So first you guys harass me about how many black sources I need to be playing because you dont agree with Canyons, saying I need more because getting our mana fixed (RB on two is the most we need to stress our manabase) is super important! But then on the same hand, nothing on turn two is scary enough to dictate an Expert to be deployed asap. You are creating a paradox and therefore making it so theres no winning regardless of what I say, because you are quick to change stances just to oppose me regardless of what is said. That is textbook harassment and trolling. Whether you are doing it intentionally doesnt reflect whether it is happening.
Also, you completely ignored everything Ace1 said about your mention of redundancy and the arbitrariness of the 90% line, just to hammer about how Munitions Expert isn't that good or something? I don't really know what you're trying to say there.
The first rule of trying to have an intelligent dialogue is to never put words in anyone's mouth. You seem to be purposely obtuse here, because nobody could ever gloss over what I read and miss those points entirely. I never said Caverns was bad, I never said Munitions Expert was bad, but yet you insist so, seemingly to derail me from getting to what I want to discuss (metagaming, sideboard strategies, etc.) I've already reported you for trolling so I hope you can stop this little back and forth you seem to have so much fun with and make a more serious comment in the future.
But let me humor you even though you're being abusive in getting these points going back and forth. Let's say you want to get a turn two Stoneforge off the table before a quick Batterskull puts the game out of reach. Or maybe you just see a 1/2 Tarmogoyf that you'd rather not deal with before it gets out of hand. If you want to slant your deck design to have RB mana for Goblins available on turn two as much as possible, but you also want your Experts to stay on parity with other turn two plays that might be tough to match, then why only play 4 Skirk Prospectors? Other than Confidant and Steel Overseer, a sizable number of options in Modern on turn two that are bad for us are going to be X/2s. It's like always trying to make an extra mana in Ponza for a turn two Stone Rain. You wouldn't only play four 1cmc ramp cards in that deck, either.
So if you want to pick a bone with how my manabase is constructed because it doesn't suit your fantasy of having RB available on turn two some XYZ number of times, then you also have to be accountable in what you say and understand that your deck isn't going to facilitate a meaningful interaction with Munitions Expert early on for every XYZ number of times unless you otherwise warp your list to do so. And if that's your entire purpose, you have to then explain why you're justifying all the extra one drops you want to play for this purpose.
That doesn't make any sense. This notion comes from karsten's article, which is a great article, but you're taking it way to litteraly. 13 lands gives you approximatly 90% chances to hit your color on turn two. But 90% isn't a magical number, its just a abitrarily chosen number to use as a guideline, because the author of the article had to pick one to do the math.
Having more chances to hit your colors is always good. There is always a trade-off between good mana and utility lands. There is nothing special about «90%» probability other than it pleases the mind because it feels kind of likely and can be divided by ten i guess? There are no cutoffs at all, you just have to weight the pros and cons when building your land base.
"hit your colors" bro just say "Munitions Expert mana" and keep it moving lmao
WHY are you guys beating up on that point? You do realize that if you want to have a turn two Munitions Expert be handy on a consistent basis, you would also have to warp your list to include 7+ one drop Goblins, correct? This is another problem where you can't fix a broken bone with a band-aid. Just trying to improve my mana to be nearly flawless has absolutely 0 payoff if I don't improve my spell base to go along with it so that when we actually get our Munitions Expert going early more often, it's actually for a reason
Cavern is dangerous when it comes to getting off an early Thoughtseize, and I've mitigated both deck design issues. Turn one Thoughtseize where it's good is going to require about 14-15 black sources, and Cavern/Field of Ruin are both jockeying for the same real estate in our 75. I think as poor as our matchup against Tron becomes if we just let them stick an Ugin, we can't concede to it having its turn under the sun.
I've prioritized Field because of this, but I am not saying Cavern isn't useful or that it's a bad card or anything. My only claim is that right now is a safe time to cut it because of the build of control decks. Many are playing proactively and leaning on Force to carry them home, while neglecting to hold up removal and counterspells. Until people get back to their senses and kill the Stoneblade hype, I think that the UW matchup is pretty much free. As potent as it can be to hold back some of our best threats with Leak and Spell Snare, most pilots are simply not letting our turn one Vial get under their interaction anyway, so they tend to just jam and play catch up on the board later.
My point about Burn is not that playing Canopy lands is negligible (I mean you have to be pretty anal retentive to think adding two to the main will skew this matchup, though) but that if we don't have a way to interact then it doesn't matter how much life our manabase is saving us. I think the sideboard is the most important part of dealing with the influx of Burn we are going to see with less Dredge in the format. I've thought about playing a Jinxed Idol where I previously had a Chandra ToD, simply because we can just yeet it to our opponent much more often than vice versa, and it is also a nice insurance measure to being able to trigger Pashalik Mons if nothing else. Pretty hard for decks backpedaling against us and decks racing us to fight that card on top of everything else we do. Just don't have enough data with it.
If you're on the draw, all of those three win conditions are super live against you, and you won't make it to your turn three to stop them. That's how they dodge your Cratermaker and K-Com.
Lastly, I don't like Krenko because typically he's win-more. If your meta has got pillow fort/Martyr, it can be a very strong option to couple with our Sling-Gangs and Pashilik Mons. Otherwise, it tends to eat removal pretty hard for a 4 drop that has no immediate impact unless our opponent is playing from pretty far behind.
