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Thread: UW Sagas

  1. #41

    Re: UW Sagas

    Quote Originally Posted by kombatkiwi View Post
    Edit: I've just seen a new spoiler from the upcoming Theros set:
    Yeah, I just saw the spoilers as well. It's interesting, but I'm pretty sure it's a fake.

  2. #42

    Re: UW Sagas

    Quote Originally Posted by aedemiel View Post
    Yeah, I just saw the spoilers as well. It's interesting, but I'm pretty sure it's a fake.
    I think there's a pretty good chance it's real,
    There are so many new and high-quality artworks included in the leaked photos, this would be a lot of effort for somebody to go through just for a hoax

  3. #43

    Re: UW Sagas

    I tested this with the new cards against my friend's 4C Oko deck

    To reiterate:

    1 Tundra
    1 Polluted Delta
    4 Flooded Strand
    4 Prismatic Vista
    5 Plains
    5 Island

    4 Ponder
    4 Brainstorm
    4 Force of Will
    4 Swords to Plowshares

    3 Porphyry Nodes
    4 Omen of the Sea
    2 Medomai's Prophecy
    2 Counterbalance
    1 Search for Azcanta
    4 History of Benalia
    3 Estrid's Invocation
    1 Dovin's Acuity
    1 Detention Sphere
    2 Replenish
    1 The Mirari Conjecture

    Felt really good. The way the game plays out against these kind of fair midrange decks is that there are too many must-counters for the opponent. Your opponent doesn't want to allow CB, Estrids Invocation, Azcanta etc to resolve because they snowball hard as the game continues but if your opponent does spend resources countering them then it supercharges your inevitable Replenish later.

    Omen of the Sea is a significant upgrade to Spreading Seas (the extra scry 2 on the ETB trigger is the main thing, especially when you repeatedly blink your Estrids Invocation on it) and the Prophecy is also a big upgrade to Font of Fortunes. Not having to pay an extra 2 mana to draw 2 is solid and scry 2 on ETB helps to set up a turn 3 play, or set up CB. The overall shell makes a lot of sense to me. If I scrub out of GP Nagoya (Pioneer) I will probably try to play this in the 'legacy championship' side event on Sunday. We aren't even halfway through the new Theros spoiler so maybe there will be even more playable cards! Exciting

  4. #44

  5. #45

    Re: UW Sagas

    Quote Originally Posted by mistercakes View Post

    is there a benefit for running a singleton serra's sanctum?
    I did think about it.
    I don't think it's a terrible idea but:

    1 - Unlike normal enchantress there are no 1 mana enchantments you can play on turn 1 (E.g. Wild Growth or Mirri's Guile) so it's more likely to be a brick early
    2 - Unlike normal enchantress you don't have ramp in the form of Growth/Sprawl so you're pretty reliant on making all your landdrops to cast your spells and really want to avoid getting wastelanded
    3 - Unlike normal enchantress you don't have actual enchantress effects that let you keep chaining spells and you aren't playing the massive top-end like Sigil of the Empty Throne or Emrakul or whatever, so theres a much lower cap on what you can do with the extra mana
    4 - Slightly awkward with B2B in the sb

    Mostly the combination of 1 and 2 makes me think it's not worth it, if I could guarantee not to play against wasteland ever then I think it would probably be correct to replace a plains

  6. #46

    Re: UW Sagas

    With the full spoiler now we have 1 more possibly-playable card:

    Omen of the Sun 2W
    Enchantment
    Flash
    When ~ enters the battlefield, gain 2 life and create 2 1/1 White Human Soldier tokens
    2W, sacrifice ~ : Scry 2

    This would be competition for the History of Benalia slot

    Advantages for Omen:
    - Flash (so it can be a combat trick to flash block, or you can hold up counterspells/removal)
    - Only costs 2W instead of 1WW (This is more significant than it might first appear due to also wanting UU for Counterbalance on turn 2 and having so many basics in the manabase)
    - Lifegain
    - Only dies when you want it to, which can be beneficial for Estrids Invocation purposes
    - Scry option

    Advantages for History
    - Way more combat stats (and Vigilance) for the same amount of mana
    - It dies without spending any extra mana, which is sometimes good for Replenish
    - 2/2 tokens don't die to plague engineer
    - Bigger tokens are more synergistic with Porphyry Nodes (because if you have Knights and your opponent has 2/x creatures you can kill theirs first, but not if you have 1/1 soldiers instead).

