Long time no see, or something like that. I just wanted to give my 2 cents to your situation Cholenberg.
And maybe I will be able to let you guys know on what I am working on right now later, after not having time for magic for quite some time now, sadly.
I made the experience, that a prowess heavy deck with Pyromancer Ascension, thought scour and as a top end Bedlam Reveler and Crackling Drake is extremely viable. Now even more so than before, as graveyard hate is not really an issue right now.
Sooner or later snapcaster mage will have to end up in the deck but with and aggressive route that has a decent late game in reveler and drake can be suprisingly powerful. You are restricting yourself to playing mostly 4 offs, but thats fine, with, lets say 27 instants and sorceries you have 3 flex spots, which is sufficient with all the cantripping that you are going to do. The play sets are the usual culprits with bolt, helix, opt, path, thought scour and probably serum visions. Say you are playing 19 lands, that leaves you with 14 pay offs/threats. 4 Delver, 4 Switfspear, 2 ascension 2 drakes and 2 revelers.
You can substitute either the drakes or the revelers for pyros, but you dont need pyros necessarily (I just dont like the card).
My list featured 3 snapcaster mages instead of the swiftspears if i remember correctly, so I cant tell you how good the deck really performs as snappy is a huge upgrade for the deck, but I still believe that this is a solid starting point.
I hope that this was off some help to you.
The Reclaimer I just want to test out, not only as a way to potentially have a faster clock, but more so to have a repeatable crop rotation at my disposal with the upside of being able to grow into a fairly sizeable beater for only one mana. Countryside Crusher is with no doubt the more potent finisher, but Reclaimer is extremely versatile and thats what I like about the card.
Living Twister I just dont like yet, but I guess thats because I just see a 2/5 body with expensive abilities, but I am willing to try it out, as you are very high on the card.
After some thought I cut the Ruination Rioters. As you mentioned above the deck is fairly resilient against graveyard hate and cards like this just make it more susceptible to hate.
Regarding the sideboard I havent put much thought into that. Sadly I dont own cindervines and my LGS does not currently have any.
It will probably look quite similar to yours.
I really like the idea of playing like 1 bojuka bog in the 75, mainboard could get a little weird. My meta isnt that heavy on graveyard related decks so mainboard is probably a little to wild. Lotus field will most likely get cut down to 1 copy and be replaced by one fire-lit thicket.
One last thing, fair decks are probably the decks we like to play against, but how do we combat a deck like Neobrand?
I would love to hear some opinions and tips on how to approach degenerate decks.
A few years back I played around with this archetype for a while, before dismissing it. With modern horizons and m20 the deck got some very interesting toys and I am eager to delve into assault loam once again.
I am thinking about a RG shell, starting from your very checklist CrypticCommander.
But there are a few cards I would like to talk about, so let's get started.
Sorry for the lack of tags, but I am on my phone right now.
Is elvish reclaimer any good?
I do believe so, in theory it is 1/2 that can potentially stem the bleeding early on, or act as a beater or get utility lands. A repeatable instant speed crop rotation is quite powerful.
What about ruination rioter?
Stems the bleeding early on against fast creature decks and develops into a threat that opponents neither want to kill, nor want to attack into. Being able to shoot it down with the last land in hand after dumping the other lands to assault can nearly oneshot the opponent.
(Loam back 3 lands -> cycle forgotten cave -> loam back 3 more lands. Throw 8 damage to the opponent's face and 2 at the rioter to get another 5 damage).
The next card on my list, that fuels those 2 cards mentioned above is lotus field, which is especially good with the elvish reclaimer. The only cards that could be a problem when playing lotus field are blood moon and smallpox, otherwise we don't really care if 2 lands are in the yard, as we can get them back pretty easily.
Next up is cindervines vs. leyline of combustion. I have no experience with either of those cards, so it would be very cool hearing about which one is better and why.
Magmatic sinkhole might be an awesome addition to the removal suite, as it further diversifies spot removal if you are afraid of meddling mage and it can deal with planeswalkers in addition to that. The downside is delving away some amount of the graveyard, but with maybe one copy in the main deck this should be bearable.
And last but not least, in your RG list you are playing quite a few lands that come into play tapped @CrypticCommander. Does this make for weird sequencing at times or have those citpt lands never been bad. And is the cinder glade worth it?
