has A LOT of early game interaction post-board and lines up quite nicely against burn, storm, infect, etc. which are all good against GX tron and titan decks. One of the reasons I've preferred to play Eldrazi Tron over any GX tron variant competitively even though I love both decks equally, is that Eldrazi Tron has legitimate game against the massive majority of the meta, and you always feel like you have a chance against any deck in modern. I think the raw power and flexibility of Eldrazi Tron will make the deck poke it's head back into consistent top 8's as the meta shifts.
1 copy of Pithing Needle or Spyglass to name Elder is good, especially if you end up blanking multiples in their hand. Ballista can ping Elder to prevent it from chump blocking before they sac it, which speeds up our clock. A chalice on X=4 can really hurt BTL version, use cavern to cast TKS through it. Maindeck Wails and being surgicals post board, I run 2 wails main 2 side so post board against titan decks I'm up to 4 wails.
I'll play Devil's advocate here and give some explanation/reasoning to why Ulamog is a good inclusion. The reason I like the card main deck is because it adds to what this deck does really really well; win game 1's and bully mid-range and control. This deck also performs really really well on the play (particularly with Eldrazi Temple or Tron early in the game), and winning game 1 means we are guaranteed to be on the play one of the post-board games. I want this to happen a lot and I want to maximize the odds of this happening. Both the chalice inclusion and Ulamog + Sanctum inevitability inclusion are key components to this.
Lets look at some numbers regarding one copy of Ulamog in a main deck as well as the Sanctum + Tron mana numbers. All of these are estimated using 60 and 53 population sizes in a calculator like this one. To me they provide a close enough idea of the percentages I'm interested in, however they obviously do not include factors such as drawing extra cards, deck thinning via searching for a card from the library, and the tron mana calculations are strictly regarding the 3 tron lands themselves and not factoring in getting to enough mana to cast Ulamog outside of assembling tron; whether that be multiple Eldrazi temples, or Path or Reshaper ramp. These percentages are rough but still get a decent enough approximation IMO. This was also done in like 20 minutes so if anyone is an actual statistics person go ahead and fix my mistakes.
Let's say you want to know the odds of seeing your 1-of Ulamog in your first 12-15-17 cards of the game, including opening 7 that would be 5-8-10 turnsish. A pretty average length of a modern game. If you shorten that average length it only makes these percentages smaller, meaning you'll see Ulamog before you want him even less likely. The odds of seeing your 1 Ulamog in the first 12 cards of the game are 20%, 15cards = 25%, 17 cards = 28.3%. These numbers are not very appealing.
However in only 11.7% of opening 7's will you see an Ulamog. Let's assume you start the game without Ulamog in hand. So make the population size 53 and the number of cards seen 5-8-10, to reflect the number of draws/turns after the opening hand. 5cards = 9.4%, 8cards = 15.1%, and 10 cards= 18.9%. These numbers to me don't seem to terrible in terms of having an uncastable Ulamog stuck in hand, being a dead card. Less than 1/10 games played will you see it by the 5th card if you do not have it in the opening hand, and that percentage gets even lower if you were to lose on turn 3 or 4. I see these percentages as the downside to running Ulamog, and having most games decided before I have even a 10% chance of seeing this card makes me think it's not causing that many game losses. It also can't be assumed the dead Ulamog in hand was the exact reason for the loss, or that the loss could have been avoided if that Ulamog was a different card (many have Wurmcoil in his stead, would that have got there instead or would this card have been just as dead due to shortness of mana or the fact that the opponent is storming or Ad Nauseating or Devoted Druiding). These numbers of 9.4%, 15.1%, and 18.9% are really worst case scenario in my opinion. The card has very little downside as a 1-of. And by turns 8-10, maybe Ulamog is a prime topdeck and you're soon approaching 25% to naturally draw into it.
Sanctum is how we get Ulamog to hand to cast it when we get the mana before we get the titan. And we also happen to run 5 copies of it while only taking 1 land slot, thanks to Expedition Map. Obviously if you use an opening hand map to assemble tron or get a GQ/Temple/w.e, these percentages will be lower. This is a pretty rough estimate compared to the Ulamog numbers. Ill show the Sanctum numbers of population 60 and 53, and # cards 12,15,17 and 5,8,10, respectively. The success size is now 5 instead of 1, meaning if we draw a map we can use it to get Sanctum and use that to get Ulamog.
60 population: 12cards = 68.6%, 15cards = 77.6%, 17cards = 82.4%, these are the chances of seeing >= 1 of the 5 copies
I think these numbers are relevant regarding Ulamog but also regarding the general usefulness of Sanctum of Ugin as a utiliy land. Because we have 4x Expedition Map we have a huge incentive to fit as many 1-of utility lands as we can to maximize the value. (If I wasn't so keen on having multiple Caverns in certain matchups I would rather run a Buried Ruin rather than a third or fourth ghost quarter. I've seen multiple 5-0 competitive league lists that have included Buried Ruin.) Sanctum is pretty good in this deck, we can get a Smasher to hastey swing 5 for a possible beatdown victory, a Ballista for infinity mana to clear the board or ping for a billion, an Endbringer for it's many uses, Wurmcoil cuz its the mirror or shadow, or Ulamog if we have the mana. This cards says 'oh I've drawn 12 lands to 4 nonlands this game and I'm way behind? let's get sanctum and use Dust/Ballista/Chalice/Karn to trigger it and put a stop to that nonsense'. I don't know about you guys but I feel like my losses occur from streaks of drawing lands or no lands when the opposite is needed more than anything else, and while Mind Stone can alleviate that another alternative is having more outs to catching back up to the board state, and doing it quickly and with the right creature for the situation.
