[DTB] Blade Control

I've thought about it... the reason I hesitate to put Jitte MD is that we don't have all the fliers of Esperblade. Put a Jitte on a flier and go to town. Put a Jitte on a Snapcaster or Mishra's Factory and you're trading creatures for Jitte counters. That's fair in some cases, but UW has so few dudes that it seems better to suit up with Pro-Green and just get in there. Against the Esper builds, it just seems like a matter of bringing in some Surgicals to deal with Lingering Souls and saving your Brainstorms for their discard.

However, I still feel jitte is a better equipment all around. You can shoot your own creatures to remove bridges or you can take down opposing weenie easily. I'm still not too sure if jitte or soff deserves the slot in the MD. Also should surgical be a 4 off in the board now? I am playing 2 surgical and 2 purify right now but surgical seems alot more useful. You need it against punishing fire, Loam and esperblade. It seems infinitely more Useful. But how many is the ideal number to board in? I don't want to flood with surgical against an opposing deck. I'm guessing 2 copies is ideal?

I usually pack 4 Surgicals in the board because when I want to see it, I really want to see it. Against Reanimator and Dredge it's a fairly easy call of 4. Loam or Punishing Fire, I'd probably shoot for 2-3. Against the Punishing Loam variant, I'd go 4. Against Esperblade, it's a little tougher a call, but I'd probably go 3. Remember, removing things like FoW, Jace, SFM, etc are also totally valid aside from the Lingering Souls. Extraction effects are rarely dead. Against non-GY abusing decks, you have better ways to fill the slots, but even when it's only mediocre, it's still very live.

(Be careful of Esperblade Extracting your Extractions. They will try to go, t1 discard your SE into their own SE in order to clear their way for LS)

I've also found that jitte can be devastating against Maverick, especially with mishra's factory. They can't name colourless so a jitted factory can really wreck some face. Machine gunning down a pair of moms and cleaning up with spot removal is actually pretty strong.

I'm also likely to be playing in a budget meta this weekend so jitte feels like the stronger choice to me. I'll be expecting lots of cheaper decks like burn, Goblins, dredgers and Affinity. I doubt many people will have goyfs. In a more developed meta, soff may be the best way to go. I'm also going to play all surgicals in the board. I want to make sure I shit on dredge.

I am no Stoneblade-player any more (dropped this deck already) but how will you guys adopt your decks to Lingering Souls? Will you all swap to UWB? I ask this because Im pretty scared from this due to me playing RUG Tempo :P

Greetings

I don't see what the issue is. Lingering souls is just basically a token generator for Jitte. The way to beat it is still the same as beating the original UW Blade deck, stopping Stoneforge. If you stop Stoneforge from fetching Jitte, Lingering souls is just basically a very inefficient token maker. But once Jitte is on the board, Lingering Souls provides an infinite stream of dudes to equip. With discard in UWB, Stoneforge becomes harder to counter.

Also, UW has to adapt, because lingering souls also kills Jace bad. That's why I'm also running Jitte MD with Batterskull. If you can get Jitte online, you can control the 1/1 flyers easily or Legend rule the opposing Jitte. You can race those puny 1/1 flyers with a resoved Batterskull. The key is to stop their SFM/Jitte.

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Originally Posted by ivanpei

I don't see what the issue is. Lingering souls is just basically a token generator for Jitte. The way to beat it is still the same as beating the original UW Blade deck, stopping Stoneforge. If you stop Stoneforge from fetching Jitte, Lingering souls is just basically a very inefficient token maker. But once Jitte is on the board, Lingering Souls provides an infinite stream of dudes to equip. With discard in UWB, Stoneforge becomes harder to counter.

Also, UW has to adapt, because lingering souls also kills Jace bad. That's why I'm also running Jitte MD with Batterskull. If you can get Jitte online, you can control the 1/1 flyers easily or Legend rule the opposing Jitte. You can race those puny 1/1 flyers with a resoved Batterskull. The key is to stop their SFM/Jitte.

