Those win rates are pretty sweet to see. That's just the thing. I expect my win rate to be much higher at FNMs and other non GP tournaments.
I'll second that. The attainable win rate obviously depends on the environment. If you are one of the few competitive players in a FNM full of casual players, 75% certainly is within reach in some formats. A few years back I played Standard extensively on MTGO. Each time the format shifted, I noticed how I gained a significant advantage over the vast majority of local FNM players who were net-decking but didn't have hundreds of matches in the new metagame under their belt. I saw my advantage diminish over time until the next block entered the format and I started getting absurd win rates again.
I doubt that many participants in this discussion expect to hit 70%+ regularly in a pro-level environment or compare themselves to the best players in the world who will usually have much better sparring partners to practice with if they are in a team.
I noticed the uptick in Jeskai Control decks, but unfortunately I have never warmed up to any of their incarnations. I'm actually surprised that Humans is considered a favorable matchup for Jeskai Control, because I imagine that Jeskai Control would have trouble to take over the game quickly enough against such a fast disruptive deck.
My secondary deck is actually Hollow One, because I wanted to learn the ins and outs of a linear deck. But when I play the deck it doesn't feel as if there is a lot to learn. It took me about a day to feel comfortable with the deck, whereas it took me several months to feel comfortable with Grixis Shadow. I don't think I have played a relevant number of games against Jeskai Control, so I'm curious if is indeed favored against Hollow One. I practiced intensively against the blue-white Jace decks that were all the rage for a while after the unban and those decks where certainly too clunky to beat Hollow One reliably.
also you gotta be realistic. most everyone thinks they are better than they are. if you just assume the majority of people you play against are less skilled than you wins stop becoming triumphs and every loss becomes a blow to your ego; which can drive you from seeking how to better your play.
That's a really good point. I don't think that I am a great player per se, I have strengths and weaknesses just like every other person. Perhaps my greatest strength is that I'm pretty good (though often not great, as I lack patience) at many different things. I think my D&D class would be bard, i. e. jack of all trades, master of none. Thus I tend to be good at games and activities in general which involve quick tactical thinking, frequent adjustment to new situations, improvisation and multitasking.
MtG can be this kind of game, but it seems as if players whose set of strengths and weaknesses is considerably different from mine have found deck archetypes in Modern and other formats that take most of what I personally consider 'skill' out of the equation. Yet, their definition of 'skill' could just be different from mine. Maybe they are always looking for new ways to lock the opponent completely out of the game or enjoy perfecting their sequencing in a highly linear combo deck.
When I feel lost at a Modern tournament because all of my opponents bring decks that want to avoid interacting with my deck in any meaningful way (which has actually happened several times by now), I can't really blame them. They are actually maximizing their chances of winning against someone like me. Yet it appears as if they have a much harder time escaping me in limited.
Thanks for the recommendation of Pauper. The popular blue red deck is pretty close to the kind of deck that I'm trying to play in just about any constructed format and I love mirror matches.
Modern has been the only format I considered playing for years. But very recently I discovered that I also like drafting Dominaria. In comparison, it feels so much more skill-intensive than Modern, especially the drafting/deck construction part. Most of the top decks of Modern may be hard to master, but they are surely not that hard to pilot decently.
Modern isn't the most-played format where I live, but we have a somewhat big community of active players, so there are dozens of people who play Modern semi-casually in weekly tournaments. Since those players don't have the time and interest in the format to practice it intensively, they tend to build the least interactive and most linear decks they can find, which is actually pretty smart if you think about it. But at the same time, this creates a toxic local tournament environment for players like me who want to play a more traditional game of MtG.
Back in the late 1990s when I played the game extensively, my win ratio was perhaps around 75% and I won about every third local tournament that I participated in (10-20 people tournaments mostly, but I also qualified for the Pro Tour in my first and only attempt to do so and with a deck variant that I came up with by myself - now, that felt rewarding). In current day Modern, my win ratio is close to 60% in MTGO and at a depressing 50% at local tournaments since I stubbornly insist on playing decks that I actually enjoy playing.
