I've mostly been focusing on keeping hands resilient to land destruction.Originally Posted by dcal1985
A lot this matchup is deciding what matters to us from D&T. In my opinion its (in order of danger): Land Destruction, Batterskull, Swords to Plowshares+Path, Flying Attackers.
For Land Destruction we mostly care about only when they have Vial, since we can rebuild faster than they can kill our mana if they don't have vial to back it up. So needle is good here, and so is Bomb.
For Batterskull, we can wait on TKS and take it from their hand if they don't have vial, or take SFM early if they do have vial, or Dismember it. Needle is still good here.
For STP and Path, it's their best way of dealing with our bigger better creatures, so we can consider leaving in Chalice (especially on the play).
Flying attackers we can't do much about, but shutting down vial helps, and Jitte+Endbringer helps.
The rest of their deck we don't care much about.
If they don't have vial we almost certainly win. They can't disrupt our mana enough to simultaneously get ahead on board with their tiny creatures.
If possible try to TKS Batterskull if they play SFM without vial.
If they do have vial it becomes a lot tricker. Especially since Flickerwisp is quite good against Endless and resetting Batterskull.
Sideboarding in the Bombs, Needles, and a land if you have one in the board.
On the play I like Chalice. Turning off both Vial and Swords+Path is a great. It slows them down a lot.
On the draw I'd rather have Mimic.
Sideboarding in the Bombs, Needles, and a land if you have one in the board. Out: 4 Mimic, 1 Chalice on play, 4 Chalice, 1 Mimic on draw.
Reason I'm not a fan of Mimic in this matchup is that it dies to everything.
Last edited by Traveler; 03-30-2017 at 12:45 AM.
I've just started playing eldrazi online. Currently running this list.
25 LANDS
4 Ancient Tomb
4 Cavern of Souls
3 City of Traitors
3 Crystal Vein
4 Eldrazi Temple
4 Eye of Ugin
2 Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth
1 Wastes
24 CREATURES
4 Eldrazi Mimic
1 Emrakul, the Promised End
4 Endless One
4 Reality Smasher
3 Simian Spirit Guide
4 Thought-Knot Seer
4 Walking Ballista
5 INSTANTS and SORC.
2 All Is Dust
2 Dismember
1 Warping Wail
6 OTHER SPELLS
4 Chalice of the Void
2 Umezawa's Jitte
SIDEBOARD
1 All Is Dust
1 Emrakul, the Promised End
4 Leyline of the Void
2 Pithing Needle
2 Ratchet Bomb
3 Thorn of Amethyst
2 Warping Wail
It's Qernavak's list and he's been doing great with eldrazi. I question the endless ones when there's already walking ballista which I love. Shoots down so many important creatures. Also can be a Mana accelerant for emrakul which is also amazing. So far I'm 2-0. Playing against alluren and grix delver
Hey guys, long time lurker, relatively new Eldrazi player. I'm going to a GPT tomorrow and I'm wondering what you guys think of this list. The store I'm going to I've seen in the past a decent amount of D&T, a small amount of Sneak and Show, and BUG decks (Delver, Shardless, and True-Name)
4x Ancient Tomb
3x Cavern of Souls
4x Chalice of the Void
3x City of Traitors
2x Dismember
4x Eldrazi Mimic
4x Eldrazi Temple
4x Endbringer
2x Endless One
4x Eye of Ugin
1x Karakas
4x Matter Reshaper
2x Mishra's Factory
4x Reality Smasher
2x Simian Spirit Guide
4x Thought-Knot Seer
2x Umezawa's Jitte
1x Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth
3x Warping Wail
3x Wasteland
Sideboard:
1x All Is Dust
4x Leyline of the Void
1x Oblivion Sower
2x Pithing Needle
2x Ratchet Bomb
2x Spatial Contortion
3x Thorn of Amethyst
Edit: How are we positioned against the 4c Control deck?
Hmm, the meta you described sounds very challenging and definitely not eldrazi welcoming. How did it go? was the meta within your expectations?
It definitely wasn't, I ended up going 3-3 at the event and the meta was kind of what I was expecting. I won against Burn, True-Name BUG, and Elves, and lost to Sneak and Show, Death and Taxes, and UR Prowess.
Well guys, our best matchup just got removed from the format. Likely to be replaced by more BUG and other midrange decks (not to mention blood moon decks / Elves that pop up to punish them).
Here's my spreadsheet results again for all the matches I've played since the I started running the deck through leagues.
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets...it?usp=sharing
Wound up with a 67% winrate over 154 matches. Subtracting Miracles matches its only a 63% winrate. And the meta is likely to shift unfavorably for us too.