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I've been playing uw with jitte as the second equipment for the past three months, I like way more then running a sword. Jitte gives you so much control over the game, swords always struck me as being much better in bant lists. With lingering souls, mom, mongoose, and that silly hexproof nonsense running around I really like running 2 engineered explosives main with an academy.

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Originally Posted by ivanpei

However, I still feel jitte is a better equipment all around. You can shoot your own creatures to remove bridges or you can take down opposing weenie easily. I'm still not too sure if jitte or soff deserves the slot in the MD. Also should surgical be a 4 off in the board now? I am playing 2 surgical and 2 purify right now but surgical seems alot more useful. You need it against punishing fire, Loam and esperblade. It seems infinitely more Useful. But how many is the ideal number to board in? I don't want to flood with surgical against an opposing deck. I'm guessing 2 copies is ideal?

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If you were playing UW Blade Control and up against Esperblade, surgical extractions are a LOT less useful against lingering souls. Since this is a control mirror, its all about lands/resource management. Once the esperblade player reaches 5 lands, you can't depend on surgical to extract lingering souls because they can cast lingering souls retain priority once its resolved and/or countered and flashback lingering souls. At no point in there can you extract if you had the surgical extraction in hand. You would have to make them NOT have the 2 mana sources in order to flashback right after.

The black splash also gives the deck better tools against one of its worse matchups (Maverick) in the form of Perish. That's a pretty good reason to splash the Black.

UW should have the advantage as far as resolving SFM goes. Spell Snare stops SFM better than discard. It is extremely key to save your Brainstorms in this MU though.

It makes absolutely zero sense to go through all of this trouble to adapt to Lingering Souls, when UW is already getting crushed by Maverick, a much more popular deck. You don't want to in-breed even more against blue decks--you want to beat the expected field, and that starts with beating Mom and company.

The advantage of Lingering Souls is that it's the best way to utilize Jitte and Jitte is really, really good against Maverick. I think that straight UW still has its advantages though, like more basics and access to Wasteland. Perish and Zealous Persecution are also good tools against Maverick. This isn't anything new though, Black has always had the deepest SB options.

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Originally Posted by Malakai

It makes absolutely zero sense to go through all of this trouble to adapt to Lingering Souls, when UW is already getting crushed by Maverick, a much more popular deck. You don't want to in-breed even more against blue decks--you want to beat the expected field, and that starts with beating Mom and company.

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I think the concern is that after the GP:Indy, there will be a surge of Esperblade decks. I've already seen one in my meta (from someone who was previously playing Maverick, though not happy about it, I don't think).

I don't think it's unreasonable then to discuss what to do differently in preparation for Esperblade; on the other hand, you're right that it would be an overreaction to change anything big given that Esper's neither dominant nor likely to overtake existing Maverick in local metas.

Anyway, I don't see the UW decklist needing to change much. As others have said here: stop SFM, prevent Jitte; get your own Jitte. EE seems useful, as does Tower of the Magistrate. Oh, and maybe this is one of the few matchups in which playing your Wastelands for mana denial will pay dividends. Martell's GP list at least has fewer basics than we do, fewer lands overall, and a greater dependence on multicolor, it would seem.

Unlike crovakiet, I think Surgical Extraction is useful. Is your opponent going to wait until 5 lands if a Lingering Souls is in his hand (especially if only running 22 lands)? And if he Intuitions into Lingering Souls, Surgical is very relevant. And even if Lingering Souls never makes for a good target, Extraction is always useful against control if for little more than to see his hand, maybe remove some counters/StPs. Now... is Extraction useful enough to board out cards in your MD? That's another question...

Just a mild rules question. I pass the turn. EoT, my opponent casts Intuition for Lingering Souls. When do I get priority again to Surgical? Ideally I don't want to wait until they untap and potentially open up Counterspell mana.

After they finish resolving Intuition.

More accurately, intuition resolves and goes to the graveyard. active player then gets priority. You're probably going to be the active player, so you're welcome to extract the souls.