Now let's look at assembling Tron. In a game where our opening hand contains 2/3 of tron (two of: tower, plant, mine, map), we have a pretty damn good chance of completing tron and having the mana to cast Ulamog by turns 5, 8, and 10. And while I hadn't looked at these percentages until just now, I can guarantee due to the fact I know Ulamog is in my list and assembling tron is slightly more important for my deck than a non-Ulamog list, I've kept hands you guys would not have kept because they were 2/3 of tron. And seeing these percentages makes me feel quite confident in doing that. When we have 2/3 of tron we have EIGHT CARDS(4 copies of each of the other two cards we are missing; have tower and mine: need map and plant, etc.) that at any point if we draw them we get tron online.
53 population: 5cards = 57.4%, 8cards = 75.7%, 10cards = 83.6%, chances number of copies >=1
We are more likely than not to assemble tron and have 7+ mana on T5 if we start with 2/3 of it. The longer the game goes, the inevitability of assembling tron and fetching for a Sanctum goes higher and higher. The whole idea of running this package is saying to the opponent "the longer this game goes, the odds of me winning are getting better and better. I'm relying on topdecks less than you and I have an 'I win' button getting closer and closer the more cards we draw." Every pilot plays the deck differently, but I've been having the most success I've ever had in modern and with Eldrazi Tron since I swapped out Mind Stones for Warping Wails, and Put in Ulamog + Sanctum. I've had sustained success on MODO, and at weekly store credit tournaments and Top 4'd a 28 person tournament, going undefeated in swiss and the first round of top 8 and prize splitting with the other top 4 players.
My non-fnm Modern paper tournaments have gone as follows(all of this data, paper and mtgo, is with Wails replacing Mind Stone and with Ulamog maindeck):
4-0-2(ID's) - 4th/28 players
3-0-1(ID) - 2nd/13 players
3-0-1(ID) - 1st/18 players
3-0-1(ID) - 1st/13 players
3-0-1(ID) - 1st/18 players
3-1 - 3rd/13 players (This stretch has been my most absurd winning streak in paper magic since I've begun playing again in December 2015, 17 match wins in a row including FNM events not listed)
My FNM's have actually been worse than that, probably because I'm generally looser and I actively help my opponents if they make a mistake because I'd rather have fun and show them/teach them than be a shark over booster packs. My total paper record with this configuration is 31-6: 83.8% winrate.
On MODO since I've made the change my overall winrate is 53-36: 59.6%, and since I added in spyglass less than two weeks ago I've gone 19-10: 65.5%. The point of all of this is to show that long term this deck is not 'clunky' in this configuration, but rather takes slightly different piloting than a version that does not run Ulamog. Now, of course you can reply to all of this with 'yeah but new decks on the rise/aether vial/go wide RIP to us/etc. all of this means nothing with new meta', I'd say two things. Firstly, how favored are we to beat aether vial decks game 1 with our extra removal in the side and likely dead chalices in the main and overall slower gameplan? Is that less than 10% chance to see an Ulamog before we die going to cost you that many more game 1's? Secondly, the meta immediately after a larger tournament, especially one like this recent one where a new flavor of the month wins, and the top 8 in general is a bunch of go wide, of course the days and weeks following will see an uptick of those decks. Then we'll see a bunch of board wipes in mains and sides and jund/junk stuff packing removal and discard beat those decks and the cycle of modern continues. Until I see my winrates decline over many leagues or paper tournaments I'm confident continuing with the strategy that has been working for me for some months now.
I think I'm going to go back to the mindstones and 1x relic in the main. I think the deck ran smoother with how it was ran before we started clunking it up with Ulamog and Wurmcoil.
I was thinking the other way, trying to keep up with Aether Vial and Affinity with more removal in the main. I really don't know what options there are other than ratchet bomb and spatial contortion (in addition to Warping Wail). Board wipes are another angle, but Id be super wary of 3 or more Dusts in the main as well as oblivion stone. Another thought was replacing Ulamog with Ugin, however not being able to fetch Ugin with a Sanctum makes that seem bad.
Edit: Maybe maindeck ratchet bomb is the answer for the moment? It hardly hits any of our own permanents which is an upside.
It is over now...maybe in some months chalice will be back again. Card is good...but EVERY guy everywhere has now outs again and the rest laugh about it
You're getting quite extreme here, I have yet to see an Eldrazi Tron list even top 8 a major tournament with chalices in the side, let alone removed from the 75 entirely. I don't see how it's constructive to give no reasoning or evidence to support your extreme claim that 'it is over now'. If there's anyone being hyperbolic here, it's this guy.
