Quote Originally Posted by Ralf View Post
Hello,

With the new toy, here is where I am at the moment.

9 Island
9 Fetch
3 Tropical Island

3 Snapcaster
3 Mission Briefing

4 Brainstorm
4 Impulse
4 Reset
4 Cunning Wish
4 FOW

3 Meditate
3 Growth Spiral
3 High Tide

2 Snap
2 Fluster

Sideboard

1 Fluster
1 High Tide
1 Meditate
1 Echoing Truth
1 Snap
1 Rebuild
1 BSZ
1 Ravenous Trap
1 Engulf the Shore
1 Hunting Pack
1 Broken Bond
2 Surgical
2 Brain Freeze

A few explanations:

1) I went to 21 lands and cut all the bad 1 mana cantrips. I'm still pondering on the fetch numbers/island/tropical
2) I play a mix of 3 SCM/Mission but i could see playing 4 SCM/2
3) Growth Spiral is busted. Period. I killed a few times T2.
4) Hunting pack is real. Especially against aggro deck.
5) I've replaced Evacuation with Engulf the Shore. You won't hit everything but usually when you wish for it, the Engulf's condition doesn't ever matter; while 1 mana matters a lot
6) I still don't like Fluster MD but this is a concession to beat tempo decks G1. We can also play 1 fluster/ 3 snap instead (and make the swap SB). I just like having access to an untap effect with a wish.
7) the fourth High tide ended up in the board so that we have virtually 7 high tide in the deck
8) Putting HT in the SB meant going up to 4 cunning wish MD
9) SB is still under testing

Consequence:

1) You dig less for mana. Opening hands are more stable
2) The deck can combo sooner. Growth spiral is one card we were waiting for. I've chained 3 Growth spiral quite a lot (during the combo turn) thanks to briefing and SCM for billions mana. Also T3 -> 4 mana is no longer a dream (if you played GS EOT having the third land in hand).
3) Hunting pack is a kill if you can make 10 mana (8 blue 2 green) (wish+HP= 10 mana). It is really good against aggro deck and quite easy to achieve.
4) Playing Trop does expose you to wasteland but usually when it happened, it meant I played a GS before (otherwise don't fetch your trop)

Advice: Give it a good spin (10 games) and you should see what I'm talking about.

It is hard to speak about resiliency and speed without having other pairs of eyes.

Happy testing.

Ralf
I'd forgotten to mention that i myself had tried growth spiral (4 GS main, 2 breeding pool, 8 fetches, 10 islands), and i felt like it was usually a win-more rather than getting me forward from behind. giving wastes a target doesn't feel good, but maybe growth spiral would be worth it. i can definitely see a situation where i can: opponent wastes me, i high tide, growth spiral, snapcaster growth spiral, snap snapcaster, and go off over the wasteland activation (that can be done, right?)
I might just be playing the deck wrong, and should really remove the opts like you did. opts didn't ever feel that effective during the setup, and only used mid-combo to be pitched to FoW. I'll have to goldfish it a bit more, and try to force myself to go off turn 2-3 more to see how my numbers build up.

some questions about your list though:
1. broken bond? it's a 2cmc sorcery..? i'm sure you've got a brilliant plan for it (and/or the land drop is really that worth it)
2. How does hunting pack work? i see you also run meditate, and i usually end up shooting off 2 or 3 and snapcaster/mission briefing them off again, which means we're skipping 3-5 turns when going off..? Or are we using it for instant blockers?
3. Again, your build is quite different from mine, but I had tried a (very old) version that ran 3 high tides and 3 resets, 2 turnabouts main with 4 wishes as a hedge against surgical, and being able to search up whatever piece i need at that time. I felt like i was relying way too much on the wish at that point, but maybe it isn't so bad if we only need it for high tides. That being said, reaching 3 mana the turn before i need to go off to get my high tide feels like a real stretch.
4. no brain freeze main! In order to go off, you need to make cunning wish at least twice unless you really plan for it. i wish i had that sort of balls to really go all in without the threat main..
5. never saw that 4 mana evacuation; it'd be more than enough to empty the DnT player's board i think.

Thanks so much for your pointers though; I'm gonna re-test growth spiral and make more space for SCM/mission briefing+snap. I'm really gonna have to test before i take out a mortgage to get those tropics (i picked this deck up because i thought mono-blue would be cheap!).

What's your take on the worst matchups for this deck would you say (or archetypes of decks)? i never feel like it's ever worse (or at least it SHOULDN'T be worse than) (45:55)±10 based off pilot skill (and nearing 65:35 against fair decks), but i want to proxy up and make another guy around here to help me grind against nightmares.