Top 4 in the Modern Challenge today from Nassif with UR Living End!
He only lost to UW Control because of a disconnection taking 15 minutes of the clock (was up a game, couldn't finish g2) and then on the semis 1-1 and timeout to Amulet Titan, which he had beaten twice before (he is a relatively slow player and the deck is fairly new, not a great combo with a laggy MTGO)
Anyway, the deck certainly has legs even in these first iterations!
Nassif 5-0ed a league with UR Living End, and there was a brazilian or portuguese streamer who was around 22-6 or something like that with it as well.
Also Shaun McLaren was playing a UR Restore Balance version and got a 4-1, then he tried a RestoreBalance/Living end UR thing and went 2/3 a couple of times.
The card enables several options, and I'm pretty confident it will be a must, so I'd expect UR, Jeskai or Grixis to be the most likely better versions now. I don't like losing as much of the control version as what I saw most people brew with, so I'll start my own experimenting soon!
Well, seems like UR might get another chance with Electrodominance.
RR cast a 0 mana spell at instant speed for free seems solid, and I've always liked the idea of Faithless looting to dig and possibly play more "bomb" creatures. Grixis already did a couple of interesting things with Goryo's and Kiki-Jikki, this might give it a nice push. Kari-Zev's expertise can give another way of casting 0 CMC cards, and wheel of fate is another way of digging hard to whatever we need.
I know, I know, that's a completely different deck...
Did anybody try changes to the Grixis Goryo AF list that was kind of popular 6 months ago or so?
Wheel of Fate seems like a ton of fun and potentially broken. Of course, the control build goes out the window, it'll be a combo deck.
On the Uw side, I managed to 3-1 at my local shop again, Path and Purge were sooo good I don't see myself going back to Ub anytime soon.
I'll disagree and say that in my opinion going Sultai for Assassin's trophy is not what the deck needs at all.
Hitting lands is a very corner case, we don't need any extra tools against Tron or Valakut like Jund did, and we have 4 Fields of Ruin if we need to check some creature-land (and fatal pushes).
We don't really need what Trophy brings, and while sure, it might be nice to trigger traps from time to time, it's just like Path was in Esper Mill, if your opponent knows what he's doing, it likely won't trigger when you need it.
The 3 color mana base is a huge downgrade from UB and brings in a lot of bad opening sevens and lifeloss, not to mention the main reason I don't buy it, the HUGE tension with Mission Briefing. Mission Briefing is the cool toy for mill GRN brought, not Trophy, and the UU goes really bad with BG.
I'd recommend Sqlut's list, my own was a couple cards off from it (I played 2 Fraying Sanity instead of 2 Inquisition and 1 Azcanta and 1 more Mesmeric Orb in place of 1 Crypt Incursion and 1 Land), but with him being an actual Hareruya Pro that has tested intensively and posted VERY good results with it, I guessed I'd better stick with his choices. Played it last week to a 3rd place in my LGS, with my loss incredibly being to Amulet Titan, after beating Phoenix, Grixis DS and a Waste Not deck.
You can watch his stream in Twitch, he also has a pretty detailed sideboard guide, definitely the top content available for the archetype.
You have a pretty decent match against Lantern, even more now with Mission Briefing I would say.
Mesmeric Orb is a must deal card for them, and it even gets through Witchbane Orb.
Any mill you get through puts them very behing, you can draw 3 with visions, shuffle quite a ton with extractions and fetches and field, etc...
Mill definitely is favored against Lantern, it's just Witchbane orb and Academy Ruins that could be somewhat annoying. I like to play 1 of Ipnu's Rivulet since it is a useful little mill when flooding or needing to activate Shelldock/Visions, but it's also instant speed milling to break soft locks like Academy Ruins.
If you're too worried about Leylines/Orb you can always play 1 Echoing Truth maindeck, or some Manic Scribes that mill without targeting.
Has anyone tested Mausoleum Secrets in the UB version?
