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Quote:
Originally Posted by Forbiddian
Ok, quick question. If there was a little corner cutting due to costs, what would be some choices if you had unlimited cash? (Not counting the obvious Guru lands and such).
Just wondering if the deck would have any alternate choices that had to be discarded based on them being overly expensive.
Congrats on the nice placing btw. Love the deck.
The deck that made T4 in the SCG was a little different than previous (recent) incarnations of the deck. Mostly, more 4-ofs and fewer 1/2/3-ofs. What made you guys decide on what stays and what goes? I know from before the reasoning against 4-ofs was because a combination of different cards (didn't matter which, as long as they had the same role) is more valuable than 2 copies of the same card. I'm personally happy to see Court Hussar go, but the newest list seems to have made some really big changes with regards to numbers. Did you guys just decide that multiples of the same card combinations were actually better, or was there something else? (and what about that wasteland?)
Also, congrats on your finish. I'm a huge fan of the deck even though I haven't had much play time with it. T4 is an amazing [major tournament] debut and a solid confirmation that the laundry list of haters here really have no idea what they're talking about.
This is in response to the two most recent posts.
I would change nothing if given unlimited cash. Here are some changes I had previously considered, given unlimited cash:
-1 vial +1 wasteland?
-1 wheel of sun and moon in the sideboard, +1 enlightened tutor?
But the good dredge players can bring our match win % down to as low as 60% unless we hate them, and wheel of sun and moon is such a GG piece of hate. Ichorid can't even dredge into their flashback hate removal to stop it. It also hated aggro loam, although I never drew it in tournament matches, but it makes crusher almost useless, and sometimes a liability if they're trying to break a lock induced by 2 or 3 wastelands. (It stops land topdecks.)
It also isn't totally useless that unlike tutor, it is immediately a hate spell, instead of a hate spell W, a card, and usually a turn later.
-1 vial +1 wasteland?
Well, we used to have the last wasteland, but actually we had run 3 wastes in the past. Double waste is pretty devastating, but I guess at some point it came to our attention that with 7 waste-finding effects, the marginal utility of another wasteland is much less than that of vial, which actually lessens our mulligans since it removes the need for double white mana, as well as the need sometimes for even a colored land. It usually promotes keeping one land hands, sometimes ones that would not otherwise be even considerable, and it encourages the use of wasteland much the same way knight of the white orchid does. It also counteracts fathom seer. We had previously advocated 2 vials because drawing 2 was a disaster, and it still is. However, it was a close call which brought more marginal utility, and a recent few facts we became aware of swung the decision the other way. The cash factor merely made it from a "close call" as to which one was right into an obvious call we didn't even have to think about.
For those of you watching closely, I did make an error in round 6 in the tournament, playing wayfarer before waste. It may have appeared I meant to tempo trip Pat by fishing out a daze and then wasting him in the same turn, but I actually would have preferred to resolve wayfarer. Answering the unasked, but possibly wondered question of if I would do anything differently in general, the answer is nothing for deck construction, and then I would change plays analogous to that one in the future.
What made us decide on what stays and what goes is some grand weighted sum of contributions to our match win %. Nobody can be expected to detect these changes without having hung out with the ideas of the deck for a year or so, so it's definitely a valid question to ask. But there's also no obvious answer. As I said, some of the changes in the last month occurred mostly because we were on the fence anyway, and then realized some other factors we previously forgot to take into account. Testing is a way to realize these things faster.
I don't think we played more multiples though. Our last couple of changes were:
-2 ancestral vision +2 spell pierce
-1 court hussar +1 serra avenger
-1 wasteland +1 vial
This actually decreased our tendency to play multiples.
From a mathematical standpoint, there are a couple of pretty basic advantages to diversifying, and not just to "similar effects." Obviously if there's a card that does exactly the same thing, you diversify to decrease the redundancy in card names, to dodge cabal therapy, meddling mage, pithing needle, maelstrom pulse, and the like.
This effect in this particular example generalizes to when you run cards that have any effects. However, the reason in practice this is not taken as a serious reason to run 60 1 ofs is because it's a rather minor factor.
Another factor is that magic inherently is a game where you'll have more than 1 card in your hand sometimes, and perhaps 2 copies of these cards. It pays game-theoretically to have choices.
The most incredibly difference is when you have tutor effects and filter. Our deck has a lot of this, so all the effects above are exacerbated.
