Blast Zone intrigues me as far as deck design goes. If it's helpful against the meta, I can see myself playing 25 lands MD 1 SB, to be able to hit our land drops in post board games vs the fair decks, and to yankee swap Field for something more relevant against the aggro/8-rack/misc lists of the world that might have a hard check by how effective it is. Bogles, Elves, Merfolk, and Goblins are the first decks that come to mind that are pretty easy to hedge against based on their average CMC of their most powerful cards. I would say that Humans is probably the one matchup that's relevant to us where hitting them for 2cmc is going to save our hide the most, though I'd argue that we can hedge against them by diversifying our sweeper suite anyway.
It's a very good card, and by virtue of that, it could easily be a trap if we play it for no reason
Is it better than Damping Sphere? That card has been an all-star for me in the sideboard, because it is so disruptive to so many decks while being a bit harder to remove than a creature.
Oh, I don't think one is strictly better than the other in a vacuum, they are both case dependent. I would even argue that Damping Sphere is usually worse for us in matchups where we would want either/or, because we like to have the ability to counter multiple things in a turn and our own Spheres hurt us in doing that from time to time. It is definitely harder to fight through decks that play cheap win-cons/mana ramp or rituals/Silence/Pact of Negation/Echoing Truth/cheap counterspells/etc in some variation when we are fighting through the incremental tax.
I also don't think Lavinia is the end-all/be-all, and it was just a fun try at another bit of 1x tech for learning purposes, but you should definitely be more mindful than to think one card is more useful than another when making your 75 count. It's all about consolidating maindeck-to-sideboard slot ratios and creating the least amount of dead spaces in your configuration spread, while mustering the chance to fight the opponent with the most potent answers you can manage in doing so.
picked up the colonnades I needed to finish my set on the weekend, so decided to play UW control for a bit. Can I get some advice on the amulet titan matchup?
A long-winded, unedited blurb of mine from the Competitive UWx Facebook Group:
Side out your Remand if you have any in the main, they are terrible against Pacts and Amulets, which are the two strongest enablers of the deck against us. Obviously side out Spell Snare if you have them as they don't produce results against anything but Negate
Proactively use your Field of Ruin to prevent them from interacting with Pact of Negation before they can put it on the stack if you have a way to bury them before it's a live play. Obviously if they are a newer player and are tempted to Pact a high impact play like Detention Sphere on multiple Amulets early on, you can try to hedge for these scenarios with 1x Ghost Quarter main being sandbagged in your hand for Karoo lands / blue sources (although most people have moved on to now playing with only 4x Field as their LD) Otherwise, if you are in the business of tempo-ing the opponent, don't forget to Cryptic their Coalition Relic if they've resolved Pact, as it can single handedly help to pay for UU. The matchup between UWx and Amulet has evolved quite a bit that the collective intel regarding free wins against Pact of Negation is overall coming to a slow halt. I don't think you should angle the opponent on this line but be aware of when you can get a free win amirite
Be aware of their manabase, look at the trending decks and count the aggregate number of basics/Caverns/Tolaria West. This lets you know whether it's a +EV play to Path, Field, or Surgical any particular target depending on how much mana you are afforded at various stages of the game. I've seen lists running 3-4 Forests main so that's probably a safe bet
Don't be afraid to Path an enabler like Sakura Tribe Scout (unless they have Amulet(s) going and you need outs to Titan,) as you don't want them to leverage you with an activation in response to Field by having a Karoo land bounce the Field target They tend to make important plays with only half their deck, so if you can throttle their action by countering/D Sphere-ing their Amulets, removing their creatures, and casting Surgical targeting T West, you can really bottleneck them on their potential line of plays down to a paltry few options in Titan and Hive Mind, which are easy to topple one at a time
I have hedged with 1x Disallow to prevent Primeval Titan + Cavern of Souls from snowballing into an unwinnable game state so make sure to have some kind of plan for their big turn. On top of this I have cut Mana Leak from the 75 to play an extra Negate main because of how there is almost no return for it against big mana and combo decks
Sometimes, we just lose to set play. They have a turn 2 nut draw, we either have 1CC removal and somehow stabilize or cry and move on to the next game
If you can make them stumble early on, be generous (as previously mentioned) in how you use Path, yet mindful: as their sideboard plan involves Tireless Tracker to gain card advantage. Don't get caught lacking removal against it because they tend to draw 5-10+ cards when it goes unchecked and it can just break the game open
If you have to fight multiple game enders, let Cryptic + Path/Condemn be designated to fight Titan, and counters + Snapcaster to fight Hive Mind. We are always going to be catching up to their tempo, making the most mana efficient play is critical to staying alive.
You want to invest all your counterspells in succession for Hive Mind to A) not die on the spot to Summoner's Pact if it resolves and B) to hope that if we cannot prevent it from sticking that they had to fight with enough Pact of Negations that they cannot force multiple copies of it on us. When they're piling up lands with a Cavern + Titan, you want to force Pact to keep Cryptic from buying yourself another turn while holding up the cheapest removal possible.
In these cases, the opponent sees that we are spending lots of mana to barely stay alive, and they can get greedy and want to search for Tolaria West + Karoo land to keep the threats coming instead of saving Pact for when they have lethal on the spot. Letting Cryptic take a hit so that the removal resolves and we have to worry about getting opened up a little less is the best EV Overall the simplest way to approach this matchup is to assume the position of the Amulet player, and know that they either want to blitz us with a fast Amulet draw by turn 3-4 or cheese us out with Hive Mind + Pacts in turns 4+ or if plan A backfires, and try to mitigate those plans in the aforementioned order by the appropriate stage of the match.
Lastly, when all else fails in the long game, you can fall back on Logic Knot and Snapcaster combined to stop Summoner's Pact copies from Hive mind, as their Hive Mind cannot copy Logic Knot for 0UU and use it to copy anything but the Pacts (if they are silly enough to go that route) One Logic Knot and one Snapcaster should probably be enough insurance to prevent such a line, considering there is Surgical Extraction as well to fight the green pact
Just know that they have a big leg up on us in tempo so try to not think that the games will be relatively fair - we need a bit of luck for these games to pan out in our favor. I think most of us would be remiss to brush this matchup off as we are pretty much a underdog against Amulet
Furthermore, I'd add that after jamming about 10 or so leagues (after getting tired of my work schedule not letting me commit to paper MTG and pushing me to switch to MTGO,) I've finally 5-0ed a Friendly league (gotta get to comps one day when my budget allows lol) and my newest version has eschewed Stony Silence for Disenchant and one Lavinia, Azorius Renegade. It makes you a little bit softer to the likes of Tireless Tracker and Walking Ballista when facing off against the Amulet decks, but I figure they try to win by siding into Hornet Queen if they aren't playing it maindeck. The upside is that Lavinia blanks so much of what they try to accomplish while modestly getting in for 2dmg per turn. She's been really good for me in other spots as well, like Whir Prison and Grishoalbrand for example
I don't look at hedging with this deck in terms of needing to focus on Tier 0 then Tier 1 then Tier 1.5 and so on, in terms of what to prioritize beating. I look to the decks that have at least 3-5% metagame representation, and then prioritize which of these put us in the most pressure binding situations possible so that I don't lose for free. I make sure not to put myself soft to Burn, Amulet Titan, Spirits etc. at the cost of maybe tweaking the deck for the top 5 archetypes out there. The only exception to this rule is maindeck Surgical, which helps in spades with all but a few of the top 10 decks in the format. That said, 4x Serum Visions and 2x Search for Azcanta really help to weed past the singletons in the main that might be bricks in certain corner cases.
