UW Tron Primer, Post-DRS
Since the banning of DRS and the overwhelming change to the format, it’s time to revamp the primer. A lot of the old information is still relevant though, so we’ll just write what is needed and get content out.
Sideboards
In creating a sideboard, we need to analyze a few things:
1. What decks are we scared of?
2. Are there any decks we will lose to automatically?
3. What decks do we automatically beat and not need to board for?
4. Are there any new decks to account for?
So to start this out, here are the decks we consider as tier 1 and that we need to be prepared for:
Burn
Affinity
Zoo
Merfolk
Jund
BGx Rock
Melira Pod
Kiki Pod
Twin
Scapeshift
Living End
RG Tron
Faeries
UR Delver
UWR Midrange
UWR Control
Note that this is basically just taking the tier 1 lists from MTGS and adding in Faeries. I’m not particularly going to spend my time speculating.
1. We’re scared of Zoo, Merfolk, Twin, Scapeshift, RG Tron, UR Delver, BGx Rock and UWR Midrange.
2. We’re going to auto lose the RG Tron matchup more or less. It’s possible you decide to just punt this matchup because: a) the pairing is unlikely for you at a large tournament, and b) even if you do spend the board spots for it, there’s no guarantee you can win. It would still be in their favour.
UWR Midrange (basically any Geist deck) shows to be a bad matchup. You’re going to get like 60-40 or 65-35 with a standard setup - it’s not that good for you. The new Zoo + Faeries infested meta hopefully makes the deck not as good, aka we see less Geist. Blocking Geist all day with 2/3s and 3/3s seems bad for Geist decks. We’ll still go over Geist and what our deck would look like to handle it, but I think overall, we’re hoping to see fewer Geists.
3. We can auto beat UWR Control only. I think it’s nigh impossible to lose this matchup. Perhaps only post-board if they Sowing Salt us. Affinity, Pod, Burn, and Living End should all be highly favourable matchups for us. I say this mostly from experience, I’ve rarely lost any of these matchups.
4. Since the last iteration of the primer, we’ve introduced Zoo and Faeries. We’ve also changed our Delver to be UR (no more Geist), but now have split UWR into Midrange (Geist) and Control (no Geist). The format overall became faster with more aggressive decks showing up. And again, without Deathrite MB the deck is overall better positioned.
Our stock sideboard is going to try and beat the following decks, and prioritize them in this order:
Zoo
Twin
UWR Midrange
BGx Rock
RG Tron
Merfolk
UR Delver
Scapeshift
This is based on a number of factors, including how likely you are to see the deck and how hard it is to board for them, as well as how bad the matchup is.
Here is some general advice about what we need to do for each of those matchups.
Zoo: We want to have some good early game cards to stop their threats. We should already be playing 4 Path, 2 Wraths, but we want additional cards to interact. We need to remember that Boros Charm is a card, because we don’t want them to blow us out after they blank our Wrath. We also need to note that just comboing out a Wurmcoil or Elesh Norn isn’t going to save us from Paths that they play.
Twin: We need counters and any cards that can interact with red or blue based permanents, as those are their win conditions. We’re not particularly scared of the tempo-based versions, mostly the control ones.
UWR Midrage: We need ways to deal with turn 3 Geist. It’s hard to answer effectively for us.
BGx Rock: 4 Tectonic Edge + 4 Fulminator Mage can be a problem.
RG Tron: We need ways to stop Tron early. Our Gifts Combo is actually useless here if we’re not playing Terastodon, and we still need to be careful going for it since they can interact with it.
Merfolk: We need ways to guarantee things don’t get out of hand. Wraths are generally just insane against them. They’re going to be attacking us where we can’t block, so just assuming Timely solves the issue out of the gate isn’t good.
UR Delver: Similar to how the Geist matchup plays out, or particularly old Delver with Geist, this is going to be a pain. While there’s no Geist we can’t interact with, the tempo provided by cheap counters and interactive spells is going to suck, plus they reasonably put a clock. We need to be able to deal with cheap creatures, and early.