Without budget constraints, we might have taken the deck in a different direction earlier, but with an infinite budget, I wouldn't make any changes to the current build against the current metagame.
However, budget constraints were important in deciding what to test, how much effort to put into testing, what to practice with, etc.
We were pretty much forced to settle on 3 Wasteland due to budget reasons. I think he had two randomly and then we bought a playset on the cheap and split them so we each had 3. Originally we thought 3 was good, but it became obvious, especially in the Landstill and Rock matchups that 4 was better than three. But we weren't going to pick up two random Wastelands (and the price shot WAY up), so we looked for alternatives from the card stock of readily available material.
It lead us to an ultimately (I believe) stronger build cutting a 4th WL for a 3rd Vial.
Also, I'll note that the new metagame is quite primed for the shift. There's much less multicolor go-the-distance control where four wastelands is important and a lot more midgame aggro/control decks where getting a vial is critical.
If you're curious, finance did weigh in on a lot of decisions for the direction of the deck:
There was a version briefly that ran Ajani and Elspeth. The build was performing pretty well. Even before it was really optimized, it was putting out good numbers (not as good as the standard build, but considering it was unoptimized for the change, it was doing well). When it became clear that it would not be a strict improvement and not one worth $80+, then optimizing the PW build became a purely academic exercise and it was abandoned.
We briefly considered Tabernacle and Moat, but quickly rejected them for budget reasons alone. They don't look good, but those were both above the bar of "shit Jeff and Matt tested because there's a tiny chance that it might be useful." Except they were below the bar of, "Worth $200 to actually get in real life." There were a few other cards that we thought about testing, but rejected in the preliminary stages because of high price, but Tabernacle was probably the most promising. But yeah, we pretty much tested everything.
We would have shipped this deck to Extended as well. There's an Extended build that was testing quite well (according to Jeff). I don't know shit about Extended, but because the cost of the ghetto-duals alone was prohibitive for me to switch, we more or less gave up on it.
Obviously with infinite money, we would have flown out to GPs and such, and probably we wouldn't have released this primer or anything since we'd be reaping the benefits of hidden tech.
Also, fundamentally, we were looking for a deck that didn't run Goyfs in part for money reasons. We both got back into Legacy and we were looking for something we could pick up and play. We stumbled onto the UW combination with Wayfarer, but honestly Goyfs were fucking amazing. If we'd had some on hand, we probably wouldn't have bothered inventing a deck that could deal with them, and just run them ourselves.
I did think of something I'd change: I would change the Windswept Heaths. I haven't thought about this problem too much, since I don't have other fetches, but it's pretty interesting. Here are my thoughts:
I would at least run the strict improvement: 1 Windswept Heath, 1 Arid Mesa, 1 Marsh Flats. Pithing Needle might happen, so might Extirpate. Yeah, yeah, I know, but it still is a strict improvement over 3 Heath.
Heath is run sometimes in Aggro Loam, some Zoo, Enchantress, Death and Taxes... If my opponent goes Heath, go, there's a huge range of decks I can put my opponent on.
I'm still probably not expecting Heath --> Tundra --> Daze my shit, but I don't have much information and the general play strategies against the range are quite different, I would simply make the standard play and not alter my strategy. Enchantress, I want to play aggressively, but Zoo I want to play defensively. Aggro Loam I want basics, Death and Taxes I want non-basics. There's no way to tell what to do just from Heath, go. It's hard to tell, I wouldn't leap to any conclusions from Heath, go.
But with Arid Mesa, you're actively feeding your opponent misinformation. I'd probably run 3x Arid Mesa just for that. Turn 1: Arid Mesa, go will have your opponent put you on a range of very aggressive decks. Particularly because it's a type 2 card, so you're most likely running a type 2 port deck like Naya.
Arid Mesa is played widely in Naya Zoo, Boros, Burn, Goblins, Aggro Loam, Goyf Sligh. The most defensive deck on that list is Aggro Loam and is has the word "Aggro" right there in the fucking name. If your opponent plays an Arid Mesa, you're instantly thinking "How do I keep my life above burn range?" Which is obviously the wrong question to ask if you're actually against NoGoyf.
If you see Arid Mesa, go, and it's like round one or something and you decide to play around Daze, you're missing a trick and you'll get your ass stomped 99 games out of 100.