I haven't been playing the deck, but wondered if a copy in place of the 4th living end would be good. It can tutor Living End so it won't hurt having less copies (we don't really need to cast Living End more than twice usually), and having the flexibility to tutor for Push, brutality or other tools we might bring (surgical extraction maybe?) as well as Living End sounds attractive. It is also instant speed so it plays well with the rest of the deck.
Mission Briefing seems potentially playable, digging two searching for AF is nice, we can recast used countermagic and with AF out we can even recast AV (a bit win-more here, I agree). Maybe as a 1-2 of, wouldn't know what to cut though. Probably better if we were playing Serum Visions or Opt as well to help dig for As Foretold or Living End.
Ok, saying things like "that's card disadvantage" or "we are a control deck" are not arguments or explanations for nothing.
Card disadvantage is like saying "that card dies to bolt". Sure, you might not like that aspect of it, but there are a ton of "card disadvantage" things worth it. Same with "Tolaria west is a land". That's just mentioning aspects of a card you might value, some others might value less.
I can say but Tolaria West comes in tapped! and that doesn't bring anything to the discussion by itself.
And claiming "we are a control deck" as an explanation is even worse, since that's just a subjective classification, even worse in our case where we don't even have a consensus on the 60 (let alone 75) "stock" decklist. Control can be tap-out style, heavier on removal, with a combo kill, with more sweepers, more planeswalkers, A TON of different things. And our deck's style of control is particularly tricky, since as I mentioned, we kind of don't work without As Foretold. We can win even without the graveyard, but games we don't draw As Foretold we are very far from a competitive deck. So that puts some combo elements in our instant speed control style.
Who are you trying to convince that someone saying "I enjoy playing this card, why not?" is disrespectful? It might not bring much to the thread, sure, but it's not disrespectful to anybody, don't be an ********. As I said, just ignore those posts and move on if they trigger you that much, but man you have ego issues if you feel disrespected by someone slightly derailing the conversation from your preferred topic.
And since this is already a confrontational post, I don't accept your "rule #1" at all. Spirits was considered by a ton of people a worse humans, and it has been putting up more and more results. Merfolk can be considered a worse spirits/humans, and plenty of people enjoy it and play competitively with it.
Rules like that are just lazy shortcuts to not actually analyze things. Some people love those, just stating "universal truths" as if discussion should end there because they said it.
That said, I do like your content after being "filtered" since I agree that control is the way to play this deck. I won't be playing it for a while since my store is overrun with Spirits and that is just not fun, but would love to hear how it is working for the rest of you.
So, my maindeck had Crypt Incursion and Sanity in for the longest time, this version was the one I came up with just a couple of days ago when I came back to the deck. Just saying that to clarify I love those cards and have played plenty with them.
This is why I made the changes (I only played a bunch of matches with this version, so they might be correct or they might be wrong, so far, Profane Memento is the one I'm happiest about).
Memento is a dead card in the same matchups that Incursion is (Incursion having a slightly higher floor, but irrelevant mostly, since it's likely a control matchup if they're dead, and gaining 6-9 life there won't likely help). It is not bad when you draw it late at all. It is bad as your topdeck if you're hellbent and need mill, sure, but if you still have Mill available, play it and mill and it will still be relevant. Obviously, Incursion is much better late game, but it is a lot more vulnerable to discard/skullcrack/ooze and other things. Most importantly, in the matchups where you need the lifegain the most, it is sometimes too slow. I still have them in the sideboard for the extra effect if needed, but haven't been too happy with them when boarded in.
They cost 3, so they are very uncomfortable with Bridges, and we have to change our gameplan to fit them in, while Memento just fills slots in our curve and lets us keep doing our thing.
Overall, Memento maindeck felt awesome this far, and it is a bet against all the aggresive, creeature heavy decks (humans, spirits, burn, bant coco, bridgevine, hollow one, affinity, etc...). Just like Bridge, they both can be dead cards, but they both can win games on their own (yes, memento can be that absurd, that's why I insist you try it out if you haven't)
Fraying Sanity is my favourite mill card. The deck feels so much more potent when this is out that it's nuts. I cut it because I wanted to give creatures a try now that bolts are all over the place, since they actually save a lot of life. Playing with Bridge makes me like the 3 drops a lot less, and Fraying Sanity has it's matchups where it is too slow, so I decided to put it in the sideboard for control matches mostly.