Scapeshift: It’s not as popular as it once was, but it was always something like a 50-50 matchup. The problem was always that there’s no good answer to Scapeshift we can provide. Probably Aven Mindcensor is solid. We can’t play Shadow of Doubt, or at least it seems a lot sketchier than Mindcensor. SoD is the kind of card that you want to have the option of casting it on turn 2 to blow them out by stopping the fetch. I’m sure it’d be tech out of our deck, I’d never expect it, but that’s for good reason. Anyways, I think Mindcensor is what you’d want here. I actually don’t think there’s much else. Jester’s Cap is the absolute nuts against them. They’re really slow and will let us resolve it, and you can hit the Valakuts and basically never lose this matchup.
Trying to maximize our odds against all decks is the goal, but we’re going to go for something that’s fine in as many scenarios as we can. We’re also not going to forget the matchups that we don’t care about, because we’ll still play them and still have to decide what happens.
First off, let’s go over a typical sideboard that we might play and analyze how it will hold up against these decks. For reference, I assume you play an Academy Ruins in your MB, 2 Timely, and Gifts Combo with Elesh Norn + Iona as the choices (whether you play Mindslaver doesn’t matter at this point).
Sideboard: 15
2 Negate
1 Disenchant
2 Relic of Progenitus
1 Torpor Orb
1 Suppression Field
1 Wurmcoil Engine
1 Sundering Titan
1 Terastodon*
3 Spreading Seas
1 Celestial Purge
1 Engineered Explosives
*Note that having reviewed the format, I think Iona MB is going to be better in the format. Terastodon was, at one point, a better MB option. But given the current situation, with fewer combo decks where it’s good, I think I’d rather have Iona main. She comes in way too often.
Burn - Wurmcoil, Celestial Purge, Explosives
Affinity - Explosives, Wurmcoil, Spreading Seas, Suppression Field, Disenchant
Zoo - Wurmcoil, Purge, Explosives
Merfolk - Disenchant, Wurmcoil, Explosives
Jund - Wurmcoil, Spreading Seas, Purge, Explosives
BGx Rock - Wurmcoil, Purge, Explosives
Melira Pod - Explosives, Purge, Suppression Field, Torpor Orb, Disenchant, Relic
Kiki Pod - Explosives, Purge, Suppression Field, Torpor Orb, Disenchant
Twin - Negate, Disenchant, Purge, Torpor Orb, Suppression Field
Scapeshift - Negate, Spreading Seas, Sundering Titan
Living End - Negate, Relic, Suppression Field
RG Tron - Negate, Suppression Field, Terastodon, Spreading Seas
Faeries - Negate, Torpor Orb, Wurmcoil
UR Delver - Negate, Wurmcoil, Explosives
UWR Midrange - Negate, Sundering Titan
UWR Control - Negate, Sundering Titan
Note that the above is just a list of cards that are good in the matchups. This does not necessarily indicate what final boarding would look like, as we may decide certain cards don’t have a high enough impact to be worth it.
Looking at the list of what we bring in, we look at some decks as concerns, and some cards as concerns. First we’ll look at deck concerns:
Zoo: We might not board enough. Only 3 cards and they have varied impact. It’s probably enough, but if we can fit another card, that’d be ideal. Considering the list has 2 Wraths, 4 Paths, 2 Timely in the MB, I think the matchup is still okay. We can’t really rely on Gifts so much, but I think we might just have enough to stall. Iona naming white seems okay, I can probably stop enough of their dudes to make it work. I think Elesh Norn is going to be bad just because if they play 3-4 Paths, I can get blown out. When I can’t kill Kird Ape, Loam Lion, Goyf, Nacatl, it’s not worth it.
Melira Pod: We board a lot for a favourable matchup. It may be time to revisit all the cards we brought in and decide that we don’t need to play all these cards, or we may just be boarding a lot of cards in against them where we shouldn’t (like maybe Disenchant isn’t that great to hit only Pod).