I dunno, when I see Arid Mesa, it's like a trigger to play defensively. It's pretty rare someone would run a fetch for just one of the two colors, so I'm thinking he's got red. Even if he makes a move like Arid Mesa --> Plains --> Vial, I'd still guess "Zoo with Vial" before I guessed "UW deck." In fact, in Legacy right now, there are so few two color decks that if my opponent even runs like: Arid Mesa --> Tundra --> Vial, I might even STILL think he has burn and that I have to play defensively.
Play the Mesa, let it sit for 5 seconds while you "think", then fetch out a Tundra and do whatever. You just mindfucked your opponent into thinking you're an aggro deck.
In a few months, when people see Tundra --> Vial, they might think "NoGoyf" (and hopefully, "Oh shit, it's NoGoyf"), but until then Arid Mesa alone is such a scare card, you can probably get away with playing your game and still bamboozle your opponent into thinking you're running a weird Zoo build.
That's a very good point in using the off color fetches to trick your opponent into misplaying. I remember a discussion in the Tempo Thresh thread about this exact point, leading with Wooded Foothills to have your opponent walk into Stifle/Daze.
Thanks for the answer and the tip too. I think I'll have to do that. I would play defense also if I saw an Arid Mesa. I like that trick.
Quote:
Originally Posted by IsThisACatInAHat?
Is this covered somewhere? I looked, but apparently I'm only good at finding stuff I don't need
Just ordered the deck after some testing, it is really fun to play and gives you so many opportunitys to outplay your opponent, nice job there.
One question though, could you write a little guide how to side? Its kinda obvious what goes in but there are too many things I don't wanna board out =).
€dit: How is the Dragonstompy Mu? It seems godawful =).
@Deckchanges:
The primer is updated for the new deck. Before the SCG 5k, we didn't post an up-to-date list because we realized we were both going to the SCG 5k and figured it would be better to hold off on releasing the new tech. I got sick, though :-(, but maybe hiding the tech paid off for Jeff.
65-70%. I'm pretty happy to go up against DS, but it's basically a combo deck, so it's not a very fun matchup and when you lose, it always feels like they were lucky as hell.Quote:
Originally Posted by paK0
Incidentally, if you look back a page or two, I played in a small tournament where I faced off/beat Dragonstompy. Obviously that's just one match, but it highlights how they usually go.
If you're on the play, you'll almost always win. Fetch a basic with your fetchland, play out some random one-drop, then you're very resilient to all their hate. You also get Daze access and Spell Pierce.
From the draw, they're much more competitive. You'll notice I lost the game where I was on the draw. He did have exactly the hate that I didn't want him to see. If he opened with anything else, I would have won that game.
Considering him getting a Chalice @ 1 turn 1 happens only like 25-30% of the time (and less if he might preferentially cast Blood Moon first), I liked my odds for that game. Unfortunately, he came out on top that game, since he was able to resolve the hate I didn't have the answer for. You'll notice that, were I on the play, I'd have won that game easily no matter what he had -- highlighting how difficult it is for them to win games when we're on the play.
Also notice you have a lot of outs to each hate in general, even if you're on the draw AND don't have the Force of Will.
Chalice @ 1 is trumped by your two drops + Jitte.
Blood Moon is trumped by Aether Vial, either of your two basic plains, and Fathom Seer + Jitte -- yes, this HAS happened.
3 Sphere on turn 1 is their strongest hate, but only if it came out through the very specific: Ancient Tomb, Chrome Mox, 3 Sphere. It's much rarer than other hates, since they need three mana and can't use SSG. Turn 1 Ancient Tomb, SSG, 3 Sphere is not that scary, you'll note.
And again, you can occasionally play around it. Any creature, then Jitte.
To beat you, Dragon Stompy needs:
1) To win the roll (otherwise you're on the play twice and DS will almost certainly lose those games).
2) A crippling hate spell in the opening hand that you don't happen to have the outs for (or have the Force of Will).
3) Follow it up with more crippling hate AND another fast beat creature to actually kill you off before you can draw the intersecting outs.
4) Do that again during game 3.
Okayyyyyy, well the thing why I asked is that 3 sphere seems even stronger when you consider that this Deck only runs 18 Lands.
Yeah, but the rest sounds promising =), just a little reliant on Jitte.
Again, is there a tournament report or so that I missed? I checked the thread and SCG but couldn't find the said thing.
I wasn't lying in my interview: of the main decks (say the ones on deckcheck) we have no "Godawful" matches. I think the worst is nassif thresh, where it's about 50%, and then slightly less if the opponent knows what we're doing and makes no errors.