I'm on Disallow to have insurance against Amulet, Storm, Modular/Hangarback Walker trigger, Dredge (single use), etc. and to fight Selfless Spirit activations when trying to clear the board with Supreme Verdict. Basically this card applies in places where Logic Knot might whiff or otherwise be dead to us, and with all the focus on graveyard hate, Logic Knot ends up being better served as a much more reliable three drop than a risky two drop which might not even pan out to our favor.
I'm not on Angels because I feel that 4x Serum and 1-2x Search (based on how you sideboard) is reliable at finding your two card punch of Snapcaster + Timely in matchups like Burn where your life total is a premium. Otherwise, I feel that Cataclysmic Gearhulk puts in a great amount of work when reach is not involved, and consolidates as an out to the Lantern/Prison style decks of the format as well.
Based on the dozen or so iterations of UW I have crafted to play in solo matches and leagues the past week, this one has the most sound and consistent gameplay. I need some suggestions here considering how I'm new to the modern metagame of late with limited play time
I think Karn does everything right in the midrange and control matchups, except produce a threatening body. If we had more incidental artifacts to fuel it, I would be 100% on board. If you can manage to jam multiple copies of Treasure Map, it seems solid.
The current iteration of GB Mid is reminiscent of Jund when Bloodbraid was printed. It was established early that the archetype had the tools to be the best deck of the format, and eventually people tried to strike its Achilles tendon. First with a low to the ground Boros matchup that would hope to steal games before the midrange deck got enough value to stabilize, then Goblin Ruinblaster and Spreading Seas to gimp the midrange deck's tempo, then finally playing two fetches + mana dork + Knight of the Reliquary, hoping to blank the first effective removal spell from Jund by searching up a Sejiri Steppe with Knight and then running away with the game afterward via Ranger of Eos and decently threatening bodies.
The Jund deck responded by gaining a new Achilles at every turn. Fighting off aggro with 1 CMC removal, playing more fetches and Sedraxis Specter to punish Blightning and Spreading Seas, then utilizing the likes of Deathmark, strong manlands, and Garruk Wildspeaker to fight the Naya decks that were loaded with plenty of ways to blank removal, so that there wouldn't be a big fuss to fire off multiple kill spells in a turn.
If we're going to adjust to all the new problems the format throws at us in similar fashion, we need to worry more about how to solve the matchups we face and less about how to do the most powerful thing in a vacuum (ramp into Carnage Tyrant, explore a bunch, etc.) Mono Red has come knocking on the door, and UWr Control has presented itself as a serious opponent, and now finally there are Phoenix/Drake decks that can just steal games if we don't kill Electromancer on time. Tocatli Honor Guard and The Immortal Sun have more than enough game to put us on very few outs, if we're not hedging for those.
Prior to the Boros Midrange decks evolving, I thought Thrashing Brontodon was actually just too inefficient against the format's best targets: History of Benalia, Search for Azcanta, The Eldest Reborn, and Experimental Frenzy.
It felt like you were either giving red the upper hand by letting them play around Brontodon with Chainwhirler, although it wasn't too far off from just being an excellent creature against them. The rest of those archetypes just kind of danced around Brontodon, and now I can see it actually proving worthwhile because of The Immortal Sun and even oddball options like the Two-Card Monte deck. To work around Disinformation Campaign as well, Reclamation Sage would probably be more effective tech, but you would need to have plenty of removal for Honor Guard to not shoot yourself in the foot by playing Sage.
The other evolution needed would be to address the mirror. You can either play into the crapshoot element of hoping to see your manadorks survive long enough to chain Tyrants together, or you could try to punish the curve of the opponent with additional discard elements and go under their endgame with sweepers to throw off their middling options. If not with a card like Angrath, the Flame-Chained, then at least with something that can help you trade one for one against the likes of Vivien Reid
I've been high on Deathgorge Scavenger to help the Phoenix matchup, since it's also just a threatening clock against control that stymies Search from going off soon in the round.
I think every GBx pilot would be remiss to disregard what the opponents are doing now that there is a target on the deck. Adjusting is better than just going even higher over the top with our threats
Cast Downs were a hedge against Tocatli Honor Guard. I wasn't too high on my 75 but only because I wish I had some extra insurance for the mirror (1 more Findbroker and 1 more Eldest Reborn) without sacrificing too much against the more aggressive archetypes
Round 1: GB Mid
Pretty stock. He did GB things, I drew very little action and lost game 1 to multiple walkers
SB Plan:
OUT:
2 Kitesail Freebooter
2 Cast Down
2 Assassin's Trophy
IN:
1 The Eldest Reborn
2 Ritual of Soot
1 Deathgorge Scavenger
1 Find // Finality
1 Vraska's Contempt
Wanted to just pinch him off of having extra creatures aside from Carnage Tyrant, and then edict it. I went over the top of my opponent in game 2 with walkers and he scooped before I could ultimate a Vraska
In game three I got to steal the opponent's Carny T with an Eldest Reborn, and from there I was able to chew up a few of his value spells with Angrath as he wasn't able to curve out properly.
Round 1: 2-1 Me
Rounds 2 and 3 were both against GB mid as well. In game one of round two, I was able to goad my opponent into swinging into me and leaving no blockers behind, because I was almost dead. I swung into his Vivien and killed it to pump my lone Deathgorge out of Finality range, which I cast to nuke his side of the board. He untaps with 9 lands, plays a 10th, rattles off Chupacabra for my Deathgorge and then a Carny T. I have 8 lands in play before my turn, and my grip is Chupes and The Eldest Reborn... rip a Greenseeker lol. In round 3 I fought to a game three where I just drew much less action than the opponent and couldn't keep up on board after stonewalling for the early and mid game.
Round 2: 2-0 Opponent
Round 3: 2-1 Opponent
Round 4 vs Burn
He leads game one with Ghitu Lavarunner, I play a Memorial and pass, he fires off two Wizard's Lightnings at my face and crashes for 2 more lol. I take my 2nd turn being down 12 to 20. Eventually he peters out after fighting through two copies of Deathgorge and a Findbroker for a 3rd. Frenzy comes down but before he can untap with it I rip a Vraska to take it out and put the game away
OUT:
2 Plaguecrafter
1 Arguel's Blood Fast
1 The Eldest Reborn
1 Find // Finality
IN:
1 Kitesail Freebooter
2 Moment of Craving
1 Deathgorge Scavenger
1 Vraska's Contempt
My opponent was stuck on 3 lands for a few turns and I simply cushioned myself so much that a few Risk Factors ended up being dead against me while I just swung in for 4-5 damage a turn
Round 4: 2-0 Me
Round 5 vs Bant Turns
Game one was decidedly won by Angrath. It just chewed into my opponent's reactive plays and left him needing to tuck it with Teferi, where I could just kill Teferi off with a lonely Dryad Greenseeker. Eventually he was dead on board and hand and topdecked Search for Azcanta before I responded with a Vivien -3 and a Findbroker to supply myself with planeswalker insurance
Game two was decided by early Duress -> Duress. I pinned the opponent into trying to set up Search for Azcanta, only to put him off a few turns with Deathgorge and holding removal. Opponent eventually lands Teferi and when he isn't on an extra turn, he passes with one card up. I have a flipped Treasure Map and after peeking with Greenseeker I see a Spyglass, then crack a Treasure to grab it and cast it. Last card in hand was Negate, which made me need something good to stay alive. Opponent draws dead and three cards from the top I rip Findbroker to buy back the Spyglass and cast it.