I am not saying that it is wrong to prepare for Esperblade with Lingering Souls. Not at all. What I am saying is that people are already unprepared for Maverick, as evidenced by the results of literally every open. The current measures are completely insufficient. UW Blade needs to change in order to make that matchup at least 50/50, and from there re-evaluate UW vs. Esper.

The matchup is bad enough, and exists in sufficient numbers, that "extreme" plans are warranted. I don't know what that plan is, but I do know that a couple paths and a couple wraths aren't it. It could be something as out-there as boarding into a combo deck.

Are there full event reports for the Opens? My schedule doesn't usually align with following them live; I have a backlog of featured matches from the podcasts, and I try to make sure to watch any matches involving Stoneblade. The last time I see Stoneblade vs. Maverick is the Tampa semifinals (William Cao vs. Michael Caffrey), but it wasn't a featured match. All I can see is that Cao won in 2. I haven't started watching the mirror match final yet.

Is there a more comprehensive reports summary, including outside the Top 16?

I haven't had occasion to play against Maverick. I've played against Punishing Zoo, and have done okay there (won 1 match in 3, lost another match in 3, different weeks). I've had to deal with Mother of Runes. She sucks, but it's rarely the end of the world. At worst, she two-for-ones you, negating that wonderful CA of Snapcaster. Wrath removes her (and everyone else), EE removes her, Jitte removes her. Flying usually gets past her.

I've recently picked up some Mutavaults to test out the faerie package, as I hadn't played that before. I didn't do very well with it this week, but I faced Dredge and two ANT decks, not my personal strengths (first time playing Dredge in a tournament, and I made a stupid keep decision in game 2; just couldn't get enough counters when I needed them against ANT w/Orim's Chant/Silence; also should have Surg. Extracted Dark Ritual when I had the chance, just in case it would have mattered; also didn't enough additional counter in the SB as I didn't expect to see so much storm). But in terms of stopping 1-drops and occasionally more (I've re-added Clique in place of Geist due to the Spellstutters), the Spellstutters are kind of nice. They seem like they could be useful against ANT, where they can't be Duressed; too bad I didn't draw one in my combo matchups.

I know others have experienced problems like getting the sprites killed in response to their trigger; I guess that's one less removal for SFM. I'll see. I'm basically playing them in place of Lightning Bolt right now (still have REB in the sideboard, but maindeck the red is only useful for EE@3).

Anyway, I don't know how much all that helps against Maverick. I did witness Esperblade take down Maverick, FWIW, but GP:Indy already showed that much (and the same Maverick that took down U/W Stoneblade), right?

EDIT: Just saw the Cao vs. Caffrey coverage show up in my podcast, so, at least there's that. :)

We had a 53-player legacy event here in Finland and I got 2nd place with following list:

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

4x Snapcaster Mage
4x Stoneforge Mystic
1x Vendilion Clique

3x Lingering Souls
4x Force of Will
4x Spell Snare
4x Brainstorm
4x Swords to Plowshares
1x Sword of Feast and Famine
1x Batterskull
1x Umezawa's Jitte
3x Jace, the Mind Sculptor
2x Thoughtseize

Sideboard:

2x Path to Exile
1x Vendilion Clique
1x Thoughtseize
2x Perish
2x Engineered Explosives
1x Flusterstorm
2x Spell Pierce
2x Surgical Extraction
2x Grafdigger's Cage

I really liked this list, though I may cut some Spell Snares for Inquistion of Kozileks. I am a huge fan of spell snare in current meta, so thats why I played 4 of them, but I guess Inquisition does the same thing. Also I would cut the maindeck SoFaF and add the fourth Lingering Souls, it just wasn't as impressive it had been previously.

What comes to the Intuition and Vindicate in Martell's list, I just wasn't convinced about them. Vindicate surely takes care of opposing jaces, chokes and so on and with Intuition you can search up for some value with Snapcaster, but 3 mana is lot in legacy. Also what Martell's list had that I wouldnt ever do is play this deck with 22 lands. 23 is the absolute minimum.