    I don't think it will be correct to play a mixture of them because the tribal Knight buff of History scales well when you have multiple.
    I could consider playing 4 History and 1 Omen (e.g to replace the Dovin's Acuity for the lifegain utility), but 4 Omen could also be correct.

    I think in a lot of fair matchups the deck wins by totally grinding the opponent out and so it often doesn't matter too much whether the tokens are 1/1s or 2/2s, but Knights can be good for pressuring planeswalkers and are better at letting you you switch roles to the aggro deck (kind of like Mentor).

    Then against combo decks, the fast clock of History can be good, but the "Ambush Viper" mode of the Omen can also be good so that you don't need to tap out.

    I think both cards are very close and I will be thinking about this in testing

  7. #47

    Re: UW Sagas

    I think Omen is just worse because it's more expensive in a long run. I can see the appeal but History seems just better to me.

  8. #48

    Re: UW Sagas

    Short report: 2-1 at locals

    Round 1 Burn 0-2
    G1 I keep a hand thats like FoW, Brainstorm, CB, Nodes, Lands. My Brainstorm only gives me more lands and I get run over.
    G2 I think I am stabilized, and I get the Omen/Invo engine going for a couple of turns, first I draw1 FoW and, then E-Tutor so next turn I plan to play Dovins Acuity but I die to Exquisite Firecraft

    Round 2 ANT 2-1
    G1 I protect my Counterbalance from discard with Brainstorm and it carries me to victory
    G2 I keep a hand thats like 4 lands 2 FoN 1 FoW, my FoW gets discarded. I play cage but he is able to set up for a spot where he plays Ad Naus in my endstep when FoN can't counter it
    G3 I keep a risky hand of Plains, Tutor, Cage, Fow, Omen, 2 more spells. I play turn 1 cage, he discards my FoW, luckily I draw Island then he plays another discard spell so I tutor in response for Deafening Silence, I lose Omen and I draw Silence but we both are very low on resources and play draw-go for a while. He plays Xantid Swarm the turn before my Medomais Prophecy 3-stage so I play Brainstorm to trigger it, then D-Sphere his Xantid with 2 cards backup. He Decays my Deafening Silence then untaps and Duresses my Estrids Invocation (Brainstorm is my last card and I'm tapped out) then makes 14 Goblins. I draw for turn then 4th stage of Prophecy reveals I have Replenish on top, so I take 14 from the Goblins going to 5 then I untap and Replenish back Invocation + other stuff, which allows me to copy Detention Sphere and eat all his Goblins and then next turn I start blinking to copy Omen and I lock up the game

    Round 3 Lands 2-1
    G1 I have a slow hand which doesn't really do anything, he plays around plow and doesn't go for the combo, gets his engine going and I eventually die to zombies from Field of Ruin
    G2 He keeps a risky hand of 2 Veil 2 Crop Rot but needs to find green sources, I play turn 2 Omen Turn 3 History Turn 4 History and he dies before he can do anything
    G3 Quite a drawn out battle where he has double port and is threatening the combo so I keep having to leave a bunch of Plains untapped, but eventually I extract loam and get my card draw engine going, and slowly I totally lock out the game by tutoring for B2B to disable Port then using Mirari Conjecture to get back Surgical to remove K-Grip, eventually I make some Knights and in a last-ditch effort he activates the combo but I have Plow and he's totally locked under B2B with FoW backup. I Replenish for the lols and he concedes to my 30-ish permanents

    Decklist:

    5 Island
    5 Plains
    4 Flooded Strand
    4 Prismatic Vista
    1 Polluted Delta
    1 Tundra

    4 Brainstorm
    4 Ponder
    4 Swords to Plowshares
    2 Replenish
    4 Force of Will

    3 Porphyry Nodes
    4 Omen of the Sea
    2 Medomai's Prophecy
    2 Counterbalance
    1 Search for Azcanta
    4 History of Benalia
    3 Estrid's Invocation
    1 Dovin's Acuity
    1 Detention Sphere
    1 The Mirari Conjecture

    SB:
    2 Enlightened Tutor
    2 Seal of Cleansing
    1 Back to Basics
    1 Pithing Needle
    1 Grafdigger's Cage
    1 Deafening Silence
    1 Dawn of Hope
    1 Humility
    2 Dovin's Veto
    2 Force of Negation
    1 Surgical Extraction

