@DeFish, I like your list and I like where you're coming from in general. Darkblast is definitely one I'll have to keep in mind.
So I recently started up my humble YouTube channel! My timing is predictably awful, since we've just entered the era of Trophy and the few videos I have all predate that, for now. Still, I put together a lengthy deck tech for BG Rock (this is mostly aimed at giving beginners context and application for every inclusion, but may be worthwhile for more experienced players too), and I also have a couple replay matches uploaded with commentary.
If anyone wants to check them out, I'd love your feedback, being new to all this stuff. (My audio is low quality, but I'll be upgrading that before too long.)
(I checked the forum rules and this doesn't seem to qualify as soliciting. At this rate I'm still years away from monetization, lol. Just trying to spread the BGx love in all its forms!)
Not sure I follow you...surely having enough information to avoid making a suboptimal play is a good thing? If you, for whatever reason, still wish to consciously make the “mistake” you would have made when lacking said information, you still have the option to do so. Maybe I’m misunderstanding; otherwise, I can’t see how a shell that provides hand information with some regularity could make our Trophy decisions worse than if we were left to guess at the contents of opponents’ hands.
Regardless, I’m happy that we’ve distilled the discussion down to the specific point of contention. Great talks as always, ladies and gents.
This has nothing to do with Traverse or DS or Jund or Abzan or whatever. Midrange decks are good stuff decks and your cards can do so much. CoCo resolving is a blowout for all the midrange decks or opponent spewing their hand on the board T1-4 isn't easy to handle for any of the decks unless they can conjure a sweeper or multiple removal spells. Your strategy is built on gaining incremental advantage over time and Trophy rarely does that early in the game. It can let you handle problematic cards you had trouble handling in the past but you can't fill your deck with it and hope for it to be effective.
Our strategy is indeed based on gaining incremental advantage; and those incremental gains sometimes run into a brick wall, and are all for naught when our opponent resolves something we can’t deal with. As everyone acknowledges, Trophy means that BGx pilots are going to be saying “well...I can’t really beat that card” a whole lot less in the future.
Your position seems to be that we’re paying an extremely steep price for access to this wide-ranging coverage—too steep even to justify more than 2x Trophy in the main. My position is that the sheer power and flexibility of Trophy is going to be of nearly incalculable benefit in a deck like ours, which above all struggles with card selection (which really means finding the right answer—finding a specific threat is far less of an issue, often any of them will do so long as we can keep interacting favorably).
I think the top 15ish meta decks’ matchup rundown a few of us have taken a crack at shows pretty clearly how well Trophy is poised to do against the current meta.
Like hitting Leyline with Trophy doesn't mean anything if you're enabling your opponent to combo-kill you next turn through discard spells. Hitting your opponent's zombie fish doesn't also mean anything if you're ramping them into a kcommand so they can recur their fish and and drop it right back on the battlefield next turn or you're giving them an island so they can soft-stub the lili you're casting on curve when you untap.
Here’s an example of what I mean about catastrophizing. If we’re still talking about Ad Nauseam (which, given the Leyline + combo kill scenario, I assume we are), what could they even have that makes them able to “combo-kill you next turn through discard spells” (note the plural there)? They’d basically have to have Ad Nauseam/Spoils x3 (with each copy of AN in hand making the Spoils worse) with an Unlife in play (in which case it’s pretty aggressive to hit the Leyline to begin with), or they’d have to have 3x each of AN and Angel’s Grace...and they also have to have been gated from comboing off by exactly one basic land.
It’s a lot more realistic to acknowledge that Leyline is the single best card they can hope to open on in this matchup, and that our maindecked Trophies being able to kill it while also having plenty of other valid targets in the matchup is just fantastic for us nearly 100% of the time.
As for the GDS scenario, I agree that it would be pretty bad to Trophy the fish, give them an untapped Island, and then walk our LoTV into the force spike. Seems like there we’d just untap, slam the LoTV, edict, and still have our catch-all removal piece in hand!
We could go back and forth all day breaking down such scenarios—and don’t get me wrong, it’s fun to consider all the various lines—but ultimately the discussion thrives more at the conceptual level IMO.
Trophy is so bad sometimes that it creates new lines for your opponent and you can see these lines because you know what they have in their hand so Trophy ends up being unplayable at that point in the game. Like against any deck running push, you're giving them revolt and mana to cast it.
There is just so many similiar lines you create for your opponent and you'll experience this first hand pretty much. So yea, it's not a card you want to fire off early on to get rid of problematic things. If you want to hit a Leyline, your best bet is still charm or pulse, not just jamming a bunch of trophies into your 60 and hope that Search for Tomorrow you freely gave away isn't gonna bite you back.
So yea, Trophy is a negative tempo card that sometimes creates insurmountable board states just because you decided to use it or you had to use it at early turns of the game. I wouldn't be surprised if Reid decided to ran like 1 in 60 and 1 in the board or none in the 60 and 2 in the board. He might just go the other way and full up on paths and trophies too, there's that.
You mention our hand info as though it’s a downside that we won’t be as likely to blunder into giving the opponent ramp at an ideal time with Trophy. Hand info is just one of many ways our deck can naturally blunt the downside of Trophy.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m glad people are proceeding with caution as it regards this ramp effect. I’d just like to go on record as saying that many are starting to overstate its drawbacks, and in so doing are underrating one of the most spectacular printings in recent memory.
You guys are really focusing on citing the best case scenarios and not actual situations where you can't use the card tbh.
Sorry, but that’s not the case at all. You can disagree with the conclusions we’ve drawn about any particular matchup, but none of us have simply cited best case scenarios. If anything, the opposite is true; the critics of Trophy have tended to indulge in a little catastrophizing, IMO.
Trophy is more or less unplayable against Valakut, Burn and Storm. Similiar to how path is almost unplayable in these matchups in Abzan.
Path is “almost unplayable” in an exponentially higher number of common scenarios than Trophy. Just think of all the decks that play few or no creatures in the maindeck! This is an obvious point, but one that bears repeating because it seems clear that the sheer power and flexibility of Trophy is becoming overshadowed in some people’s minds by the prospect of inefficient use cases.
“Almost unplayable” in any given scenario is less likely to apply to Trophy than to any other answer card in Modern.
Before I forget, it’s worth noting that people on either side of this discussion might just be talking past each other. You and others are probably defaulting to the mindset of a Traverse player when considering the Trophy count, whereas I’m speaking from the perspective of a non-Traverse pilot, which is by definition more interested in noncreature answer cards.
E.g. 1. When affinity plays and equips Cranial Plating, you'll fire it off on it to not take 5-10 extra damage and they'd still get to use the land on their 2nd main phase. Ramping isn't "optional", you always ramp except when you fire it on a nonbasic and you'll rarely get to fire it off on a nonbasic.
Yes, but aren’t you glad you had a deck chock full of instant-speed outs to a must-answer card like Plating? Decay does the job more efficiently here (but only once—Affinity usually runs a lone basic AFAIK), but at the cost of being literally dead in hand against dozens of other must-answer threats in the format.
E.g. 2. When you fire it off eot against Infect when they're tapped out, they'd still get an extra land to protect their other threats during your turn. Even if you sequence this differently and fire Trophy on your turn, they'd still get an extra land and another card in the graveyard on their turn for pump spells unless you've killed exactly an Inkmoth Nexus where in that situation, they don't get the extra land. So yea, you gave them 2 different type of resources by killing one of their threats, delve fodder and an extra mana to spend on their turn while you are likely tapped out.
Being able to hit Inkmoth on our own terms (i.e. not having to wait for them to activate it) is extraordinary in this matchup—this is the exact reason we side in Fulminator Mage. Decay is great here too (but arguably higher variance; it blows them out if they’re leaning on Pierce but is dead in hand if they go all in on Inky). Still, consider that this is a matchup where the opponent plays counter magic AND literally zero CMC 4+ permanents, and yet Trophy still keeps pace with Decay, each card having roughly equal value overall. Let that sink in!
E.g. 3. Against Ad Nauseam, would you fire it off on Pentad Prism just to cut them off a single extra mana? Decay or any other artifact removal does its job here and Trophy is stuck in your hand in the same situation because it just doesn't have an impact. Killing Leyline with Golgari Charm instead of Trophy is miles better since they're not 1 step closer to combo off when they untap and discard spells in your hand might just not be enough to keep them off combo next turn now that you've ramped them. Similiarly, Trophy isn't ideal to fire off on Lotus Bloom either.