Scapeshift: It’s hard to really interact with them, and we’re more so just trying to get value. The only point to bringing in Spreading Seas here is that we draw a card off it and we can sometimes mess up math if they go the Primeval way. We probably have enough cards to board out for them though. And even if we don’t board Spreading Seas, we’re just not doing much against them.
RG Tron: This is probably fine for us, but the matchup still sucks a lot. Like I’ve pointed out before, we might just want to scoop this matchup. It would have to make up more than 10% of the meta for me to care, and I don’t think it will. Stats from GP KC showed it at 6.67%, GP Prague at just under 6%. Reasonably speaking, those are odds where I’m actually willing to scoop the matchup.
UWR Midrange: We still lose to Geist plain and simple. We didn’t actually accomplish making that matchup better. That said, I’m really hoping the card sees less play.
Card Concerns:
Relic: This card ends up under performing. We’re boarding a card here that’s being boarded in against two decks, both of which we have favourable matchups for. It may be time for us to decide that we don’t actually need to grave hate. In a completely open meta, it’s hard not to, but if we’re expecting these decks to show up, it’s likely the wrong card to bring. I really need to see where the format goes because if people start playing decks like Dredgevine and Loam again, I may reconsider. If people are playing just the above, then I’m not in a mood to care.
Sundering Titan: This card is under question as well. We just de-facto bring it in against any 3+ colour deck where Iona/Elesh Norn doesn’t seem strictly better. It’s a little bit clunky since it offers itself no protection, and basically just tries to be fat and get in the way. If they Path it, they could just win on board potentially. It seems like it doesn’t pull its weight. While initially it wasn’t that bad, the fact of the matter is, we may not get enough ahead off it, or they can work around it. Extremely aggressive decks can perhaps still work around. In lieu of that, we may want to consider something else that just does work. Inkwell Leviathan would be my first suggestion. It’s good against Geist (insanely good), and can efficiently attack into people. And like the other cards, it protects itself. Against a deck where a few key creatures getting in is important, one giant blocker can do some work.
Wurmcoil: This came in roughly half the matchups. It may be worth reconsidering whether we want it MB or SB. It’s a solid enough card on its own, and even though it’s not spectacular in some matchups, it’s almost never going to be downright bad. A 6/6 lifelink + deathtouch for 6 is never a bad thing.
Negate: This also came in roughly half the matchups. We may want to reconsider our deck in two ways. First would be having some sort of hard counter in the MB (if we don’t have one), and second would be whether the card is too vague or not. It may turn out it doesn’t actually solve any of our problems, just sort of helps against decks randomly. It’s a very vague card in that it’s use is very wide.
Explosives: This came in more than half the time. It actually suggests, on average, the card is better in the deck than not. Considering that we can try to facilitate fetching for a guaranteed Wrath, this is actually looking better in the MB than in the SB. One caveat to that is that we may want to play a black source to facilitate x=3. It seems like a bad idea given what it’ll do for our deck, but at some point we may just do the math and figure out exactly how much strain on the mana we cause.
So trying to find better answers, we look at the decks we want to crush again:
Zoo
Twin
UWR Midrange
BGx Rock
RG Tron
Merfolk
UR Delver
Scapeshift
Zoo
Against Zoo, we’d like to have Wrath effects and general creature stall. We also wouldn’t mind spot removal as well, we just need to deal with them playing a bunch of dudes.
Timely
Explosives
Hallowed Burial
Porphyry Nodes
Playing more Timely is never going to be bad if we want to beat aggro. It comes down on turn 3 and it’s a reasonable card. It stalls for two turns on average and I’m quite happy about that. It also synergizes well with Elesh Norn if you get lucky to have that happen. I’m a huge fan of it and there’s a reason we play it MB a lot.
Explosives / Hallowed Burial are just options for more Wraths. They offer different cases for us. Explosives is really great against the Small Zoo iterations playing a bunch of 1-drops. It can also be cast much sooner, as early as turn 2. It’s also quite good against other decks like Affinity, where it can hit multiple targets on something like x=2 and hit non-creature permanents (Cranial Plating is a big one). Hallowed Burial, on the other hand, is great against Melira Pod and Living End, since it gets rid of things for good. It also costs more, and has to be cast at once, so it’s a bit slower against these aggressive decks like Zoo.