But now that I started drafting Dominaria, my win ratio is currently at 85% after a few intermediate draft leagues. I probably got really lucky and I don't think it will last in the long run because literally all I know about drafting I got from watching others doing it on youtube. But it sure feels like a flashback to the days in pre-netdeck constructed MtG when my opponents had to beat me in several disciplines, including deck building. I'm aware that those days are never going to come back, but I still think that the issue I have with Modern (and probably most other constructed formats) is the lack of opportunity to outplay my opponent when they are on a deck that - more often than not - pretty much plays itself.
I don't really know what to do about it, because the cards that make these decks exist and banning them will likely only bring similarly problematic cards to the spotlight. So I guess all I can do for now is play less Modern and draft more Dominaria while it lasts.
This is a deck from last summer when Eldrazi Tron was the deck to beat. Dismember kills just about everything in that deck at the lowest possible cost, but it taxes the life total. Street Wraith also taxes the life total, but can become a liability later in the game when Dismember can still be cast for some extra mana. Just take a look at the top 32 decks from that event and notice how many of these decks are creature-based. This is the kind of metagame where an extra Dismember may be more valuable than the 4th Street Wraith.
It's also noteworthy that nearly all Grixis Shadow decks from that era had 19 lands. Cutting a Street Wraith from today's vanilla version with 18 lands, 2 Temur Battle Rages and up to 4 Anglers seems loose. I have never been the biggest fan of Street Wraith, but it is a crucial corner piece of the more aggressive game adopted by the current incarnation of our deck.
Faithless Looting has worse card selection than Serum Visions. You will be tapped out when you cast it on turn 1 or 2 most of the time, so getting cards a turn earlier won't even matter much.
IMHO Faithless Looting is a build-around card which is good in the Mardu Pyromancer deck because almost every other card in it that isn't a discard/removal spell benefits significantly from it or negates its drawback (Bedlam Reveler, Young Pyromancer, Lingering Souls, Collective Brutality, Kolaghan's Command). There is a lot of synergy here, while there is next to no synergy between Faithless Looting and Death's Shadow, Stubborn Denial and Temur Battle Rage.
The more I think about it, I would rather replace Thought Scour with Faithless Looting in order to maximize the deck's ability to dig for a threat. Faithless Looting and Serum Visions even have some nice synergies with each other.
That's card disadvantage and makes it even more profitable to neutralize your Gurmag Angler because you have one less card to recover from that. In addition, a turn 2 Gurmag Angler is most profitable against mostly non-interactive decks like Tron and Titanshift. But the one way these decks are interacting with your deck early is by attacking your graveyard. While it is certainly not impossible to play around a turn 1 Relic of Progenitus on your opponent's side, doing so is considerably harder with four copies of Gurmag Angler and no Tasigurs. Yes, it is still going to work sometimes, but the more you rely on things going well for you, the more likely you are going to get punished.
I would at the very least put 2 Young Pyromancers and some additional artifact/enchantment removal (Engineered Explosives etc.) in the sideboard to fight your way through graveyard hate. The typical Mardu Pyromancer deck has 3 or 4 Kolaghan's Command maindeck and some combination of Wear/Tear, Engineered Explosives, Stony Silence and Pithing Needle in the sideboard (4 to 6 cards in total). Your deck has just 1 By Force and doesn't even run a second copy of Kolaghan's Command.
Lestart is right. Faithless Looting was one of the first cards that I tested in Grixis Shadow shortly after the deck had its breakout appearance. Back then, Faithless Looting had been the backbone of a rogue Grixis Aggro deck I had previously played, so I was very eager to integrate it into my new deck. Unfortunately, this change effectively turned Grixis Shadow into a UBR deck instead of a UBr deck, resulting in frequent mana issues without adding that much power to the deck. It's also noteworthy that Faithless Looting doesn't play well with Delve creatures.
Sure, but keep in mind that these were practice matches against opponents of varying skill levels.
My deck list was stock except for running a split of 3 Anglers / 1 Tasigur, which also means that Angler had much more opportunity to shine. I also played a LotV over the 4th Snapcaster Mage, which I kind of regretted because I had problems establishing a threat in several games, in which a 2/1 + with flashed-backed Opt would have been better in comparison.
Without further ado, here's my afternoon "report".
