Originally Posted by
maharis
I haven't played the esper build yet but with the grixis / 4 bolt build I board all 4 buried alives first in postboard matchups vs. combo decks.
Once the buried alives are out I bring in an entire blue package of 3 force, 2 echoing truth, and 1 flusterstorm at the very least and start trimming from dark ritual next, then bolt/liliana depending on the matchup and additional cards to come in (surgical, crypt etc)
While ritual->buried->3rd spell is powerful, almost any other combo deck is more so. I'd rather just play a hard control game with 8 discard spells and 4 counterspells.
Of course, Echoing Truth is the hardest part of the board plan, but we need blue cards and it has some minor blowout potential:
-vs. empty the warrens (this actually happened yesterday where I was dead af and peeled the echoing truth)
-vs. show-omniscience on an empty hand, or griselbrand in response to draw 7, or a cast sneak attack then pass
-vs. almost any reanimator target
-vs. marit lage (sometimes it works but the mu is so bad no matter what you do it seems)
It's possible that this is not how the deck will end up tackling combo, but the U package (especially sb forces) solves a couple key problems problems I've had with the deck:
-It makes the deck more focused vs. very fast strategies. While we are likely the beatdown in most fair matchups, against combo decks I don't think this deck can keep up unless the combo player keeps terrible hands postboard. Every arclight, buried alive, ritual etc in our hand is not disrupting decks that can kill us out of nowhere. These decks are built to take damage along the way to assembling turn 3-4 wins. Hoping for turn 2 ritual-buried-spell to get us there against decks with more streamlined plans is just not something i'm comfortable with (but it's fine if that's how you want to play it)
-We can board in the whole package vs. Chalice decks as well. Chalice is a beating for this deck. Echoing Truth has more utility there (since it can bounce CotV at 1 and most chalice decks also play Leylines). I don't board out the whole combo in those matchups, though i will occasionally trim it. Flusterstorm isn't as good in those matchups and you can just go 17 U cards w/3 force if you want, but in some cases (like 4c loam, since it hits GSZ and some other things, and is a way to counter a fiery confluence vs. red prison)
What I'm really looking for is a better option in the echoing truth slot. I considered far//away, since it also hits emrakul and TNN, but it doesn't bounce multiple leylines or deal with Empty.
Also, I think depths is a lost cause for this archetype and it's not worth devoting board cards to beat it. Though the karakas in the white versions may be more helpful (as well as closing speed on Mentor). Perhaps Whitefaces will want to weigh on on this but I would say this deck's matchups go like this:
-Miracles, UBx midrange/control: favored to very favored, we have tons of relevant disruption even postboard, discard wrecks them
-Delver/Vial and/or Thalia decks: about 50/50, Wasteland can be very relevant in these matchups. Sequencing is crucial, very tricky
-Storm/Show and Tell: favored (until they start boarding in leyline of sanctity :wink: )
-Reanimator: slightly unfavored because of their raw power more than anything. The fact that we are playing 5 pieces of GY hate is really rough on our sideboard.
-Chalice decks: unfavored because like us they can present bomb after bomb and we do not have enough answers
-burn: unfavored but winnable with good sequencing and bad luck by them