It might help if you let us know what decks you see in your local meta. Most of the players in this forum are used to a very fast metagame with a lot of decks like Affinity, Burn and Humans which would be terrible matchups for you deck. If your store is full of nothing but glacially slow decks that give you time to reliably get 8-drop spells through without comsistent ramp, then all you need to do is play a fast aggro deck to win basically every round and clean house!
I don't mean to sound disparaging, but it does sound like you play in a very casual environment. If that is the case, then it would be best to ignore us and just play whatever you find most fun if you want to get competitive, thought, you will have to tweak your deck to not good to the abundance of cards that are currently very good against it. I know when I came up against an Aura themed deck with my main Abzan list, I am very pleased and will immediately set about clearing you hand of creatures with my discard package and follow up with removal on whatever's left...
The idea of swinging in with equipped unblockable creatures is a good one, but there's a lot to improve here. To start with, 3 of the most played cards in Modern are Lightning Bolt, Fatal Push and Path to Exile, your initial unblockable creature is vulnerable to dying Turn 1 against a huge proportion of the metagame. Also, if killed in response to an Aura, they 2-for-1 you, and if they kill in response to an equip you still lose mana. Therefore, to improve, I'd start by adding a lot more unblockable creatures. Invisible Stalker will probably be the best card you could run in this deck, so add that in. I'd also look at trimming a lot of the Aura and Equipment cards, and just running a couple of more powerful Equipment. Finally, I'd also suggest adding some number of cantrips (e.g Serum Visions) to help smooth out your draws and ensure you find both the creature you want tand the equipment you want to put on it.
My collected thoughts from playing GP Birmingham's Modern sides this weekend:
- Damping Sphere isn't great. We can't spare 2 more sideboard slots for the Tron matchup and we don't need more help Vs Storm. With 1 in the Sb, we're not that likely to draw it in the 1 MU it comes in.
-Worship is greeaaattttt, Boggles and Affinity are everywhere in the UK right now and it shuts them down a lot of the time. It can be answered, yes, but most of the time it buys us enough turns to stabilise.
-3+ Paths in the 75 is a must in the current super aggro meta.
-Karn, Scion of Urza is good against us, kill on sight.
-Stony Silence can be really good against Skred :')
-4 Inq/2 Seize split seems best with aggro everywhere, 3rd Seize in the side is not unreasonable.
If I think of anything else I'll post it up
i also have my doubts about Damping Sphere. What would your new sideboard look like considering the meta at GP Birmingham?
I felt Flaying Tendrils wasn't good enough anymore and replaced it with a second Damnation, was thinking of Worship as well.
Agreed on 3 path and 4/2 Inq/TS, i've had the same for a while now.
I had 1 Damping Sphere left in SB by the end of the weekend. Aggro was everywhere, but there was still plenty of diversity. As for what to cut the Sphere for, I would feel OK putting something reasonably specific in. I am considering Engineered Explosives, third Stony Silence, Kataki, Back to Nature, second Worship, Maelstrom Pulse (2 main) or a Blessed Alliance.
My collected thoughts from playing GP Birmingham's Modern sides this weekend:
- Damping Sphere isn't great. We can't spare 2 more sideboard slots for the Tron matchup and we don't need more help Vs Storm. With 1 in the Sb, we're not that likely to draw it in the 1 MU it comes in.
-Worship is greeaaattttt, Boggles and Affinity are everywhere in the UK right now and it shuts them down a lot of the time. It can be answered, yes, but most of the time it buys us enough turns to stabilise.
-3+ Paths in the 75 is a must in the current super aggro meta.
-Karn, Scion of Urza is good against us, kill on sight.
-Stony Silence can be really good against Skred :')
-4 Inq/2 Seize split seems best with aggro everywhere, 3rd Seize in the side is not unreasonable.
Besides, WotC has been ensuring ally colors would have easier mana options than enemy colors, hence Underground River cycle compare to Caldera Lake cycle. While WotC has been a lot more lenient in recent years, they still prioritize giving ally color lands first before producing enemy colors ones,hence Seachrome Coast cycle before Spirebluff Canal cycle, and Fortified Village cycle first and maybe later we will get enemy color cycle.
My response to this being pointed out is, "but why?" Wizards harp on about letting everyone "play the game your way" and Maro has even said there isn't a conscious bias against printing new enemy duals, and yet enemy pairs consistently get shafted at every level of design. I'm a fan of BW and wedge decks, and I just feel like Wizards wants me to enjoy Standard and EDH less than people who like ally colours and shards. Heck, even in Modern, where all the lands that matter (shocks, fetches, fasts) have full 10 card cycles, enemy colours still lack anything comparable to the DTK commands. I've tried to play BW in standard, the manabase was unworkable so I gave up on competing. To go back to DTK again, we're finally given a wedge set (KTK), only for the last set of the block to go straight back to allied pairs, giving them plenty of new toys and leaving enemy pairs behind again.
I'm sorry this post has turned into a rant but the lack of support for enemy pairs is my #1 problem with current Magic design, and that's saying something considering the state it's in.
Where we can recommend depends on where you are in the world. "mtguk and Ireland sale and trade" is a great resource for the UK but idk about other countries
I think these are filthy gorgeous and might cancel my plans to get Unstable basics signed in Birmingham and just snag a pile of these from my Modern double ups instead
I'm sure these have been asked in the previous thread but I can't get at that now.
What do people think of Worship as SB tech for the Bogles matchup? Also can come in against lots of aggro decks. I'm also interested in running Settle the Wreckage as my SB board wipes, it can catch a Bogle even with an Umbra and again is great against aggro in general. Only trouble is getting double white, but if we're running 4 Paths we can probably rejig the mana to make it work.