Sadly i cant really go into more detail. My playexperience with the deck is very limited, someone else is probably more suited to answer your question in Detail, like CrypticCommander.
What are the general thoughts on the newly spoiled lotus field? It does seem pretty decent.
Edit:
@CrypticCommander:
I havent read the last few pages, but mtgs is apperently shutting down early july, are you going to write the primer for the new site?
Hey there,
some of you might remember me. Some time ago I got into this deck and even wrote some comments, but my account and everything I ever posted got deleted.
With the release of modern horizons this deck just seems very fun once more. I started with a RG shell and after some brainstorming and reading some comments about the 3 Color versions I was wondering what white and black really bring to the table and if a RG deck, with 1 or 2 black or white source, depending on the splash, would be viable.
The idea would be to only play the white/black for sideboardcards. White is just an overall solid color when it comes to sideboarding and black would provide some discard and graveyard hate.
Hopefully this explanation wasnt to confusing.
@SSquirrel:
Back in the day, when shadow was first released it saw a little play, but most of the time the card was just win more. It can lead to some Gotcha games, but most of the time the card either doesnt do anything, or you are winning anyway.
The main goal of this particular list would be to land a turn 1 or 2 GoR into a turn 3 Geist. Geist can than block a creature if nescessary and go to work on our turn. The list is way more control oriented than the list I am playing right now but I really like the "protect the Geist" strategy quite a bit.
Ranger-Captain is going to have quite an impact as well in modern, imo. It draws a card, is a 3/3 body and has an additional ability which is insane against a number of decks, like storm, izzet phoenix and other combo decks that might gain some ground after the release of MH.
The Teferis are for the longer game, as well as making it way more difficult to answer our threats, generating a tempo advantage over a few turns, as whatever they want to do they have to either get rid of baby teferi first, or just play everything sorcerie speed.
So I am curious what your thoughts are on my list.
Just some quick thoughts regarding MH from my point of few. At first I was not really excited about any of the cards they spoiled but I love the creativity and thought wizards put into this product so far. There are throwbacks, just well designed new cards and cards that are somewhat existent already, but powered down to not straight up destroy modern as a whole, but shake things up quite a bit.
After seeing the new Force of Negation and Giver of Runes, plus the Ranger-Captain of Eos I think its time for a resurgence of a straight up delver geist list, with just a few burn spells to finish the job.
For quite some time I havent posted anything in here, thats because modern wasnt that appealing in the last few months, I just could not motivate myself to play modern, but with the new set coming out, I am going to play a fair bit of modern for sure!
A few months back I decided for myself that Geist sadly wasnt good anymore and shifted to crackling drakes and streamlined my deck to 90% playsets to support my 2 Pyromancer Ascension, which worked out extremely well and I love how the deck play out. However, I still miss geist, so with the cards I mentioned earlier especially Stepmom Geist could become a monster once again.
I would focus the build on Geist, and Delver, only splashing red for a few sideboard cards, a playset of bolts and maybe some amount of helix.
Ranger-Captain of eos would be a way to tutor stepmom and cards like grim lavamancer, or even delver. The second ability is just icing on the cake. Prohibit could be an excellent card as well.
With Teferi, time Raveler and Spell Quellerin the mix this deck could become not just good, but even suppressiv, and I quite like the thought off not being on the receiving end of suppression
I got to test a few matches against grixis DS and got to resolve a turn 2 pyromancer ascension and getting it going on turn 3, there was no coming back from that point for my friend. All in all the deck feels great, I really enjoy the high cantrip with 3 Thought scour assissting the playsets of opt and serum visions and the lower land count at 18. The deck runns very smooth and Pteramander did some pretty nasty things. It needed some time getting used to the card but after a few games I can say that he is they way to go forward, at least for me.
As far as Modern horizon goes, the SCG-Team did a 3 matches with 6 different decks, that could potentially exist after the release of MH. They showcased some of the cards pretty well. Most of the cards just seemed extremely fine, a few others not as much.
Daze would so cool to get, but only time will tell. I hope that we just get some kind of tempo card and daze would be the perfect fit.
As you said Curdbros, we would have to build our deck somewhat different, way more tempo oriented and less aggressive.