Mind Stone is really good right now, I ran up to 3 copies in a league but once I had two of them in an otherwise great opening hand I realized that's why we don't want too many copies. One is perfect to see in the opener, but anymore makes the hand do less and become too slow. I think it's perfect as a two-of.
The reason I'm wary of Batterskull in the 75 and Collar in the maindeck is one card. Ancient Grudge. It's everywhere right now, Dredge and Hollow One are milling into their own yards, Jund always seems to draw at least a copy post-board, etc. It's such a cheap answer to these cards. That, and a lot of removal meaning there's nothing to equip the collar with. However, if you are using 2x Collar in the 75, may as well be a 1/1 split so you can snag free wins off the Collar + Ballista or Bringer combo.
Since you don't have Caverns at the moment, going up to 4x Ghost Quarter to help against Affinity and GX Tron will be better than going up to 3 Sanctums. I've ran Sanctum of Ugin for a long time and played hundreds of matches with it and I can count on one hand the number of times where I would have wanted a second Sanctum of Ugin in a game, whereas there's been plenty of times I wish I had room for one or two more Ghost Quarters as I'm failing to naturally draw them early against Affinity and Tron.
Ugin is a card I really really like, but I'm pretty afraid of it being a dead card in hand because I fail to get tron active. The meta is looking prime for it though. I would prefer to have my 2x dust in the main and Ugin in the side for when he is so good it's worth being risky with how expensive he is.
Wails in the maindeck are also really good against a lot of Tier 1 and 2 decks, they have been for some months now. Previously the only deck they were 'bad' against game 1 was Grixis Shadow, now that deck is Jund. Except as you said, now it can be used to exile Bob, and can also be used in response to a Liliana downtick as a 'gotcha'. Can also counter a discard spell. Against the other top decks it is really good, often trading for a 2 mana or higher card which is some great tempo to make use of on an otherwise passed turn. I was up to 2x wails main and 2 more in the side at one point, but right now I prefer two in the main with no additional copies in the side. Spatial Contortion replaced the two copies in the side, for Mantis Rider, Spell Queller, and to bring in against Eldrazi Tron because we are siding out 8 cards (2x dust, 2x wail, 4x chalice). Contortion is also good against Taxes decks and affinity. I definitely prefer contortion to gut shot and I'm not sure why more people don't other than to copy what Sam Pardee I think ran in a large tournament.
Four chalice is really strong right now. In both paper and MODO the amount of wins Ive had where afterward the opponent revealed a hand of 1-drops is staggering. The only downside to running four maindeck chalice is it has collateral damage in only four of our own cards (and in a few corner cases our 2-drop Mind Stones and Wails). When you look at the matchups where a chalice on 1 is good, you're talking about the opponent having absurdly way more 1-drops than you, like 14-20+ copies to your 4, the percentage of games where you blank multiple cards from them is going to outweigh the times it happens with 1 or more expedition maps, by a large margin. You can also sequence around it as well. And on top of that the only time when it feels really bad is when you draw map after chalice and are also short on land drops to where that map is necessary. Sure it feels bad, but the odds of chalice benefiting us game 1 are greatly in our favor. And we get to throw all 4 copies away in matchups where chalice is bad after game 1. Its just too strong of a card to not make use of.
I have been playing MODO against recently for the first time since around Christmas (I was always playing paper 1-2x a week), and even though the deck is 'poorly positioned' if you look at the metashare, I have been doing pretty well and even had a 5-0 competitive league last night. I'll do a report of the league when I get time possibly this weekend and if not then next weekend, but for now here is the list I used for the 5-0:
4 Walking Ballista
4 Matter Reshaper
4 Thought-Knot Seer
4 Reality Smasher
2 Endbringer
1 Wurmcoil Engine
1 Ulamog, the Ceaseless Hunger
Artifacts [10]
2 Mind Stone
4 Expedition Map
4 Chalice of the Void
Spells [6]
2 Dismember
2 All Is Dust
2 Warping Wail
4 Urza's Power Plant
4 Urza's Mine
4 Urza's Tower
4 Eldrazi Temple
1 Sanctum of Ugin
2 Ghost Quarter
1 Sea Gate Wreckage
2 Cavern of Souls
2 Wastes
1 Grafdigger's Cage
2 Hangarback Walker
2 Ratchet Bomb
3 Relic of Progenitus
2 Spatial Contortion
2 Sorcerous Spyglass
1 Basilisk Collar
1 Warping Wail
I actually was an idiot and had a 14 card sideboard for it. What happened was I was lacking a second Grafdigger's copy and a second Wurmcoil or third All is Dust copy for the two slots I had warping wail taking up in the side. Right before I queued into the league I now remember I was starting to cut the wails, and realized that I was missing the cards I wanted to run and said '**** it, lets go' because it was late at night and I couldn't buy them. I must have removed a copy of wail sometime during all of this.
