Great! So you didn't have problems without white or would the white splash have helped in any situation?
No Intuition or Tolaria West anymore... Did you miss them? Did the Gambles a good job? Would a 4th Gamble be something?
Why Warping Wail in the SB? Was it useful?
Thorn instead of Sphere in SB??
Did you miss the Trackers?
Manabond main... I think that is a really good idea now.
GQ still better than Ports?
How did you win most of the time? Was it more control or just a fast token?
Not missing Intuition or West right now. The deck feels very smooth being almost two colors now. I dont think a 4th gamble is worth it right now for me, I'm okay without it.
Warping Wail was a way for me to hedge against cards like Show and Tell, Reanimate, Natural Order and Infernal Tutor. It also came in handy killing things like DRS. It's super easy to cast since we have around 16-20 colorless producing lands. I even countered an Unmask in a matchup where I was holding a surgical. It felt nice. Not sure if they'll stay around, but we'll see.
Revoker is my choice of activated ability hate, especially since it provides a clock. You don't want to give combo decks time to just find answers. Also, cutting mana abilities is exactly what your deck aims to do, in terms of mana denial.
Thorn comes in a lot of matchups where revoker does too, and I was also playing trackers but had to cut them for this event because of the large amount of combo. For example, against ANT, I went T1: Crop Rotate for Ancient Tomb -> Thorn. T2, I cast revoker off tomb and wastelanded. I think the only creature based matchup you really want sphere instead of thorn is elves and the matchup is positive anyways, I feel.
Manabond main is a great gamble target when you're behind or just need to close the game out.
Unsure if GQ is better than ports, I haven't tested ports in a while, partially because my girlfriend has them in her D&T deck, but I think GQ is still great against the greedy BUG manabases and even decks like ANT. It just doesn't help as much against reanimator and S&S which are awful matchups anyways.
I lost in the finals of another small 15 man GPT on Sunday playing the same list. List feels pretty nice. I played:
R1: Turbo Depths 2-1
R2: Deathblade 2-1
R3: UR Delver 2-0
R4: ID
Top 4:
Semis: UR Delver 2-1
Finals: Infect 2-1
Funny enough, I lost to my friend piloting my own infect deck I lent out He was on the play G3, and let with T1 tropical island Glistener Elf. His hand had Daze, Invigorate, Bersek, Blossoming Defense. Cant beat that!
Semi final master again, top 4'ed another incredibly combo heavy meta. Sideboarded as such.
1 Academy Ruins
1 Ancient Tomb
1 Barbarian Ring
1 Bojuka Bog
2 Dark Depths
1 Forest
1 Glacial Chasm
3 Grove of the Burnwillows
1 Karakas
3 Maze of Ith
1 Misty Rainforest
4 Ghost Quarter
2 Taiga
1 The Tabernacle at Pendrell Vale
3 Thespian's Stage
2 Tropical Island
1 Verdant Catacombs
4 Wasteland
1 Wooded Foothills
4 Crop Rotation
2 Engineered Explosives
1 Crucible of Worlds
4 Exploration
1 Molten vortex
1 Manabond
3 Gamble
4 Life from the Loam
4 Mox Diamond
3 Punishing Fire
2 Chalice of the Void
3 Krosan Grip
2 Phyrexian Revoker
2 Warping Wail
3 Thorn of Amethyst
3 Surgical Extraction
R1: BR reanimator 2-0
R2: TES 2-1
R3: DnT 2-0
R4: Mono B Reanimator 2-1
R5: ID
Top 8:
Quarters: Eldrazi 2-0
Semis: Same monoB as the Swiss 0-2
Can you explain how you are able to combo off one turn earlier because of this one tomb? I can only imagine it will work with two crop rotations or both combo pieces in hand and only without exploration or mox diamond out. Or is it just a like a rotationable fifth mox?
I always wanted one CotV main but never did it because it can hurt me more than the opponent.
