Maximising value in the manabase from fetchable sources is one of my priorities, and running out of basics is a very real point of discussion. I prefer to run sufficient basic Plains that I cannot be taken off of the seven needed to immediately threaten recursion with either Fulminator Mage or Field of Ruin, so I never go below seven of those, and I also work very hard to minimise my Blue requirements to prevent issues with smooth sequencing to Emeria. That being said, the basic island (despite being the worst land in the deck) has sadly proved to be a necessity for me, since whenever I try to cut it I inevitably die at least once in a tournament after casting a Pilgrim's Eye on turn three that could not fix for the game-winning Supreme Verdict I had in hand. Ghost Quarter helps mitigate the downside of this land (and helps reduce the sting of drawing multiple Emeria, the Sky Ruin), but as I recently stated my list has now changed to reflect my new plan against control and is now quite close to what you posted, replacing only the Windswept Heath with the Island, but also running a Prairie Stream instead of a Hallowed Fountain, and rounding our the four nonbasic fetchable Plains with a Mistveil Plains as an additional source.
As a final point, I believe that the printing of Break the Ice puts a disaster scenario into the equation which disincentivises the Snow Basics that you have indicated.
And the sideboard would be much more lesson-heavy to make the maindeck more resilient, meaning that the importance of winning game 1 would rise dramatically, however I think this might just be a reasonable plan in a metagame where Attrition is favoured. In addition to the Yorion, then, the sideboard would give Professor of Symbology the following 11 options in aside from looting on ETB to get rid of irrelevant cards in certain matchups:
If all were included, this would theoretically be 12 Cards, leaving 3 for legitimate sideboarding purposes, which I would call 1 Crucible of Worlds, the third Ghost Quarter, and a second settle the Wreckage.
No testing at all has gone into this, it is pure theorycraft for illustrative purposes.
The Esper matchup is sometimes difficult, and Vindicate being a new adoption of theirs is an important piece of information to be aware of. I had assumed that their Flash play patterns were too important, but when Teferi, Time Raveler or Planeswalkers are involved they are 1) already playing a little at Sorcery-speed and 2) able to situationally use it as an Instant anyway. While we are on the subject I tested against a list the other day that ran zero Vindicate, but instead ran a full four Archmage's Charm as a response to the Kaldra Compleat subgame. I was caught off-guard by my opponent gaining control of the Germ and immediately threw away a game that was very much still in question otherwise. A word of caution to the wise: I am now keenly aware of permanent Ray of Command potential and generally try play around it with a Wall of Omens to re-equip to post-combat in the lategame, while my preferred options strongly favour both Mortarpod and Batterskull, which have inherent protection from the effect.
A few small things about the matchup before I get to suggestions for answers to Planeswalkers, then. You say you ended the game with multiple Supreme Verdict and Path to Exile in hand, and part of this is simply an occupational hazard of playing a board control deck. The first of these is a completely dead card unless you happen to be running Solitude, but the second is legitimately better used as a Ramp spell whenever possible if you have a) Germ tokens, b) Pilgrim's Eye, c) Stoneforge Mystic, d) Wall of Omens or e) Court Hussar on the table. The order here represents the sequencing starting with the LEAST valuable card to turn into a land, and ending with the MOST valuable effect to maintain access to recursion of. I love recurring Eye against control, but if I draw too many Paths, they have already gotten value, and there are more in the deck. Stoneforge Mystic runs out of targets or becomes much less relevant once the lategame is achieved, and is generally a high-priority target for their removal (one of the only ones we have), so assume they will give you an opportunity at some point to target it with your own removal in order to at least get a land out of the bargain. Recurring Walls and Hussars are the primary spell-advantage (as opposed to pure card advantage with lands included) vectors in the recursion lategame, and Teferi, Time Raveler almost always bounces either of these (or Eye) immediately for value whenever I have one of them around if he hits the table. The creatures do little enough else other than their ETB trigger at any rate in the matchup, so doubling up on these is preferred. And yes, finally, Remorseful Cleric is a prized Graveyard control effect here as well.
As I had stated on the last page, though, my new list is also having more trouble with Planeswalkers than before (due to the presence of Prismatic Ending to permanently remove my Detention Sphere more than anything else), so I am currently looking for better options as well, but there are a few choices that I can say I am looking at. The word on Prismatic Ending for us is that it does a very good job indeed at covering 3-mana Teferi, Liliana, Narset, Gideon, Davriel, Ashioks, etcetera with a Raugrin Triome, or specifically Wrenn and Six even without it, but cannot stretch up to four without serious retooling of the manabase. This is very unfortunate, because the quite strong Skyclave Apparition covers these cards as well, while hitting 4-mana Jaces, Ajanis, Elspeths, Nahiris, Karns, and more but does not reach up to most notably Teferi, Hero of Dominaria, meaning there is more space that must to be devoted to the Planeswalker issue even if you run both these spells.
The "good" news is that the printing of Prismatic Ending leaves the sideboard open by a few slots because Pithing Needle is no longer a reliable and recurrable safety valve. Its efficiency may still earn it a spot or two in the future, but I expect that it will leave the 75 entirely for at least a little while. The space provided by its departure can thus be turned directly to answer the issue at hand.
For a while in the past I ran an Archon of Justice as a combination with Mortarpod or Supreme Verdict, but this was at least seven years ago, and things have evolved far past its heyday in the intervening span of time, even handing over value when opponents bring in Leyline of the Void or Rest in Peace. The same is true for the slightly more relevant Angel of Sanctions. There are also other odd Time Spiral cards that can be considered in Pentarch Paladin, but slightly more likely in Saltblast. To be exhaustive, I could also include Scourglass but none of these is truly high-appeal.
If we are willing to discuss 5-mana options, however, the interesting choice of Elspeth Conquers Death could be of great utility in the Tef3ri versions, and also synergizes quite well for attrition with the rest of the deck, while maintaining its primary function versus Graveyard removal and meshing extremely well with the coverage of a Triome-fuelled set of Prismatic Ending. Another 5-mana play (and one that notably does not get exiled by Force of Negation) has its own set of synergies in Cavalier of Dawn, but space is tight there at the moment. In more expensive ideas, my Mono-White build was extremely happy with [EDIT: Hour of Revelation] and Devastating Mastery as catchall Wraths that could become cheaper, and I had briefly considered the janky Exclusion Ritual or even the pipe-dream Karn Liberated, but these are almost certainly not what we need and would stand very little chance of seeing play even in the maindeck. Sadly, the only hyper-expensive option that I would be willing to consider in Ondu Inversion does not feature the Plains subtype on its back half.
Turning down from 5 mana on the curve, then, since I exclude all options already covered or improved on by Detention Sphere, Aether Gust, and/or Celestial Purge, we find a few specialty options cheap enough to sideboard in Angelic Ascension, the somewhat clunky Angelic Purge, the intriguingly efficient though narrow Glare of Heresy, the slightly retro and very slow Mangara of Corondor which can combine with Mortarpod on activation for a full monstrosity of a .5 per turn cycle combo with Emeria, the equal parts awkward and versatile Ravnica at War, and the highly noteworthy Reduce to Memory for potential Professor of Symbology value. This last option returns me to another effect from my Mono-White testing in Generous Gift, which was not as bad as it seemed when Wall of Omens was around to either block or upgrade with respect to the 3/3s.
Given my caveats, this list is exhaustive for spells castable using only White mana that read "destroy permanent", "exile permanent", "destroy planeswalker", or "exile planeswalker" on gatherer.wizards.com, and I may therefore be missing some Blue or Colourless options, but the former are not ideal given our manabase, and the latter will tend to be either prohibitively expensive or vulnerable again to Prismatic Ending, so barring a metagame shift where Glare of Heresy could supplement something like two Prismatic Ending and a Skyclave Apparition in the maindeck, I think that the 4 spells that give the opponent Creatures as a drawback (Ascension, Reduce, Gift, and Cavalier) join Elspeth Conquers Death or Saltblast as the best candidates for the job, considering their utility in other areas. Though they are expensive at 5 mana, I would put Cavalier of Dawn and ECD at the top of that list, as I would feel that they actually add some amount to the attrition plan and require nothing else in order to be a topdecked answer to an impending Ultimate ability. Of the cheaper options, Generous Gift being able to affect lands seems to matter the most, but Professor of Symbology continues to be more and more interesting to me as an option for an alternative build.
Please let me know if you find any upgrades to this list, or if you have differing opinions on their viability!
Thank you for the response, Starstorm, and luck is fickle for your losses. I agree with your analysis of Seal of Cleansing being better against Urza's Saga (and many other things, for that matter). There are two things which make this less relevant for my deck, however. 1) Strategically, I am not certain that the Enchantment-Land is a great enough part of the metagame to be worth losing the diversity over, as that might constitute warping the deck for one pairing, which rarely works well. It is also much less of a threat for me when I assume the Karnstructs are card-neutral for them in the face of abundant blockers and sweepers. I also have five manabase options to leverage against the card, though I would concede that these are somewhat stretched in the matchup. Regardless, their "Grindy" plan is fragile. Ours is more robust, and I like my chances if that is what they choose to focus on. 2) Operationally, the amount of one-shot defense my deck provides up to and beyond turn 4 signifies that in so many of my games the cards will come off the top of the deck instead of beginning in my opening 10 cards, say. This means that the value of 2 versus 3 is lesser if I assume I do not absolutely need these cards in order to survive, and will be well into turns 4/5/6 before I find myself wanting to cast them (I also consider both of these sideboard cards to be luxuries rather than necessities, and so they can attempt to tackle more subtle nuances with greater impact).
As I said before, though, mine is not a strong sentiment since the two cards are very, very close in power level. Running a 1-1 split or a 2-0 in favour of Seal of Cleansing is akin to a coin toss depending on pairings, so I wouldn't fault anything except perhaps the 0-2 split in favour of the Aura of Silence, which I would assume pushes the curve up far too much post-board. If I could run a set of 3, it would be of 2 Seal and 1 Aura.
On another note, I think that I disagree much more strongly with one specific piece of advice you gave in the Izzet Blitz matchup. You stated the following about your blocking heuristics:
When they go for attacks, if it's only one creature attacking, almost 100% of the times i won't block because if they actually pump it, they are losing value on those spells, as they could be pumping not 1 but 2 or 3 creatures.
I was surprised to read this because I would heavily recommend doing the exact opposite of your proposed play pattern, based off of precisely the same logic. Perhaps you value your creatures much more highly than mine for closing out the game, but in my eyes the purpose of my deck facilitates survival when I get every one of my spells to trade for as many pieces of cardboard as I can. I have no way to affect cards in hand or on the stack directly pre-board, so their Prowess mechanic actually offers an indirect way of encouraging them to trade cards in hand - and usually in multiple - for an attack that gets no damage in, leaving them down resources on some future more critical turn. Your statement is correct, in that they lose value pumping a single creature, but the corollary is that I would consider blocking as the best way to capitalize on that fact operationally in such a situation. Wall of Omens and Court Hussar are particularly well-suited to this task, as they have already accrued value by the time the decision [EDIT: SHOULD BECOME AVAILABLE] to throw their high-toughness bodies in front of the train, but Stoneforge Mystic also counts as a viable roadblock so that I can survive to hardcast the Batterskull later: it was probably going to die anyway. The 1-toughness "Creatures" of Mortarpod and Pilgrim's Eye are less valuable in this aim, generally being placed in harm's way at literally the first opportunity since they are so unlikely to survive, but can combine into a 1/2 to make the same kinds of plays. The scenario you described is a bad one for them, where we can also potentially make their sequencing awkward by taxing their mana and affecting their board development. I WANT them to make that attack. Whenever I can get them to spew their spells on only a single creature, I am happy with the exchange whether or not my creature survives.
Other than that notable discrepancy in our philosophies, I fully endorse the rest of your matchup guide.