My ideal sideboard right now would have two Cages instead of one, and a Wurmcoil or All is Dust or even Ugin instead of the Warping Wail. But once Karn, Scion of Urza comes out that will change. I know I want him in the 75, 1-2 copies, but I don't know if it's maindeck or sideboard yet. My current thinking is it comes down to Warping Wail. Do I want 2x Wails maindeck and 2x New Karn in the side? Or swap them, and have Karns in maindeck and Wail in side? New Karn will be so good in slow, grindy, mid-range or control matchups, but will be pretty bad in aggressive, go-wide matchups where we want to be playing creatures every turn to keep up on the board.
Those are the exact cards I bring it in for, and I think most people consider it worth it.
Another route to take would be Field of Ruin and bumping the waste count higher, but I'm not at all a fan of that strategy as it doesn't take maximum advantage of our playset of Expedition Map.
In addition to those points, this would make Crucible of Worlds a more legitimate 1-of in the side. For GX tron and Scapeshift, Tec Edge + crucible can totally shut them down from playing lands. They literally need to draw lands to keep up, and once they don't draw a land we continue developing a board with other lands. Crucible has value against really hard control decks like UW control and Jeskai (no queller) control, which IMO wasn't enough reason to run the card since those are decent matchups but with Tec Edge in the main deck I can see Crucible being quite playable. I currently only have 14 cards locked in for my sideboard and I'm quite interested in trying out this configuration for a couple tournaments. What do you guys think? Any support or counter-points?
I can also see Blight Herder being even better than I previously mentioned before the BBE unbanning. I likely won't be testing it maindeck because I don't and won't run relics maindeck, but that 15th slot in the sideboard could indeed become Blight Herder over Wurmcoil #2, which it currently is.
Sometime over the weekend I'd like to get some discussion on sideboarding for a few matchups, will post that when I get the time.
I'm pretty excited for new Karn in our deck. I think it generates really good card advantage while also sticking on the board very well thanks to our creatures to protect it. I think if you exclude the inevitability of the token generation, over the course of a few turns the extra cards you would see with this card will help us get the mana to play our cards, whether it be through finding tron lands our just lands in general. It could help smooth out flooding/screw, which is the single biggest issue the deck has. As someone who already preferred Ulamog to Karn Liberated in the current meta, I can see myself moving wurmcoil to the side and having 2x Bringers, 2x New Karn, and 1x Ulamog for an end game. Maybe going up to 3 or even 4 Mind Stones for further early game mana and artifact synergy with Karn. I'm pretty stoked for a 4 drop through blood moon that guarantees us extra cards. Even just two turns of use is two extra cards, which seems quite likely with 6 loyalty on turn 4 after a +1. As long as the format doesn't turn into a total aggro fest, this card is going to be amazing for our deck.
I will say that 2 Endbringers and an Ulamog top end, with no Karns, feels like a great end game against a surge of blue decks playing jace. I'm not sure if I like 4 endbringers in a meta with Jace bounces, dreadbores, and paths. An interesting card right now is Oblivion Sower, perhaps replacing Wurmcoil maindeck as a way to both guarentee value on cast if you can process and get lands to cast all is dust/Ulamog. Not to mention it can be cast through blood moon, and is at a nice spot in the curve where we currently have a bunch of creatures that that require wastes to cast. The downside of this is you'd probably want 2 relics main to help exile along with TKS, but I've never been a fan of maindeck relics in this deck because I want as few 1-cost cards outside of Exp. map as possible. We also have a great game 1 against Storm, Living End, and Jund/Junk so I don't think we need the extra GY help game 1.
Perhaps Sower is sideboard, to be brought in with relics in certain matchups? One copy of Wurmcoil and 1 of Sower as utility creatures for matchups where they are all-stars. I currently have 1 surgical in my side I could cut to make that happen quite easily.
I definitely like Contortion more than Gut Shot. We already have ballista pings and wails to deal with stuff at 1 toughness. Contortion targets a lot of 2-3 cost creatures meaning it is either equal tempo or a tempo gain. And it's an extra card to bring in in the mirror where we have to side 8 cards out (4 chalice, 2 dust, 2 wail).
I'm also back on Pithing Needle over spyglass. IMO the card is most critical against affinity, and we don't want a spyglass non-bo with chalice on 2. Pithing will go against more Jace and Lili decks now, and I side chalices out against Jund because their cmc is pretty spread and they have 3x K-command. Jace decks run Cryptic which they like to use to bounce chalice back to hand, while they are tapped out cast the needle on their planeswalker. Needle is a lot better against aether vial and expedition map on T1, which are two of the top current decks in GX tron and humans. Spyglass is clearly better in some situations, but I think pithing is better overall.
One thing Im back and forth on is collar or wurncoil main. I don't think we really need wurmcoil game 1 and I want to cast eldrazi creatures with temple, and I like that collar isn't answered by some decks game 1, but many lists use the wurmcoil main with success. Can someone give a case for wurm main?
