Quote Originally Posted by -Spooky- View Post
The only reasons that we have kept map so far are two-fold. First, It is a colorless land search, which means it helps us against blood moon and Back to basics, both of which are very common in our meta. Second, we played the brainstorm version for a bit and ended up not liking it. Part of the reason we didn't like it was that every time we had brainstorm, we just wished it was another land search. We decided that the pure redundancy is better than not having what we needed for the time being. We are still open to trying other things, but our thought process is simple, whatever we put in the deck in place of map has to be better than something that straight up search for whatever combo piece we need.

Sheizo was fine. I used it maybe once during my GPT and I'm not sure how many times y brother used it, I'll have to ask him. We use both Sheizo and step, with the idea that usually they serve different purposes. A 4th urborg might be good, I guess we have not tested it, but I would worry about having extras clog my hand due to legendary rules.

It was my understanding for a while that Death and Taxes was our worst possible match up. It's not too common in my area, and I don't believe very common overall compared to delver variants and the like. Because of this, I've decided to just strengthen my match ups against other decks and accept a loss to it. In order for me to be able to do anything against them I would have to spend way too many sideboard slots that could be going towards other more common match ups. Things like Dread of Night are great in the D&T match up, but not anywhere else.

Junk actually seems kind of a rough match up to me. They have discard to slow you down, and wasteland plus swords to stop the combo. They attack us from three different angles, and it seems like if they have an opener with wasteland, you really have to start worrying about the clock they are going to put on you. This is just my experience, though. I'd have to ask my brother how he felt during the matches, since I was not present for all of them.



My match ups during the GPT that I played in were as follows...
Eldrazi- 2-1
Infect- 2-1
Enchantress- 2-1
Burn- 2-1
U/R Delver- Intentional Loss to get us both into top 8 (won the fun games though)
Eldrazi- 2-1
Burn in the finals 2-0

As mentioned above, I've basically handed the death and taxes match up to the gravedigger. Just like how other deck need to accept that they will never win against storm and just move on, I don't know if we will ever have a good match up against death and taxes without decimating our sideboards for it. I do plan on testing the match up extensively either way, but as of now I'm just accepting it as a loss and moving to improve my chances against other decks.

Against delver and infect I have yet to lose in a competitive environment, but I can see how we would. I saw my brother lose to RUG delver at a local last week, and it actually looked rough. Delvers can block, they have you on a clock at all times, they run wasteland and stifle, and their counter magic prevents you from being fast. The match up does look frustrating.

You are correct with eldrazi, you really just need to race them, and hope to god that if they have wasteland they kept a slow hand for it, or you have the needle to answer it.

I've never had a problem with jund lands, but It might be because i'm too fast for them? Admittedly, I've only played the match up a couple times, but I don't think it's that big of an issue for us. I just had to know how to win Thespians Stage games with them for the most part.

Miracles is all about them running out of steam. You will make 2-3 marits that die, and you need to be able to keep going. Sometimes they keep an iffy hand that you can just play through with one NOTW, but that's not common. Just jam the combo and force them to have it, and then rebuild with the time they give you. Your board is where the match up swings to your favor. Pithing Needle, Decay, and Chalice make things much easier.

Into the North has been amazing. I would not play a 4th, as it can only grab one part of the combo, but the fact that it puts that part into play is just nuts. It has won me many games based on the speed alone, and its awesome when players neglect to counter it because they forget that Dark Depths is a snow land. It happens. Overall, though, the card is just great for the speed it gives us. It won me my eldrazi games for sure. Also, it's not like we are substituting any other tutors for it. We play the full rotations, scryings, and a couple maps all alongside it.
Vs eldrazi, enchantress, burn, infect.. side in and side out?Thanks