Haven't played in a while, have a few questions regarding sower of temptation. I understand the card is amazing against abzan, what do we usually side-out to make room for sower (I'm using a scion build)? Also, what other match-ups do you guys bring sower in?
What is the best time to play hurkyl's recall to make sure my opponent's glimmervoid dies? If I play it at the end of his second main phase does he get back priority to play a new artifact and save his glimmervoid? Do I have a window to play it in the end step because the glimmervoid ability would use the stack?
Please explain your reasoning, as I most likely will have to explain it to my opponent's too.
Thank you!
Edit : Quick other question : What are the best times to use hurkyl's recall to make him discard at the end of the turn?
Sadly, they are absolutely right. It's pointless for them to play against faeries as we're an absolute non-factor in just about anything bigger than local fnms.
That doesn't mean faeries is a bad deck. But calling it good in this meta would be delusional.
Normally their best time to resolve blood moon is after you cast bitterblossom (else you could counter it). With a resolved blossom and at least 1 island (ideally more), you still have a decent game against a deck that just used up all their T3's tempo.
Sometimes the card will completely destroy you. But they shouldn't be able to resolve it easily against us, and even if they do, we can still fight back. I wouldn't spend too much energy coming up with specific plan against it, unless your meta is choke full of it. (in which case, just play a few more basics)
Anyone tested the Jeskai Ascendancy matchups? Just looking at the decklists it would seem to me that we're very well equiped to beat it. What's the empirical data on it?
Welcome aboard sonyxg! Glad I found some support on my crusade against 2cc removals lol. I do have a few questions about your list :
- Aren't the 8 non-blue lands too much? I curse my deck whenever I run more than 5, though I can tolerate up to 6. It seems to me one of the swamps really should be watery grave, creeping tar pit or an island.
- Is the single Vendilion for budget reasons? The card has been good to me in every matchup and even with 3 the legendary problem is very rarely an issue.
- How are the shadow of doubt performing? I never got around testing it but I'm very interested in its potential. Do you play it in every matchups where your opponent is running a bunch of fetchlands?
I never considered suffer the past, but that card indeed seems very good at beating the treasure cruise version of burn. Probably not something to consider at a large event (too narrow), but a very powerful tool to bring to a suitable local meta.
It seems to me (with all due respect) that you are just supporting a card because you like it,
That may very well be the case! As much as everyone think they can be objective, it is very hard to part ways with our own biases. That said, I don't think that's the case. In fact, I've considered and tested almost every other ''normal'' setups before arriving at the dismembers. I don't particularly like the card and if you'd ask me a month ago I would of agreed with you. Now that I think about it, I'm very disappointed in our removal options as a whole. Dismember just feels like the least bad option available.
Quote from "darktutor »
»not because it has actually a better effect on the game. If you want to pay four life to kill a creature that you can take care of more efficiently with any other removal or even a bounce (even if you let attack would deal less damage than that), then that's fine, go for it. Don't expect to reach the best results with the deck though.
Alot of very competitive lists already run 1-2 dismembers. I'm not advocating something completely off the wall here. It's a talk about fine-tuning and details here. 4x dismember is clearly at least playable, as is most removal setups.
Quote from "darktutor »
»If you want the deck to work, you need to accept that it needs different answers for different threats. That's what faeries is about: providing the right answers. If you only have Dismember you will find yourself dying to Bitterblossom on regular basis (especially against Lightning Bolt, or not being able to cast it, giving you dead cards in hand.
What is wrong with casting dismember for 3? That happens at least as often as casting it for 1 (against aggressive decks). Saying that faeries needs different answers for different threats can't be right, since in the past (my experience is mostly with lorwyn standard) the removal was pretty much set in stone. If tomorrow we'd somehow get access to bolt in black, that'd be our removal answer to everything full stop. It seems to be we're stuck with weird singleton splits all over the place exactly because our removal is very weak and conditional for modern.
Quote from "darktutor »
As for the T1 removal, Dismember is the worst. As for late game removal, it can become the best. But, in the scenario you present it, it is just bad.
Yeah, obviously it's the worse T1 removal! It would be very sad if the most versatile removal is also the best at something. What you gain in flexibility you lose on efficiency, else there would be no reason not to play it. The whole argument is that the gain in flexibility (which you seem to completely undervalue, since you called it dead if you can't pay life for it? At least that's how I understood it) makes up for the loss in efficiency.
