But against dredge, an extra Anger of the Gods seems to be a better card to have in the sideboard than Temur Battle Rage. Temur Battle Rage requires Death's Shadow to be effective and Dredge players will likely board in several copies of Abrupt Decay.
Interesting quote. I think with combo decks he means Dredge. I don't see the need to rush Storm, CoCo or Ad Nauseam. I'm a control player at heart and feel comfortable switching to that role against most combo decks.
I'm still not completely sold on Temur Battle Rage. I tried to run one copy of it maindeck in place of a Lightning Bolt for a few matches. I won one game with it against Elves, but I was already in a comfortable position at that point. In another game, a Gurmag Angler bravely gave his life for the team against a 9/10 Nivmagus elemental right after I had foiled my opponent's attempt to cast Temur Battle Rage on the Elemental. Well, that was pretty epic actually and won me the game, because my opponent had emptied their hand. But in several other games Battle Rage didn't matter or it ended up in my graveyard when I had Snapcaster and three lands. In at least two of these cases, snapping back a bolt would have changed the game state in my favor. So overall, Temur Battle Rage felt borderline gimmicky, even though I like that it makes our deck less predictable. It also seems worse as a sideboard card than maindeck, because even an innocent looking CoCo deck might have 3 Paths to Exile after boarding and plenty of open mana during our turn.
I think any kind of graveyard hate works fine against Storm, because we are already heavily favored in this matchup. I also switched from Fulminators to extra counterspells and it seems to work a lot better. Even though they were more scared of me when I ran Fulminators + Extractions.
I agree that three pieces of graveyard hate are a good number. I currently run 2 Nihil Spellbombs and 1 Rakdos Charm, because I felt I desperately needed an extra artifact destruction spell in certain matchups. I also run Kozilek's Return over Anger of the Gods for other reasons, so Dredge is already a nightmare. But I don't expect to face dredge very often, because it struggles even harder than us with the graveyard hate that people are packing against us and the Jund Death's Shadow decks. Players in my meta love putting hate cards in their sideboards instead of interacting with the opponent's deck. That's why the big-mana decks are so popular.
BloodyRabbit_01, why do you consider Surgical Extraction a must-have? My local metagame is dominated by Gx Tron and RG Titanshift. My attempts to beat them with Fulminator Mages and Surgical Extractions failed miserably for the most part. UWx Control seems to be nearly inexistent in my area. If it was popular, I would play a different deck.
Thank you, BloodyRabbit_01. Very interesting read! Until now I have never sided out the Inquisitions in the mirror and even brought in the additional Stubborn Denials from the sideboard. My plan is to disrupt their early game aggressively (I might even force spike Serum Visions if I have two Stubborn Denials) and establish a threat with counterspell protection on turn 3 before they can stabilize (preferably Angler or Tasigur). I use Nihil Spellbomb aggressively as well to delay their delve threats and blunt their Snapcasters. I keep track of my record against other Grixis Shadow decks (including 2 with a white splash) and I'm currently at 7-2 on MTGO. But these were just training games, so some of my opponents were probably just learning how to play their deck. But so was I. So I will test out what happens when I side Inquisitions and Stubborn Denial out.
The idea behind spell snare is it's a replacement 1 cmc spell thats really good vs snapcaster, which is important if grixis DS becomes the main DS deck, and it is a pretty strong card for most stages of the game anyway. Snare is also just good against affinity, burn, and coco decks, which are all really popular, and i do think we need at least the coco help.
I don't see a huge advantage of Spell Snare over Inquisition in the CoCo matchup. Most of their CMC2 drops die to any creature removal, including KCommand, and they can still cheat the missing combo piece into play with Chord of Calling. Inquisition can take out the key pieces of their grindy backup plan: Kitchen Finks, Eternal Witness and possibly Renegade Rallier and/or Rhonas the Indomitable. It can also grab Chord of Calling, which is particularly important in game 1 before we can bring in our Collective Brutalities and extra Stubborn Denials.
Inquisition is great against burn and can grab Etched Champion against Affinity, which can often be even more troublesome than their CMC2 spells because it can't be KCommanded in practice.
Inquisition is also not bad at all in the mirror. If they are winning, it's often because they drew into just the neccessary number of lands and many spells. But this also means that they cannot play out everything at once and might hold back on high value spells like KCommand, waiting for the right moment to ruin your day. In addition to grabbing anything worthwile except for delve creatures, Inquisition provides valuable intel on what our opponent is capable of doing. Even if the mirror comes down to topdecking with empty hands, Spell Snare can be a worse topdeck than Inquisition because it only hits 6 to 8 spells. Inquisition might sit in your hand for a while, but when you finally draw a threat, Inquisition can protect it better than Spell Snare.
IMHO Spell Snare is at is best when it is part of a larger package of conditional counterspells, Mana Leak in particular.
So if you count, you'll notice this is 61 cards in the main and 14 in the sideboard. Only 2 lists were running Temur Battle Rage, and both cut Bolts for them in the main, so you either cut a Bolt or a TBR (or cut 2 Bolts and play 2 TBR). This means there's one extra slot open in the sideboard. In my opinion, the best options are a 3rd Brutality, 3rd Rejection, or 2nd sweeper. Of course, this isn't gospel, so everyone's free to tinker as they wish, but I think this is the starting point for us going forward.
