Mulligan decisions are pretty straightforward for the most part. The deck requires certain pieces in play to win, so most hands should be evaluated first by "how fast can I make that happen." You usually want to have a hand that can put a KCI into play by turn 4, or at least have a gameplan to do so (multiple wellsprings, ramp, etc). Most hands that have a turn 1 active mopal (mopal, darksteel, egg) are pretty much snap keeps unless the rest of the hand does nothing. For hands that are slower but more redundant, we need to have interaction (ee or spellbomb) which is doubly important if you know your opponent is playing a creature-disruption based deck such as humans or burn.
Ideal starting hands
2-3 lands
Acceleration (mopal or mind stone)
Cantrips/dig (eggs, wellspring, stirrings)
A combo piece (kci or trawler)
Some hands from my Vegas tournament
OTD g3 versus humans
Mopal, EE, star, stirrings, spellbomb. (mull to 5, he kept 6)
I kept this hand on the draw because of a few things. If I hit a land, I can cast my hand turn 1 and have access to disruption and dig on top of that. If I hit another EE, I can stirrings into the land and at least present a bit of a fight. I have a scry, and minimum 2 drawsteps to find a relevant card.
OTD vs Grishoalbrand g2
Mopal, Citadel, Citadel, KCI, EE, Egg, Ichor
This hand is turn 1 opal active (acceleration), interaction with chalice of the void and leyline (EE), cantrips (egg/ichor) and combo piece (KCI). I snap kept this, and was rewarded with a 2nd mopal off the top into scrap trawler to kill my opponent on turn 2
OTD vs Unknown g1
Citadel, Ruin, Fair, Forest, Egg, Egg, Egg
On the draw I mulled this. While it may seem fine enough, I have 4 draws to hit combo pieces, acceleration, and potential interaction if needed. While it may seem fine, hands like this can be really loose if you fail to find in the top 4 cards or just draw more cantrips. Any thalia matchup and this hand is terrible, same thing with opposing combo decks.
Mulled into
Citadel, Egg, Opal, Wellspring, Mindstone, KCI
Keep, scry fair to the top. Win on turn 3
It may seem counter intuitive, but when saccing things to first start generating mana put as many rocks and wellsprings into play before you play trawler. If your opponent goes after it with the trigger on the stack, you are able to build up enough value to draw another and continue chaining. Surgical can sometimes put a damper on things, but if you have sequenced correctly with myr retriever, playing multiple trawlers, or have buried ruin in play its very difficult for the opponent to disrupt you. I have also been a fan of boarding in defense grid (and now silence) vs surgical decks to mess with their disruption. Postboard against extraction decks you should be bringing in alternative win-conditions as well.
This event was my first time in Vegas. It was a bit surreal getting off the plane and the first thing that greets my wife and I was a slot machine. Walking through the airport and being bombarded by gambling was a life experience that I won’t really forget. Our initial flight out of Austin was supposed to go to El Paso, but because of delays we would have missed our connection so we were put onto a different flight that would fly nonstop to Vegas. Our Southwest gate attendant had assured us that our bag would be switched from the previous plane to this one. Yea, that didn’t happen. After waiting for all the bags from our flight to be unloaded, and not seeing mine, I did not have high hopes for this event. This would end up being a recurring theme throughout the weekend. However, our original plane did end up making its connection so they found my bag on another carrousel about 15 minutes later. We arrive at our Airbnb which is about a block from the convention center. Thursday we spent all day getting stuff signed but ended up not being able to make any of the LCQs. I guess we are grinding out all 15 rounds.
Day 1 started with me checking my registration status on site and guess what, I’m not on the registration sheet. I had bought my registration online almost a month beforehand so this was concerning. Apparently I was not the only person with this issue, and we all had to be put in again before the round started. This put the round start back almost an hour, and when we finally sat down there wasn’t enough time for a player meeting, so we just sat down next to our first round opponent. Without them telling us about it. Yea. Luckily I am paranoid and didn’t give anything up, but I saw a bunch of cards my opponent was playing. Great start to the tournament.
Round 1- Stephen playing Jeskai LD jank. Win 2-0
Lost the die roll, but I had seen stone rain and bolt out of my opponent shuffling so I put him on some ponza list. Luckily ponza is a good matchup for KCI since I don’t really care about much of what they do. Well, it would get weirder. My opponent cast multiple off the wall spells game one, but applied no pressure. He taps out to stone rain me, I untap and start going off. He lets me put KCI, scrappy and a bunch of other things into play while looping opal for mana. He then stops me mid combo, then tries to surgical (?) my opals. Yea buddy this isn’t going to work out well for you. Sac another star in response, recur the opal again, keep going off. He remanded me and was playing white lands so I assumed he had stony/rip and other countermagic nonsense.
In: 4 Nature’s Claim, 2 Aether grid, 2 Defense Grid
Out: 4 terrarion, 1 myr retriever, 1 mind stone, 2 EE
Game 2 he sticks an early blood moon, then Ajani vengeant after ghost quartering his shock that he fetched for to color fix. I resolve a defense grid, and it starts doing work. This is then magnified when he cast bust to destroy all lands. While a minor annoyance, I do need to end the game eventually. I finally peeled a mox to cast the aether grid in my hand and it goes the distance.
Round 2- Aaron playing Grishoalbrand. Win 2-0
Since we had to write in our names because they manually paired us round 1, I wasn’t on the round 2 pairings. Come to find out that not only did they put in my result wrong; they wrote my name wrong so I couldn’t find myself on the pairings board. Great tournament so far. I finally get a pairing, and have a judge escort me to my opponent with a lengthy time extension. Aaron and I talk about how ridiculous this tournament has been so far (spoilers it gets worse), I win the die roll and we begin. I play stuff, he plays faithless discarding borborygmos and land. Great, this matchup is really reliant on the die roll since we don’t really interact with one another. I kill him on turn 3 before he kills me.
In: 2 Defense Grid, 1 Ensnaring Bridge, 2 Nature’s Claim
Out: 2 Mind stone, 2 Terrarion, 1 Engineered Explosives
This matchup is all about speed, and which type of hate your opponent has. If they have leyline, claim is good. If they have surgical, defense grid does work. Either which way, they tend to have chalice of the void so EE stays in. My board was a bit different in that I have access to ensnaring bridge to shut down their attack step. Game 2 on the draw I mull to 5, and my opponent kills me turn 3 before I can kill him. Fun times.
Game 3 on the play I mull to 4, and think my tournament is already over. However, my opponent mulls as well, and my 4 isn’t terrible with EE, Citadel, Opal and Trawler. I play out my stuff and pass. My opponent casts t1 faithless, turn 2 chalice on 1 and not much else. I peel the land to cast trawler and just give him the beatdowns. I do draw a few one drops, but leaving his chalice in play is more beneficial for now. Scrappy gets him down to 11, and I finally am able to just play KCI, crack ee, then start going. He has to put griselbrand in to play to draw into surgical, but it wouldn’t matter because he was at exactsies to die if he takes that line from my spellbomb.
The first 2 rounds have taken almost an hour and a half each, and then the event reporter crashed. They offered full refunds for this tournament, and even though I was 2-0 I was sorely tempted to take it, but I tested quite a bit for this tourney so I stayed in. Of course, I immediately lost the next round.
Round 3 vs Eric playing Burn, Loss 2-1
I lost the die roll, and kept a spellbomb heavy hand. This payed dividends when my I had to kill a goblin guild and multiple eidolons. My opponent managed to kill me before I could find my 4th mana source for KCI.