Porphyry Nodes happens to just be a card I think will be solid here. It causes an opponent to decide whether they can race it or lose out on an entire turn. So slowing down a deck like Zoo one full turn is great. Combined with Timely, we can force a lot of bad situations for them. Yes, it’s a little slow, and yes, sometimes it will suck. But on average, it’s likely going to do some work and hit multiple things. I’m quite happy to go turn 1 Porphyry Nodes on the draw and make them sac their Nacatl or whatever.
Twin
Twin is odd because there’s so many things we can do. Since we’re light on removal and counters, I suspect they don’t try to tempo us out of the game. Post-board they’ll side out Bolts in favour of more counters. I’m okay with that I suppose, I’ll play proactive cards:
Torpor Orb
Suppression Field
Negate
Disenchant
Celestial Purge
Realistically, I want to just bring in cards that interact with the combo. These are the best I can come up with. Torpor Orb and Suppression Field happen to stop the combo completely, and are proactive. The best part about Torpor Orb is that it doesn’t interact with us, since we have no ETB, and it costs only 2, so we can get it down way before they go off. Suppression Field costs more, but interacts in other ways with other decks, though still stopping the Twin player.
Negate is just a general purpose card for us here, since they typically play 4 Twin, and 0-2 Kiki, but play a ton of counters that we’d love to interact with. Negate is more relevant in the control version, so it is more version dependant than the other two. Especially against us though, I suspect they will go for a controlled approach (post-board) and try to win from the combo. They don’t have time to stall out a tempo win since we clock them.
Pithing Needle isn’t as good as it seems here. You’re forced to name Kiki, Pestermite, or Exarch. Depending on the list though, it could be very good. Some lists play fewer Pestermites so you’re better off naming Exarch. The list Kachapow ran at GP Prague had 4 Pestermites, 2 Twins. So really, it’s difficult to accurately name. You’d love to be proactive with Needle but you can’t particularly afford it. Especially if there’s a Kiki in the list (Kachapow had none), then two choices becomes three and it’s just a mess.
Disenchant and Celestial Purge both accomplish the same thing in this matchup. On one hand, Purge hits all the combo wins, and on the other hand, Disenchant hits Spellskite as well. Both hit Blood Moon, which is really nice.
UWR Midrange
For this deck, I’m primarily scared of Geist and Remand. Geist for the fact that it’s 6 damage with hexproof and we don’t play blockers. For Geist, this is like the ideal deck. Remand I’m scared of because it blanks flashback on Unburial Rites. I’d like to just play cards that profitably interact with Geist
Mana Leak / Condescend
Porphyry Nodes
Timely
Supreme Verdict
While I generally think hard counters are bad for us, or rather not as good as their potential, I think it might be good in this matchup. Stopping Geist indefinitely is something we want to accomplish. It can get out of hand really easily.
I’m actually quite fine with Porphyry Nodes as an answer. Sure, I take 6, but they’re losing that Geist for sure, which I want to happen.
Timely is still very good here. I always triple block to be sure, knowing that Eletroylze sucks. I’d rather take the chance Geist dies than prevent 6 damage when I’m taking 12 in the air.
Supreme Verdict is particularly good because it must resolve. While it’s often a tad slow, I think the deck can support it. Generally speaking, the decks I want a Wrath against aren’t blue so the uncounterable isn’t so relevant. But if we really do want a third Wrath, this might be the one to consider.
BGx Rock
This is actually a difficult matchup to board for because they do a lot of different things. Goyf is quite strong against us, especially since we want to discard artifacts that make it better. We have to deal with 4 Fulminator Mages post board in addition to the 4 Tectonic Edge main, and probably Oozes at some point as well.