Quote from "darktutor »
That's my thoughts about running a set of Dismember, an instant 'No'.
I thank you for your opinion! I'm curious though, how many do you run personally?
HardKOrr : Tyvm for the awnser! Right now I'm on a very strict schedule so I won't have time to go in dept, but I'll certainly consider doing that after my exams.
Darktutor : I'll awnser very briefly before my wife can realize I'm still on forums instead of preparing for my exams :p. In none of the situations I am casting an instant on my turn. But I did completely mess up my examples I am very sorry about that! Thank you for correcting me! I think you still understood the argument I'm presenting though since you offered disfigure/vendetta as solutions, which are indeed functionally the same in that scenario. I did also say that bitterblossom always wins if that's the choice presented.
The main idea is this : 2cc removal sucks at dealing with early pressure, you're playing a turn behind against decks much faster than you are. If this is accepted, then the question becomes which 1cc removal to use. Overwhelmingly, the main solution seems to be a disfigure/2cc removal split, my proposal is that a dismember playset could be a superior alternative to the disfigure/2cc removal split.
I think the main point of disagreement I have with people that bothered to answer is that I am alot more happy to pay 4 to deal with a T1 creatures than others. I will certainly do it to kill almost any 1drop (mana dorks, nactal, delver, swiftspear, guide...) and feel very good about it. Yes disfigure/vendetta would of been better in that particular situation, but dismember was better than any 2cc removal I could have. The (very significant) downside of dismember is made up for the vast amount of advantages dismember has in general over disfigure/vendetta that I gave a few posts ago.
About the discard vs removal argument. They are not mutually exclusive. I run 4x inquisitions maindeck in addition to the dismembers. Deciding which is right is a complicated question, and I would indeed prefer T1 IoK against an unknown opponent. Most of the time though, you only have one or the other. What is important is not having a blank first turn, format punishes it too hard.
As for the edicts discussion. Yeah Liliana has my vote for best edict by far. Personally I've approached the boggle matchup by having 2-3 ratchet bomb/engineered explosives in the side-board. It seems to be sufficient hate for me(about 20 matches against same opponent, matchup seems about 50:50), but millage may vary. (For those who don't know, daybreak coronet dies when you destroy all other enchantments at X=1).
Thank you for the awnser! First of, I indeed don't play any of polluted, watery grave and (maindeck) thoughtseize, which gives me alot more life to work with compared to most list.
I think the part we disagree most is losing 4 life on turn 1. It is certainly an hefty amount I'll concede that. But I think it's totally justified against any deck that aren't pure burn (I'll do it probably 95% of the time). It's not just an idea I'm throwing out there I did playtest it a bunch already. The problem I found with 2cc removal (which dismember can be if the situation calls for it) is that it put us so far behind in matchups that we really need the tempo. Here are 3 terrible situations that happens all the time when I run mostly 2cc removal :
1. I smother their T1 on my T2, opponent counters that removal and keep the beatings
2. I smother their T1 on my T2, opponent seize the opportunity to drop something brutal like blood moon or young pyro + some spells
3. I need to make a choice between removing their T1 and dropping my own bitterblossom (bitterblossom always win, but that T1 is now generating some huge pressure that could of been avoided easily)
I'm sure everyone runs into these alot, which is why many lists are already running a few disfigure/dismembers. Before going the dismember route I actually tried 4x disfigures to solve the tempo issue. That worked better than when I was running 2cc removal but it was dead/weak in too many matchups so I dropped it. It's also very awkward with a river of tears hand, especially on the play.
You gave the example of thoughtseizing their T1 away instead of removing it. I would argue that dismembering it paying 4 is almost always a superior play. You're essentially trading 2 extra life for their first turn's tempo. I'd certainly accept to start every games at 18 life if it meant my opponent couldn't cast anything on T1.
I probably should of introduced my idea more as ''2cc removal is too slow for this crazy meta''. Most people seems to echo the sentiment that faeries is a bit too slow to compete right now, which is a huge problem for a deck that tries to play a tempo game. Moving from 2cc to 1cc removal is the direct countermeasure to this, and dismember appears to me as the most main-deckable 1cc removal we have access to. Really though any split of disfigure/dismember/vendetta (I think vendetta is clearly worse than the other options but I didn't test it so I might be wrong) is in the spirit of what I'm advocating here.