We have enough sources (13) for a turn two Munitions Expert or Warren Weirding. That's literally the cutoff, any more sources would be redundant, albeit a little more consistent. If you're playing black non-creatures below 3cmc, Cavern actually HURTS your deck more than anything. We only play two lands that hurt us in the long game? I wrote 2 Canyons, not 4. Even then, we are probably losing to an unanswered Eidolon more than anything.
Turn two Infect creature/Stoneforge/Devoted Druid etc. all dodge Cratermaker and Kolaghan's Command, so no, they are strictly worse than Abrade for what it's worth. It's meant to slant against aggressive builds while giving you splash hate for Whirza and such. Chandra is meta specific; I know for a fact that the only pilots at my LGS that are going to be tough matchups all play value decks, so I need a critical mass of sticky threats.
Had a decently successful weekend where I won an FNM 4-0, then I had a 4-0 SCG side event into a 3-1 into a 1-1-2.
FNM:
UW Control (2-0)
Bogles (2-1)
Burn (2-1)
UW Control (2-0)
Side event no.1:
UW Stoneblade (2-0)
Mardu Death's Shadow (2-0)
Whirza (2-1)
Grixis Death's Shadow (2-0)
Side event no.2:
GW Stoneforge Company(?) (0-2)
UW Stoneblade (2-0)
UWr Stoneblade (2-0)
-No show- (2-0)
Side event no.3:
UW Stoneblade (1-1)
UWr Stoneblade (2-0)
Sun & Moon (0-2)
Burn (0-2)
UW Control is by far the easiest metagame opponent. You have everything that beats them: uncounterable threats via Vial and/or Cavern if you choose to play Cavern, a plan that slants hard against Force of Negation, and plenty of reach and card advantage. UWx Stoneblade is a little bit trickier to play against, but due to its low impact options against us (less removal, and oftentimes they have incentive to avoid sweepers altogether if it suits their plan) they tend to fizzle out when we interact and choose our spots well. I wouldn't overcompensate to prepare for these two, I like one SB Abrade for Stoneblade
Bogles is something you simply can't beat without Warren Weirding. Depending on how large your tournament is and how many you see in the room, you want to pack 0-2 in the board. I audibled one for FNM but chose to play without it in the side events, as I saw plenty more real decks there.
Burn is a struggle, and some of the games can be close, but it is a very winnable matchup without any spice. I think if you were trying to beat Burn specifically while consolidating your options, 1-2 Grim Lavamancer is pretty sweet because it helps vs. Infect and GW Company decks as well. If you want to target burn, you should go with 2-3 Dragon's Claw IMO.
Whirza is seemingly a pretty smooth matchup, but you have to be very weary of their ability to go off with Thopter Foundry. I've slotted in Trashmaster maindeck due to the drop off of graveyard strategies and the uptick of Stoneforge/Urza decks, and it was a pretty reasonable move.
The GWx decks, irrespective of whether they shoehorned Stoneforge in, may or may not have a lot of high impact turn 2 plays. I lost my match because G1 started with T1 Giver of Runes into T2 Devoted into turn 3 Vizier + Ballista and I was a turn off of dealing with both Giver and Druid. I would consider using your flex slots for additional Tarfire copies if you see GW, Burn, and Infect in the room because there are a lot of things to race through in those archetypes, and I feel those are the proactive decks of choice now.
Sun and Moon was miserable because my opponent got off four copies of Timely Reinforcements via the new Chandra that buys things back. Even though it might not seem worthwhile, consider your Chainwhirler for post-boarded games.
After evaluating which choices worked for me and those that didn't, here's my updated recommended list:
A few thoughts on where I see this deck design going in the near future:
My notable changes are that I'm not sold on Cavern anymore. The only counterspells that are concerning are Spell Snare and Chalice of the Void, and we can beat those with Vial and Cratermaker respectively. The decks that tend to play from behind by holding up counterspells for information tend to also be our best matchups. Conversely, giving yourself the real estate of a maindeck Swamp is crucial so you don't get Field of Ruined out of games is crucial. Playing a few canopy lands to make up for the few cards that might get countered in a game is a nice trade-off that can carry over to other attrition matchups.
I like Damping Sphere as a way to nix many of our worst combo opponents which go over the top of what we're doing. Against Twiddle Storm, it's extra insurance on top of our Alpine Moons. Against Tron, it's pretty much lights out, especially when backed up by a Chieftain assault.
Some cards that hose us pretty hard are Plague Engineer, Torpor Orb, so it's important to have plenty of ways to deal with those naturally, since you can't rely on Matron to find an out to Orb.