Crucible
Wraths
Mana Leak/Spell Snare
It’s really not easy to board for this deck to be quite honest. They don’t exactly play a linear strategy that you can easily counter. So in general I just want cards that would be good in certain situations.
Crucible is good for the LD problem. It’s still the best answer we have there. If you’re playing it main then that’s even better. Especially since the DRS ban, you’re basically fighting off Ooze for Mindslaver lock. It’s not exactly ideal there but it’s not horrible either.
Wraths are just generally going to be good against Scavenging Ooze and Goyf. They’re big creatures that basically only get solved from Path. I guess Explosives is fine here, they play a solid number of 3 drops but we’re more scared of Ooze, Goyf, and Bob than the Finks or whatever else we’re going to see. We could play something like Mana Leak or Spell Snare, but we don’t particularly want to pass turn 2 not doing anything. That said…
Spell Snare is pretty solid here. It should hit 12 creatures, each of which we want to get rid of (Goyf, Ooze, Bob). So the Spell Snare will do some solid work in fending off three key cards. Mana Leak would be just as solid but it’s worse of a top deck and more expensive. The biggest problem is us wanting to tap out early. I want to go turn 1 Map, turn 2 Signet, or turn 2 crack map. I guess I can go turn 1 Colonnade into turn 2 Map + Snare, it’s not exactly ideal. I suppose Snare is better on the draw since we cast it with 1 mana. But there’s a legitimate concern about the mana cost being castable, since we probably only have 4 or so untapped blue sources on turn 1, you’d have to pay for Fountains.
RG Tron
The goal is to not die to Karn. The ways to accomplish that are countering Karn, proactively stopping it, or stopping Tron.
Ghost Quarter
Pithing Needle
Aven Mindcensor
Spreading Seas
Terastodon
Vedalken Plotter
Negate
GQ for them is the same way as for us: they play few basics and even more so than us, don’t need colour. So I’m really pleased with every time I use it in that matchup. It buys you a turn, and honestly, our GQ for stopping Tron and delaying Karn is worth it every time.
Pithing Needle is another nifty card because of how well it interacts. You can stop Map (though it hurts us equally I suppose), stop Karn, Mindslaver, Academy Ruins, Eye of Ugin, there’s enough that’s for sure. I think Karn is almost always the right play into an empty board unless you have other answers for it.
Aven Mindcensor, I think, is going to be a turn too slow. On the draw, they’ll have Tron before we can cast it. On the play, they’ll potentially have Tron or have the last land in hand. So it’s just not ideal for us. Yeah we blank them later but honestly, playing this, it’s just too slow. It’s not Shadow of Doubt, that’s for sure.
Spreading Seas has been wonderful for me. Turning Tron lands into Islands is pretty good for a deck that can’t use Islands. It’s an early enough play like the Shadow of Doubt and also draws the card, like Shadow of Doubt. Against them it might as well be the same card. They have ways to kill it, like Karn or O-Stone, so it’s not strictly better. But for the most part I’m not concerned if their play is something like Karn exile the Seas, or O-Stone to blow up a Seas.
Terastodon is quite clearly the nuts. Blowing up lands is exactly what we want to do. It doesn’t always win but it’s the best bet and only takes up one slot. Gifts happens to be really slow here if you don’t interact otherwise though, so without something early like Spreading Seas there’s going to be some luck to get him down. I’m a decent enough fan of running the one slot for it, because without anything, you’re losing this matchup.
Vedalken Plotter seems really strong. It’s a bit slow but hey, it’s insanely powerful. You basically trade them an Island for a Tron land. It lets you assemble your Tron and leave them wanting. It fares pretty well to be honest. There’s not a lot 3-mana cards can do against turn 3 Karn, but as far as this goes, it’s quite good. And let’s be real, most of the time it’s turn 3 Tron, turn 4 Karn.
Negate is surprisingly good here. I just want to stop Karn, but stopping random crap like O-Stone, Sylvan Scrying, or even just a Map can be quite good. I don’t want them to keep advancing their game. And with Negate, it’s a nice general board card. It’s great in enough other matchups that I often end up playing some number of them. Since we really just need to stop Karn, we can afford to make room for them.