I guess you’ll just have to ask some AN pilots about this one. BGx is widely considered a nightmare matchup for them due to our combination of discard, flexible permanent removal, and a respectable clock. I’m quite confident in saying that the ability to remove Leylines (which they will mulligan aggressively for) far outweighs the downside Trophy brings; Leyline, more than any other single card, is what the matchup hinges upon.
In fact, AN is so cold to discard-heavy decks like ours that, a few months back, some pilots were trimming a Pact of Negation, a Sleight of Hand, and a Spoils of the Vault (or something similar) in order to jam 3 Leylines main. Our targets for removal, in order of priority and assuming a relatively normal progression on both sides: Leyline > Phyrexian Unlife > Lotus Bloom on their upkeep (only if you know their hand and the play makes sense) > Prism > Lotus Bloom with limited hand info.
Another factor worth noting is that most AN players are packing an alternate wincon in the side: Grave Titan, Dragonlord Dromoka, sometimes even a transformative plan of Unburial Rites + Gifts Ungiven + I-win fatties. Decay is dead and Trophy is live against anything along those lines they’re going to bring from the sideboard.
E.g. 4. Trophy is solid against Boogles, unless they've kept a greedy 1 lander with a hand full of action and you just gave them what they needed to run away with the game, hitting their leyline so they can empty out their hand after you've cast a discard spell or two.
“Solid” is the undersell of the century. Trophy killing Leyline enables our discard but more importantly sets our LoTV free! That’s so far ahead of ramping the Bogle player on the “this matters” scale that I don’t even know how to quantify it.
If they’re on a one-lander full of action and you’re wary about giving them a land, then you simply don’t give them a land. If their land is a Thicket or a Canopy then it’s actually a perfectly acceptable play to destroy it with Trophy and force them to operate off a lone basic, which limits them yet further. Or you just develop your board instead. Bogles on one land aren’t exactly pressuring us in a meaningful way.
Against GDS, do you think you'll get to fire it off on a nonbasic in an attirition match? Your first Trophy won't cut them off colors unless they only have 1 red source(they got basic Swamp&Island). Will cutting them off red matter? I don't think so because the cards they keep in their deck postboard are mostly blue and black(they are likely to side out TBR, wraith and looting)when playing against any GBx midrange deck except kcommand, bolts, pyromancer and maybe staticaster against souls and that's mostly 5-6 red cards pretty much. You're not realistically cutting them off blue or black and they'll fetch for 2 red sources if they're playing against a trophy deck. Pyromancer is also a possibility post board but it's rare at this point.
Agree that cutting GDS off of red isn’t the highest priority, but in a deck packing 3-4 Field it’s very doable—just not something you’d prioritize in an average match. The larger upside to Trophy in this matchup is simply the ability to kill Delve threats. Given their own level of hand disruption and stack interaction, having a high density of answers to their relatively limited number of genuine threats is not to be underestimated.
So I don't think Trophy is good against leylines since I don't think it's a spell you want to fire off on T1-3 and even T4 if your opponent missed a land drop tbh. That's why I'm suggesting 2 copies instead of 3 but 3rd copy can have a slot in the board against Tron and H1 or other similiar decks where it's playable on T2.
This is just where we part ways, I suppose. Isn’t this a lot like saying Path isn’t good against creatures because you’d sometimes decline to use it on their early plays if they’re missing land drops?
Again, I wonder if the big difference in perspective here resides in the Traverse vs traditional shells. Otherwise, I can’t imagine being so lukewarm about things like how powerful a maindeckable CMC 2 answer to Leyline of Sanctity is.
Again, we can do this exact same analysis for dead modes on Push, Path, Lily, and TS, all of which routinely see 3+ copies. The average Trophy is still way better than the average Decay in more matchups. The below average Trophies are still often find. Bad Trophy is admittedly very bad, but it's generally just as bad as bad Decay, bad TS, bad Push, etc.
I’d even take this one step further and say that bad Trophy is almost never as bad as bad Decay/Push/TS. The worst you can ever really say about Trophy is that it’s not good right now, a negative which lessens with each passing turn in any matchup. Not so for the other cards, which in certain matchups will start the game dead and end the game dead, with your best use case for them being free LoTV/Brutality fodder.
Anyway I think ktkenshinx is pretty spot on with most of his assessment on Trophy.
Same.
By the way.. there's no word from the Duke on the new spoilers, yet?
Don’t believe so, but our main man is looking swole lately. Hair and beard game is on point too. If the Duke says to play only two copies of Trophy then I will be forced to renounce my wicked ways.
Rather than talk about any applications of Trophy you can think of, because there will be tons, but instead let's think about which actual tier decks it matters against, and how it compares to Abrupt Decay.
I know that listing as many relevant CMC 4+ non-indestructible permanents as I can think of doesn’t tell the whole story; that was more a reminder of the scope and breadth of Modern’s variety. Some people (not really anyone ITT) have expressed an attitude along the lines of “almost every relevant target is CMC 3 or less anyway”, and it’s useful to bear in mind just how crazy Modern can get in terms of what cards see play.
Now, I do agree with you completely that it’s necessary to compare Trophy’s impact on various matchups with that of its closest competitors. @ktkenshinx did a great job on that front. If we dig a little deeper down the tier list, we find the following decks:
Mardu Pyromancer
There’s only one target that Decay misses but Trophy hits, but it’s a big one: Bedlam Reveler. Most of my own losses to the deck seem to have come at the hands of a Reveler, which not only breaks the symmetry of card advantage but also closes the game out—and the latter half of that statement is important. BGx decks are capable of clawing their way back into the game even after a Reveler lands, but not if they can’t answer it quickly. I’d also say that ramping Mardu via Trophy doesn’t feel too bad for a variety of reasons (their advantage coming more from a resolved Pyro + spell density more than curving out, their increased likelihood to fetch basics due to their own Moons, etc), but admittedly that all goes out the window if you’re in a spot where you’re using an Ooze or something to try keeping them off of Reveler mana. Tough call overall—but Trophy remains our only card outside of white that can answer both Pyromancer and Reveler ASAP, so I’d give it the nod.
Bogles
The Bogles mana base can be clunky and awkward; it’s actually sort of greedy for a 2c deck, between naturally drawing Dryad Arbor, the WW for Coronet, the low land count, and the pain from Canopies. So ramping them feels fairly bad even though they’re likely on just 3 basics, especially since Decay cleanly takes care of Spiritdancer and every Aura. However, Trophy gives us a strong chance of a maindeck out to their maindeck Leylines of Sanctity, which is obviously of enormous import given the absurd strength of LoTV against their strategy. Trophy’s CMC of 2 is also a nice upgrade to Pulse (unless they opened on 2 Leylines lol—and even then they might sandbag one) if our plan is to remove their Leyline ASAP and start firing off discard spells. Finally, Trophy can answer Dryad Arbor if they’re in a position where they have to start suiting it up—which is not uncommon. Trophy is the clear winner.
Ad Nauseam
This one actually mirrors Bogles to a strange degree, given how different the two decks are. Decay is already strong against both, and ramping them is a significant price to pay, but the huge difference maker is the ability to hit Leylines. Discard is the most powerful form of interaction against Ad Naus—leaning on permanent removal doesn’t help against Grace into AN—and once more, Trophy lets us pop the Leyline T2 and start discarding T3, and against this opponent those discard spells will still be very, very good at that stage of the game. Another minor note: these decks only ever play 1 Island and 1 Plains for basics, so occasionally it might be realistic to use Trophy to keep them off BB for their signature spell, although it would have to be an unusual game for that to pan out. Still, from the Ad Naus perspective it’s almost Leyline or bust post-side against BGx, so on the strength of Trophy being able to answer their best card, I’d say it’s the clear favorite.
Amulet Titan
Helping to ramp the ramp deck sucks; no getting around that! Still, Trophy answers the Titan itself. It also answers Zapalta, Ruric Thar, and whatever other monstrous goons they have floating around in their 75, and it also takes care of Hive Mind if they’ve got that in as an alternate win condition. As dedicated players, we’re always looking for the most efficient lines and carefully weighing the costs and downsides of every inclusion, but I feel like this is the sort of matchup that illustrates exactly why Trophy is an insanely powerful Magic card, and it’s for the most obvious reason. Point it at the payoff cards and they die. Advantage: Trophy.