About Geth's verdict/devour flesh : Is it really accomplishing anything more than other choices except of against boggles? If that's the case, it seems like a very big concessions, boggles would have to be really represented for it to be worth it I think. I do however like the 1of dimir charm, might get around testing it next time.
On an unrelated note, I must of missed the discussion about river of tears. To me it seems that it's almost strictly better than one more island, except when it comes to blood moon obviously. Can that really be the only reason?
For simplicity's sake, let's assume you've decided to play 4 main deck removal. (Argument works just as well with other number, just easier to explain with 4).
Here is the assumptions I'm working with, which I got from playing the deck since bitterblossom's release :
- 1cc removal is very narrow and is only worth it against the most aggressive decks. It also doesn't play too well with river of tears (Which most people run as a playset, me included).
- 2cc removal isn't fast enough to deal with decks that presents you with a proper threat curve. You have other things to do on T2 than to deal with their T1 threat. This is the main reason faeries have typically bad matchups vs aggro.
Most players to solve those issues uses a mix of 1cc and 2cc removal, my argument is that running a playset of dismember in its place is alot more consistent and presents non-negligible advantages over doing a split. What I'm looking for is an argument as to why the split system is superior, which shouldn't be too hard to provide if I'm wrong (which I probably am, since I seem to be the only advocate of such idea).
Also note that this is an argument for the maindeck only. Yes disfigure is much better against aggro than dismember, which is why I run 3-4 in the side-board at all time.
Why I think a full dismember package is better than a mix system :
- You never run into the problem of not having the right removal for the situation. Disfigure vs a big creature doesn't work. Smother vs a solid T1 threat isn't fast enough (not only do you take an additional hit from it, you also use your second turn which is often enough to simply lose)
- It's only dead when all removals are dead. All other removals are randomly dead or very bad in some matchups.
- It's can always be cast. Like it or not there is time where your forced to operate on awkward mana. T1 river of tears is the main example, but also you might need your black for something else or you might be facing blood moon ect
- It's almost always the best removal against decks that don't pressure your life total, by a large margin
- It makes the side-board easier/better. You don't have to have a plan for when your removal is dead/bad in certain matchups. Except against decks without creatures obviously, but that's a non-issue since it applies to all removal.
There is a few other advantages like beating regenerate/indestructible and dodging chalice at 1, but that's too small to really consider imo.
Now, the only real disadvantage of dismember is obviously the health cost. It is a very big disadvantage I'll concede that, but one that can be mitigated a ton with proper play. An analysis of the impact of the health cost is out of the scope of my argument, but it is something that can be easily tested, which I did (but not enough, as I'm currently very busy with my exams), and found it very manageable.
I'm sorry if I'm too insistent in pushing my idea. But if we're to arrive at something truly competitive we'll need a cooperative effort of at least a dedicated group of individuals, testing and thoroughly rebutting each others ideas. Sadly, we don't have the luxury of simply putting ancestral recall in our decks and overpowering everyone else by sheer brute force.
I don't think that's a good way to analyse the card considering that the best thing about dismember is you don't have to pay life for it if you don't want to.
The way I see it, on T1 paying life for dismember almost always saves you life in the long run (except when comparing with disfigure, which has it's own set of problems). In theory, you could restrict yourself to always pay 3 mana for the other dismembers you draw and be in a reasonable position. (it's a reasonable position because your first dismember over-performed compared to a 2cc removal, and that advantage is balanced out by having your other dismembers being less efficient than 2cc removal). Obviously, there is no reason to restrict ourselves that way, but it certainly demonstrate the potential of the card.
Playing a full dismember package as removal has alot of other benefits :
- You don't randomly whiff artifacts/black creatures/converted manacost 4+
- Being universal removal, it saves room in the side-board (I like to have a few disfigure in the side still, too important vs certain decks).
- It's always the best removal against decks that don't really care about your life total. (unless it's a dead card, in which case it doesn't matter)
- You always have more options. Having a smother to deal with a T1 threat and drawing disfigure later when it's dead is awful.
- Cast-able even if you don't have access to black. Quite important if you run 4x river of tears.