At this point, the opponent stonewalls me with one Carny T after the other. My first Plaguecrafter chews away the paralyzed Teferi, and during my opponent's EOT I use Memorial to get it back and take out one of two Tyrants left. Opponent draws dead for a few turns while a topdeck Vivien finds me a Findbroker for another Eldest Reborn. On the backfoot and facing lethal the next turn my opponent topdecks a Settle that gets discarded to Eldest Reborn, and I was able to cap off the game.
Round 5: 2-0 Me
Total record: 3-2 in Matches, 7-3 in Games (11th/30)
The GBx mirror feels a lot like the Modern Tron mirror. You can tailor your 75 to crimp the opponent on plays, or you can just blast at them with one haymaker after the next while hoping for a smoother curve and play sequence than the opponent.
Although Carnage Tyrant has cushion against me if the opponent has creatures to spam the board with, I felt comfortable trying to beat it rather than trying to win the Draw-Your-Endgame-First crapshoot myself.
I also have noticed that the version I play has a lot more gas against UWx due to the multiple discard spells (and Find // Finality to fish up Freebooters that were previously destroyed.) I prefer to gameplan in a similar fashion, and was thinking of some goofy tech for Carnage Tyrant. Detection Tower, Pelakka Wurm, and Star of Extinction come to mind. Star seems good if you're on the Boros Mid that plays The Immortal Sun to generate value against control and GB. Punishing the draws where the opponent just jams all their action has got to be a matchup breaker for sure.
In my testing before this event (with a 3x Carny T/3x Vivien type list) I found that one or two Pelakkas in the side made the opponent's sequence pretty bad on average. They have to rip the right removal for the right targets (Contempt for Wurm and Trophy for Vivien) and if they just overload on both types of removal, then your own Tyrant ends up having very little to oppose it. I really like having 3 Findbrokers and 3 The Eldest Reborn to win the board-clog cheese-fest, so having 3 Tyrant, 3 Vivien, 3 Find // Finality, 3 Findbroker, 3 The Eldest Reborn, 1 Pelakka Wurm, 2 Detection Tower seems to be like the ideal for the mirror. It's just a matter of finding the room for all this stuff lol
As much as the deck can have a well-rounded approach to each matchup by diversifying stock in its creature selection, Mausoleum Secrets is no Traverse the Ulvenwald. If it could grab Carnage Tyrant, Kraul Harpooner, Thrashing Brontodon, Wildgrowth Walker, and Deathgorge Scavenger, then it could actually be a toolbox card. As it stands, the deck also needs additional ways to mill itself at a healthy enough clip to support the use of Mausolem Secrets on time. I just don't see it lining up well in a format that leaves no room for a turn to be wasted.
You should go wreck shop at every PPTQ, RPTQ, PTQ, 5K, GP and beyond with your deck since you think it's this sort of level 0 archetype with an unbeatable gameplan lol. Delusions of grandeur...
Also, not once did I say UB lacked threat density. I said it lacked the options to keep up when it is on the backfoot. With UW, Teferi can just draw you two cards a turn for 5 mana once. For your little Campaign interactions you need to be spending at least 3 times as much mana to keep your defenses up for the time it takes to whittle away your opponent's resources, and still yet you have to answer planeswalkers with something else entirely. The card isn't as backbreaking as you think it is, and it's honestly not conducive to your own growth as a player to let a lack of scientific data decide what a good strategy is
Wow! Thank you so much. I was starting to intuit what you were saying in my gameplay after adding Vraska, Golgari Queen. Deafening Clarion and the other boardwipes have been ruining my day. Often during my games I notice I'm just drawing into a bunch of lands. It's just too punishing to play a deck full of creatures that die to all of the most common boardwipes.
I'm trying to decide if splashing blue for some negate/Chemister's Insight might make this deck worth playing (help me beat control.) Otherwise I'm leaning toward going U/B/g control. It just seems like the counterspells, boardwipes and card draw in the current meta overpower this midrange deck.
What are your opinions? Is U/B control better than this G/B midrange archetype? Or would adding blue/another color or cards make this deck more competitive?
Chemister's Insight has a very distinct push and pull conflict with a lot of GB's common lines. You don't want to net value from a draw spell at 4CMC since you are sandbagging your turn instead of playing proactively. You would rather develop tempo by adding to your board since you are supposed to be the instigator in long games, not the detractor. If somehow you can find the blue splash to be profitable, I would suggest a build that maintains synergy with Muldrotha as a one or two of. It's very low impact the turn it's played, but your chances of winning scale tremendously for every turn past the 2nd one that it's out.
UB control simply doesn't have the tools to keep churning out answers and dealing with the opponent. The Level one of this standard meta is GBx Mid and UWx Teferi Control.
I don't think adding blue to GB helps it win, since most of why it is so good is its versatility in being able to attrition and outlast aggro with its consistent manabase. Adding a bunch of shocks and checklands on top of the GB suite is pressing, and it doesn't improve your percentages quite that much. If you're asking my opinion, I would recommend my list in post #42 lol
Vraska, Golgari Queen is actually unplayable. There isn't much you can feed into her +2 without being considered a net loss of tempo and/or resources. She would be great in a deck that incidentally makes tokens, or something that can always recur free cards eg. Emeria, the Sky Ruin, but there's nothing in a similar vein legal in Standard. Playing a card like Reassembling Skeleton to net some value is a huge tempo loss considering how that card lines up poorly against the format on its own. Anyone advocating that she's fine to just play, tick up without feeding into her plus, and then trying to ultimate, is someone who doesn't have enough data to understand how utterly dead that line of play is.
The best of GBx variants are going to scale well against Control, which means playing less Explore doofuses and more utility threats. It's just wrong to not be playing at least 3 Deathgorge Scavenger in your 75, because of how versatile and effective it is in medium to long games. Their plan is to usually just allow your inconsequential creatures get in the red zone for a while, set up Deafening Clarion + Ionize, then turn a corner. In order to fight that, you need cards that make up for the net loss and still put enough pressure on control to be dealt with immediately.
The logic behind why a build with many Explore creatures can be such a good way to net value is because you can cash in with them by either drawing lands to replace them or by milling your dead draws (Spot removal vs Control or expensive value spells vs aggro) in game ones. However, after you board out your dead cards, is your deck REALLY well designed if you actually want to mill through some of your cards? Mostly everything needs to be high-impact, and so if you only have a few specific cards you want to draw into and are milling through dead draws on the regular, your explore creatures pulling their weight means your deck sucks when they can't always draw lands, because of the lack of efficacy from the cards you build around them with.
