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That makes little or no sense. RUG Delver has enough stifle and wasteland to attack your Mana base. Even if you did get to 4 lands, you still have to fight over cheap counter to resolve a Jace.Quote:
Originally Posted by klaus
Againt DnT, same issue, it attacks your Mana base via wasteland, port, and aven mindcensor.
By the time you did get your 4 Mana brainstorm to resolve, your life total is probably at Bolt range. It has nothing to do w/ nay sayer, it's being realistic.
I've been playing with 4, but only because running 6 would be illegal. I think Entreat #3 is an easy cut for the 4th Jace.Quote:
Originally Posted by zerzab11
Hmm..Is the same as how Moat is so terrible and people shouldn't play it?Quote:
Originally Posted by twndomn
That's your logic, not mine. By your logic, you should not play Miracle at all, you should be playing Delver decks, since most of Delver cards have CMC 1 or 2, excluding FoW.Quote:
Originally Posted by Cipher
why don't you explain to me that argument: "people should be running 4 Jaces..., kills any nay sayer's argument blah blah blah"
I actually kept my 3 in since they did so well in game 1 with a Terminus. He had a lot of six drops (Steel Hellkite, Wurmcoil, Staff on Nin) and if he did get some creatures out I could always cast Terminus. I boarded in Verdict, Helm, Humility, Aura of silence and the extra Terminus for 2 Cliques, 1 Jace, 1 D-sphere.Quote:
Originally Posted by Dzra
I was being sarcastic. Somebody was saying Moat is to expensive to be good against delver, which is funny because because 4 mana is never too much to just win the game.Quote:
Originally Posted by twndomn
My argument is that Jace is the single most powerful spell you could run in your deck, as far as card advantage is concerned. Counterbalance + top in the right matchup can beat it, but that's a combo that requires exact setup. The problem with Jace is that it costs 4 mana. Against mana denial aggro decks, like Death & Taxes and Delver, in order for the 4th Jace to be undesirable, it would have to be replacing a card that was actually better in the matchup at a lower CMC.
Against Delver, you basically have to deal with the creatures they put on board. After a while, you get your lands and their plan falls apart. Is Jace replacing removal spells lower down the curve? I know my version of the deck has 4x Swords and 4x Terminus, so it's not as if I'm going to upgrade the slot to something better against Delver. I do only have 3x Counterbalance maindeck, but I've never been comfortable running the full 4 and I have Predict which is taking that slot, regardless.
My experience against Death & Taxes is limited, since nobody really runs the deck in my area, but from watching streaming/coverage of the matchup Swords and even moreso Terminus seem to be the bottlenecks, once again, with Entreat being the other gamebreaker, given that it always resolves. In particular, having 2-3 copies of miracles rotting in your hand and praying for a brainstorm seems to be a recurring motif. Even if Jace really is just a 4 mana Brainstorm + gain 3-4 life, that still sounds great if Entreat or Terminus is going on top.
Against combo, you can argue that Jace costs too much, but that's complete nonsense. You have a pile of dead cards in those matchups, already, and after sideboarding you have to look for cards to board in. I can't see a 4th Jace being bad there.
And the Midrange decks? Is Jace not "better than all"? We have the best Jace deck in the format. This is what my local metagame looks like, so I suppose I'm a bit biased:
http://www.mtgdecks.net/events/view/11807
Part of my problem with the way people play this deck is that it's a control deck with very few ways to draw cards. The human mind is terrible at probability and the fact that Top digs through cards with replacement makes it less effective than people imagine. They think they're just getting unlucky, but with 45 cards in your deck your basically 10% to see an Entreat on each of the 8 or 9 reshuffles you have in your deck. Doesn't matter how many times you repeat the process, you're not really "getting closer". The deck needs more ways to put itself up on cards. Counter-top isn't that reliable against decks that aren't predominantly 1's. You're only 40-50% to have a Top to go with it in the first few turns of the game. It's a dead (or dormant) card 50% of the time, and that's to say nothing of the times when you don't have the right CMC floating. It's a great combo, but you're not doing enough if that's all you're doing. In my opinion, this deck is first and foremost a Jace/Brainstorm/Miracles deck that also manages to play the countertop combo.