Overall sideboard was success, Cage's were pretty amazing against dredge and reanimator along Surgical Extractions. Perishes and EE's helped against Maverick. The one thing I didn't like was the extra clique in sideboard. I did board it against dredge and reanimator but in the other matchups it wasn't needed and I sided out the maindeck one also.

Meta was what I expected it to be: Lots of Maverick, UW(b) Blade and RUG.

Quick sum of tournament:

R1 - RUG 2-0
R2 - Mirror - Martell's list w/ few alterations. 2-1
R3 - U/B Merfolk 2-1
R4 - Punishing Maverick 1-1-1
R5 - Dredge 2-1
R6 - ID w/ Maverick
TOP8 - Reanimator 2-1
TOP4 - RUG CounterTop 2-0
TOP2 - SPLIT w/ R3 opponent & played for lols and lost g1, scooped him the extra points due the clock was already so late.

How necessary do people think Mishra's Factory (or any manland) is? I may be crusading, but I keep wanting more basics and more fetches, maybe even 2-3 Glacial Fortress... Against most decks, especially Maverick, losing generally feels like a result of being mana-locked out of the game.

Try this manabase out for size:

2 Mishra's Factory
1 Karakas
3 Wasteland
3 Tundra
7 fetchland
2 Plains
5 Island
1 Glacial Fortress

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Originally Posted by Dzra

How necessary do people think Mishra's Factory (or any manland) is? I may be crusading, but I keep wanting more basics and more fetches, maybe even 2-3 Glacial Fortress... Against most decks, especially Maverick, losing generally feels like a result of being mana-locked out of the game.

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Nice to have; not necessary. If you're not getting the value you want out of them, go ahead and swap 'em out.

Sometimes Mishra's doesn't actualy does anything but helps anyway.

Like, if you opponent atacks you with a 2/2, and you have a untaped mishra...obviously he has a removal, if you wanna trade it for one of your lands, is up to you.... you may also notice he doesn't has a removal by "no atacking choise".

Having a mishra there, means the opponent can't do things that he would do otherwise, like, tapping out or blow your tundra.

A A LOT of times you can use it just for pressure, hit 2 every turn, and the opponent knows he can't just sit there for so long.

In lategame I rather draw a mishra then a tundra. Gives you more options (doesn't matter if you will use it).

Mishra's is a very strong card, But I would run only 1. (It helps you more often than karacas or riptide lab)

I think Mishra is a fine card. If you are playing more than 2 colours, it's probably not a good Idea to run it. In UW, it's pretty useful. I run 5 colourless lands out of 24 and I haven't had much problems with my mana so far. 3 Factories and 2 Wastes seem like an ok number.

Mishra speeds up the deck's other wise slow clock. Getting in there with a Snapcaster + Factory can finish games fast sometimes. You don't want to draw out too many games. Also, it's useful when you can wear an equipment in a pinch or attack down a Planeswalker. Also Mishra trades 1 for 1 with a Nimble Mongoose which is hard to kill.

Overall Mishra+Wasteland are the most useful colourless lands. But don't compromise your manabase by running too many. It can be very useful in the control mirror where every "live" card counts. It can also screw you over against decks with wasteland when you draw too many colourless sources.

Edit: anyone tried punishing grove in Stoneblade? You'd have to cut all the colourless lands, but it seems powerful enough to warrant splashing. Thoughts?

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Originally Posted by ivanpei

Edit: anyone tried punishing grove in Stoneblade? You'd have to cut all the colourless lands, but it seems powerful enough to warrant splashing. Thoughts?

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The idea is proposed from time to time, but I think most of us believe it to not be a good match for Stoneblade. With no way to tutor for a Grove, you have to run too many of them if you want it to be more than cute, and now you're screwing up your mana base with off color lands that you can't even fetch when you need them. I'd bet that, on average its not any faster than it would be for us to assemble a ThopterSword combo (which would probably require fewer slots), and honestly, if I'm going to assemble a combo, I'd prefer ThopterSword.

