[DTB] Blade Control

Snapcaster mage is amazing and I want always one of them in my initial 7, having one swords to plowshares and one mage in my hand gives me high confidence against any creature based deck, and against the rest you'll want as many counterspells or brainstorms as possible. In other words, you never have enough swords to plowshares or brainstorms, and if you do then you'll want more counterspells and snares.
I played just 3 in the first tournament as they were legal because I was unsure about their real impact on the game, but since then I know I want the full playset. It's blue, a body to equip, card advantage, using many of your more powerful cards once again... the nuts.

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Originally Posted by Cotes16

well...to sum up we can say that the 2 swords shine in different match up:
SOBM is better when you need to race opponent (zoo, maverick and so on...)
SOFF is better when you need card/tempo advantage (control and combo)
...so a good idea would be to play one in the main and one in the side depending on which meta you expect!

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I definitely agree it probably depends on your meta as well. My meta has no merfolk or goblins currently so swords like Fire and Ice didn't do as much for me as a pro-green sword would. Bant decks started to spring up around my area so I've been using SoBM currently. I like SoFF and SoFI in a vacuum more but there is a ton of blue and Jace bounce is very relevant for me.

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Originally Posted by klaus

Hey Frid,

are you sold on 4 being the right amount of Snapcasters?
I do lean towards 3 (--> don't want them in my starting 7), but haven't tested the full playset extensively.

thx

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FWIW, I've never been mad when I see a snapcaster mage and have been playing a full playset as well. It was pretty funny to play a game against combo elves and game 1 I ended the game with all 4 snapcasters and I was just able to counter and remove everything my opponent played. Of course that hand was redic but it definitely nice to see all of those Tiagos.

So this is my decklist. Let me know what you think. I think it's pretty standard.
4 Stoneforge Mystic
4 Snapcaster Mage
3 Vendilion Clique
1 Phantasmal Image

4 Jace, the Mind Sculptor

1 Sword of Feast and Famine
1 Batterskull

4 Brainstorm
4 Sword to Plowshares
4 Spell Snare
4 Force of Will
2 Counterspell

4 Tundra
4 Flooded Strand
3 Mishra's Factory
2 Wasteland
2 Misty Rainforest
1 Riptide Labotary
1 Scalding Tarn
1 Polluted Delta
1 Karakas
4 Island
1 Plains

Sideboard:
4 Path to Exile
3 Spell Pierce
3 Purify the Grave
2 Wrath of God
1 Disenchant
1 Umezawa's Jitte
1 Elspeth, the Knight Errant

Thoughts?

@Hugo,

I see your still using 2 explosives side in your UW build. Have they been effective enough with just two colors?

why you guys play purify the grave over surgical extraction?

We don't, he does.

i've seen it in plenty lists, so i was looking for a reason. But i couldn't find any =D

Purify seems pretty narrow IMO. But being able to double cast it against reanimator is strong. However surgical is much better against dredge whereas purify barely affects them at all.

Surgical can also annoy various combo decks out there + gives you info on their hand. It's just more flexible overall. I'm sticking to surgical. Purify is also nice in the snapcaster mirror but it can be played around. You're obviously not going to walk into the flashbacked purify.

Me neither, I prefer surgical all day long. Free spells in legacy are awesome.

@Waikiki: Yes, they're still pretty useful: GW, tribal decks, zoo, threshold decks, counterbalance... Ok, now I can't kill chokes or reliquarys, but my big deal is to kill nacatl, mongoose and vial, and I still can do that. Those are the reason I always played explosives in the sb. Losing a bit of versatility doesn't make the card unuseful, and cards like disenchant are too weak for me to run them. Indeed they were the card I sided most times in during the tournament.
The worst card from my sb was by far spell pierce, but there's nothing better in UW to fit their role (be useful against control and combo) I mean, it is not good, but it's the less worse option and at least they're very versatile, so I think we have to play them despite being mediocre unless someone discovers any better replacement, which I didn't.

purify the grave can be very very good because of flashback...this mean that you can remove 2 different dredgers and not just 1 as with surgical...and so prevent the opponent to start dragging...last week i played on mtgo my dredge deck and i lost because of this...

do not forget that explosive can be really good also against dredge at 0!

