Also, if you play maindeck sweepers why not Ritual of Soot over Fiery Cannonade ?
Is it just because of the BB mana cost with black being the splash color ?
I choose Sarkhan over Ral one, because sarkhan comes down on 3 if needed, 2 I've tested with both and everytime I've played Ral I was wishing he was sarkhan. Ral is good, but my game plan is to drop niv-mizzet.
Reborn is awesome and that's why it's in the sideboard, but waiting 3 turns to bring back a mizzet is too slow. I want to be able to play a mizzet into removal if needed, draw a card, ping them and then just do it again the next turn and have him stick. Although I may put reborn MB if I find Casting Vraska's is hard with my mana base like this, but it's felt find out of the sideboard so I figured I'd try it.
Yes Fiery Cannonade is a concession to the BB casting cost, while also being able to hit things at instant speed if needed, so I don't have to slow down on my turns.
So I did decide to make a few changes. -4 Ionize +2 Sinister Sabotage +2 Vraska's Contempt from the SB. I put 2 Nicol Bolas, The Ravager into the SB against Izzet Drakes as they will most likely take their coils out and the extra discard is valuable to slow them down.
In your deck, I don't get the black splash so much... ...you play 8 black cards, none of them is really needed. This version of the deck won't be weaker if you cut the black spells and add some more counterspells instead.
Also, I don`t think a 1of Dive Down is good here. You either have Niv-Mizzet without dive down or Dive down without anything to protect. I'd play a card, that is always good, not only in rare cases.
The black splash is for things like thought erasure, contempt,duress, and reborn. I thought about tossing 2 nicol bolas in the mix, but I'm still unsure if I want to. I feel like everyone plays him because they feel they have to. He gets eaten by a ton of removal. Lava coil is huge right now and I don't like playing him into that. Maybe sideboarding him could be decent for when they board out their coils and such. The idea is to play mizzet and get him to stick. Dive down helps in that area, and like you said it can be a dead card in hand but i can toss it for jumpstart or toss it to sarkhan if I want something else. It's a one of because it can come in really clutch. There is a reason this card is seeing so much play with it's best buddy Mizzet.
I believe Niv-Mizzet is literally the most insane card in standard now. If he lives he basically wins games the next turn.
A few things I still need to play test to make sure is correct. I may be dropping Ionize all together for Sinister Sabotage as 19 blue sources is more than enough to support them. I may even cut them down to 2. Not 100% sure what I would replace them with ATM but I just know that a lot of the time I'm wishing they were something reactive. Connive // Concoct basically lets us run 6 Niv-Mizzet and is amazing if you can bring him out on turn 5 or turn 6 with dive down in hand.
Arclight phoenix has apparently become the new go-to deck for Johnny-Spikes which started to annoy me recently on Arena, so I built an experimental new Esper control deck to keep it in check and teach those players a valuable lesson about that deck's fragile nature and situational co-dependencies. I still need to unlock more non-basic lands among other cards so it's not fully optimized yet, but I wanted to share it anyway to get some opinions, comments, suggestions, and criticisms.
What do you think?
Lol plenty of decks can be beaten if you target it. Although many other decks are going to stomp this deck that you've created
I haven't played against Chamber Sentry because no one plays this card, can you explain how you play it and what makes it so good for you ?
All i see here is a card that pretty much requires you to have Chromatic Lantern in play and is a 5/5 for 5 at best and if you want to get it back after it dies you need to spend 5 mana and an additional 5 mana to recast it as a 5/5.
This doesn't scream "efficiency" to me.
What I like about Thaumatic Compass is that serves multiple functions, early on it lets you find lands and fixes some awkward land/color draws and later on it flips into a land which stops the biggest attacker on the other side and as a topdeck it pretty much turns into a 2-mana ramp spell as it flips immediately.
First off can I start by saying, no one ever casts their first sentry at 5 mana, unless of course they don't draw into them until they have 5 available lands. He is a great 1-2-3-4 drop. He can be used as a blocker early game and a finisher late game. He can shoot fliers for up to 5, and be brought back to do it again. Mind you we're playing ramp so this is pretty damn feasible to do multiple times. I really think you should try playing with chamber sentry before you knock him. Thaumatic Compass is still too slow. I'm doing other things on turn 3-4-5 that compass will just sit there until I flip it. I don't want to be holding mana up to use compass at EOT.