Spencerrind, I am glad you appreciated the advice. Your observation about our resilience to discard via excellent topdecks is spot-on as well, and it usually takes people quite a long time to reach that conclusion. As an extreme example, when playing against 8-rack in the past, I felt very little (if any) danger, because our card velocity leaves us so much redundant hand size that I am almost never struggling to make land drops. I have, however, seen other pilots get into trouble by hanging on for value when the name of the game is, once more, our marquee Land. Emeria, the Sky Ruin does not require a hand to win the game, and Pilgrim's Eye or Crucible of Worlds are again the MVPs of such matchups. Discard everything else, up to and including Sun Titan, to keep putting Land into play. That is all. If they do not have Leyline of the Void, winning the game is that simple. If they do, we can beat it eventually in any number of ways, and they need to apply pressure to something other than our hand or we will eventually engineer a way out. Drawing the Leyline makes them less likely to have that pressure, and so we will rarely have to care about either Grief or any other Thoughtseize effects. My plan is thereby almost always simply to ignore these as irrelevant.
I wish you good luck with a blended list, though, this seems very promising given the wealth of options you have at your disposal currently. If you can manage it I, for one, would appreciate if you could test a list with some unusual combinations of cards by looking at things which have not been paired together in any single list found on this thread. We are all more or less set in our ways, and have biases and preferences which result in oversights or omissions which you could relevantly affect with fresh eyes on new combinations of established cards. That way, your list begins with solid cards that we can advise you on, you could immediately offer to share a new perspective on them, and you would be able to offer insights from a variety of different angles even if the experiment goes catastrophically poorly. The joy of playing a new list compensates fully for the sting of potential losses in these situations (to me, at least).
Well done, Spencerrind, I hope you continued to enjoy playing the deck!
In terms of facing Control, the thing to remember is that we enjoy inevitability in the abstract because an active Emeria, the Sky Ruin will beat most everything except for a Planeswalker literally threatening to ultimate before your next upkeep, but that is only assuming a well-stocked Graveyard. Since this precondition is the case, and since Supreme Verdict is otherwise such a liability to draw against Creature-light strategies, your lack of Mortarpod is something that flips the matchup heavily in their favour. By delaying the ultimate ability on Teferi, Hero of Dominaria for one turn on its own, it is a valuable tutor target in this matchup, and by pressuring loyalty with any random Wall of Omens sitting around waiting for something to do beside provide free blocks on the occasional Snapcaster Mage it becomes a threat worth some amount of their respect.
Next, the utility of both Pilgrim's Eye and Crucible of Worlds is far greater than might initially appear in more grindy pairings. When as a child I first caught the attention of my local tournament endbosses way back in the 90's, I received a piece of advice which has transposed directly into part of the philosophy I bring to this deck: "Never underestimate the power of mana development in Control mirrors". The 3-mana Artifacts I run are almost superior to Archmage's Charm and the like against Control for this reason, as I can guarantee access to land drops much better than their card draw can when tapping out mainphase - a strategic advantage that also extends to Wall of Omens and leads to operational and tactical difficulties for them because they are consistently uncertain whether tapout plays represent a sign of strength or of weakness from us. In addition, a maindeck Crucible also becomes nearly a must-counter threat, and turns their Field of Ruin into more of a delaying tactic than surefire disruption. The resilient trifecta of Emeria, the Sky Ruin, Crucible of Worlds, and Sun Titan is ultimately a very difficult one for them to answer cleanly, especially when given the presence of Mistveil Plains.
Given that you had no such angles available, the matchup should go from favourable for us to a noticeable though not overwhelming edge to them, but in order to make this the case given what you had I would have advised 1) that you bring in Remorseful Cleric as a way to disrupt graveyard recursion and pressure Planeswalkers [EDIT: WHILE FUELLING EMERIA SOME AMOUNT], and 2) that you bring in your Seal of Cleansing to set up your Detention Sphere for a permanent Exile effect on Planeswalkers, while protecting you from Prismatic Ending disaster scenarios and otherwise hedging a tiny amount against things like Rest in Peace. To make room for these, I would have removed at least two of your Path to Exile, (though I always like leaving in at least one Path for a chance at value on surprise Emeria activations ahead of schedule and possible coverage against Monastery Mentor or Gideon, Ally of Zendikar), and and I highly dislike handing over value on the board by keeping in Elite Spellbinder since it is so much less likely to resolve and attack given that I typically choose to draw every time in the matchup. In addition, the opposition is trying to reach the later game and has a flatter power distribution in its plays, so its trigger loses a lot of value by being a) less likely to disrupt their curve and b) eventually becoming no more than a taxing effect and therefore leaving them access to almost all of their lines of play once they inevitably draw sufficient land.
The last piece of advice I have for you here is indeed about your sequencing against Field of Ruin, where we have a huge edge in numbers. Lists running Cryptic Command, Counterspell, and Prismatic Ending are colour-intensive, to say nothing of the presence of either Archmage's Charm or Esper Charm. If the latter two are seen, their manabase is extremely unlikely to feature more than a single colourless-producing utility land, since it costs them so much of their curve to draw cards of that nature in the early game or when they Mulligan. Even if their card advantage comes from elsewhere, the heavily colour-restricted cards mean that 3 is a typical number for them in the maindeck, and we therefore have a conservative average of 2 more pieces of manabase disruption than they do. This means that at any point in the game attacking their coloured sources can quickly become an option worth keeping an eye out for, but the real trick is to actually hit their utility lands with our own copies whenever a clean opportunity presents itself. Though it is a symmetrical effect, I have sometimes delayed deploying Pithing Needle until I had an Emeria, the Sky Ruin in hand with seven Plains in play, at which point when they allowed the Needle to resolve I could either name Field of Ruin to play my Emeria and proceed immediately to the endgame instead of guessing at a Planeswalker as they expected, or justify the same play looking to freeze their activation in order to use Ghost Quarter on it to force them to find another precious copy within a turn cycle, which I would then meet with more of the same if I had either Crucible of Worlds or Sun Titan ready to turbo-charge running them out of basic land. This is virtually the only situation, however, where I would consciously go down a land against them.
I hope that this has been helpful, and wish you much luck in your next interaction with the strategy. There are subtleties in your other matchups that I could discuss as well, but they largely did not affect the results as far as I can tell, and you will be able to quickly find your optimal balance for them as they crop up in the future. Barring critique on your build (which I will gladly give if you feel unhappy with your list, or if you ask for a comparison with mine on matchups), I think that I would only ask why you included Leyline of Sanctity and Kataki, War's Wage. Were you expecting certain decks that these seemed important against? They are certainly good cards in the abstract, but sometimes suboptimal in this shell, and I might be able to advise more generic replacements if their narrow coverage was not specifically what you needed from them.
All in all, thank you for the report, and I hope your good fortune continues.
-Stéphane Gérard
(P.S.: The Yorion, Sky Nomad, Soullherder, and Ephemerate builds have had a possible new toy spoiled in Teleportation Circle. The new wording preference of "At the beginning of your End Step" is producing a larger than usual number of viable effects to tap out for, and this one joins the list as a Conjurer's Closet analogue that is cheaper, more versatile, and on-colour in a slightly more difficult to interact with permanent.)
(P.P.S.: I cannot recall who it was who asked whether Aura of Silence still had relevant advantages over Seal of Cleansing, perhaps Starstorm, but I forgot to answer them. My apologies. The reply is that Aura of Silence and Seal of Cleansing are literally different cards, which matters for two reasons. The first is that Pithing Needle, Sorcerous Spyglass, Phyrexian Revoker, Meddling Mage, and Surgical Extraction are all terrible cards against me, so I will flat-out refuse to give them any value to claw their pilot back into a match that they are desperately trying to stay afloat in. Their presence typically means that my opponent had even worse cards that they were looking to get rid of, and therefore the diversity is notable in preserving my win percentages post-board in excellent matchups. The second advantage is less strategic and more operational or tactical, where Aura of Silence is far better at breaking up combo pieces which are used as setup, despite its extra W mana cost. An excellent example is Underworld Breach, where taxing the initial investment in the card while simultaneously representing its destruction is a fantastic state of affairs. They therefore are less likely to threaten to combo in the first place, and can on a moment's notice be maximally punished for committing to the board. This is not a clear decision for me, since I value efficiency much more highly than almost anything, but the combination of factors makes me happier to mix and match my hate between these broadly overlapping Enchantments, generally also leaving me in a better situation against rogue strategies or new sideboard technology.)
Although it is possible that the aggressive versions will want Guardian of Faith more than I realize, 1) this will not be without consequence to the power level of the deck as a whole due to the 3-drop issue mentioned above and 2) this will only be true in the shells which are trying to win the game actively (which I maintain is not a strategy naturally synergistic with our namesake tapland in either philosophy or gameplay).
In addition, it provides little value when recurred on mainphase or upkeep for us, whereas Selfless Spirit provides a rough analogue for its utility at 2/3 of the cost, and on an evasive body which has free instant-speed activation built into its presence on the table. When tapping out so often, the value of hidden information is lesser for us as well, and the timing sensitivity when tied to a high up-front mana investment combines with the disastrous Living Weapon/Phasing interaction issues such that I, for one, am entirely uninterested in the card on first impression.
Should you wish to seek out its best home, I might recommend starting to test immediately against it because I believe that it will have a very high chance of becoming a staple in Collected Company decks, particularly (and rather obviously) in Bant Spirits.
In other spoilers, I believe that Ingenious Smith has approximately as much power as Professor of Symbology did, and therefore has a [EDIT: SMALL] chance of seeing play in specific builds who need card selection 2-drops (perhaps specifically the Yorion, Sky Nomad builds). Sadly, I see less potential in either Monk Class or Paladin Class given their respective balances, though I will look forward to seeing if their rules baggage will mean that they also interact favourably with Yorion.
Hello everyone, and a warm welcome to Spencerrind!
I hope that you are all doing well this fine Canada Day, and wish you all a happy and healthy summer (especially in the heatwave which is also affecting us here in the prairie provinces with numbers currently hovering at around the 40-degree Celsius / 100 Farenheit mark). I will be out canoeing on the river soon, so here's hoping I don't incur heatstroke to pass out and drown! If I do perish, however, I will leave you with a few final thoughts.
Thank you for giving my strategy a try, Plichow! I feel as though you may have gotten unlucky not to do better on the day (the Chandra sequence in particular was painful to read, and post-board Celestial Purge is a card that joins Aether Gust in reducing these extremely unlikely losses to base-Red midrange decks - a strategy which I feel we have a death-grip on in general). Losing to Jeskai is more realistic, though I feel strongly advantaged there as well, but the Grixis Shadow loss is a real gut-check. Planeswalkers and Kaldra are indeed issues that must be managed with play patterns more than direct answers, so it does not surprise me to hear of that becoming an issue, and I would say that the sideboard was out of date by four cards (Mindcensors and Needles), and ill-optimized to the current metagame in another three (Lavinia, Prelate, and Alliance - my apologies for not having made that clear in these past few pages, since you broadly followed my list from the primer). I recommend you read my primer guide on Shadow, at the very least, to see how you sideboarded and what lines you took which differed from what I have found to be "best practice" there. This list is also one which rewards experience a lot, so if you continue to stick with it, you will eventually run across as series of "Ah-HA!" moments is a few areas which will affect your sequencing significantly. I wish you the best, and will hope to be around to offer more assistance in the future!
On the equipment package, I loathe things which cannot help stabilize the board once Emeria is on the table and all I need is either a land or another upkeep, but after re-stating that distaste I will weigh in on the options with the following list of priorities. 1) If the Stoneforge Mystic is being used to draw out removal or to go for the throat, Kaldra Compleat is the best option on offense, and Batterskull is nearly always the best option on defense - except against other Kaldras. 2) If you assume your Kor Artificer is going to die and you will then need to continue providing more blockers to survive (an ongoing theme in my deck), if Planeswalkers threaten game-breaking Loyalty abilities when you have no board presence (another commonly assumed state of affairs for me), or if you want to compound Emeria, the Sky Ruin advantages when you begin to close out the game, then Mortarpod is your man and covers against x-1 aggro/combo/utility/acceleration Creatures starting on turn 2 to boot. After that, things get considerably more murky.