I would LOVE to make room for it mainboard, but it might not be the time. As I said before, I will try a more 1 shot kill, comboish version with 4 Sanity for sure, since I don't enjoy the "bridge" wins too much.
So, mostly a meta choice on my part, since all the cards you mentioned are in my SB, but so far I stand by it and prefer the Mementos maindeck and the other cards in the SB.
You can certainly read it as a pre-sideboarded thing for the current meta.
I returned to Mill yesterday, went 2-2.
Both losses were 2-1, both wins 2-0.
Lost match 1 to Hardened Scales, though I punted that one not realizing I could've used surgical extraction on my own graveyard to get my flooded strand out of my hand and be empty handed, I drawed 4 lands in a row and was killed by a bunch of 1/1 Thopters. Bridge was huge winning g1 (he had no answers maindeck) and should've won me the match if I saw that line. The other game was close as well, he got me with 1 card in hand and modular triggers to pump a 1/1.
Won against CoCo easily on the back of Profane Memento, that card coming down early is just stupid against creature heavy decks. G2 I had 2 Mementos down and eventually cast Damnation, no coming back from there.
Won against Bogles, this one goes to Ensnaring Bridge t3 both times, mulled to 5 game 2 just to find Bridge, I don't think we have much of a chance otherwise. Milled the seal of primordium and gg.
Lost against Bridgevine, another close one, lost a g3 where Memento kept me alive and looking good until I punted letting a Viscera Seer resolve before pushing my Scribe to get rid of the 3 bridges from below in the yard. He just activated it, I pushed my guy and realized he could activate it for his other 3 guys in response... An army of zombies got to me then.
G2 I started out fast and a Visions drew me a Nihil Spellbomb at the perfect time to clean most of his deck out and finish him in time. Can't remember g1, but they were all pretty close games.
If you haven't, try Profane Memento. The card is great at buying time in so many matchups right now, I was very happy with it and Bridge.
I played without Fraying Sanity for the more controlling build, so my plan was mostly delay with Memento until I get Bridge down, extract the answers to Bridge when I see them and then close the game. It worked pretty nicely, but with GRN I'm for sure making changes, I don't particularly enjoy the games I win hiding behind Bridge several turns... I understand it is likely our best chance, it's just a personal preference, I want to try to actually win fast enough that I don't need a lock like Bridge. Maybe after losing enough I will come back to just playing Bridge, haha.
I think there is still a lot of merit to a comboish build setting Fraying Sanity - 2 Mill spells kill in t4, specially after GRN releases. We'll see
Edit: Forgot to add the list I played for context: Here it is
THIS IS NOT A COMBO. Ideas Unbound is a terrible source of Card Disadvantage.
While I agree, we are a weird control deck, since if we don't find and resolve As Foretold fast we don't have access to our sweepers and most of our card advantage.
Finding As Foretold in time is crucial, and worth some card disadvantage in exchange for cheap selection (we can easily overcome it once we find As Foretold and can start casting Visions/Living End).
Helping flip Azcanta is also a nice upside, and with Mission Briefing coming we can get some value out of discarded cards as well.
That said, I do agree Ideas Unbound is likely not good enough for our deck.
My main "No" is that it's a sorcery, I would definitely try it if it was an instant. Tapping out early for this seems pretty tough, and later when we can still hold counters it loses a lot of appeal. Instant speed feels like a must for the Ub build of the deck.
As a sidenote to you BloodyRabbit, you might want to reconsider how you post. You always come out very aggresive and arrogant, and it certainly takes some effort (at least for me) to filter that and actually get to the content of your post. Take it or leave it, just wanted to mention it since sometimes it's an online thing where you don't realize how your posts read for others.
Now, this one is very hard to evaluate since it is a ton of mana upfront and will likely not be worth it most times.