Match 1 - Naya Company (Knight of the Reliquary) 2-0
G1: Opponent is busy chump blocking, all their creatures die as I draw tons of discard and removal, it's not even close
G2: Opponent is stuck on two lands after I kill their mana dorks, they have a hand full of cards, but apparently no way to interact with my Izzet Staticaster
Good Cards: Death's Shadow, Dismember, Izzet Staticaster
Match 2 - Blue Living End 2-1
G1: Opponent draws 2 As Foretolds, 3 Living Ends and 2 Cryptic Commands, I die
G2: Heavy disruption thanks to Liliana of the Veil, Stubborn Denial counters their Ancestral Vision, Rakdos Charm wipes their yard
G3: Opponent has Leyline of Sanctity but misses turn 2 land drop, draws some land, but it's already too late
Good Cards: Stubborn Denial, Liliana of the Veil, Gurmag Angler, Rakdos Charm
Match 3 - Esper Tokens 0-2
G1: I mulligan into a terrible hand with 2 removal spells and a Snapcaster Mage, which they make me discard, they run over me with a bunch of spirit tokens
G2: I am on land short of casting Angler (don't have Tasigur) when they cast Surgical Extraction on a Snapcaster Mage that I milled with my first Thought Scour, taking another Snapcaster Mage from my hand, this makes it even harder to cast my Angler and the spirit tokens get me before Angler becomes relevant
Good Cards: Thoughtseize, Tasigur the Golden Fang
Match 4 - Blue Moon 2-0
G1: I play around Remand, I let them have Blood Moon because I already have my two basics, an Angler and 2 Stubborn Denials, they die quickly
G2: They are stuck on multiple copies of Shadow of Doubt which would have screwed me had they had the mana to cast it, Gurmag Angler runs over them
Good Cards: Thoughtseize, Death's Shadow, Gurmag Angler
Match 5 - Gb Elves (Company) 1-2
G1: They mulligan to 5, but still build up insanely fast, I die with a TBR in hand after they topdecked exactly the one land that they needed for a big Ezuri attack
G2: Again my opponent has a very good board, successfully playing around my Staticaster with a timely Lord, in the end, I get them with TBR and Stubborn Denial backup, despite some nasty Scooze action
G3: They take my only threat with Thoughtseize on turn 1, as it turns out there is no second threat in the top 27 cards of my deck, so I slowly bleed out against a board of small buggers
Good Cards: Temur Battle Rage, Fatal Push
Match 6 - Bant Company 2-1
G1: I totally roll over him with Gurmak Angler and Death's Shadow with the removal that I was short on in the games vs. Elves, my deck feels like a combo deck this game
G2: My opponent land floods, but my deck fails to produce a threat again, eventually they kill me with Sigarda, Host of Herons of all cards after a long game
G3: Slow game again, but this time 2 Shadows and TBR roll over the few creatures my opponent manages to cast for an uncontested win
Good Cards: Death's Shadow, Stubborn Denial, Temur Battle Rage
Match 7 - Mono-Red Prison 2-0
G1: Fatal Push kills Eidolon, Stubborn Denial stops a turn 2 Chalice of the Void, I decide to cast Liliana of the Veil over a threat, my opponent casts Blood Moon (I saw that coming), but I already have the basic Swamp to cast Angler, opponent scoops after discarding some cards and taking a beating
G2: I'm unhappy to start with two Ceremonious Rejections, but my opponent has Sorcerous Spyglass on turn 2 and Chalice on turn 3, I thoughtseize a Magus of the Moon, leaving them with only lands in hand, my opponent scoops again
Good Cards: Ceremonious Rejection, Liliana of the Veil, Gurmag Angler
Match 8 - Naya Burn 2-0
G1: Opponent has lots of gas but is stuck on 2 lands, Gurmag Angler + TBR proof to be too much to handle
G2: Game 2: IOK reveals a Path and an Ensnaring Bridge, opponent is again stuck on good cards but few lands, 2 Swiftspears are no match for 2 Death's Shadows
Good Cards: Death's Shadow, Stubborn Denial, Inquisition of Kozilek, Thoughtseize, Fatal Push
Match 9 - Gift's Storm 2-0
G1: My opponent kinda goes off when I tap out for an early Angler, killing it and lowering my life total from 15 to 7 with a Past in Flames in the yard, I have way too many lands, but also some removal for their dorks, eventually I find a second Angler and kill them before they can combo off
G2: It's my opponent's turn to be mana flooded and they are even better at this than me, my disruption ensures an easy win
Good Cards: Stubborn Denial, Gurmag Angler, Fatal Push, Snapcaster Mage