In: 4 Nature’s Claim, 1 Wurmcoil Engine, 3 Galvanic Blast
Out: 3 EE, 4 Terrarion, 2 Mind Stone
On the play, the matchup feels almost un-losable. My opponent kept a creature heavy draw, which died to 2x spellbombs. My opponent tapped out turn 3 to cast eidolon and grim lavamancer, and then died turn 4.
In: 1 EE
Out: 1 Mind Stone
Mind stone on the draw is super slow, and EE lets you clean up the nut draws. Unfortunately, that exact nut draw happened, and I never found enough interaction to stabilize. Turn 1 goblin guide, t2 goblin guide, t3 goblin guide swiftspear searing blood your scrap blocker and still had destructive revelry. Must be nice. Over the course of the match, I had 11 goblin guide triggers and drew a land off it once.
Round 4 vs Joseph playing Grishoalbrand, Win 2-0
I lose the die roll, and my opponent casts faithless looting. I think sweet we are playing dredge but no, it’s yet another stupid shoal deck. Just like the previous deck, the die roll really matters so losing it feels really bad. However, I untapped on my turn 4 and wasn’t dead, so I repaid the favor by killing my opponent.
Sideboarding: the same as before.
Game 2 I kept a potentially explosive hand, and my opponent mulled to 5. He went turn 1 faithless discarding grizzlybrand and borbor, turn 2 nights whisper. I played turn 1 citadel opal star stirrings, and untapped turn 2 probably being dead. Luckily I peeled the mox opal to play citadel, 2nd opal, KCI, go infinite. Nice turn 2 kill.
Round 5 vs Brandon playing Mardu Pyromancer, Win 2-0
Game 1 this matchup is really easy. They don’t pressure you all that fast, and you have ways to slow their clock down while generating value. I won the die roll, spellbombed his turn 2 pyromancer, and durdled for a bit then killed my opponent. Not much to say.
In: 2x Ghirapur Aether Grid, 1x Wurmcoil Engine, 3x Galvanic Blast, 2x Defense Grid
Out: 2x Terrarion, 3x Mind Stone, 1x EE, 1x Spellbomb, 1x Myr Retriever
There is additional tension in this matchup with what to sideboard in, as the types of hate could be different. Natures claim is good against black leyline, defense grid is good against their targeted removal and surgical. Most lists are playing khambal, which both shortens your clock and prevents you from comboing so it is more important to get off the table.
Game 2 my opponent mulled to 6 for leyline, I kept a 7 that was resilient to many types of things. I play defense grid on turn 2, and it really puts a crimp in his plans of sit on pyromancer and stop me from combing with k command. I land aether grid, clean up his pressure and we play a waiting game for a while. I finally find an ee, put it on 4, and kill him after blowing up leyline.
Round 6 vs Julio playing Titanshift. Win 2-0
Chatting with Julio I find out he is from Mexico, up here for the event. He seemed decent, but I didn’t know how well it would go having to explain the combo with a possible language barrier. Luckily it didn’t come up. I won the die roll, kept a turn 4 kill hand, and breathed easy when my opponent shocked and suspended a search for tomorrow on 1. Julio cast 2x ramp spells, then died.
In: 4x nature’s claim
Out: 1x mind stone, 2x EE, 1 Terrarion
RG shift can bring in targeted removal, relic, and possibly damping sphere, none of which we really care about. My opponent went turn 1 valakut, turn 2 relic. I kept playing out my artifacts and not cracking them, just to be able to generate enough value to push through relic in one turn. I found a KCI with ancient stirrings, and my opponent tapped out turn 4 to play a witchbane orb. He then proceeded to die.
Round 7 vs James on RG Eldrazi. Win 2-0
I lost the die roll, and kept a slower hand but more resilient, and luckily my opponent’s draw was not super-fast. He beat me down a bit with matter reshapers, but tapped out to cast a reality smasher. I untapped and combed him.
In: 2x Defense grid, 1x Wurmcoil Engine, 1x Ensnaring Bridge, 3x Galvanic Blast
Out: 2x Mind Stone, 3x Terrarion, 2x EE,
Postboard they gain access to ancient grude, abrade, relic, and sometimes damping sphere to go along with their giant dudes. I think defense grid does a lot of work in making your opponent decide whether to leave up mana for interaction or put you on a clock. Game 2 I mulliganed to a mediocre 6, but my opponent was not very fast out of the gates. His turn 1 relic was annoying, but I managed to get him to pop it to stop a recursion of spellbombs to keep him off pressure. I resolved a wurmcoil engine, which then traded with a bolt and reality smasher. I then rebought the wurmcoil with a buried ruin, and it just gummed up the ground long enough to push through all of his relics and ancient grudges. He wiped my graveyard twice, and ancient grudged me twice and still died.
Round 8 vs Matthew on White BTL Scapeshift. Loss 2-1
Last match of the day is against an opponent who was sitting caddy-corner to me last round, so we both know what each other are on. After some friendly banter about BTL vs RUGshift, I lose the die roll and we get it on. Game 1 his draw was medium, and he taps out to set up for a kill. I untapped and combed him.
In: 3x Nature’s Claim, 2x Guttural Response, 2x Defense Grid, 1x Aether Grid
Out: 3x Mind Stone, 2x EE, 1x Terrarion, 1x Pyrite Spellbomb, 1x Myr Retriever
I didn’t really know how to sideboard apart from the anti-counterspell stuff. I brought in an alternate win-con and anti-white sideboard hate just in case, but I don’t think I needed to.
Game 2 my hand was fine, but my opponent had a good ramp+interaction hand. I test spelled a KCI into his 2 open mana, he remanded me into scapeshift kill. The problem with playing this matchup is unlike other counterspell decks U Scapeshift lists can interact with you on the stack untap and just kill you.
Game 3 was a bunch of the same, although I drew sideboard cards to actually fend of his stack interaction. We were going back and forth on resources fighting over a defense grid. I peeled a 2nd grid and should have just tried jamming. Instead I wanted to recur a previously killed grid, test spell with one to resolve the other then win next turn. The problem with this line is it assumes that my opponent has infinite resources and gives him time to find his wincon. I should have just left the land in play, played the grid to get countered and hope the last card in my opponents hand was not a counterspell and jam KCI for the win. Opponent peeled the scapeshift to kill me.
Day 1 ends with an x-2 record, meaning I am probably out of top 8 contention. However, it’s my first decent day 1 record at a huge GP so I might as well finish it out. Day 2 actually starts on time, but no announcement of change of REL. So off to a great start again.
Round 9 vs Shawn on Mardu Pyromancer. Win 2-0
My opponent sits down, takes out his deck, flashes me the top card of his sideboard, and then starts shuffling his deck facing me so I see the bottom 2 cards each time he cuts. I don’t think much of it since he told me it was his 2nd GP day 2, but it goes downhill from there. Game 1 I keep a hand with early spellbomb and combo on turn 3 with buried ruin, so it’s an easy keep. I spellbomb an early young pyro, and my opponent never deals me another point of damage for the rest of the game. He casts a bedlam reveler leaving up swamp and plains, so I know it’s safe to go for it. A little note about how I combo. When I perform an action, I am writing down my mana totals on the back of my life pad. When I sac an artifact I write 2, when I sac another I scratch out 2 and write 4. I have done it this way since I played storm, and it is very intuitive for me and is easy to recreate situations. Also I am very clear about what I am doing, my death triggers, etc. This is relevant because as I am comboing off, my opponent kept trying to stop me mid action and check mana. Once or twice I get it, but it was every 3rd or 4th action while I was in the middle of drawing or had draw triggers on the stack he would tell me to wait and try and count. Nice try doofus, but you aren’t messing me up. Try the scumbag stuff elsewhere please.
Sideboard is same as before.