Lastly, as much as Cavern might be obsolete in the grand scheme of what the format might need to be fought with, so too are Thoughtseize and Relic of Progenitus (for now, IMO)
For example, my LGS that I normally frequent has something like 2-3 Infect players, 3-4 UWx Control/Mid, 2-3 Tron, 1-2 Burn, 1-2 GBx, 1-2 Twiddle Storm, another Goblins player, and then the few oddball types sprinkled in with their Mill and Bogles and 8rack and what have you. So I would probably sleeve this sideboard up for my next FNM:
I feel like the 5+ slots being dedicated to Thoughtseize and Relic are just not necessary until a slew of combo decks and graveyard based strategies crop up to make those catch-alls relevant again. The only combo decks you have to worry about (Storm, Infect, etc.) get hosed by Damping Sphere, and if you're dealing with the likes of TitanShift you can just tick up your Alpine Moon count to deal with Field of the Dead and Reclamation Sage
Tried the deck in the OP against Jund a bunch of times in pre-board games. Narset Pitch Blue lost most of them because Jund is quite good at shredding hands, it doesn't tend to draw additional cards for its CA (see their Dark Confidant, Bloodbraid Elf, Liliana, the Last Hope), it often has a fairly quick clock that can be hard to Engulf the Shore profitably (e.g. Goyf, Scavenging Ooze, BBE), and it dumps its hand fairly quickly and can take advantage of emergency naked Day's Undoing. What can this deck do to combat it and other BGx Midrange decks? How much does post-board removal help?
Ran into a GB player in my league play here - LINK
Most of what was mentioned in my other response came to fruition pretty reasonably. I stopped articulating sometime into this footage as it was pretty late lol. I think Jund is probably the toughest GBx opponent now that I've played all of them, the hasty BBE is a tough call to answer in time.
(As an aside, playing UW Control for the longest and watching Sultai Reclamation not only go under everything I was doing but also out-value me in the process... it felt so, so sweet playing Pitch Blue and flipping the script on them lol)
I don't like the line of play after 1:15 where OP plays the 2nd remand targeting Narset. By Commandeering targeting 1 remand and then aiming that remand at spell snare, and then tapping out to recast spell snare, yet you get both remands out of the OP's hand and also get your Narset in play, but you just tapped out, with no free interaction in hand to protect Narset, and you know the OP has a mystical teachings in hand from when you remanded it earlier, meaning there is no way your Narset survives unless you find a pitch spell off of the -2. If you don't Commandeer at least you get to keep your Narset & spell snare in hand while also holding up both Commandeer & spell snare for the OP's turn. If you do Commandeer a remand, aim it at the other remand so that you resolve the Narset and hold one mana up, meaning you have another hit with the -2 to potentially have some interaction to keep her alive, (obviously OP went for ubrubt decay instead of trophy, however, meaning that the first option of not Commandeering is best).
Also revealing that you have a Notion Thief by casting it when Teachings is on the stack seems questionable. There's no way the OP doesn't search for something to kill your Thief. Wait for them to hopefully get greedy, or pick the wrong bit of interaction with Teachings and then try and play it after they already chose what card they want. Basically, I think you could have baited the opponent into doing what they did at 3:20ish a lot earlier, (tapping out on their turn so that you can Thief into Day's which probably wins you the game.)
Yeah see the game was spiraling into a situation where I could either throttle my opponent to sticking a timely topdeck and forcing them to have their impact play, or where I could let them mulch through their draws while having interaction. It might have seemed like an all-or-nothing kind of bet but I was really not trying to have them get an extra couple of draws to find a way to break out of their slump. I put them on a lot of ineffective reactionary spells and not a lot of progressive cards like Growth Spiral and whatnot.
The concession was for both of us to end up winded on options and for me to hope that the Remand and Narset activation found me one of the other three Narsets or the other Commandeer. I already knew Abrupt Decay was going to be the kill spell of choice, and wanted to eliminate that from being a problem the rest of the way for Narset no.2 if she were to stick.
I can see where you're coming from and I think it opens a can of worms to try to manipulate a game that now has too many variables to account for when you give yourself an extra card by letting yourself Narset with counter/Consign backup versus just putting your opponent on 'must answer' mode and stressing their responses (like the moment where they needed exactly Fatal Push to not get cards eked out of their grip and that's exactly what they had.) I saw a lot of inherent value in disrupting their cantrips and ability to play on my turn that game and I might probably need to reevaluate the matchup with more data to find out which lines have better %
(As an aside, playing UW Control for the longest and watching Sultai Reclamation not only go under everything I was doing but also out-value me in the process... it felt so, so sweet playing Pitch Blue and flipping the script on them lol)
Tried the deck in the OP against Jund a bunch of times in pre-board games. Narset Pitch Blue lost most of them because Jund is quite good at shredding hands, it doesn't tend to draw additional cards for its CA (see their Dark Confidant, Bloodbraid Elf, Liliana, the Last Hope), it often has a fairly quick clock that can be hard to Engulf the Shore profitably (e.g. Goyf, Scavenging Ooze, BBE), and it dumps its hand fairly quickly and can take advantage of emergency naked Day's Undoing. What can this deck do to combat it and other BGx Midrange decks? How much does post-board removal help?
To beat Jund you have to hedge pretty hard. Take my list from above and replace a Commandeer and Arguel's Blood Fast out of the board for two Ancestral Vision. Replace Unmoored Ego for two cards like Threads of Disloyalty
What they predicate their plan on doing is using cheap discard and tough to kill threats that pan out in their favor once the dust settles. With Thougtseize and the like, both players hate to have to lose a card out of it, but Jund is fine with trading off because they put you in the hot seat right away.