Match 10 - Bant Eldrazi 2-0
G1: My opponent has Eldrazi Temple but no Eldrazi, just a bunch of mana dorks and a Fauna Shaman, they all die a horrible death
G2: The game drags endlessly as my opponent and me are both land flooded, Relic of Progenitus does some work for them, and they have multiple Paths and Blessed Alliances for my threats, then they suddenly start drawing about one Eldrazi per turn, lowering my life total to 2 before I can stabilize and take over the board with multiple threats
Good Cards: Thoughtseize, Fatal Push, Dismember
Match 11 - Blue Red Breach Combo 2-0
G1: They have a land heavy hand and I take what little action is left with my discard spells, eventually I get Angler down and they die
G2: They are still setting up their board when two rather small Shadows come at them before they can hit the 5 mana they need for Breach (which I would have countered)
Good Cards: Stubborn Denial, Thoughtseize
Match 12 - 4C Vizier Company 2-0
G1: They basically ignore me outside of chumpblocking, but not even half their combo remains on the board long enough to lose summoning sickness
G2: This time they actually interact with my cards once when they bounce a Death's Shadow with Reflector Mage after I baited them to do so by making them discard their alternatives, I proceed to drop Angler, Shadow comes back from vacation, game over
Good Cards: Death's Shadow, Gurmag Angler, Street Wraith
Match 13 - Hollow One 0-2
G1: I'm stuck on two lands and can't find another one despite casting multiple cantrips, they have a hand full of action and slaughter me
G2: I'm stuck on two lands again, this time they even cast Molten Rain on one those lands after a few turns, not good
Good Cards: Stubborn Denial, Fatal Push
Match 14 - GW Company 2-0
G1: They seem to have a full playset of Renegade Rallier, Eternal Witness and Kitchen Finks, which would have been a problem, had they enough mana and revolt triggers to cast them all before Angler and two Shadows got out of control
G2: They are low on creatures this time, but I'm still one removal short of stopping their Scooze from growing dangerously big, yet my opponent underestimates my ability of lowering my life total and die on the back swing of their first attack
Good Cards: Dismember, Thoughtseize, Gurmag Angler, Death's Shadow
Match 15 - Abzan Vizier Company 2-0
G1: This game feels like a deja-vu from G1 against the 4C Vizier Company deck, but this time my opponent also has a slow start except for two druids which both die before they can tap
G2: Apparently they boarded in a Path that kills one of my two Death's Shadows, unfortunately for them, this also gives me the land that I needed to cast an Angler, followed by a Temur Battle Rage with Stubborn Denial backup
Good Cards: Death's Shadow, Temur Battle Rage, Fatal Push
I have to take back some of my criticism in regard to maindeck TBRs.
Today I played 15 practice matches in a row on MTGO and took notes on which cards were good in each matchup and what my opponents did to stop me. Unsurprisingly, Thoughtseize, Stubborn Denial and Gurmag Angler were the MVPs.
What surprised me was the lack of interaction in the vast majority of the games. The two most interactive matches were against Storm and Bant Eldrazi, and frankly, these decks were not that interactive. To be fair, I also rolled over a blue red control deck before my opponent had the opportunity to interact much. But even that opponent was busy trying to resolve one of their maindeck Blood Moons when they were not Opting or Serum Vision-ing. Of the 15 decks, 6 were Company/Chord decks in various color combinations that mostly played solitaire.
I went 12-3 in matches, losing only to Elves (very close), Esper Tokens (totally owned me with Lingering Souls) and Mono Red Hollow One (in both games I was stuck on 2 lands for the entire time). 10 of the 12 matches that I won ended 2-0 in games for me. I'm sure I won some of these games because I was more experienced with my deck than my opponents were with theirs, even though I also was playing an unfamiliar version with a new sideboard. On the other hand, I doubt that most of the solitaire decks are that hard to master. Anyway, I'm glad that TBR helped end some of these games prematurely. And I'm looking forward to some mirror matches in the future, which are currently by far the most enjoyable games for me.