Conversely, if your deck is lined with all effective plays, then your ability to run out Explore creatures very rarely benefits you because they are just poorly scaled vanilla beaters compared to the Steel Leaf decks that have value spells for the late game in the board. Since control wants to stiff-arm your weaker creatures, then Cleansing Nova or Settle your Carnage Tyrant(s), you are only playing into their plan by shoving fodder onto the board for them to wipe. Avoiding this strategy is similar to when UW control in the last standard decided they didn't necessarily need to play Torrential Gearhulk, since Teferi and/or Approach were enough to win games, so if they eschewed Torrential from their main it would likely blank opposing Abrades, Disintegrations, etc. The creatures I line my main with all fulfill the same plan of trying to avoid needing to absolutely flood the board to pressure lethal damage, only to help the opponent play around your threat density accordingly.
Jadelight Ranger is the exception to this rule of course, as she can be very effective on her own. There are just too many good plays in the 1 to 2 CMC slots for the deck to go in that direction and reliably maintain some form of net value in the long term without resolving multiple 5+ CMC bombastic endgame spells.
I have been crushing recently with this 75 recently, and built it after determining that certain UWx Control players try to milk the round clock by securing a game one win with Expansion // Explosion. It's easy to just get scumbagged into trying to win with so many dead draws reserved for aggro matchups, like the Dead Weights and Chupacabras of the world. Maindeck Angrath helps to correct those scenarios. He is also just generally good at chewing into opposing resources at a steady and speedy clip, as most mirrors usually maintain a ratio of one impact spell per turn, barring multiple Duress in one game. Therefore, their grip is usually stocked for Angrath to melt if they can't answer him immediately.
With a critical threat density from the spread of three different planeswalkers (Legendary spam can be very punishing) and double Eldest Reborn, your plan actually puts a clock on the control and mirror matches, so you can just freely jam spell after spell and keep the opponent on the backfoot, rather than durdle around playing through Nova Cleansing/Settle the Wreckage like generic Golgari midrange
This ensures that you can constantly pressure the opponent, or use Find // Finality and Arguel's Blood Fast for sweet, cheap value, or use Spyglass for very important information. It feels like you have so many ways to dunk on their wincons (and Spyglass/Scavenger to mitigate Search for Azcanta) that you don't need Trophy and V Contempt, which by their reactive nature help the opponent gas their hands up with counterspells before sticking a walker.
While I normally wouldn't take one matchup far more seriously than the others, I feel UWx is the only contender (because of the efficacy of Chemister's Insight) that puts us in check before the new Standard meta is completely solved for now. While I feel this deck has a lot of pull in the new meta because it's easy to tune for the mirror (with the above 75 you can sub out your Jadelights against the baseline GB decks and play Ritual of Soots & Find // Finality for attrition, and use your Scavengers to whittle away their long game) the one thing that is scary is getting clocked game one vs control or just a fast Ghalta deck, ergo the Price of Fame SB tech (which is somehow also relevant versus Angels.) While I'm still not keen on playing double Vraska's Contempt main, it seems like a necessary evil against aforementioned Ghalta/Angels matchups, while still being a good card across the board. Would like a smoother curve, but I'll settle for this one for now.
@VoodooKick, looking like a strong build from the get-go. Batterskull is a spicy one, have you run it in Rock decks before? Our sideboards diverge a lot more than our main decks do, but that’s something that will probably take longer to “solve” (and be more meta-dependent, of course).
I have been off the archetype for a few months so I figured the new meta would be more kind to Batterskull. In hindsight it was a mediocre pick lol but I think it could do work if the format changed a bit. Reading Brightmist's posts, watching a few leagues and seeing some 5-0 lists helped to shape the revised version of my previous list:
A few of my match notes from today (vs Elves for 3 sets 2-1, vs Goryo 2-0, vs Hardened Scales 1-1)
I can't say that Creeping Corrosion is a necessary evil, but I feel it's too good against some of the more punishing decks to not deserve its place
Goyf was the difference, it's really hard to put a game away attacking in small bunches
Nihil Spellbomb is exceptional because the most common way to beat Rock is through abusing unfair strategies that cheat on mana (mostly Goryo, Vengevine, Hollow One, KCI, and Storm try to do this) Spellbomb is an ace against every single one of those decks
Languish/Flaying Tendrils/EE felt very nice against Elves. Don't think the matchup can be won with any fewer than 3 sweepers
Kitchen Finks feels like the better option over Col. Brutality, but I have no data to back it up. It's just that the body living through a block step and giving you that much more of a cushion feels so important over just the single use of Disfigure/drain. Only because coupled with Liliana the Last Hope this feels to be the better angle to outlast aggro. Need more testing to back it up
Flaying Tendrils was insane against Hardened Scales. One of the scariest things about the deck is their ability to weasel around removal with Welding Jar and it feels by the time you nix their threats, the next wave is just too much to deal with. Tendrils on a Hangarback to cinch their board feels like the way to go. I might shift to 2x Tendrils if Languish doesn't pull its weight. My opponent tried to sac it to his land in response and the tokens just ended up dying lol
Deck is super fun to jam. Felt good playing the Tim Duncan of Modern archetypes lol. I'm not a fan of this high-octane crapshoot where you just try to do your plan A faster than the other guy and then center your board around hate. Finally feels like you can play a deck where punishing the opponent's mistakes and choosing the best lines rewards you the most, without the drawback of playing control and drawing so many dead cards in compromising situations
I don't have the money to build the deck on paper and MTGO but if anyone is willing to do gauntlet testing on Cockatrice feel free to get in touch
Anytime a new presence is about to be felt, the fun police always come out and impose their will. The decks that are meant to leverage the meta with their high power level and the ones asking everyone the most questions. You dont want to next level them with the wrong answers so you have to anticipate that beating them involves preparing for the decks that will prey on you to enforce a proper circle of life. For this reason I choose cards like Batterskull and Fulminator: cards that will gain % vs Tron and Control so that a gatekeeper of the format doesnt push me out of praying on squishier decks
I think that by playing enough tech to fight KCI, I can go through with the GB plan to shore up the aforementioned Tron matchup. It is very crucial imo, because that's what's stopped this archetype from being a known quantity in the format years past. 4 Trophy/4 Field of Ruin/3 Fulminator Mage/1 Damping Sphere/2 Surgical/1 Extirpate. I feel that is a critical number of land hate that can be assimilated into a 75 without sacrificing too many game one scenarios against faster, more troublesome decks. Has me excited to play cards that will bring a much needed parity to Modern!