From my experience, the deck doesn't work well as a "trade cards until you run out and I win" sort of strategy. That type of game plan is better left for Jund and Shardless, or even Stoneblade. We are primarily a "stall until I Entreat you" deck with Jace's ultimate as a viable side option. Relying on Jace's ultimate to win you the game gets a whole lot worse with True-Name Nemesis around. There are also plenty of times when I'll beat people to death with Clique, especially against combo (where both Jace and Entreat can be lackluster).Quote:
Originally Posted by Cipher
Although 6 can be very live against them, it is still a fairly big stretch to get it and keep it on top of your library for Balance. Their deck is primarily 3's, 4's, 5's, and 6's with the main threats coming at 5, 6, and 7. DSphere and Jace can be used to get rid of their hardcast threats. Clique is pretty good because they have a lot of late game bad draws (like Metalworker and Grim Monolith, and even Trinisphere/Chalice can be pretty much junk by turn Billion) that you can let them have while shipping the real threats like Karn, Forgemaster, and Steel Hellkite. They have so many dead draws that Clique + Karakas pretty much locks them out of the game.Quote:
Originally Posted by lyracian
When do we prefer Counterbalance over a simple Counterspell?
Against Elves, RUG, UWR, Storm. But Rest in Peace / Ethersworn Canonist would be effective the same
When is useless? DnT, MUD, Merfolk, partially Sneak Show.
I don't know how hot is Counterbalance right now.
Abrupt Decay after TNN is just everywhere..(because of Golgari Charm). I wouldn't play more than 2.
it's terrible in multiple and against Storm and Elves an Ethersworn Canonist is better.
against RUG Rest in Peace is better..
Against Jund RiP is slightly better but they're both bad.. I think there are reasons why Miracle is disappearing from T8s.. and what a shame, I love UW control.. :(
Rug - counter top is really good as their deck curves out to 2 maybe 3 if they run clique or TNN. There really is no reason to side into canonist its not hard to play around daze stifle or spell pierce, you just cant go full retard; with stifle being the most obnoxious. I run rip-helm helps against anything with green or G/B dot decks.Quote:
Originally Posted by Poron
Storm - having fow, spell pierce, counterspell, and counterbalance MD makes miracles the the roughest match up for storm. The majority of TES is 2 or under with mana rocks being at 0, cantrips and rituals being at 1, and the tutors being at 2. Which is easily covered by a decent CB curve. Canonist, fluster storm, EE, and blood moon easily coming in from the side; and having rip Md makes games against ANT easier and can hurt TES as it shuts off their past in flames engine.
DnT - I haven't played against it but you do have a sideboard for a reason. With vial and cavern counterbalance is pretty bad but you can catch some stragglers.
G/B/x - RiP is a MVP while it does get hit by abrupt and pulse it does its job by muling the yard and starving goyfs and deathrites. Counterbalance is still live against g/b dot decks just because it eats abrupt doesn't mean it doesn't have lots of other live targets; and with top, BS, and Jace we will more than likely find another soon, also just holding onto the redundant CB is really good while you may just shuffle it away holding onto it and slamming it after the previous one eats abrupt will hurt your opponent a lot.
Merfolk- CB is not entirely dead against merfolk Bc they don't run cavern so the only thing they have is vial which is only a 40% of being in their opening hand and is definitely FoW worthy. Nuking their vial with a dsphere is really good. Verdict and terminus are the heavy hitters in the match up.
Mud - CB is not as good but our CB does goes up to 6 for wurmcoil and dragon and any other targets they may have. I havent plaued the match up personally though.
Sneak and show - while CB is not as good in the match up your curve can easily hit 3 and 4 but it is mostly dependent on how slow they are or if you have the turn 2 CB, this is a match up where clique can shine though.
And I am really liking my rip- helm list.... MD rip is really good as I have no graveyard dependency. Also really enjoying the synergy with CB and e-tutor because i can counter anything with a 1-4 cmc as well as working towards a combo.
against RUG you don't play canonist. It's a sitting duck for Bolt. You side in RiP
Against storm you want to have 4 Counterbalance, yes. But 2 Ethersworn Canonist + 2 Meddling Mage are worth the same (may be more if you name Burning Wish, Ad Nauseam, Dismember, ecc)
Merfolk do runs Cavern and Aether Vial.