That's just my theory, though. I haven't actually tried Punishing Grove.

hello, long time type1 player, new to Legacy blade control.
Just wondering if anybody has tried echoing truth MB to answer the tokens against lingering souls or dredge's bfb zombies?
If so, how effective is it in other MU as well?

Also, does Elbrus, the binding blade + Looter il-kor have a place in this deck?

thank you.

(my apollogies for not knowing how to autocard here)

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Originally Posted by Ten-Ten

hello, long time type1 player, new to Legacy blade control.
Just wondering if anybody has tried echoing truth MB to answer the tokens against lingering souls or dredge's bfb zombies?
If so, how effective is it in other MU as well?

Also, does Elbrus, the binding blade + Looter il-kor have a place in this deck?

thank you.

(my apollogies for not knowing how to autocard here)

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If you were looking to force an equipped Elbrus through, I would think something like Invisible Stalker would be better, because he's also protected by hexproof. And since you're hoping for Withengar to be your wincon, the looter effect is less important than the hexproof.

But the problem is that Elbrus itself doesn't confer much of a benefit, Invisible Stalker itself isn't much of a benefit, and Withengar has a big fat target on him, and likely can't close the game in one shot. So, it's a lot of work to gain 13 life (or to watch the combo fizzle due to artifact hate).

I've been playing this deck recently (the black-splash version) after playing mostly aggro decks recently, and I've been pretty unhappy with Umezawa's Jitte whenever I grab it. I'm probably making mistakes when I search for it, since I'm used to having a lot of creatures to equip to Jitte, but it's such a big tempo sink when you pay 4 mana to play/cheat and equip, then get your only creature blown out by removal.

For those of you who are more experienced, has this been the MD Jitte been good for you? I'm thinking of replacing it with a second Batterskull. I would consider one of the Swords, but they suffer from the same problem as Jitte.

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Originally Posted by lordofthepit

I've been playing this deck recently (the black-splash version) after playing mostly aggro decks recently, and I've been pretty unhappy with Umezawa's Jitte whenever I grab it. I'm probably making mistakes when I search for it, since I'm used to having a lot of creatures to equip to Jitte, but it's such a big tempo sink when you pay 4 mana to play/cheat and equip, then get your only creature blown out by removal.

For those of you who are more experienced, has this been the MD Jitte been good for you? I'm thinking of replacing it with a second Batterskull. I would consider one of the Swords, but they suffer from the same problem as Jitte.

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I think the idea with Lingering Souls is that you can get multiple evasive creatures out quickly, so tutoring up the Jitte and getting it active is easier. When you're not generating tokens like that, it's more of a problem.

The difference with the swords is they confer an immediate benefit with their +2/+2, which can bring the creature out of bolt range (depending on who it is), and also offer color protection, so for instance your opponent's Tarmogoyf can't block it.

With non-LS, I still like SoFF main, Jitte side. With the LS I think the Jitte is arguably better, but there's certainly room for personal judgement there.

The benefit of having a non-Batterskull option is that the swords and Jitte are easier to hardcast when your SFM is removed (which is often). It also leaves you less susceptible to things like Pithing Needle, I suppose.

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Originally Posted by matunos

I think the idea with Lingering Souls is that you can get multiple evasive creatures out quickly, so tutoring up the Jitte and getting it active is easier. When you're not generating tokens like that, it's more of a problem.

The difference with the swords is they confer an immediate benefit with their +2/+2, which can bring the creature out of bolt range (depending on who it is), and also offer color protection, so for instance your opponent's Tarmogoyf can't block it.

With non-LS, I still like SoFF main, Jitte side. With the LS I think the Jitte is arguably better, but there's certainly room for personal judgement there.

The benefit of having a non-Batterskull option is that the swords and Jitte are easier to hardcast when your SFM is removed (which is often). It also leaves you less susceptible to things like Pithing Needle, I suppose.