Game 2 my opponent mulls to 5 on the play and smugly plays a t0 leyline, t1 faithless off a mountain. His next land on turn 3 is a mountain as well. I cast a turn 3 aether grid, turn 5 wurmcoil engine naturally and my opponent scoops. While this was happening my wife sat down next to me (again not knowing we are at pro REL) and my opponent calls a judge. They step aside, then the judge pulls my wife aside and asks her to stay behind the blue tape. Fair enough. Right as I cast my wurmcoil engine, another random comes and sits down on the other side of my opponent to watch his friend’s match on the other side. My opponent scoops to my wurmcoil, then leaves his cards half scooped to go and complain to the judge again, much more emphatically this time. After he apparently didn’t get a free win, he puts a line through the signature line on the results slip. Classy. I make sure to get a judge to confirm he just signed it, and that was that.
Round 10 vs Peter on Humans. Loss 2-1
Sit down next round, my opponent and I make small talk and I think to myself how I haven’t actually played vs a humans player yet. Mistakes. I lose the die roll, and my opponent mulls to 5. I keep a slower hand but, my opponent still manages to kill me on turn 4 with enough disruption before I can kill him.
In: 3x Galvanic Blast, 2x Ghirapur Aether Grid, 1x Ensnaring Bridge
Out: 4x Terrarion, 2x Mind Stone
Game 2 I keep a hand with turn 1 active spellbomb, turn 2 aether grid with galvanic blast backup. Snap it off. I play a turn 2 grid, and at the end of turn 3 I have the option to tap 2 artifacts to shoot my opponent. However, he had an active vial on 2, so I hold off in case he has Kataki (he did). This game, my opponent uses both his rec sages, and I kill 2 katakis before slamming an ensnaring bridge that he is cold to. It buys me infinite time to assemble the win.
Game 3 I made my only glaring play mistake. On the draw, it is especially important to get an engineered explosives on 2 into play to keep multiple meddling mages and freebooters from running away with the game. I have an option to play it on 2 or keep up a galvanic blast to kill a mantis rider. However, I just assumed I had 3 artifacts in play by this point because I was thinking about playing EE. I did not. Mantis rider did not die. I did. Rip, rtfc and all that.
Round 11 vs Brishan on Humans. Win 2-0
I need to shake off the previous round, and I am seeing a lot of tron around me so I’m hoping for an easy round. Nothing doing, when my opponent leads on human land champion. Luckily I won the die roll and had a turn 2 spellbomb to kill off his champion and slow down his draw. I cracked ee on 2, and combed off with 16 life.
Sideboard same as before
Round 2 on the draw, my opponent plays nothing turn 1, a turn 2 meddling mage on ee. I feel like his hand has no real interaction with me apart from that so I spellbomb it, and set an ee on 2. His next turn was 3x thalias lieutenant which put me to 3. However, with a lack of interaction I untapped and won. Got a bit of pleasure killing him with aether grid since I couldn’t find a myr retriever in the top 30 cards.
Round 12 vs Bobby on Humans. Loss 2-1
Feeling pretty good about my chances, I sat down and chatted with Bobby before the round started. He was like me, just happy to be here and playing well. Unfortunately, it was yet another humans player so this was going to be difficult to maintain a good record. I lost the die roll, and was greeted by a t1 vial off a human land. However, I peeled a spellbomb for the turn, and turned it on early. My life total goes from 18, to 14, to 3, so I needed to combo when I untapped. Unfortunately for me, my opponent played a thalia post combat to make my endeavor even harder. Luckily, I peeled another darksteel citadel, played a KCI for 5 mana, played a scrap trawler, and generated enough mana to rebuy the spellbomb, put it into play, generate red mana from a mox and kill thalia. From there it was easy pickings. During this match, my opponent tapped a horizon canopy for mana and forgot to take the damage until the following turn. I should have called a judge on this, but didn’t and it wound up biting me later on.
Sideboard is the same as the previous rounds humans rounds.
Game 2 on the draw I mull to 5 and keep opal, ee, star, stirrings, spellbomb. This hand is turned on by another ee, or land which is 20/55 cards or just over 36%. I have a scry and a draw to hit a land, which puts my chances at decent to hit within a turn. I didn’t hit anything within 4 draws, and died after just casting mopal.
Game 3 on the play I brought back in a mind stone for an ichor wellspring, as I want to go faster vs this guy since he seems the type to keep hands completely reliant on thalia. During this game my opponent tried to cast a rec sage off human-only lands (GRV) and forgot to pay for his aether vial for his kataki (GRV). This coupled with the potential GRV from game 1 means the third warning should have been upgraded to a game loss, which sucks because after the vial died my opponent had exactly thalia’s lieutenant + phantasmal image to exact me before I could kill him. Live and learn, but at professional REL ALWAYS CALL A JUDGE.
Round 13 vs Zach on Affinity. Win 2-1
Zach was playing next to me the previous round, and I knew what he was on. It ended up not mattering because I lost the die roll and got ran over game 1. It was sweet that he made a 5/5 inkmoth nexus, and hit me with that + hope of ghirapur, then cracked the hope to ensure I couldn’t combo him. Nice play.
In: 4x Nature’s Claim, 2x Ghirapur Aether Grid
Out: 2x Mind Stone, 4x Terrarion
Postboard this match is a cakewalk. They attack along an axis that is covered by claim, but are also weak to aether grid and EE. Game 2 on the play I played some mana rocks, my opponent tried to clock me with a 5/5 inkmoth from a ravager eating the rest of his board. The inkmoth got nature’s claimed which gave me infinite time to combo him.
No sideboard changes on the draw.
Game 3 my opponent went inkmoth, drum, ornithopter, drum, go. I played a darksteel star opal crack and stirrings, setting up for a turn 4 kill. He played a plating, a second inkmoth, signal pest, and hit me with a large ornithopter. I took a hit from the thopter, untapped and blew up an ee on 1 to slow him down. The ornithopter dealt significantly less damage for the next few turns, and I combed him from there.
Round 14 vs Chuck on Dredge. Loss 2-1
Game one versus dredge is really a cakewalk. They have zero interaction and are generally slower than you. The only way they can win is a nuts cathartic on the play hitting multiple amalgams. I won the die roll game 1, took my beats down to 3 then killed him.
Sideboard depends on what hate if any you think they have. Most lists aren’t on black leyline right now, so it’s mostly ancient grudge, nature’s claim, thoughtseize and the new sadball.
In: 3x Nature’s Claim, 1x Ensnaring Bridge, 1x Wurmcoil engine.
Out: 2x Mind Stone, 2x EE, 1x Terrarion.
Game 2 on the draw I kept a decent 6, and my opponent had a perfect dredge draw + sadball on turn 3. I would have been ok had he not hit his driven/despair and wiped my hand out. I let it resolve and discarded everything but bridge, hoping he wouldn’t see the two ancient grudges in his graveyard. He did.
No changes on the play
Game 3 I mulled to 6, and opponent to 5. I kept darksteel citadel, stirrings, claim, ichor wellspring, KCI, scrap trawler and scryed a 2nd natures claim to the bottom. This was probably a mistake, but my outs were any of my sphere effects or land, with mopal as half a hit (25/54) with a single draw step. My opponent even proceeded to miss his first land drop. After drawing 4 green spells in a row, I finally hit a forest, when my opponent hits me for 14 and driven/despairs my hand. Easy game guess.
Round 15 vs Brennan on Elves. Win 2-1
Last match, we are both really frazzled and just chatting about our day. I won the die roll, and kept a spellbomb heavy hand. This was rewarded when I spellbombed his t2 archdruid, t3 archdruid, ee wiped his one drops, and scrap trawler rebought a spellbomb which rebought ee. The turn he failed to play a spell I untapped after and won. During sideboarding we were chatting about this matchup, and it does really feels dependent on the coin flip.