The other card I was considering is Wheel of Sun and Moon as our grave hate, as it doesn't affect us but shuts off future graveyard use from T2, which seems much better against Hollow One than Nihil Spellbomb or constantly leaving mana up for an easily-answered Scavenging Ooze.
Could be great in Limited if you can assemble the critical mass f cheap common artifacts I guess
In Standard it gets hit with a Seal Away the the second it's untao trigger fires, in Modern I think it's just too inefficient even tho it dodges Decay, Dismember and a smol Push - having to keep dropping artifacts for 3+ turns to get the job done will be a faff.
For everyone who's shocked at the Gateway, remember that Quicksilver Amulet is already in Modern and no one is losing to T4 Emrakuls coming off it at any reasonable level of competition. Card is cool, sure, but not remotely broken.
The difference here is this also cheats out Planeswalkers. Is that good enough?
I'm of the opinion that if cheating out Emrakul, the Aeons Torn isn't good enough, then there is nothing you can cheat out that will be good enough. I'd be glad to be shown wrong, if only because my Modenr decks tend to prey on combos like this, but suddenly having the option to drop Ugin instead isn't enough to make a Quicksilver Amulet variant anything other than a casual card IMO.
For everyone who's shocked at the Gateway, remember that Quicksilver Amulet is already in Modern and no one is losing to T4 Emrakuls coming off it at any reasonable level of competition. Card is cool, sure, but not remotely broken.
Amazingly there are so many cards in this set that would be rares in any other set.
I'm not sure who to commend for this: The new Play Design (?) team or Richard Garfield or someone else.
The prevailing rumour is that they're downgrades from set 2 of Dominaria block, which later became C19. Not sure if there's a source for this but hopefully Wizards learn something about how to make really good sets from this :')
Hadn't even clocked the Gideon flavour text when I posted earlier. Could we see a Gideon, Heir to Blackblade in the core set? P/T of his creature mode defined by your land count?
I don't mean to sound disparaging, but it does sound like you play in a very casual environment. If that is the case, then it would be best to ignore us and just play whatever you find most fun if you want to get competitive, thought, you will have to tweak your deck to not good to the abundance of cards that are currently very good against it. I know when I came up against an Aura themed deck with my main Abzan list, I am very pleased and will immediately set about clearing you hand of creatures with my discard package and follow up with removal on whatever's left...
Happy brewing!
I had 1 Damping Sphere left in SB by the end of the weekend. Aggro was everywhere, but there was still plenty of diversity. As for what to cut the Sphere for, I would feel OK putting something reasonably specific in. I am considering Engineered Explosives, third Stony Silence, Kataki, Back to Nature, second Worship, Maelstrom Pulse (2 main) or a Blessed Alliance.
The rest of my sideboard is:
- Damping Sphere isn't great. We can't spare 2 more sideboard slots for the Tron matchup and we don't need more help Vs Storm. With 1 in the Sb, we're not that likely to draw it in the 1 MU it comes in.
-Worship is greeaaattttt, Boggles and Affinity are everywhere in the UK right now and it shuts them down a lot of the time. It can be answered, yes, but most of the time it buys us enough turns to stabilise.
-3+ Paths in the 75 is a must in the current super aggro meta.
-Karn, Scion of Urza is good against us, kill on sight.
-Stony Silence can be really good against Skred :')
-4 Inq/2 Seize split seems best with aggro everywhere, 3rd Seize in the side is not unreasonable.
If I think of anything else I'll post it up
My response to this being pointed out is, "but why?" Wizards harp on about letting everyone "play the game your way" and Maro has even said there isn't a conscious bias against printing new enemy duals, and yet enemy pairs consistently get shafted at every level of design. I'm a fan of BW and wedge decks, and I just feel like Wizards wants me to enjoy Standard and EDH less than people who like ally colours and shards. Heck, even in Modern, where all the lands that matter (shocks, fetches, fasts) have full 10 card cycles, enemy colours still lack anything comparable to the DTK commands. I've tried to play BW in standard, the manabase was unworkable so I gave up on competing. To go back to DTK again, we're finally given a wedge set (KTK), only for the last set of the block to go straight back to allied pairs, giving them plenty of new toys and leaving enemy pairs behind again.
I'm sorry this post has turned into a rant but the lack of support for enemy pairs is my #1 problem with current Magic design, and that's saying something considering the state it's in.
What do people think of Worship as SB tech for the Bogles matchup? Also can come in against lots of aggro decks. I'm also interested in running Settle the Wreckage as my SB board wipes, it can catch a Bogle even with an Umbra and again is great against aggro in general. Only trouble is getting double white, but if we're running 4 Paths we can probably rejig the mana to make it work.
The other card I was considering is Wheel of Sun and Moon as our grave hate, as it doesn't affect us but shuts off future graveyard use from T2, which seems much better against Hollow One than Nihil Spellbomb or constantly leaving mana up for an easily-answered Scavenging Ooze.
In Standard it gets hit with a Seal Away the the second it's untao trigger fires, in Modern I think it's just too inefficient even tho it dodges Decay, Dismember and a smol Push - having to keep dropping artifacts for 3+ turns to get the job done will be a faff.
I'm of the opinion that if cheating out Emrakul, the Aeons Torn isn't good enough, then there is nothing you can cheat out that will be good enough. I'd be glad to be shown wrong, if only because my Modenr decks tend to prey on combos like this, but suddenly having the option to drop Ugin instead isn't enough to make a Quicksilver Amulet variant anything other than a casual card IMO.
The prevailing rumour is that they're downgrades from set 2 of Dominaria block, which later became C19. Not sure if there's a source for this but hopefully Wizards learn something about how to make really good sets from this :')