It does have a couple very cool interactions though, one with Fraying Sanity (if you stack the triggers properly, this mills them for the size of their graveyard EOT). Another with Memento, since all the creatures are put back into the graveyard and re-trigger it.
It's a weird card so it's hard to evaluate quickly, but it certainly is something to play around with.
EDIT: Another Mill card out, Drowned Secrets. Feels too slow, maybe for a different build, mostly blue with several cantrips, mission briefings, etc..
That Lost Legacy effect for 1UB is a nice sideboard card for us.
Very reasonable cost, it's extra ways of removing annoying cards (titans and such if they make a comeback), combo pieces without even milling them first, or their boarded answer to Bridge to lock them out!
I also like the black tutor a lot, and Mission Briefing as well. A lot of room for tinkering post GRN for UB mill I feel, and I do like how the deck's positioned currently.
I did think so as well, until I ran into a wall of UW Spirits. Pretty sure Bant Spirits will play similarly.
Any specific tech you like against them or have you been lucky enough to avoid the matchup?
There were at least 5 spirits players in my 23 player tournament last week.
Torpor Orb still feels too narrow to be worth it (Humans-Merfolk-Spirits, maybe it's enough?), maybe Faerie Macabre can tackle some of their pesky sacrificing spirits, and more EE and brutalities in place of most countermagic since Cavern+Vial make counterspells feel awful...
Mission Briefing is an interesting one, the snapcaster effect that we really wanted!
Since it's not flashback, it lets us recast Archive Traps from the gy for free, as well as any other snapcaster shenanigans.
Surveil 2 is also useful to dig a bit and reduce dead draws, whether it's more valuable than the 2/1 body will depend on the match I think, but being able to "flashback" Archive Traps makes it very interesting.
Edit: Mausoleum Secrets is worth testing if you're playing several creatures, since getting a surgical, a push, a brutality or crypt incursion at instant speed can be great, and may also make Darkness worth it as a 1 of, in a more toolbox approach.
Played the deck yesterday, UW Spirits is a tough one for us...
Cavern, Vial, Mausoleum Wanderer and Thalia mess up our early counters, Selfless spirit makes EE useless plus sacs himself to come back (so do Mausoleum Wanderers as well). Spell Queller is annoying to interact with as well, and their clock is decently fast.
Loved the Bogles matchup and crushed UW control and BG, but that 0-2 start to 2 UW spirits decks was tough, maybe I'll go back to Torpor Orbs in the SB for Humans/Merfolk/Spirits
Another potential card to consider today with Mission Briefing, since it's not an alternate cost, we can target an AV or LE and cast it off As Foretold with it. It's a better fit than snapcaster for us, and surveil 2 helps dig as well.
He only lost to UW Control because of a disconnection taking 15 minutes of the clock (was up a game, couldn't finish g2) and then on the semis 1-1 and timeout to Amulet Titan, which he had beaten twice before (he is a relatively slow player and the deck is fairly new, not a great combo with a laggy MTGO)
Anyway, the deck certainly has legs even in these first iterations!
Also Shaun McLaren was playing a UR Restore Balance version and got a 4-1, then he tried a RestoreBalance/Living end UR thing and went 2/3 a couple of times.
The card enables several options, and I'm pretty confident it will be a must, so I'd expect UR, Jeskai or Grixis to be the most likely better versions now. I don't like losing as much of the control version as what I saw most people brew with, so I'll start my own experimenting soon!
RR cast a 0 mana spell at instant speed for free seems solid, and I've always liked the idea of Faithless looting to dig and possibly play more "bomb" creatures. Grixis already did a couple of interesting things with Goryo's and Kiki-Jikki, this might give it a nice push. Kari-Zev's expertise can give another way of casting 0 CMC cards, and wheel of fate is another way of digging hard to whatever we need.
I know, I know, that's a completely different deck...
Did anybody try changes to the Grixis Goryo AF list that was kind of popular 6 months ago or so?
Wheel of Fate seems like a ton of fun and potentially broken. Of course, the control build goes out the window, it'll be a combo deck.
On the Uw side, I managed to 3-1 at my local shop again, Path and Purge were sooo good I don't see myself going back to Ub anytime soon.