Regarding the London mulligan. I havent tested it yet, except for some goldfishing, and I have to say at first I was very sceptical and thought it was way to powerful and that our deck just doesnt really benefit from it and others get way better. But it felt very natural for our deck, keeping the best 6 or 5 out of 7 is actually huge and very enjoyable. The degenerate decks will benefit more, thats for sure. The deck thats benefits the most is probably dredge, but if they really think that dredge goes over the top with this change, even thought looting is the best card in modern, it would be a mistake to ban it. This would kill some very interesting archetypes like mardu pyromancer, opting for a stinkweed imp ban would be a hit against dredge and not outright destroy a handfull of decks.
The anounced modern "exclusive" expansion sure is interesting, with 2 cards spoiled already and one of them being a very creative approach to bringing a Legacy staple into the modern format I am really excited! (Cabal Therapy --> Cabal Therapist)
Carddesigns like this renews my faith into WotC and that they really are going to support modern in the long run and dont just throw in cards to make the format more powerful. Basically keeping the personality of the Modern format intact. As modern players we dont want another format like legacy, we want our most favourite format to be different, with our own toys and the occasional reprints form older sets, just like counterspell, or daze, or even flusterstorm, but I will go over those in a bit.
I really hope they keep innovative ideas comming, with new hatecards against specific archetypes and cards that make not only our jeskai delver deck, but much more fringe archetypes playable, or even decks that havent existed before, making modern even more diverse than it is now.
So you guys already discussed a few cards that could become modern legal, here are my thoughts.
Many people complain about ancient stirrings to be banworthy, but I have to disagree, here is why. You have to build your deck with that card in mind, just as we build our decks with delver in mind, hence keeping the I/S count high. Ancient stirrings decks have to build there deck with that card in mind and fold to hate cards quite easily most of the time, like stony silence or blood moon/alpine moon.
With that being said, I do not think that we will get any of the blue cantrips, as they could just unban the card, but they havent and with phoenix being the dominant deck at the moment I cant see WotC giving them another tool.
Counterspell, Daze and Flusterstorm are a complete different pair of shoes. Daze would be the card I would want to see the most out of the 3, but is probably the most dangerous as well with DS in the mix, as it would represent another very powerful counterspell in their deck with an upside off 2-4 damage the next turn. But Daze could help our deck tremendously, answering a threat while being tapped out could be huge.
Counterspell is probably the card we will get, Logic Knot has filled that slot in the slower versions off jeskai control for some time and the UU manarestriction is a small hindrance.
Flusterstrom is weird, the card is bonkers against and in storm, but without force of will in the format I cant really see why we would want that card right now. As stated above the arclight decks dont really care if their spells resolve, as long as they can cast 3 in one turn or set up for future turns a flusterstorm doesnt really do much against them.
I believe, that some draws just cant be interacted with, regarding the phoenix deck. The key would be on when to cast silence effectively, or queller. Casting either of those two cards in response to a third stell with phoenixes in the GY would be very unwise. But playing silence in the upkeep, or quelling their turn 2 or 3 manamorphose to keep them from going off on their turn with spell pierce or remand back up while presenting pressure could just be backbreaking.
@stevo:
I dont have any experience with your style of deck, the more midrange approach, but I will tell you this much. Why fix it if it aint broken?
You have stated in last couple of posts, that you have pretty good results with the deck and considering the meta shifting more to burn, phoenix decks, as well as dredge and grixis shadow, with a tron deck in the mix as well sometimes you seem pretty well set up for most of those match ups.
Gravehate is very important right now, personally I would play 2 surgicals and 1 RiP but thats just my preference. You could even try 1 surgical main to make room for another card in your sideboard. Surgical is so good right now and hardly ever a dead card in the current modern metagame.
Speaking of the new modern metagame. I wanted to ask you guys about some cards and what your thoughts are regarding those cards.
The first one would be Silence. Playing this on curve, or turn 3 on upkeep of the izzet phoenix decks and flashing it back turn 4 with a proactive snapcaster could be quite good.
And the other card is Spell queller. Could izzet phoenix be the deck we want to board in queller again? It could be decent versus grixis shadow as well and in the burn match up its quite good in my experience.
I am curious what you guys think.
So finally I am getting around to writting up something, just havent had the time/urge to write, but its due time.
Anyways, there is much to talk about. First off I wanted to show you what I am, or rather what I was working with a few weeks, or days ago.