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I agree with most of what you said, but I would argue that while having an evasive creature improves the value of Umezawa's Jitte, it improves the value of Sword of Fire and Ice (or any other Sword, but primarily SoFI for its insane triggered abilities) even more. Jitte is pretty powerful when you can just kamikaze one of your guys into a blocker just to gain counters, but you don't necessarily need a flier to do that. The Swords actually need to connect, and the evasion is really awesome there.

In fact, the original Belgian list ran SoFI instead of Jitte, which Martell switched to. Not sure what's better in a general metagame.

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Originally Posted by lordofthepit

I agree with most of what you said, but I would argue that while having an evasive creature improves the value of Umezawa's Jitte, it improves the value of Sword of Fire and Ice (or any other Sword, but primarily SoFI for its insane triggered abilities) even more. Jitte is pretty powerful when you can just kamikaze one of your guys into a blocker just to gain counters, but you don't necessarily need a flier to do that. The Swords actually need to connect, and the evasion is really awesome there.

In fact, the original Belgian list ran SoFI instead of Jitte, which Martell switched to. Not sure what's better in a general metagame.

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Fair enough. I think when you have a cheap supply of token creatures, they're more expendable, so running them into a blocker or chumping with them to power the Jitte is a smart move. When you don't, and you're running only 10-12 real creatures, I think you want to be more conservative for that reason too. And you're right, evasiveness helps in that regard.

But also, once you have the Jitte active, evasiveness is good whether it's on tokens or not, so you can do an extra 2+ to the face if you so choose, rather than running into chump blocks yourself.

BTW, I've gone back and forth on including SoFI or Jitte in the side (still playing SoFF main). Does anyone have specific experiences comparing the two? Jitte just seems so powerful and versatile if you can get it going.

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Originally Posted by matunos

BTW, I've gone back and forth on including SoFI or Jitte in the side (still playing SoFF main). Does anyone have specific experiences comparing the two? Jitte just seems so powerful and versatile if you can get it going.

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Unfortunately, most of my experience with equipment comes from playing Zoo a long time ago, but occasionally Bant or Maverick. In general, I'm a lot less patient with equipment than other people are, and I tilt really hard when I sink a lot of mana into an equipped creature that gets removed (which is why I often don't run equipment in decks that usually do). :laugh:

I haven't played Stoneblade long enough to form an opinion there, but I have only once been able to stick a Jitte onto a creature when it mattered (opponent was on Maverick), and that Jitte ended up getting K-Gripped with 5 counters on it (opponent's board was empty and my Batterskull had been previously destroyed). I ended up losing that game.

Batterskull, which I would never play in my aggro decks, has been amazing, even when I have to hardcast it. Granted, I probably made a lot of mistakes by fetching Jitte when I should have fetched Batterskull, out of inexperience.

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Originally Posted by Ten-Ten

hello, long time type1 player, new to Legacy blade control.
Just wondering if anybody has tried echoing truth MB to answer the tokens against lingering souls or dredge's bfb zombies?
If so, how effective is it in other MU as well?

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Forgot about your first question. Personally, I think Engineered Explosives is more versatile. It can blow out tokens (and transformed creatures) for 2 mana, but can also take out lots of other things, and with the mana curves of most top legacy decks, it's almost always got some relevance. It's even occasionally effective against storm combo, if they play out their LEDs/Moxen/Petals before they're ready to go off; and can also wipe the board of goblin tokens after Empty the Warrens.

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Originally Posted by lordofthepit

Unfortunately, most of my experience with equipment comes from playing Zoo a long time ago, but occasionally Bant or Maverick. In general, I'm a lot less patient with equipment than other people are, and I tilt really hard when I sink a lot of mana into an equipped creature that gets removed (which is why I often don't run equipment in decks that usually do). :laugh:

I haven't played Stoneblade long enough to form an opinion there, but I have only once been able to stick a Jitte onto a creature when it mattered (opponent was on Maverick), and that Jitte ended up getting K-Gripped with 5 counters on it (opponent's board was empty and my Batterskull had been previously destroyed). I ended up losing that game.