Dire Fleet Daredevil is cute, but it is just so much better in an Aether Vial deck. At the point in the game where we have 5 mana to cast Lingering Souls with it, a 2/1 with First Strike is going to be irrelevant most of the time. I can see how Dire Fleet Daredevil performs great in a Grixis Shadow mirror, but so do many other cute cards that only see fringe play because they are too narrow or too expensive to warrant one - let alone two - sideboard slots. Pia and Kiran Nalaar, Liliana's Defeat etc.
I played against different versions on the deck on MTGO. Some of had Monastery Swiftspears in addition to the Young Pyromasters, which can't be killed by Liliana, the Last Hope and Izzet Staticaster. I also like to go aggressively after Young Pyromancer, because this has repeatedly provoked my opponents into recurring it with Kolaghan's Command and recasting it. That's a nice tempo swing for just 1 mana. And I want to play the tempo game here, because they will likely outgrind me if the game goes too long.
+2 Anger of the Gods/Kozilek's Return
+1 Engineered Explosives
+1 Izzet Staticaster/Liliana, the Last Hope (ideally both)
+2 Nihil Spellbomb
+1 Stubborn Denial
My plan is to streamline my deck by cutting cards I don't need in multiples (plus Kommand because it's not relevant enough). The remaining discard spells are mostly there to take their discard spells. If they play very defensively, I would cut 2 IOKs instead of 2 Thoughtseizes, an Opt/Serum Visions instead of one Street Wraith and a Fatal Push instead of a Dismember. From my experience, they will go all in though, so I'd like to keep the self-hurt at a reasonable level and let them do the work.
Nihil Spellbomb, Izzet Staticaster and Liliana, the Last Hope are very good sideboard cards vs Mardu Pyromancer. It is also noteworthy that Mardu Pyromancer leans towards heavy discard rather than heavy removal. The deck is not as good at getting rid of Gurmag Angler as Abzan because it usually doesn't have Path. TBR can obviously be good in this matchup, especially because Mardu Pyromancer is sometimes hellbent in the later stages of the game. I wouldn't call the matchup unfavorable, but I have only played about a dozen games against the deck.
I'm fine if you feel the way as you do but I'm definitely rather on the deck with less lands in that kind of matchup because that means I am more likely to draw more spells and GDS can operate on very few lands.
Following your reasoning, wouldn't it be smart to board out more lands for extra value cards? 17 lands could be even better than 18 lands. What makes you feel that 18 lands is the sweet spot, not 17 or 19?
I doubt that many participants in this discussion expect to hit 70%+ regularly in a pro-level environment or compare themselves to the best players in the world who will usually have much better sparring partners to practice with if they are in a team.
My secondary deck is actually Hollow One, because I wanted to learn the ins and outs of a linear deck. But when I play the deck it doesn't feel as if there is a lot to learn. It took me about a day to feel comfortable with the deck, whereas it took me several months to feel comfortable with Grixis Shadow. I don't think I have played a relevant number of games against Jeskai Control, so I'm curious if is indeed favored against Hollow One. I practiced intensively against the blue-white Jace decks that were all the rage for a while after the unban and those decks where certainly too clunky to beat Hollow One reliably.
MtG can be this kind of game, but it seems as if players whose set of strengths and weaknesses is considerably different from mine have found deck archetypes in Modern and other formats that take most of what I personally consider 'skill' out of the equation. Yet, their definition of 'skill' could just be different from mine. Maybe they are always looking for new ways to lock the opponent completely out of the game or enjoy perfecting their sequencing in a highly linear combo deck.
When I feel lost at a Modern tournament because all of my opponents bring decks that want to avoid interacting with my deck in any meaningful way (which has actually happened several times by now), I can't really blame them. They are actually maximizing their chances of winning against someone like me. Yet it appears as if they have a much harder time escaping me in limited.
Thanks for the recommendation of Pauper. The popular blue red deck is pretty close to the kind of deck that I'm trying to play in just about any constructed format and I love mirror matches.
