Originally Posted by
Stryfo
@shaka1333:
Notion Thief is an insanely powerful spell in the mid-late game and leads to blowouts that no other spell in the deck can provide. In addition it is easy to cast in terms of colors, and is a reasonable beater. In addition to that, it has absurd synergy with Dack Fayden. It may be that something else could be better, but Notion Thief has been very strong for me.
For a long time I was running two Jaces and the Chandra is a new addition to the deck, but so far I have been very pleased. She clocks better than Jace, she is better removal most of the time, and she is red rather than blue, and her starting loyalty is very high all of these are pretty great qualities. She doesn't dig for answers as well as Jace, but in many matchups, that's not important.
The maindeck is admittedly light on combo hate, but postboard I do not agree, there are ~12 cards to bring in against storm and ~11 against SnS. I think the storm matchup is unfavorable (I'd guess ~40%), and I believe the SnS is close to even.
I have been incredibly impressed by Rise//Fall, it is frequently an easier to cast Hymn to Tourach, and in the late game when both people are ground to dust, it frequently becomes something like a draw three by returning a Snapcaster or Strix from your graveyard and the board. As for Search, my current estimation is it's the weakest card in the list, but it's still a very powerful card, I haven't decided what I'd replace it with yet.
The sideboard is meant to be extremely wide, so that your postboard matchups improve by a significant margin across the board. I'd agree that in many situations flusterstorm is better than invasive surgery, but against decks like lands, being able to counter+exile Loam is extremely powerful. Surgical extraction is better against decks like Reanimator than Nihil Spellbomb, but Spellbomb can be brought in against Snapcaster decks and you don't have to play a card that is largely card disadvantage in a grindy matchup. As for Duress, I like being able to bring in a discard spell specifically against burn, this could mean that Inquisition of Kozilek could be better in that slot, I hadn't thought of that until just now.
@mgrinshpon:
I have not had problems with Leyline decks or Rest in Peace decks, Those decks are going down on cards (and in the case of Rest in Peace, tempo) to beat a graveyard centered subtheme of a control deck, The deck functions fine without a graveyard because of the high density of planeswalkers and generally powerful cards, punishing fire being a 1 for 1 post RiP doesn't take into account that they had to spend time and cards to put RiP into play. As for things I've tried to deal with random enchantments: I've tried Abrupt Decay, but I cut that after the banning of top because your mana gets much better when you're not required to have green in the early turns. I've tried Chaos Warp, which was a little bit too cute. Sultai Charm was fine, and it's my favorite of those three.
As for golgari charm, I really like how versatile it is, and I haven't run it in this deck, but I've run it in similar decks and it was powerful. I might try cutting Search, moving the second Rise//Fall to the main, and putting a Golgari Charm in the board. It's one of those cards you can bring in across the board, Storm, Delver, DnT, potentially SnS if there are enough bad mainboard cards, and even more fringe decks with lots of enchantments.
Regarding the manabase, I think it is very reasonable to cut the 2nd island for a 9th fetchland, it is my personal preference to have a bit better insurance against Blood Moon, but if you don't care about that, trim basics all you like.