This was before Pteramander was spoiled. Ater reading the article CurdBros was so kind to post I was very positiv that this card could jsut be what our deck needed. The first attempt on my part, as I wasnt really a fan of Thought Scour. I started off with 2 copies of the lizard and 0 tought scour, just swapping out the 2 figures of destiny and 1 mantis rider, as well as cutting the 2 censor and the one Hieroglyphic illumination for one copy each off serum visions, opt and spell snare. Playing against Grixis shadow and jund, which were the only decks I tested against the lizard came close to transforming in 1 game if I recall correctly, so I upped the lizard count and went with 3-4 thought scours, switching at times, jsut to get a feeling for it.
Although the little flying man got dramatically better it still kind of underperformed in my opinion, so I dont really know what to do right now, either going back to the mantis riders or finally trying some swift spears along with one copy of figure of destiny. Those match ups arent the most represented in the meta game but I play versus interactive decks a lot in my local gamestore and I just havent seen the results I wanted. Pteramander seems less clunky on the card itself, but you often times dont really want to pump mana into it EoT becuase its just getting pushed, dismembered or bolted anyways. All in All I was a little disapointed with how it performed.
After trying out a new style off build or a new card I am often times a little discouraged and question the deck as a whole. And thats when I start to come up with some real spicy stuff and that may jsut happend right now.
I am very curious on what you guys think about the spice I am going to present you guys next.
While playing with looting the card felt extremelly powerful and with another 3 cantrips I lowered the land count to 18 and with 28 spells the delver flip rate felt amazing, like fantastic. Thinking about threats and such besides delver I stumbled upon Pyromancer Ascension. Thought Scour was filling the graveyard regardless and Ascension is a way of cheesing someone out that isnt prepared, as well as giving really good late game potential with cards like lightning helix, serum visions, bolts and snapcasters.
2 copies in the main or sideboard, thats what I havent figured out yet, should be sufficient. If it ends up in the main board and the opponent sees it and we expect grave hate we just board it out and dont really worry about grave hate at all, the question is would crackling drake in these RiP, albeit slower match ups, be a fine card to side in? Probably so. Or would Geist be sufficient?
One last thing, the new dovin is very interesting. We would have to make it work with evasive/aggressive creatures. A list like the one CurdBros is playing would probably be perfect for him. Siding him in versus slower decks could be decent.
Edit: Mazereon speaking. I have no clue why, but my account and all posts I previously made on this thread have been deleted. So here I am born anew lol...
And maybe I will be able to let you guys know on what I am working on right now later, after not having time for magic for quite some time now, sadly.
I made the experience, that a prowess heavy deck with Pyromancer Ascension, thought scour and as a top end Bedlam Reveler and Crackling Drake is extremely viable. Now even more so than before, as graveyard hate is not really an issue right now.
Sooner or later snapcaster mage will have to end up in the deck but with and aggressive route that has a decent late game in reveler and drake can be suprisingly powerful. You are restricting yourself to playing mostly 4 offs, but thats fine, with, lets say 27 instants and sorceries you have 3 flex spots, which is sufficient with all the cantripping that you are going to do. The play sets are the usual culprits with bolt, helix, opt, path, thought scour and probably serum visions. Say you are playing 19 lands, that leaves you with 14 pay offs/threats. 4 Delver, 4 Switfspear, 2 ascension 2 drakes and 2 revelers.
You can substitute either the drakes or the revelers for pyros, but you dont need pyros necessarily (I just dont like the card).
My list featured 3 snapcaster mages instead of the swiftspears if i remember correctly, so I cant tell you how good the deck really performs as snappy is a huge upgrade for the deck, but I still believe that this is a solid starting point.
I hope that this was off some help to you.
Tomorrow there is a small tournament near me and if I can make it I will pilot a list inspired by yours.
4 Elvish Reclaimer
3 Young Pyromancer
2 Living Twister
2 Scavenging ooze
Planeswalkers:
3 Wrenn and Six
Enchantments:
3 Seismic Assault
Sorceries:
4 Faithless Looting
4 Life from the loam
2 Flame Jab
1 Flame Slash
3 Lightning Bolt
1 Magmatic Sinkhole
1 Dismember
1 Lightning axe
Lands:
4 Wooded Foothills
1 Bloodstained Mire
2 Stomping Grounds
5 Mountain
1 Forest
2 Rootbound Craig
2 Lotus Field
1 Raging Ravine
2 Forgotten Cave
1 Sheltered Thicket
2 Ghost Quater
1 Blastzone
The Reclaimer I just want to test out, not only as a way to potentially have a faster clock, but more so to have a repeatable crop rotation at my disposal with the upside of being able to grow into a fairly sizeable beater for only one mana. Countryside Crusher is with no doubt the more potent finisher, but Reclaimer is extremely versatile and thats what I like about the card.