Other than the Chalice you already mentioned, getting Cavern(s) to help beat down through blue sideboard counterspells should be a high priority pickup. It changes how you get to play the matchup and gives us a large advantage against, say, Jeskai Control and Grixis Shadow. Most of the pro tour lists from this weekend even ran 2 copies instead of 1.
One thing I can suggest is not having so many dismembers maindeck. Especially if you're seeing a lot of Goyf decks, I think a Basilisk Collar maindeck and 2 dismembers would be better for you, you get to wipe their board with pings from Collar and Bringer and they have next to no answers to collar pre-sideboard. The third copy of dismember is often in the sideboard, to be brought in against the mirror where 4/4's and 5/5s are aplenty, and storm where we can afford the -4 life loss if it means we kill their Baral or Electromancer.
Since you have a manabase that has 4x Quarter and 3x Wastes, it seems a perfect candidate for dropping 1 ghost quarter for 1 copy of Field of Ruin. There are more than a handful of times where it would be a preferred target from a mid-game expedition map tutor, but mosts lists can't afford to trim Quarters any further than they already do to accommodate Cavern of Souls.
As far as sideboarding guides go, you can find quite a few matchups done in articles written by pros, and I am a big advocate for learning as many decklists in modern as possible other than the one you're currently piloting (especially the cards they use to win in maindeck/signature cards of the deck, know their sideboard cards and plans so you can sideboard around it (i.e. don't side into an absurd amount of artifacts into a Stony Silence), and as far as chalice goes literally count their number of 1 and 2-cost cards maindeck. If they have something around 14 or more of the same cost, chalice becomes better and better the more they have. Some decks have 20+ of 1 or 2-cost and those are the ones you not only want to keep it in post-board, but try to have it in the opening hand as well as other early game plays to curve out well. Some obvious times to side it out are decks that use Aether Vial and/r lots of Cavern of Souls, like Merfolk, Elves, Humans, and Taxes decks. Always keep in mind when you're bringing in a lot of 1-cost sideboard cards, like a bunch of relics and cages, or pithings and Gut Shots, that you take out chalice unless it is REALLY good against your opponent. Also keep in mind for times when double chalice in the opening hand is the nuts, such as against Grixis Shadow and Lantern, which both have T1 discard potential on the first chalice copy and both have an absurd number of cards that cost 1 mana.
I would suggest going through the new decklists from this weekends pro-tour both on mtggoldfish - modern metagame webpage and on this reddit link of people that did well in the modern portion of the tournament. Create a written or mental in/out plan for as much of a percentage of the meta as you can, and in doing so you'll have to look at as many 75's of decks seeing play in the format. Never take anyone else's sideboard guide/suggestions as fact, and be ready to deviate from your predetermined sideboard plans when an opponent pulls out some spicy tech.
I was just looking at this last night, it seems against many of the most popular decks at the moment Karn is just not very good even game 1.
Grixis Shadow has Stubborn Denial and Snapcaster to flash it back, Storm has Remand to totally blow us out, it's terrible against affinity and humans because we are hardly casting it on turn 3, a turn 5, 6, or 7 Karn is much too late against wide aggressive decks. Jeskai Control and pretty much any other blue deck in modern is using Stubborn Denial, Ceremonious Rejection, and Disdainful Stroke which are all big tempo losses. It feels like smashing uncounterable Eldrazi is going to be a better pre-sideboard plan than casting Karn and hoping to resolve it (early enough). Really outside of the mana decks (E-Tron, GX Tron, and Titanshift), and Ensnaring Bridge, Karn really isn't a card that we need to see to win by any stretch of the imagination. Even against a deck like Smallpox which runs Bridge, they won't let us get to 7 mana easily for a Karn to remove it and we might be more likely to get there through Endbringer and Ballista. Anyone have any thoughts on Karn, am i missing some of the cards utility/necessity in the deck?
My list w/o Karn looks like this, which feels pretty great to fit both 2x Mind Stone and 2x Warping Wail in the maindeck, to help smoothe out the deck game 1 against all the Blood Moon and GQ/Field of Ruin running around at the moment.
2-1 Bogles
0-2 Titanshift
2-0 Burn
2-0 Storm
2-0 Storm
Warping Wail was the MVP in both storm matchups, as was the plethora of removal to remove their T2 and T3 creature drops (4x wail, 2x contortion, 2x dismember post-board). There was a situation in game 2 of the first storm match where I had 12 mana and 2 karns in hand, but the opponent had a remand and pyretic ritual and 1 unknown, so instead of letting them remand a karn and dig deeper for the combo, I beat down with a TKS I played earlier over several turns. Eventually they had to remand their own ritual on my end step to try to dig, which they failed to do and allowed me to resolve Karn on my next turn and seal the game.
In paper over the last 4 events, I've gone 3-1 all four times. Two of those 4 losses (at least) were 1x affinity and 1x Ponza, so I feel pretty good about my current list/build if it's pretty much only losing to our most unfavored matchups and cleaning house against the rest of the field.
I do agree with what another said that Hangarback seems to be a weak SB card atm, it's such a silver bullet against shadow so I can't justify removing both copies but perhaps going down to 1 copy is correct. With the potential free SB slot, it could be another relic/1x surg/some from of GY hate, or a third copy of dismember, which appeals to me for the mirror and a few other creature decks.
