Quote Originally Posted by sdematt View Post
I found them just fine, but they're also there to get the blue count up to about 18 for 3 Forces. But, I agree, since games do go long, they're kind of ass sometimes. I'm also considering cutting them for action, and Thoughtseize/Hymn seem like good choices.


What I noticed in playing the Shardless mirror a bunch is that my opponent was just laying out Visions and letting them come off naturally, and saving Brainstorms when it was relevant to actually dig for action. I'm curious to see if this is, in fact, the right call - just playing another draw 3 that slowly comes down. My problem is that I also need to keep the blue count up. At the moment, I'm at 17 with 3 Forces, which is likely just fine. I might cut a Decay and a land for 2 Strixes to up the removal count as well as the blue count, but we'll see. I might also jam 2 Thoughtseize in the board in place of a Needle and a Null Rod, or nug the second Garruk (which replaced Thrun).
That's usually how you want to handle Visions in Shardless - you're likely to be doing well if the game goes on another 4 tuns, and it's just good to be more mana efficient early on. Strapping Ancestral Recall to Grizzly Bears straight-up is great. Spending U and a card to do it is harder to distinguish from Grey Value Ogre, which isn't great.

I'm surprised that you've opted for 0 Liliana in favor of the third Jace and second Garruk but simultaneously cut countermagic. Even if you aren't comfortable running Counterspell, I've got a real soft spot for Negate in the current meta and there's very little cost to running them in the board.