This might change if people start paying attention to our deck and packing their sideboard full of hate. (Say null rod, night of soul's betrayal, or even dread of night lolololol.)
But if people just leave things the way it is, the deck will continue to enjoy essentially completely positive matchups averaging 65-70% MUs.
We board out KOTWO against a reasonable number of matches. I have a formula sheet for sideboarding plans, but it can basically be summarized by: we don't run bad cards so besides swords, and mother which are cards that are polarized to some specific situation, you really should be looking to answer
"Which card in the deck is worst"
not
"Which card in the deck is bad."
I mean, bad only makes sense in the context of other existing cards anyway, but it might help you to realize that the choices are typically nonobvious, but end up being swords, knights, mothers, and occasionally wayfarers. We spent a few hours debating sideboarding plans, so it's definitely not something that is too easy to derive.
Edit: we never claimed that Dragonstompy has no opportunities to win, but like all of magic, but most obviously so with DS, it's modeled well by a probability model.
Quote:
Originally Posted by pi4meterftw
The problem is that it is hard to test sideboarding. On MWS it hardly makes a difference and our playgroup is not that big, so I can only test so much Matchups(I'm not a fan of just giving a deck to someone, play against him and call that testing since at tournaments chances are your opponents know what they are playing)
Just because my boarding is ok right now does not mean I am satisfied with it, something like this should be done perfectly everytime.
Main reason why I ask is the point that you stated. Its hard to figure out which ability is the least valuable in certain situation:
I usually put out the Wayfarers vs Decks that do not play too many Duals and Knights VS Decks that don't run creatures it cant handle.
I have a lot of trouble figuring out the rest of the creatures, since there are very few situations where there effect doesn't matter. (Draw 2 is hardly dead in any matchup.)
Same goes for Avenger, mostly she is unimpressive but she goes crazy with Jitte.
I figured asking you was the best way since chances are you tested stuff like that =).
Yeah, Jeff actually typed up sideboard plans for every single archetype that ended up on Deckcheck and even some more. It's quite exhaustive, but after discussing it, we realized it wouldn't be that much help to people (just to post the list) because the theory for WHY a card is coming out is so important. As long as you're cutting one of the worst cards in the deck, it doesn't really matter what you're chopping, but you have to be able to identify what's good and bad.
In general, you'll want to board out White cards. It's pretty easy to cut Fathom Seers and such against fast-aggro, and game-by-game you probably won't miss it, but it's a bad percentage play because of what it does to Force. One notable exception is that I cut Spell Pierce on the draw against Goblins.
If you ask for specific matchups, I can discuss the board plan for those in more detail.
Or just an example: Against Tempo Thresh I do this:
+1 Grunt, +1 Relic. After a ton of debate, we decided against bringing in Tormod's Crypt or Wheel of Sun and Moon. Both look good, but exposed to countermagic they can backfire, giving Goyf +1/+1. Also, Crypt hitting them gives Goyf +1/+1 almost automatically.
-2 Knights is the cut that I do. It's pointed out that they have a lot of land kill, and that's generally how they will win (if they do), but Knight doesn't help in the intensely-mana screwed position. He doesn't do very much without Jitte (which is game winning regardless), and Tempo Thresh will sometimes even decline the third land drop.
Grunt, Vial, Mom, and Avenger are the most important cards in this MU. Also, if you get to kill a Goose or a Goyf, usually you want to kill the Goose.
Mh, i think every bit of Information helps if you wanna pick up a new Deck. You can still question your plans after you know the right ones. Well, but its your list and your decision, if you decide against it it's fine with me.
The thing is at our tournaments you are sure to face Combo, Merfolk, Canadian, Dredge, Zoo/Goyfsligh and BantSur. The rest is all over the place, so it is really hard to anticipate what you will face. I don't like having to play 3 rounds while improvisng =).
So if not the full List I would be very grateful if you could give me the plans for these.
Ah, and vs. Gobbos I just did
+4 Tender -2 Grunt -2 Wayfarers
It worked well (I won without much hassle)but i was torn between siding out them or 2 Avengers since Wayfarers give me another out to Lackey but Avengers get the beatdown going while maintaining defense.
I became familiar with your deck recently (via the SCG 5k coverage) and I must say I'm impressed by the list (and will probably sleeve it up soon).
I was wondering, how is the CB-Top Progenitus match-up ? It would seem like landing Vial is key in that MU, but I'd like insight from people with tournament/testing experience of the MU.