    Comments:
    - Omen of the Sea is very good and the synergy with Estrid's Invocation is ridiculous
    - I think replacing Curse of Exhaustion with Deafening Silence is probably correct even if it's slightly worse (or just outright bad) as a tool against fair decks
    - Medomai's Prophecy is kind of slow/clunky but I'm still trying to figure out whether its necessary as this kind of consistency/"glue" card that holds the synergies together
    - Still not clear whether History or Omen of the Sun would be better, History definitely helped to win G2 against lands, but apart from that the games I won were all due to locking up the game, not beatdown, and the Omen lifegain could have been good against burn
    - Possibly could play a 3-1 split or 4-1 split History/Omen main (cutting the Dovin's Acuity, or maybe the Medomais Prophecy) to open up the Dawn of Hope sb slot
    - The Veto/FoN sb slots can be shifted around / exchanged for flusterstorm etc

  9. #49

    Re: UW Sagas

    I made some slight changes to the above list:

    Main:
    -1 Dovin's Acuity
    +1 Dawn of Hope
    Side:
    -1 Dawn of Hope
    +1 Flusterstorm

    And played to the following record over side events at GP Nagoya:
    2-0 UR Delver
    0-2 UG Omni Tell
    2-0 RUG Delver
    1-0 BYE
    0-2 Tinfins
    2-0 Grixis Urza War
    0-2 DNT
    1-1-1 Mono U Urza
    2-0 Tinfins
    2-1 Chalice Post
    0-2 UR Delver
    2-0 Riddlesmith Breach
    2-0 4C Foodchain
    1-1-1 4C Snowko
    1-1-1 UW Miracles
    1-2 Grixis Delver
    1-2 UR Delver
    2-0 Slivers
    (If rounds were untimed I would have beaten the UW and Urza players and probably lost to the 4C Snow player)

    Overall I think the biggest issue was that the deck is just slightly too clunky which makes it very difficult to play against good Delver players.
    I also have no lifegain except for the Dawn of Hope (or Plow your own Knight token) which is very slow to stabilize (compared to something like blinking Invocation on Dovin's Acuity).

    I don't think the Replenish / Conjecture options are relevant against enough of the metagame given how much they punish you in tempo matchups for how much mana they cost.

    Going forward I would play the following list, with -2 Replenish -1 Conjecture +2 Sevinne's Reclamation +1 Teferi

    5 Island
    5 Plains
    4 Flooded Strand
    4 Prismatic Vista
    1 Polluted Delta
    1 Tundra

    4 Brainstorm
    4 Ponder
    4 Swords to Plowshares
    2 Sevinne's Reclamation
    4 Force of Will

    1 Teferi, Time Raveler

    3 Porphyry Nodes
    4 Omen of the Sea
    2 Medomai's Prophecy
    2 Counterbalance
    1 Search for Azcanta
    1 Dawn of Hope
    4 History of Benalia
    3 Estrid's Invocation
    1 Detention Sphere

    SB:
    2 Enlightened Tutor
    2 Seal of Cleansing
    1 Back to Basics
    1 Pithing Needle
    1 Grafdigger's Cage OR Rest in Peace
    1 Deafening Silence
    1 Dawn of Hope
    1 Humility
    2 Dovin's Veto
    2 Force of Negation
    1 Surgical Extraction

    Sevinne's Reclamation feels like an upgrade to Replenish for the following reasons
    - Even though sometimes you do Replenish back a ton of enchantments (there was 1 memorable game where I got back 2 Omen of the Sea, 2 Medomai's Prophecy, 3 History of Benalia, and maybe 1 more) it doesn't happen often enough that only returning 1 or 2 enchantments is not a notable downgrade
    - Everything costs 3 or less except the SB Humility so that restriction isn't really a downgrade either
    - 3 mana vs 4 is important eg. when trying to return Nodes to stabilize
    - Having flashback makes it a more powerful grindy card

    and then Teferi is just a good card
    - Bounce opponent threat to stabilize
    - Bounce own permanent for value
    - Can return with Reclamation
    - Can give Reclamation flash to use as trick, or Ponder to set up CB flip, etc

    RIP can maybe be played in the SB instead of Cage because against the Storm/Reanimator decks where graveyard hate is good, you don't really need the grindy value of the recursion plan and typically board it out anyway.

  10. #50

    Re: UW Sagas

    I think the recent changes are good choices. I would probably at least add one Omen of the Sun to get the lifegain value and reliable way to trigger Dawn of Hope. Another Teferi would probaly also help do get in more value, maybe even more than the second Sevinne's Reclamation, since you can Bounce your Enchantments two replay them later on.