And you're going away from blue... Just one intuition and one tolaria west? I said to myself, I need two tolarias or three EE, because I want those EE. How do you feel with just these cards?
I like your SB But didn't the Trackers do a good job before?
Yeah I'm shying away from intuitions. I love the card but it's just a bit too slow right now for the meta.
If you have green source + stage + depths in play you can rotate for tomb to kill.
I'be switched up my list slightly now, tomb in board with no chalice main, and playing molten vortexes along with fires.
Revoker is really good right now. Trackers are nice but I want something with immediate effects and cutting mana abilities is amazing.
Top 4 split yet another GPT, yet still unable to covert to byes. Ugh. Played 6 rounds of Swiss.
R1: DnT 2-0
R2: Omnitell 2-1
R3: RG Lands 2-1
R4: Shardless 2-1
R5: ID
R6: ID
I enter top 8 as first seed.
Quarters: Same RG lands player 2-1
Semis: Deathblade 1-2
Tomb was nice, won me a few games being able to combo a turn earlier. Never needed it to chalice. Chalice main was a hedge against me expecting a ton of combo and elves, being to gamble for it G1 was a nice option I feel.
1 Academy Ruins
1 Ancient Tomb
1 Barbarian Ring
1 Bojuka Bog
2 Dark Depths
1 Forest
1 Glacial Chasm
3 Grove of the Burnwillows
1 Karakas
3 Maze of Ith
1 Misty Rainforest
4 Ghost Quarter
2 Taiga
1 The Tabernacle at Pendrell Vale
3 Thespian's Stage
1 Tolaria West
2 Tropical Island
1 Verdant Catacombs
4 Wasteland
1 Wooded Foothills
4 Crop Rotation
1 Chalice of the Void
2 Engineered Explosives
1 Crucible of Worlds
4 Exploration
1 Intuition
2 Gamble
4 Life from the Loam
4 Mox Diamond
3 Punishing Fire
3 Chalice of the Void
3 Krosan Grip
2 Trinisphere
2 Phyrexian Revoker
2 Sphere of Resistance
2 Surgical Extraction
1 Sudden Demise
So, been out of the loop for the better part of a year.
Want to resleeve the cube with sleeves that are matte on the front and back. It seems my option are Legion Double Matte, KMC hyperMatte Premium and Ultra Pro Matte.
First off the list is ultra pro, super flimsy and thin, no thank you.
Then it is between the kmc and the legion ones. I have had the old kmc hyper matte (premium and regular) and those hold up very well. It seems their quality has gone down (at least for the regular hyper mattes). My main question is if this quality drop affects the kmc hypermatte premiums too? If it does, then, are the legion double mattes better?
A last resource would be matte inner sleeves if anyone offers those and dragon shield mattes (I have found no matte inner sleeves and doubt there is a market for those)...
Up for suggestions (but some brands might be pretty hard to find where I live)
If you can find them, Ultra Pro Eclipse sleeves are a brand new product that rival the quality of Dragon Shield Mattes and the old formula KMC hyper mattes. I know it sounds weird because UP is normally awful for sleeves but they did it right this time, even removing the little silver circle on the front of all their sleeves. They come in a variety of colors and are matte on both sides.
So I have been wanting to play Lands for a quite awhile and have been chipping away at getting it on MTGO. I finally completed the deck minus the ports (which I will continue to pick up as time goes on) and am running the Ghost Quarter/Wasteland build. I won my first match, and I know that probably doesnt seem like much but I am so excited since I have been working on getting the deck for so long. Just wanted to say Thank you to the Lands community here and can't wait to continue to play and get more familiar with actually playing it and not watching or reading about it!
I keep Karakas main because of all the RGCL players in my meta these days.
I'm still playing bog and karakas main because old habits die hard. I'm super happy when I get matched against the pseudo-mirror and they have neither in the main, though. Feels great.
I had no idea that ARN Serendib Efreet was so expensive these days. I still have one kicking around since he got cut from my cube.