In: 3x Galvanic Blast, 2x Ghirapur Aether Grid
Out: 2x Mind Stone, 1x Myr Retriever, 2x Terrarion.
Game 2 on the draw in untapped on my turn 3 facing 26+ power with a board of 2x land, sphere, mopal with KCI, 2x scrappy and myr retriever in hand. If I peel exactly darksteel citadel, I can cast my hand and go infinite. We peeled a non-ds citadel land.
No changes on the play
Game 3 I killed my opponent on turn 3. It took forever to assemble the infinite, so I had to go manual mode for most of it with aether grid while chaining. We had almost 20 minutes left on the clock so my opponent made me go all the way through it, which I understand.
Final record 10-5, good for a pro point. It felt good that all my loses were in 3 games, and most of them felt tight enough that I might have been able to play lines differently for a win. This deck feels really good, but does it deserve a banning? Probably not. The amount of stony silences in the top 32 is indicative that this was a good weekend for KCI, and people still are not respecting it. I was RIPed and stoney’ed 0 times throughout the tournament which felt good. Let me know in the comments if you have any other requests for thought processes or data, as I feel pretty comfortable with this deck. Thanks for reading.
The meta became a bit more favorable for us would be my guess. If we play a bunch of decks that fold to thopter sword, we should be pretty favored. Only deck that this doesnt technically apply to is burn i think because its more combo-y in that it can kill us before we get the chance to set up.
for those of you wondering why travis' list looks "stock" its because hes my testing buddy and Disgruntled elk online. He ended x-4, losing his top 8 shot to storm where he technically misplayed but it wouldnt have mattered cuz his opp had everything.
Post notes results from him and from my jamming in side events:
Deck feels great in its current form
Jace is meh, we cut both copies out of the main for the 4th serum visions and a krark-clan ironworks. Ironworks is for grindy matchups or combo where we need some way to leverage thopter sword to go over the top. Case in point, Travis' last win was against amulet titan, where he had thopter sword in play for most of the game. His opponent still almost managed to kill him with multiple titans and ruric-thar. Had travis had kci in his deck, it would have been an easier win
spellskite from the board was an all-star, trying to find a way to the main deck.
scissors out of the board was HOT all day. Trav beat tron twice I believe, essentially by being lava axe.deck
which remand decks are yall struggling against? The more controlling versions without a decent clock fold pretty hard to thopter combo. There have been games that I've ended with jace, tezz and whir in my hand with no real reason to cast them because thopter sword just takes over the game.
RE Talisman vs Prism: While I understand the want to play talisman, prism just powers up whir in ways no other deck can play. t2 prism is a turn 3 whir for 2, 3 with any 0 or 1 mana artifact on turn 1. Prism also lets you play it for "free" in turns where you need to dump cards out of your hand for bridge. Honestly I wouldnt go below 4 prism in the deck, and it is especially telling when we have a multitude of hands that are marginal but insane if we draw a prism.
One problem I see recurring is building the deck as control. Honestly I think this is a mistake. I prefer to think about (and play) this deck almost as a tempo role, using thoughtseize to resolve our combo and use tezz pretty aggressively to make 5/5s. The presence of bridge is only there to allow us to transition to a defensive posture more easily, but given the choice I think we need to be the beatdown.
@Eter: Current list is 3x Serum Visions in the main, sideboard changes day to day. Apart from that, still the same list.
@jacetotheface: I like the idea of maxing thropters, as it tends to be the best card by itself. I have won a non-zero number of games with saccing random crappy artifacts to make thopters and pressure. Disagree on mox opal, as it is a split card of best/worst card in the deck. If we max on thopter foundry, then the extra opals just turn into rando 1/1s. More upside than downside I think. See above for my thoughts on prism vs talisman. We originally played ceremonious rejection, but the slot turned into scissors to just make em dead. Travis has been liking a one-of spellskite in the board, I haven't gotten a chance to see it yet.
@noctem89 That reply was pretty rude (and therefore pointless) if you don't think I know what I'm talking about, don't respond - if you want to have a conversation, don't condescend. The deck has significant problems facing it, brainstorming new angles is totally appropriate. Supporting status quo would require results, which the deck is simply not putting up.
so you say im rude when you lead with
"Anyone who has played the deck for a long enough period knows ..."
right. sure dude.
We were having a conversation about potential sideboard options. Your post started with an insult to my line of thinking (and therefor me), a strawman to back up your argument, and no other substance or data to back it up. I'm up to about 70 or so matches online. I have a decent feel for what the deck is trying to do. Red for just grid offers nothing that the current sideboard would fix (I'm up to 3 decay, 1 pulse in the board now), red for blast doesnt solve problems that fatal push couldn't fix (given an expected meta thats not showing up currently) and red for potential artifact hate that we don't really struggle against (affin and lantern, although lantern can sometimes be an issue if they lock early). So yes, lets continue evolving the deck to a specific meta. Just try starting off your post less pointed
I've been liking echoing truth, recently, more and more as an "answer" to stony, (along with maybe only 1 hard answer like decay). While it only buys you 1-2 turns, typically that is enough against the types of decks (white) that run stony to pull ahead, as your combo has probably been sitting there ignored by gideons and jaces. And as an alternate-use SB card, truth does quite well against today's agro. Looking at you, bloodghast/angler/champion/24 goblin tokens. Echoing truth is easy to cast and rarely dead, and serves as protection for your key artifacts at times.
With our straight UB builds echoing truth pulled a lot of weight. This is something to consider based on your meta
I’ve gotten very excited about coming up with a red/burnish version relying on Grid and Galv Blast as payoff but after working on it for a week or two i found that it brought too little to the table. This being said, that was a while ago and meta has shifted a lot.
with the meta moving more midrangy, there are a lot more blast and targeted shatter effects running around. We might need to start upping the #s of welding jar again and play more padeem. While grid is nice, it also expects you to have 6+ artifacts in play all the time to really hold a candle to the creatures midrange is playing, which doesn't happen that much.
"Anyone who has played the deck for a long enough period knows that it's not as simple as having a flexible removal spell."
stopped taking your post seriously right here
With a bit of thought into your manabase, its very easy to cast a decay or pulse or disenchant. Your fix is to go into another color that doesn't offer removal for the problematic cards, play a card that doesn't get rid of said problem(does go around so +1 for that) and hopefully still find a way to win. Right.
"Stony is a huge problem for myriad reasons (and usually comes with a kataki and/or disenchants in tow), and a new configuration is certainly worth consideration."
This is literally the reason you play a flexible spell, to be able to deal with stony or kataki, whichever your opponent draws. Thats.....the point of flexibility. Also, please show me a deck playing all of these cards. The only one close enough that I can think of would be GWx value/combo or Taxes, neither of which have a large meta share or we really struggle against
we get a bunch of free wins vs aggro with thopter sword and bridge anyway, and red is the weakest for sideboard options. While grid is good to grind with, so is thopter sword and jace. I would much rather just answer the stony silence with a flexible removal spell and move on with the gameplan than play a worse color
Glimmervoid is a good idea, but there are some instances where we dont have an artifact in play until turn 2. While it is nice to have a color source always turned on unlike spire, the drawback for glimmervoid can sometimes be a real thing. The main matchup this occurs in is grixis ds where they shatter your stuff all the time, and you board out some artifact air anyway.
I tried white for a while as well boarding out jace for lingering souls in aggressive matchups, but yes overall green is better. The removal you bring in is flexible enough for multiple matchups. With white, you can board in disenchant vs something like boggles and just hit their enchantments, but decay can also hit teeg. Anguished unmaking is nice, but we really don't care that much about jace; between tezz and thopter sword we can really easily kill a jace. One thing I am pushing for is the inclusion of maelstrom pulse, but aparently bontu's has been testing decently well on the draw vs humans.