    Medomai's Prophecy reminds me little bit of Standstill, but i allows you to progress your gamestate, but it seems to be kind of slow in a lot of matches. How long did most of your matches go?

    Do you think 1-2 Spell Pierce or Counterspell might have helped in some matchups to stall the game a little longer? Sideboarding brings Veto and FoN, which should help quite a bit.

    If you are running creatureless, don't you expect them to remove most creature removal? Might a one of value creature make sense in this vacuum spot?

  11. #51

    Re: UW Sagas

    I think the recent changes are good choices. I would probably at least add one Omen of the Sun to get the lifegain value and reliable way to trigger Dawn of Hope.
    I considered various splits of these effects e.g.
    4x Omen of the Sun 1x Dawn of Hope
    4x History of Benalia 1x Omen of the Sun
    In the end I decided that playing 4x History was correct because of the greater impact that it has on the board than these others and that 1 Dawn of Hope was the best use of that other slot because of its higher standalone power level. I think that the mix I played (4x History 1x Dawn) is ok but having some etb lifegain effect (whether that is Omen of the Sun or Dovins Acuity) is good because it helps to stabilize much faster with Estrids Invocation. (The deck uses its life total as a resource in order to take advantage of Porphyry Nodes as removal so there were many games where I felt like I was 1 turn from stabilizing and died to their last creature or a burn spell). The synergy with Dawn of Hope (more draw-card triggers) isn't very important I don't think.

    Another Teferi would probaly also help do get in more value, maybe even more than the second Sevinne's Reclamation, since you can Bounce your Enchantments two replay them later on.
    Maybe, I will consider it

    Medomai's Prophecy reminds me little bit of Standstill, but i allows you to progress your gamestate, but it seems to be kind of slow in a lot of matches. How long did most of your matches go?
    I think that this was one of the weakest cards in the deck, but I thought it was necessary to have some kind of cheap 2-for-1 card advantage effect and that this card had relevant synergy with Estrids Invocation and Replenish. Actually those synergies don't really matter much, and while the card itself is not that bad, I think it's probably replaceable. I would like to just swap it for Dovin's Acuity but I am worried it screws up the mana curve too much.

    Do you think 1-2 Spell Pierce or Counterspell might have helped in some matchups to stall the game a little longer? Sideboarding brings Veto and FoN, which should help quite a bit.
    Yes, possibly, these can also go in the Medomai's Prophecy slots

    If you are running creatureless, don't you expect them to remove most creature removal? Might a one of value creature make sense in this vacuum spot?
    Yes, that would be possible, but e.g. Delver decks will still leave in bolts to aim at your face and having an enchantment-based option (i.e. Dawn of Hope) in this slot has other upsides because even if it can be killed by Disenchant you can tutor for it if you need to, copy it, replenish gets it back, etc. Also what would it be? Mentor?

  12. #52

    Re: UW Sagas

    Quote Originally Posted by kombatkiwi View Post
    Yes, that would be possible, but e.g. Delver decks will still leave in bolts to aim at your face and having an enchantment-based option (i.e. Dawn of Hope) in this slot has other upsides because even if it can be killed by Disenchant you can tutor for it if you need to, copy it, replenish gets it back, etc. Also what would it be? Mentor?
    I started thinking about this problem and will probably proxy this deck together and test it to get a feeling for how it plays. I don't miss many cards and will have some better insights then.

    For generally possible slots I was looking at this list:
    Random Hate Pieces(not really my first choice):
    Containment Priest, Hushwing Gryff, Aven Mindcensor, Lavinia

    Value Creatures:
    Sram, Senior Edificer
    Protean Thaumaturge
    Archon of Sun's Grace

    Beatdown:
    Monastery Mentor
    Brazen Borrower
    True-Name Nemesis

    From this list I would probably try Brazen Borrower and Archon of Sun's Grace. I tried to keep them under CMC 3 for Reclamation value. Accidental Hatepieces will probably not really be worth it only if there is a single matchup we really really need to buff up. I don't think there is enough spell chaining for Mentor or synergy with TNN. Borrower should allow us to remove difficult pieces on the board and buy us time to set up our enchantment engine.