Ravenous Chupacabra is not playable in this deck. If you want to kill a creature there are much better things on curve for the job, like Vraska's Contempt. If you want value versus aggro, play low-curve removal in bunches. The deck plays like Junk, it doesn't really need Ravenous unless you have G/b midrange in your sights, then I can understand 1 or 2 in the board. Even then it's loose
It's a very good card, and by virtue of that, it could easily be a trap if we play it for no reason
Oh, I don't think one is strictly better than the other in a vacuum, they are both case dependent. I would even argue that Damping Sphere is usually worse for us in matchups where we would want either/or, because we like to have the ability to counter multiple things in a turn and our own Spheres hurt us in doing that from time to time. It is definitely harder to fight through decks that play cheap win-cons/mana ramp or rituals/Silence/Pact of Negation/Echoing Truth/cheap counterspells/etc in some variation when we are fighting through the incremental tax.
I also don't think Lavinia is the end-all/be-all, and it was just a fun try at another bit of 1x tech for learning purposes, but you should definitely be more mindful than to think one card is more useful than another when making your 75 count. It's all about consolidating maindeck-to-sideboard slot ratios and creating the least amount of dead spaces in your configuration spread, while mustering the chance to fight the opponent with the most potent answers you can manage in doing so.
A long-winded, unedited blurb of mine from the Competitive UWx Facebook Group:
Proactively use your Field of Ruin to prevent them from interacting with Pact of Negation before they can put it on the stack if you have a way to bury them before it's a live play. Obviously if they are a newer player and are tempted to Pact a high impact play like Detention Sphere on multiple Amulets early on, you can try to hedge for these scenarios with 1x Ghost Quarter main being sandbagged in your hand for Karoo lands / blue sources (although most people have moved on to now playing with only 4x Field as their LD) Otherwise, if you are in the business of tempo-ing the opponent, don't forget to Cryptic their Coalition Relic if they've resolved Pact, as it can single handedly help to pay for UU. The matchup between UWx and Amulet has evolved quite a bit that the collective intel regarding free wins against Pact of Negation is overall coming to a slow halt. I don't think you should angle the opponent on this line but be aware of when you can get a free win amirite
Be aware of their manabase, look at the trending decks and count the aggregate number of basics/Caverns/Tolaria West. This lets you know whether it's a +EV play to Path, Field, or Surgical any particular target depending on how much mana you are afforded at various stages of the game. I've seen lists running 3-4 Forests main so that's probably a safe bet
Don't be afraid to Path an enabler like Sakura Tribe Scout (unless they have Amulet(s) going and you need outs to Titan,) as you don't want them to leverage you with an activation in response to Field by having a Karoo land bounce the Field target They tend to make important plays with only half their deck, so if you can throttle their action by countering/D Sphere-ing their Amulets, removing their creatures, and casting Surgical targeting T West, you can really bottleneck them on their potential line of plays down to a paltry few options in Titan and Hive Mind, which are easy to topple one at a time
I have hedged with 1x Disallow to prevent Primeval Titan + Cavern of Souls from snowballing into an unwinnable game state so make sure to have some kind of plan for their big turn. On top of this I have cut Mana Leak from the 75 to play an extra Negate main because of how there is almost no return for it against big mana and combo decks
If you can make them stumble early on, be generous (as previously mentioned) in how you use Path, yet mindful: as their sideboard plan involves Tireless Tracker to gain card advantage. Don't get caught lacking removal against it because they tend to draw 5-10+ cards when it goes unchecked and it can just break the game open
If you have to fight multiple game enders, let Cryptic + Path/Condemn be designated to fight Titan, and counters + Snapcaster to fight Hive Mind. We are always going to be catching up to their tempo, making the most mana efficient play is critical to staying alive.
You want to invest all your counterspells in succession for Hive Mind to A) not die on the spot to Summoner's Pact if it resolves and B) to hope that if we cannot prevent it from sticking that they had to fight with enough Pact of Negations that they cannot force multiple copies of it on us. When they're piling up lands with a Cavern + Titan, you want to force Pact to keep Cryptic from buying yourself another turn while holding up the cheapest removal possible.
In these cases, the opponent sees that we are spending lots of mana to barely stay alive, and they can get greedy and want to search for Tolaria West + Karoo land to keep the threats coming instead of saving Pact for when they have lethal on the spot. Letting Cryptic take a hit so that the removal resolves and we have to worry about getting opened up a little less is the best EV Overall the simplest way to approach this matchup is to assume the position of the Amulet player, and know that they either want to blitz us with a fast Amulet draw by turn 3-4 or cheese us out with Hive Mind + Pacts in turns 4+ or if plan A backfires, and try to mitigate those plans in the aforementioned order by the appropriate stage of the match.
Lastly, when all else fails in the long game, you can fall back on Logic Knot and Snapcaster combined to stop Summoner's Pact copies from Hive mind, as their Hive Mind cannot copy Logic Knot for 0UU and use it to copy anything but the Pacts (if they are silly enough to go that route) One Logic Knot and one Snapcaster should probably be enough insurance to prevent such a line, considering there is Surgical Extraction as well to fight the green pact
Just know that they have a big leg up on us in tempo so try to not think that the games will be relatively fair - we need a bit of luck for these games to pan out in our favor. I think most of us would be remiss to brush this matchup off as we are pretty much a underdog against Amulet
Furthermore, I'd add that after jamming about 10 or so leagues (after getting tired of my work schedule not letting me commit to paper MTG and pushing me to switch to MTGO,) I've finally 5-0ed a Friendly league (gotta get to comps one day when my budget allows lol) and my newest version has eschewed Stony Silence for Disenchant and one Lavinia, Azorius Renegade. It makes you a little bit softer to the likes of Tireless Tracker and Walking Ballista when facing off against the Amulet decks, but I figure they try to win by siding into Hornet Queen if they aren't playing it maindeck. The upside is that Lavinia blanks so much of what they try to accomplish while modestly getting in for 2dmg per turn. She's been really good for me in other spots as well, like Whir Prison and Grishoalbrand for example
My list and the reasoning behind the card choices:
1 Vendilion Clique
4 Serum Visions
2 Search for Azcanta
4 Path to Exile
1 Condemn
1 Surgical Extraction
1 Spell Snare
2 Negate
1 Remand
1 Disallow
1 Timely Reinforcements
2 Detention Sphere
3 Cryptic Command
3 Supreme Verdict
1 Gideon of the Trials
2 Jace, the Mind Sculptor
2 Teferi, Hero of Dominaria
4 Field of Ruin
1 Ghost Quarter
4 Flooded Strand
2 Hallowed Fountain
2 Glacial Fortress
6 Island
2 Plains
2 Rest in Peace
2 Stony Silence
2 Dispel
1 Negate
1 Disdainful Stroke
1 Ceremonious Rejection
1 Vendilion Clique
1 Timely Reinforcements
2 Celestial Purge
2 Cataclysmic Gearhulk
I don't look at hedging with this deck in terms of needing to focus on Tier 0 then Tier 1 then Tier 1.5 and so on, in terms of what to prioritize beating. I look to the decks that have at least 3-5% metagame representation, and then prioritize which of these put us in the most pressure binding situations possible so that I don't lose for free. I make sure not to put myself soft to Burn, Amulet Titan, Spirits etc. at the cost of maybe tweaking the deck for the top 5 archetypes out there. The only exception to this rule is maindeck Surgical, which helps in spades with all but a few of the top 10 decks in the format. That said, 4x Serum Visions and 2x Search for Azcanta really help to weed past the singletons in the main that might be bricks in certain corner cases.