Grixis Shadow
Now this one’s a little tricky. Lots of factors to consider. On the one hand, there’s not much that feels better than taking care of their only Shadow with an uncounterable Decay while the opponent is obviously holding up Stubborn Denial. On the other hand, the Decay could just as easily be dead in hand while you’re getting beaten to death by the Delve threats. This is a matchup where our Goyfs can easily wind up outsizing the opposing Anglers, however, while Shadows...not so much. Lots of moving pieces to consider. I’ve seem some pro players, while siding against Shadow, say things like “I don’t want to leave in too many spells that only kill Shadows”. It’s possible that just leaning on Push and Trophy here is enough—even if Push gets countered, it’s still a neutral exchange on tempo and cards. Grixis Shadow’s manabase is also notoriously fragile, so a Field-heavy draw could easily see Trophy apply the finishing touch as far as keeping them off a color goes. I’m leaning toward Trophy here as well, guys.
All that said, I’m still angling to fit a Decay in the 75. The card remains great! Some people have mentioned the 3/1/1 Trophy/Decay/Pulse split. I want 4/1/1, with a second Pulse in the side. We’ll see if that ends up being tenable.
Hey, none of us know for sure how the builds will pan out over time, but I’ll take a stab at defending Trophy as a 4-of. Quoting myself from the State of Modern thread:
Decay sees a lot of play in contemporary BGx decks (1-3 in Jund, 2-3 in Abzan, 2-4 in Rock) despite its limitation, because it’s a hell of a card. So, even a slightly upgrade to Decay would be big news. But here’s a list of relevant permanents that Trophy hits and Decay misses:
Jace
Teferi
Karn
Ugin
Wurmcoil Engine
Tronlands
Manlands
Azcanta, the Sunken Ruin
Thought-Knot Seer
Reality Smasher
Endbringer
Krark-Clan Ironworks
Primeval Titan (and all the other Titans)
Tasigur
Gurmag Angler
Hollow One
Stormbreath Dragon
Baneslayer Angel
Lyra Dawnbringer
Leylines
Worship
Infinite combo pieces like Felidar Guardian, Restoration Angel, Kiki-Jiki
Random 4-drop curve-topping value plays like Kalitas, Huntmaster of the Fells, and Chandra, Torch of Defiance
That’s just off the top of my head; I’m sure there are plenty I missed. In an “answers” deck like BGx, it cannot be overstated how powerful a catch-all inclusion like this will be. It’s downside is real, yes, but decklists playing the card will take that under consideration and mitigate it as best as possible.
Assassin’s Trophy is bonkers.
Adding to the list (and I’m sure I’ll have still missed some obvious ones), Street Wraith and various other Living End goons, Hive Mind, Master of Waves, The Antiquities War, Padeem, Batterskull, Koth and the rest of the Skred Red/Dragon Skred top end, Sphere of Safety and many other Enduring Ideal cards, Torrential Gearhulk, Witchbane Orb/Orbs of Warding, Shalai, new Karn, Platinum Emperion, Platinum Angel, Siege Rhino, Tezzeret, Gideon AoZ, Gideon Jura, Elspeths, etc etc.
Yeah, many of the cards mentioned on the above two lists are fringe cards—but many aren’t! And even so, the fringe cards still exist, and many of them exist precisely because the Modern format struggles to answer them immediately (or at all). With Trophy, we’re poised to be the most significant exception to that trend.
Consider also that this is not Path to Exile so far as play patterns are concerned. Trophy doesn’t replace our Fatal Pushes, it replaces different, narrower catch-all answers and/or different card types altogether. In other words, Path’s downside is more meaningful than Trophy’s due to its narrower application; and Trophy’s flexibility allows us more chances to sequence plays in such a way as to blunt the downside it brings.
I don’t think playing only 3 is unreasonable or anything; far from it. 3-of was actually my first inclination right off the bat. But now that the hype has died down, I wonder if people are starting to underrate the card, strange as that may sound.
Will post my decklist later but wanted clarification on the ravine activation with cryptic tapping my stuff down and how to navigate combat in scenarios like that. I starting with "Ok, start combat step?"
*opponent cryptic tapped and I foolishly activated ravine with cryptic on the stack*
Opp- "ok so your ravine is tapped too"
Me- *facepalm*
Here’s how you’d communicate your intentions and sequence correctly:
You: “Move to combat?”
Opponent: “Before combat, cast Cryptic Command, tapping down your team and drawing a card.”
You: “Ok. Cryptic resolves.” *you tap your creatures, he draws a card*
You: “While we’re still in the beginning of combat step, activate Raging Ravine. Any response? Ok, move to attacks.”
Hey I recently took a mono blue list of turns to a pptq and went 2-3-1 my list was...
This was my first run with the deck so I'm no expert but my impression so far is that we need more mine effects, the games where I was able to land a mine effect or 2 before turn 5 went in my favor as it allowed me use my exhastions and gigadrowse more liberally knowing I would be drawing 3 or 7 cards with ancestral.
I wasn't impressed with ancestral. Always felt too slow. A couple times it was nice to draw all those cards but most of the time I would rather have played serum visions. Visions also plays better with titi allowing us to flip him faster
Yep, that was my first thought when seeing your list. Serum is probably mandatory if you have 4 Thing in the 75.
It does feel horrible to burn through Gigadrowses and Exhaustions without one of these effects gaining you advantage, which is why Cryptic and Remand are such great pieces of interaction in this deck.
I found myself thinking that turn 3-4 can get awkward for us. Usually when we are faced with wanting to wait to eot dictate so we can untap and exhaustion or gigs but sometimes being forced to exhaustion so we don't die that turn. This being really hard if we don't have cryptic or the 4th land for cryptic to follow up, It also feels that some amount of filtering would be nice but I don't know how to squeeze it in because the good filter spells are all at 3 mana for blue. Jace felt ok. Never amazing but never bad Best plays were usually bouncing snaps back to hand to recast time warp. I liked the one titi main as it is a whole turn faster than awakened waterveil. Also my opponent would almost always be tapped down by the time I deployed him so removal was never an issue. I think I want the 4th exhaustion in the main. I love remand in the main. It plays very well with cryptic and it draws us cards which this deck needs badly.
I like mono blue for a couple reasons, it allows us to streamline the combo meaning when we are going off I don't have to worry about drawing removal or whatever else thus fizzling the combo. At the same time we do get those draws where we just don't have enough interaction early and get put in bad spots so the splash would be appreciated there,
So with all that being said, I know some matchup will always be bad (burn, mill, humans) but would going for more mine effects main be warranted? I see most of you have settled on 6 but the deck felt like it wanted to land one on turn 2 and 3 while using gigs to tap their lands rendering all the cards the draw useless.
The number and nature of mine effects is still kind of an open question (remember that Jace counts as one). I like 7 (4 Dictate, 2 Mine, 1 JtMS) + 1 Ancestral, but this is by no means set in stone. I do think the variety here is crucial, with JtMS serving as an alternate wincon, AV breaking the symmetry of 1-for-1s in heavily interactive matchups, Mine fitting most cleanly along the curve while being the most dangerous to actually resolve, and Dictate being the most elegant fit overall.
Yeah I think next time I run this deck I will try it with 3 howling mine main and serum instead of ancestral. While the extra cards from ancestral were nice most of the time I was having to discard them after taking an extra turn. In a meta where I was playing lots of GBx decks I see ancestral playing more of a role main but in an open meta and the speed of some decks serum is where we need to be.
Like i said before it feels like filtering would be nice but the core list is so tight that we don't have much wiggle room. Baby jace actually does seem like a good fit though except he turns on removal and we have no way to recur him once he dies but being able to filter those hands where we draw the wrong parts of our deck too soon does seem appealing.
So what other decks do you guys run when not on turns? I currently have grixis shadow and I'm thinking about building infect.
I'm not entirely convinced that we need more filtering than 4x Serum. We're a quantity over quality deck in terms of card draw, because 1) we have enough redundancy and flexibility in interaction that most pieces we'll find can keep us alive, and 2) we want to keep making our land drops all the way up to the 11th in a fair number of games.