Dawn of Hope seems interesting as a mana sink but probaably too slow and only good as a SB option to bring against control decks.
There combination with Fountain is good but a bit slow outside of control or attrition matchups.
It is heavily skewed toward beating aggro decks and thus struggles against control (counters are a nightmare) and midrange (The Eldest Reborn is a huge blowout and Vraska's Contempt cleanly answers Wurm) decks which can just handle every threat I throw at them which leave me hoping to burn them out which isn's the most consistent plan without blue in the deck to find Banefire/Fight with Fire.
Have you ever played against chamber sentry? Clearly you havent if you consider him a chump blocker. Those games where you fold to counter magic and eldest reborn, I laugh with my chamber sentry.I'm not looking to close out games with karn, but I can if I need to. Thaumatic compass is too slow, I'd rather be pumping out Dawn of hope tokens then finding another land. If I was to run another artifact it would be treasure map, but I don't have any ATM so I won't.
This is currently what I'm working with. Some of the card choices are due to what I currently own. Let me know what you think. Chromatic lantern and Chamber sentry is quite amazing. Along with fountain of renewal to help stabilize and allow us to draw cards with dawn of hope, while also pumping karn tokens is pretty sweet as well.
Do you think that there's a substantial difference between Gift of Paradise and Grow from the Ashes?
I have found the life-gain relevant against Aggro decks and it does open up more colors and spells to play with outside of the Temur colors.
Which leads me to my next question: have you missed the White Wrath effects in Deafening Clarion and Settle the Wreckage? They seem pivotal in turning the corner against Aggro matches and dealing with Carnage Tyrant (for Settle specifically).
Have you considered running Pelakka Wurm? I just recently put it in for a few games and it's been performing admirably, trades with Carnage Tyrant while also significantly padding our life total to get out of Burn range.
# I run both as the lifegain + fixing is important with Gift while Grow has more ramp potential with the kicker (and also puts the land/s untapped) while counting as a sorcery in the GY for Azcanta/Ral/Mirari.
# I have Clarion in my SB and I also pack River's Rebuke over Nova/Settle to not splash heavier into white (or lean too much on Gift for fixing).
# I run 2x Wurms in my SB and also like them in the aggro matchups.
All he wants to return with recollect is mirari to loop it. Thus Nature's Spiral is the better choice as it costs less. Not sure how you don't see the logic behind this. If he's looking to bring back sorceries and instants, then he has conjecture for that.
I figured I'd try something new with this mid-range deck. Take a few cool pieces from various decks that work well for what they're supposed to do. I will put up a sideboard later. There is plenty of other "Good Stuff" that can go into this deck and I'm excited to hear people's thoughts on the matter.
Reborn is awesome and that's why it's in the sideboard, but waiting 3 turns to bring back a mizzet is too slow. I want to be able to play a mizzet into removal if needed, draw a card, ping them and then just do it again the next turn and have him stick. Although I may put reborn MB if I find Casting Vraska's is hard with my mana base like this, but it's felt find out of the sideboard so I figured I'd try it.
Yes Fiery Cannonade is a concession to the BB casting cost, while also being able to hit things at instant speed if needed, so I don't have to slow down on my turns.
The black splash is for things like thought erasure, contempt,duress, and reborn. I thought about tossing 2 nicol bolas in the mix, but I'm still unsure if I want to. I feel like everyone plays him because they feel they have to. He gets eaten by a ton of removal. Lava coil is huge right now and I don't like playing him into that. Maybe sideboarding him could be decent for when they board out their coils and such. The idea is to play mizzet and get him to stick. Dive down helps in that area, and like you said it can be a dead card in hand but i can toss it for jumpstart or toss it to sarkhan if I want something else. It's a one of because it can come in really clutch. There is a reason this card is seeing so much play with it's best buddy Mizzet.
A few things I still need to play test to make sure is correct. I may be dropping Ionize all together for Sinister Sabotage as 19 blue sources is more than enough to support them. I may even cut them down to 2. Not 100% sure what I would replace them with ATM but I just know that a lot of the time I'm wishing they were something reactive. Connive // Concoct basically lets us run 6 Niv-Mizzet and is amazing if you can bring him out on turn 5 or turn 6 with dive down in hand.