I'm on Disallow to have insurance against Amulet, Storm, Modular/Hangarback Walker trigger, Dredge (single use), etc. and to fight Selfless Spirit activations when trying to clear the board with Supreme Verdict. Basically this card applies in places where Logic Knot might whiff or otherwise be dead to us, and with all the focus on graveyard hate, Logic Knot ends up being better served as a much more reliable three drop than a risky two drop which might not even pan out to our favor.
I'm not on Angels because I feel that 4x Serum and 1-2x Search (based on how you sideboard) is reliable at finding your two card punch of Snapcaster + Timely in matchups like Burn where your life total is a premium. Otherwise, I feel that Cataclysmic Gearhulk puts in a great amount of work when reach is not involved, and consolidates as an out to the Lantern/Prison style decks of the format as well.
Based on the dozen or so iterations of UW I have crafted to play in solo matches and leagues the past week, this one has the most sound and consistent gameplay. I need some suggestions here considering how I'm new to the modern metagame of late with limited play time
The Jund deck responded by gaining a new Achilles at every turn. Fighting off aggro with 1 CMC removal, playing more fetches and Sedraxis Specter to punish Blightning and Spreading Seas, then utilizing the likes of Deathmark, strong manlands, and Garruk Wildspeaker to fight the Naya decks that were loaded with plenty of ways to blank removal, so that there wouldn't be a big fuss to fire off multiple kill spells in a turn.
If we're going to adjust to all the new problems the format throws at us in similar fashion, we need to worry more about how to solve the matchups we face and less about how to do the most powerful thing in a vacuum (ramp into Carnage Tyrant, explore a bunch, etc.) Mono Red has come knocking on the door, and UWr Control has presented itself as a serious opponent, and now finally there are Phoenix/Drake decks that can just steal games if we don't kill Electromancer on time. Tocatli Honor Guard and The Immortal Sun have more than enough game to put us on very few outs, if we're not hedging for those.
Prior to the Boros Midrange decks evolving, I thought Thrashing Brontodon was actually just too inefficient against the format's best targets: History of Benalia, Search for Azcanta, The Eldest Reborn, and Experimental Frenzy.
It felt like you were either giving red the upper hand by letting them play around Brontodon with Chainwhirler, although it wasn't too far off from just being an excellent creature against them. The rest of those archetypes just kind of danced around Brontodon, and now I can see it actually proving worthwhile because of The Immortal Sun and even oddball options like the Two-Card Monte deck. To work around Disinformation Campaign as well, Reclamation Sage would probably be more effective tech, but you would need to have plenty of removal for Honor Guard to not shoot yourself in the foot by playing Sage.
The other evolution needed would be to address the mirror. You can either play into the crapshoot element of hoping to see your manadorks survive long enough to chain Tyrants together, or you could try to punish the curve of the opponent with additional discard elements and go under their endgame with sweepers to throw off their middling options. If not with a card like Angrath, the Flame-Chained, then at least with something that can help you trade one for one against the likes of Vivien Reid
I've been high on Deathgorge Scavenger to help the Phoenix matchup, since it's also just a threatening clock against control that stymies Search from going off soon in the round.
I think every GBx pilot would be remiss to disregard what the opponents are doing now that there is a target on the deck. Adjusting is better than just going even higher over the top with our threats
2 Kitesail Freebooter
2 Deathgorge Scavenger
2 District Guide
3 Jadelight Ranger
2 Plaguecrafter
2 Golgari Findbroker
3 Ravenous Chupacabra
2 Angrath, the Flame-Chained
1 Vivien Reid
2 Vraska, Relic Seeker
1 Treasure Map
1 Arguel's Blood Fast
2 Cast Down
1 The Eldest Reborn
2 Assassin's Trophy
2 Vraska's Contempt
1 Find // Finality
1 Field of Ruin
2 Memorial to Folly
1 Golgari Guildgate
1 Rootbound Crag
1 Dragonskull Summit
4 Overgrown Tomb
4 Woodland Cemetery
5 Forest
3 Swamp
1 Mountain
1 Kitesail Freebooter
1 Banefire
1 Sorcerous Spyglass
1 The Eldest Reborn
2 Moment of Craving
3 Duress
2 Ritual of Soot
1 Deathgorge Scavenger
1 Find // Finality
1 Vraska's Contempt
1 Price of Fame
Cast Downs were a hedge against Tocatli Honor Guard. I wasn't too high on my 75 but only because I wish I had some extra insurance for the mirror (1 more Findbroker and 1 more Eldest Reborn) without sacrificing too much against the more aggressive archetypes
Round 1: GB Mid
Pretty stock. He did GB things, I drew very little action and lost game 1 to multiple walkers
SB Plan:
OUT:
2 Kitesail Freebooter
2 Cast Down
2 Assassin's Trophy
IN:
1 The Eldest Reborn
2 Ritual of Soot
1 Deathgorge Scavenger
1 Find // Finality
1 Vraska's Contempt
Wanted to just pinch him off of having extra creatures aside from Carnage Tyrant, and then edict it. I went over the top of my opponent in game 2 with walkers and he scooped before I could ultimate a Vraska
In game three I got to steal the opponent's Carny T with an Eldest Reborn, and from there I was able to chew up a few of his value spells with Angrath as he wasn't able to curve out properly.
Round 1: 2-1 Me
Rounds 2 and 3 were both against GB mid as well. In game one of round two, I was able to goad my opponent into swinging into me and leaving no blockers behind, because I was almost dead. I swung into his Vivien and killed it to pump my lone Deathgorge out of Finality range, which I cast to nuke his side of the board. He untaps with 9 lands, plays a 10th, rattles off Chupacabra for my Deathgorge and then a Carny T. I have 8 lands in play before my turn, and my grip is Chupes and The Eldest Reborn... rip a Greenseeker lol. In round 3 I fought to a game three where I just drew much less action than the opponent and couldn't keep up on board after stonewalling for the early and mid game.
Round 2: 2-0 Opponent
Round 3: 2-1 Opponent
Round 4 vs Burn
He leads game one with Ghitu Lavarunner, I play a Memorial and pass, he fires off two Wizard's Lightnings at my face and crashes for 2 more lol. I take my 2nd turn being down 12 to 20. Eventually he peters out after fighting through two copies of Deathgorge and a Findbroker for a 3rd. Frenzy comes down but before he can untap with it I rip a Vraska to take it out and put the game away
OUT:
2 Plaguecrafter
1 Arguel's Blood Fast
1 The Eldest Reborn
1 Find // Finality
IN:
1 Kitesail Freebooter
2 Moment of Craving
1 Deathgorge Scavenger
1 Vraska's Contempt
My opponent was stuck on 3 lands for a few turns and I simply cushioned myself so much that a few Risk Factors ended up being dead against me while I just swung in for 4-5 damage a turn
Round 4: 2-0 Me
Round 5 vs Bant Turns
Game one was decidedly won by Angrath. It just chewed into my opponent's reactive plays and left him needing to tuck it with Teferi, where I could just kill Teferi off with a lonely Dryad Greenseeker. Eventually he was dead on board and hand and topdecked Search for Azcanta before I responded with a Vivien -3 and a Findbroker to supply myself with planeswalker insurance
OUT:
3 Ravenous Chupacabra
2 Cast Down
2 Assassin's Trophy
2 Vraska's Contempt
IN:
1 Kitesail Freebooter
1 Banefire
1 Sorcerous Spyglass
1 The Eldest Reborn
3 Duress
1 Deathgorge Scavenger
1 Find // Finality
Game two was decided by early Duress -> Duress. I pinned the opponent into trying to set up Search for Azcanta, only to put him off a few turns with Deathgorge and holding removal. Opponent eventually lands Teferi and when he isn't on an extra turn, he passes with one card up. I have a flipped Treasure Map and after peeking with Greenseeker I see a Spyglass, then crack a Treasure to grab it and cast it. Last card in hand was Negate, which made me need something good to stay alive. Opponent draws dead and three cards from the top I rip Findbroker to buy back the Spyglass and cast it.