When not on Turns, I'm playing BGx; usually Abzan, but lately straight Golgari. I'm sure the posters ITT will forgive me when I say I'll be taking fewer extra turns for a while after Assassin's Trophy is released. (For what its worth, the printing of Trophy probably incentivizes us more toward AV, both as a nod to the increased meta share of BGx and as a source of card advantage that can't be removed.)
Alright so I had my PPTQ today! My record was: 3-1-2
So a quick report of things,
First round: BYE
Second & Third Rounds: Were against UW Control and Hardened Scales Affinity.. both resulted in draws and were super frustrating.. I don't know if any of you have ran into this but a lot of times people will have difficulty interacting with your deck or be confused how to play their deck into your combo so they take ungodly long turns but then blame you in the end for going to time... With my matchup against the Hardened Scales he was taking up to 3 minutes resolving Ancient Stirrings despite his choices having no affect on me winning through time warp effects.. [END RANT] lol but yeah against that dude he called judge unnecessarily twice for things that the judge dismissed as nothing so when we went to turns I just did a small combo so he wouldn't have any turns before the draw lol (dirty magic, I know...)
Dude...don't hesitate to act in a situation like this. I'm a pretty friendly and lenient guy so far as tournament play goes, and even I would have politely asked him to make a decision about 45 seconds after Stirrings was cast, and after another 30s or so I would have called a judge. That is far, far too long of a time to take IMO.
Round 4: Sultai Control - won easily 2-0.. My first game I had the combo easily, and then my second game I played almost like UW Control but then ended up ultimating jace against him (without a Mine effect in play! which was insane) Total heart of the cards Yugi moment lol
Round 5: Against a friend who plays UW Control (2-0) - had a cool interaction in game one where he had detention sphered my Jace but I was able to cast cryptic to bounce it and then repeatedly Exhaustion him as I built card advantage with Jace and set up for like infinite Temporal Mastery Miracles haha
Round 6: Humans... AWFUL.. enough said lol
But honestly the power of Mantis Rider with exalt swinging for 4 in game one was insane.. and then game two I almost stabilized and started to combo but was left in this weird situation where I Terminus the board and exhaustion thinking I was safe but he was able to of course vial in the Mantis Rider to hit for lethal.
(If I had won this I would of cut to top 8)
So some random notes I learned:
I really like 4 Exhaustion, however I may start playing around with the rest of my early game interaction ie 2x Path, 2x Remand, 3x Gigadrowse, etc.. I was honestly contemplating removing the Path and just putting in two mainboard Terminus.. honestly it seems like at 2 it wouldn't really hinder non-creature matchups anyhow..
I think I was right in running the split of 2/2 Negate & Dispel.. It worked exactly as I thought it would. There wasn't too much control there despite me playing against UW twice but in those matchups, having the negate felt really good because I could fight counter battles but it also hit planeswalkers and D-Sphere
I may also attempt to make room for a second Jace.. honestly him resolving is just so game ending in this deck
Nice work overall! Unlucky on going to time twice and getting paired up against Humans in the deciding matchup. 2/2 Negate/Dispel does seem like a nice spread, but when I tested counter-heavy setups in general I found it easy to overboard on such effects; just something to keep in mind.
I’ve been playing Modern since just before Kaladesh—so probably way less time than most of you—and even I’ve seen a few iterations of “maybe this printing will make Sultai great again in Modern” (namely JtMS and Push). It never seems to quite work, namely because the color combination usually ends up being a pile of really strong cards that tend lack synergy.
However, maybe this time we really are seeing the printing that will put Sultai on the map. SaintDoom’s writeup, linked above, approaches the colors with a genuinely cohesive plan in mind. Maybe that will work, maybe it won’t; but even Sultai goodstuff is looking more appealing than ever. Trophy looks to be very abusable with Snapcaster.
So during last night’s Golgari games I encountered consistent mana issues for the first time, with several different opening hands rendered either much worse or unkeepable due to the density of monocolored lands, manlands, and/or Fields. My fourth Field came at the expense of Hoogland’s 5th Swamp. As great as basics are for the foreseeable future, I think I’d rather play a 5th fetchland or a Twilight Mire in that slot for now. Any thoughts?
Still, despite some mana issues, the strength of my results on this deck has blown me away. Remember my posts about tracking my Abzan winrate in the tournament practice lobby? I was clocking at at 74% after over 100 games. Not bad...but on this Hoogland-esque Golgari build I’m 20-2 in the same lobby so far. Lol. Time to play some real leagues I guess! Regardless, online and in testing against friends the deck feels amazing even without Trophy.
@Grim Falyer
Congrats man on your first Starcity! I totally get what you mean about them being exhausting.. When I went to the one in Massachusetts recently my last match of the day was against Storm and I was just completely drained and made a million misplays lol.
I have another coming up in a week or two, and Im excited!
Thanks! Good luck in MA, let us know how you end up doing.
@everyone in regard to my Humans match...yep, Meddling Mage has some unusual templating which means it doesn’t have an EtB trigger: you either respond while he’s on the stack or forever hold your peace.
Don’t quote me on this because I didn’t take notes and my memory is hazy here, but I think I was dead on board even when blocking with Snap and Thing unless I hit beaters (not Teeg) with Truth. I could still certainly have Gigadrowsed in response to the Meddling Mage cast, but that seems to have been the line that gives me the least chance to topdeck my way into a flipped Thing, and gives my opponent the most information in terms of what to name with the Mage. Still, it was the safest line and possibly the one I should have taken, hoping to hit a couple Serums or whatever when I untap.
It’s matches like this where I miss my Boomerang. Just adding another differently-named bounce spell to the mix could certainly have dug me out. The splash colors also shine here, of course. But Humans in competent hands are just brutal in general for us, no matter how teched up you are.
Nothing cool from GRN for us so far as I saw. Selective Snare might have been interesting at instant speed, but lacking that it’s a hard pass.
I see your points and think they are sound. I just want to add here, if you want to go the all in on Tracker move, you gotta make sure that your early game isn't suffering too much. You gotta make sure that you can consistantly reach a point where you actually gaining the advantage of Tracker, especially against the linear aggressive decks.
Absolutely, and with this mindset in place the stock of cards like Fatal Push, Collective Brutality, and even Duress begins to rise.
Doesn’t look like there’s much else for us from the GRN full spoiler, but that’s obviously fine. Cannot wait to start slinging Trophies!
I would simply run 3 Bob and 3 Tracker. Its pretty much perfect for tackling each early game CA as well as lategame power. I think you want 24-25 lands. I personally try to stay at 24, since it prevents flooding a little bit more.
That’s what my first look at the deck involved: 3 Bob, 3 Tracker. Definitely viable, definitely a balanced spread of advantage engines. But what I’m wondering is whether either card is optimized in such a shell. If you’re all in on Tracker, you can safely justify 25 lands, 2 Tasigurs, and more high-curve cards out of the side—if you’re all-in on Bob, you can play a more aggressively low curve where running 3 Trackers may not be ideal.
These thoughts are predicated on the notion that the broadness of Assassin’s Trophy allows us to specialize our remaining 56 cards a little more than we’ve been able to in the past. Perhaps I’m off base here, but if nothing else it may be a useful conceptual deck-building exercise.
As for Field of Ruin, I’ve been testing the 4th copy in the Hoogland list. I like the upsides of access to another LD “spell”, another Landfall trigger for Tracker, and another card in the graveyard for Goyf and Tasigur. That said, all of those upsides are worth less than mana consistency, so if I run into too many issues with color production I won’t hestiate to scale back to 3–but so far there’s nothing bad to report on that front.
Alright, boys and girls. I’m back with a report from the SCG Open in Syracuse. This was my first such event ever, so of course I had to bring this relatively fringe deck that I started playing less than two months ago! But, as people who’ve been reading this thread will know, I took preparation for piloting and sideboarding very seriously, and continue to believe that the deck is well positioned at the moment. Sadly, I didn’t run into many of the popular decks we’re built to prey upon—just one, to be exact.
I ran the exact mono-blue list posted upthread, with a single change: cutting my Boomerang for an Ancestral Vision. I was loathe to drop the Boomerang as it has been a strong performer, but the card shines most against midrange and control where bouncing a land can be backbreaking; and since Vision is probably even better in those matches while giving me a non-symmetrical draw effect, that’s the change I went with.