Stealing a Tarmogoyf and blocking their best threats, or stealing Dark Confidant and letting them play the topdeck game while you stock up on gas, those are winning lines. It sucks to fold to their direct damage, but they would be remiss to leave in Bolt post-board as it just costs them a card with little returns. The way you beat the attrition deck is with value. Threads being a 2-for-1 and Vision being a 3-for-1 help tremendously. Relic is also a great tool against GBx: if they plan to eat your creatures with Scooze, you can wittle them out of your GY and deny it any growth to buy yourself many turns. And when Tarmogoyf presents itself as a lategame problem, you can mitigate it for a while depending on how much leverage you can afford yourself.
The matchup is probably one of the more difficult ones since they can just run you over with Ravine if they didn't already resolve one of their many card advantage engines or stalwart threats. They have a lot of critical spells so make sure to be ready to answer a lot of what they do to kill us and hope you can outlast their discard spells. Having multiple Spell Snare is a big premium in getting tempo back against them. If you can Snare their really good 2s and Commandeer their good 3s then youre in a solid position.
Assuming you take my list and cut a Commandeer for AV and Unmoored Ego for Threads, my SB plan would be:
You want to get rid of Commandeer because you're probably never going to be able to consistently cast it in the mid-game post board assuming they have even more discard after the fact. Pierce loses value if they don't draw mono-walkers since theyre so spread around on their diversity of threats. Getting to a point where you can counter what will kill your Notion Theif and Day's Undoing as a follow up is your first goal since it is very unreliable to try to untap with Narset. You want to throttle them on cards before getting ahead on board. Blood Fast into Threads to gain a lot is pretty sweet EV :^)
The effect of Notion Thief doesn't override Narset, or vice versa. It replaces what happens to the opponent, therefore affecting how Narset affects the opponent.
If your opponent is dead in hand and you activate Lore Broker during their upkeep, they won't draw anything and you'll draw two before pitching one.
Then, the opponent will draw a card for the turn naturally since they haven't done so, and since it wouldn't even be their second card drawn for that turn thanks to Notion Thief.
The key is either to use Thief to get ahead before then killing it to lock the opponent out entirely, and then just beating down with Clique...or just playing someone's odds of never drawing an Instant, and waiting until they draw for the turn to activate Lore Broker if you have Narset and Thief out as well.
I much rather prefer the former to the latter since you can dig through your deck all day unimpeded, save for some kind of Flashback shenanigans. In which case, Ashiok + Relic spells doom for the opponent
I think people are getting the deck wrong for a few reasons. Sticking to an absurdly high amount of blue spells just to fuel unfair instants is a bit of a gimp. You start to lose matchup spread against decks that punish for not answering their go-wide strategies.
While this is partly true, one of the reasons that the blue pitch spells are so powerful is that it lets us tap out to play our sorcery-speed combo pieces while still holding up interaction; but against aggro decks that may not have a lot of interaction I think it's fine to sideboard in some none-blue hate cards, while siding out useless interaction spells in those matchups like -2 Commandeer +2 Yahenni's Expertise is probably fine, and the ability to combo into a Day's Undoing, Ashiok, Dream Render or Narset, Parter of Veils is pretty sweet. Only dealing with 3 toughness or less creatures kind of sucks, it does nothing vs green stompy, Primeval Titan, Tarmogoyf, Death's Shadow, and Gurmag Angler etc, so I'm not sure it's worth it in place of something like Damnation. Also 5 cmc is a little high for the deck, especially with it also needing double black on top of that.
Which card is 5cmc with BB in the cost? I think we are fine losing percentages to green stompy as that deck is simply Tier 3 or lower in the modern format. It gets outclassed by too much to be relevant, and one Terminus is enough to send them packing more times than not.
Primeval Titan is the card that I thought inspired Unmoored Ego to begin with... it is highly unlikely to put a cap on it or contain it otherwise imo, especially with Amulet having access to Cavern, which would make any bit of tech like Disdainful Stroke out of the board a moot consideration. Angler gets rolled by Ashiok and bounce spells, while I am packing enough kill spells alongside the double Spell Snare for 'goyfs.
I think the aggressive plan you're probably afraid is overshadowed by the type of deck that is this plan's hard counter. Any deck with Burn / Aether Vial / counterspells / card advantage is going to be a tough ride. Hilariously, the first time I ponied up with this deck in a Friendly League, I played a janky UR Wizards that had 4 Vials in it to play Dark Confidant...
Have you thought about vision skeins? Draw 2 for 2 at instant speed sounds pretty good... During your oppoent's turn, there is no drawback.
Skeins would be good if Lore Broker had a way to break its symmetry. Otherwise, on its own, it's too low impact compared to Day's Undoing for us to benefit from it. A win-more card by nature as you already have multiple ways to break the game open without it, but when you mulligan down to it, it really forces you to put the opponent up on cards so that you can stay in the game. Not playing the 4th Day's Undoing if that's your jam is another reason to not play Skeins. It makes your mulligans and opening plays worse when you have such a redundancy of group hug type card draw.
I think people are getting the deck wrong for a few reasons. Sticking to an absurdly high amount of blue spells just to fuel unfair instants is a bit of a gimp. You start to lose matchup spread against decks that punish for not answering their go-wide strategies.
