Well it is kind of a mix between aggro and fatty ramp. The thing is you can take advantage of chief engineer/grand architect's fast mana aspect by spamming the board with stuff. This is because they produce mana the turn they enter the battlefield, which is great tempo that ramp decks don't usually have.
You can also take advantage of the vast amounts of mana they can produce by playing high costed things, but you can't go all in on that because your opponent will likely interact with you and kill your key pieces, especially when they start realizing what your deck is doing. You'll get a lot of free wins when you begin playing the deck but after a while your opponents will learn what you're up to. Also sometimes you just don't draw architect, and all these factors can lead you to end up getting stuck with big stuff you can't cast. A mix of these two aspect is probably the safest bet, it's all about balancing things.
This why things like walking ballista are great, they benefit from both aspect, being a mana sink and easy to play at any point in the game. Also lodestone golem is another perfect creature for this deck, because you can cheat them turn 3 (which is a great advantage) but they aren't expensive enough that you can never cast them in a game without your fast mana.
Also it is very hard to beat combo decks without mausoleum wanderer and golem, so consider that. Golem slows down their games and is a huge clock because it has 5 power, which is what you want vs linear decks.
Master of etherium i've played a lot with. I used to play it with signal pest 4x as my other one drop. As you play the deck you'll see the value your creature have by simply being blue or being artifacts. Master is both and could lead to explosive starts, also acting as another lord in addition to architect, and providing the strategy with various benefits, like getting lodestone out of bolt range, getting the pump from architect, pumping ballista so they stay alive after you discharge all the counters, etc. But now with the new bird i've removed them because they recquired high artifact density to be worth it.
You are correct in saying the deck is mostly aggro. This is why i don't like durdly stuff that don't take advantage of the speedy mana engine we have, which is what makes the deck not just a worse version of ramp.
Oh yeah i agree, it just seems to me that for 6 mana it just does a bunch of stuff not very well. Staff of nin exists and i tried it a long time ago (because i like to try evrything) and it was meh. The sun's +1/+1 is ok and the cost reduction doesn't matter. If you can get full value with sun and make everything it does actually matter it could be worth 6 mana. But it doesn't seem like a overwhelming value and aggression engine like god-pharaoh's gift is.
But still, the sun is worth trying out i would think, simply because it costs 6 mana and that goes well with our architect curving out(still you could be casting wurmcoil for that price so i dunno).
Mmmm, i was just being honest, and my comment was more of an invitation to try things out by yourself more than anything. I've been on this forum for a long time and i don't want to repeat everything i've been saying in this forum since 2015 to every newcomer.
I've been playing this deck once or twice a week (with some pauses) since chief engineer was printed, so saying «the result are there» after beating two deck 2-0 is not going to impress me. Just try things out by yourself, get enough testing to have an appropriate sample size, then maybe the word «solid list» will have a meaning. Or, feel free to browse this forums if you need to understand why the pieces are there and why they are part of the core.
EDIT: on a more positive note i've been considering the immortal sun myself, and it would make sense if planeswalkers are heavily played (but calling it «the truth» is most likely exagerated).
Good to have feedback from other people on traxos, this will save me testing time with the thing, didn't really want to test it more after my initial disappointment. Bird is great though, love it.
I've never taken throne of the god-pharaoh out of the deck, it never disappoints. In addition to being just great in general it just beats cards i hate losing to, like worship and ensnaring bridge. I'm currently on 2 and have been happy with this number.
I also still love god-pharaoh's gift since i started playing it, it just gives the deck a big splashy artifact to use all the extra mana. It provides free wins vs heavy control decks and isn't really awful against any decks, the challenge is just getting to resolve one.
Anyone had positive results with traxos, scourge of kroog? I tried it in a small weekly tournament in a store today and it did absolutely nothing. I cast it on turn 3 every time it drew it and was not able to untap it a single time...
I get that this is a small sample and i was pretty unlucky but traxos feels like a card that can just potentially make your deck lose to itself, kind of like myr superion in older builds. It seems to me we could just not play stuff like that because we have access to a lot of fine options, do we really need this?
EDIT: the bird on the other hand keeps being super good.
Yes, i've been enjoying it as a 2x, 4x seems too much and could lead to awkward opening hands. Like i've said in an earlier post it is really good vs decks with few interaction and can takeover the game sometimes. It gets sided out vs midrange control because of the possibility of getting 2 for 1'd.
Oh yeah, vialing image is super good and leads to a lot of powerful plays, enough that leaving it on 2 when you have enough mana to cast the rest of your stuff can be right sometimes.
Phantasmal image is awesome and if it wasn't for deck space i could see myself play with the full set, but i agree that there is no consensus on the correct number. My personal favorite use of it is vs burn, copying eidolon of the great revel (this actually happens quite often when i'm playing against this deck). Basically locks down the burn player from killing us if we can manage to have a clock and dodge eidolon triggers with vial. Also eidolon is and spirit which is quite hilarious.