You also have to consider turn 0 Thought Seize/Duress/Cabal. You're kinda screwed if you have Surgical, whereas Purify you have at least 1 last shot until draw another. Even if you do rely on Snapcaster to bring it back, you need at least 3 land drops to bring back Surgical from the grave, whereas with Purify, you need 1 white sources open. You can probably go with Purify + Meddling Mage and shut down Dredge (by naming Dread Returns). The Spell Snares should easily stop Echoing Truth from bouncing the Mage back. Or you could just go straight 3 Surgicals and ignore the turn 1 Seize/Duress/Cabal in games 2~3.

I agree though, against dredge, purify the grave isn't enough. You can go with either one, but it's strictly meta dependent between the two. I think we need to discuss the current issues in the meta with Tempo Rug and probably more people coming in with Reanimator/Dredge as entry level decks now. I've been working on some solutions to the sideboard, but give me your thoughts on it. I've been considering dropping Meddling Mage to 2 and putting an extra Batterskull, but I don't know if that will make it less effective.

Sideboard for U/W version

3x Purify the Grave - Reanimator/Dredge
3x Path to Exile - Aggro/Rug
2x Fluster Storm - Burn/Storm/Combo
3x Meddling Mage - Combo/Elves/Dredge/Reanimator (Show & Tell)
1x Disenchant - Top/Mirror
1X Elspeth - Aggro/Mirror
2x Wrath of God - Rug/Aggro/Elves/Merfolk

Some people are starting to toss in a single Thrund in their main boards now... so I dunno if Wrath should become main also, considering the current meta where there's half janky decks with silver bullet cards.

Anyways, I decided to try out esperblade, since the red was very underwhelming versus non control blue decks. The list I'm current trying is

4x Flooded Strand
3x Polluted Delta
1x Marsh Flats
3x Tundra
2x Underground Sea
1x Scrubland
4x Island
1x Plains
1x Swamp
3x Wastelands

(23 lands)

4x Stoneforge Mystic
3x Snapcaster Mage
3x Vendilion Clique

(10 Creatures)

3x Spell Snare
4x Swords to Plowshares
4x Force of Will
4x Brainstorm
3x Jace, the Mind Sculptor
2x Spell Pierce
2x Path to Exile
3x Bitterblossom

(27 Spells)

ANND a weird sb I'm trying out

2x Engineered Explosives
2x Vindicate
2x Path to Exile
2x Surgical Extraction
1x Extirpate
3x Counterbalance
3x Sensei's Divining Top

I'm not using dark confidants because the life loss would be too much: bitterblossom + confidant is very painful. On top of that, the mb is running 5x cc5 spells, 3x cc4 spells, and 4x cc3 spells. All in all making for some very painful flips. Also, I'm not really packing any discard mb since I didnt want to have to fetch black very often-- ideally i'd fetch U, W, U, then B to avoid getting tempo'd out. Blossom does seem worthwhile right now: all of the X/1's floating around (snapcaster, clique, bob) that it stops from attacking as well as chumping goyfs, delvers, mongeese. Pro black is a bit of a problem, but if they have a sword out, they'll probably be able to get through anyways.

From testing, sobam is far superior to the other swords: the protection it gives you basically gives you board dominance, especially on a flyer. Versus Rug tempo, 1 connect will usually put me in a position to win the game -- the wolf token is verrryy relevant. Versus combo, sobam is probably the best: milling 10 versus almost any combo deck (minus dredge/reanimator) helps by potentially removing any 1-2 ofs that they use their tutors on. Post board, swinging in with sobam, milling a infernal/wish and then extracting it is pretty good.

The counterbalance sb is something that I haven't really tested out yet, but it does seem fun. The curve fits balance well enough that i think out of the board, it can be useful, especially versus combo and rug to a lesser extent.