Anyway that's my reasoning. I'm most likely wrong since nobody is trying it out. Just trying to understand why that is.
As for remand, yeah that is a good answer for sure. I just don't think it's good in the deck otherwise. Though I'd be interested in having it as a 1-of to have the option when it present itself.
I really like 1-2 Countersquall in the side-board. I use them to replace removals in matchups where it isn't needed such a scapeshift. Haven't had a problem casting it yet with a straight UB manabase. I could also see an aggressive version of the deck making good use of them mainboard, worth trying out imo.
Anyone tried 4x dismember as the only main deck removal? It's not something I'm very excited about but the more I play the more I find that 2cc removal is often too slow for the meta. You really want to be casting bitterblossom or mana leak on t2 else you risk falling too far behind. The alternative is disfigure but that opens a few new problems that I'd rather not have to deal with. (Most importantly, disfigure is actually kinda hard to cast on the opponent's T1 as river of tears and creeping tar pit can't). I'm playing a painless manabase do accommodate that very greedy removal suite.
On an unrelated note. What is everyone's opinion on siding-in 1-2 relic of progenitus against decks that only care about their graveyard to play treasure cruise? My initial instincts tells me it's too narrow an awnser to a very specific problem, but on the other hand the card is so powerful and I don't really see a good alternative.
Please explain your reasoning, as I most likely will have to explain it to my opponent's too.
Thank you!
Edit : Quick other question : What are the best times to use hurkyl's recall to make him discard at the end of the turn?
That doesn't mean faeries is a bad deck. But calling it good in this meta would be delusional.
Sometimes the card will completely destroy you. But they shouldn't be able to resolve it easily against us, and even if they do, we can still fight back. I wouldn't spend too much energy coming up with specific plan against it, unless your meta is choke full of it. (in which case, just play a few more basics)
Anyone tested the Jeskai Ascendancy matchups? Just looking at the decklists it would seem to me that we're very well equiped to beat it. What's the empirical data on it?
- Aren't the 8 non-blue lands too much? I curse my deck whenever I run more than 5, though I can tolerate up to 6. It seems to me one of the swamps really should be watery grave, creeping tar pit or an island.
- Is the single Vendilion for budget reasons? The card has been good to me in every matchup and even with 3 the legendary problem is very rarely an issue.
- How are the shadow of doubt performing? I never got around testing it but I'm very interested in its potential. Do you play it in every matchups where your opponent is running a bunch of fetchlands?
That may very well be the case! As much as everyone think they can be objective, it is very hard to part ways with our own biases. That said, I don't think that's the case. In fact, I've considered and tested almost every other ''normal'' setups before arriving at the dismembers. I don't particularly like the card and if you'd ask me a month ago I would of agreed with you. Now that I think about it, I'm very disappointed in our removal options as a whole. Dismember just feels like the least bad option available.
Alot of very competitive lists already run 1-2 dismembers. I'm not advocating something completely off the wall here. It's a talk about fine-tuning and details here. 4x dismember is clearly at least playable, as is most removal setups.
What is wrong with casting dismember for 3? That happens at least as often as casting it for 1 (against aggressive decks). Saying that faeries needs different answers for different threats can't be right, since in the past (my experience is mostly with lorwyn standard) the removal was pretty much set in stone. If tomorrow we'd somehow get access to bolt in black, that'd be our removal answer to everything full stop. It seems to be we're stuck with weird singleton splits all over the place exactly because our removal is very weak and conditional for modern.
Yeah, obviously it's the worse T1 removal! It would be very sad if the most versatile removal is also the best at something. What you gain in flexibility you lose on efficiency, else there would be no reason not to play it. The whole argument is that the gain in flexibility (which you seem to completely undervalue, since you called it dead if you can't pay life for it? At least that's how I understood it) makes up for the loss in efficiency.
I thank you for your opinion! I'm curious though, how many do you run personally?
Darktutor : I'll awnser very briefly before my wife can realize I'm still on forums instead of preparing for my exams :p. In none of the situations I am casting an instant on my turn. But I did completely mess up my examples I am very sorry about that! Thank you for correcting me! I think you still understood the argument I'm presenting though since you offered disfigure/vendetta as solutions, which are indeed functionally the same in that scenario. I did also say that bitterblossom always wins if that's the choice presented.