Living Twister I just dont like yet, but I guess thats because I just see a 2/5 body with expensive abilities, but I am willing to try it out, as you are very high on the card.
After some thought I cut the Ruination Rioters. As you mentioned above the deck is fairly resilient against graveyard hate and cards like this just make it more susceptible to hate.
Regarding the sideboard I havent put much thought into that. Sadly I dont own cindervines and my LGS does not currently have any.
It will probably look quite similar to yours.
I really like the idea of playing like 1 bojuka bog in the 75, mainboard could get a little weird. My meta isnt that heavy on graveyard related decks so mainboard is probably a little to wild.
Lotus field will most likely get cut down to 1 copy and be replaced by one fire-lit thicket.
One last thing, fair decks are probably the decks we like to play against, but how do we combat a deck like Neobrand?
I would love to hear some opinions and tips on how to approach degenerate decks.
A few years back I played around with this archetype for a while, before dismissing it. With modern horizons and m20 the deck got some very interesting toys and I am eager to delve into assault loam once again.
I am thinking about a RG shell, starting from your very checklist CrypticCommander.
But there are a few cards I would like to talk about, so let's get started.
Sorry for the lack of tags, but I am on my phone right now.
Is elvish reclaimer any good?
I do believe so, in theory it is 1/2 that can potentially stem the bleeding early on, or act as a beater or get utility lands. A repeatable instant speed crop rotation is quite powerful.
What about ruination rioter?
Stems the bleeding early on against fast creature decks and develops into a threat that opponents neither want to kill, nor want to attack into. Being able to shoot it down with the last land in hand after dumping the other lands to assault can nearly oneshot the opponent.
(Loam back 3 lands -> cycle forgotten cave -> loam back 3 more lands. Throw 8 damage to the opponent's face and 2 at the rioter to get another 5 damage).
The next card on my list, that fuels those 2 cards mentioned above is lotus field, which is especially good with the elvish reclaimer. The only cards that could be a problem when playing lotus field are blood moon and smallpox, otherwise we don't really care if 2 lands are in the yard, as we can get them back pretty easily.
Next up is cindervines vs. leyline of combustion. I have no experience with either of those cards, so it would be very cool hearing about which one is better and why.
Magmatic sinkhole might be an awesome addition to the removal suite, as it further diversifies spot removal if you are afraid of meddling mage and it can deal with planeswalkers in addition to that. The downside is delving away some amount of the graveyard, but with maybe one copy in the main deck this should be bearable.
And last but not least, in your RG list you are playing quite a few lands that come into play tapped @CrypticCommander. Does this make for weird sequencing at times or have those citpt lands never been bad. And is the cinder glade worth it?
Best regards
Maze
What are the general thoughts on the newly spoiled lotus field? It does seem pretty decent.
Edit:
@CrypticCommander:
I havent read the last few pages, but mtgs is apperently shutting down early july, are you going to write the primer for the new site?
some of you might remember me. Some time ago I got into this deck and even wrote some comments, but my account and everything I ever posted got deleted.
With the release of modern horizons this deck just seems very fun once more. I started with a RG shell and after some brainstorming and reading some comments about the 3 Color versions I was wondering what white and black really bring to the table and if a RG deck, with 1 or 2 black or white source, depending on the splash, would be viable.
The idea would be to only play the white/black for sideboardcards. White is just an overall solid color when it comes to sideboarding and black would provide some discard and graveyard hate.
Hopefully this explanation wasnt to confusing.
@SSquirrel:
Back in the day, when shadow was first released it saw a little play, but most of the time the card was just win more. It can lead to some Gotcha games, but most of the time the card either doesnt do anything, or you are winning anyway.