I really like Yahenni's Expertise for what this deck is trying to fight. Packs a punch against Dredge since you can sneak an Ashiok under it and activate Ashiok right away. Same with any of our value spells that are just hard to manage while fending off creatures. Getting a walker or value spell under this makes it feel like a Terminus when it works (and the -3/-3 is typically enough to help us beat the decks that we tend to have problems with)
Consign // Oblivion is another card I'm high on. When the game peters out it's a source of discard to put your opponent closer to being locked out by Narset + Loot. If I'm not mistake, due to the split card rule it's technically a 7cmc which can pitch for a Shoal to counter a Karn Liberated.
Last, a card I've been toying with to solve the go-wide matchups is Agony Warp. Helps feed into pitch cards while taming two separate creatures. The returns and defensive tempo of this one are too vast to be ignored in a game one scenario.
I'm toying with an Arguel's Blood Fast in the board as a way to muck up the control/midrange matchup for our opponent if they plan on not playing into our counterspells. Getting it down early and riding the wave of card advantage it provides can certainly help to break parity - as we typically take these matches easily except when we're throttled on land drops.
I cut some of the fat from the deck, like Day's Undoing no.4, Vendilion Clique no.3, Unsubstantiate no.2, etc. Felt a lot of these were holding the deck from funneling through a critical mass of live draws, since we are looking to interact more than just a typical combo deck.
I've also replaced my Deltas with a playset of Flooded Strand. When you represent UW control by running out Island -> Flooded Strand, it helps to beat certain decks who might not want to overextend into the likes of a serious board wipe, Snapcaster plays, or a powerful planeswalker in game one. Accounting for the cheaper removal spells in the 75 means cutting a basic for a Drowned Catacomb. Going to crunch some numbers and see if that can still be serviceable for our spot removal to come into effect while they still matter in the early stages of the game.
So there was an interesting UW combo-control list that popped up during the SCG modern event this weekend that took 9th place. It looks a lot like typical UW control except it replaced all the cryptics and most of the jace's and snaps with Teferi, Time Raveler and Knowledge Pool.
Well, there's not much to be said. It's a combo shell with some disruptive elements of control, so it mulligans a lot worse than typical UW and is considerably worse to Extraction and Meddling Mage effects. The upside of all the redundancy here isn't a payoff as neither Teferi nor Knowledge Pool hold up on their own in a vacuum save for certain matchups. I think it's one of those gimmicks that has a leg to stand on but only until people figure out the best way to one-up that strategy and care enough to. Deck can't possibly catch on in the long run.
This card pushes the entire deck and adds so much to its power level, on top of Shamans also getting a solid turn 1 play with Ignoble Hierarch.
Burning-Tree Emissary turns into a Dark Ritual on legs, Elvish Visionary to go up on cards, Goblin Ruinblaster to shred the opposing manabase, Reclamation Sage, Essence Warden, Burning-Tree Shaman, Wolf-Skull Shaman, Plaguecrafter, etc. all become amplified and the deck gains a sort of velocity many tribal thems can't achieve in modern
There are a ton of creative implementations for the shell with the MH2 prints and I'm excited to see how things shake out
The first rule of trying to have an intelligent dialogue is to never put words in anyone's mouth. You seem to be purposely obtuse here, because nobody could ever gloss over what I read and miss those points entirely. I never said Caverns was bad, I never said Munitions Expert was bad, but yet you insist so, seemingly to derail me from getting to what I want to discuss (metagaming, sideboard strategies, etc.) I've already reported you for trolling so I hope you can stop this little back and forth you seem to have so much fun with and make a more serious comment in the future.
But let me humor you even though you're being abusive in getting these points going back and forth. Let's say you want to get a turn two Stoneforge off the table before a quick Batterskull puts the game out of reach. Or maybe you just see a 1/2 Tarmogoyf that you'd rather not deal with before it gets out of hand. If you want to slant your deck design to have RB mana for Goblins available on turn two as much as possible, but you also want your Experts to stay on parity with other turn two plays that might be tough to match, then why only play 4 Skirk Prospectors? Other than Confidant and Steel Overseer, a sizable number of options in Modern on turn two that are bad for us are going to be X/2s. It's like always trying to make an extra mana in Ponza for a turn two Stone Rain. You wouldn't only play four 1cmc ramp cards in that deck, either.
So if you want to pick a bone with how my manabase is constructed because it doesn't suit your fantasy of having RB available on turn two some XYZ number of times, then you also have to be accountable in what you say and understand that your deck isn't going to facilitate a meaningful interaction with Munitions Expert early on for every XYZ number of times unless you otherwise warp your list to do so. And if that's your entire purpose, you have to then explain why you're justifying all the extra one drops you want to play for this purpose.
"hit your colors" bro just say "Munitions Expert mana" and keep it moving lmao
WHY are you guys beating up on that point? You do realize that if you want to have a turn two Munitions Expert be handy on a consistent basis, you would also have to warp your list to include 7+ one drop Goblins, correct? This is another problem where you can't fix a broken bone with a band-aid. Just trying to improve my mana to be nearly flawless has absolutely 0 payoff if I don't improve my spell base to go along with it so that when we actually get our Munitions Expert going early more often, it's actually for a reason
I've prioritized Field because of this, but I am not saying Cavern isn't useful or that it's a bad card or anything. My only claim is that right now is a safe time to cut it because of the build of control decks. Many are playing proactively and leaning on Force to carry them home, while neglecting to hold up removal and counterspells. Until people get back to their senses and kill the Stoneblade hype, I think that the UW matchup is pretty much free. As potent as it can be to hold back some of our best threats with Leak and Spell Snare, most pilots are simply not letting our turn one Vial get under their interaction anyway, so they tend to just jam and play catch up on the board later.