Modern isn't the most-played format where I live, but we have a somewhat big community of active players, so there are dozens of people who play Modern semi-casually in weekly tournaments. Since those players don't have the time and interest in the format to practice it intensively, they tend to build the least interactive and most linear decks they can find, which is actually pretty smart if you think about it. But at the same time, this creates a toxic local tournament environment for players like me who want to play a more traditional game of MtG.
Back in the late 1990s when I played the game extensively, my win ratio was perhaps around 75% and I won about every third local tournament that I participated in (10-20 people tournaments mostly, but I also qualified for the Pro Tour in my first and only attempt to do so and with a deck variant that I came up with by myself - now, that felt rewarding). In current day Modern, my win ratio is close to 60% in MTGO and at a depressing 50% at local tournaments since I stubbornly insist on playing decks that I actually enjoy playing.
But now that I started drafting Dominaria, my win ratio is currently at 85% after a few intermediate draft leagues. I probably got really lucky and I don't think it will last in the long run because literally all I know about drafting I got from watching others doing it on youtube. But it sure feels like a flashback to the days in pre-netdeck constructed MtG when my opponents had to beat me in several disciplines, including deck building. I'm aware that those days are never going to come back, but I still think that the issue I have with Modern (and probably most other constructed formats) is the lack of opportunity to outplay my opponent when they are on a deck that - more often than not - pretty much plays itself.
I don't really know what to do about it, because the cards that make these decks exist and banning them will likely only bring similarly problematic cards to the spotlight. So I guess all I can do for now is play less Modern and draft more Dominaria while it lasts.
It's also noteworthy that nearly all Grixis Shadow decks from that era had 19 lands. Cutting a Street Wraith from today's vanilla version with 18 lands, 2 Temur Battle Rages and up to 4 Anglers seems loose. I have never been the biggest fan of Street Wraith, but it is a crucial corner piece of the more aggressive game adopted by the current incarnation of our deck.
IMHO Faithless Looting is a build-around card which is good in the Mardu Pyromancer deck because almost every other card in it that isn't a discard/removal spell benefits significantly from it or negates its drawback (Bedlam Reveler, Young Pyromancer, Lingering Souls, Collective Brutality, Kolaghan's Command). There is a lot of synergy here, while there is next to no synergy between Faithless Looting and Death's Shadow, Stubborn Denial and Temur Battle Rage.
The more I think about it, I would rather replace Thought Scour with Faithless Looting in order to maximize the deck's ability to dig for a threat. Faithless Looting and Serum Visions even have some nice synergies with each other.
I would at the very least put 2 Young Pyromancers and some additional artifact/enchantment removal (Engineered Explosives etc.) in the sideboard to fight your way through graveyard hate. The typical Mardu Pyromancer deck has 3 or 4 Kolaghan's Command maindeck and some combination of Wear/Tear, Engineered Explosives, Stony Silence and Pithing Needle in the sideboard (4 to 6 cards in total). Your deck has just 1 By Force and doesn't even run a second copy of Kolaghan's Command.
My deck list was stock except for running a split of 3 Anglers / 1 Tasigur, which also means that Angler had much more opportunity to shine. I also played a LotV over the 4th Snapcaster Mage, which I kind of regretted because I had problems establishing a threat in several games, in which a 2/1 + with flashed-backed Opt would have been better in comparison.
Without further ado, here's my afternoon "report".