The fact that Shadowspear provides immediate interaction on a 2-mana investment for potentially crippling plays from opponents, without necessitating a creature presence, combines with its overall cheapness to make it into a uniquely efficient tutor target in the deck, which also hedges with additional stats bonuses and lifegain where appropriate, but it in no way belongs in the maindeck unless the metagame shifts to make it more consistently relevant. Moving beyond this layer, unless you find yourself trying to solve a very specific issue, the respective advantages of the "Sword Of" cycle all boil down to their metagame-dependent Protection abilities more than anything else, with three notable exceptions for Sword of Fire and Ice, Sword Of Hearth and Home, and Sword Of Feast and Famine as real standouts. These three have triggers which contribute in direct ways to bridging the gap in the midrange sequences. Notably, however, the last two have analogues which are rarely discussed in the cheaper Sword of the Animist for fetching lands (though without the Flicker effect), and the MUCH cheaper Specter's Shroud (without the untap trigger). Blinking creatures or doubling mana can be extremely useful, but they generally pale in comparison to the startup mana efficiency required, particularly since the discard effect is extremely desireable against fast Combo decks when 2-drop heavy versions can follow their Mystic - or even Mortarpod - up immediately with resource denial given a natural curve into a third land. Once you move up to 5 mana Equip sequences SOF/I, though, hits the hardest and guarantees value best of all the other Sword effects, while SOH/H can situationally outpace it on value or board control early on, though never matching its pressure.
Lastly, I would like to weigh in on the Ranger-Captain of Eos combination with Skyclave Apparition, and will note that the 3-drop issue mentioned above is one of the key differences that Emeria, the Sky Ruin and Sun Titan combine to turn into a very important spot on the curve. In the past, whenever people suggested running Kitchen Finks, I would use that as a diagnostic of either lack of insight into the deck, or complete unfamiliarity with how it operates. Three is the "Magic Number" for the strategy, and slots in that space are incredibly competitive. If Mortarpod was somehow a 3-Mana Equipment, it wouldn't be in the top TWENTY effects I could justify in the colours, probably even if it offered 3 damage on sacrifice instead of one. (This also relates back a tiny amount to my issue with the "Sword Of" cycle above). In essence, then, though it is always theoretically possible to run both of the 1WW cards, their numbers are naturally reduced by the other important effects that will tend to displace them, and I find that the Blue 3-drops are the primary culprit. In the Mono- or Heavy-White versions, this slot opens up a little more, and I believe that it is far more realistic to run, say, 3 Ranger-Captain and 2 Skyclave Apparition together without significant issues. The question then becomes whether it is possible to do this without compromising too many matchups due to the lack of Blue support, to which my answer has thus far been "no". The saving graces for the Mono-White versions, however, do notably include excellent Emeria activation and nearly ironclad utility-land development otherwise.
Should any of you have differing ideas, however, as always you may feel free to ask me to take off my blinders, and I will give my honest opinion about the relative merits of certain choices in other shells. Just because I find my version to be the best for me, it in no way reduces my enthusiasm for optimization in other contexts.
Fluff and Starstorm - you have both asked about Pilgrim's Eye, so I will start there. It is indeed valuable as a flying blocker, however in my version they essentially serve as basic lands with a 3-mana body attached as a kicker. Lava Dart and Wrenn and Six make that body less relevant, but as a measure of how much I want the land it provides I will state that I tested The Birth of Meletis, and (bad as it is) would be willing to run it over Stoneforge Mystic if it ever leaves. I realize that I will be sounding like a broken record at this point, but every creature-based option that interacts well with filling our deck with Plains represents the kind of advantages that Emeria, the Sky Ruin rewards and maximises. I WANT approximately 40 lands in my deck, and can GET AWAY WITH running only 24 because of curve filling creatures like Wall of Omens and Court Hussar being able to find me more Plains. Given that Sun Titan is the best finisher for our strategy, Pilgrim's Eye is a crucial effect in that pursuit.
Focus on the advantages that this shell has over other viable candidates, and ask yourself: what makes this strategy unique? what does it offer that other decks do not, and therefore why is it a viable deck choice? My answer is that, as a "free" effect in the manabase, it enables the purely focused mantra of "survive, survive, survive". The natural consequence of playing the game takes over from that point and flood no longer becomes a death sentence for us, while other decks must ultimately leverage dwindling resources which depend on much more variable boardstates. Build with Emeria ASSUMING you will have to come from behind to stabilize - THEN you can proceed to win with whatever you have at your disposal. Anything other than crossing the threshold to the next upkeep is superfluous, and in my opinion a distraction from the core ideal which results the strategy's dominance when the conditions for it are right. The only other thing that matters in-game is whether, after avoiding lethal as best as possible, I have played a land before passing the turn. If I have done so, I literally consider myself one step closer to winning the game. I will, however, gladly take every extra tiny edge that I can if my permanents can generate extra value on their way to jumping in front of a bus for me, which is why I continue to debate the card choices as much as I do, but my focus continues to differ from many other decklists in this respect - with telling results in anything resembling a midrange or control matchup, I might add. This is the way that persistent advantages can be gained without devoting precious spell slots to such a lower-priority cause as "winning the game".
Next up, the question of Mortarpod. Given the strategy above, I am quite content with "block and ping" as the base rate, since (in an extremely important difference from your build) that is EXACTLY what I am hoping for it to do. I have no other objectives with it, other than to interact with the board early so that I can reliably continue to put land on the Battlefield for one more turn. There is a minor concern that has to do with deck thinning and guaranteeing value for lategame recursion of Stoneforge Mystic, but this is secondary to the fact that it is a 2-drop that can help stabilize at any point in the game against a lethal attacker, [EDIT: AND INCIDENTALLY TURNS ANY RANDOM BOARD PRESENCE INTO WIN CONDITIONS WITH EMERIA ONLINE] while providing synergy with both a premier creature in the format AND the natural end game of our namesake land. Unless this effect becomes nearly irrelevant to surviving even a single turn against the majority of the format, it will be staying in the deck even should Stoneforge Mystic make a hypothetical return to the banned list.
Finally, on Teferi, Time Raveler, I am altogether uncertain whether the 4-of will be the best configuration, but my initial impressions are that it is not a crippling disadvantage to have two copies in hand during a game, and even drawing three in the first six turns has not been as bad as it could have been. It is clearly optimal, in a theoretical sense, only to draw one and have it do its work unmolested, and I consider my former list to be a better deck in that respect, and yet the world we live in seems to have changed in its favour with respect to the needs of my spell suite. This is still anecdotal, however, and the potential of drawing 4 has never yet manifested itself, but I will be certain to tell you all if and when it does.
My previous post was quite rushed, and included Ashiok, Nightmare Weaver when I in fact meant Ashiok, Dream Render, and a Detention Sphere as a 61st card in the list which was an error, but the statements within it stand. To clarify, then, in addition to 4 maindeck Teferi, Time Raveler I am currently advocating 7 copies of 1-mana interaction plus moving more towards land and spell-based disruption in general at this time, because of the presence of Ragavan and the now near-total unreliability of both Crucible of Worlds and Detention Sphere in the face of Prismatic Ending from the opposition.
It also appears that Lurrus of the Dream-Den and Dreadhorde Arcanist are becoming more severe threats in this new metagame, which Prismatic Ending and Path to Exile are very highly recommended against, in addition to substituting for the reduction of Detention Sphere to a singleton in the sideboard. I am quite unhappy with this resulting long-term plan without D-Sphere or Crucible, which now has enormous difficulty winning against a resolved Jace, the Mind Sculptor or Teferi, Hero of Dominaria in game 1, so I may need to brainstorm (no pun intended) a solution for these very serious issues, however the new removal suite as bolstered by a high density of card-velocity bounce spells is excellent against both the cheaper threats [EDIT: INCLUDING DELVE] and against the influx of Germ tokens from Stoneforge Mystic trending upward to exploit Kaldra Compleat. The proactive plan against Control is also a little better at resolving spells with Tef3ri present in such numbers, so it is not all bad news on that front.
Should things remain as they are, however, I suspect that the manabase might switch to 4 Field of Ruin and a single Ghost Quarter in the main to improve deck thinning and prioritize going straight for Emeria activations in control encounters, while Pithing Needle becomes abysmal in the face of the new exile effect and so leaves the 75 to make room for the following sideboard which attempts to deal with Kaldra Compleat permanently (either by removing it, or by exiling its Germ then exhausting the basic lands so that it cannot be re-equipped):
I am less than 50% certain about the sideboard, and the loss of Court Hussar nos. 2 and 3 to fit in the extra copies of Tef3ri is, frankly, depressing in the extreme, but the blue spell count was becoming too high and the possibility of losing single copies of permanents to exile in many forms had become an intolerable variance. I will accept Court Hussar being exiled since its function is replaced some small amount by the Planeswalker, but all other spells are now redundant in the main (barring the two "finisher" equipment), and its absence is not a crippling loss to Emeria activations when said Planeswalker can re-set Wall of Omenset al. for advantage more often. Having access to the 25th Land in the shape of a Ghost Quarter plus a Crucible post-board is a comfort against Control, at least. The last card that the Forsake the Worldly could be is an Angelic Ascension, which might also help with the big Planeswalkers issue, but for now I think I will try the Forsake.
There is a lot yet to do as the format is so volatile, so I will bid you all a good day for the moment.
Time away has clearly led to a lot of progress (on both sides of the screen). There is a lot I need to get to, so if I forget things please feel free to remind me of questions so that they don't get left out of the conversation as the pages keep rolling - I am thinking specifically of your matchup breakdowns, Starstorm, and your deck choice/metagame nuance question, Plichow. I also agree with you, Fluff, that it is lovely to have so much new discussion happening, and want to join the chorus of gratitude for your tireless efforts keeping the thread running and up to date.
On that subject, I would like to say that I could give a breakdown for Scapeshift, but I need to solidify things still after a weekend of testing. The pairing does not have a ton of nuance other than "cross your fingers", from my version's perspective, and it ranks among the worse matchups for my variant (after Tron, and nearly as bad). Since one of the strategies for winning also engages with your Planeswalker question, I will use that as a springboard to say that the most important option for this deck where that card type is concerned is by head and shoulders Teferi, Time Raveler. It does too much of what we want to do, and also punishes strategies while critically being Sun Titan-friendly. The colours can support literally any Blue, White, or Colourless 'Walker otherwise, but the ones that are really important to look at are the 3-drops. After the small Teferi, Ashiok, Nightmare Weaver and Gideon of the Trials are the best at winning games for specific matchups, but have their own fail cases and downsides. While it is sadly double-Blue, Ashiok is one of the only actual threats against dcks such as Valakut, the Molten Pinnacle combo. Narset, Parter of Veils also deserves mention, but mostly just because of her static ability's headache-inducing potential, since her Loyalty abilities are mostly lacklustre given our low non-Creature spell count.
That in turn leads me to what I have been up to this weekend. After testing quite a bit, I have both good and bad news to report, then a little more murky news which could be either. The good news is that Ragavan, Nimble Pilferer has made Mortarpod pick up a great deal of incidental value, and that Prismatic Ending has continued to impress. The bad news is that both of these cards are now poised to be present in very large numbers in other decks. Related to your question about it replacing Path to Exile, Starstorm, I think that we may need to play BOTH now to keep pace. I need to go now so there will be more to follow, but my test list has arrived at roughly this configuration (which I will have to explain later):
I don't have a lot of time to read through your breakdown in-depth today, so for the moment I will just say congratulations on the 3-0 and note that you played against three "fair" (combat damage) decks where I would expect Wall of Omens to be a good card. The result is therefore not altogether unexpected, though your sideboard was not optimized for this fact so this enables a positive inference to be made about how much the specialized hate slots "cost" across the board. I am now looking forward even more to seeing what Sanctum Prelate can do against more unfair strategies. Thanks for the report, and keep testing the cards!