The main idea is this : 2cc removal sucks at dealing with early pressure, you're playing a turn behind against decks much faster than you are. If this is accepted, then the question becomes which 1cc removal to use. Overwhelmingly, the main solution seems to be a disfigure/2cc removal split, my proposal is that a dismember playset could be a superior alternative to the disfigure/2cc removal split.
I think the main point of disagreement I have with people that bothered to answer is that I am alot more happy to pay 4 to deal with a T1 creatures than others. I will certainly do it to kill almost any 1drop (mana dorks, nactal, delver, swiftspear, guide...) and feel very good about it. Yes disfigure/vendetta would of been better in that particular situation, but dismember was better than any 2cc removal I could have. The (very significant) downside of dismember is made up for the vast amount of advantages dismember has in general over disfigure/vendetta that I gave a few posts ago.
About the discard vs removal argument. They are not mutually exclusive. I run 4x inquisitions maindeck in addition to the dismembers. Deciding which is right is a complicated question, and I would indeed prefer T1 IoK against an unknown opponent. Most of the time though, you only have one or the other. What is important is not having a blank first turn, format punishes it too hard.
As for the edicts discussion. Yeah Liliana has my vote for best edict by far. Personally I've approached the boggle matchup by having 2-3 ratchet bomb/engineered explosives in the side-board. It seems to be sufficient hate for me(about 20 matches against same opponent, matchup seems about 50:50), but millage may vary. (For those who don't know, daybreak coronet dies when you destroy all other enchantments at X=1).
I think the part we disagree most is losing 4 life on turn 1. It is certainly an hefty amount I'll concede that. But I think it's totally justified against any deck that aren't pure burn (I'll do it probably 95% of the time). It's not just an idea I'm throwing out there I did playtest it a bunch already. The problem I found with 2cc removal (which dismember can be if the situation calls for it) is that it put us so far behind in matchups that we really need the tempo. Here are 3 terrible situations that happens all the time when I run mostly 2cc removal :
1. I smother their T1 on my T2, opponent counters that removal and keep the beatings
2. I smother their T1 on my T2, opponent seize the opportunity to drop something brutal like blood moon or young pyro + some spells
3. I need to make a choice between removing their T1 and dropping my own bitterblossom (bitterblossom always win, but that T1 is now generating some huge pressure that could of been avoided easily)
I'm sure everyone runs into these alot, which is why many lists are already running a few disfigure/dismembers. Before going the dismember route I actually tried 4x disfigures to solve the tempo issue. That worked better than when I was running 2cc removal but it was dead/weak in too many matchups so I dropped it. It's also very awkward with a river of tears hand, especially on the play.
You gave the example of thoughtseizing their T1 away instead of removing it. I would argue that dismembering it paying 4 is almost always a superior play. You're essentially trading 2 extra life for their first turn's tempo. I'd certainly accept to start every games at 18 life if it meant my opponent couldn't cast anything on T1.
I probably should of introduced my idea more as ''2cc removal is too slow for this crazy meta''. Most people seems to echo the sentiment that faeries is a bit too slow to compete right now, which is a huge problem for a deck that tries to play a tempo game. Moving from 2cc to 1cc removal is the direct countermeasure to this, and dismember appears to me as the most main-deckable 1cc removal we have access to. Really though any split of disfigure/dismember/vendetta (I think vendetta is clearly worse than the other options but I didn't test it so I might be wrong) is in the spirit of what I'm advocating here.
About Geth's verdict/devour flesh : Is it really accomplishing anything more than other choices except of against boggles? If that's the case, it seems like a very big concessions, boggles would have to be really represented for it to be worth it I think. I do however like the 1of dimir charm, might get around testing it next time.
On an unrelated note, I must of missed the discussion about river of tears. To me it seems that it's almost strictly better than one more island, except when it comes to blood moon obviously. Can that really be the only reason?
For simplicity's sake, let's assume you've decided to play 4 main deck removal. (Argument works just as well with other number, just easier to explain with 4).
Here is the assumptions I'm working with, which I got from playing the deck since bitterblossom's release :
- 1cc removal is very narrow and is only worth it against the most aggressive decks. It also doesn't play too well with river of tears (Which most people run as a playset, me included).