Match 1 - Naya Company (Knight of the Reliquary) 2-0
G1: Opponent is busy chump blocking, all their creatures die as I draw tons of discard and removal, it's not even close
G2: Opponent is stuck on two lands after I kill their mana dorks, they have a hand full of cards, but apparently no way to interact with my Izzet Staticaster
Good Cards: Death's Shadow, Dismember, Izzet Staticaster
Match 2 - Blue Living End 2-1
G1: Opponent draws 2 As Foretolds, 3 Living Ends and 2 Cryptic Commands, I die
G2: Heavy disruption thanks to Liliana of the Veil, Stubborn Denial counters their Ancestral Vision, Rakdos Charm wipes their yard
G3: Opponent has Leyline of Sanctity but misses turn 2 land drop, draws some land, but it's already too late
Good Cards: Stubborn Denial, Liliana of the Veil, Gurmag Angler, Rakdos Charm
Match 3 - Esper Tokens 0-2
G1: I mulligan into a terrible hand with 2 removal spells and a Snapcaster Mage, which they make me discard, they run over me with a bunch of spirit tokens
G2: I am on land short of casting Angler (don't have Tasigur) when they cast Surgical Extraction on a Snapcaster Mage that I milled with my first Thought Scour, taking another Snapcaster Mage from my hand, this makes it even harder to cast my Angler and the spirit tokens get me before Angler becomes relevant
Good Cards: Thoughtseize, Tasigur the Golden Fang
Match 4 - Blue Moon 2-0
G1: I play around Remand, I let them have Blood Moon because I already have my two basics, an Angler and 2 Stubborn Denials, they die quickly
G2: They are stuck on multiple copies of Shadow of Doubt which would have screwed me had they had the mana to cast it, Gurmag Angler runs over them
Good Cards: Thoughtseize, Death's Shadow, Gurmag Angler
Match 5 - Gb Elves (Company) 1-2
G1: They mulligan to 5, but still build up insanely fast, I die with a TBR in hand after they topdecked exactly the one land that they needed for a big Ezuri attack
G2: Again my opponent has a very good board, successfully playing around my Staticaster with a timely Lord, in the end, I get them with TBR and Stubborn Denial backup, despite some nasty Scooze action
G3: They take my only threat with Thoughtseize on turn 1, as it turns out there is no second threat in the top 27 cards of my deck, so I slowly bleed out against a board of small buggers
Good Cards: Temur Battle Rage, Fatal Push
Match 6 - Bant Company 2-1
G1: I totally roll over him with Gurmak Angler and Death's Shadow with the removal that I was short on in the games vs. Elves, my deck feels like a combo deck this game
G2: My opponent land floods, but my deck fails to produce a threat again, eventually they kill me with Sigarda, Host of Herons of all cards after a long game
G3: Slow game again, but this time 2 Shadows and TBR roll over the few creatures my opponent manages to cast for an uncontested win
Good Cards: Death's Shadow, Stubborn Denial, Temur Battle Rage
Match 7 - Mono-Red Prison 2-0
G1: Fatal Push kills Eidolon, Stubborn Denial stops a turn 2 Chalice of the Void, I decide to cast Liliana of the Veil over a threat, my opponent casts Blood Moon (I saw that coming), but I already have the basic Swamp to cast Angler, opponent scoops after discarding some cards and taking a beating
G2: I'm unhappy to start with two Ceremonious Rejections, but my opponent has Sorcerous Spyglass on turn 2 and Chalice on turn 3, I thoughtseize a Magus of the Moon, leaving them with only lands in hand, my opponent scoops again
Good Cards: Ceremonious Rejection, Liliana of the Veil, Gurmag Angler
Match 8 - Naya Burn 2-0
G1: Opponent has lots of gas but is stuck on 2 lands, Gurmag Angler + TBR proof to be too much to handle
G2: Game 2: IOK reveals a Path and an Ensnaring Bridge, opponent is again stuck on good cards but few lands, 2 Swiftspears are no match for 2 Death's Shadows
Good Cards: Death's Shadow, Stubborn Denial, Inquisition of Kozilek, Thoughtseize, Fatal Push
Match 9 - Gift's Storm 2-0
G1: My opponent kinda goes off when I tap out for an early Angler, killing it and lowering my life total from 15 to 7 with a Past in Flames in the yard, I have way too many lands, but also some removal for their dorks, eventually I find a second Angler and kill them before they can combo off
G2: It's my opponent's turn to be mana flooded and they are even better at this than me, my disruption ensures an easy win
Good Cards: Stubborn Denial, Gurmag Angler, Fatal Push, Snapcaster Mage
Match 10 - Bant Eldrazi 2-0
G1: My opponent has Eldrazi Temple but no Eldrazi, just a bunch of mana dorks and a Fauna Shaman, they all die a horrible death