I didn’t end up taking notes, so what follows will be out of order and perhaps imprecise in places. I faced Infect x2, Humans, 4c Shadow, Ad Nauseam, and Titanshift. Titanshift is a great one for us, but otherwise that is a murderer’s row of matchups that range from unfavorable to horrifyingly bad. Where were all the Tron and UWC players? Sitting on either side of me pretty much every game, that’s where. Not gonna lie, I feel pretty aggrieved as far as the matchup lottery went. That’s part of the game, but as someone who probably won’t make it to another of these for a year at least, I reeeaallllly could have used a spread of opposing archetypes that was less brutal!
That said, the deck performed fantastically given the circumstances. I beat Titanshift—the only match in which I was the firm favorite—and did it in some style. Blind flipped three Miracles in two games, Commandeered a Scapeshift, and eventually won G2 with an Exhaustion that locked him out of paying for his Summoner’s Pact. My poor opponent was just laughing by the end of the match, nothing he could have done differently.
I also took Ad Nauseam’s scalp by the skin of my teeth after three grueling games. Game 3 was especially crazy with plenty of nerve-racking moments, including the casting of an Ad Naus for value. In the end, I got there on the back of 1) knowing the opposing deck very well and 2) Chalice of the Void, which was my MVP of the weekend. My third win of the day came against Infect (!!!), which felt amazing. I’ve heard it said that this is our actual worst matchup, and I took it down at my first major event against an opponent that only mulled once (to 6) and had strong progressions every time. Winning Game 1 here was huge, which I did while at 9 poison counters, eventually taking over with Jace and winning with some Infect damage of my own. Game 2 he killed me T3 through a Remand! Game 3 I resolved a T2 Chalice and played cagily until I found a Thing around T6/7, and then a well-timed Awoken Horror flip put the match to bed.
Even my three losses weren’t so bad considering the nature of the matchups. The first one I’ll mention was 4c Shadow; my opponent was skilled and pleasant (as was everyone else, honestly), and he ended up making top 32. Happy for him, and also happy to have taken G2 off of him. G1 could also have gone my way, really—after stabilizing and untapping with a Dictate in play I bricked for two turns on relevant draws—but that does happen. G3 he just curved out perfectly and stripped away my interaction while I drew time walk after time walk.
My other Infect opponent 2-0ed me. G1 he got me T4 without me really having anything to say about it. G2 I was in what felt like total control around turn 7, with a Dictate down and a handful of interaction, but I missed my land drop and had only Temporal Masteries in hand as far as time walks went. I passed the turn. My options were to Gigadrowse him in his upkeep or to Cryptic during the beginning of combat step. Gigadrowse seemed like the safer and more efficient line—Cryptic gets blown out by double Spell Pierce, and even assuming it resolved I’d have been forced to tap his team and bounce his Inkmoth, which wastes the draw potential of Cryptic. So I went for the Gigadrowse, tapping his Glistener Elf and all five of his lands. Turns out he had Pierce for the copy targeting Elf and then enough gas in hand to make the Elf an 11/11 on the spot (I had taken no poison damage thus far) because Become Immense is a balanced card. Punished. In retrospect, I could have waited to Gigadrowse during the beginning of combat, even though giving him two more draws would have been riskier, because maybe he would have tried to deploy a Blighted Agent or something first to test the waters. Either way I guess I should have left one of his lands open and targeted the Elf twice? I would certainly have tagged it twice if I’d hit my land drop. Feels really unlucky, but then again I’d have been a major dog in the matchup G3 on the draw. Well played by my opponent.
Lastly I’ll touch on the Humans matchup. G1 I had what would have been a nut draw coupled with minimal disruption on his end except for the fact that he found three Vials over the course of the early turns. Needless to say, my Gigadrowses and Exhaustions weren’t able to lock him out, and eventually he drew enough Mages and Freebooters to lock me out! G2 I beat a no-Vial, heavy disruption progression via Thing and multiple Exhaustions. G3 I take my hat off to my opponent; his decisions were next level. He slammed a Teeg T2 and then never attacked with it once despite having an anemic clock for a while, playing around the old Snapcaster ambush, which I was indeed holding in hand.
During the game-deciding turn, he cast a Meddling Mage, with another Mage already on the field naming Exhaustion. Teeg was locking me out of Cryptic. I had a Thing with three counters remaining on it but was facing lethal even with it blocking. My outs to his board were Echoing Truth (one was already in my graveyard, and by this point he knew of my Snapcaster in hand) or Gigadrowse (which was in my hand but he didn’t know about it). If I responded to the Mage with Snap->Truth on some beaters, I could stay alive for a turn, but would then have two draws to find exactly my other Truth to bounce the Teeg and then go off. My other line was to let the Mage resolve, hope he named Truth instead of Gigadrowse, and then Gigadrowse his board down, giving me a better chance to topdeck one of my other three Gigadrowses to stay alive. (I had no other castable instants or sorceries in hand, so either way I wasn’t likely to flip Thing next turn). I went with what I think was the correct line—letting the Mage resolve—and the dude promptly named Gigadrowse. GG WP. There was a solid dozen people watching who witnessed the end of my G2 Thing beats for the win and then the entirety of G3, so it was a pretty epic loss. Opponent was nice and said that he got lucky, but I corrected him: his Mage naming was next level for the entire match, and he earned the win.
I was absolutely exhausted after these six matches, and was more than happy to sign the drop slip at 3-3. Given the combination of a highly unfavorable spread of matchups, six very competent opposing pilots (who took two or perhaps three total mulligans between them), and the somewhat fringe nature of Turns as a deck, I can’t be anything but pleased with how the deck performed for me. Based on this display, I can’t help feeling that I’d have been a very strong contender for Day 2 if I’d run into more Tron/UWx and less Infect/Shadow/Humans. Oh well! Still had a great time, and all things considered I think my belief in the viability of monoU Turns in the current meta has been affirmed.
I mean, he's a bit biased towards to BG rock and always been. So it's no surprise he's advocating BG rock.
I’ve been testing Hoogland’s exact maindeck (I made several changes to the sideboard) against friends who don’t mind getting wrecked by Trophy before it’s officialy released, and his take on Golgari (am I the only one who doesn’t love the name Rock, btw?) is feeling really strong.
Bob is IMO still a very powerful card in these shells, but there’s a certain elegance and cohesion that comes with the territory in these 25-land, 4-Tracker lists with a high number of mana sinks. Like others in this thread, my first take on BGx post-Trophy involved 23-24 lands and a split of Bob and Tracker, but after trying Hoogland’s list I wouldn’t be surprised if the best builds end up running 4/0 or 0/4 copies of Tracker/Bob, with each approach demanding its own supporting cast and looking viable in its own right.
Special mention to the 2x Tasigur in no-Bob builds. I hadn’t given this guy a proper go before my recent games, and he’s blown my expectations out of the water.
So I recently started up my humble YouTube channel! My timing is predictably awful, since we've just entered the era of Trophy and the few videos I have all predate that, for now.
If anyone wants to check them out, I'd love your feedback, being new to all this stuff. (My audio is low quality, but I'll be upgrading that before too long.)
Deck Tech
BG Rock Mirror Match
BG Rock vs BW Tokens
(I checked the forum rules and this doesn't seem to qualify as soliciting. At this rate I'm still years away from monetization, lol. Just trying to spread the BGx love in all its forms!)
Regardless, I’m happy that we’ve distilled the discussion down to the specific point of contention. Great talks as always, ladies and gents.
Our strategy is indeed based on gaining incremental advantage; and those incremental gains sometimes run into a brick wall, and are all for naught when our opponent resolves something we can’t deal with. As everyone acknowledges, Trophy means that BGx pilots are going to be saying “well...I can’t really beat that card” a whole lot less in the future.
Your position seems to be that we’re paying an extremely steep price for access to this wide-ranging coverage—too steep even to justify more than 2x Trophy in the main. My position is that the sheer power and flexibility of Trophy is going to be of nearly incalculable benefit in a deck like ours, which above all struggles with card selection (which really means finding the right answer—finding a specific threat is far less of an issue, often any of them will do so long as we can keep interacting favorably).
I think the top 15ish meta decks’ matchup rundown a few of us have taken a crack at shows pretty clearly how well Trophy is poised to do against the current meta.