Anyone have any thoughts on where the deck moves from here?
This may sound obvious, but only the old Eldrazi (not equipped to deal with Blood Moon and Show and Tell decks) will be bad. Adjusting for the new meta will be primarily about beating those two strategies.
Do we move to UB then? What has your testing looked like if you subtract out Miracles?
I also anticipate an uptick in Delver, Stoneblade, BUG, in addition to Elves/S&S/Moon decks.
I'm not sure if the meta slides in a favorable direction for us. Seems like plenty of people will dust off Goyf now that Terminus isn't sending stuff to the bottom instead of the GY.
A shift towards Show & Tell would be fantastic since it can be manhandled by the white Displacer build.
I'm more worried about the uptick in BUG, TNN, Blood Moon & SFM decks. Elves will be more popular as well, but the match is so-so.
Before jumping into how to best adapt, let’s try a level based analysis to better understand what it is to come. First, let’s be reminded of the triangle of equilibrium: aggro > control > combo > aggro. With Miracles considerably weakened (not dead), the metagame will approach some sort of new equilibrium. Let’s take a look.
Level 1: Miracles gone; is there a blue-based control strategy that can replace it?
Two possible answers:
- A. No. The void is filled with current dominant archetypes in proportion to their matchup equilibrium. Another possibility is that miracle players, being spikey, shift to the next best strategy: BUG delver or BUG “control”.
- B. Yes. Existing and former blue-based strategies take over as the control strategy. Some candidates are: 4C Control, Jace-CAB, Standstill, UWx Stoneforge, Esper Control. The argument here is that Miracles was pushing out of the meta, other control strategies that are competitive enough but not as effective as Miracles.
Level 2: What decks directly benefit (improve win rate) from Level 1 answers?
- A. In general, combo decks. But more specifically, Storm is greatly favored in a counterbalance-free metagame, especially when Miracles was also significantly represented on the floor. Other combo strategies that may see a resurgence are: High Tide, UB Reanimator, Painter, Tin Fins, Big Red. Sneak Attack will likely see a drop off as a result of faster combo being the dominating strategy. Storm >> Show and Tell.
- B. If a suitable control replacement quickly becomes ingrained in the meta, then combo likely only shifts to faster strategies, but only marginally increases its presence. Same as above, the “new world” favors fast combo. Still, Storm should become the dominant combo strategy. Eldrazi Stompy also is favored against most of these control strategies except for UWx Stoneforge. When Battleskull becomes a significant part of the metagame, the best move is to shift of main deck Tower of the Magistrate, as it has happened before.
Level 2: What decks directly become worse from Level 1 answers?
- A. Uber control strategies: cloudpost-based strategies particularly. Without control, the overall metagame becomes significantly faster and uber control will not catch up; moreover, it loses its natural prey. Version of Eldrazi sporting Oblivion Sower and Grim Monolith may lose some ground from the disappearance of Miracles, but if Blood Moon –based combo or control become dominant, then the loss of strength may be diminished as these two cards can answer moon-based strategies.
- B. Not clear that any particular deck becomes worse if another blue based control strategy arises.
Level 3: What would be the best choice for the metagames as envisioned in Levels 1 and 2 analyses.
- R. The disappearance of a very effective control strategy favors fast combo. Of all fast combo, Storm is king and will likely soon take over the metagame. When Storm is favored, Eldrazi needs to shift to main deck Thorns or to white splash, potentially maindecking Thalias. However, there’s a risk that the control players shift to existing dominant strategies, multiplying the % of delver and Wastelands. Historically, main deck thorns are still competitive vs. delver strategies, but suboptimal.
Level 3. What does it all mean for Eldrazi?
- R. Remove Oblivion Sower, place Thorns in main deck. Up number of Ratchet Bombs to 3 to deal with potential Moons and Delvers at low mana. Run 1 or 2 wastes. Keep copies Tower of the Magistrate handy. Simian Spirit Guide versions should still be the mainstream option. White Eldrazi to be the choice if meta becomes dominated by both Storm and Sneak and Show. UB Eldrazi is favored in Delver-dominant strategies, but it needs to be modified to compete with Sneak and Show. Colorless Ballista Eldrazi is also an option to combat delver strategies. There are a few more Eldrazi strategies that may arise as a result of the metagame, like Jeskai and Boros Eldrazi. Blood Moon was already increasing in popularity, therefore be mindful when choosing a colored Eldrazi choice.
Just remember that Eldrazi is a powerful high variance deck, and as such its strength is in the pre-game strategy and deck building. I will be playing leagues and will try to post progress more often.
Good luck everyone and enjoy this period of exciting changes!