(Oh, and one more note: what has your opinion been on Kaldra Compleat so far? I have it being quite high variance in matchups, which I am honestly not a huge fan of, but it essentially poses huge problems for opponents in many midrange matchups, so I am confident it has contributed to an overall positive trend in my deck's performance in general. Specifically re-setting it to hand with my extra copies of Teferi, Time Raveler - whether or not Stoneforge Mystic is active - has been very good, and it also helps seamlessly fill some portion of the 7-drop slot on the curve after Sun Titan can be cast but before a naturally-sequenced Emeria, the Sky Ruin can reliably become active. Can you talk about the specifics of the play patterns it has generated for you, as well as the amount it has actually contributed to your games since you started playing the card?)
Hoping this finds you well,
-Stéphane Gérard
(P.S. : On a final thought - I think that given best play into Detention Sphere Jund pilots should be keeping or boarding in Maelstrom Pulse, if they have access to it, and that is the removal spell I primarily keep in mind when I discuss the matchup post-board. This, plus the presence of Lightning Bolt plus random Haste value is what makes me slightly less keen on [EDIT: BRINGING IN] Gideon of the Trials as a way to trade at better than a 1-for-1 rate.)
It occurs to me that you should probably update the primer to include Solitude as a 3 out of 5 or 4 out of 5 stars card on the homepage [EDIT: in the "other spells" section]. Because of the "emergency-mode" zero-mana Evoke cost, it stands a near-infinitely better chance of being a stabilising play than any other 5-drop, and has a solid body and effect when hardcast. It competes strongly, in my mind, with Gideon Jura, Cavalier of Dawn, and Geist-Honored Monk on power level alone as a pure 5-mana play, but the extra utility of fail cases or the hypothetical absolute necessity of interaction before the fifth land can be counted on pushes its rating a clear cut above all the other choices in the slot (except Batterskull when Stoneforge Mystic can be counted on to be active). The exile clause on the pitch-cast mode hurts, but at least it puts itself in the graveyard in those scenarios for natural lategame synergy with Emeria, the Sky Ruin.
Plichow, if you have no objections, [EDIT: THEN] I think the 5-0 list can stand on its own merits on the homepage as-is. Fluff, you should put the deck up as it was posted by Natesroom above. Plichow, you should then use your experience in these comments to say what land would best replace the third Emeria, and what should replace the two Void Mirror in the sideboard, unless you still feel that they were necessary. This would be all you would need to show new interested parties, unless you had any other clear improvements to report.
Reports, in a different sense, lead me to your 3-2 result. This is likely just variance catching up with you, but once again I urge you to focus less on the number than to share with us instead the cards, games, or plans you faced, and your own feelings about the legitimacy of your decisions given what occurred. There are thousands of interactions in a game of Magic, and the person who made the last decisive mistake has often thrown away any number of advantages along the line somewhere, so relevant learning in some senses can only begin after the match has been completed.
Moving on to other learning, then, I thank you for offering to re-evaluate the Kami of False Hope synergy. That is all I ask. It may still not be useful enough to warrant a slot, but I believe the context may have changed enough that it is worth testing again - specifically since the attitude towards its utility has to change so much in this shell. It seems possible to me that its effect might be better to lean on than 4-mana sweepers at the moment, and the utility of activating Ranger-Captain of Eos is also quite different in a hybrid Aggro/Attrition shell. The final point in favour of including these cards (my preference would be as a 3-2 split leaning towards the tutor effect which can also find Thraben Inspector) is that the density of 4-mana plays would be organically broken into a 3+1 sequence much more often, increasing your sequencing options either by playing Lurrus of the Dream-Den or Ranger-Captain into the Kami. In the right matchups, the idea would be simply to use the extra white card to support the Evoke on Solitude.
To find the space for these five new cards, I would probably start with moving your two Supreme Verdict to the sideboard for the appropriate contexts, then removing the Detention Sphere you were uncertain about, and trimming the Sun Titan down to a singleton and the Solitude count down to two. These are all merely based off of your reports, and would be subject to change pending preference, but the attempt to maximize Lurrus and include the Ranger-Captain may be a priority now, where the result would ideally be a much better Combo matchup in the maindeck, with later synergies 1) adding to pressure directly and 2) requiring quite specific alternative answers to break up. I will also take the time to look through your recording - thank you for the link - but will have to do so later since I must get back to work now.
I look forward to hearing more from you all soon!
-Stéphane Gérard
(P.S. : Since you had asked for a list, my current intention is to target the format in a more explicit fashion maindeck by playing my preferred maximal attrition version - the most recent list for which being found in the second post down on page 77 of this thread - updated to replace the Wrath of God with the fourth Supreme Verdict, then the Settle the Wreckage with a second Teferi, Time Raveler, and finally the second Detention Sphere with a third Tef3ri. The lack of diversity against Meddling Mage appears less important at the moment, and instead of going the 6-sweeper route I believe the way forward is rather to tackle the abundance of countermagic and Delve head-on. Losing access to Settle the Wreckage and the second D-Sphere is a great pity, but I will need to start there to see how things go. I warn you, however, that I generally subject such things to exacting standards before I come to a conclusion about where the harder Control version needs to be pointed in this metagame. This typically means dozens of matches, and requires things to settle down somewhat as well before I am ready to make pronouncements about the viability of Attrition. The strictly binary result will be either "I think I have it" or "I do not recommend playing Emeria until bannings or new printings shift the format back to its strengths". I have generally found that there are around 2-4 months of the year where the deck is genuinely a good choice, and lean on experience, tuning, playskill, luck in pairings, and surprise factor to justify playing it otherwise with any semblance of competitive parity.)
Good points on the Mishra's Bauble synergies and their interaction with shuffle effects, I broadly agree. I think there is still a cost to be paid when you reach the lategame of "losing on board with no cards in hand" and simply need access to a spell or seventh Plains immediately, but this is heavily outweighed by the advantage that can be accrued early with it by Lurrus of the Dream-Den. There is a secondary concern as well which has to do with deck space to fit all the necessary effects in the grindier control shell, but since both of these are much more relevant to my own build preference I will leave things at that. Speaking of builds, however:
Fluff - I think it may be very important now to get at least one Lurrus build on the homepage, since the format seems most open to it rather than control. If you think your list was roughly viable, Plichow, would you be willing to support it for Fluff to make it available for all those seeking help with the strategy? I would immediately recommend going down to 2 Emeria, the Sky Ruin in it, since your recursion is set up earlier in other ways and the tapland is a more severe drawback in the early game, but you should also take the chance to make any adjustments that you find relevant now in pursuit of a preliminary list where the land plays more of a backup role.
Back to your list in particular, then, I have also invested some amount of time into an 80-card Yorion MartyrProc build, which works extremely well to re-trigger Ranger-Captain of Eos and Ranger of Eos in setting up the Kami lock while fuelling white spells in hand to feed Martyr of Sands, and you will forgive me, I hope, if I think that you may find that your initial sentiment about its death in end-step to removal is a little off-base here. The applications of the Kami's Fog effect takes on a very different texture when it is used to back up pressure rather than relied on for staying alive. I may be wrong about how your list actually finishes its games, but having access to an alternative soak for removal to stretch opponents seems as though it may be beneficial to give you a unique advantage in racing situations, while providing a very reasonable fail-case alternative "out" to lethal damage in other contexts.
Other contexts being in question, then, I think that the interaction between Lurrus and immediate Flicker effects like Ephemerate is noteworthy, where being able to put in a new "Lurrus" object for game rules purposes allows multiple graveyard rebuys, while providing protection or interaction in many other ways, and obviously having an extremely powerful additional dynamic with Solitude. If I again take off my "Emeria Attrition/Control" googles, this is something I think definitely warrants testing, and may bring Charming Prince and Flickerwisp back into the picture as viable effects (the first of these already having synergy with the Legend). The "end-step" clause on the two creatures is - as with Glimmerpoint Stag in my original Standard deck - an unfortunate one in many respects, but they have a great deal of value to offer in the right shell. Perhaps this is leaning too far into things, but I would not be surprised if this were just a few too many powerful synergies to ignore.
As a final note, I may need to ask how exactly you see the Titan matchup being "Aether Gust or bust" early on, since despite being unfavourable I think of the matchup as a winnable one with zero copies of the card in my 75. Am I overstating your position on the card, or is there possibly some dynamic that I am taking advantage of better in my build? I thought that you would certainly have a much easier time with 4 Spreading Seas and better early aggression than me maindecked, but perhaps I misjudged something? I suppose missing out on the extra Ghost Quarter and the Crucible of Worlds might account for some of that, but I wanted to check in case it was anything else.
Let me know how you all feel, and best of luck to everyone with your testing!
Thank you very much for the additional detail! Your build seems solid, and as an alternative may drive towards a separate endgame where you maximize Lurrus of the Dream-Den even more (which might then incentivise reducing the copies of Emeria, the Sky Ruin). This may be very important, as it appears that the Lurrus/Bauble synergy is actually the most efficient raw card advantage engine in the format right now. My immediate candidates to support this would be to look at Selfless Spirit and Remorseful Cleric maindeck - moving some or all of the sweepers to the sideboard - while it might be much more viable for you to add a single Kami of False Hope for the soft-lock as supported by some copies of Ranger-Captain of Eos.
Staying on the theme of alternative cards, I would say that if Detention Sphere did not impress you you should try either Starstorm's Skyclave Apparition or the standby Teferi, Time Raveler, though this last card can never deal with Planeswalkers and the first is a liability against the current crop of Delve Creatures or any threats that go over the top (Primeval Titan,Niv-Mizzet Reborn, Teferi, Hero of Dominaria, etcetera). As far as Aether Gust is concerned, I think that it does a very good job at playing to the board when coming from behind in this shell, and so avoids being tarred with the purely reactive label which spells the "Countermagic Kiss of Death" in my opinion. I have had quite positive results with a singleton in the past, and it may be reasonably well-positioned moving forward. Four copies seems like an extreme amount, however, and I was shocked to read that you did not bring in all of them against your Prowess opponent, so I would agree that you are likely over-saturated on the effect. My immediate instinct is that Celestial Purge could find its way into your sideboard in some number to diversify a little on that front.
Your kind comments on Mortarpod are appreciated, it is a personal favourite of mine at establishing synergies while remaining a board-relevant topdeck and keeping Equipment counts high well into the lategame to ensure recursive Stoneforge Mystic value, but 1-toughness plays are comparatively rare currently, which takes a little of its shine away when it does not contribute to the removal suite. I was recently debating going down to 2 from 3, but I would be extremely reluctant to go any lower without other ways to keep the graveyard stocked when sweepers come out against Combo decks. Your frequent removal of the card makes me assume you are ending games well before recursion can run you out of targets, leading me back to my point from paragraph 1 of this response. Going back to the subject of the removal suite itself, were you able to form an impression of Solitude which might colour the impression of those who have not yet played with it? Where was it good, where bad, and do you think that you had it right with 3 copies?
Maximising value in the manabase from fetchable sources is one of my priorities, and running out of basics is a very real point of discussion. I prefer to run sufficient basic Plains that I cannot be taken off of the seven needed to immediately threaten recursion with either Fulminator Mage or Field of Ruin, so I never go below seven of those, and I also work very hard to minimise my Blue requirements to prevent issues with smooth sequencing to Emeria. That being said, the basic island (despite being the worst land in the deck) has sadly proved to be a necessity for me, since whenever I try to cut it I inevitably die at least once in a tournament after casting a Pilgrim's Eye on turn three that could not fix for the game-winning Supreme Verdict I had in hand. Ghost Quarter helps mitigate the downside of this land (and helps reduce the sting of drawing multiple Emeria, the Sky Ruin), but as I recently stated my list has now changed to reflect my new plan against control and is now quite close to what you posted, replacing only the Windswept Heath with the Island, but also running a Prairie Stream instead of a Hallowed Fountain, and rounding our the four nonbasic fetchable Plains with a Mistveil Plains as an additional source.