My point about Burn is not that playing Canopy lands is negligible (I mean you have to be pretty anal retentive to think adding two to the main will skew this matchup, though) but that if we don't have a way to interact then it doesn't matter how much life our manabase is saving us. I think the sideboard is the most important part of dealing with the influx of Burn we are going to see with less Dredge in the format. I've thought about playing a Jinxed Idol where I previously had a Chandra ToD, simply because we can just yeet it to our opponent much more often than vice versa, and it is also a nice insurance measure to being able to trigger Pashalik Mons if nothing else. Pretty hard for decks backpedaling against us and decks racing us to fight that card on top of everything else we do. Just don't have enough data with it.
If you're on the draw, all of those three win conditions are super live against you, and you won't make it to your turn three to stop them. That's how they dodge your Cratermaker and K-Com.
Lastly, I don't like Krenko because typically he's win-more. If your meta has got pillow fort/Martyr, it can be a very strong option to couple with our Sling-Gangs and Pashilik Mons. Otherwise, it tends to eat removal pretty hard for a 4 drop that has no immediate impact unless our opponent is playing from pretty far behind.
Turn two Infect creature/Stoneforge/Devoted Druid etc. all dodge Cratermaker and Kolaghan's Command, so no, they are strictly worse than Abrade for what it's worth. It's meant to slant against aggressive builds while giving you splash hate for Whirza and such. Chandra is meta specific; I know for a fact that the only pilots at my LGS that are going to be tough matchups all play value decks, so I need a critical mass of sticky threats.
FNM:
Side event no.1:
Side event no.2:
Side event no.3:
UW Control is by far the easiest metagame opponent. You have everything that beats them: uncounterable threats via Vial and/or Cavern if you choose to play Cavern, a plan that slants hard against Force of Negation, and plenty of reach and card advantage. UWx Stoneblade is a little bit trickier to play against, but due to its low impact options against us (less removal, and oftentimes they have incentive to avoid sweepers altogether if it suits their plan) they tend to fizzle out when we interact and choose our spots well. I wouldn't overcompensate to prepare for these two, I like one SB Abrade for Stoneblade
Bogles is something you simply can't beat without Warren Weirding. Depending on how large your tournament is and how many you see in the room, you want to pack 0-2 in the board. I audibled one for FNM but chose to play without it in the side events, as I saw plenty more real decks there.
Burn is a struggle, and some of the games can be close, but it is a very winnable matchup without any spice. I think if you were trying to beat Burn specifically while consolidating your options, 1-2 Grim Lavamancer is pretty sweet because it helps vs. Infect and GW Company decks as well. If you want to target burn, you should go with 2-3 Dragon's Claw IMO.
Whirza is seemingly a pretty smooth matchup, but you have to be very weary of their ability to go off with Thopter Foundry. I've slotted in Trashmaster maindeck due to the drop off of graveyard strategies and the uptick of Stoneforge/Urza decks, and it was a pretty reasonable move.
The GWx decks, irrespective of whether they shoehorned Stoneforge in, may or may not have a lot of high impact turn 2 plays. I lost my match because G1 started with T1 Giver of Runes into T2 Devoted into turn 3 Vizier + Ballista and I was a turn off of dealing with both Giver and Druid. I would consider using your flex slots for additional Tarfire copies if you see GW, Burn, and Infect in the room because there are a lot of things to race through in those archetypes, and I feel those are the proactive decks of choice now.
Sun and Moon was miserable because my opponent got off four copies of Timely Reinforcements via the new Chandra that buys things back. Even though it might not seem worthwhile, consider your Chainwhirler for post-boarded games.
After evaluating which choices worked for me and those that didn't, here's my updated recommended list:
4 Munitions Expert
4 Mogg War Marshal
3 Goblin Piledriver
1 Goblin Cratermaker
4 Goblin Matron
4 Goblin Warchief
2 Sling-Gang Lieutenant
1 Pashalik Mons
4 Goblin Ringleader
1 Goblin Trashmaster
1 Tarfire
4 Auntie's Hovel
4 Bloodstained Mire
2 Wooded Foothills
2 Blood Crypt
2 Sunbaked Canyon
4 Field of Ruin
4 Mountain
1 Swamp
2 Icon of Ancestry
2 Damping Sphere
1 Goblin Chainwhirler
1 Earwig Squad
1 Goblin Cratermaker
1 Pashalik Mons
2 Alpine Moon
1 Abrade
4 (Flex Slot)
A few thoughts on where I see this deck design going in the near future:
My notable changes are that I'm not sold on Cavern anymore. The only counterspells that are concerning are Spell Snare and Chalice of the Void, and we can beat those with Vial and Cratermaker respectively. The decks that tend to play from behind by holding up counterspells for information tend to also be our best matchups. Conversely, giving yourself the real estate of a maindeck Swamp is crucial so you don't get Field of Ruined out of games is crucial. Playing a few canopy lands to make up for the few cards that might get countered in a game is a nice trade-off that can carry over to other attrition matchups.