Trinket for citadel seems super corner case. When is it that you have 3 lands to cast mage and need a fourth non blue producing land? I'd say totally not worth the color screw potential when you draw citadel.
Other than that i've been super happy with artificer's assistant. I also have a real hard time beating KCI combo, seems whe have no interaction and they are faster than us. We really need to win with the sideboard in this matchup i guess.
When staying straight UW i believe playing 4 copies of Horizon Canopy (or at least more than 1-2) is mandatory for "refilling" your hand like Death and Taxes lists do for example. Same can be said about playing some copies of Curious Obsession over Steel of the Godhead + GoST.
Edit:
The Bant Manabase is actually pretty good for a 3 colour deck and i never had any major issues with it.
4 canopy seems a lot. Two advantages of the u/w mana is less damage with our lands when facing aggro decks and less vulnerability to blood moon. Canopy goes against that, so it is not without of disadvantages.
It is obviously better in mono green (likes elves) or mono white/ or green/white (like D&T), i'm not even sure other splashes of D&T plays it, but i'm not up to date with these archetypes. I've been enjoying irrigated farmland, so i could see the value in canopy. We do have great mana but we kind of already stretch it with moorland haunts and cavern of souls. Playing a mono white mana producing land does come with a drawback, but it would deserve some testing maybe at a 2x in my opinion.
(...)So what do I need to shore up? Aggro and a way to deal with Bridge, while keeping my matchup vs. Burn solid. (...)
(...)Nebelgeist Herald - I've played him, and he's cute, but I don't think its powerful enough at the three slot to justify (...)
On bridge, it is the bane of this deck. I basically semi gave up on beating bridge decks, especially lantern because they never let you draw the answer. I have echoing truth and detention sphere in my sideboard because they are also good vs other stuff and are the most generic answer that you can side in without feeling too bad, but that's it.
Creature problems? Nebelgast is the hero you need. They are the closest thing we have to repeated removal. I never feel bad in creature matchups partly because of those. I don't know how much you played with them but they are not fringe at all, in the old u/w thread i believe we reached a consensus that they were part of the must-play spirits. They are just super tempo, think of them as your spell queller for creatures in play. They win me games all the times. Definitely a solid option to consider.
I really don't like the idea of jace, the mind sculptor in spirits. It goes against everything this deck is about. Tapping out for a 4 mana card that isn't a creature, and sorcery speed on top of that? This is a recipe for disaster i think. At least in control decks it serve as both a card draw engine AND a win con, and it hasn't even been that insane in those decks. We need no additional win con, beating with flying bears is all we need.
I dunno about restoration angel, do we even have worthy etb to abuse? Flickering rattlechains is useless since the angel already saves a creature anyways, angel is just a 4cc rattlechains at this point. Flickering nebelgast herald produces no additional benefit, if resto was just a random spirit with flash it would trigger herald anyways (same with wanderer). So we have the really corner case of flickering queller in response to the etb trigger, and, i mean, that's just meh. Angel costing 4 mana just messes up the land count math and makes vial real awkward compared to having all 2 and 3 drops. There are plenty of decent 3 drops spirits to choose from, i see no need for the angel here.
EDIT: also if you look at my sideboard you'll notice burrenton forge-tender x2. The card is the absolute nuts vs burn (and great vs red decks in general). Comes down 2 full turns earlier than finks and is a lot easier to cast with a single white in the cost (meaning less shocking ourselves with land and easier to cast under blood moon). I don't think i've ever lost to burn after resolving a t1 forge tender and i play vs burn quite often. Try it and you'll love it or your money back
I won't comment everything in detail since the primer does a great job of explaining the u/w version, but i'll share my thoughts on the most recent addition to the deck.
First: curious obsession. This deck has been looking for a proper card draw engine for a while. With no CoCo, i've tried a bunch of things, from military intelligence to chart a course, and more obscure/janky things. Obsession, from my recent testing, has been better than all of those. One mana is a very cheap price to pay for even a few extra cards and damage points. You DO have to be careful because of the established principles that generally makes auras bad, but I feel our deck is better equipped to negate those issues. I also found, strangely, that the aura shines brightest vs linear decks. All you have to do is spend one blue mana at some point in the game, and suddenly for the rest of the game you get gas to answer everything. I take them out for kira and other stuff from the board vs hyper interactive decks.
Also i've been enjoying the main deck eidolon of rhetoric, which i added after the recent unbans. I was getting ready for BBE and Jace (hence more snaps) but i've been pleased with all the merits of the 1/4 explained in the primer.