- 2cc removal isn't fast enough to deal with decks that presents you with a proper threat curve. You have other things to do on T2 than to deal with their T1 threat. This is the main reason faeries have typically bad matchups vs aggro.
Most players to solve those issues uses a mix of 1cc and 2cc removal, my argument is that running a playset of dismember in its place is alot more consistent and presents non-negligible advantages over doing a split. What I'm looking for is an argument as to why the split system is superior, which shouldn't be too hard to provide if I'm wrong (which I probably am, since I seem to be the only advocate of such idea).
Also note that this is an argument for the maindeck only. Yes disfigure is much better against aggro than dismember, which is why I run 3-4 in the side-board at all time.
Why I think a full dismember package is better than a mix system :
- You never run into the problem of not having the right removal for the situation. Disfigure vs a big creature doesn't work. Smother vs a solid T1 threat isn't fast enough (not only do you take an additional hit from it, you also use your second turn which is often enough to simply lose)
- It's only dead when all removals are dead. All other removals are randomly dead or very bad in some matchups.
- It's can always be cast. Like it or not there is time where your forced to operate on awkward mana. T1 river of tears is the main example, but also you might need your black for something else or you might be facing blood moon ect
- It's almost always the best removal against decks that don't pressure your life total, by a large margin
- It makes the side-board easier/better. You don't have to have a plan for when your removal is dead/bad in certain matchups. Except against decks without creatures obviously, but that's a non-issue since it applies to all removal.
There is a few other advantages like beating regenerate/indestructible and dodging chalice at 1, but that's too small to really consider imo.
Now, the only real disadvantage of dismember is obviously the health cost. It is a very big disadvantage I'll concede that, but one that can be mitigated a ton with proper play. An analysis of the impact of the health cost is out of the scope of my argument, but it is something that can be easily tested, which I did (but not enough, as I'm currently very busy with my exams), and found it very manageable.
I'm sorry if I'm too insistent in pushing my idea. But if we're to arrive at something truly competitive we'll need a cooperative effort of at least a dedicated group of individuals, testing and thoroughly rebutting each others ideas. Sadly, we don't have the luxury of simply putting ancestral recall in our decks and overpowering everyone else by sheer brute force.
The way I see it, on T1 paying life for dismember almost always saves you life in the long run (except when comparing with disfigure, which has it's own set of problems). In theory, you could restrict yourself to always pay 3 mana for the other dismembers you draw and be in a reasonable position. (it's a reasonable position because your first dismember over-performed compared to a 2cc removal, and that advantage is balanced out by having your other dismembers being less efficient than 2cc removal). Obviously, there is no reason to restrict ourselves that way, but it certainly demonstrate the potential of the card.
Playing a full dismember package as removal has alot of other benefits :
- You don't randomly whiff artifacts/black creatures/converted manacost 4+
- Being universal removal, it saves room in the side-board (I like to have a few disfigure in the side still, too important vs certain decks).
- It's always the best removal against decks that don't really care about your life total. (unless it's a dead card, in which case it doesn't matter)
- You always have more options. Having a smother to deal with a T1 threat and drawing disfigure later when it's dead is awful.
- Cast-able even if you don't have access to black. Quite important if you run 4x river of tears.
Anyway that's my reasoning. I'm most likely wrong since nobody is trying it out. Just trying to understand why that is.
As for remand, yeah that is a good answer for sure. I just don't think it's good in the deck otherwise. Though I'd be interested in having it as a 1-of to have the option when it present itself.
Anyone tried 4x dismember as the only main deck removal? It's not something I'm very excited about but the more I play the more I find that 2cc removal is often too slow for the meta. You really want to be casting bitterblossom or mana leak on t2 else you risk falling too far behind. The alternative is disfigure but that opens a few new problems that I'd rather not have to deal with. (Most importantly, disfigure is actually kinda hard to cast on the opponent's T1 as river of tears and creeping tar pit can't). I'm playing a painless manabase do accommodate that very greedy removal suite.
On an unrelated note. What is everyone's opinion on siding-in 1-2 relic of progenitus against decks that only care about their graveyard to play treasure cruise? My initial instincts tells me it's too narrow an awnser to a very specific problem, but on the other hand the card is so powerful and I don't really see a good alternative.
Ancient grudge deals with the swords. What can we do about the rest?