Here’s an example of what I mean about catastrophizing. If we’re still talking about Ad Nauseam (which, given the Leyline + combo kill scenario, I assume we are), what could they even have that makes them able to “combo-kill you next turn through discard spells” (note the plural there)? They’d basically have to have Ad Nauseam/Spoils x3 (with each copy of AN in hand making the Spoils worse) with an Unlife in play (in which case it’s pretty aggressive to hit the Leyline to begin with), or they’d have to have 3x each of AN and Angel’s Grace...and they also have to have been gated from comboing off by exactly one basic land.
It’s a lot more realistic to acknowledge that Leyline is the single best card they can hope to open on in this matchup, and that our maindecked Trophies being able to kill it while also having plenty of other valid targets in the matchup is just fantastic for us nearly 100% of the time.
As for the GDS scenario, I agree that it would be pretty bad to Trophy the fish, give them an untapped Island, and then walk our LoTV into the force spike. Seems like there we’d just untap, slam the LoTV, edict, and still have our catch-all removal piece in hand!
We could go back and forth all day breaking down such scenarios—and don’t get me wrong, it’s fun to consider all the various lines—but ultimately the discussion thrives more at the conceptual level IMO.
You mention our hand info as though it’s a downside that we won’t be as likely to blunder into giving the opponent ramp at an ideal time with Trophy. Hand info is just one of many ways our deck can naturally blunt the downside of Trophy.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m glad people are proceeding with caution as it regards this ramp effect. I’d just like to go on record as saying that many are starting to overstate its drawbacks, and in so doing are underrating one of the most spectacular printings in recent memory.
Sorry, but that’s not the case at all. You can disagree with the conclusions we’ve drawn about any particular matchup, but none of us have simply cited best case scenarios. If anything, the opposite is true; the critics of Trophy have tended to indulge in a little catastrophizing, IMO.
Path is “almost unplayable” in an exponentially higher number of common scenarios than Trophy. Just think of all the decks that play few or no creatures in the maindeck! This is an obvious point, but one that bears repeating because it seems clear that the sheer power and flexibility of Trophy is becoming overshadowed in some people’s minds by the prospect of inefficient use cases.
“Almost unplayable” in any given scenario is less likely to apply to Trophy than to any other answer card in Modern.
Before I forget, it’s worth noting that people on either side of this discussion might just be talking past each other. You and others are probably defaulting to the mindset of a Traverse player when considering the Trophy count, whereas I’m speaking from the perspective of a non-Traverse pilot, which is by definition more interested in noncreature answer cards.
Yes, but aren’t you glad you had a deck chock full of instant-speed outs to a must-answer card like Plating? Decay does the job more efficiently here (but only once—Affinity usually runs a lone basic AFAIK), but at the cost of being literally dead in hand against dozens of other must-answer threats in the format.
Being able to hit Inkmoth on our own terms (i.e. not having to wait for them to activate it) is extraordinary in this matchup—this is the exact reason we side in Fulminator Mage. Decay is great here too (but arguably higher variance; it blows them out if they’re leaning on Pierce but is dead in hand if they go all in on Inky). Still, consider that this is a matchup where the opponent plays counter magic AND literally zero CMC 4+ permanents, and yet Trophy still keeps pace with Decay, each card having roughly equal value overall. Let that sink in!
I guess you’ll just have to ask some AN pilots about this one. BGx is widely considered a nightmare matchup for them due to our combination of discard, flexible permanent removal, and a respectable clock. I’m quite confident in saying that the ability to remove Leylines (which they will mulligan aggressively for) far outweighs the downside Trophy brings; Leyline, more than any other single card, is what the matchup hinges upon.
In fact, AN is so cold to discard-heavy decks like ours that, a few months back, some pilots were trimming a Pact of Negation, a Sleight of Hand, and a Spoils of the Vault (or something similar) in order to jam 3 Leylines main. Our targets for removal, in order of priority and assuming a relatively normal progression on both sides: Leyline > Phyrexian Unlife > Lotus Bloom on their upkeep (only if you know their hand and the play makes sense) > Prism > Lotus Bloom with limited hand info.
Another factor worth noting is that most AN players are packing an alternate wincon in the side: Grave Titan, Dragonlord Dromoka, sometimes even a transformative plan of Unburial Rites + Gifts Ungiven + I-win fatties. Decay is dead and Trophy is live against anything along those lines they’re going to bring from the sideboard.
“Solid” is the undersell of the century.
If they’re on a one-lander full of action and you’re wary about giving them a land, then you simply don’t give them a land. If their land is a Thicket or a Canopy then it’s actually a perfectly acceptable play to destroy it with Trophy and force them to operate off a lone basic, which limits them yet further. Or you just develop your board instead. Bogles on one land aren’t exactly pressuring us in a meaningful way.
Agree that cutting GDS off of red isn’t the highest priority, but in a deck packing 3-4 Field it’s very doable—just not something you’d prioritize in an average match. The larger upside to Trophy in this matchup is simply the ability to kill Delve threats. Given their own level of hand disruption and stack interaction, having a high density of answers to their relatively limited number of genuine threats is not to be underestimated.
This is just where we part ways, I suppose. Isn’t this a lot like saying Path isn’t good against creatures because you’d sometimes decline to use it on their early plays if they’re missing land drops?
Again, I wonder if the big difference in perspective here resides in the Traverse vs traditional shells. Otherwise, I can’t imagine being so lukewarm about things like how powerful a maindeckable CMC 2 answer to Leyline of Sanctity is.
I’d even take this one step further and say that bad Trophy is almost never as bad as bad Decay/Push/TS. The worst you can ever really say about Trophy is that it’s not good right now, a negative which lessens with each passing turn in any matchup. Not so for the other cards, which in certain matchups will start the game dead and end the game dead, with your best use case for them being free LoTV/Brutality fodder.
Same.
Don’t believe so, but our main man is looking swole lately. Hair and beard game is on point too. If the Duke says to play only two copies of Trophy then I will be forced to renounce my wicked ways.
I know that listing as many relevant CMC 4+ non-indestructible permanents as I can think of doesn’t tell the whole story; that was more a reminder of the scope and breadth of Modern’s variety. Some people (not really anyone ITT) have expressed an attitude along the lines of “almost every relevant target is CMC 3 or less anyway”, and it’s useful to bear in mind just how crazy Modern can get in terms of what cards see play.
Now, I do agree with you completely that it’s necessary to compare Trophy’s impact on various matchups with that of its closest competitors. @ktkenshinx did a great job on that front. If we dig a little deeper down the tier list, we find the following decks:
Mardu Pyromancer
There’s only one target that Decay misses but Trophy hits, but it’s a big one: Bedlam Reveler. Most of my own losses to the deck seem to have come at the hands of a Reveler, which not only breaks the symmetry of card advantage but also closes the game out—and the latter half of that statement is important. BGx decks are capable of clawing their way back into the game even after a Reveler lands, but not if they can’t answer it quickly. I’d also say that ramping Mardu via Trophy doesn’t feel too bad for a variety of reasons (their advantage coming more from a resolved Pyro + spell density more than curving out, their increased likelihood to fetch basics due to their own Moons, etc), but admittedly that all goes out the window if you’re in a spot where you’re using an Ooze or something to try keeping them off of Reveler mana. Tough call overall—but Trophy remains our only card outside of white that can answer both Pyromancer and Reveler ASAP, so I’d give it the nod.
Bogles
The Bogles mana base can be clunky and awkward; it’s actually sort of greedy for a 2c deck, between naturally drawing Dryad Arbor, the WW for Coronet, the low land count, and the pain from Canopies. So ramping them feels fairly bad even though they’re likely on just 3 basics, especially since Decay cleanly takes care of Spiritdancer and every Aura. However, Trophy gives us a strong chance of a maindeck out to their maindeck Leylines of Sanctity, which is obviously of enormous import given the absurd strength of LoTV against their strategy. Trophy’s CMC of 2 is also a nice upgrade to Pulse (unless they opened on 2 Leylines lol—and even then they might sandbag one) if our plan is to remove their Leyline ASAP and start firing off discard spells. Finally, Trophy can answer Dryad Arbor if they’re in a position where they have to start suiting it up—which is not uncommon. Trophy is the clear winner.