Great work! But the 1.4 Surgical Extractions and 1.3 Nihil Spellbombs got rounded up to a 2-2 split that does not look right. Currently, most lists dedicate two or three slots to graveyard hate. So I think there is at least one more flex slot in the sideboard.
It's also noteworthy that Surgical Extraction interacts favorably with Fulminator Mage, which got rounded down to 0. There is some competition between Ceremonious Rejection and Fulminator Mage for the sideboard slots, because you can pack only so much hate against (Eldrazi) Tron without weakening the primary game plan of the deck.
I didn't warm up to this deck initially, but it is growing on me. One thing I'd like to point out is that I think that Lightning Bolt still has a home in it.
After my 1.5 year break from Modern and mostly Magic in general, the format seems to have undergone what I would like to call an "Eldrazification". Many decks opt for raw power and/or assembly of redundant combo pieces instead of interacting much with the opponent's deck. Fatal Push happens to be one of the new "raw power" cards. Most of the time, it's just a narrow and highly effective removal spell that gets the job done. Lightning Bolt, on the other hand, feels like a card from a different era. It can do so many things for you, much like a 1 CMC guild charm. This quality makes Lightning Bolt a great addition to the narrower removal spells in the deck. So I'm not saying: Take out Fatal Push for it. IMHO Lightning Bolt mostly competes with Terminate, Dismember, Temur Battle Rage or any other card in the few flex slots this deck has.
While Lightning Bolt might not be the powerhouse it once was in the current meta, it still has awesome synergy with various cards in the deck. It also encourages creative thinking rather than attrition battles. Thus, it also comes with the added benefit of making it harder to predict what we are capable of doing next turn. I have won so many games against Death Shadow decks of various flavors with my aggro control decks because it usually takes them a full turn (maybe even two with Serum Visions) before they can assemble any capable threat after a well-timed removal spell or a board wipe. Bolt + Snapcaster + Bolt often translates into 8 damage right after that, and the opponent can feel forced to waste a removal spell on the Snapcaster Mage during the next turn to stabilize the board state AGAIN. This is the kind of pressure I like to apply to control decks to have a chance of winning. It's really important to win game 1 against control decks, because game 2 and 3 will be much harder once they have boarded in their graveyard hate.
Inquisition is great against burn and can grab Etched Champion against Affinity, which can often be even more troublesome than their CMC2 spells because it can't be KCommanded in practice.
Inquisition is also not bad at all in the mirror. If they are winning, it's often because they drew into just the neccessary number of lands and many spells. But this also means that they cannot play out everything at once and might hold back on high value spells like KCommand, waiting for the right moment to ruin your day. In addition to grabbing anything worthwile except for delve creatures, Inquisition provides valuable intel on what our opponent is capable of doing. Even if the mirror comes down to topdecking with empty hands, Spell Snare can be a worse topdeck than Inquisition because it only hits 6 to 8 spells. Inquisition might sit in your hand for a while, but when you finally draw a threat, Inquisition can protect it better than Spell Snare.
IMHO Spell Snare is at is best when it is part of a larger package of conditional counterspells, Mana Leak in particular.
It's also noteworthy that Surgical Extraction interacts favorably with Fulminator Mage, which got rounded down to 0. There is some competition between Ceremonious Rejection and Fulminator Mage for the sideboard slots, because you can pack only so much hate against (Eldrazi) Tron without weakening the primary game plan of the deck.
I didn't warm up to this deck initially, but it is growing on me. One thing I'd like to point out is that I think that Lightning Bolt still has a home in it.
After my 1.5 year break from Modern and mostly Magic in general, the format seems to have undergone what I would like to call an "Eldrazification". Many decks opt for raw power and/or assembly of redundant combo pieces instead of interacting much with the opponent's deck. Fatal Push happens to be one of the new "raw power" cards. Most of the time, it's just a narrow and highly effective removal spell that gets the job done. Lightning Bolt, on the other hand, feels like a card from a different era. It can do so many things for you, much like a 1 CMC guild charm. This quality makes Lightning Bolt a great addition to the narrower removal spells in the deck. So I'm not saying: Take out Fatal Push for it. IMHO Lightning Bolt mostly competes with Terminate, Dismember, Temur Battle Rage or any other card in the few flex slots this deck has.
While Lightning Bolt might not be the powerhouse it once was in the current meta, it still has awesome synergy with various cards in the deck. It also encourages creative thinking rather than attrition battles. Thus, it also comes with the added benefit of making it harder to predict what we are capable of doing next turn. I have won so many games against Death Shadow decks of various flavors with my aggro control decks because it usually takes them a full turn (maybe even two with Serum Visions) before they can assemble any capable threat after a well-timed removal spell or a board wipe. Bolt + Snapcaster + Bolt often translates into 8 damage right after that, and the opponent can feel forced to waste a removal spell on the Snapcaster Mage during the next turn to stabilize the board state AGAIN. This is the kind of pressure I like to apply to control decks to have a chance of winning. It's really important to win game 1 against control decks, because game 2 and 3 will be much harder once they have boarded in their graveyard hate.