I didn't want to post lists without explanations, and I didn't want to type up 80+ explanations. But I'm happy to explain board plans against standard decks.
Storm Combo:
This is really easy to board. You're bringing in everything except BFT and you're taking out everything useless.
+3 Aura (if you resolve it, they can't cast Artifacts for profit or IGG or Doomsday loop you)
+2 Thorn (obviously this is sick, vulnerable to Echoing Truth and Hurkyl's Recall, though)
+2 Enlightened Tutor (get Thorn, then get Aura if you have the 2WW to cast Aura under Thorn... you don't want to lose to Hurkyls or ET, and either one is a pretty good lock if they have Chain of Vapor)
+1 Relic
+1 Crypt
+1 Wheel
+1 Grunt
Cards coming out:
4x Swords to Plowshares (junk)
3x Mother of Runes (junk)
2x Knight of the White Orchid (junk)
1x Umezawa's Jitte (junk)
1x Vial (junk)
Against Solidarity, you obviously don't want Aura of Silence. Leave those in the board. Also leave Moms and Vials in. You can vial in a Grunt after being milled "to death" and protect it with Mom = You Win. In storm matchups, you have so much junk that corner cases like that are important in deciding which cards to keep.
Against Belcher, you want to leave Moms and Jittes in, cutting Serra Avenger instead. You can beat a soft (12 tokens or less) EtW with Mom and/or Jitte, but Avenger is basically useless and surprisingly it's worse even than Aura of Silence. Wayfarer is better than Avenger because you can chump a token with it more consistently. You also don't bring in the four yard hates. Sorry, Jeff brought up the good point that you should chop Vials against Belcher, and that obviously Moms < BFTs, which I forgot to mention.
Ok, so Belcher plan, more spelled out:
+2 Thorn
+2 Tutor
+3 Aura
+4 BFT
-4 Mom
-3 Vial
-4 Swords
Goblins: Spell Pierce is horrible from the draw (they just cast Vial first). I always board it out from the draw in that MU. Wayfarer isn't a great answer to lackey from the draw, either. And a 1/1 body isn't that great. The matchup is very tempo-oriented, you usually don't have that much time to sit around and Wayfarer the roses, PARTICULARLY when they have Vial out (which is when they're most likely to beat us). +4 BFT is obvious, then I do -2 Spell Pierce, -2 Wayfarer from the draw and I do -4 Wayfarer from the play.
By the way, Angel is very solid against Goblins. It's not so fast that you can't get them into play, and Angel survives all the normal stuff, carries Jitte like a champ, and can block most of his team at 1:0.
Stopping their Vial is very important. They almost can't win without it. I find Grunt to be pretty good at two copies because he just eats everything, and can stall you into Jitte. But I would still cut him before Angel.
Merfolk: Do nothing! Yay! They usually don't have anything for you, either, so just keep winning. If you know they're running Vedalken Shackles, you put in two copies of Aura over Wayfarer and Knight.
Canadian I went over above. I call it Tempo Thresh (UGr).
BantSur... what's that? Non-combo Survival, right? Uh, don't bring in yard hate except Grunt against Survival decks. It's not worth it. If it's Bant Aggro that runs Survival, stick to the above. Bring in just Grunt and 1 Aura. Cut Knights.
If it's more survival-intensive, you can cut some Moms or Vial for more Aura. I wouldn't go too overboard, Survival is not that good of a card if you can keep them off having a lot of lands. Jitte is ridiculous against Survival, so try to Jiquip. Sorry, I don't really know this MU, I'm more experienced with Survival that runs Red for like Anger.
Dredge: +the 10 obvious cards, cutting 4 Wayfarers, 2 Knights, 3 Vial, 1 Spell Pierce. You basically want a steady stream of creatures and disruption coming out to stall until you can resolve Wheel.
Particularly on the draw, Spell Pierce is not great, but I try not to cut many blue spells if possible.
Zoo and Goyf Sligh, you'll want to cut a combination of Wayfarers and Knights for BFTs and the Grunt. Grunt is the best card in this matchup. I'd cut 3 Wayfarers, 2 Knights.
I like to leave Spell Pierce in, but just play normally and the first time you happen to be untapped and he happens to cast something you can SP, then SP it. It's not worth saving it to stop a really good spell.
I mean, there are some exceptions when you set up something crazy on when you're winning easily or he completely wastes a spell for no reason, but you generally just want SP to trade with a Bolt. The matchup is so fast you can't wait around on anything, or even stay untapped for SP. Also, trading down is really good for you. Always block his Nacatl with your Angel.