And the actual point is that Abrupt Decay will be more frequent in the next future because of Golgari Charm (to respond TNN). They have 1 more reason to run BG and, at that point, 4 Abrupt Decay is a just a must.
In your list, yes, CB is still very good because you play many targets for AD (Rest in Peace, may be even Energy Field?) and with Enlightened Tutor you have a wonderful hard counter for W.
I think your list wants 4 CBs in its 75s
Other lists, often, apart from CB have offer no target for opponent's removal (<3cc) and without CB you make their removal dead cards. Which is additional plus in removing Counterbalance
@Poron
To me counterbalance is the reason why control can exist. Why would you play a deck that trades 1for1 with a shell of 22+ lands and CMC 4 spells? You have to spend 3-4 cards more than Canadian Thresh/Storm just to get going. Counterbalance provides the much needed CA (and top's filtering in a way I guess) when facing those low-curve-efficient-decks.
Abrupt decay is a problem but there are ways to handle this, siding CB out, playing misdirection, overload on targets etc. Not starting with CB main just seems wrong. If the meta calls for it then I would play another deck with CA from either ancestral vision or Standstill but that's a different deck. I think the best way to fight golgari charm is to counter it with CB or Spell Snare. Golgari Charm is actually pretty bad coming from an agressive strategy against our deck imo.
Abrupt Decay is the card to fear. Golgari Charm is the reason why I fear Abrupt Decay will be more frequent.
This said, I think that the only way to deal with Decay is 4 CBs and overflowing valid targets (Clique, Peace, eventually Pithing Needle) or 0 CBs
Has anyone tried a Scroll Rack? And I mean in a non-Land Tax list… It seems like it could be sweet with Miracles, but I also imagine it's pretty slow.
slow, expensive.. we already have 4 Brainstorm, 2+ SnapMage, 3+ Jace.. to be stuck with Miracle in hand, often is just a matter of bad timed Brainstorm (that's why Top and Ponder, where possible. To save Brainstorms)
Misdirection is pretty good at "countering" Abrupt Decay.Quote:
Originally Posted by Poron
Or you could play Misdirection like Joe Lossett, and enough Abrupt Decay targets to trick your opponent before blowing them out with Misdirection.Quote:
Originally Posted by Poron
yes but what other permanents cc < 3 do we play against Jund and BUG? I was thinking about Meekstone and Rest in Peace
Against decks that can cast Abrupt Decay, you're most likely to be bringing in Rest in Peace, and possibly Needle for Liliana. But you also probably want a maindeck Misdirection, and one or two more in the board -- it's good at winning counter wars, and sometimes hits for value by redirecting a discard spell or something. And against decks that can cast Abrupt Decay, it also functions as a counter for that, and the card disadvantage is often worth maintaining the soft lock.
Whenever somebody says "Abrupt Decay is a card so counterbalance is less useful," or "I should run less counterbalances because people can answer with abrupt decay," I'm not exactly sure how this makes sense. This is not a reason to run less counterbalance. In fact, if anything, this is a reason to run more counterbalance so that even if your opponent gets abrupt decay to answer your counterbalance, you can find another one. If, on the other hand, you want to evaluate the usefulness of counterbalance against decks in general and decide on a number based on that, then that's fine. But please, stop thinking that abrupt decay means you should run less counterbalances for some reason. The percentages of abrupt decays you will find in your opponents' decks is probably not even all that high to begin with.
New to playing the deck myself, but counterbalance has won me the majority of the games I've played in testing. Most of my testing has been against Delver(RUG,URW and BUG), Maverick, Shardless BUG and various Esper Trueblade lists. They can't do anything else until they removed it, and most of the decks that play maindeck answers to counterbalance do not have maindeck answers to large amounts of angels.
Quick question for those more experienced with the deck. What cards would you recommend for fighting the mirror? There is a decent amount of U/W miracles where I play, most of them running the Rest in Peace Combo main, and I'm trying to figure out a sideboard plan though I haven't gotten a chance to test the match yet. What sort of removal should I leave in? Any thoughts?
I run a semi standard U/W/r list without helm combo.