Any advice would be smashing!
4x Niv-Mizzet, Parun
Planeswalker (2)
2x Sarkhan, Fireblood
Instant/Sorcery (26)
4x Opt
4x Thought Erasure
4x Ionize
2x Lava Coil
2x Cast Down
2x Fiery Canonade
2x Chemister's Insight
2x Connive // Concoct
1x Dive down
1x Blink of an Eye
2x Expansion // Explosion
2x Search For Azcanta
Lands (26)
3x Watery Grave
4x Steam Vents
4x Dragonskull Summit
4x Sulfur Falls
4x Drowned Catacomb
3x Mountain
4x Island
2x Vraska's Contempt
2x Duress
2x Ritual of Soot
2x The Eldest Reborn
2x Disdainful Stroke
2x Lava Coil
1x Golden Demise
1x Fiery Cannonade
1x Star of Extinction
Lol plenty of decks can be beaten if you target it. Although many other decks are going to stomp this deck that you've created
First off can I start by saying, no one ever casts their first sentry at 5 mana, unless of course they don't draw into them until they have 5 available lands. He is a great 1-2-3-4 drop. He can be used as a blocker early game and a finisher late game. He can shoot fliers for up to 5, and be brought back to do it again. Mind you we're playing ramp so this is pretty damn feasible to do multiple times. I really think you should try playing with chamber sentry before you knock him. Thaumatic Compass is still too slow. I'm doing other things on turn 3-4-5 that compass will just sit there until I flip it. I don't want to be holding mana up to use compass at EOT.
Have you ever played against chamber sentry? Clearly you havent if you consider him a chump blocker. Those games where you fold to counter magic and eldest reborn, I laugh with my chamber sentry.I'm not looking to close out games with karn, but I can if I need to. Thaumatic compass is too slow, I'd rather be pumping out Dawn of hope tokens then finding another land. If I was to run another artifact it would be treasure map, but I don't have any ATM so I won't.
3x Chamber Sentry
Planeswalker (3)
3x Karn, Scion of Urza
Instants (1)
1x Insecapable Blaze
Sorcery (13)
1x Banefire
4x Deafening Clarion
1x Fight with Fire
3x Circuitous Route
1x Sylvan Awakening
1x Star of Extinction
2x Lava Coil
Artifact (6)
3x Chromatic Lantern
3x Fountain of Renewal
1x Ixalan's Binding
3x Dawn of Hope
2x Seal Away
3x Gift of Paradise
Land (25)
1x Rootbound Crag
4x Sacred Foundry
4x Temple Garden
4x Sunpetal Grove
3x Clifftop Retreat
4x Forest
3x Mountain
2x Plains
4 Llanowar Elves
2 Elvish Rejuvenator
3 Jadelight Ranger
3 Plaguecrafter
1 Ravenous Chupacabra
3 Carnage Tyrant
Instants
3 Cast Down
2 Assassin's Trophy
2 Vraska's Contempt
2 Find // Finality
2 Ritual of Soot
Enchantments
3 Journey to Eternity
2 Shapers' Sanctuary
2 The Eldest Reborn
Planeswalkers
1 Vivien Reid
1 Vraska, Relic Seeker
2 Field of Ruin
9 Forest
4 Overgrown Tomb
5 Swamp
4 Woodland Cemetery
That's fine I was just stating that if that was all you used it for then why not go with something cheaper.
All he wants to return with recollect is mirari to loop it. Thus Nature's Spiral is the better choice as it costs less. Not sure how you don't see the logic behind this. If he's looking to bring back sorceries and instants, then he has conjecture for that.
I don't see how, if all you're looking to do is bring back Mirari. The smaller mana cost is thus better in this situation.
3x Adanto Vanguard
4x Thief of Sanity
2x Ravenous Chupacabra
2x Doom Whisperer
1x Dream Eater
Planeswalkers (3)
3x Teferi, Hero of Dominaria
Other (19)
3x Thought Erasure
2x Moment of Craving
2x Cast Down
3x Vraska's Contempt
3x Notion Rain
2x Revitalize
1x Discover//Dispersal
2x The eldest Reborn
1x Cleansing Nova
4x Drowned Catacomb
4x Watery Grave
4x isolated chapel
4x glacial fortress
5x plains
4x swamp
1x island