At this point, the opponent stonewalls me with one Carny T after the other. My first Plaguecrafter chews away the paralyzed Teferi, and during my opponent's EOT I use Memorial to get it back and take out one of two Tyrants left. Opponent draws dead for a few turns while a topdeck Vivien finds me a Findbroker for another Eldest Reborn. On the backfoot and facing lethal the next turn my opponent topdecks a Settle that gets discarded to Eldest Reborn, and I was able to cap off the game.
Round 5: 2-0 Me
Total record: 3-2 in Matches, 7-3 in Games (11th/30)
The GBx mirror feels a lot like the Modern Tron mirror. You can tailor your 75 to crimp the opponent on plays, or you can just blast at them with one haymaker after the next while hoping for a smoother curve and play sequence than the opponent.
Although Carnage Tyrant has cushion against me if the opponent has creatures to spam the board with, I felt comfortable trying to beat it rather than trying to win the Draw-Your-Endgame-First crapshoot myself.
I also have noticed that the version I play has a lot more gas against UWx due to the multiple discard spells (and Find // Finality to fish up Freebooters that were previously destroyed.) I prefer to gameplan in a similar fashion, and was thinking of some goofy tech for Carnage Tyrant. Detection Tower, Pelakka Wurm, and Star of Extinction come to mind. Star seems good if you're on the Boros Mid that plays The Immortal Sun to generate value against control and GB. Punishing the draws where the opponent just jams all their action has got to be a matchup breaker for sure.
In my testing before this event (with a 3x Carny T/3x Vivien type list) I found that one or two Pelakkas in the side made the opponent's sequence pretty bad on average. They have to rip the right removal for the right targets (Contempt for Wurm and Trophy for Vivien) and if they just overload on both types of removal, then your own Tyrant ends up having very little to oppose it. I really like having 3 Findbrokers and 3 The Eldest Reborn to win the board-clog cheese-fest, so having 3 Tyrant, 3 Vivien, 3 Find // Finality, 3 Findbroker, 3 The Eldest Reborn, 1 Pelakka Wurm, 2 Detection Tower seems to be like the ideal for the mirror. It's just a matter of finding the room for all this stuff lol
Also, not once did I say UB lacked threat density. I said it lacked the options to keep up when it is on the backfoot. With UW, Teferi can just draw you two cards a turn for 5 mana once. For your little Campaign interactions you need to be spending at least 3 times as much mana to keep your defenses up for the time it takes to whittle away your opponent's resources, and still yet you have to answer planeswalkers with something else entirely. The card isn't as backbreaking as you think it is, and it's honestly not conducive to your own growth as a player to let a lack of scientific data decide what a good strategy is
Chemister's Insight has a very distinct push and pull conflict with a lot of GB's common lines. You don't want to net value from a draw spell at 4CMC since you are sandbagging your turn instead of playing proactively. You would rather develop tempo by adding to your board since you are supposed to be the instigator in long games, not the detractor. If somehow you can find the blue splash to be profitable, I would suggest a build that maintains synergy with Muldrotha as a one or two of. It's very low impact the turn it's played, but your chances of winning scale tremendously for every turn past the 2nd one that it's out.
UB control simply doesn't have the tools to keep churning out answers and dealing with the opponent. The Level one of this standard meta is GBx Mid and UWx Teferi Control.
I don't think adding blue to GB helps it win, since most of why it is so good is its versatility in being able to attrition and outlast aggro with its consistent manabase. Adding a bunch of shocks and checklands on top of the GB suite is pressing, and it doesn't improve your percentages quite that much. If you're asking my opinion, I would recommend my list in post #42 lol
The best of GBx variants are going to scale well against Control, which means playing less Explore doofuses and more utility threats. It's just wrong to not be playing at least 3 Deathgorge Scavenger in your 75, because of how versatile and effective it is in medium to long games. Their plan is to usually just allow your inconsequential creatures get in the red zone for a while, set up Deafening Clarion + Ionize, then turn a corner. In order to fight that, you need cards that make up for the net loss and still put enough pressure on control to be dealt with immediately.
The logic behind why a build with many Explore creatures can be such a good way to net value is because you can cash in with them by either drawing lands to replace them or by milling your dead draws (Spot removal vs Control or expensive value spells vs aggro) in game ones. However, after you board out your dead cards, is your deck REALLY well designed if you actually want to mill through some of your cards? Mostly everything needs to be high-impact, and so if you only have a few specific cards you want to draw into and are milling through dead draws on the regular, your explore creatures pulling their weight means your deck sucks when they can't always draw lands, because of the lack of efficacy from the cards you build around them with.
Conversely, if your deck is lined with all effective plays, then your ability to run out Explore creatures very rarely benefits you because they are just poorly scaled vanilla beaters compared to the Steel Leaf decks that have value spells for the late game in the board. Since control wants to stiff-arm your weaker creatures, then Cleansing Nova or Settle your Carnage Tyrant(s), you are only playing into their plan by shoving fodder onto the board for them to wipe. Avoiding this strategy is similar to when UW control in the last standard decided they didn't necessarily need to play Torrential Gearhulk, since Teferi and/or Approach were enough to win games, so if they eschewed Torrential from their main it would likely blank opposing Abrades, Disintegrations, etc. The creatures I line my main with all fulfill the same plan of trying to avoid needing to absolutely flood the board to pressure lethal damage, only to help the opponent play around your threat density accordingly.
Jadelight Ranger is the exception to this rule of course, as she can be very effective on her own. There are just too many good plays in the 1 to 2 CMC slots for the deck to go in that direction and reliably maintain some form of net value in the long term without resolving multiple 5+ CMC bombastic endgame spells.