Tidehollow is interesting, but I think the combination of collective brutality and scissors really puts the pressure on the opponent to awkwardly go off in spots where they normally wouldn't. It's been working well against tron and we havent played vs storm really at all online yet.
My kingdom for a baleful strix printing in modern. Cmon wotc, ONE TIME.
We want flexibility, but also to not flood on hand disruption. 4 Thoughtseize felt like the correct number. We play more like a tempo deck, so thoughtseize into walker once is usually enough to put the opp on the back foot.
We play 2 bridges main.....
I talked about cobru in the first post. I do want more in the board, but the card is obnoxiously expensive online. IRL im currently at 3
4 Tezz really isn't too much, its the best payoff in the deck besides actual thopter/sword. It's how you can steal matches vs big mana and combo, just make a bunch of 5/5s and punch them. We even board in more effects like that postboard in ensoul artifact for those matchups. Jace is very medium in this deck. He is good some of the time, but it feels like sometimes he is just the 5-6 copies of tezz.
Sweepers are only really there for decks with creatures and lots of artifact interaction. Against things like humans and whatnot we don't really rely in damnation and lean on thopter/sword and bridge to do a bunch of the heavy lifting. Also postboard you can use abrupt decay to fill your curve up to payoffs.
Ideal starting hands
2-3 lands
Acceleration (mopal or mind stone)
Cantrips/dig (eggs, wellspring, stirrings)
A combo piece (kci or trawler)
Some hands from my Vegas tournament
OTD g3 versus humans
Mopal, EE, star, stirrings, spellbomb. (mull to 5, he kept 6)
I kept this hand on the draw because of a few things. If I hit a land, I can cast my hand turn 1 and have access to disruption and dig on top of that. If I hit another EE, I can stirrings into the land and at least present a bit of a fight. I have a scry, and minimum 2 drawsteps to find a relevant card.
OTD vs Grishoalbrand g2
Mopal, Citadel, Citadel, KCI, EE, Egg, Ichor
This hand is turn 1 opal active (acceleration), interaction with chalice of the void and leyline (EE), cantrips (egg/ichor) and combo piece (KCI). I snap kept this, and was rewarded with a 2nd mopal off the top into scrap trawler to kill my opponent on turn 2
OTD vs Unknown g1
Citadel, Ruin, Fair, Forest, Egg, Egg, Egg
On the draw I mulled this. While it may seem fine enough, I have 4 draws to hit combo pieces, acceleration, and potential interaction if needed. While it may seem fine, hands like this can be really loose if you fail to find in the top 4 cards or just draw more cantrips. Any thalia matchup and this hand is terrible, same thing with opposing combo decks.
Mulled into
Citadel, Egg, Opal, Wellspring, Mindstone, KCI
Keep, scry fair to the top. Win on turn 3
It may seem counter intuitive, but when saccing things to first start generating mana put as many rocks and wellsprings into play before you play trawler. If your opponent goes after it with the trigger on the stack, you are able to build up enough value to draw another and continue chaining. Surgical can sometimes put a damper on things, but if you have sequenced correctly with myr retriever, playing multiple trawlers, or have buried ruin in play its very difficult for the opponent to disrupt you. I have also been a fan of boarding in defense grid (and now silence) vs surgical decks to mess with their disruption. Postboard against extraction decks you should be bringing in alternative win-conditions as well.
List for the event.
4x Scrap Trawler
2x Myr Retriever
4x Terrarion
4x Chromatic Star
2x Chromatic Sphere
3x Pyrite Spellbomb
3x Engineered Explosives
4x Mox Opal
4x Ancient Stirrings
4x Ichor Wellspring
4x Mind Stone
4x Krark-Clan Ironworks
4x Grove of the Burnwillows
2x Spire of Industry
2x Forest
4x Darksteel Citadel
3x Buried Ruin
3x Inventor’s Fair
Sideboard:
1x Wurmcoil Engine
1x Engineered Explosives
3x Galvanic Blast
4x Nature’s Claim
2x Defense Grid
2x Ghirapur Aether Grid
2x Guttural Response
This event was my first time in Vegas. It was a bit surreal getting off the plane and the first thing that greets my wife and I was a slot machine. Walking through the airport and being bombarded by gambling was a life experience that I won’t really forget. Our initial flight out of Austin was supposed to go to El Paso, but because of delays we would have missed our connection so we were put onto a different flight that would fly nonstop to Vegas. Our Southwest gate attendant had assured us that our bag would be switched from the previous plane to this one. Yea, that didn’t happen. After waiting for all the bags from our flight to be unloaded, and not seeing mine, I did not have high hopes for this event. This would end up being a recurring theme throughout the weekend. However, our original plane did end up making its connection so they found my bag on another carrousel about 15 minutes later. We arrive at our Airbnb which is about a block from the convention center. Thursday we spent all day getting stuff signed but ended up not being able to make any of the LCQs. I guess we are grinding out all 15 rounds.
Day 1 started with me checking my registration status on site and guess what, I’m not on the registration sheet. I had bought my registration online almost a month beforehand so this was concerning. Apparently I was not the only person with this issue, and we all had to be put in again before the round started. This put the round start back almost an hour, and when we finally sat down there wasn’t enough time for a player meeting, so we just sat down next to our first round opponent. Without them telling us about it. Yea. Luckily I am paranoid and didn’t give anything up, but I saw a bunch of cards my opponent was playing. Great start to the tournament.
Round 1- Stephen playing Jeskai LD jank. Win 2-0
Lost the die roll, but I had seen stone rain and bolt out of my opponent shuffling so I put him on some ponza list. Luckily ponza is a good matchup for KCI since I don’t really care about much of what they do. Well, it would get weirder. My opponent cast multiple off the wall spells game one, but applied no pressure. He taps out to stone rain me, I untap and start going off. He lets me put KCI, scrappy and a bunch of other things into play while looping opal for mana. He then stops me mid combo, then tries to surgical (?) my opals. Yea buddy this isn’t going to work out well for you. Sac another star in response, recur the opal again, keep going off. He remanded me and was playing white lands so I assumed he had stony/rip and other countermagic nonsense.
In: 4 Nature’s Claim, 2 Aether grid, 2 Defense Grid
Out: 4 terrarion, 1 myr retriever, 1 mind stone, 2 EE
Game 2 he sticks an early blood moon, then Ajani vengeant after ghost quartering his shock that he fetched for to color fix. I resolve a defense grid, and it starts doing work. This is then magnified when he cast bust to destroy all lands. While a minor annoyance, I do need to end the game eventually. I finally peeled a mox to cast the aether grid in my hand and it goes the distance.
Round 2- Aaron playing Grishoalbrand. Win 2-0
Since we had to write in our names because they manually paired us round 1, I wasn’t on the round 2 pairings. Come to find out that not only did they put in my result wrong; they wrote my name wrong so I couldn’t find myself on the pairings board. Great tournament so far. I finally get a pairing, and have a judge escort me to my opponent with a lengthy time extension. Aaron and I talk about how ridiculous this tournament has been so far (spoilers it gets worse), I win the die roll and we begin. I play stuff, he plays faithless discarding borborygmos and land. Great, this matchup is really reliant on the die roll since we don’t really interact with one another. I kill him on turn 3 before he kills me.
In: 2 Defense Grid, 1 Ensnaring Bridge, 2 Nature’s Claim
Out: 2 Mind stone, 2 Terrarion, 1 Engineered Explosives
This matchup is all about speed, and which type of hate your opponent has. If they have leyline, claim is good. If they have surgical, defense grid does work. Either which way, they tend to have chalice of the void so EE stays in. My board was a bit different in that I have access to ensnaring bridge to shut down their attack step. Game 2 on the draw I mull to 5, and my opponent kills me turn 3 before I can kill him. Fun times.