Hitting lands is a very corner case, we don't need any extra tools against Tron or Valakut like Jund did, and we have 4 Fields of Ruin if we need to check some creature-land (and fatal pushes).
We don't really need what Trophy brings, and while sure, it might be nice to trigger traps from time to time, it's just like Path was in Esper Mill, if your opponent knows what he's doing, it likely won't trigger when you need it.
The 3 color mana base is a huge downgrade from UB and brings in a lot of bad opening sevens and lifeloss, not to mention the main reason I don't buy it, the HUGE tension with Mission Briefing. Mission Briefing is the cool toy for mill GRN brought, not Trophy, and the UU goes really bad with BG.
I'd recommend Sqlut's list, my own was a couple cards off from it (I played 2 Fraying Sanity instead of 2 Inquisition and 1 Azcanta and 1 more Mesmeric Orb in place of 1 Crypt Incursion and 1 Land), but with him being an actual Hareruya Pro that has tested intensively and posted VERY good results with it, I guessed I'd better stick with his choices. Played it last week to a 3rd place in my LGS, with my loss incredibly being to Amulet Titan, after beating Phoenix, Grixis DS and a Waste Not deck.
You can watch his stream in Twitch, he also has a pretty detailed sideboard guide, definitely the top content available for the archetype.
Mesmeric Orb is a must deal card for them, and it even gets through Witchbane Orb.
Any mill you get through puts them very behing, you can draw 3 with visions, shuffle quite a ton with extractions and fetches and field, etc...
Mill definitely is favored against Lantern, it's just Witchbane orb and Academy Ruins that could be somewhat annoying. I like to play 1 of Ipnu's Rivulet since it is a useful little mill when flooding or needing to activate Shelldock/Visions, but it's also instant speed milling to break soft locks like Academy Ruins.
If you're too worried about Leylines/Orb you can always play 1 Echoing Truth maindeck, or some Manic Scribes that mill without targeting.
I haven't been playing the deck, but wondered if a copy in place of the 4th living end would be good. It can tutor Living End so it won't hurt having less copies (we don't really need to cast Living End more than twice usually), and having the flexibility to tutor for Push, brutality or other tools we might bring (surgical extraction maybe?) as well as Living End sounds attractive. It is also instant speed so it plays well with the rest of the deck.
Mission Briefing seems potentially playable, digging two searching for AF is nice, we can recast used countermagic and with AF out we can even recast AV (a bit win-more here, I agree). Maybe as a 1-2 of, wouldn't know what to cut though. Probably better if we were playing Serum Visions or Opt as well to help dig for As Foretold or Living End.
Card disadvantage is like saying "that card dies to bolt". Sure, you might not like that aspect of it, but there are a ton of "card disadvantage" things worth it. Same with "Tolaria west is a land". That's just mentioning aspects of a card you might value, some others might value less.
I can say but Tolaria West comes in tapped! and that doesn't bring anything to the discussion by itself.
And claiming "we are a control deck" as an explanation is even worse, since that's just a subjective classification, even worse in our case where we don't even have a consensus on the 60 (let alone 75) "stock" decklist. Control can be tap-out style, heavier on removal, with a combo kill, with more sweepers, more planeswalkers, A TON of different things. And our deck's style of control is particularly tricky, since as I mentioned, we kind of don't work without As Foretold. We can win even without the graveyard, but games we don't draw As Foretold we are very far from a competitive deck. So that puts some combo elements in our instant speed control style.
Who are you trying to convince that someone saying "I enjoy playing this card, why not?" is disrespectful? It might not bring much to the thread, sure, but it's not disrespectful to anybody, don't be an ********. As I said, just ignore those posts and move on if they trigger you that much, but man you have ego issues if you feel disrespected by someone slightly derailing the conversation from your preferred topic.
And since this is already a confrontational post, I don't accept your "rule #1" at all. Spirits was considered by a ton of people a worse humans, and it has been putting up more and more results. Merfolk can be considered a worse spirits/humans, and plenty of people enjoy it and play competitively with it.