That's a good looking alter.
Yeah, I got my Serendib on ebay a couple weeks back for ~$120ish, which is crazy compared to what they were a year ago.
Funny story about my City of Brass actually; I won an auction for some foreign Storm stuff on ebay, the seller recognized my name from The Source and threw in 2 Arabian City of Brasses (I think they were 35-40 each at the time) along with a message that he was just glad someone in the community would be using the stuff he was selling off.
I have a cube like this at home, and its actually like 60-70% foiled, haha. I have a list half typed up. I'll see if I can torture myself and finish it.
I think I cut bog, glacial chasm, ghost quarter x2, intuition x2, and a gamble.
Intuition is awful against RIP and surgical and generally get boarded out 95% of the time as such. I'm not a fan of chasm in this matchup with both wasteland and flickerwisp but I wouldn't fault anyone for wanting to keep it in either. Ghost quarter is mediocre against 9-10 basics and the gamble is cut in anticipation of a slightly longer grindy game.
Chalice is great against miracles. It's a slow matchup so boarding out the speed tutors like gamble and crop roto are fine as you're mostly trying to grind out a win rather than race. Chalice 1 shuts off approximately 20 cards in miracles; 4 top/brainstorm/STP/ponder/needle/surgical etc. I've also definitely won games slamming chalice 1, and then following up with a now safe from plow tracker.
Not missing Intuition or West right now. The deck feels very smooth being almost two colors now. I dont think a 4th gamble is worth it right now for me, I'm okay without it.
Warping Wail was a way for me to hedge against cards like Show and Tell, Reanimate, Natural Order and Infernal Tutor. It also came in handy killing things like DRS. It's super easy to cast since we have around 16-20 colorless producing lands. I even countered an Unmask in a matchup where I was holding a surgical. It felt nice. Not sure if they'll stay around, but we'll see.
Revoker is my choice of activated ability hate, especially since it provides a clock. You don't want to give combo decks time to just find answers. Also, cutting mana abilities is exactly what your deck aims to do, in terms of mana denial.
Thorn comes in a lot of matchups where revoker does too, and I was also playing trackers but had to cut them for this event because of the large amount of combo. For example, against ANT, I went T1: Crop Rotate for Ancient Tomb -> Thorn. T2, I cast revoker off tomb and wastelanded. I think the only creature based matchup you really want sphere instead of thorn is elves and the matchup is positive anyways, I feel.
Manabond main is a great gamble target when you're behind or just need to close the game out.
Unsure if GQ is better than ports, I haven't tested ports in a while, partially because my girlfriend has them in her D&T deck, but I think GQ is still great against the greedy BUG manabases and even decks like ANT. It just doesn't help as much against reanimator and S&S which are awful matchups anyways.
I lost in the finals of another small 15 man GPT on Sunday playing the same list. List feels pretty nice. I played:
R1: Turbo Depths 2-1
R2: Deathblade 2-1
R3: UR Delver 2-0
R4: ID
Top 4:
Semis: UR Delver 2-1
Finals: Infect 2-1
Funny enough, I lost to my friend piloting my own infect deck I lent out
I'm always on the hunt for foil upgrades, cool miscuts or new alters (plus commissions).
1 Academy Ruins
1 Ancient Tomb
1 Barbarian Ring
1 Bojuka Bog
2 Dark Depths
1 Forest
1 Glacial Chasm
3 Grove of the Burnwillows
1 Karakas
3 Maze of Ith
1 Misty Rainforest
4 Ghost Quarter
2 Taiga
1 The Tabernacle at Pendrell Vale
3 Thespian's Stage
2 Tropical Island
1 Verdant Catacombs
4 Wasteland
1 Wooded Foothills
4 Crop Rotation
2 Engineered Explosives
1 Crucible of Worlds
4 Exploration
1 Molten vortex
1 Manabond
3 Gamble
4 Life from the Loam
4 Mox Diamond
3 Punishing Fire
2 Chalice of the Void
3 Krosan Grip
2 Phyrexian Revoker
2 Warping Wail
3 Thorn of Amethyst
3 Surgical Extraction
R1: BR reanimator 2-0
R2: TES 2-1
R3: DnT 2-0
R4: Mono B Reanimator 2-1
R5: ID
Top 8:
Quarters: Eldrazi 2-0
Semis: Same monoB as the Swiss 0-2
Yeah I'm shying away from intuitions. I love the card but it's just a bit too slow right now for the meta.