Wow, what a mess do we have here ! No more Miracles
Thanks Qernavak for sharing your thoughts, that's clarifying.
To follow up on your words, if Blood Moon.decks become more popular, or if we go down the colored road, have we ever consider running some Ash Barrens (to catch a single Wastes, single Plains maybe if we're on Displacer or Thalia Builds) ?
That would allow us to have some nice sideboard options too.
I ay be totally wrong here, but at least I wanted to share :)
That's an interesting question. I think I would rather play 3 wastes than 1 wastes and 4 Ash Barren. I would save me the tempo of paying 1 to go search for a wastes. In a white splash version, I would also rather play 3 plains. The 3-of is based on hypergeometric distribution of cards that you want to draw one-of.Wow, what a mess do we have here ! No more Miracles
Thanks Qernavak for sharing your thoughts, that's clarifying.
To follow up on your words, if Blood Moon.decks become more popular, or if we go down the colored road, have we ever consider running some Ash Barrens (to catch a single Wastes, single Plains maybe if we're on Displacer or Thalia Builds) ?
That would allow us to have some nice sideboard options too.
I ay be totally wrong here, but at least I wanted to share :)
Since I've been out of the loop for a while, I've looked up what UB Eldrazi is.
What I don't understand is how the deck is supposed to make good use of Walking Ballista.
@Qernavak: great post!
My bet would be on Eldrazi&Taxes since i played it a lot and love displacer since i started brewing with Barook in the early eldrazi days. I simply hate to lose against something like Show&Tell and Displacer is a good call against it. I have about 100 testmatchups with Eldrazi & Taxes and various ideas and i think if combo rises it would be the best version because your thorns can beat (Thalia) and you can also operate under wasteland pressure with lower cc across the board.
Overall i also like the UB stuff and tried some UW brews to abuse Skyspawner with Displacer.
So lets see what will rise in a miracle-less meta and how eldrazi can adapt in this new era.
Edit: quick brew about "colorfull eldrazi"^^ based on the UB list linked from Barook
// 60 Maindeck
// 9 Artifact
4 Chalice of the Void
2 Umezawa's Jitte
3 Mox Diamond
// 24 Creature
3 Bearer of Silence
4 Eldrazi Mimic
4 Eldrazi Skyspawner
4 Reality Smasher
4 Thought-Knot Seer
2 Endbringer
3 Eldrazi Displacer
// 2 Instant
2 Warping Wail
// 25 Land
4 Ancient Tomb
4 Cavern of Souls
2 City of Traitors
4 Eldrazi Temple
3 Eye of Ugin
2 Karakas
4 Corrupted Crossroads
2 Aether Hub
// 15 Sideboard
SB: 2 Pithing Needle
SB: 2 Ratchet Bomb
SB: 2 Thorn of Amethyst
SB: 4 Leyline of the Void
SB: 2 Spatial Contortion
SB: 3 All Is Dust
TEAM MtG Berlin
Nothing special about the UB version that makes Ballosta any better than it would be in any other Eldrazi shell. That said, the UB version is trying to maximize evasion, which Ballista provides in the form of direct damage.
This version was concocted as a response to the raise of TNN / Baleful Strix strategies.
I'm on a work trip, which allows me to play way more Magic that normally (normally 1 league every two days, but this week 2 to 3 leagues a day). I just completed my first 5-0 out of 10 leagues. Let me give a summary of the meta I have faced, anecdotally:
Storm is way over represented. But not only that, it is the fastest versions of storm. I'm talking about Chrome Mox and Rite of Flame. To the point that I faced 7 consecutive Storm opponents (one of them on Doomsday). Typically it would be walk for Eldrazi, but these guys consistently win on game 1 and 2.
Secondly, Grixis Delver is also overly represented. At some point, 5 out of 6 matches were Grixis Delver.
But the rest of the metagame is the wild west. Elves, Reanimator, Big Red, Wr D&T, White Eldrazi, Moon Stompy, Burn, Czech Pile, Hex Depths. I was not surprised to not see Show and Tell because I know they have a bad matchup vs. Storm.
***
For the very first leagues, I tried UB Eldrazi with unsurprisingly disappointing results. I took a few beating before going to Colorless Eldrazi, with which I played around with the mana base and main decks. With such a heavy load of Storm, I now sport 3 Thorns, two in the main and one in the sideboard. I tried 4 on SB and 4 in the MD, and I settle for a compromise.