Without further ado:
4 Giver of Runes
3 Spell Queller
2 Ranger-Captain of Eos
3 Geist of Saint Traft
1 Vendilion Clique
2 Snapcaster Mage
Sorceries:
3 Ancestral Vision
Instants:
4 Lightning Bolt
4 Path to Exile
3 Force of Negation
3 Cryptic command
2 Prohibit
2 Spell Pierce
1 Spell Snare
4 Flooded Strand
3 Scalding Tarn
2 Hallowed Fountain
1 Steam Vents
2 Seachrome Coast
1 Inspiring Vantage
1 Glacial Fortress
2 Celestial colonnade
3 Island
1 Plains
The main goal of this particular list would be to land a turn 1 or 2 GoR into a turn 3 Geist. Geist can than block a creature if nescessary and go to work on our turn. The list is way more control oriented than the list I am playing right now but I really like the "protect the Geist" strategy quite a bit.
Ranger-Captain is going to have quite an impact as well in modern, imo. It draws a card, is a 3/3 body and has an additional ability which is insane against a number of decks, like storm, izzet phoenix and other combo decks that might gain some ground after the release of MH.
The Teferis are for the longer game, as well as making it way more difficult to answer our threats, generating a tempo advantage over a few turns, as whatever they want to do they have to either get rid of baby teferi first, or just play everything sorcerie speed.
So I am curious what your thoughts are on my list.
After seeing the new Force of Negation and Giver of Runes, plus the Ranger-Captain of Eos I think its time for a resurgence of a straight up delver geist list, with just a few burn spells to finish the job.
For quite some time I havent posted anything in here, thats because modern wasnt that appealing in the last few months, I just could not motivate myself to play modern, but with the new set coming out, I am going to play a fair bit of modern for sure!
A few months back I decided for myself that Geist sadly wasnt good anymore and shifted to crackling drakes and streamlined my deck to 90% playsets to support my 2 Pyromancer Ascension, which worked out extremely well and I love how the deck play out. However, I still miss geist, so with the cards I mentioned earlier especially Stepmom Geist could become a monster once again.
I would focus the build on Geist, and Delver, only splashing red for a few sideboard cards, a playset of bolts and maybe some amount of helix.
Ranger-Captain of eos would be a way to tutor stepmom and cards like grim lavamancer, or even delver. The second ability is just icing on the cake.
Prohibit could be an excellent card as well.
With Teferi, time Raveler and Spell Quellerin the mix this deck could become not just good, but even suppressiv, and I quite like the thought off not being on the receiving end of suppression
As far as Modern horizon goes, the SCG-Team did a 3 matches with 6 different decks, that could potentially exist after the release of MH. They showcased some of the cards pretty well. Most of the cards just seemed extremely fine, a few others not as much.
Daze would so cool to get, but only time will tell. I hope that we just get some kind of tempo card and daze would be the perfect fit.
As you said Curdbros, we would have to build our deck somewhat different, way more tempo oriented and less aggressive.
Regarding the London mulligan. I havent tested it yet, except for some goldfishing, and I have to say at first I was very sceptical and thought it was way to powerful and that our deck just doesnt really benefit from it and others get way better. But it felt very natural for our deck, keeping the best 6 or 5 out of 7 is actually huge and very enjoyable. The degenerate decks will benefit more, thats for sure. The deck thats benefits the most is probably dredge, but if they really think that dredge goes over the top with this change, even thought looting is the best card in modern, it would be a mistake to ban it. This would kill some very interesting archetypes like mardu pyromancer, opting for a stinkweed imp ban would be a hit against dredge and not outright destroy a handfull of decks.
Carddesigns like this renews my faith into WotC and that they really are going to support modern in the long run and dont just throw in cards to make the format more powerful. Basically keeping the personality of the Modern format intact. As modern players we dont want another format like legacy, we want our most favourite format to be different, with our own toys and the occasional reprints form older sets, just like counterspell, or daze, or even flusterstorm, but I will go over those in a bit.
I really hope they keep innovative ideas comming, with new hatecards against specific archetypes and cards that make not only our jeskai delver deck, but much more fringe archetypes playable, or even decks that havent existed before, making modern even more diverse than it is now.
So you guys already discussed a few cards that could become modern legal, here are my thoughts.
Many people complain about ancient stirrings to be banworthy, but I have to disagree, here is why. You have to build your deck with that card in mind, just as we build our decks with delver in mind, hence keeping the I/S count high. Ancient stirrings decks have to build there deck with that card in mind and fold to hate cards quite easily most of the time, like stony silence or blood moon/alpine moon.
With that being said, I do not think that we will get any of the blue cantrips, as they could just unban the card, but they havent and with phoenix being the dominant deck at the moment I cant see WotC giving them another tool.