  13. #53

    Re: UW Sagas

    Thinking about this deck again

    I think the core of the deck is this 50:
    Those 20 Lands
    4 Brainstorm
    4 Ponder
    4 Plow
    4 Force
    4 Omen
    4 History
    3 Invocation
    2 Counterbalance
    1 Detention Sphere

    Then I think I want to play
    3 Porphyry Nodes
    2 Dovin's Acuity
    1 Dawn of Hope
    2 Sevinne's Reclamation
    2 Spell Pierce (or possibly some mix of Force of Negation / Dovin's Veto / Teferi Time Raveler)

    I think some kind of extra removal is needed.
    Before this was Nodes, because it had obvious synergy with Replenish, but I don't want to play Replenish anymore, so maybe Nodes is not needed? I am not sure I want to play Terminus either, because I don't have Mystic Sanctuary, don't have Snapcaster to Brainstorm, don't have JTMS to Brainstorm. Supreme Verdict? I think I might just keep Nodes for now.

    Medomai's Prophecy was included in the deck before, also for its synergy with replenish and somewhat for its synergy with Estrids Invocation, but the synergy with Invocation is not great because any turn that you copy it, it only scrys 2. The card is just not very good on its own so I think it can go, but I think the deck needs extra copies of something that works with Invocation so the Invocations are more reliably functional. Dovins Acuity is actually not that bad of a card, it helps to stay out of burn range against Delver and you can get value off it even without the invocation combo. The deck becomes a little bit heavy on threes but I think it's ok because it's not playing Replenish/Conjecture anymore.

    1 Copy of Dawn of Hope is still fine as a wincon/value engine and it can proc off Dovin's Acuity as well. I think that Azcanta becomes significantly worse without having Replenish to recur it 'for free' and the effect is probably a little too greedy anyway.

    2 Sevinne's Reclamation seems like a good choice as a flexible value card ("Snapcaster" variant), it can get the self-sacrificing removal (Nodes) and threats (History) and value (Omen) and then you also have any CB/Sphere/Acuity/Invocation that gets countered or discarded.

    Then there are 2 more slots and I think the deck can just go with something like Spell Pierce to have extra cheap interaction in the early game to bridge the gap to casting the powerful threes. If you use it to protect your own spells in your own mainphase it also gives you more ways to pick up Dovin's Acuity.

    Then the previous sb was mostly ok I think:
    2 Enlightened Tutor
    2 Seal of Cleansing
    1 Back to Basics
    1 Pithing Needle
    1 Grafdigger's Cage OR Rest in Peace (just need to be a little bit careful with cage now with a flashback spell in the deck, but as previously noted you don't generally need the grindy recursion value in matchups where graveyard hate is important)
    1 Deafening Silence
    1 Humility
    2 Dovin's Veto
    2 Force of Negation
    1 Surgical Extraction
    1 [free slot]

  14. #54

    Re: UW Sagas

    So... Should you play Yorion?
    There is a deck in Pioneer that is basically the same strat, since it pairs well with sagas.

  15. #55

    Re: UW Sagas

    Quote Originally Posted by aedemiel View Post
    So... Should you play Yorion?
    There is a deck in Pioneer that is basically the same strat, since it pairs well with sagas.
    You should definitely play yorion. I am playing wb yorion curses, and triggering all your enchanments is insane. Furthermore, if you splash black for animate dead you can set up a slow worldgorger loop.

    https://twitter.com/reeplcheep/statu...969793/photo/1

  16. #56

    Re: UW Sagas

    I splashed white for yorion and suppression field in my curses deck. You may want to check my post in that thread for ideas.

  17. #57

    Re: UW Sagas

    Yorion might be ok, the deck is creatureless so it can also just play Kaheera as well

    Shark Typhoon is also interesting, some kind of Sharknado/Standstill/Nodes/Replenish control deck is tempting but it might be too silly

  18. #58

    Re: UW Sagas

    Quote Originally Posted by kombatkiwi View Post
    Shark Typhoon is also interesting, some kind of Sharknado/Standstill/Nodes/Replenish control deck is tempting but it might be too silly
    Damn, that sounds exactly like the kind of deck I would play.

  19. #59

    Re: UW Sagas

    Part of what makes that idea appealing to me is that if you play Sharknado instead of History of Benalia then your WW commitment is significantly reduced, so you can cut a lot of the plains from the manabase to enable mystic sanctuary, which seems pretty strong with Replenish/CB

  20. #60

    Re: UW Sagas

    I hear you. Although i don't think cutting History of Benalia altogether is a good idea, being "more blue" is definitely appealing.

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