Rules like that are just lazy shortcuts to not actually analyze things. Some people love those, just stating "universal truths" as if discussion should end there because they said it.
That said, I do like your content after being "filtered" since I agree that control is the way to play this deck. I won't be playing it for a while since my store is overrun with Spirits and that is just not fun, but would love to hear how it is working for the rest of you.
This is why I made the changes (I only played a bunch of matches with this version, so they might be correct or they might be wrong, so far, Profane Memento is the one I'm happiest about).
Memento is a dead card in the same matchups that Incursion is (Incursion having a slightly higher floor, but irrelevant mostly, since it's likely a control matchup if they're dead, and gaining 6-9 life there won't likely help). It is not bad when you draw it late at all. It is bad as your topdeck if you're hellbent and need mill, sure, but if you still have Mill available, play it and mill and it will still be relevant. Obviously, Incursion is much better late game, but it is a lot more vulnerable to discard/skullcrack/ooze and other things. Most importantly, in the matchups where you need the lifegain the most, it is sometimes too slow. I still have them in the sideboard for the extra effect if needed, but haven't been too happy with them when boarded in.
They cost 3, so they are very uncomfortable with Bridges, and we have to change our gameplan to fit them in, while Memento just fills slots in our curve and lets us keep doing our thing.
Overall, Memento maindeck felt awesome this far, and it is a bet against all the aggresive, creeature heavy decks (humans, spirits, burn, bant coco, bridgevine, hollow one, affinity, etc...). Just like Bridge, they both can be dead cards, but they both can win games on their own (yes, memento can be that absurd, that's why I insist you try it out if you haven't)
Fraying Sanity is my favourite mill card. The deck feels so much more potent when this is out that it's nuts. I cut it because I wanted to give creatures a try now that bolts are all over the place, since they actually save a lot of life. Playing with Bridge makes me like the 3 drops a lot less, and Fraying Sanity has it's matchups where it is too slow, so I decided to put it in the sideboard for control matches mostly.
I would LOVE to make room for it mainboard, but it might not be the time. As I said before, I will try a more 1 shot kill, comboish version with 4 Sanity for sure, since I don't enjoy the "bridge" wins too much.
So, mostly a meta choice on my part, since all the cards you mentioned are in my SB, but so far I stand by it and prefer the Mementos maindeck and the other cards in the SB.
You can certainly read it as a pre-sideboarded thing for the current meta.
Both losses were 2-1, both wins 2-0.
Lost match 1 to Hardened Scales, though I punted that one not realizing I could've used surgical extraction on my own graveyard to get my flooded strand out of my hand and be empty handed, I drawed 4 lands in a row and was killed by a bunch of 1/1 Thopters. Bridge was huge winning g1 (he had no answers maindeck) and should've won me the match if I saw that line. The other game was close as well, he got me with 1 card in hand and modular triggers to pump a 1/1.
Won against CoCo easily on the back of Profane Memento, that card coming down early is just stupid against creature heavy decks. G2 I had 2 Mementos down and eventually cast Damnation, no coming back from there.
Won against Bogles, this one goes to Ensnaring Bridge t3 both times, mulled to 5 game 2 just to find Bridge, I don't think we have much of a chance otherwise. Milled the seal of primordium and gg.
Lost against Bridgevine, another close one, lost a g3 where Memento kept me alive and looking good until I punted letting a Viscera Seer resolve before pushing my Scribe to get rid of the 3 bridges from below in the yard. He just activated it, I pushed my guy and realized he could activate it for his other 3 guys in response... An army of zombies got to me then.
G2 I started out fast and a Visions drew me a Nihil Spellbomb at the perfect time to clean most of his deck out and finish him in time. Can't remember g1, but they were all pretty close games.
If you haven't, try Profane Memento. The card is great at buying time in so many matchups right now, I was very happy with it and Bridge.