I've been enjoying irrigated farmland as a 2 of. Like stated in the primer, there is no consensus on the proper amount of lands this deck recquires in the u/w version. I've been leaning on the less greedy 22 side, while others like 20 plus cantrips better. The cycling lands are a nice compromise. You WILL get more keeps because this is your second land in your starting hand, instead of mulling a one lander. You will also be happy to cycle it later on after topdecking it. Seems like a nice compromise, and it operates at instant speed, which is what we want.
One last thing, you guys do what you want but i've tried hard to make tallowisp work in the past and failed horribly, and i don't think curious obsession changes the fact that the candle juggler is a very clunky card advantage engine that doesn't fly and doesn't do anything until late. AND you have to put enough auras in your deck for it to be worth, which makes your deck clunky and diluted. Even if you put answers in the form of auras, those are just inefficient and narrow in general. The card just felt very bad in general.
Well ok maybe there is a reason but not a good one
I mean yes what you said is true but the bird seems way better for all other turns after the first/second. Flying is also a huge upside over the sage, especially in the signal pest version.
Also with no shuffle effect scrying seem pretty valuable compared to order the top 4. Bottoming stuff we don't need and never seeing them again is great compared to the classic «this card in my top deck is awful and i'm gonna draw it».
Anyways i'll be doing some testing when i can play the bird and will report.
You can also take advantage of the vast amounts of mana they can produce by playing high costed things, but you can't go all in on that because your opponent will likely interact with you and kill your key pieces, especially when they start realizing what your deck is doing. You'll get a lot of free wins when you begin playing the deck but after a while your opponents will learn what you're up to. Also sometimes you just don't draw architect, and all these factors can lead you to end up getting stuck with big stuff you can't cast. A mix of these two aspect is probably the safest bet, it's all about balancing things.
This why things like walking ballista are great, they benefit from both aspect, being a mana sink and easy to play at any point in the game. Also lodestone golem is another perfect creature for this deck, because you can cheat them turn 3 (which is a great advantage) but they aren't expensive enough that you can never cast them in a game without your fast mana.
Also it is very hard to beat combo decks without mausoleum wanderer and golem, so consider that. Golem slows down their games and is a huge clock because it has 5 power, which is what you want vs linear decks.
Master of etherium i've played a lot with. I used to play it with signal pest 4x as my other one drop. As you play the deck you'll see the value your creature have by simply being blue or being artifacts. Master is both and could lead to explosive starts, also acting as another lord in addition to architect, and providing the strategy with various benefits, like getting lodestone out of bolt range, getting the pump from architect, pumping ballista so they stay alive after you discharge all the counters, etc. But now with the new bird i've removed them because they recquired high artifact density to be worth it.
You are correct in saying the deck is mostly aggro. This is why i don't like durdly stuff that don't take advantage of the speedy mana engine we have, which is what makes the deck not just a worse version of ramp.
But still, the sun is worth trying out i would think, simply because it costs 6 mana and that goes well with our architect curving out(still you could be casting wurmcoil for that price so i dunno).
I've been playing this deck once or twice a week (with some pauses) since chief engineer was printed, so saying «the result are there» after beating two deck 2-0 is not going to impress me. Just try things out by yourself, get enough testing to have an appropriate sample size, then maybe the word «solid list» will have a meaning. Or, feel free to browse this forums if you need to understand why the pieces are there and why they are part of the core.
EDIT: on a more positive note i've been considering the immortal sun myself, and it would make sense if planeswalkers are heavily played (but calling it «the truth» is most likely exagerated).
I've never taken throne of the god-pharaoh out of the deck, it never disappoints. In addition to being just great in general it just beats cards i hate losing to, like worship and ensnaring bridge. I'm currently on 2 and have been happy with this number.
I also still love god-pharaoh's gift since i started playing it, it just gives the deck a big splashy artifact to use all the extra mana. It provides free wins vs heavy control decks and isn't really awful against any decks, the challenge is just getting to resolve one.
I get that this is a small sample and i was pretty unlucky but traxos feels like a card that can just potentially make your deck lose to itself, kind of like myr superion in older builds. It seems to me we could just not play stuff like that because we have access to a lot of fine options, do we really need this?
EDIT: the bird on the other hand keeps being super good.
Other than that i've been super happy with artificer's assistant. I also have a real hard time beating KCI combo, seems whe have no interaction and they are faster than us. We really need to win with the sideboard in this matchup i guess.
4 canopy seems a lot. Two advantages of the u/w mana is less damage with our lands when facing aggro decks and less vulnerability to blood moon. Canopy goes against that, so it is not without of disadvantages.
It is obviously better in mono green (likes elves) or mono white/ or green/white (like D&T), i'm not even sure other splashes of D&T plays it, but i'm not up to date with these archetypes. I've been enjoying irrigated farmland, so i could see the value in canopy. We do have great mana but we kind of already stretch it with moorland haunts and cavern of souls. Playing a mono white mana producing land does come with a drawback, but it would deserve some testing maybe at a 2x in my opinion.