Ad Nauseam
This one actually mirrors Bogles to a strange degree, given how different the two decks are. Decay is already strong against both, and ramping them is a significant price to pay, but the huge difference maker is the ability to hit Leylines. Discard is the most powerful form of interaction against Ad Naus—leaning on permanent removal doesn’t help against Grace into AN—and once more, Trophy lets us pop the Leyline T2 and start discarding T3, and against this opponent those discard spells will still be very, very good at that stage of the game. Another minor note: these decks only ever play 1 Island and 1 Plains for basics, so occasionally it might be realistic to use Trophy to keep them off BB for their signature spell, although it would have to be an unusual game for that to pan out. Still, from the Ad Naus perspective it’s almost Leyline or bust post-side against BGx, so on the strength of Trophy being able to answer their best card, I’d say it’s the clear favorite.
Amulet Titan
Helping to ramp the ramp deck sucks; no getting around that! Still, Trophy answers the Titan itself. It also answers Zapalta, Ruric Thar, and whatever other monstrous goons they have floating around in their 75, and it also takes care of Hive Mind if they’ve got that in as an alternate win condition. As dedicated players, we’re always looking for the most efficient lines and carefully weighing the costs and downsides of every inclusion, but I feel like this is the sort of matchup that illustrates exactly why Trophy is an insanely powerful Magic card, and it’s for the most obvious reason. Point it at the payoff cards and they die. Advantage: Trophy.
Grixis Shadow
Now this one’s a little tricky. Lots of factors to consider. On the one hand, there’s not much that feels better than taking care of their only Shadow with an uncounterable Decay while the opponent is obviously holding up Stubborn Denial. On the other hand, the Decay could just as easily be dead in hand while you’re getting beaten to death by the Delve threats. This is a matchup where our Goyfs can easily wind up outsizing the opposing Anglers, however, while Shadows...not so much. Lots of moving pieces to consider. I’ve seem some pro players, while siding against Shadow, say things like “I don’t want to leave in too many spells that only kill Shadows”. It’s possible that just leaning on Push and Trophy here is enough—even if Push gets countered, it’s still a neutral exchange on tempo and cards. Grixis Shadow’s manabase is also notoriously fragile, so a Field-heavy draw could easily see Trophy apply the finishing touch as far as keeping them off a color goes. I’m leaning toward Trophy here as well, guys.
All that said, I’m still angling to fit a Decay in the 75. The card remains great! Some people have mentioned the 3/1/1 Trophy/Decay/Pulse split. I want 4/1/1, with a second Pulse in the side. We’ll see if that ends up being tenable.
Adding to the list (and I’m sure I’ll have still missed some obvious ones), Street Wraith and various other Living End goons, Hive Mind, Master of Waves, The Antiquities War, Padeem, Batterskull, Koth and the rest of the Skred Red/Dragon Skred top end, Sphere of Safety and many other Enduring Ideal cards, Torrential Gearhulk, Witchbane Orb/Orbs of Warding, Shalai, new Karn, Platinum Emperion, Platinum Angel, Siege Rhino, Tezzeret, Gideon AoZ, Gideon Jura, Elspeths, etc etc.
Yeah, many of the cards mentioned on the above two lists are fringe cards—but many aren’t! And even so, the fringe cards still exist, and many of them exist precisely because the Modern format struggles to answer them immediately (or at all). With Trophy, we’re poised to be the most significant exception to that trend.
Consider also that this is not Path to Exile so far as play patterns are concerned. Trophy doesn’t replace our Fatal Pushes, it replaces different, narrower catch-all answers and/or different card types altogether. In other words, Path’s downside is more meaningful than Trophy’s due to its narrower application; and Trophy’s flexibility allows us more chances to sequence plays in such a way as to blunt the downside it brings.
I don’t think playing only 3 is unreasonable or anything; far from it. 3-of was actually my first inclination right off the bat. But now that the hype has died down, I wonder if people are starting to underrate the card, strange as that may sound.
Here’s how you’d communicate your intentions and sequence correctly:
You: “Move to combat?”
Opponent: “Before combat, cast Cryptic Command, tapping down your team and drawing a card.”
You: “Ok. Cryptic resolves.” *you tap your creatures, he draws a card*
You: “While we’re still in the beginning of combat step, activate Raging Ravine. Any response? Ok, move to attacks.”
Also ran into a rogue deck online that seemed to play Hive Mind as its main win condition along with every sort of Pact in existence...pretty spicy!
Yep, that was my first thought when seeing your list. Serum is probably mandatory if you have 4 Thing in the 75.
It does feel horrible to burn through Gigadrowses and Exhaustions without one of these effects gaining you advantage, which is why Cryptic and Remand are such great pieces of interaction in this deck.
The number and nature of mine effects is still kind of an open question (remember that Jace counts as one). I like 7 (4 Dictate, 2 Mine, 1 JtMS) + 1 Ancestral, but this is by no means set in stone. I do think the variety here is crucial, with JtMS serving as an alternate wincon, AV breaking the symmetry of 1-for-1s in heavily interactive matchups, Mine fitting most cleanly along the curve while being the most dangerous to actually resolve, and Dictate being the most elegant fit overall.
I'm not entirely convinced that we need more filtering than 4x Serum. We're a quantity over quality deck in terms of card draw, because 1) we have enough redundancy and flexibility in interaction that most pieces we'll find can keep us alive, and 2) we want to keep making our land drops all the way up to the 11th in a fair number of games.
When not on Turns, I'm playing BGx; usually Abzan, but lately straight Golgari. I'm sure the posters ITT will forgive me when I say I'll be taking fewer extra turns for a while after Assassin's Trophy is released.
Dude...don't hesitate to act in a situation like this. I'm a pretty friendly and lenient guy so far as tournament play goes, and even I would have politely asked him to make a decision about 45 seconds after Stirrings was cast, and after another 30s or so I would have called a judge. That is far, far too long of a time to take IMO.
Nice work overall! Unlucky on going to time twice and getting paired up against Humans in the deciding matchup. 2/2 Negate/Dispel does seem like a nice spread, but when I tested counter-heavy setups in general I found it easy to overboard on such effects; just something to keep in mind.
However, maybe this time we really are seeing the printing that will put Sultai on the map. SaintDoom’s writeup, linked above, approaches the colors with a genuinely cohesive plan in mind. Maybe that will work, maybe it won’t; but even Sultai goodstuff is looking more appealing than ever. Trophy looks to be very abusable with Snapcaster.
So during last night’s Golgari games I encountered consistent mana issues for the first time, with several different opening hands rendered either much worse or unkeepable due to the density of monocolored lands, manlands, and/or Fields. My fourth Field came at the expense of Hoogland’s 5th Swamp. As great as basics are for the foreseeable future, I think I’d rather play a 5th fetchland or a Twilight Mire in that slot for now. Any thoughts?
Still, despite some mana issues, the strength of my results on this deck has blown me away. Remember my posts about tracking my Abzan winrate in the tournament practice lobby? I was clocking at at 74% after over 100 games. Not bad...but on this Hoogland-esque Golgari build I’m 20-2 in the same lobby so far. Lol. Time to play some real leagues I guess! Regardless, online and in testing against friends the deck feels amazing even without Trophy.
Thanks! Good luck in MA, let us know how you end up doing.
@everyone in regard to my Humans match...yep, Meddling Mage has some unusual templating which means it doesn’t have an EtB trigger: you either respond while he’s on the stack or forever hold your peace.
Don’t quote me on this because I didn’t take notes and my memory is hazy here, but I think I was dead on board even when blocking with Snap and Thing unless I hit beaters (not Teeg) with Truth. I could still certainly have Gigadrowsed in response to the Meddling Mage cast, but that seems to have been the line that gives me the least chance to topdeck my way into a flipped Thing, and gives my opponent the most information in terms of what to name with the Mage. Still, it was the safest line and possibly the one I should have taken, hoping to hit a couple Serums or whatever when I untap.
It’s matches like this where I miss my Boomerang. Just adding another differently-named bounce spell to the mix could certainly have dug me out. The splash colors also shine here, of course. But Humans in competent hands are just brutal in general for us, no matter how teched up you are.
Nothing cool from GRN for us so far as I saw. Selective Snare might have been interesting at instant speed, but lacking that it’s a hard pass.