Game 3 on the play I mull to 4, and think my tournament is already over. However, my opponent mulls as well, and my 4 isn’t terrible with EE, Citadel, Opal and Trawler. I play out my stuff and pass. My opponent casts t1 faithless, turn 2 chalice on 1 and not much else. I peel the land to cast trawler and just give him the beatdowns. I do draw a few one drops, but leaving his chalice in play is more beneficial for now. Scrappy gets him down to 11, and I finally am able to just play KCI, crack ee, then start going. He has to put griselbrand in to play to draw into surgical, but it wouldn’t matter because he was at exactsies to die if he takes that line from my spellbomb.
The first 2 rounds have taken almost an hour and a half each, and then the event reporter crashed. They offered full refunds for this tournament, and even though I was 2-0 I was sorely tempted to take it, but I tested quite a bit for this tourney so I stayed in. Of course, I immediately lost the next round.
Round 3 vs Eric playing Burn, Loss 2-1
I lost the die roll, and kept a spellbomb heavy hand. This payed dividends when my I had to kill a goblin guild and multiple eidolons. My opponent managed to kill me before I could find my 4th mana source for KCI.
In: 4 Nature’s Claim, 1 Wurmcoil Engine, 3 Galvanic Blast
Out: 3 EE, 4 Terrarion, 2 Mind Stone
On the play, the matchup feels almost un-losable. My opponent kept a creature heavy draw, which died to 2x spellbombs. My opponent tapped out turn 3 to cast eidolon and grim lavamancer, and then died turn 4.
In: 1 EE
Out: 1 Mind Stone
Mind stone on the draw is super slow, and EE lets you clean up the nut draws. Unfortunately, that exact nut draw happened, and I never found enough interaction to stabilize. Turn 1 goblin guide, t2 goblin guide, t3 goblin guide swiftspear searing blood your scrap blocker and still had destructive revelry. Must be nice. Over the course of the match, I had 11 goblin guide triggers and drew a land off it once.
Round 4 vs Joseph playing Grishoalbrand, Win 2-0
I lose the die roll, and my opponent casts faithless looting. I think sweet we are playing dredge but no, it’s yet another stupid shoal deck. Just like the previous deck, the die roll really matters so losing it feels really bad. However, I untapped on my turn 4 and wasn’t dead, so I repaid the favor by killing my opponent.
Sideboarding: the same as before.
Game 2 I kept a potentially explosive hand, and my opponent mulled to 5. He went turn 1 faithless discarding grizzlybrand and borbor, turn 2 nights whisper. I played turn 1 citadel opal star stirrings, and untapped turn 2 probably being dead. Luckily I peeled the mox opal to play citadel, 2nd opal, KCI, go infinite. Nice turn 2 kill.
Round 5 vs Brandon playing Mardu Pyromancer, Win 2-0
Game 1 this matchup is really easy. They don’t pressure you all that fast, and you have ways to slow their clock down while generating value. I won the die roll, spellbombed his turn 2 pyromancer, and durdled for a bit then killed my opponent. Not much to say.
In: 2x Ghirapur Aether Grid, 1x Wurmcoil Engine, 3x Galvanic Blast, 2x Defense Grid
Out: 2x Terrarion, 3x Mind Stone, 1x EE, 1x Spellbomb, 1x Myr Retriever
There is additional tension in this matchup with what to sideboard in, as the types of hate could be different. Natures claim is good against black leyline, defense grid is good against their targeted removal and surgical. Most lists are playing khambal, which both shortens your clock and prevents you from comboing so it is more important to get off the table.
Game 2 my opponent mulled to 6 for leyline, I kept a 7 that was resilient to many types of things. I play defense grid on turn 2, and it really puts a crimp in his plans of sit on pyromancer and stop me from combing with k command. I land aether grid, clean up his pressure and we play a waiting game for a while. I finally find an ee, put it on 4, and kill him after blowing up leyline.
Round 6 vs Julio playing Titanshift. Win 2-0
Chatting with Julio I find out he is from Mexico, up here for the event. He seemed decent, but I didn’t know how well it would go having to explain the combo with a possible language barrier. Luckily it didn’t come up. I won the die roll, kept a turn 4 kill hand, and breathed easy when my opponent shocked and suspended a search for tomorrow on 1. Julio cast 2x ramp spells, then died.
In: 4x nature’s claim
Out: 1x mind stone, 2x EE, 1 Terrarion
RG shift can bring in targeted removal, relic, and possibly damping sphere, none of which we really care about. My opponent went turn 1 valakut, turn 2 relic. I kept playing out my artifacts and not cracking them, just to be able to generate enough value to push through relic in one turn. I found a KCI with ancient stirrings, and my opponent tapped out turn 4 to play a witchbane orb. He then proceeded to die.
Round 7 vs James on RG Eldrazi. Win 2-0
I lost the die roll, and kept a slower hand but more resilient, and luckily my opponent’s draw was not super-fast. He beat me down a bit with matter reshapers, but tapped out to cast a reality smasher. I untapped and combed him.
In: 2x Defense grid, 1x Wurmcoil Engine, 1x Ensnaring Bridge, 3x Galvanic Blast
Out: 2x Mind Stone, 3x Terrarion, 2x EE,
Postboard they gain access to ancient grude, abrade, relic, and sometimes damping sphere to go along with their giant dudes. I think defense grid does a lot of work in making your opponent decide whether to leave up mana for interaction or put you on a clock. Game 2 I mulliganed to a mediocre 6, but my opponent was not very fast out of the gates. His turn 1 relic was annoying, but I managed to get him to pop it to stop a recursion of spellbombs to keep him off pressure. I resolved a wurmcoil engine, which then traded with a bolt and reality smasher. I then rebought the wurmcoil with a buried ruin, and it just gummed up the ground long enough to push through all of his relics and ancient grudges. He wiped my graveyard twice, and ancient grudged me twice and still died.
Round 8 vs Matthew on White BTL Scapeshift. Loss 2-1
Last match of the day is against an opponent who was sitting caddy-corner to me last round, so we both know what each other are on. After some friendly banter about BTL vs RUGshift, I lose the die roll and we get it on. Game 1 his draw was medium, and he taps out to set up for a kill. I untapped and combed him.
In: 3x Nature’s Claim, 2x Guttural Response, 2x Defense Grid, 1x Aether Grid
Out: 3x Mind Stone, 2x EE, 1x Terrarion, 1x Pyrite Spellbomb, 1x Myr Retriever
I didn’t really know how to sideboard apart from the anti-counterspell stuff. I brought in an alternate win-con and anti-white sideboard hate just in case, but I don’t think I needed to.
Game 2 my hand was fine, but my opponent had a good ramp+interaction hand. I test spelled a KCI into his 2 open mana, he remanded me into scapeshift kill. The problem with playing this matchup is unlike other counterspell decks U Scapeshift lists can interact with you on the stack untap and just kill you.
Game 3 was a bunch of the same, although I drew sideboard cards to actually fend of his stack interaction. We were going back and forth on resources fighting over a defense grid. I peeled a 2nd grid and should have just tried jamming. Instead I wanted to recur a previously killed grid, test spell with one to resolve the other then win next turn. The problem with this line is it assumes that my opponent has infinite resources and gives him time to find his wincon. I should have just left the land in play, played the grid to get countered and hope the last card in my opponents hand was not a counterspell and jam KCI for the win. Opponent peeled the scapeshift to kill me.