On bridge, it is the bane of this deck. I basically semi gave up on beating bridge decks, especially lantern because they never let you draw the answer. I have echoing truth and detention sphere in my sideboard because they are also good vs other stuff and are the most generic answer that you can side in without feeling too bad, but that's it.
Creature problems? Nebelgast is the hero you need. They are the closest thing we have to repeated removal. I never feel bad in creature matchups partly because of those. I don't know how much you played with them but they are not fringe at all, in the old u/w thread i believe we reached a consensus that they were part of the must-play spirits. They are just super tempo, think of them as your spell queller for creatures in play. They win me games all the times. Definitely a solid option to consider.
I dunno about restoration angel, do we even have worthy etb to abuse? Flickering rattlechains is useless since the angel already saves a creature anyways, angel is just a 4cc rattlechains at this point. Flickering nebelgast herald produces no additional benefit, if resto was just a random spirit with flash it would trigger herald anyways (same with wanderer). So we have the really corner case of flickering queller in response to the etb trigger, and, i mean, that's just meh. Angel costing 4 mana just messes up the land count math and makes vial real awkward compared to having all 2 and 3 drops. There are plenty of decent 3 drops spirits to choose from, i see no need for the angel here.
EDIT: also if you look at my sideboard you'll notice burrenton forge-tender x2. The card is the absolute nuts vs burn (and great vs red decks in general). Comes down 2 full turns earlier than finks and is a lot easier to cast with a single white in the cost (meaning less shocking ourselves with land and easier to cast under blood moon). I don't think i've ever lost to burn after resolving a t1 forge tender and i play vs burn quite often. Try it and you'll love it or your money back
So i'll share my list here, i had very good results with various versions of it since eldritch moon came out, this is my current list:
4 path to exile
auras: 2
2 curious obsession
artifacts: 4
4 aether vial
creatures: 28
4 mausoleum wanderer
4 selfless spirit
4 rattlechains
2 thalia, guardian of thraben
2 phantasmal image
4 spell queller
4 drogskol captain
3 nebelgast herald
1 eidolon of rhetoric
4 flooded strand
2 polluted delta
2 windswept heath
2 hallowed fountain
2 irrigated farmland
3 plains
3 island
2 seachrome coast
2 moorland haunt
1 kira, great glass-spinner
1 eidolon of rhetoric
2 burrenton forge-tender
1 kataki, war's wage
1 phyrexian revoker
1 sorcerous spyglass
1 grafdigger's cage
1 relic of progenitus
2 ceremonious rejection
2 blessed alliance
1 echoing truth
1 detention sphere
I won't comment everything in detail since the primer does a great job of explaining the u/w version, but i'll share my thoughts on the most recent addition to the deck.
First: curious obsession. This deck has been looking for a proper card draw engine for a while. With no CoCo, i've tried a bunch of things, from military intelligence to chart a course, and more obscure/janky things. Obsession, from my recent testing, has been better than all of those. One mana is a very cheap price to pay for even a few extra cards and damage points. You DO have to be careful because of the established principles that generally makes auras bad, but I feel our deck is better equipped to negate those issues. I also found, strangely, that the aura shines brightest vs linear decks. All you have to do is spend one blue mana at some point in the game, and suddenly for the rest of the game you get gas to answer everything. I take them out for kira and other stuff from the board vs hyper interactive decks.
Also i've been enjoying the main deck eidolon of rhetoric, which i added after the recent unbans. I was getting ready for BBE and Jace (hence more snaps) but i've been pleased with all the merits of the 1/4 explained in the primer.
I've been enjoying irrigated farmland as a 2 of. Like stated in the primer, there is no consensus on the proper amount of lands this deck recquires in the u/w version. I've been leaning on the less greedy 22 side, while others like 20 plus cantrips better. The cycling lands are a nice compromise. You WILL get more keeps because this is your second land in your starting hand, instead of mulling a one lander. You will also be happy to cycle it later on after topdecking it. Seems like a nice compromise, and it operates at instant speed, which is what we want.
One last thing, you guys do what you want but i've tried hard to make tallowisp work in the past and failed horribly, and i don't think curious obsession changes the fact that the candle juggler is a very clunky card advantage engine that doesn't fly and doesn't do anything until late. AND you have to put enough auras in your deck for it to be worth, which makes your deck clunky and diluted. Even if you put answers in the form of auras, those are just inefficient and narrow in general. The card just felt very bad in general.
I mean yes what you said is true but the bird seems way better for all other turns after the first/second. Flying is also a huge upside over the sage, especially in the signal pest version.
Also with no shuffle effect scrying seem pretty valuable compared to order the top 4. Bottoming stuff we don't need and never seeing them again is great compared to the classic «this card in my top deck is awful and i'm gonna draw it».
Anyways i'll be doing some testing when i can play the bird and will report.