Originally Posted by
Kap'n Cook
The deck will work, it just won't be as fast. The 4th city has never felt too necessary as you only really want one and double city hands are usually mulls unless they have the combo or fast mana. Additional white sources come up a decent amount too as a lot of times you just have to fetch white into Wasteland to tutor. The third was only added recently, so two plateau should be okay. You can't run hedge-mage without two or three though. If you aren't going to run cities, maybe you can get away with a plains, although everyone here knows my feelings about a plains as one of the 19 mainboard lands lol
Over the last two months since Baltimore I've only been able to play about 30-ish matches (2 challenges, 3 leagues, 1 monthly maybe?). The results have been bad, losing probably half of the games. Granted, it is a small sample size, but the losses have been a combination of testing different boards with weird cards, playing really poorly, and even a feeling of unluckiness in close game 3s. I've punted a lot, and in general am still learning a lot about Copter and how strange it makes the lines. Either way, I'll just post what I am planning to test more in depth moving forward and thoughts.
4 Ancient Tomb
3 City of Traitors
3 Plateau
3 Mountain
1 Great Furnace
2 Wooded Foothills
3 Bloodstained Mire
4 Lotus Petal
1 Simian Spirit Guide
4 Imperial Recruiter
4 Painter's Servant
3 Goblin Welder
3 Ethersworn Canonist
1 Walking Ballista
1 Goblin Cratermaker
4 Grindstone
4 Smuggler's Copter
1 Ensnaring Bridge
1 Engineered Explosives
1 Blood Moon
3 Enlightened Tutor
4 Pyroblast
2 Red Elemental Blast
Sideboard:
4 Surgical Extraction
1 Tormod's Crypt
1 Containment Priest
1 Duergar Hedge-Mage
1 Ethersworn Canonist
2 Sulfur Elemental
1 Blood Moon
2 Red Elemental Blast
2 Karn, Scion of Urza
Surgical has been very good, as the graveyard decks are just too fast now. I wish I could just jam 4 Rest in Peace and a Helm as that would make the Grixis matchup a bye, but Reanimator being Black-Red instead of Black-Blue means there isn't enough time and blasts can't delay careful studies. Surgical keeps us alive just often enough against Reanimator and Dredge to find the Crypt or Priest. More importantly, Surgical gives us more viable alternatives to fighting Show and Tell and Miracles, which is another reason I wanted to max out the blasts. I have also experimented with starting to bring some in against grixis, as you will probably get two for one'd by the first k-command, but removing that with Surgical lets you fight the Snapcasters more readily through normal blasts and canonists, and lets you try to trade 1 for 1 long enough to win. Again, it's been a really small sample size, but it has felt a little bit better recently. As for boarding against these control decks, I have been chopping all petals/tutors, and usually don't even bother with trying to Blood Moon them anymore. Play/draw there could be an argument to switching slightly, but on the whole this has been the plan.
Sulfur Elemental. Initially I was running all the pyroclasms (and was going to consider whipflare eventually), but DnT has felt very winnable without them. The hope was that there would be more random creature decks popping up with the bannings, but since then it has settled into the usual Miracles/Chalice/Ape Combo meta we all expected. I'm really not sure what Wizards thought would happen when they banned Top. So as the pyroclasm numbers went lower after cratermaker got a spot, I tried two Swords to Plowshares, for cross-hate against Reanimator/Shadow/Goyf/Angler, but then got ran over by Mentor tokens enough to want to switch back to Sulfur. It's also just a generally good anti-control card and can crew at instant speed, which isn't nothing. Obviously there can be the random blowouts against off-beat decks where you name white with Painter too. I do worry about the Elves/Infect matchups by dropping Swords/Clasms/Bolts/etc, but those matchups have always felt very coin-flippy regardless of what build you run, and the hope is that 4 Canonist can slow them down enough to do your thing. At the end of the day, Mentor and DnT are more likely to show up, where Sulfur is much better, than these other small creature decks, so I am okay with taking the hit there.
Hedge-Mage, Moon and Karn. These are the two flex spots I guess. The second moon is mainly for lands/loam/post and random monstrosities, since there are usually ways to destroy the first one. Having the backup copy has been just good enough, and if you ever want to play roulette against some of these three color decks you can always just board the second in on the play with all the fast mana and all the tutors to try to land one on turn 1 or likely turn 2. Hedge mage is back mostly for counterbalance and chalice, as having the etb ability complements Cratermaker and EE nicely. It also gives you a varied mana curve against Chalice. Plus you might just blowout Omni or sneak one out of every 20 games. Revoker could be here too if sneak attack is too prevalent, but I don't think it does enough outside of that matchup, as ANT is very favorable now anyways. For Karn, I just keep coming back to him. Like Dan said, he is just raw card advantage and will take over the game if allowed to live. It really does feel like the best card available that leverages the other shitty 73 cards we have to play.
Anyways, this list is more defined in what it wants to fight, mainly snapcaster and combo. It definitely gives up percentages against the middle tier stuff like shadow and chalice, but the hope is that we have enough to navigate those matchups as it is. As always, thoughts appreciated.
-jack