Edit: One thing I just remembered on Hangarback, it is one of our better cards against breach/emrakul decks because we can sac the hangabrack to the emmy trigger and then chump block with a thopter. I've won more than 1 game against an emrakul deck after losing 6 permanents, and being near 20 life after that happens increases those odds drastically.
Edit 2: Just did another competitive league this morning, getting some practice in for paper magic tonight and tomorrow
Storm 2-0
Humans 0-2
Eldrazi Tron 2-1
Mardu Tokens/Mancer 2-1
Mardu Tokens/Mancer 2-0
Total: 4-1
Humans was brutal, they had two vials and drew no more than 2 or 3 lands both games, went wide insanely fast and even though I had 7 eldrazi mana both games I never saw a Dust, which would have been a blowout because they named Ulamog with meddling mage for some reason. I feel like this matchup is near impossible when they draw like that, but if they durdle for even a little bit we can compete. In the mirror the opponent won game 1 with really good topdecks in the early turns of the game, and game 2 I turn 3 karn'd and turn 4 TKS and they conceded, game 3 they mulled to 6 and had a non-explosive opener, I cast T3 TKS, T4 TKS, and they were way short on the 5 mana needed for their two smashers in hand.
Both matches against mardu felt good(they were different players). I never saw a blood moon and I don't know if that was lucky by me or they just weren't running it. Early reshapers and TKS's made it so they couldn't swing in with any non-souls tokens, and late game a dust or huge ballista seals it every time as their hand will be empty by then. I made sure to keep hands that were resilient to T1 discard spells.
2-0 against Jund
2-0 against Soul Sisters/Martyr (Ballista MVP, All is Dust for taking out 2/2 flying tokens)
2-0 against Mono white D & T (they saw zero arbiters and Ballista was mvp both games against their 1 toughness creatures)
2-0 against Primal Command/Mono G Devotion - triple temple hand for T3 smasher T4 All is Dust game 1, followed by a T8 Tower topdeck in game 2 taking me from 7 mana to 14, allowing me to all is dust and then Karn on the same turn, sealing the game.
Edit: Collar equipped on Bringer won 2 games, I really like having access to Collar game 1 because so many decks don't have their artifact hate until post-board. Feels safer to me than a 6 mana Wurmcoil that can eat a Path.
I agree with you, I don't think Eldrazi Tron is really a combo deck. It is much more of a ramp-midrange deck because it is not so dedicated to assembling the tron-land combo in the first few turns. GX tron has 7-9 threats, 2-4 spot removal, 9-10 other removal in Karn/Ugin/O-stone, and the rest of the nonlands are dedicated to digging through the deck, tutoring up the combo lands or a threat, and drawing extra cards. This deck is not a combo deck because it does not assemble any combo regularly. Assembling tron mana in Eldrazi Tron is a nice bonus, and lets us throw up our hand onto the battlefield faster, but is not necessary for the deck to operate or win games. The deck is more-so a really flexible mid-range deck, capable of far more explosive aggressive openings than other midrange decks like Junk and Jund. The big threats and above average mana ramp make it better than other midrange decks at beating down hard control decks and going over the top in the midrange mirror. I think to generalize what Eldrazi Tron is, I'd call it a midrange deck with a bit more variance and volatility because of inconsistent mana ramp game to game and the occasional blowout by T3 Karn or T2 TKS --> T3 smasher.
You absolutely need to swap your contortions and Dismembers. Dismembers are a necessity maindeck because often times that 4 like paid does not decide the game, meaning you paid 1 mana for a -5/-5 removal and that is a great tempo play. It catches more creatures and is dead less often than contortion, which is why you always see Dismembers maindeck and contortions in the side. Even paying 4 life on turn 1 to kill an attacking goblin guide is only two more damage taken than contorting it on turn 2. Contortion does not hit enough stuff, it's dead against eldrazi, delve threats, and hollow one to name a few.
3 Cavern of Souls is 1 too many, because we have 4x Expedition Map to give us even more copies of the card. If you are intending to swap Kozilek with Ulamog, Ceaseless Hunger, cut a cavern for a copy of Sanctum of Ugin. More utility lands to make use of Exp. Maps is more value and more ways to win as the game goes on. If you are running a titan you are much less effective at casting that titan if you don't have Sanctum of Ugin to tutor it to hand.
Your oblivion stones over All is Dusts in the main is going to cost you more games than you would be happy with. You're going to blow up your own chalices and creatures way too often All is Dust is good against 85-90% of the meta and gets sideboarded out where its dead. The fact that it's such a 1-sided blowout almost 9 games out of 10 makes it worth the few times where it is a dead card game 1 against the mirror, affinity, or lantern. All is Dust is essential to any elrazi tron build, oblivion stone will screw you out of games where you're winning on board state but the opponent has a permanent you have no other way of answering besides o-stone. You are legitimately better off keeping the Dusts in vs. aggressive decks and hoping to assemble tron mana fast enough, or even multiple temples to ramp. When you try to hold off aggro with o-stone, they just hold their threats in hand and beat down with 1 or 2 creatures, meanwhile you can't play any of your own cards into the o-stone. The only reason o-stone maindeck works for GX tron is because they aren't killing their own permanents with o-stone. When a card in your maindeck does too much splash damage to yourself it's not worth a slot. Overall I don't think you need to change maindeck cards too much to fit aggressive metas, format your sideboard to be better after game 1 and try to execute your decks game plan game 1.