2 Kitesail Freebooter
2 Deathgorge Scavenger
2 District Guide
3 Jadelight Ranger
2 Plaguecrafter
2 Golgari Findbroker
3 Ravenous Chupacabra
2 Angrath, the Flame-Chained
1 Vivien Reid
2 Vraska, Relic Seeker
1 Treasure Map
1 Arguel's Blood Fast
2 Fungal Infection
1 The Eldest Reborn
2 Assassin's Trophy
1 Vraska's Contempt
1 Price of Fame
1 Find // Finality
1 Field of Ruin
2 Memorial to Folly
1 Golgari Guildgate
1 Rootbound Crag
1 Dragonskull Summit
4 Overgrown Tomb
4 Woodland Cemetery
5 Forest
3 Swamp
1 Mountain
1 Kitesail Freebooter
1 Banefire
1 Sorcerous Spyglass
1 The Eldest Reborn
2 Moment of Craving
3 Duress
2 Ritual of Soot
1 Deathgorge Scavenger
1 Find // Finality
2 Vraska's Contempt
With a critical threat density from the spread of three different planeswalkers (Legendary spam can be very punishing) and double Eldest Reborn, your plan actually puts a clock on the control and mirror matches, so you can just freely jam spell after spell and keep the opponent on the backfoot, rather than durdle around playing through Nova Cleansing/Settle the Wreckage like generic Golgari midrange
You can actually take this 75 and go
-3 Ravenous Chupacabra
-2 Assassin's Trophy
-2 Fungal Infection
-1 Vraska's Contempt
-1 Price of Fame
then sub in
1 Find // Finality
1 Kitesail Freebooter
1 Deathgorge Scavenger
3 Duress
1 The Eldest Reborn
1 Banefire
1 Sorcerous Spyglass
The end result for your postboard plan vs. Control:
3 Kitesail Freebooter
3 Deathgorge Scavenger
2 District Guide
3 Jadelight Ranger
2 Plaguecrafter
2 Golgari Findbroker
3 Duress
1 Banefire
1 Sorcerous Spyglass
2 Angrath, the Flame-Chained
1 Vivien Reid
2 Vraska, Relic Seeker
1 Arguel's Blood Fast
1 Treasure Map
2 The Eldest Reborn
2 Find // Finality
1 Field of Ruin
2 Memorial to Folly
1 Golgari Guildgate
1 Rootbound Crag
1 Dragonskull Summit
4 Overgrown Tomb
4 Woodland Cemetery
5 Forest
3 Swamp
1 Mountain
This ensures that you can constantly pressure the opponent, or use Find // Finality and Arguel's Blood Fast for sweet, cheap value, or use Spyglass for very important information. It feels like you have so many ways to dunk on their wincons (and Spyglass/Scavenger to mitigate Search for Azcanta) that you don't need Trophy and V Contempt, which by their reactive nature help the opponent gas their hands up with counterspells before sticking a walker.
While I normally wouldn't take one matchup far more seriously than the others, I feel UWx is the only contender (because of the efficacy of Chemister's Insight) that puts us in check before the new Standard meta is completely solved for now. While I feel this deck has a lot of pull in the new meta because it's easy to tune for the mirror (with the above 75 you can sub out your Jadelights against the baseline GB decks and play Ritual of Soots & Find // Finality for attrition, and use your Scavengers to whittle away their long game) the one thing that is scary is getting clocked game one vs control or just a fast Ghalta deck, ergo the Price of Fame SB tech (which is somehow also relevant versus Angels.) While I'm still not keen on playing double Vraska's Contempt main, it seems like a necessary evil against aforementioned Ghalta/Angels matchups, while still being a good card across the board. Would like a smoother curve, but I'll settle for this one for now.
I have been off the archetype for a few months so I figured the new meta would be more kind to Batterskull. In hindsight it was a mediocre pick lol but I think it could do work if the format changed a bit. Reading Brightmist's posts, watching a few leagues and seeing some 5-0 lists helped to shape the revised version of my previous list:
4 Dark Confidant
3 Tireless Tracker
1 Kalitas, Traitor of Ghet
2 Scavenging Ooze
2 Nihil Spellbomb
4 Fatal Push
4 Assassin's Trophy
3 Liliana of the Veil
1 Liliana, the Last Hope
2 Maelstrom Pulse
2 Thoughtseize
4 Inquisition of Kozilek
4 Verdant Catacombs
2 Overgrown Tomb
4 Swamp
2 Forest
4 Blooming Marsh
2 Hissing Quagmire
2 Treetop Village
1 Damping Sphere
1 Engineered Explosives
1 Kalitas, Traitor of Ghet
2 Kitchen Finks
2 Fulminator Mage
1 Surgical Extraction
1 Extirpate
1 Liliana, the Last Hope
2 Duress
1 Creeping Corrosion
1 Languish
1 Flaying Tendrils
A few of my match notes from today (vs Elves for 3 sets 2-1, vs Goryo 2-0, vs Hardened Scales 1-1)
Deck is super fun to jam. Felt good playing the Tim Duncan of Modern archetypes lol. I'm not a fan of this high-octane crapshoot where you just try to do your plan A faster than the other guy and then center your board around hate. Finally feels like you can play a deck where punishing the opponent's mistakes and choosing the best lines rewards you the most, without the drawback of playing control and drawing so many dead cards in compromising situations
I don't have the money to build the deck on paper and MTGO but if anyone is willing to do gauntlet testing on Cockatrice feel free to get in touch
4 Tarmogoyf
3 Tireless Tracker
2 Scavenging Ooze
1 Kalitas, Traitor of Ghet
1 Batterskull
2 Nihil Spellbomb
3 Fatal Push
4 Assassin's Trophy
4 Liliana of the Veil
1 Liliana, the Last Hope
1 Maelstrom Pulse
2 Thoughtseize
4 Inquisition of Kozilek
4 Verdant Catacombs
2 Overgrown Tomb
3 Swamp
2 Forest
1 Wooded Foothills
1 Marsh Flats
4 Blooming Marsh
3 Hissing Quagmire
1 Damping Sphere
1 Kalitas, Traitor of Ghet
2 Kitchen Finks
3 Fulminator Mage
2 Surgical Extraction
1 Extirpate
1 Liliana, the Last Hope
1 Duress
1 Engineered Explosives
1 Creeping Corrosion
1 Damnation
I think a lot of your choices have to come down to a meta call
By my estimation, the decks will line up as such:
Lv 0 - Tron, KCI, Hollow One, Humans
Lv 1 - Midrange, Misc New Archetypes, Tier-2 mainstays
Lv 2 - Control, Burn, Cute Next-Next Level ideas
Anytime a new presence is about to be felt, the fun police always come out and impose their will. The decks that are meant to leverage the meta with their high power level and the ones asking everyone the most questions. You dont want to next level them with the wrong answers so you have to anticipate that beating them involves preparing for the decks that will prey on you to enforce a proper circle of life. For this reason I choose cards like Batterskull and Fulminator: cards that will gain % vs Tron and Control so that a gatekeeper of the format doesnt push me out of praying on squishier decks
I think that by playing enough tech to fight KCI, I can go through with the GB plan to shore up the aforementioned Tron matchup. It is very crucial imo, because that's what's stopped this archetype from being a known quantity in the format years past. 4 Trophy/4 Field of Ruin/3 Fulminator Mage/1 Damping Sphere/2 Surgical/1 Extirpate. I feel that is a critical number of land hate that can be assimilated into a 75 without sacrificing too many game one scenarios against faster, more troublesome decks. Has me excited to play cards that will bring a much needed parity to Modern!