As a final point, I believe that the printing of Break the Ice puts a disaster scenario into the equation which disincentivises the Snow Basics that you have indicated.
I hope this has been helpful!
-Stéphane Gérard
I wanted to try one more time to put together a Yorion, Sky Nomad build, so here it is:
4 Field of Ruin
2 Ghost Quarter
10 Plains
4 Hallowed Fountain
1 Raugrin Triome
4 Flooded Strand
1 Mistveil Plains
1 Island
4 Prismatic Ending
4 Path to Exile
4 Wall of Omens
4 Professor of Symbology
4 Pilgrim's Eye
4 Supreme Verdict
1 Settle the Wreckage
4 Teferi, Time Raveler
4 Sun Titan
4 Stoneforge Mystic
2 Elspeth Conquers Death
1 Skyclave Apparition
1 Remorseful Cleric
3 Mortarpod
1 Shadowspear
1 Batterskull
1 Kaldra Compleat
And the sideboard would be much more lesson-heavy to make the maindeck more resilient, meaning that the importance of winning game 1 would rise dramatically, however I think this might just be a reasonable plan in a metagame where Attrition is favoured. In addition to the Yorion, then, the sideboard would give Professor of Symbology the following 11 options in aside from looting on ETB to get rid of irrelevant cards in certain matchups:
If all were included, this would theoretically be 12 Cards, leaving 3 for legitimate sideboarding purposes, which I would call 1 Crucible of Worlds, the third Ghost Quarter, and a second settle the Wreckage.
No testing at all has gone into this, it is pure theorycraft for illustrative purposes.
-Stéphane Gérard
The Esper matchup is sometimes difficult, and Vindicate being a new adoption of theirs is an important piece of information to be aware of. I had assumed that their Flash play patterns were too important, but when Teferi, Time Raveler or Planeswalkers are involved they are 1) already playing a little at Sorcery-speed and 2) able to situationally use it as an Instant anyway. While we are on the subject I tested against a list the other day that ran zero Vindicate, but instead ran a full four Archmage's Charm as a response to the Kaldra Compleat subgame. I was caught off-guard by my opponent gaining control of the Germ and immediately threw away a game that was very much still in question otherwise. A word of caution to the wise: I am now keenly aware of permanent Ray of Command potential and generally try play around it with a Wall of Omens to re-equip to post-combat in the lategame, while my preferred options strongly favour both Mortarpod and Batterskull, which have inherent protection from the effect.
A few small things about the matchup before I get to suggestions for answers to Planeswalkers, then. You say you ended the game with multiple Supreme Verdict and Path to Exile in hand, and part of this is simply an occupational hazard of playing a board control deck. The first of these is a completely dead card unless you happen to be running Solitude, but the second is legitimately better used as a Ramp spell whenever possible if you have a) Germ tokens, b) Pilgrim's Eye, c) Stoneforge Mystic, d) Wall of Omens or e) Court Hussar on the table. The order here represents the sequencing starting with the LEAST valuable card to turn into a land, and ending with the MOST valuable effect to maintain access to recursion of. I love recurring Eye against control, but if I draw too many Paths, they have already gotten value, and there are more in the deck. Stoneforge Mystic runs out of targets or becomes much less relevant once the lategame is achieved, and is generally a high-priority target for their removal (one of the only ones we have), so assume they will give you an opportunity at some point to target it with your own removal in order to at least get a land out of the bargain. Recurring Walls and Hussars are the primary spell-advantage (as opposed to pure card advantage with lands included) vectors in the recursion lategame, and Teferi, Time Raveler almost always bounces either of these (or Eye) immediately for value whenever I have one of them around if he hits the table. The creatures do little enough else other than their ETB trigger at any rate in the matchup, so doubling up on these is preferred. And yes, finally, Remorseful Cleric is a prized Graveyard control effect here as well.
As I had stated on the last page, though, my new list is also having more trouble with Planeswalkers than before (due to the presence of Prismatic Ending to permanently remove my Detention Sphere more than anything else), so I am currently looking for better options as well, but there are a few choices that I can say I am looking at. The word on Prismatic Ending for us is that it does a very good job indeed at covering 3-mana Teferi, Liliana, Narset, Gideon, Davriel, Ashioks, etcetera with a Raugrin Triome, or specifically Wrenn and Six even without it, but cannot stretch up to four without serious retooling of the manabase. This is very unfortunate, because the quite strong Skyclave Apparition covers these cards as well, while hitting 4-mana Jaces, Ajanis, Elspeths, Nahiris, Karns, and more but does not reach up to most notably Teferi, Hero of Dominaria, meaning there is more space that must to be devoted to the Planeswalker issue even if you run both these spells.
The "good" news is that the printing of Prismatic Ending leaves the sideboard open by a few slots because Pithing Needle is no longer a reliable and recurrable safety valve. Its efficiency may still earn it a spot or two in the future, but I expect that it will leave the 75 entirely for at least a little while. The space provided by its departure can thus be turned directly to answer the issue at hand.
For a while in the past I ran an Archon of Justice as a combination with Mortarpod or Supreme Verdict, but this was at least seven years ago, and things have evolved far past its heyday in the intervening span of time, even handing over value when opponents bring in Leyline of the Void or Rest in Peace. The same is true for the slightly more relevant Angel of Sanctions. There are also other odd Time Spiral cards that can be considered in Pentarch Paladin, but slightly more likely in Saltblast. To be exhaustive, I could also include Scourglass but none of these is truly high-appeal.
If we are willing to discuss 5-mana options, however, the interesting choice of Elspeth Conquers Death could be of great utility in the Tef3ri versions, and also synergizes quite well for attrition with the rest of the deck, while maintaining its primary function versus Graveyard removal and meshing extremely well with the coverage of a Triome-fuelled set of Prismatic Ending. Another 5-mana play (and one that notably does not get exiled by Force of Negation) has its own set of synergies in Cavalier of Dawn, but space is tight there at the moment. In more expensive ideas, my Mono-White build was extremely happy with [EDIT: Hour of Revelation] and Devastating Mastery as catchall Wraths that could become cheaper, and I had briefly considered the janky Exclusion Ritual or even the pipe-dream Karn Liberated, but these are almost certainly not what we need and would stand very little chance of seeing play even in the maindeck. Sadly, the only hyper-expensive option that I would be willing to consider in Ondu Inversion does not feature the Plains subtype on its back half.
Turning down from 5 mana on the curve, then, since I exclude all options already covered or improved on by Detention Sphere, Aether Gust, and/or Celestial Purge, we find a few specialty options cheap enough to sideboard in Angelic Ascension, the somewhat clunky Angelic Purge, the intriguingly efficient though narrow Glare of Heresy, the slightly retro and very slow Mangara of Corondor which can combine with Mortarpod on activation for a full monstrosity of a .5 per turn cycle combo with Emeria, the equal parts awkward and versatile Ravnica at War, and the highly noteworthy Reduce to Memory for potential Professor of Symbology value. This last option returns me to another effect from my Mono-White testing in Generous Gift, which was not as bad as it seemed when Wall of Omens was around to either block or upgrade with respect to the 3/3s.
Given my caveats, this list is exhaustive for spells castable using only White mana that read "destroy permanent", "exile permanent", "destroy planeswalker", or "exile planeswalker" on gatherer.wizards.com, and I may therefore be missing some Blue or Colourless options, but the former are not ideal given our manabase, and the latter will tend to be either prohibitively expensive or vulnerable again to Prismatic Ending, so barring a metagame shift where Glare of Heresy could supplement something like two Prismatic Ending and a Skyclave Apparition in the maindeck, I think that the 4 spells that give the opponent Creatures as a drawback (Ascension, Reduce, Gift, and Cavalier) join Elspeth Conquers Death or Saltblast as the best candidates for the job, considering their utility in other areas. Though they are expensive at 5 mana, I would put Cavalier of Dawn and ECD at the top of that list, as I would feel that they actually add some amount to the attrition plan and require nothing else in order to be a topdecked answer to an impending Ultimate ability. Of the cheaper options, Generous Gift being able to affect lands seems to matter the most, but Professor of Symbology continues to be more and more interesting to me as an option for an alternative build.
Please let me know if you find any upgrades to this list, or if you have differing opinions on their viability!
-Stéphane Gérard
Thank you for the response, Starstorm, and luck is fickle for your losses. I agree with your analysis of Seal of Cleansing being better against Urza's Saga (and many other things, for that matter). There are two things which make this less relevant for my deck, however. 1) Strategically, I am not certain that the Enchantment-Land is a great enough part of the metagame to be worth losing the diversity over, as that might constitute warping the deck for one pairing, which rarely works well. It is also much less of a threat for me when I assume the Karnstructs are card-neutral for them in the face of abundant blockers and sweepers. I also have five manabase options to leverage against the card, though I would concede that these are somewhat stretched in the matchup. Regardless, their "Grindy" plan is fragile. Ours is more robust, and I like my chances if that is what they choose to focus on. 2) Operationally, the amount of one-shot defense my deck provides up to and beyond turn 4 signifies that in so many of my games the cards will come off the top of the deck instead of beginning in my opening 10 cards, say. This means that the value of 2 versus 3 is lesser if I assume I do not absolutely need these cards in order to survive, and will be well into turns 4/5/6 before I find myself wanting to cast them (I also consider both of these sideboard cards to be luxuries rather than necessities, and so they can attempt to tackle more subtle nuances with greater impact).
As I said before, though, mine is not a strong sentiment since the two cards are very, very close in power level. Running a 1-1 split or a 2-0 in favour of Seal of Cleansing is akin to a coin toss depending on pairings, so I wouldn't fault anything except perhaps the 0-2 split in favour of the Aura of Silence, which I would assume pushes the curve up far too much post-board. If I could run a set of 3, it would be of 2 Seal and 1 Aura.
On another note, I think that I disagree much more strongly with one specific piece of advice you gave in the Izzet Blitz matchup. You stated the following about your blocking heuristics:
I was surprised to read this because I would heavily recommend doing the exact opposite of your proposed play pattern, based off of precisely the same logic. Perhaps you value your creatures much more highly than mine for closing out the game, but in my eyes the purpose of my deck facilitates survival when I get every one of my spells to trade for as many pieces of cardboard as I can. I have no way to affect cards in hand or on the stack directly pre-board, so their Prowess mechanic actually offers an indirect way of encouraging them to trade cards in hand - and usually in multiple - for an attack that gets no damage in, leaving them down resources on some future more critical turn. Your statement is correct, in that they lose value pumping a single creature, but the corollary is that I would consider blocking as the best way to capitalize on that fact operationally in such a situation. Wall of Omens and Court Hussar are particularly well-suited to this task, as they have already accrued value by the time the decision [EDIT: SHOULD BECOME AVAILABLE] to throw their high-toughness bodies in front of the train, but Stoneforge Mystic also counts as a viable roadblock so that I can survive to hardcast the Batterskull later: it was probably going to die anyway. The 1-toughness "Creatures" of Mortarpod and Pilgrim's Eye are less valuable in this aim, generally being placed in harm's way at literally the first opportunity since they are so unlikely to survive, but can combine into a 1/2 to make the same kinds of plays. The scenario you described is a bad one for them, where we can also potentially make their sequencing awkward by taxing their mana and affecting their board development. I WANT them to make that attack. Whenever I can get them to spew their spells on only a single creature, I am happy with the exchange whether or not my creature survives.
Other than that notable discrepancy in our philosophies, I fully endorse the rest of your matchup guide.