G2: The game drags endlessly as my opponent and me are both land flooded, Relic of Progenitus does some work for them, and they have multiple Paths and Blessed Alliances for my threats, then they suddenly start drawing about one Eldrazi per turn, lowering my life total to 2 before I can stabilize and take over the board with multiple threats
Good Cards: Thoughtseize, Fatal Push, Dismember
Match 11 - Blue Red Breach Combo 2-0
G1: They have a land heavy hand and I take what little action is left with my discard spells, eventually I get Angler down and they die
G2: They are still setting up their board when two rather small Shadows come at them before they can hit the 5 mana they need for Breach (which I would have countered)
Good Cards: Stubborn Denial, Thoughtseize
Match 12 - 4C Vizier Company 2-0
G1: They basically ignore me outside of chumpblocking, but not even half their combo remains on the board long enough to lose summoning sickness
G2: This time they actually interact with my cards once when they bounce a Death's Shadow with Reflector Mage after I baited them to do so by making them discard their alternatives, I proceed to drop Angler, Shadow comes back from vacation, game over
Good Cards: Death's Shadow, Gurmag Angler, Street Wraith
Match 13 - Hollow One 0-2
G1: I'm stuck on two lands and can't find another one despite casting multiple cantrips, they have a hand full of action and slaughter me
G2: I'm stuck on two lands again, this time they even cast Molten Rain on one those lands after a few turns, not good
Good Cards: Stubborn Denial, Fatal Push
Match 14 - GW Company 2-0
G1: They seem to have a full playset of Renegade Rallier, Eternal Witness and Kitchen Finks, which would have been a problem, had they enough mana and revolt triggers to cast them all before Angler and two Shadows got out of control
G2: They are low on creatures this time, but I'm still one removal short of stopping their Scooze from growing dangerously big, yet my opponent underestimates my ability of lowering my life total and die on the back swing of their first attack
Good Cards: Dismember, Thoughtseize, Gurmag Angler, Death's Shadow
Match 15 - Abzan Vizier Company 2-0
G1: This game feels like a deja-vu from G1 against the 4C Vizier Company deck, but this time my opponent also has a slow start except for two druids which both die before they can tap
G2: Apparently they boarded in a Path that kills one of my two Death's Shadows, unfortunately for them, this also gives me the land that I needed to cast an Angler, followed by a Temur Battle Rage with Stubborn Denial backup
Good Cards: Death's Shadow, Temur Battle Rage, Fatal Push
Today I played 15 practice matches in a row on MTGO and took notes on which cards were good in each matchup and what my opponents did to stop me. Unsurprisingly, Thoughtseize, Stubborn Denial and Gurmag Angler were the MVPs.
What surprised me was the lack of interaction in the vast majority of the games. The two most interactive matches were against Storm and Bant Eldrazi, and frankly, these decks were not that interactive. To be fair, I also rolled over a blue red control deck before my opponent had the opportunity to interact much. But even that opponent was busy trying to resolve one of their maindeck Blood Moons when they were not Opting or Serum Vision-ing. Of the 15 decks, 6 were Company/Chord decks in various color combinations that mostly played solitaire.
I went 12-3 in matches, losing only to Elves (very close), Esper Tokens (totally owned me with Lingering Souls) and Mono Red Hollow One (in both games I was stuck on 2 lands for the entire time). 10 of the 12 matches that I won ended 2-0 in games for me. I'm sure I won some of these games because I was more experienced with my deck than my opponents were with theirs, even though I also was playing an unfamiliar version with a new sideboard. On the other hand, I doubt that most of the solitaire decks are that hard to master. Anyway, I'm glad that TBR helped end some of these games prematurely. And I'm looking forward to some mirror matches in the future, which are currently by far the most enjoyable games for me.
-1 Dismember
-1 Kolaghan's Command
-1 Snapcaster Mage
-2 Street Wraith
-2 Thoughtseize
+2 Anger of the Gods/Kozilek's Return
+1 Engineered Explosives
+1 Izzet Staticaster/Liliana, the Last Hope (ideally both)
+2 Nihil Spellbomb
+1 Stubborn Denial
My plan is to streamline my deck by cutting cards I don't need in multiples (plus Kommand because it's not relevant enough). The remaining discard spells are mostly there to take their discard spells. If they play very defensively, I would cut 2 IOKs instead of 2 Thoughtseizes, an Opt/Serum Visions instead of one Street Wraith and a Fatal Push instead of a Dismember. From my experience, they will go all in though, so I'd like to keep the self-hurt at a reasonable level and let them do the work.