Batterskull, which I would never play in my aggro decks, has been amazing, even when I have to hardcast it. Granted, I probably made a lot of mistakes by fetching Jitte when I should have fetched Batterskull, out of inexperience.

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My experience with Jitte in Stoneblade has been similar. So much potential, but difficult to get started *and* still have a creature to carry it. Although, maybe it'll be a little better with my Sprites. Usually, I'm happy enough with SoFF, but dropping a -1/-1 on a Mother of Runes is so tempting...

Batterskull is ridiculous (and its flavor makes no sense either). It's saved me from 1 live against burn (after swordsing my own Mishra's to stay alive). It's especially nice when you can hardcast him (even if you don't have to), because that usually means you can bounce and re-cast or equip as needed, except, obviously, against Krosan Grip. To be honest, I don't see a lot of K. Grip, because the decks that would run it (Bant, Maverick) have Qasali Pridemage, so they either don't board grips at all, or they only have 1. It's probably a smart move: Pridemage is hateful enough, and more versatile. I used to have grips in my sideboard with one Trop, Tony Chu style, but the only opportunity I ever had to cast it was as a last hurrah against Enchantress before conceding. Now I figure splashing red is more useful (I'm trying to resist Esperblade).

I'm still trying to figure out the best times to fetch one over the other. My theory has been if I'm going off early, fetch the sword/jitte, as they're easier to hardcast, but oftentimes, you just end up with your sword/jitte and no creatures (this is a case where SoFF shines, if you have a manland). This may not be as much of an issue for Esperblade with Lingering Souls. Watching the top8s, I see Stoneblade players fetching Batterskull early (e.g. turn 3, sometimes turn 2) a lot more often than I have been, so maybe it's worth just getting him in your hand.

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Originally Posted by matunos

(I'm trying to resist Esperblade).

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On a similar note, I just ordered the cards to put Esperblade together. Afterwards, I found out it's the deck that won the GP. Go figure.

As a whole, I love the Esper Stoneblade list and sideboard. Only one thing isn't clicking: what's the use of the singleton Intuition? Is it just expected to be a general tutor, or is it there more specifically as, say, a fifth Lingering Souls or a fourth Force of Will?

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Originally Posted by delcameron

As a whole, I love the Esper Stoneblade list and sideboard. Only one thing isn't clicking: what's the use of the singleton Intuition? Is it just expected to be a general tutor, or is it there more specifically as, say, a fifth Lingering Souls or a fourth Force of Will?

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Intuition for 3 Lingering Souls. You can play one and flashback the others. If they don't get surgically extracted, that is. :-)

BTW, there's a dedicated thread for Esperblade here: http://www.mtgthesource.com/forums/s...UWb-Esperblade

Great - thanks matunos!

Played the GP KL side event yesterday. 40 man cut to t8 after 6 rounds. However due to time constraints, it was 6 rounds with t8 split (1st seed drafts duals first etc). The prize pool was 10 revised duals and a box of boosters.

1st round vs rug tempo:
Absolutely blow him out g1. My manabase was rock solid and I just kept removing his threats. He plays the snapcaster version, which IMO is much slower than the mongoose version. Batterskull won it for me after he gang blocked skull but I had the plow.

G2 grudge gave me some trouble but he could not keep threats on the table because of my stream of removal. Eventually Snapcasters and factory won the game for me.

2nd round vs reanimator:
Met this guy before when I was playing in Singapore. However his play this round really pissed me off. G1 I pathed an angel after he used it to kill my jace. He then proceeded to Reanimate angel again without me noticing. Savage cheats. I still win the game but I noticed during Sideboarding and brought it up. He apologised so I was, ok fine.

G2 I had too much hate and he was losing. I cliqued him and pointed to Jin. He put it into his bloody graveyard and I was like no no not again you cheating ass. I asked him to shove that shit under his deck. I proceed to rape him with clique-karakas lock and got there comfortably.

