I think proxies are okay for the most part, but I think people should put in the extra effort to make high quality proxies. Writing on lands with permanent marker or writing out the card text on paper is just awful. I think a proxy should look like the actual card.
Another issue is when people proxy a large number of really powerful cards like mana drain. If the entire table isn't prepared to do the same or doesn't own any of those cards it can be hard to deal with. Getting your little casual EDH deck stomped by a few thousand dollars of fake cards would make somebody annoyed.
702.84a Cascade is a triggered ability that functions only while the spell with cascade is on the stack. Cascade means "When you cast this spell, exile cards from the top of your library until you exile a nonland card whose converted mana cost is less than this spell‘s converted mana cost. You may cast that card without paying its mana cost. Then put all cards exiled this way that weren‘t cast on the bottom of your library in a random order."
You don't have to worry about cascading into counterspells. Except that you lose some of the value from Wanderer.
Vapors has seen some play in control decks. It's a little bit slow unless the game is stalling already. It comes down too late to save you against most aggression without support. Being sorcery speed is the main reason why I never used it. I'd rather Consume The Meek in decks I play.
So I tried playing an Esper Teachings deck for the first time today as I've been looking for a fun control deck to play with Modern cards. I felt that while the deck was actually quite fun, Mystical Teachings itself felt like my worst card. It was consistently too slow to be effective, by 1/2 mana. Now there WERE times when it was effective, but those times were already late game when I felt like I had stabilized and should have been playing game winning threats, rather than continuing to fend off meager attacks post-stabilization. Anyone have any experience with this? I'm really tempted to just take Teachings out and play Esper Control.
If you cut teachings I'd advise adding a different engine in its place.
Cloister is bad because if they smash it you will lose your hand. That and it does almost nothing by itself. It's better to just cast spells to turn on bridge
Draw spells =/= draw engine. They are not the same.
This. When you have the same amount of cards in hand after casting a spell most likely all you've done is increased the quality of the cards in your hand. An actual engine gives you card advantage meaning you will have more cards. Another thing about an engine is that it usually implies that it is recurable or at least chain-able. You can use Oona's Grace or whispers of the muse as an engine. Think Twice has a pretty low chance of continuously supplying gas.
I've played teachings a bunch and it is my favorite deck in modern. Really fast aggro and highly resilient decks are brutal to face with teachings. It also is affected by splash damage whenever people run graveyard hate for other decks. It is also very challenging to play since you can't just copy a decklist very easily and expect to win. You have to tune it to the meta you are expecting. I think it's just good enough to be a real deck but not good enough to consistently win top 8.
If you want to draw cards I would go for actual card advantage. Manamorphose says "draw a card" but since it is a card it is value neutral. Harmonize and life from the loam are some green card advantage options
makes me think a singleton Pillar of Flame may be worth it to give you a 5th turn one answer to DRS while also being great against a new card I truly hate, VoR
Yeah he's a lot better with Teferi out because you can flash him in eot to protect him. Also I would sacrifice a land over him because that one bolt is going to be the last spell they resolve. The main difference between dralnu and snapcaster is that dralnu gives you massive amounts of card advantage and snapcaster only gives you flexibility
INS has a really good list floating around in the forums. I think the thread was called Classical Teachings. It needs to be tuned but that shell is kind of awesome. Dralnu is amazing.
I am doubtful. I have yet to see a blue spell suggestions that I could see taking out one of the current cards for.
It probably isn't worth splashing for unless the deck had a few more artifacts but thirst for knowledge might be okay since we can pitch extra bridges to dig for racks and pitch extra racks to dig for bridges. In a pinch we could pitch anything to dig for one of them.
Storage lands are essential to the draw-go style in this format. The idea is that you want to have something like think twice or a storage land to take advantage of your opponent not dropping a threat. The options are very limited in this format for doing that. TT, storage lands, whispers of the muse, mystical teachings, gifts ungiven, and a few flash creatures are all I can think of in these colors.
Another issue is when people proxy a large number of really powerful cards like mana drain. If the entire table isn't prepared to do the same or doesn't own any of those cards it can be hard to deal with. Getting your little casual EDH deck stomped by a few thousand dollars of fake cards would make somebody annoyed.
You don't have to worry about cascading into counterspells. Except that you lose some of the value from Wanderer.
If you cut teachings I'd advise adding a different engine in its place.
Cloister is bad because if they smash it you will lose your hand. That and it does almost nothing by itself. It's better to just cast spells to turn on bridge
This. When you have the same amount of cards in hand after casting a spell most likely all you've done is increased the quality of the cards in your hand. An actual engine gives you card advantage meaning you will have more cards. Another thing about an engine is that it usually implies that it is recurable or at least chain-able. You can use Oona's Grace or whispers of the muse as an engine. Think Twice has a pretty low chance of continuously supplying gas.
magma spray and flame slash are also options
Killing a 5 mana dude for 1 mana is a huge tempo advantage even if you get a token and some life.
It probably isn't worth splashing for unless the deck had a few more artifacts but thirst for knowledge might be okay since we can pitch extra bridges to dig for racks and pitch extra racks to dig for bridges. In a pinch we could pitch anything to dig for one of them.