Merfolk
This matchup is one where we really don’t want Timely. In fact, we want exactly two things. Something that can kill a multitude of blue creatures, particularly in the 2-drop slot, and something that can stop turn 1 artifacts.
Pithing Needle
Engineered Explosives
Disenchant
Pithing Needle is INSANE against Aether Vial. You simply stop the Vial completely, on the spot. It doesn’t get to activate, they get no free creatures. Now you’re probably thinking “but what if they don’t draw turn 1 Vial, then what?”. We can hit Thassa, or we can hit Mutavault. So with a possibility of 10 cards it can hit (1/6th of their deck), I’m completely okay with this card. More than okay, I think this is probably the best possible card.
Explosives for 2 is also quite good. Most of their lords are 2-drops. Roughly half their creatures are 2-drops so I’m happy to cast that. Sometimes you might want to hit the Vial at x=1 and hope to catch their Cursecatcher or something, and it even has implications at x=0 to hit Master of Waves tokens.
Disenchant is a de-facto answer to Vial. It’s not my go to card, but if we’re already running one, I’ll bring it in. I wouldn’t add this to my board explicitly to hit Aether Vial, it’s not that great, and there are better answers like Pithing Needle.
UR Delver
My concern with this deck is how much tempo they’re capable of. Racing us with burn and a protected Delver is a real threat. Especially in the board when they can bring in Blood Moon, Spellskite, Negate, etc, they can really just tempo us out of the game.
Spellskite
Wraths
Timely
Wurmcoil
The problem in this matchup is boarding relevant threats. Iona naming blue is still very good for us.
Timely is so obviously insane here. They’re basically playing cheap creatures and Bolting us. I’m basically always gaining 6 and getting 3 creatures, which can now block and trade with an assortment of creatures. Similarly the Wurmcoil should be good. Not enough of their creatures have flying and they have to double Bolt a Wurmcoil or Vapor Snag it, and I think the Snags should come out since they can’t hit our face with them.
Spellskite will block a lot of things for us. Not just creatures but spells too. Sometimes leaving up a blue to fog a Bolt is going to be relevant.
Wraths are going to be nice since they often swarm the board with Pyromancer and tokens. You just can’t justify boarding into Negates when they play a lot of creatures.
It’s possible Mana Leaks are solid enough. We need to stave off early game against them. However, unlike some decks, this deck should still perform okay against us if they fall behind. I really just want to guarantee my Iona comes into play, because naming blue should be brutal. As much fun as naming red could be, Vapor Snag is a card. They should probably actually board it out against us though.
Explosives is still a card, but significantly worse than normal. The typical list is going to play Delver, Lavamancer, Snapcaster, Pyromancer, and Clique. It’s just too spread out of a cmc range to want to bank on it. I’ll probably still bring it in if my board has it, but this deck isn’t going to make me want to play it. Remember that Delver flipped has a cmc of 0, so you’ve really just got a broad spectrum. You’ll almost always hit something but whether it does enough is up for debate. I honestly think Pyromancer should come out against us since we play Wraths. So if they just go Delver, Snapcaster, Clique, that’s just way too spread out for it to hit enough cards.
Scapeshift
This seems like one of the more difficult decks to board for. Let’s assume they’re playing a stock Titanshift list, so they’ve got 4 Primeval Titans 4 Scapeshift. What exactly do we do? I guess we need to leave in Paths or Wraths, something to deal with Titan. Fine. But then we also need to board into counters to interact with them.
Negate
Sundering Titan
Aven Mindcensor
Negate is just a general card, yet again. It stops Scapeshift and that’s what matters. It would suck if they cast a Counterflux but yeah, not much to do about that.
Sundering Titan is potentially great. They have a very fine balance around their lands, so destroying even a single Mountain can be relevant, and it’s possible to hit 3 off of Sundering Titan and shocks. Especially if they play the Prismatic Omen version, then it’s just a complete blowout.