I called a judge at this point after the game and put him on the watch list. Best I could do for the other guys he will be playing against.

Round 3 vs burn:
When I say this mu is bad, I mean really really bad. G1 I dealt with 2 hellsparks with path but still died horribly. Post board I only have pierces to bring in.

G2 I plowed 2 guides after some free land and I still died, wasn't even close. He flooded with land but my non existent clock let him draw a billion burn spells to finish me. This mu is abysmal. I'm gonna need cop red next time.

Round 4 esper blade:
Lingering souls spanked me g1, I just couldn't not deal with it. My jitte got legend ruled and token advantage won it for him.

G2 we fought over the key surgical extraction. Some timely responses with brainstorm against inquisition let me protect my snapcaster and I successfully surgicalled his lingering souls. We go back and forth but I pretty much counter everything and beat with weenies FTW.

There was only 4 mins left in the round for g3 so we drew after neither of us could get a fast enough start. Oh well, control mirrors are like that.

Round 5 vs dredge:
I know the guy who was the previous PTQ winner for modern. He was 2-2 and out of contention for t8 so he scooped to me. We play it out anyway for fun and I beat him g1 but his slow dredging couldn't beat a batterskull with a jitte on it. A flash snap trading with a. Zombie, removing bridges won it for me pretty much earlier in the game.

G2 double led faithless looting Cephalid Coliseum god hand rolled me. No chance. I manage to surgical both Ichorid and bridge but death my Narcomoeba totally embarrassed me lol.

G3 my surgicals make short work of his deck. The synergy with snapcaster is insanely. He hail maryed a dread returned grave troll but I chump till I draw the plow. Got there.

Round 6 bubble match vs rug tempo.
He was 5-1 and requested a draw but since he was paired down and I was paired up, I had to win out. We proceed to play and g1 his t1 Delver went all the way but it was really close. That's what rug does.

G2 was epic because by this time we were the last players left in the tournament as most have dropped or scooped to those in contention. The crouded piled the pressure on but man was this a legendary game. We went back and forth but I managed to stick an Elspeth for a few turns before a Delver and a bolt finished her. My sfm stuck so I had batterskull down. He eventually built and army of 3 goyfs, 1 goose and a Delver. I rip wrath. I try the wrath, gets forced. I now chump with everything to buy a turn. I have to rip another wrath of snapcaster to survive. I rip my korean fbb wrath.

Wont woot huge cheers from the crowd. Savage rips! I wipe the board but he draws the grudge for the batterskull and at thus point we are playing totally off the top of our library. I eventually stick a crucible and start waste locking him. I Hardcast force on a bunch of geese along the way and. Plow everything. He finally remembers he has a grudge in the yard and. Pops my crucible. However I've already wiped all his. Coloured sources. He sandbags fetches and when he draws his last Goyf, he fetched his last trop and played it. I have the plow. I draw a waste and waste his last trop. He now has no way of killing me but I have no. Clock. He plays it out. I was a little pissed that he didn't scoop. At this point but a draw is advantages for. Him. I go into turbo play mode and I eventually get a pair of Snapcasters down and. Beat him to death. Epic game.

G3 we only had 4 mins to play so we eventually draw despite turbo playing from me and him insisting to shuffle my deck after every time I fetch. He pile shuffled AFTER I presented my deck, wtf mulligan and pile shuffled again. But the head judge was watching the game so I guess it was nothing excessive. I was on turbo tilt at this point praying for him to hurry up. We draw in the end and as the final prize split was based on standings after 6 rounds, I scooped to him to place him. Higher in the standings. Though I was a little bit tilted by his slow play, he didn't do anything wrong rules wise and he played very well. All in all I was just on edge cause I needed to win out.

A game away from t8. Oh well, it happens. But it was a blast. Fun games!

Quote:

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Originally Posted by ivanpei

This mu [vs Burn] is abysmal. I'm gonna need cop red next time.

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Do you think CoP is better than Aegis of Honor here?