Im cool with everything but combo
Why take out the Swords? Most Decks bring some Xantid Swarms, and Confidants and Shushers aren't too uncommon either.
Yeah some of my opponents made the mistake of bringing in xantid swarms, but I've never seen confidant or shushers. If you see a confidant, (presumably from AdN) then he takes ~1 damage a turn (it doesn't even do anything to help him combo unless it sticks around for 2 upkeeps), and if that happens, you get two turns to swing about 3-4 damage, so say you deal about 8 damage to him, and he deals 2 to himself +1-2 fetches, so 12 damage. Now his Ad Nauseam isn't even scary... I don't see why DC would come in. Every estimate used here has been rather conservative.Quote:
Originally Posted by paK0
Xantid swarms are bad because our hate doesn't stop at countermagic, and they can't bring in disenchants, bounce, be running Pact/duress/silence/chant at at least 8 copies, and then also have xantid swarms, and expect to not only draw the right answer to whatever hate we draw, but then to have enough actual combo pieces to still go off.
Analogous reasoning holds for shusher. As stated though, we won't be able to take the time to justify the entries in the list, but we trust that you will have the ingenuity to understand why we've made our choices.
BTW, having forgotten about ETW, I might also in the future do -1 vial, +1 jitte relative to the generic storm combo plan. This is what I did in the tournament; it's good to think about what you do even if you refer to my guidelines.
The most important card in that MU is Weathered Wayfarer. He just stops them from getting out Progenitus and he stops the lock from being effective.Quote:
Originally Posted by aTn
If I know that's what I'm up against, I lead with Mom, then second turn cast Wayfarer, forcing the resignation (I'm serious, they can't do anything about that -- Mom Wayfarer > Counterbalance Top, and the individual parts are better, too).
If you can't land-lock them out of Progenitus, but they haven't landed Toplock, just get a Spell Pierce ready and make sure that their Dazes are blanked during the counterwar. Don't tap out when they can get to four, it's not rocket science. You have more countermagic than they do, and you might even have a LOT more if they can't play around Daze (e.g. if you're beating them down with Angel and they don't have many turns left, or you mana screwed them and they only just barely managed to get to 4 mana).
I mean, you get: 4 Force, 2 Spell Pierce (and sometimes 3 Daze as well), and they get 4 Force to defend their combo.
I dunno, play it a few times. You're obviously the beatdown, but you also have more countermagic and a lot of their spells are caught up in clunky combos. Also, you can draw cards and they can't. You have a lot going for you.
Ok, thanks a lot. I looked over it, and I actually like most things. Still I feel like some things (only a few, be relieved =)) Just short comments are more than enough, I'll figure out the rest myself.
Storm again:
Ok, your probably right about the Confidant, with a fast clock it might hurt them.
Swarm however blanks 9 of our Spells. So wouldnt we actually gain more hate by leaving them in?
Affinity:
Aura has written "I win" all over it, so why no Tutors?
Painter:
-4 Aura
+3 Aura + Grunt
well, THIS is wrong^^
Dragon-Stompy:
Beforehand Jitte was mentioned frequently, so is Tender really > Tutor?
Ok, thats the only things I'm really wondering about right now. Thanks again for the list^^
Storm: this is a decent argument but a clock is not worthless, so the minute amount of hate gained isn't worth anything. You already board out vial, mom, swords. (This is the new plan after realizing vial is bad vs. storm.)Quote:
Originally Posted by paK0
Also, not everybody even runs xantid swarm, and they don't even always draw it, and when they do, we don't even always have countermagic as our hate, and when we do, we might even have jitte to take it out.
Affinity: Aura is only great against affinity, but it's not an autowin. It's subpar if it's W and then 1WW plus a card for the effect.
Painter: cut 4 of something in the deck for that, perhaps mother of runes, or like KOTWO, it doesn't really matter as long as you make a reasonable choice.
DS: you would never tutor a jitte. Tutor isn't this handy toolbox, you only bring it in when the spell you're grabbing is so gg that -1 card -W is worth it.
For those of you who still decide that decks like UW merfolk have some merit over this deck, I suggest at least changing your sideboard to adopt the ideas of ours. In many matches, rather than just like a few for sideboards that are thrown together, we bring in many things, and sometimes even many things that completely cripple the opponent, like thorn of amethyst and auras against storm, graveyard hate against ichorid, BFT against goblins...