Aven Mindcensor is actually one of the few cards that’s good here. It stops both Scapeshift and Prime Time, it attacks them, and it is hard to deal with. They probably board out Bolts against us, so there’s just maybe 3 Izzet Charms, and even they seem meh against us. I’d probably keep those in if I were them just because of the flexibility.
So after all of this is done, what do we find?
Some amount of additional Wraths are good. Which ones? It’s hard to say, really. We want a mix of them for different decks. Supreme Verdict is good against UWR Midrange, Explosives is good against Zoo and Merfolk, and against BGx Rock any Wrath seems good, and I guess Explosives is solid enough. If we consider Timely, it’s also good against various decks.
I think I would propose moving Explosives to the MB actually. Third MB Wrath seems powerful and it’s fairly easy to turn on. I don’t like a lot of other options for the Wrath. Supreme Verdict seems unreliable and Hallowed Burial is slow. I’d probably still want 2 Timely in the 75. A Gifts package of Wrath, Day, Explosives, Timely seems quite powerful. Depending on where the meta ends up, Supreme Verdict might be worth it. I can do the math and see that it’s going to be unreliable to cast on turn 4, but if we’re okay waiting an extra turn, it may end up okay. I think though, I’d rather have an extra Timely in that slot. Particularly against Geist decks, I’m expecting to take a Geist hit and then resolve this, gaining all the life back. Again, the decision on how many and of what we play depends largely on what the lists look like. If Geist decks are running a lot of Electrolyzes, the Timely is less desirable.
Porphyry Nodes seems like it might actually work out in some matchups. It at least seems solid enough for me to want to test it. I can’t really say whether it’s a good idea or not without generating some results out of it. In particular, I need to see how good it is against the average Zoo matchup.
I think I still want some number of Torpor Orb / Suppression Fields. I’ve always been a fan of 1-1 as opposed to 2-0 simply because Suppression Fields can hit a number of cards Torpor Orb can’t (like anything with Cycling).
Pithing Needle can be a very good card. It’s possible 1-2 make it into the board this time around. Even in matchups where I don’t exactly want it, it can be okay. Even against BGx Rock, I can name Lili, Tec Edge, Fulminator Mage, Scavenging Ooze - okay, maybe I actually do want it in against them. I’m probably at least considering it as a 1-of.
Celestial Purge vs Disenchant is a real debate. Disenchant hits a large number of cards Purge can’t, like anything in Affinity, Spellskite, and Aether Vial. Purge hits a lot of things Disenchant can’t though, like Bob or any red creature in RDW. My inclination is to say a 1-1 split is best, particularly because of Gifts. A lot of the time that I’d fetch them, they’re acting as spot removal. So if I were to fetch Purge against something like Twin, I’m fetching Purge, Disenchant, Path, and guaranteeing some card that interacts with their combo.
Hard counters out of the board seem solid. Maybe it’s possible we want to try out Spell Snare. More Condescends out of the board also sound reasonable. While Mana Leak can be good, I think I’d generally rather avoid it since it’s a bad top deck. I think we’re getting better value from Condescend since we’re likely to hit them as they tap out anyways and it scales better.
I feel like punting the RG Tron matchup. I’m going to board nothing for it and hope other cards are solid. I may consider boarding Aven Mindcensor for the Scapeshift matchup, which I’ll bring in against Tron. I’m not particularly upset about this either. The 4 Spreading Seas is a lot of a board requirement for this.
I’m not overly impressed by Sundering Titan. I have to reassess how it performs in those matchups. If it does well, that’s great, if not, I’ll cut it.
Going forward, here’s my sideboard:
1 Timely / Supreme Verdict / Hallowed Fountain
1 Pithing Needle
1 Celestial Purge
1 Disenchant
1 Torpor Orb
1 Suppression Field
1 Wurmcoil Engine
2 Relic of Progenitus
3 Negate / other hard counter
2 Porphyry Nodes / Aven Mindcensor
1 Sundering Titan / Filler
Again, for everyone interested, I’m going to update this again once I see the results of the PT.