For those interested, here's the list I'm currently playing:
2 Dismember
4 Cavern of Souls
4 Chalice of the Void
2 City of Traitors
4 Eldrazi Mimic
4 Endless One
4 Eye of Ugin
4 Matter Reshaper
4 Ancient Tomb
2 Walking Ballista
4 Reality Smasher
3 Simian Spirit Guide
4 Thought-Knot Seer
2 Umezawa's Jitte
1 Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth
4 Eldrazi Temple
3 Mishra's Factory
1 Wastes
2 Wasteland
2 Thorn of Amethyst
2 All Is Dust
2 Warping Wail
2 Pithing Needle
4 Leyline of the Void
2 Ratchet Bomb
1 Thorn of Amethyst
2 Walking Ballista
Had this experiment sleeved up but couldn't go to the tournament at the last minute so I'm sharing it here. The idea is to hate on storm and elves, have game against TNN/SFM/Equipment while being resistant to blood moon. In case it's not apparent. The spheres cancel themselves out with inspiring statuary, so they become assymetrical. Burn and lands are bad matchups. If you can sphere burn out and duress/brutality/warping wail price of progress, then maybe you have a chance but I doubt it.
Inspired Eldrazi
4 Badlands
4 Bloodstained Mire
1 Swamp
1 Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth
3 City of Traitors
4 Ancient Tomb
2 Eye of Ugin
3 Eldrazi Temple
3 Inspiring Statuary
2 Urza’s Incubator
4 Lodestone Golem
4 Chalice of the Void
3 Collective Brutality
3 Trinisphere
4 Sphere of Resistance
2 Phyrexian Revoker
1 Karn Liberated
3 Bonfire of the Damned
2 Eldrazi Mimic
4 Reality Smasher
4 Thought-Knot Seer
Sideboard:
1 Contagion Clasp - DNT / Aether Vial / ramps with statuary after effect
1 Blood Moon - Lands, 4c leovold decks
1 All is dust - Jace/TNN/elves/DRS-GSZ decks
2 Oath of Liliana - should be Trial of Ambition - SNT/TNN/Delver
1 Massacre - DNT/TNN/Elves
1 Flaying Tendrils - TNN/DNT/Elves/NicFit
2 Tormod's Crypt - Reanimator
1 Manriki-Gusari - TNN-SFM/DNT - ramps with statuary while being able to equip
1 Collective Brutality - Storm/Elves
1 Duress - Storm/Sneak&Show
2 Warping Wail - Natural Order/Catch all
1 Kolaghan's Command - Artifact removal / Catch-all
The mimics are lousy top-decks but they do help with the clock. Might be better off replacing it for a big pay-off spell like All is Dust / Emrakul 2.0 / Ulamog 2.0
This looks pretty standard, but is about where I landed when re-tooling the deck for Elves and Storm. Did this list fare any better than the UB list?
I also tossed around the idea of Phyrexian Revoker for Storm.
Yes. While the UB list was good enough to consistently perform at 3-2 in leagues, it was just folding to fast combo (Storm and Elves).
But you're right, standard lists -or rather very aggressive configurations- is the way to go.
I like your idea of fitting Phyrexian Revoker. I will take it out for a spin.
So how exactly does Eldrazi manage to have problems against Storm? IIRC, it was one of my best match-ups. Edit: Looked it up again - went 10-0 against ANT and 1-0 vs TES with my old White Eldrazi list. What the hell are you guys doing?
I'm still pondering what deck to choose to come back playing Legacy. I'm leaning towards a variant of my White Eldrazi list, but I'll first wait and see how the meta shakes out.
The white list is still good enough vs Storm, while also having a very strong game Sneak & Show (which is coming back big time) and some other stuff like UB Reanimator.
Other thoughts on the meta:
- Delver was always a problem, so we need better ways to deal with it.
- TNN is coming back big time (both in BUG variants and Stoneblade), so unless we can add ways to handle it, we're toast.
- Since Elves got alot more relevant, I'd to see ways to improve the match-up (it was somewhat even to very slightly favored IIRC and looking at my old data).
- With Miracles and Shardless BUG disappearing due to other BUG decks, I'm not too sure how necessary Mishra's Factory is, especially with more TNN roadblocks on the way.
My initial plan to adapt my old white deck would be:
- Keep the white splash for Karakas and Displacer.
- Add Bearer of Silence as a way to deal with TNN and having more removal. A shame it can't block Delver.
- Add Walking Ballistas to deal with Elves and Swarm decks.
- Wasteland Strangler might be a good SB card with all DRS shenanigans going on.
- Replace the Factories for more colored lands to support the new W/B plan better.
Not sure what to cut, but I'll figure out that one later.
Last edited by Barook; 05-01-2017 at 07:00 PM.
There are currently 1 users browsing this thread. (0 members and 1 guests)
Reply With Quote