So, you're trying a list with stoneforge mystic but no equipment? :laugh:

oopsss lol

theres 1x batterskull, 1x sobam

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Originally Posted by Polish Tamales

You also have to consider turn 0 Thought Seize/Duress/Cabal. You're kinda screwed if you have Surgical, whereas Purify you have at least 1 last shot until draw another. Even if you do rely on Snapcaster to bring it back, you need at least 3 land drops to bring back Surgical from the grave, whereas with Purify, you need 1 white sources open. You can probably go with Purify + Meddling Mage and shut down Dredge (by naming Dread Returns). The Spell Snares should easily stop Echoing Truth from bouncing the Mage back. Or you could just go straight 3 Surgicals and ignore the turn 1 Seize/Duress/Cabal in games 2~3.

I agree though, against dredge, purify the grave isn't enough. You can go with either one, but it's strictly meta dependent between the two. I think we need to discuss the current issues in the meta with Tempo Rug and probably more people coming in with Reanimator/Dredge as entry level decks now. I've been working on some solutions to the sideboard, but give me your thoughts on it. I've been considering dropping Meddling Mage to 2 and putting an extra Batterskull, but I don't know if that will make it less effective.

Sideboard for U/W version

3x Purify the Grave - Reanimator/Dredge
3x Path to Exile - Aggro/Rug
2x Fluster Storm - Burn/Storm/Combo
3x Meddling Mage - Combo/Elves/Dredge/Reanimator (Show & Tell)
1x Disenchant - Top/Mirror
1X Elspeth - Aggro/Mirror
2x Wrath of God - Rug/Aggro/Elves/Merfolk

Some people are starting to toss in a single Thrund in their main boards now... so I dunno if Wrath should become main also, considering the current meta where there's half janky decks with silver bullet cards.

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Dredge does not play Duress/Thoughtseize. As for Cabal Therapy, I highly doubt they will get it right the first time. They can call a wide variety of things, from Surgical to Tormods to Relic. Even then, if I was a good Dredge player, I'd call force because force is always a 4 off and Surgicals/ Crypts/ Relics are a dodgy call at best and might not be played as a 4 off. Purify really doesn't do anything against Dredge. If you purify an Ichorid/Bridge it barely does anything! At least Surgical lets you rip up their DECK as well. It permanently removes one of their weapons.

Also you need to keep mana open for Purify when you should really be trying your best to pressure them. I much prefer a split of 2/2 Surgical and Tormod's in the board. It gives Dredge players headaches on what to call while making anti-hate very tricky.

Aside from aggro, what MU do you remove FOW post board?

Got raped last night in testing vs Tempo *****. His plays:

1. Wasteland my Tundra + Surgical
2. Surgical Extr my StP

Jeez, how do you guys combat the Tempo ***** MU? Thanks!

Playing @Frid's list with 8 basic lands :)

Have you guys seen David Ochoa's Blade Control list yet? He said it was built against Rug Tempo in mind. He played this at this year's Worlds going 4-1, losing to Dredge.


Lands
4 Flooded Strand
1 Misty Rainforest
1 Polluted Delta
1 Scalding Tarn
2 Mutavault
1 Riptide Laboratory
1 Karakas
4 Tundra
3 Wasteland
1 Plains
5 Snow-Covered Island

Planeswalkers
3 Jace, the Mind Sculptor

Creatures
4 Snapcaster Mage
2 Spellstutter Sprite
4 Stoneforge Mystic
2 Vendilion Clique

Spells
4 Brainstorm
2 Counterspell
4 Force of Will
4 Spell Snare
4 Swords to Plowshares

Artifacts
1 Batterskull
1 Sword of Feast and Famine
1 Crucible of Worlds

Sideboard
3 Flusterstorm
3 Path to Exile
3 Purify the Grave
1 Batterskull
2 Disenchant
1 Elspeth, Knight-Errant
2 Wrath of God


Here's a deck tech link for the details: http://youtu.be/aNYO6ori5Jo

A very weak sb in my opinion. Cards like disenchant or purify the grave just don't make the cut for me.

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Originally Posted by Frid

A very weak sb in my opinion. Cards like disenchant or purify the grave just don't make the cut for me.

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I still like my 2 SB Disenchants VS. all those Chokes running around lately.

Anyone has a better solution, I'm all ears.