I like Damping Sphere as a way to nix many of our worst combo opponents which go over the top of what we're doing. Against Twiddle Storm, it's extra insurance on top of our Alpine Moons. Against Tron, it's pretty much lights out, especially when backed up by a Chieftain assault.
Some cards that hose us pretty hard are Plague Engineer, Torpor Orb, so it's important to have plenty of ways to deal with those naturally, since you can't rely on Matron to find an out to Orb.
Lastly, as much as Cavern might be obsolete in the grand scheme of what the format might need to be fought with, so too are Thoughtseize and Relic of Progenitus (for now, IMO)
For example, my LGS that I normally frequent has something like 2-3 Infect players, 3-4 UWx Control/Mid, 2-3 Tron, 1-2 Burn, 1-2 GBx, 1-2 Twiddle Storm, another Goblins player, and then the few oddball types sprinkled in with their Mill and Bogles and 8rack and what have you. So I would probably sleeve this sideboard up for my next FNM:
I feel like the 5+ slots being dedicated to Thoughtseize and Relic are just not necessary until a slew of combo decks and graveyard based strategies crop up to make those catch-alls relevant again. The only combo decks you have to worry about (Storm, Infect, etc.) get hosed by Damping Sphere, and if you're dealing with the likes of TitanShift you can just tick up your Alpine Moon count to deal with Field of the Dead and Reclamation Sage
Ran into a GB player in my league play here - LINK
Most of what was mentioned in my other response came to fruition pretty reasonably. I stopped articulating sometime into this footage as it was pretty late lol. I think Jund is probably the toughest GBx opponent now that I've played all of them, the hasty BBE is a tough call to answer in time.
Yeah see the game was spiraling into a situation where I could either throttle my opponent to sticking a timely topdeck and forcing them to have their impact play, or where I could let them mulch through their draws while having interaction. It might have seemed like an all-or-nothing kind of bet but I was really not trying to have them get an extra couple of draws to find a way to break out of their slump. I put them on a lot of ineffective reactionary spells and not a lot of progressive cards like Growth Spiral and whatnot.
The concession was for both of us to end up winded on options and for me to hope that the Remand and Narset activation found me one of the other three Narsets or the other Commandeer. I already knew Abrupt Decay was going to be the kill spell of choice, and wanted to eliminate that from being a problem the rest of the way for Narset no.2 if she were to stick.
I can see where you're coming from and I think it opens a can of worms to try to manipulate a game that now has too many variables to account for when you give yourself an extra card by letting yourself Narset with counter/Consign backup versus just putting your opponent on 'must answer' mode and stressing their responses (like the moment where they needed exactly Fatal Push to not get cards eked out of their grip and that's exactly what they had.) I saw a lot of inherent value in disrupting their cantrips and ability to play on my turn that game and I might probably need to reevaluate the matchup with more data to find out which lines have better %
In this game one, what would you have done differently, if anything?
Pitch Blue vs Sultai Reclamation (5/7/2019) LINK
(As an aside, playing UW Control for the longest and watching Sultai Reclamation not only go under everything I was doing but also out-value me in the process... it felt so, so sweet playing Pitch Blue and flipping the script on them lol)
To beat Jund you have to hedge pretty hard. Take my list from above and replace a Commandeer and Arguel's Blood Fast out of the board for two Ancestral Vision. Replace Unmoored Ego for two cards like Threads of Disloyalty
What they predicate their plan on doing is using cheap discard and tough to kill threats that pan out in their favor once the dust settles. With Thougtseize and the like, both players hate to have to lose a card out of it, but Jund is fine with trading off because they put you in the hot seat right away.
Stealing a Tarmogoyf and blocking their best threats, or stealing Dark Confidant and letting them play the topdeck game while you stock up on gas, those are winning lines. It sucks to fold to their direct damage, but they would be remiss to leave in Bolt post-board as it just costs them a card with little returns. The way you beat the attrition deck is with value. Threads being a 2-for-1 and Vision being a 3-for-1 help tremendously. Relic is also a great tool against GBx: if they plan to eat your creatures with Scooze, you can wittle them out of your GY and deny it any growth to buy yourself many turns. And when Tarmogoyf presents itself as a lategame problem, you can mitigate it for a while depending on how much leverage you can afford yourself.
The matchup is probably one of the more difficult ones since they can just run you over with Ravine if they didn't already resolve one of their many card advantage engines or stalwart threats. They have a lot of critical spells so make sure to be ready to answer a lot of what they do to kill us and hope you can outlast their discard spells. Having multiple Spell Snare is a big premium in getting tempo back against them. If you can Snare their really good 2s and Commandeer their good 3s then youre in a solid position.
Assuming you take my list and cut a Commandeer for AV and Unmoored Ego for Threads, my SB plan would be:
OUT:
IN:
You want to get rid of Commandeer because you're probably never going to be able to consistently cast it in the mid-game post board assuming they have even more discard after the fact. Pierce loses value if they don't draw mono-walkers since theyre so spread around on their diversity of threats. Getting to a point where you can counter what will kill your Notion Theif and Day's Undoing as a follow up is your first goal since it is very unreliable to try to untap with Narset. You want to throttle them on cards before getting ahead on board. Blood Fast into Threads to gain a lot is pretty sweet EV :^)
If your opponent is dead in hand and you activate Lore Broker during their upkeep, they won't draw anything and you'll draw two before pitching one.