Spencerrind, I am glad you appreciated the advice. Your observation about our resilience to discard via excellent topdecks is spot-on as well, and it usually takes people quite a long time to reach that conclusion. As an extreme example, when playing against 8-rack in the past, I felt very little (if any) danger, because our card velocity leaves us so much redundant hand size that I am almost never struggling to make land drops. I have, however, seen other pilots get into trouble by hanging on for value when the name of the game is, once more, our marquee Land. Emeria, the Sky Ruin does not require a hand to win the game, and Pilgrim's Eye or Crucible of Worlds are again the MVPs of such matchups. Discard everything else, up to and including Sun Titan, to keep putting Land into play. That is all. If they do not have Leyline of the Void, winning the game is that simple. If they do, we can beat it eventually in any number of ways, and they need to apply pressure to something other than our hand or we will eventually engineer a way out. Drawing the Leyline makes them less likely to have that pressure, and so we will rarely have to care about either Grief or any other Thoughtseize effects. My plan is thereby almost always simply to ignore these as irrelevant.
I wish you good luck with a blended list, though, this seems very promising given the wealth of options you have at your disposal currently. If you can manage it I, for one, would appreciate if you could test a list with some unusual combinations of cards by looking at things which have not been paired together in any single list found on this thread. We are all more or less set in our ways, and have biases and preferences which result in oversights or omissions which you could relevantly affect with fresh eyes on new combinations of established cards. That way, your list begins with solid cards that we can advise you on, you could immediately offer to share a new perspective on them, and you would be able to offer insights from a variety of different angles even if the experiment goes catastrophically poorly. The joy of playing a new list compensates fully for the sting of potential losses in these situations (to me, at least).
Hoping this finds you both well,
-Stéphane Gérard
In terms of facing Control, the thing to remember is that we enjoy inevitability in the abstract because an active Emeria, the Sky Ruin will beat most everything except for a Planeswalker literally threatening to ultimate before your next upkeep, but that is only assuming a well-stocked Graveyard. Since this precondition is the case, and since Supreme Verdict is otherwise such a liability to draw against Creature-light strategies, your lack of Mortarpod is something that flips the matchup heavily in their favour. By delaying the ultimate ability on Teferi, Hero of Dominaria for one turn on its own, it is a valuable tutor target in this matchup, and by pressuring loyalty with any random Wall of Omens sitting around waiting for something to do beside provide free blocks on the occasional Snapcaster Mage it becomes a threat worth some amount of their respect.
Next, the utility of both Pilgrim's Eye and Crucible of Worlds is far greater than might initially appear in more grindy pairings. When as a child I first caught the attention of my local tournament endbosses way back in the 90's, I received a piece of advice which has transposed directly into part of the philosophy I bring to this deck: "Never underestimate the power of mana development in Control mirrors". The 3-mana Artifacts I run are almost superior to Archmage's Charm and the like against Control for this reason, as I can guarantee access to land drops much better than their card draw can when tapping out mainphase - a strategic advantage that also extends to Wall of Omens and leads to operational and tactical difficulties for them because they are consistently uncertain whether tapout plays represent a sign of strength or of weakness from us. In addition, a maindeck Crucible also becomes nearly a must-counter threat, and turns their Field of Ruin into more of a delaying tactic than surefire disruption. The resilient trifecta of Emeria, the Sky Ruin, Crucible of Worlds, and Sun Titan is ultimately a very difficult one for them to answer cleanly, especially when given the presence of Mistveil Plains.
Given that you had no such angles available, the matchup should go from favourable for us to a noticeable though not overwhelming edge to them, but in order to make this the case given what you had I would have advised 1) that you bring in Remorseful Cleric as a way to disrupt graveyard recursion and pressure Planeswalkers [EDIT: WHILE FUELLING EMERIA SOME AMOUNT], and 2) that you bring in your Seal of Cleansing to set up your Detention Sphere for a permanent Exile effect on Planeswalkers, while protecting you from Prismatic Ending disaster scenarios and otherwise hedging a tiny amount against things like Rest in Peace. To make room for these, I would have removed at least two of your Path to Exile, (though I always like leaving in at least one Path for a chance at value on surprise Emeria activations ahead of schedule and possible coverage against Monastery Mentor or Gideon, Ally of Zendikar), and and I highly dislike handing over value on the board by keeping in Elite Spellbinder since it is so much less likely to resolve and attack given that I typically choose to draw every time in the matchup. In addition, the opposition is trying to reach the later game and has a flatter power distribution in its plays, so its trigger loses a lot of value by being a) less likely to disrupt their curve and b) eventually becoming no more than a taxing effect and therefore leaving them access to almost all of their lines of play once they inevitably draw sufficient land.
The last piece of advice I have for you here is indeed about your sequencing against Field of Ruin, where we have a huge edge in numbers. Lists running Cryptic Command, Counterspell, and Prismatic Ending are colour-intensive, to say nothing of the presence of either Archmage's Charm or Esper Charm. If the latter two are seen, their manabase is extremely unlikely to feature more than a single colourless-producing utility land, since it costs them so much of their curve to draw cards of that nature in the early game or when they Mulligan. Even if their card advantage comes from elsewhere, the heavily colour-restricted cards mean that 3 is a typical number for them in the maindeck, and we therefore have a conservative average of 2 more pieces of manabase disruption than they do. This means that at any point in the game attacking their coloured sources can quickly become an option worth keeping an eye out for, but the real trick is to actually hit their utility lands with our own copies whenever a clean opportunity presents itself. Though it is a symmetrical effect, I have sometimes delayed deploying Pithing Needle until I had an Emeria, the Sky Ruin in hand with seven Plains in play, at which point when they allowed the Needle to resolve I could either name Field of Ruin to play my Emeria and proceed immediately to the endgame instead of guessing at a Planeswalker as they expected, or justify the same play looking to freeze their activation in order to use Ghost Quarter on it to force them to find another precious copy within a turn cycle, which I would then meet with more of the same if I had either Crucible of Worlds or Sun Titan ready to turbo-charge running them out of basic land. This is virtually the only situation, however, where I would consciously go down a land against them.
I hope that this has been helpful, and wish you much luck in your next interaction with the strategy. There are subtleties in your other matchups that I could discuss as well, but they largely did not affect the results as far as I can tell, and you will be able to quickly find your optimal balance for them as they crop up in the future. Barring critique on your build (which I will gladly give if you feel unhappy with your list, or if you ask for a comparison with mine on matchups), I think that I would only ask why you included Leyline of Sanctity and Kataki, War's Wage. Were you expecting certain decks that these seemed important against? They are certainly good cards in the abstract, but sometimes suboptimal in this shell, and I might be able to advise more generic replacements if their narrow coverage was not specifically what you needed from them.
All in all, thank you for the report, and I hope your good fortune continues.
-Stéphane Gérard
(P.S.: The Yorion, Sky Nomad, Soullherder, and Ephemerate builds have had a possible new toy spoiled in Teleportation Circle. The new wording preference of "At the beginning of your End Step" is producing a larger than usual number of viable effects to tap out for, and this one joins the list as a Conjurer's Closet analogue that is cheaper, more versatile, and on-colour in a slightly more difficult to interact with permanent.)
(P.P.S.: I cannot recall who it was who asked whether Aura of Silence still had relevant advantages over Seal of Cleansing, perhaps Starstorm, but I forgot to answer them. My apologies. The reply is that Aura of Silence and Seal of Cleansing are literally different cards, which matters for two reasons. The first is that Pithing Needle, Sorcerous Spyglass, Phyrexian Revoker, Meddling Mage, and Surgical Extraction are all terrible cards against me, so I will flat-out refuse to give them any value to claw their pilot back into a match that they are desperately trying to stay afloat in. Their presence typically means that my opponent had even worse cards that they were looking to get rid of, and therefore the diversity is notable in preserving my win percentages post-board in excellent matchups. The second advantage is less strategic and more operational or tactical, where Aura of Silence is far better at breaking up combo pieces which are used as setup, despite its extra W mana cost. An excellent example is Underworld Breach, where taxing the initial investment in the card while simultaneously representing its destruction is a fantastic state of affairs. They therefore are less likely to threaten to combo in the first place, and can on a moment's notice be maximally punished for committing to the board. This is not a clear decision for me, since I value efficiency much more highly than almost anything, but the combination of factors makes me happier to mix and match my hate between these broadly overlapping Enchantments, generally also leaving me in a better situation against rogue strategies or new sideboard technology.)
Although it is possible that the aggressive versions will want Guardian of Faith more than I realize, 1) this will not be without consequence to the power level of the deck as a whole due to the 3-drop issue mentioned above and 2) this will only be true in the shells which are trying to win the game actively (which I maintain is not a strategy naturally synergistic with our namesake tapland in either philosophy or gameplay).
In addition, it provides little value when recurred on mainphase or upkeep for us, whereas Selfless Spirit provides a rough analogue for its utility at 2/3 of the cost, and on an evasive body which has free instant-speed activation built into its presence on the table. When tapping out so often, the value of hidden information is lesser for us as well, and the timing sensitivity when tied to a high up-front mana investment combines with the disastrous Living Weapon/Phasing interaction issues such that I, for one, am entirely uninterested in the card on first impression.
Should you wish to seek out its best home, I might recommend starting to test immediately against it because I believe that it will have a very high chance of becoming a staple in Collected Company decks, particularly (and rather obviously) in Bant Spirits.
In other spoilers, I believe that Ingenious Smith has approximately as much power as Professor of Symbology did, and therefore has a [EDIT: SMALL] chance of seeing play in specific builds who need card selection 2-drops (perhaps specifically the Yorion, Sky Nomad builds). Sadly, I see less potential in either Monk Class or Paladin Class given their respective balances, though I will look forward to seeing if their rules baggage will mean that they also interact favourably with Yorion.
Hoping this finds you all well,
-Stéphane Gérard
I hope that you are all doing well this fine Canada Day, and wish you all a happy and healthy summer (especially in the heatwave which is also affecting us here in the prairie provinces with numbers currently hovering at around the 40-degree Celsius / 100 Farenheit mark). I will be out canoeing on the river soon, so here's hoping I don't incur heatstroke to pass out and drown! If I do perish, however, I will leave you with a few final thoughts.
Thank you for giving my strategy a try, Plichow! I feel as though you may have gotten unlucky not to do better on the day (the Chandra sequence in particular was painful to read, and post-board Celestial Purge is a card that joins Aether Gust in reducing these extremely unlikely losses to base-Red midrange decks - a strategy which I feel we have a death-grip on in general). Losing to Jeskai is more realistic, though I feel strongly advantaged there as well, but the Grixis Shadow loss is a real gut-check. Planeswalkers and Kaldra are indeed issues that must be managed with play patterns more than direct answers, so it does not surprise me to hear of that becoming an issue, and I would say that the sideboard was out of date by four cards (Mindcensors and Needles), and ill-optimized to the current metagame in another three (Lavinia, Prelate, and Alliance - my apologies for not having made that clear in these past few pages, since you broadly followed my list from the primer). I recommend you read my primer guide on Shadow, at the very least, to see how you sideboarded and what lines you took which differed from what I have found to be "best practice" there. This list is also one which rewards experience a lot, so if you continue to stick with it, you will eventually run across as series of "Ah-HA!" moments is a few areas which will affect your sequencing significantly. I wish you the best, and will hope to be around to offer more assistance in the future!
On the equipment package, I loathe things which cannot help stabilize the board once Emeria is on the table and all I need is either a land or another upkeep, but after re-stating that distaste I will weigh in on the options with the following list of priorities. 1) If the Stoneforge Mystic is being used to draw out removal or to go for the throat, Kaldra Compleat is the best option on offense, and Batterskull is nearly always the best option on defense - except against other Kaldras. 2) If you assume your Kor Artificer is going to die and you will then need to continue providing more blockers to survive (an ongoing theme in my deck), if Planeswalkers threaten game-breaking Loyalty abilities when you have no board presence (another commonly assumed state of affairs for me), or if you want to compound Emeria, the Sky Ruin advantages when you begin to close out the game, then Mortarpod is your man and covers against x-1 aggro/combo/utility/acceleration Creatures starting on turn 2 to boot. After that, things get considerably more murky.