I played without Fraying Sanity for the more controlling build, so my plan was mostly delay with Memento until I get Bridge down, extract the answers to Bridge when I see them and then close the game. It worked pretty nicely, but with GRN I'm for sure making changes, I don't particularly enjoy the games I win hiding behind Bridge several turns... I understand it is likely our best chance, it's just a personal preference, I want to try to actually win fast enough that I don't need a lock like Bridge. Maybe after losing enough I will come back to just playing Bridge, haha.
I think there is still a lot of merit to a comboish build setting Fraying Sanity - 2 Mill spells kill in t4, specially after GRN releases. We'll see
Edit: Forgot to add the list I played for context: Here it is
While I agree, we are a weird control deck, since if we don't find and resolve As Foretold fast we don't have access to our sweepers and most of our card advantage.
Finding As Foretold in time is crucial, and worth some card disadvantage in exchange for cheap selection (we can easily overcome it once we find As Foretold and can start casting Visions/Living End).
Helping flip Azcanta is also a nice upside, and with Mission Briefing coming we can get some value out of discarded cards as well.
That said, I do agree Ideas Unbound is likely not good enough for our deck.
My main "No" is that it's a sorcery, I would definitely try it if it was an instant. Tapping out early for this seems pretty tough, and later when we can still hold counters it loses a lot of appeal. Instant speed feels like a must for the Ub build of the deck.
As a sidenote to you BloodyRabbit, you might want to reconsider how you post. You always come out very aggresive and arrogant, and it certainly takes some effort (at least for me) to filter that and actually get to the content of your post. Take it or leave it, just wanted to mention it since sometimes it's an online thing where you don't realize how your posts read for others.
Mnemonic Betrayal
Now, this one is very hard to evaluate since it is a ton of mana upfront and will likely not be worth it most times.
It does have a couple very cool interactions though, one with Fraying Sanity (if you stack the triggers properly, this mills them for the size of their graveyard EOT). Another with Memento, since all the creatures are put back into the graveyard and re-trigger it.
It's a weird card so it's hard to evaluate quickly, but it certainly is something to play around with.
EDIT: Another Mill card out, Drowned Secrets. Feels too slow, maybe for a different build, mostly blue with several cantrips, mission briefings, etc..
Very reasonable cost, it's extra ways of removing annoying cards (titans and such if they make a comeback), combo pieces without even milling them first, or their boarded answer to Bridge to lock them out!
I also like the black tutor a lot, and Mission Briefing as well. A lot of room for tinkering post GRN for UB mill I feel, and I do like how the deck's positioned currently.
I did think so as well, until I ran into a wall of UW Spirits. Pretty sure Bant Spirits will play similarly.
Any specific tech you like against them or have you been lucky enough to avoid the matchup?
There were at least 5 spirits players in my 23 player tournament last week.
Torpor Orb still feels too narrow to be worth it (Humans-Merfolk-Spirits, maybe it's enough?), maybe Faerie Macabre can tackle some of their pesky sacrificing spirits, and more EE and brutalities in place of most countermagic since Cavern+Vial make counterspells feel awful...
Since it's not flashback, it lets us recast Archive Traps from the gy for free, as well as any other snapcaster shenanigans.
Surveil 2 is also useful to dig a bit and reduce dead draws, whether it's more valuable than the 2/1 body will depend on the match I think, but being able to "flashback" Archive Traps makes it very interesting.
Edit: Mausoleum Secrets is worth testing if you're playing several creatures, since getting a surgical, a push, a brutality or crypt incursion at instant speed can be great, and may also make Darkness worth it as a 1 of, in a more toolbox approach.
Cavern, Vial, Mausoleum Wanderer and Thalia mess up our early counters, Selfless spirit makes EE useless plus sacs himself to come back (so do Mausoleum Wanderers as well). Spell Queller is annoying to interact with as well, and their clock is decently fast.
Loved the Bogles matchup and crushed UW control and BG, but that 0-2 start to 2 UW spirits decks was tough, maybe I'll go back to Torpor Orbs in the SB for Humans/Merfolk/Spirits
Another potential card to consider today with Mission Briefing, since it's not an alternate cost, we can target an AV or LE and cast it off As Foretold with it. It's a better fit than snapcaster for us, and surveil 2 helps dig as well.