Then, the opponent will draw a card for the turn naturally since they haven't done so, and since it wouldn't even be their second card drawn for that turn thanks to Notion Thief.
The key is either to use Thief to get ahead before then killing it to lock the opponent out entirely, and then just beating down with Clique...or just playing someone's odds of never drawing an Instant, and waiting until they draw for the turn to activate Lore Broker if you have Narset and Thief out as well.
I much rather prefer the former to the latter since you can dig through your deck all day unimpeded, save for some kind of Flashback shenanigans. In which case, Ashiok + Relic spells doom for the opponent
Which card is 5cmc with BB in the cost? I think we are fine losing percentages to green stompy as that deck is simply Tier 3 or lower in the modern format. It gets outclassed by too much to be relevant, and one Terminus is enough to send them packing more times than not.
Primeval Titan is the card that I thought inspired Unmoored Ego to begin with... it is highly unlikely to put a cap on it or contain it otherwise imo, especially with Amulet having access to Cavern, which would make any bit of tech like Disdainful Stroke out of the board a moot consideration. Angler gets rolled by Ashiok and bounce spells, while I am packing enough kill spells alongside the double Spell Snare for 'goyfs.
I think the aggressive plan you're probably afraid is overshadowed by the type of deck that is this plan's hard counter. Any deck with Burn / Aether Vial / counterspells / card advantage is going to be a tough ride. Hilariously, the first time I ponied up with this deck in a Friendly League, I played a janky UR Wizards that had 4 Vials in it to play Dark Confidant...
Skeins would be good if Lore Broker had a way to break its symmetry. Otherwise, on its own, it's too low impact compared to Day's Undoing for us to benefit from it. A win-more card by nature as you already have multiple ways to break the game open without it, but when you mulligan down to it, it really forces you to put the opponent up on cards so that you can stay in the game. Not playing the 4th Day's Undoing if that's your jam is another reason to not play Skeins. It makes your mulligans and opening plays worse when you have such a redundancy of group hug type card draw.
I really like Yahenni's Expertise for what this deck is trying to fight. Packs a punch against Dredge since you can sneak an Ashiok under it and activate Ashiok right away. Same with any of our value spells that are just hard to manage while fending off creatures. Getting a walker or value spell under this makes it feel like a Terminus when it works (and the -3/-3 is typically enough to help us beat the decks that we tend to have problems with)
Consign // Oblivion is another card I'm high on. When the game peters out it's a source of discard to put your opponent closer to being locked out by Narset + Loot. If I'm not mistake, due to the split card rule it's technically a 7cmc which can pitch for a Shoal to counter a Karn Liberated.
Last, a card I've been toying with to solve the go-wide matchups is Agony Warp. Helps feed into pitch cards while taming two separate creatures. The returns and defensive tempo of this one are too vast to be ignored in a game one scenario.
I'm toying with an Arguel's Blood Fast in the board as a way to muck up the control/midrange matchup for our opponent if they plan on not playing into our counterspells. Getting it down early and riding the wave of card advantage it provides can certainly help to break parity - as we typically take these matches easily except when we're throttled on land drops.
I cut some of the fat from the deck, like Day's Undoing no.4, Vendilion Clique no.3, Unsubstantiate no.2, etc. Felt a lot of these were holding the deck from funneling through a critical mass of live draws, since we are looking to interact more than just a typical combo deck.
I've also replaced my Deltas with a playset of Flooded Strand. When you represent UW control by running out Island -> Flooded Strand, it helps to beat certain decks who might not want to overextend into the likes of a serious board wipe, Snapcaster plays, or a powerful planeswalker in game one. Accounting for the cheaper removal spells in the 75 means cutting a basic for a Drowned Catacomb. Going to crunch some numbers and see if that can still be serviceable for our spot removal to come into effect while they still matter in the early stages of the game.
The current draft of my list:
2 Vendilion Clique
3 Notion Thief
3 Spell Pierce
2 Spell Snare
2 Fatal Push
2 Remand
1 Unsubstantiate
2 Agony Warp
1 Tyrant's Scorn
3 Day's Undoing
4 Narset, Parter of Veils
4 Mistvein Borderpost
2 Consign // Oblivion
2 Commandeer
4 Disrupting Shoal
1 Commit // Memory
1 Drowned Catacomb
1 Geier Reach Sanitarium
1 Mikokoro, Center of the Sea
4 Flooded Strand
2 Watery Grave
8 Island
1 Fatal Push
1 Arguel's Blood Fast
3 Relic of Progenitus
2 Yahenni's Expertise
2 Unmoored Ego
2 Commandeer
1 Notion Thief
1 Spell Pierce
2 Ashiok, Dream Render
Well, there's not much to be said. It's a combo shell with some disruptive elements of control, so it mulligans a lot worse than typical UW and is considerably worse to Extraction and Meddling Mage effects. The upside of all the redundancy here isn't a payoff as neither Teferi nor Knowledge Pool hold up on their own in a vacuum save for certain matchups. I think it's one of those gimmicks that has a leg to stand on but only until people figure out the best way to one-up that strategy and care enough to. Deck can't possibly catch on in the long run.