Day 1 ends with an x-2 record, meaning I am probably out of top 8 contention. However, it’s my first decent day 1 record at a huge GP so I might as well finish it out. Day 2 actually starts on time, but no announcement of change of REL. So off to a great start again.
Round 9 vs Shawn on Mardu Pyromancer. Win 2-0
My opponent sits down, takes out his deck, flashes me the top card of his sideboard, and then starts shuffling his deck facing me so I see the bottom 2 cards each time he cuts. I don’t think much of it since he told me it was his 2nd GP day 2, but it goes downhill from there. Game 1 I keep a hand with early spellbomb and combo on turn 3 with buried ruin, so it’s an easy keep. I spellbomb an early young pyro, and my opponent never deals me another point of damage for the rest of the game. He casts a bedlam reveler leaving up swamp and plains, so I know it’s safe to go for it. A little note about how I combo. When I perform an action, I am writing down my mana totals on the back of my life pad. When I sac an artifact I write 2, when I sac another I scratch out 2 and write 4. I have done it this way since I played storm, and it is very intuitive for me and is easy to recreate situations. Also I am very clear about what I am doing, my death triggers, etc. This is relevant because as I am comboing off, my opponent kept trying to stop me mid action and check mana. Once or twice I get it, but it was every 3rd or 4th action while I was in the middle of drawing or had draw triggers on the stack he would tell me to wait and try and count. Nice try doofus, but you aren’t messing me up. Try the scumbag stuff elsewhere please.
Sideboard is same as before.
Game 2 my opponent mulls to 5 on the play and smugly plays a t0 leyline, t1 faithless off a mountain. His next land on turn 3 is a mountain as well. I cast a turn 3 aether grid, turn 5 wurmcoil engine naturally and my opponent scoops. While this was happening my wife sat down next to me (again not knowing we are at pro REL) and my opponent calls a judge. They step aside, then the judge pulls my wife aside and asks her to stay behind the blue tape. Fair enough. Right as I cast my wurmcoil engine, another random comes and sits down on the other side of my opponent to watch his friend’s match on the other side. My opponent scoops to my wurmcoil, then leaves his cards half scooped to go and complain to the judge again, much more emphatically this time. After he apparently didn’t get a free win, he puts a line through the signature line on the results slip. Classy. I make sure to get a judge to confirm he just signed it, and that was that.
Round 10 vs Peter on Humans. Loss 2-1
Sit down next round, my opponent and I make small talk and I think to myself how I haven’t actually played vs a humans player yet. Mistakes. I lose the die roll, and my opponent mulls to 5. I keep a slower hand but, my opponent still manages to kill me on turn 4 with enough disruption before I can kill him.
In: 3x Galvanic Blast, 2x Ghirapur Aether Grid, 1x Ensnaring Bridge
Out: 4x Terrarion, 2x Mind Stone
Game 2 I keep a hand with turn 1 active spellbomb, turn 2 aether grid with galvanic blast backup. Snap it off. I play a turn 2 grid, and at the end of turn 3 I have the option to tap 2 artifacts to shoot my opponent. However, he had an active vial on 2, so I hold off in case he has Kataki (he did). This game, my opponent uses both his rec sages, and I kill 2 katakis before slamming an ensnaring bridge that he is cold to. It buys me infinite time to assemble the win.
Game 3 I made my only glaring play mistake. On the draw, it is especially important to get an engineered explosives on 2 into play to keep multiple meddling mages and freebooters from running away with the game. I have an option to play it on 2 or keep up a galvanic blast to kill a mantis rider. However, I just assumed I had 3 artifacts in play by this point because I was thinking about playing EE. I did not. Mantis rider did not die. I did. Rip, rtfc and all that.
Round 11 vs Brishan on Humans. Win 2-0
I need to shake off the previous round, and I am seeing a lot of tron around me so I’m hoping for an easy round. Nothing doing, when my opponent leads on human land champion. Luckily I won the die roll and had a turn 2 spellbomb to kill off his champion and slow down his draw. I cracked ee on 2, and combed off with 16 life.
Sideboard same as before
Round 2 on the draw, my opponent plays nothing turn 1, a turn 2 meddling mage on ee. I feel like his hand has no real interaction with me apart from that so I spellbomb it, and set an ee on 2. His next turn was 3x thalias lieutenant which put me to 3. However, with a lack of interaction I untapped and won. Got a bit of pleasure killing him with aether grid since I couldn’t find a myr retriever in the top 30 cards.
Round 12 vs Bobby on Humans. Loss 2-1
Feeling pretty good about my chances, I sat down and chatted with Bobby before the round started. He was like me, just happy to be here and playing well. Unfortunately, it was yet another humans player so this was going to be difficult to maintain a good record. I lost the die roll, and was greeted by a t1 vial off a human land. However, I peeled a spellbomb for the turn, and turned it on early. My life total goes from 18, to 14, to 3, so I needed to combo when I untapped. Unfortunately for me, my opponent played a thalia post combat to make my endeavor even harder. Luckily, I peeled another darksteel citadel, played a KCI for 5 mana, played a scrap trawler, and generated enough mana to rebuy the spellbomb, put it into play, generate red mana from a mox and kill thalia. From there it was easy pickings. During this match, my opponent tapped a horizon canopy for mana and forgot to take the damage until the following turn. I should have called a judge on this, but didn’t and it wound up biting me later on.
Sideboard is the same as the previous rounds humans rounds.
Game 2 on the draw I mull to 5 and keep opal, ee, star, stirrings, spellbomb. This hand is turned on by another ee, or land which is 20/55 cards or just over 36%. I have a scry and a draw to hit a land, which puts my chances at decent to hit within a turn. I didn’t hit anything within 4 draws, and died after just casting mopal.
Game 3 on the play I brought back in a mind stone for an ichor wellspring, as I want to go faster vs this guy since he seems the type to keep hands completely reliant on thalia. During this game my opponent tried to cast a rec sage off human-only lands (GRV) and forgot to pay for his aether vial for his kataki (GRV). This coupled with the potential GRV from game 1 means the third warning should have been upgraded to a game loss, which sucks because after the vial died my opponent had exactly thalia’s lieutenant + phantasmal image to exact me before I could kill him. Live and learn, but at professional REL ALWAYS CALL A JUDGE.
Round 13 vs Zach on Affinity. Win 2-1
Zach was playing next to me the previous round, and I knew what he was on. It ended up not mattering because I lost the die roll and got ran over game 1. It was sweet that he made a 5/5 inkmoth nexus, and hit me with that + hope of ghirapur, then cracked the hope to ensure I couldn’t combo him. Nice play.
In: 4x Nature’s Claim, 2x Ghirapur Aether Grid
Out: 2x Mind Stone, 4x Terrarion
Postboard this match is a cakewalk. They attack along an axis that is covered by claim, but are also weak to aether grid and EE. Game 2 on the play I played some mana rocks, my opponent tried to clock me with a 5/5 inkmoth from a ravager eating the rest of his board. The inkmoth got nature’s claimed which gave me infinite time to combo him.
No sideboard changes on the draw.
Game 3 my opponent went inkmoth, drum, ornithopter, drum, go. I played a darksteel star opal crack and stirrings, setting up for a turn 4 kill. He played a plating, a second inkmoth, signal pest, and hit me with a large ornithopter. I took a hit from the thopter, untapped and blew up an ee on 1 to slow him down. The ornithopter dealt significantly less damage for the next few turns, and I combed him from there.
Round 14 vs Chuck on Dredge. Loss 2-1
Game one versus dredge is really a cakewalk. They have zero interaction and are generally slower than you. The only way they can win is a nuts cathartic on the play hitting multiple amalgams. I won the die roll game 1, took my beats down to 3 then killed him.
Sideboard depends on what hate if any you think they have. Most lists aren’t on black leyline right now, so it’s mostly ancient grudge, nature’s claim, thoughtseize and the new sadball.