The fact that Shadowspear provides immediate interaction on a 2-mana investment for potentially crippling plays from opponents, without necessitating a creature presence, combines with its overall cheapness to make it into a uniquely efficient tutor target in the deck, which also hedges with additional stats bonuses and lifegain where appropriate, but it in no way belongs in the maindeck unless the metagame shifts to make it more consistently relevant. Moving beyond this layer, unless you find yourself trying to solve a very specific issue, the respective advantages of the "Sword Of" cycle all boil down to their metagame-dependent Protection abilities more than anything else, with three notable exceptions for Sword of Fire and Ice, Sword Of Hearth and Home, and Sword Of Feast and Famine as real standouts. These three have triggers which contribute in direct ways to bridging the gap in the midrange sequences. Notably, however, the last two have analogues which are rarely discussed in the cheaper Sword of the Animist for fetching lands (though without the Flicker effect), and the MUCH cheaper Specter's Shroud (without the untap trigger). Blinking creatures or doubling mana can be extremely useful, but they generally pale in comparison to the startup mana efficiency required, particularly since the discard effect is extremely desireable against fast Combo decks when 2-drop heavy versions can follow their Mystic - or even Mortarpod - up immediately with resource denial given a natural curve into a third land. Once you move up to 5 mana Equip sequences SOF/I, though, hits the hardest and guarantees value best of all the other Sword effects, while SOH/H can situationally outpace it on value or board control early on, though never matching its pressure.
Lastly, I would like to weigh in on the Ranger-Captain of Eos combination with Skyclave Apparition, and will note that the 3-drop issue mentioned above is one of the key differences that Emeria, the Sky Ruin and Sun Titan combine to turn into a very important spot on the curve. In the past, whenever people suggested running Kitchen Finks, I would use that as a diagnostic of either lack of insight into the deck, or complete unfamiliarity with how it operates. Three is the "Magic Number" for the strategy, and slots in that space are incredibly competitive. If Mortarpod was somehow a 3-Mana Equipment, it wouldn't be in the top TWENTY effects I could justify in the colours, probably even if it offered 3 damage on sacrifice instead of one. (This also relates back a tiny amount to my issue with the "Sword Of" cycle above). In essence, then, though it is always theoretically possible to run both of the 1WW cards, their numbers are naturally reduced by the other important effects that will tend to displace them, and I find that the Blue 3-drops are the primary culprit. In the Mono- or Heavy-White versions, this slot opens up a little more, and I believe that it is far more realistic to run, say, 3 Ranger-Captain and 2 Skyclave Apparition together without significant issues. The question then becomes whether it is possible to do this without compromising too many matchups due to the lack of Blue support, to which my answer has thus far been "no". The saving graces for the Mono-White versions, however, do notably include excellent Emeria activation and nearly ironclad utility-land development otherwise.
Should any of you have differing ideas, however, as always you may feel free to ask me to take off my blinders, and I will give my honest opinion about the relative merits of certain choices in other shells. Just because I find my version to be the best for me, it in no way reduces my enthusiasm for optimization in other contexts.
Wishing you all the best,
-Stéphane Gérard
Fluff and Starstorm - you have both asked about Pilgrim's Eye, so I will start there. It is indeed valuable as a flying blocker, however in my version they essentially serve as basic lands with a 3-mana body attached as a kicker. Lava Dart and Wrenn and Six make that body less relevant, but as a measure of how much I want the land it provides I will state that I tested The Birth of Meletis, and (bad as it is) would be willing to run it over Stoneforge Mystic if it ever leaves. I realize that I will be sounding like a broken record at this point, but every creature-based option that interacts well with filling our deck with Plains represents the kind of advantages that Emeria, the Sky Ruin rewards and maximises. I WANT approximately 40 lands in my deck, and can GET AWAY WITH running only 24 because of curve filling creatures like Wall of Omens and Court Hussar being able to find me more Plains. Given that Sun Titan is the best finisher for our strategy, Pilgrim's Eye is a crucial effect in that pursuit.
Focus on the advantages that this shell has over other viable candidates, and ask yourself: what makes this strategy unique? what does it offer that other decks do not, and therefore why is it a viable deck choice? My answer is that, as a "free" effect in the manabase, it enables the purely focused mantra of "survive, survive, survive". The natural consequence of playing the game takes over from that point and flood no longer becomes a death sentence for us, while other decks must ultimately leverage dwindling resources which depend on much more variable boardstates. Build with Emeria ASSUMING you will have to come from behind to stabilize - THEN you can proceed to win with whatever you have at your disposal. Anything other than crossing the threshold to the next upkeep is superfluous, and in my opinion a distraction from the core ideal which results the strategy's dominance when the conditions for it are right. The only other thing that matters in-game is whether, after avoiding lethal as best as possible, I have played a land before passing the turn. If I have done so, I literally consider myself one step closer to winning the game. I will, however, gladly take every extra tiny edge that I can if my permanents can generate extra value on their way to jumping in front of a bus for me, which is why I continue to debate the card choices as much as I do, but my focus continues to differ from many other decklists in this respect - with telling results in anything resembling a midrange or control matchup, I might add. This is the way that persistent advantages can be gained without devoting precious spell slots to such a lower-priority cause as "winning the game".
Next up, the question of Mortarpod. Given the strategy above, I am quite content with "block and ping" as the base rate, since (in an extremely important difference from your build) that is EXACTLY what I am hoping for it to do. I have no other objectives with it, other than to interact with the board early so that I can reliably continue to put land on the Battlefield for one more turn. There is a minor concern that has to do with deck thinning and guaranteeing value for lategame recursion of Stoneforge Mystic, but this is secondary to the fact that it is a 2-drop that can help stabilize at any point in the game against a lethal attacker, [EDIT: AND INCIDENTALLY TURNS ANY RANDOM BOARD PRESENCE INTO WIN CONDITIONS WITH EMERIA ONLINE] while providing synergy with both a premier creature in the format AND the natural end game of our namesake land. Unless this effect becomes nearly irrelevant to surviving even a single turn against the majority of the format, it will be staying in the deck even should Stoneforge Mystic make a hypothetical return to the banned list.
Finally, on Teferi, Time Raveler, I am altogether uncertain whether the 4-of will be the best configuration, but my initial impressions are that it is not a crippling disadvantage to have two copies in hand during a game, and even drawing three in the first six turns has not been as bad as it could have been. It is clearly optimal, in a theoretical sense, only to draw one and have it do its work unmolested, and I consider my former list to be a better deck in that respect, and yet the world we live in seems to have changed in its favour with respect to the needs of my spell suite. This is still anecdotal, however, and the potential of drawing 4 has never yet manifested itself, but I will be certain to tell you all if and when it does.
Hoping you are all having a wonderful day,
-Stéphane Gérard
My previous post was quite rushed, and included Ashiok, Nightmare Weaver when I in fact meant Ashiok, Dream Render, and a Detention Sphere as a 61st card in the list which was an error, but the statements within it stand. To clarify, then, in addition to 4 maindeck Teferi, Time Raveler I am currently advocating 7 copies of 1-mana interaction plus moving more towards land and spell-based disruption in general at this time, because of the presence of Ragavan and the now near-total unreliability of both Crucible of Worlds and Detention Sphere in the face of Prismatic Ending from the opposition.
It also appears that Lurrus of the Dream-Den and Dreadhorde Arcanist are becoming more severe threats in this new metagame, which Prismatic Ending and Path to Exile are very highly recommended against, in addition to substituting for the reduction of Detention Sphere to a singleton in the sideboard. I am quite unhappy with this resulting long-term plan without D-Sphere or Crucible, which now has enormous difficulty winning against a resolved Jace, the Mind Sculptor or Teferi, Hero of Dominaria in game 1, so I may need to brainstorm (no pun intended) a solution for these very serious issues, however the new removal suite as bolstered by a high density of card-velocity bounce spells is excellent against both the cheaper threats [EDIT: INCLUDING DELVE] and against the influx of Germ tokens from Stoneforge Mystic trending upward to exploit Kaldra Compleat. The proactive plan against Control is also a little better at resolving spells with Tef3ri present in such numbers, so it is not all bad news on that front.
Should things remain as they are, however, I suspect that the manabase might switch to 4 Field of Ruin and a single Ghost Quarter in the main to improve deck thinning and prioritize going straight for Emeria activations in control encounters, while Pithing Needle becomes abysmal in the face of the new exile effect and so leaves the 75 to make room for the following sideboard which attempts to deal with Kaldra Compleat permanently (either by removing it, or by exiling its Germ then exhausting the basic lands so that it cannot be re-equipped):
I am less than 50% certain about the sideboard, and the loss of Court Hussar nos. 2 and 3 to fit in the extra copies of Tef3ri is, frankly, depressing in the extreme, but the blue spell count was becoming too high and the possibility of losing single copies of permanents to exile in many forms had become an intolerable variance. I will accept Court Hussar being exiled since its function is replaced some small amount by the Planeswalker, but all other spells are now redundant in the main (barring the two "finisher" equipment), and its absence is not a crippling loss to Emeria activations when said Planeswalker can re-set Wall of Omens et al. for advantage more often. Having access to the 25th Land in the shape of a Ghost Quarter plus a Crucible post-board is a comfort against Control, at least. The last card that the Forsake the Worldly could be is an Angelic Ascension, which might also help with the big Planeswalkers issue, but for now I think I will try the Forsake.
There is a lot yet to do as the format is so volatile, so I will bid you all a good day for the moment.
-Stéphane Gérard
Time away has clearly led to a lot of progress (on both sides of the screen). There is a lot I need to get to, so if I forget things please feel free to remind me of questions so that they don't get left out of the conversation as the pages keep rolling - I am thinking specifically of your matchup breakdowns, Starstorm, and your deck choice/metagame nuance question, Plichow. I also agree with you, Fluff, that it is lovely to have so much new discussion happening, and want to join the chorus of gratitude for your tireless efforts keeping the thread running and up to date.
On that subject, I would like to say that I could give a breakdown for Scapeshift, but I need to solidify things still after a weekend of testing. The pairing does not have a ton of nuance other than "cross your fingers", from my version's perspective, and it ranks among the worse matchups for my variant (after Tron, and nearly as bad). Since one of the strategies for winning also engages with your Planeswalker question, I will use that as a springboard to say that the most important option for this deck where that card type is concerned is by head and shoulders Teferi, Time Raveler. It does too much of what we want to do, and also punishes strategies while critically being Sun Titan-friendly. The colours can support literally any Blue, White, or Colourless 'Walker otherwise, but the ones that are really important to look at are the 3-drops. After the small Teferi, Ashiok, Nightmare Weaver and Gideon of the Trials are the best at winning games for specific matchups, but have their own fail cases and downsides. While it is sadly double-Blue, Ashiok is one of the only actual threats against dcks such as Valakut, the Molten Pinnacle combo. Narset, Parter of Veils also deserves mention, but mostly just because of her static ability's headache-inducing potential, since her Loyalty abilities are mostly lacklustre given our low non-Creature spell count.