Absolutely, and with this mindset in place the stock of cards like Fatal Push, Collective Brutality, and even Duress begins to rise.
Doesn’t look like there’s much else for us from the GRN full spoiler, but that’s obviously fine. Cannot wait to start slinging Trophies!
That’s what my first look at the deck involved: 3 Bob, 3 Tracker. Definitely viable, definitely a balanced spread of advantage engines. But what I’m wondering is whether either card is optimized in such a shell. If you’re all in on Tracker, you can safely justify 25 lands, 2 Tasigurs, and more high-curve cards out of the side—if you’re all-in on Bob, you can play a more aggressively low curve where running 3 Trackers may not be ideal.
These thoughts are predicated on the notion that the broadness of Assassin’s Trophy allows us to specialize our remaining 56 cards a little more than we’ve been able to in the past. Perhaps I’m off base here, but if nothing else it may be a useful conceptual deck-building exercise.
As for Field of Ruin, I’ve been testing the 4th copy in the Hoogland list. I like the upsides of access to another LD “spell”, another Landfall trigger for Tracker, and another card in the graveyard for Goyf and Tasigur. That said, all of those upsides are worth less than mana consistency, so if I run into too many issues with color production I won’t hestiate to scale back to 3–but so far there’s nothing bad to report on that front.
I ran the exact mono-blue list posted upthread, with a single change: cutting my Boomerang for an Ancestral Vision. I was loathe to drop the Boomerang as it has been a strong performer, but the card shines most against midrange and control where bouncing a land can be backbreaking; and since Vision is probably even better in those matches while giving me a non-symmetrical draw effect, that’s the change I went with.
I didn’t end up taking notes, so what follows will be out of order and perhaps imprecise in places. I faced Infect x2, Humans, 4c Shadow, Ad Nauseam, and Titanshift. Titanshift is a great one for us, but otherwise that is a murderer’s row of matchups that range from unfavorable to horrifyingly bad. Where were all the Tron and UWC players? Sitting on either side of me pretty much every game, that’s where. Not gonna lie, I feel pretty aggrieved as far as the matchup lottery went. That’s part of the game, but as someone who probably won’t make it to another of these for a year at least, I reeeaallllly could have used a spread of opposing archetypes that was less brutal!
That said, the deck performed fantastically given the circumstances. I beat Titanshift—the only match in which I was the firm favorite—and did it in some style. Blind flipped three Miracles in two games, Commandeered a Scapeshift, and eventually won G2 with an Exhaustion that locked him out of paying for his Summoner’s Pact. My poor opponent was just laughing by the end of the match, nothing he could have done differently.
I also took Ad Nauseam’s scalp by the skin of my teeth after three grueling games. Game 3 was especially crazy with plenty of nerve-racking moments, including the casting of an Ad Naus for value. In the end, I got there on the back of 1) knowing the opposing deck very well and 2) Chalice of the Void, which was my MVP of the weekend. My third win of the day came against Infect (!!!), which felt amazing. I’ve heard it said that this is our actual worst matchup, and I took it down at my first major event against an opponent that only mulled once (to 6) and had strong progressions every time. Winning Game 1 here was huge, which I did while at 9 poison counters, eventually taking over with Jace and winning with some Infect damage of my own. Game 2 he killed me T3 through a Remand! Game 3 I resolved a T2 Chalice and played cagily until I found a Thing around T6/7, and then a well-timed Awoken Horror flip put the match to bed.
Even my three losses weren’t so bad considering the nature of the matchups. The first one I’ll mention was 4c Shadow; my opponent was skilled and pleasant (as was everyone else, honestly), and he ended up making top 32. Happy for him, and also happy to have taken G2 off of him. G1 could also have gone my way, really—after stabilizing and untapping with a Dictate in play I bricked for two turns on relevant draws—but that does happen. G3 he just curved out perfectly and stripped away my interaction while I drew time walk after time walk.
My other Infect opponent 2-0ed me. G1 he got me T4 without me really having anything to say about it. G2 I was in what felt like total control around turn 7, with a Dictate down and a handful of interaction, but I missed my land drop and had only Temporal Masteries in hand as far as time walks went. I passed the turn. My options were to Gigadrowse him in his upkeep or to Cryptic during the beginning of combat step. Gigadrowse seemed like the safer and more efficient line—Cryptic gets blown out by double Spell Pierce, and even assuming it resolved I’d have been forced to tap his team and bounce his Inkmoth, which wastes the draw potential of Cryptic. So I went for the Gigadrowse, tapping his Glistener Elf and all five of his lands. Turns out he had Pierce for the copy targeting Elf and then enough gas in hand to make the Elf an 11/11 on the spot (I had taken no poison damage thus far) because Become Immense is a balanced card. Punished. In retrospect, I could have waited to Gigadrowse during the beginning of combat, even though giving him two more draws would have been riskier, because maybe he would have tried to deploy a Blighted Agent or something first to test the waters. Either way I guess I should have left one of his lands open and targeted the Elf twice? I would certainly have tagged it twice if I’d hit my land drop. Feels really unlucky, but then again I’d have been a major dog in the matchup G3 on the draw. Well played by my opponent.
Lastly I’ll touch on the Humans matchup. G1 I had what would have been a nut draw coupled with minimal disruption on his end except for the fact that he found three Vials over the course of the early turns. Needless to say, my Gigadrowses and Exhaustions weren’t able to lock him out, and eventually he drew enough Mages and Freebooters to lock me out! G2 I beat a no-Vial, heavy disruption progression via Thing and multiple Exhaustions. G3 I take my hat off to my opponent; his decisions were next level. He slammed a Teeg T2 and then never attacked with it once despite having an anemic clock for a while, playing around the old Snapcaster ambush, which I was indeed holding in hand.
During the game-deciding turn, he cast a Meddling Mage, with another Mage already on the field naming Exhaustion. Teeg was locking me out of Cryptic. I had a Thing with three counters remaining on it but was facing lethal even with it blocking. My outs to his board were Echoing Truth (one was already in my graveyard, and by this point he knew of my Snapcaster in hand) or Gigadrowse (which was in my hand but he didn’t know about it). If I responded to the Mage with Snap->Truth on some beaters, I could stay alive for a turn, but would then have two draws to find exactly my other Truth to bounce the Teeg and then go off. My other line was to let the Mage resolve, hope he named Truth instead of Gigadrowse, and then Gigadrowse his board down, giving me a better chance to topdeck one of my other three Gigadrowses to stay alive. (I had no other castable instants or sorceries in hand, so either way I wasn’t likely to flip Thing next turn). I went with what I think was the correct line—letting the Mage resolve—and the dude promptly named Gigadrowse. GG WP. There was a solid dozen people watching who witnessed the end of my G2 Thing beats for the win and then the entirety of G3, so it was a pretty epic loss. Opponent was nice and said that he got lucky, but I corrected him: his Mage naming was next level for the entire match, and he earned the win.
I was absolutely exhausted after these six matches, and was more than happy to sign the drop slip at 3-3. Given the combination of a highly unfavorable spread of matchups, six very competent opposing pilots (who took two or perhaps three total mulligans between them), and the somewhat fringe nature of Turns as a deck, I can’t be anything but pleased with how the deck performed for me. Based on this display, I can’t help feeling that I’d have been a very strong contender for Day 2 if I’d run into more Tron/UWx and less Infect/Shadow/Humans. Oh well! Still had a great time, and all things considered I think my belief in the viability of monoU Turns in the current meta has been affirmed.
I’ve been testing Hoogland’s exact maindeck (I made several changes to the sideboard) against friends who don’t mind getting wrecked by Trophy before it’s officialy released, and his take on Golgari (am I the only one who doesn’t love the name Rock, btw?) is feeling really strong.
Bob is IMO still a very powerful card in these shells, but there’s a certain elegance and cohesion that comes with the territory in these 25-land, 4-Tracker lists with a high number of mana sinks. Like others in this thread, my first take on BGx post-Trophy involved 23-24 lands and a split of Bob and Tracker, but after trying Hoogland’s list I wouldn’t be surprised if the best builds end up running 4/0 or 0/4 copies of Tracker/Bob, with each approach demanding its own supporting cast and looking viable in its own right.
Special mention to the 2x Tasigur in no-Bob builds. I hadn’t given this guy a proper go before my recent games, and he’s blown my expectations out of the water.