Edit: Here is my most recent list that I updated today to reflect the Modern GP over the weekend. I think Eldrazi Tron is quite a flexible midrange deck; and while people are trying to go underneath GX Tron and Titan decks in the coming weeks (Mono G tron, GB tron, and Titanshift wrecked the tournament), E-tron should be able to hang with the people bullying up on the big boys. Eldrazi Tron has A LOT of early game interaction post-board and lines up quite nicely against burn, storm, infect, etc. which are all good against GX tron and titan decks. One of the reasons I've preferred to play Eldrazi Tron over any GX tron variant competitively even though I love both decks equally, is that Eldrazi Tron has legitimate game against the massive majority of the meta, and you always feel like you have a chance against any deck in modern. I think the raw power and flexibility of Eldrazi Tron will make the deck poke it's head back into consistent top 8's as the meta shifts.
Lets look at some numbers regarding one copy of Ulamog in a main deck as well as the Sanctum + Tron mana numbers. All of these are estimated using 60 and 53 population sizes in a calculator like this one. To me they provide a close enough idea of the percentages I'm interested in, however they obviously do not include factors such as drawing extra cards, deck thinning via searching for a card from the library, and the tron mana calculations are strictly regarding the 3 tron lands themselves and not factoring in getting to enough mana to cast Ulamog outside of assembling tron; whether that be multiple Eldrazi temples, or Path or Reshaper ramp. These percentages are rough but still get a decent enough approximation IMO. This was also done in like 20 minutes so if anyone is an actual statistics person go ahead and fix my mistakes.
Let's say you want to know the odds of seeing your 1-of Ulamog in your first 12-15-17 cards of the game, including opening 7 that would be 5-8-10 turnsish. A pretty average length of a modern game. If you shorten that average length it only makes these percentages smaller, meaning you'll see Ulamog before you want him even less likely. The odds of seeing your 1 Ulamog in the first 12 cards of the game are 20%, 15cards = 25%, 17 cards = 28.3%. These numbers are not very appealing.
However in only 11.7% of opening 7's will you see an Ulamog. Let's assume you start the game without Ulamog in hand. So make the population size 53 and the number of cards seen 5-8-10, to reflect the number of draws/turns after the opening hand. 5cards = 9.4%, 8cards = 15.1%, and 10 cards= 18.9%. These numbers to me don't seem to terrible in terms of having an uncastable Ulamog stuck in hand, being a dead card. Less than 1/10 games played will you see it by the 5th card if you do not have it in the opening hand, and that percentage gets even lower if you were to lose on turn 3 or 4. I see these percentages as the downside to running Ulamog, and having most games decided before I have even a 10% chance of seeing this card makes me think it's not causing that many game losses. It also can't be assumed the dead Ulamog in hand was the exact reason for the loss, or that the loss could have been avoided if that Ulamog was a different card (many have Wurmcoil in his stead, would that have got there instead or would this card have been just as dead due to shortness of mana or the fact that the opponent is storming or Ad Nauseating or Devoted Druiding). These numbers of 9.4%, 15.1%, and 18.9% are really worst case scenario in my opinion. The card has very little downside as a 1-of. And by turns 8-10, maybe Ulamog is a prime topdeck and you're soon approaching 25% to naturally draw into it.
Sanctum is how we get Ulamog to hand to cast it when we get the mana before we get the titan. And we also happen to run 5 copies of it while only taking 1 land slot, thanks to Expedition Map. Obviously if you use an opening hand map to assemble tron or get a GQ/Temple/w.e, these percentages will be lower. This is a pretty rough estimate compared to the Ulamog numbers. Ill show the Sanctum numbers of population 60 and 53, and # cards 12,15,17 and 5,8,10, respectively. The success size is now 5 instead of 1, meaning if we draw a map we can use it to get Sanctum and use that to get Ulamog.