Counterspell, Daze and Flusterstorm are a complete different pair of shoes. Daze would be the card I would want to see the most out of the 3, but is probably the most dangerous as well with DS in the mix, as it would represent another very powerful counterspell in their deck with an upside off 2-4 damage the next turn. But Daze could help our deck tremendously, answering a threat while being tapped out could be huge.
Counterspell is probably the card we will get, Logic Knot has filled that slot in the slower versions off jeskai control for some time and the UU manarestriction is a small hindrance.
Flusterstrom is weird, the card is bonkers against and in storm, but without force of will in the format I cant really see why we would want that card right now. As stated above the arclight decks dont really care if their spells resolve, as long as they can cast 3 in one turn or set up for future turns a flusterstorm doesnt really do much against them.
I dont have any experience with your style of deck, the more midrange approach, but I will tell you this much. Why fix it if it aint broken?
You have stated in last couple of posts, that you have pretty good results with the deck and considering the meta shifting more to burn, phoenix decks, as well as dredge and grixis shadow, with a tron deck in the mix as well sometimes you seem pretty well set up for most of those match ups.
Gravehate is very important right now, personally I would play 2 surgicals and 1 RiP but thats just my preference. You could even try 1 surgical main to make room for another card in your sideboard. Surgical is so good right now and hardly ever a dead card in the current modern metagame.
Speaking of the new modern metagame. I wanted to ask you guys about some cards and what your thoughts are regarding those cards.
The first one would be Silence. Playing this on curve, or turn 3 on upkeep of the izzet phoenix decks and flashing it back turn 4 with a proactive snapcaster could be quite good.
And the other card is Spell queller. Could izzet phoenix be the deck we want to board in queller again? It could be decent versus grixis shadow as well and in the burn match up its quite good in my experience.
I am curious what you guys think.
Anyways, there is much to talk about. First off I wanted to show you what I am, or rather what I was working with a few weeks, or days ago.
This was before Pteramander was spoiled. Ater reading the article CurdBros was so kind to post I was very positiv that this card could jsut be what our deck needed. The first attempt on my part, as I wasnt really a fan of Thought Scour. I started off with 2 copies of the lizard and 0 tought scour, just swapping out the 2 figures of destiny and 1 mantis rider, as well as cutting the 2 censor and the one Hieroglyphic illumination for one copy each off serum visions, opt and spell snare. Playing against Grixis shadow and jund, which were the only decks I tested against the lizard came close to transforming in 1 game if I recall correctly, so I upped the lizard count and went with 3-4 thought scours, switching at times, jsut to get a feeling for it.
Although the little flying man got dramatically better it still kind of underperformed in my opinion, so I dont really know what to do right now, either going back to the mantis riders or finally trying some swift spears along with one copy of figure of destiny. Those match ups arent the most represented in the meta game but I play versus interactive decks a lot in my local gamestore and I just havent seen the results I wanted. Pteramander seems less clunky on the card itself, but you often times dont really want to pump mana into it EoT becuase its just getting pushed, dismembered or bolted anyways. All in All I was a little disapointed with how it performed.
After trying out a new style off build or a new card I am often times a little discouraged and question the deck as a whole. And thats when I start to come up with some real spicy stuff and that may jsut happend right now.
I am very curious on what you guys think about the spice I am going to present you guys next.
While playing with looting the card felt extremelly powerful and with another 3 cantrips I lowered the land count to 18 and with 28 spells the delver flip rate felt amazing, like fantastic. Thinking about threats and such besides delver I stumbled upon Pyromancer Ascension. Thought Scour was filling the graveyard regardless and Ascension is a way of cheesing someone out that isnt prepared, as well as giving really good late game potential with cards like lightning helix, serum visions, bolts and snapcasters.
2 copies in the main or sideboard, thats what I havent figured out yet, should be sufficient. If it ends up in the main board and the opponent sees it and we expect grave hate we just board it out and dont really worry about grave hate at all, the question is would crackling drake in these RiP, albeit slower match ups, be a fine card to side in? Probably so. Or would Geist be sufficient?
One last thing, the new dovin is very interesting. We would have to make it work with evasive/aggressive creatures. A list like the one CurdBros is playing would probably be perfect for him. Siding him in versus slower decks could be decent.
Edit: Mazereon speaking. I have no clue why, but my account and all posts I previously made on this thread have been deleted. So here I am born anew lol...