If you have green source + stage + depths in play you can rotate for tomb to kill.
I'be switched up my list slightly now, tomb in board with no chalice main, and playing molten vortexes along with fires.
Revoker is really good right now. Trackers are nice but I want something with immediate effects and cutting mana abilities is amazing.
R1: DnT 2-0
R2: Omnitell 2-1
R3: RG Lands 2-1
R4: Shardless 2-1
R5: ID
R6: ID
I enter top 8 as first seed.
Quarters: Same RG lands player 2-1
Semis: Deathblade 1-2
Tomb was nice, won me a few games being able to combo a turn earlier. Never needed it to chalice. Chalice main was a hedge against me expecting a ton of combo and elves, being to gamble for it G1 was a nice option I feel.
1 Academy Ruins
1 Ancient Tomb
1 Barbarian Ring
1 Bojuka Bog
2 Dark Depths
1 Forest
1 Glacial Chasm
3 Grove of the Burnwillows
1 Karakas
3 Maze of Ith
1 Misty Rainforest
4 Ghost Quarter
2 Taiga
1 The Tabernacle at Pendrell Vale
3 Thespian's Stage
1 Tolaria West
2 Tropical Island
1 Verdant Catacombs
4 Wasteland
1 Wooded Foothills
4 Crop Rotation
1 Chalice of the Void
2 Engineered Explosives
1 Crucible of Worlds
4 Exploration
1 Intuition
2 Gamble
4 Life from the Loam
4 Mox Diamond
3 Punishing Fire
3 Chalice of the Void
3 Krosan Grip
2 Trinisphere
2 Phyrexian Revoker
2 Sphere of Resistance
2 Surgical Extraction
1 Sudden Demise
If you can find them, Ultra Pro Eclipse sleeves are a brand new product that rival the quality of Dragon Shield Mattes and the old formula KMC hyper mattes. I know it sounds weird because UP is normally awful for sleeves but they did it right this time, even removing the little silver circle on the front of all their sleeves. They come in a variety of colors and are matte on both sides.
Welcome to the crew.
I'm still playing bog and karakas main because old habits die hard. I'm super happy when I get matched against the pseudo-mirror and they have neither in the main, though. Feels great.
That's one heck of a throw in!
Wow! I had no idea some of these cards even spiked. I bought my foil brushlands at probably $9, and my foil gargadon at like $3 or 4.
1) Mishra's Workshop
2) Library of Alexandria
3) Grim Monolith (Foil)
4) Underground Sea
5) Thoughtseize (Lorwyn foil)
Those 5 are around $2500, haha. Probably closer to 2k realistically, though.
Good thing my power is CE/Proxies.
Intuition is awful against RIP and surgical and generally get boarded out 95% of the time as such. I'm not a fan of chasm in this matchup with both wasteland and flickerwisp but I wouldn't fault anyone for wanting to keep it in either. Ghost quarter is mediocre against 9-10 basics and the gamble is cut in anticipation of a slightly longer grindy game.
Chalice is great against miracles. It's a slow matchup so boarding out the speed tutors like gamble and crop roto are fine as you're mostly trying to grind out a win rather than race. Chalice 1 shuts off approximately 20 cards in miracles; 4 top/brainstorm/STP/ponder/needle/surgical etc. I've also definitely won games slamming chalice 1, and then following up with a now safe from plow tracker.