60 population: 12cards = 68.6%, 15cards = 77.6%, 17cards = 82.4%, these are the chances of seeing >= 1 of the 5 copies
53 population: 5cards = 40.3%, 8cards = 57.4%, 10cards = 66.5%, same thing >=1
I think these numbers are relevant regarding Ulamog but also regarding the general usefulness of Sanctum of Ugin as a utiliy land. Because we have 4x Expedition Map we have a huge incentive to fit as many 1-of utility lands as we can to maximize the value. (If I wasn't so keen on having multiple Caverns in certain matchups I would rather run a Buried Ruin rather than a third or fourth ghost quarter. I've seen multiple 5-0 competitive league lists that have included Buried Ruin.) Sanctum is pretty good in this deck, we can get a Smasher to hastey swing 5 for a possible beatdown victory, a Ballista for infinity mana to clear the board or ping for a billion, an Endbringer for it's many uses, Wurmcoil cuz its the mirror or shadow, or Ulamog if we have the mana. This cards says 'oh I've drawn 12 lands to 4 nonlands this game and I'm way behind? let's get sanctum and use Dust/Ballista/Chalice/Karn to trigger it and put a stop to that nonsense'. I don't know about you guys but I feel like my losses occur from streaks of drawing lands or no lands when the opposite is needed more than anything else, and while Mind Stone can alleviate that another alternative is having more outs to catching back up to the board state, and doing it quickly and with the right creature for the situation.
Now let's look at assembling Tron. In a game where our opening hand contains 2/3 of tron (two of: tower, plant, mine, map), we have a pretty damn good chance of completing tron and having the mana to cast Ulamog by turns 5, 8, and 10. And while I hadn't looked at these percentages until just now, I can guarantee due to the fact I know Ulamog is in my list and assembling tron is slightly more important for my deck than a non-Ulamog list, I've kept hands you guys would not have kept because they were 2/3 of tron. And seeing these percentages makes me feel quite confident in doing that. When we have 2/3 of tron we have EIGHT CARDS(4 copies of each of the other two cards we are missing; have tower and mine: need map and plant, etc.) that at any point if we draw them we get tron online.
53 population: 5cards = 57.4%, 8cards = 75.7%, 10cards = 83.6%, chances number of copies >=1
We are more likely than not to assemble tron and have 7+ mana on T5 if we start with 2/3 of it. The longer the game goes, the inevitability of assembling tron and fetching for a Sanctum goes higher and higher. The whole idea of running this package is saying to the opponent "the longer this game goes, the odds of me winning are getting better and better. I'm relying on topdecks less than you and I have an 'I win' button getting closer and closer the more cards we draw." Every pilot plays the deck differently, but I've been having the most success I've ever had in modern and with Eldrazi Tron since I swapped out Mind Stones for Warping Wails, and Put in Ulamog + Sanctum. I've had sustained success on MODO, and at weekly store credit tournaments and Top 4'd a 28 person tournament, going undefeated in swiss and the first round of top 8 and prize splitting with the other top 4 players.
My non-fnm Modern paper tournaments have gone as follows(all of this data, paper and mtgo, is with Wails replacing Mind Stone and with Ulamog maindeck):
4-0-2(ID's) - 4th/28 players
3-0-1(ID) - 2nd/13 players
3-0-1(ID) - 1st/18 players
3-0-1(ID) - 1st/13 players
3-0-1(ID) - 1st/18 players
3-1 - 3rd/13 players (This stretch has been my most absurd winning streak in paper magic since I've begun playing again in December 2015, 17 match wins in a row including FNM events not listed)
My FNM's have actually been worse than that, probably because I'm generally looser and I actively help my opponents if they make a mistake because I'd rather have fun and show them/teach them than be a shark over booster packs. My total paper record with this configuration is 31-6: 83.8% winrate.
On MODO since I've made the change my overall winrate is 53-36: 59.6%, and since I added in spyglass less than two weeks ago I've gone 19-10: 65.5%. The point of all of this is to show that long term this deck is not 'clunky' in this configuration, but rather takes slightly different piloting than a version that does not run Ulamog. Now, of course you can reply to all of this with 'yeah but new decks on the rise/aether vial/go wide RIP to us/etc. all of this means nothing with new meta', I'd say two things. Firstly, how favored are we to beat aether vial decks game 1 with our extra removal in the side and likely dead chalices in the main and overall slower gameplan? Is that less than 10% chance to see an Ulamog before we die going to cost you that many more game 1's? Secondly, the meta immediately after a larger tournament, especially one like this recent one where a new flavor of the month wins, and the top 8 in general is a bunch of go wide, of course the days and weeks following will see an uptick of those decks. Then we'll see a bunch of board wipes in mains and sides and jund/junk stuff packing removal and discard beat those decks and the cycle of modern continues. Until I see my winrates decline over many leagues or paper tournaments I'm confident continuing with the strategy that has been working for me for some months now.
Here is my current list with contortions in the side.
I was thinking the other way, trying to keep up with Aether Vial and Affinity with more removal in the main. I really don't know what options there are other than ratchet bomb and spatial contortion (in addition to Warping Wail). Board wipes are another angle, but Id be super wary of 3 or more Dusts in the main as well as oblivion stone. Another thought was replacing Ulamog with Ugin, however not being able to fetch Ugin with a Sanctum makes that seem bad.
Edit: Maybe maindeck ratchet bomb is the answer for the moment? It hardly hits any of our own permanents which is an upside.
You're getting quite extreme here, I have yet to see an Eldrazi Tron list even top 8 a major tournament with chalices in the side, let alone removed from the 75 entirely. I don't see how it's constructive to give no reasoning or evidence to support your extreme claim that 'it is over now'. If there's anyone being hyperbolic here, it's this guy.