In: 3x Nature’s Claim, 1x Ensnaring Bridge, 1x Wurmcoil engine.
Out: 2x Mind Stone, 2x EE, 1x Terrarion.
Game 2 on the draw I kept a decent 6, and my opponent had a perfect dredge draw + sadball on turn 3. I would have been ok had he not hit his driven/despair and wiped my hand out. I let it resolve and discarded everything but bridge, hoping he wouldn’t see the two ancient grudges in his graveyard. He did.
No changes on the play
Game 3 I mulled to 6, and opponent to 5. I kept darksteel citadel, stirrings, claim, ichor wellspring, KCI, scrap trawler and scryed a 2nd natures claim to the bottom. This was probably a mistake, but my outs were any of my sphere effects or land, with mopal as half a hit (25/54) with a single draw step. My opponent even proceeded to miss his first land drop. After drawing 4 green spells in a row, I finally hit a forest, when my opponent hits me for 14 and driven/despairs my hand. Easy game guess.
Round 15 vs Brennan on Elves. Win 2-1
Last match, we are both really frazzled and just chatting about our day. I won the die roll, and kept a spellbomb heavy hand. This was rewarded when I spellbombed his t2 archdruid, t3 archdruid, ee wiped his one drops, and scrap trawler rebought a spellbomb which rebought ee. The turn he failed to play a spell I untapped after and won. During sideboarding we were chatting about this matchup, and it does really feels dependent on the coin flip.
In: 3x Galvanic Blast, 2x Ghirapur Aether Grid
Out: 2x Mind Stone, 1x Myr Retriever, 2x Terrarion.
Game 2 on the draw in untapped on my turn 3 facing 26+ power with a board of 2x land, sphere, mopal with KCI, 2x scrappy and myr retriever in hand. If I peel exactly darksteel citadel, I can cast my hand and go infinite. We peeled a non-ds citadel land.
No changes on the play
Game 3 I killed my opponent on turn 3. It took forever to assemble the infinite, so I had to go manual mode for most of it with aether grid while chaining. We had almost 20 minutes left on the clock so my opponent made me go all the way through it, which I understand.
Final record 10-5, good for a pro point. It felt good that all my loses were in 3 games, and most of them felt tight enough that I might have been able to play lines differently for a win. This deck feels really good, but does it deserve a banning? Probably not. The amount of stony silences in the top 32 is indicative that this was a good weekend for KCI, and people still are not respecting it. I was RIPed and stoney’ed 0 times throughout the tournament which felt good. Let me know in the comments if you have any other requests for thought processes or data, as I feel pretty comfortable with this deck. Thanks for reading.
Post notes results from him and from my jamming in side events:
Deck feels great in its current form
Jace is meh, we cut both copies out of the main for the 4th serum visions and a krark-clan ironworks. Ironworks is for grindy matchups or combo where we need some way to leverage thopter sword to go over the top. Case in point, Travis' last win was against amulet titan, where he had thopter sword in play for most of the game. His opponent still almost managed to kill him with multiple titans and ruric-thar. Had travis had kci in his deck, it would have been an easier win
spellskite from the board was an all-star, trying to find a way to the main deck.
scissors out of the board was HOT all day. Trav beat tron twice I believe, essentially by being lava axe.deck
RE Talisman vs Prism: While I understand the want to play talisman, prism just powers up whir in ways no other deck can play. t2 prism is a turn 3 whir for 2, 3 with any 0 or 1 mana artifact on turn 1. Prism also lets you play it for "free" in turns where you need to dump cards out of your hand for bridge. Honestly I wouldnt go below 4 prism in the deck, and it is especially telling when we have a multitude of hands that are marginal but insane if we draw a prism.
One problem I see recurring is building the deck as control. Honestly I think this is a mistake. I prefer to think about (and play) this deck almost as a tempo role, using thoughtseize to resolve our combo and use tezz pretty aggressively to make 5/5s. The presence of bridge is only there to allow us to transition to a defensive posture more easily, but given the choice I think we need to be the beatdown.
@Eter: Current list is 3x Serum Visions in the main, sideboard changes day to day. Apart from that, still the same list.
@jacetotheface: I like the idea of maxing thropters, as it tends to be the best card by itself. I have won a non-zero number of games with saccing random crappy artifacts to make thopters and pressure. Disagree on mox opal, as it is a split card of best/worst card in the deck. If we max on thopter foundry, then the extra opals just turn into rando 1/1s. More upside than downside I think. See above for my thoughts on prism vs talisman. We originally played ceremonious rejection, but the slot turned into scissors to just make em dead. Travis has been liking a one-of spellskite in the board, I haven't gotten a chance to see it yet.
so you say im rude when you lead with
"Anyone who has played the deck for a long enough period knows ..."
right. sure dude.
We were having a conversation about potential sideboard options. Your post started with an insult to my line of thinking (and therefor me), a strawman to back up your argument, and no other substance or data to back it up. I'm up to about 70 or so matches online. I have a decent feel for what the deck is trying to do. Red for just grid offers nothing that the current sideboard would fix (I'm up to 3 decay, 1 pulse in the board now), red for blast doesnt solve problems that fatal push couldn't fix (given an expected meta thats not showing up currently) and red for potential artifact hate that we don't really struggle against (affin and lantern, although lantern can sometimes be an issue if they lock early). So yes, lets continue evolving the deck to a specific meta. Just try starting off your post less pointed
With our straight UB builds echoing truth pulled a lot of weight. This is something to consider based on your meta
with the meta moving more midrangy, there are a lot more blast and targeted shatter effects running around. We might need to start upping the #s of welding jar again and play more padeem. While grid is nice, it also expects you to have 6+ artifacts in play all the time to really hold a candle to the creatures midrange is playing, which doesn't happen that much.
stopped taking your post seriously right here
With a bit of thought into your manabase, its very easy to cast a decay or pulse or disenchant. Your fix is to go into another color that doesn't offer removal for the problematic cards, play a card that doesn't get rid of said problem(does go around so +1 for that) and hopefully still find a way to win. Right.
"Stony is a huge problem for myriad reasons (and usually comes with a kataki and/or disenchants in tow), and a new configuration is certainly worth consideration."
This is literally the reason you play a flexible spell, to be able to deal with stony or kataki, whichever your opponent draws. Thats.....the point of flexibility. Also, please show me a deck playing all of these cards. The only one close enough that I can think of would be GWx value/combo or Taxes, neither of which have a large meta share or we really struggle against
I tried white for a while as well boarding out jace for lingering souls in aggressive matchups, but yes overall green is better. The removal you bring in is flexible enough for multiple matchups. With white, you can board in disenchant vs something like boggles and just hit their enchantments, but decay can also hit teeg. Anguished unmaking is nice, but we really don't care that much about jace; between tezz and thopter sword we can really easily kill a jace. One thing I am pushing for is the inclusion of maelstrom pulse, but aparently bontu's has been testing decently well on the draw vs humans.
Tidehollow is interesting, but I think the combination of collective brutality and scissors really puts the pressure on the opponent to awkwardly go off in spots where they normally wouldn't. It's been working well against tron and we havent played vs storm really at all online yet.
My kingdom for a baleful strix printing in modern. Cmon wotc, ONE TIME.
We play 2 bridges main.....
I talked about cobru in the first post. I do want more in the board, but the card is obnoxiously expensive online. IRL im currently at 3
Sweepers are only really there for decks with creatures and lots of artifact interaction. Against things like humans and whatnot we don't really rely in damnation and lean on thopter/sword and bridge to do a bunch of the heavy lifting. Also postboard you can use abrupt decay to fill your curve up to payoffs.