That in turn leads me to what I have been up to this weekend. After testing quite a bit, I have both good and bad news to report, then a little more murky news which could be either. The good news is that Ragavan, Nimble Pilferer has made Mortarpod pick up a great deal of incidental value, and that Prismatic Ending has continued to impress. The bad news is that both of these cards are now poised to be present in very large numbers in other decks. Related to your question about it replacing Path to Exile, Starstorm, I think that we may need to play BOTH now to keep pace. I need to go now so there will be more to follow, but my test list has arrived at roughly this configuration (which I will have to explain later):
4 Stoneforge Mystic
4 Pilgrim's Eye
1 Court Hussar
3 Sun Titan
1 Kaldra Compleat
1 Batterskull
3 Mortarpod
3 Prismatic Ending
1 Detention Sphere
4 Supreme Verdict
4 Path to Exile
3 Emeria, The Sky Ruin
7 Plains
3 Field of Ruin
2 Ghost Quarter
1 Prairie Stream
1 Island
1 Mistveil Plains
4 Flooded Strand
1 Hallowed Fountain
1 Raugrin Triome
-Stéphane Gérard
I don't have a lot of time to read through your breakdown in-depth today, so for the moment I will just say congratulations on the 3-0 and note that you played against three "fair" (combat damage) decks where I would expect Wall of Omens to be a good card. The result is therefore not altogether unexpected, though your sideboard was not optimized for this fact so this enables a positive inference to be made about how much the specialized hate slots "cost" across the board. I am now looking forward even more to seeing what Sanctum Prelate can do against more unfair strategies. Thanks for the report, and keep testing the cards!
(Oh, and one more note: what has your opinion been on Kaldra Compleat so far? I have it being quite high variance in matchups, which I am honestly not a huge fan of, but it essentially poses huge problems for opponents in many midrange matchups, so I am confident it has contributed to an overall positive trend in my deck's performance in general. Specifically re-setting it to hand with my extra copies of Teferi, Time Raveler - whether or not Stoneforge Mystic is active - has been very good, and it also helps seamlessly fill some portion of the 7-drop slot on the curve after Sun Titan can be cast but before a naturally-sequenced Emeria, the Sky Ruin can reliably become active. Can you talk about the specifics of the play patterns it has generated for you, as well as the amount it has actually contributed to your games since you started playing the card?)
Hoping this finds you well,
-Stéphane Gérard
(P.S. : On a final thought - I think that given best play into Detention Sphere Jund pilots should be keeping or boarding in Maelstrom Pulse, if they have access to it, and that is the removal spell I primarily keep in mind when I discuss the matchup post-board. This, plus the presence of Lightning Bolt plus random Haste value is what makes me slightly less keen on [EDIT: BRINGING IN] Gideon of the Trials as a way to trade at better than a 1-for-1 rate.)
It occurs to me that you should probably update the primer to include Solitude as a 3 out of 5 or 4 out of 5 stars card on the homepage [EDIT: in the "other spells" section]. Because of the "emergency-mode" zero-mana Evoke cost, it stands a near-infinitely better chance of being a stabilising play than any other 5-drop, and has a solid body and effect when hardcast. It competes strongly, in my mind, with Gideon Jura, Cavalier of Dawn, and Geist-Honored Monk on power level alone as a pure 5-mana play, but the extra utility of fail cases or the hypothetical absolute necessity of interaction before the fifth land can be counted on pushes its rating a clear cut above all the other choices in the slot (except Batterskull when Stoneforge Mystic can be counted on to be active). The exile clause on the pitch-cast mode hurts, but at least it puts itself in the graveyard in those scenarios for natural lategame synergy with Emeria, the Sky Ruin.
Hoping this finds you well,
-Stéphane Gérard
Plichow, if you have no objections, [EDIT: THEN] I think the 5-0 list can stand on its own merits on the homepage as-is. Fluff, you should put the deck up as it was posted by Natesroom above. Plichow, you should then use your experience in these comments to say what land would best replace the third Emeria, and what should replace the two Void Mirror in the sideboard, unless you still feel that they were necessary. This would be all you would need to show new interested parties, unless you had any other clear improvements to report.
Reports, in a different sense, lead me to your 3-2 result. This is likely just variance catching up with you, but once again I urge you to focus less on the number than to share with us instead the cards, games, or plans you faced, and your own feelings about the legitimacy of your decisions given what occurred. There are thousands of interactions in a game of Magic, and the person who made the last decisive mistake has often thrown away any number of advantages along the line somewhere, so relevant learning in some senses can only begin after the match has been completed.
Moving on to other learning, then, I thank you for offering to re-evaluate the Kami of False Hope synergy. That is all I ask. It may still not be useful enough to warrant a slot, but I believe the context may have changed enough that it is worth testing again - specifically since the attitude towards its utility has to change so much in this shell. It seems possible to me that its effect might be better to lean on than 4-mana sweepers at the moment, and the utility of activating Ranger-Captain of Eos is also quite different in a hybrid Aggro/Attrition shell. The final point in favour of including these cards (my preference would be as a 3-2 split leaning towards the tutor effect which can also find Thraben Inspector) is that the density of 4-mana plays would be organically broken into a 3+1 sequence much more often, increasing your sequencing options either by playing Lurrus of the Dream-Den or Ranger-Captain into the Kami. In the right matchups, the idea would be simply to use the extra white card to support the Evoke on Solitude.
To find the space for these five new cards, I would probably start with moving your two Supreme Verdict to the sideboard for the appropriate contexts, then removing the Detention Sphere you were uncertain about, and trimming the Sun Titan down to a singleton and the Solitude count down to two. These are all merely based off of your reports, and would be subject to change pending preference, but the attempt to maximize Lurrus and include the Ranger-Captain may be a priority now, where the result would ideally be a much better Combo matchup in the maindeck, with later synergies 1) adding to pressure directly and 2) requiring quite specific alternative answers to break up. I will also take the time to look through your recording - thank you for the link - but will have to do so later since I must get back to work now.
I look forward to hearing more from you all soon!
-Stéphane Gérard
(P.S. : Since you had asked for a list, my current intention is to target the format in a more explicit fashion maindeck by playing my preferred maximal attrition version - the most recent list for which being found in the second post down on page 77 of this thread - updated to replace the Wrath of God with the fourth Supreme Verdict, then the Settle the Wreckage with a second Teferi, Time Raveler, and finally the second Detention Sphere with a third Tef3ri. The lack of diversity against Meddling Mage appears less important at the moment, and instead of going the 6-sweeper route I believe the way forward is rather to tackle the abundance of countermagic and Delve head-on. Losing access to Settle the Wreckage and the second D-Sphere is a great pity, but I will need to start there to see how things go. I warn you, however, that I generally subject such things to exacting standards before I come to a conclusion about where the harder Control version needs to be pointed in this metagame. This typically means dozens of matches, and requires things to settle down somewhat as well before I am ready to make pronouncements about the viability of Attrition. The strictly binary result will be either "I think I have it" or "I do not recommend playing Emeria until bannings or new printings shift the format back to its strengths". I have generally found that there are around 2-4 months of the year where the deck is genuinely a good choice, and lean on experience, tuning, playskill, luck in pairings, and surprise factor to justify playing it otherwise with any semblance of competitive parity.)
Good points on the Mishra's Bauble synergies and their interaction with shuffle effects, I broadly agree. I think there is still a cost to be paid when you reach the lategame of "losing on board with no cards in hand" and simply need access to a spell or seventh Plains immediately, but this is heavily outweighed by the advantage that can be accrued early with it by Lurrus of the Dream-Den. There is a secondary concern as well which has to do with deck space to fit all the necessary effects in the grindier control shell, but since both of these are much more relevant to my own build preference I will leave things at that. Speaking of builds, however:
Fluff - I think it may be very important now to get at least one Lurrus build on the homepage, since the format seems most open to it rather than control. If you think your list was roughly viable, Plichow, would you be willing to support it for Fluff to make it available for all those seeking help with the strategy? I would immediately recommend going down to 2 Emeria, the Sky Ruin in it, since your recursion is set up earlier in other ways and the tapland is a more severe drawback in the early game, but you should also take the chance to make any adjustments that you find relevant now in pursuit of a preliminary list where the land plays more of a backup role.
Back to your list in particular, then, I have also invested some amount of time into an 80-card Yorion MartyrProc build, which works extremely well to re-trigger Ranger-Captain of Eos and Ranger of Eos in setting up the Kami lock while fuelling white spells in hand to feed Martyr of Sands, and you will forgive me, I hope, if I think that you may find that your initial sentiment about its death in end-step to removal is a little off-base here. The applications of the Kami's Fog effect takes on a very different texture when it is used to back up pressure rather than relied on for staying alive. I may be wrong about how your list actually finishes its games, but having access to an alternative soak for removal to stretch opponents seems as though it may be beneficial to give you a unique advantage in racing situations, while providing a very reasonable fail-case alternative "out" to lethal damage in other contexts.
Other contexts being in question, then, I think that the interaction between Lurrus and immediate Flicker effects like Ephemerate is noteworthy, where being able to put in a new "Lurrus" object for game rules purposes allows multiple graveyard rebuys, while providing protection or interaction in many other ways, and obviously having an extremely powerful additional dynamic with Solitude. If I again take off my "Emeria Attrition/Control" googles, this is something I think definitely warrants testing, and may bring Charming Prince and Flickerwisp back into the picture as viable effects (the first of these already having synergy with the Legend). The "end-step" clause on the two creatures is - as with Glimmerpoint Stag in my original Standard deck - an unfortunate one in many respects, but they have a great deal of value to offer in the right shell. Perhaps this is leaning too far into things, but I would not be surprised if this were just a few too many powerful synergies to ignore.
As a final note, I may need to ask how exactly you see the Titan matchup being "Aether Gust or bust" early on, since despite being unfavourable I think of the matchup as a winnable one with zero copies of the card in my 75. Am I overstating your position on the card, or is there possibly some dynamic that I am taking advantage of better in my build? I thought that you would certainly have a much easier time with 4 Spreading Seas and better early aggression than me maindecked, but perhaps I misjudged something? I suppose missing out on the extra Ghost Quarter and the Crucible of Worlds might account for some of that, but I wanted to check in case it was anything else.
Let me know how you all feel, and best of luck to everyone with your testing!
-Stéphane Gérard
Thank you very much for the additional detail! Your build seems solid, and as an alternative may drive towards a separate endgame where you maximize Lurrus of the Dream-Den even more (which might then incentivise reducing the copies of Emeria, the Sky Ruin). This may be very important, as it appears that the Lurrus/Bauble synergy is actually the most efficient raw card advantage engine in the format right now. My immediate candidates to support this would be to look at Selfless Spirit and Remorseful Cleric maindeck - moving some or all of the sweepers to the sideboard - while it might be much more viable for you to add a single Kami of False Hope for the soft-lock as supported by some copies of Ranger-Captain of Eos.
Staying on the theme of alternative cards, I would say that if Detention Sphere did not impress you you should try either Starstorm's Skyclave Apparition or the standby Teferi, Time Raveler, though this last card can never deal with Planeswalkers and the first is a liability against the current crop of Delve Creatures or any threats that go over the top (Primeval Titan,Niv-Mizzet Reborn, Teferi, Hero of Dominaria, etcetera). As far as Aether Gust is concerned, I think that it does a very good job at playing to the board when coming from behind in this shell, and so avoids being tarred with the purely reactive label which spells the "Countermagic Kiss of Death" in my opinion. I have had quite positive results with a singleton in the past, and it may be reasonably well-positioned moving forward. Four copies seems like an extreme amount, however, and I was shocked to read that you did not bring in all of them against your Prowess opponent, so I would agree that you are likely over-saturated on the effect. My immediate instinct is that Celestial Purge could find its way into your sideboard in some number to diversify a little on that front.
Your kind comments on Mortarpod are appreciated, it is a personal favourite of mine at establishing synergies while remaining a board-relevant topdeck and keeping Equipment counts high well into the lategame to ensure recursive Stoneforge Mystic value, but 1-toughness plays are comparatively rare currently, which takes a little of its shine away when it does not contribute to the removal suite. I was recently debating going down to 2 from 3, but I would be extremely reluctant to go any lower without other ways to keep the graveyard stocked when sweepers come out against Combo decks. Your frequent removal of the card makes me assume you are ending games well before recursion can run you out of targets, leading me back to my point from paragraph 1 of this response. Going back to the subject of the removal suite itself, were you able to form an impression of Solitude which might colour the impression of those who have not yet played with it? Where was it good, where bad, and do you think that you had it right with 3 copies?
Hoping this finds you well,
-Stéphane Gérard