Same deck went 3-1 in the Prelim: https://magic.wizards.com/en/article...06-05#minest_-
Packing the disruption of Esper Sentinel + Ethersworn Canonist next to the Affinity/Steel Stompy clock is interesting.
Found a video of the winner in action:
https://www.twitch.tv/videos/1046572201
First match starts at ~4:10, finals match starts at ~6:10.
Holy crap, this deck is insane.
Did they realize Urza's Saga didn't need to literally capture the power level of the Urza's Saga block?
That's gotta be the best use of both Esper Sentinel and Urza's Saga I've seen so far.
I like how the "fail case" of the deck (G1 the first match) is putting up enough gas to beat through 4 Terminus.
That was probably the most impressive part - fighting through multiple Terminus and planeswalkers like a champ while still being a massive threat. Most other decks would have been toast long before that.
I wouldn't be surprised if they did miss the double activation of Urza's Saga during playtesting.
Trinket Mage 2U: Opponent discards a blue card from hand. If not, create a 2/2 and tutor 0-1 cmc artifact to hand.
Urza's Saga 0: Can't be countered. Create 2 5/5 constructs and tutor 0-1 cmc artifact to battlefield. Also, T: Add 1.
Slight power creep.
You could compare it to Pack Rat that you don't have to discard for too.
Urza’s Saga is utterly insane in artifact decks. And aside from mox opal and the artifact land, every thing else is modern legal.
Saga might well be the first card from MH2 that gets banned.
Esper Sentinel is also incredibly powerful as a 1 drop and is going to be a staple of most aggressive decks that play white. Its a one drop that demands to be killed asap, and requires atleast 2 mana to do it. Pure tempo. I really should get around to splashing white into Vaka Nought and testing Esper Sentinel maindeck like I posted back when that card was spoiled.
Saga compromises their mana, and artifact decks are notoriously soft to any hate. In the case of the deck that won the challenge, we note the inability to run City of Traitors, the lack of Chalice, and the lack of Karn. This deck is not nearly as scary Emry Cannon's LED/Echo exploits; on the Ancient Tomb side of things, Echo is more likely to be banned.
Their trick yesterday was putting Nettlecyst on Esper Sentinel. When you don't plan against that CA cheese, you're going to get drowned by it. Urza's Saga is there doing basically the same thing as 4 mana Karn, Scion of Urza. The only difference is that there is no interference [Chalice] for the trade-off of their Karn effect not walking into trades with opponent's blue cards in hand. This deck punishes "good card" syndrome at a time when people are trying to overload on 1-for-1 removal; I can tell you you're not going to get there if "good card" Prismatic Ending is something you've gone all-in on instead having sufficient EE/wraths.
Make no mistake though, you play artifact lands in this format and you will get burned. A deck like Anzi's could have easily won those finals with FoV played as 0 mana Rain of Salt. There is also no shortage of hosers in older sets Titania's Song, Powder Keg, Pulverize, Meltdown/Hammer Mage, Energy Flux, Humility, Gorilla Shaman/Goblin Tinkerer, Serenity, Pernicious Deed...and the list goes on and on into the new cards like KarnTGC, FoV, Ouphe, Abrade/Grudge, Wear//Tear, Dack, Dress Down, EE, Crime // Punishment, Sarulf, Realm Eater, any wrath, and the list goes on and on and on, for all colors, and all decks.
Just kill the mana surrounding the suicidal Saga, and you're gonna be okay, or just Needle it. Your focus should be more on Nettlecyst and cmc=0. You can also just cast Alpine Moon name Saga. This card isn't getting banned in a Wasteland format...
There's no shortage of artifact hosers (UR Delver running Meltdown X=0 kills all artifact lands, constructs, servos, Ballista, Stonecoil, and Mox for a 1-mana sorcery, something the deck already wants to play. Pay 1 more to kill Retrofitter Foundry and Esper Sentinel too). The problem is these cards are very narrow, so there is a real cost to putting them in your SB over something else. If everyone starts playing Affinity, sideboards will hate out Affinity. Same thing applies to Dredge and Hogaak. But if SBs don't come prepared with very specific hate, it can blowout decks just trying to trade with fair removal because there are just too many things to remove.
Watching Anuraag's stream, the deck did more than just Nettlecyst + Esper Sentinel. That was the most standout play in one game "PAY 8???" but far from the only thing going on. The deck had too many engines to attack: Retrofitter Foundry, Emry, Sai, making cheap X/Xs, stacking multiple hatebears, 1-mana Mulldrifter. All those engines left it matching cards with a control deck running Uro, Jace, Sylvan, Teferi, infinite Terminus.... You needed a crystal ball to know you were facing this deck to pack the right narrow disruption to attack it. In the end he ran out of resources to deal with everything. Nettlecyst + Sentinel was just one of the things he ran out of answers for.
I am waiting to see what Saga can do in Emry Stompy though...
Yah it keeps blue players honest. It can be hated out if you cut surgicals, but then you are open to getting rolled by gaak. Or they cut borrowers & fov for meltdown, and they get rolled by stompy decks. Or they cut their grind cheese (klothys/quad library) and lose to bigger blue decks.
Fox, it isn't cheese. A land that creates massive tokens is very hard to deal with for control. Its the same things as field of the dead, except much, much faster.
If you're talking about Anzi's match specifically, it was overloading on Endurance & Ending at the cost of FoV and EE/wrath. He was losing the this matchup moment he clicked submit deck.
@Reeplcheep Wasteland is a control card, always has been.
It's really not that bad, but if you're not attacking their mana or cmc zero or stocking sufficient wrath, you are going to get overwhelmed while always playing catchup whack-a-mole with 1-for-1s. You can still beat UR Delver and play a different list than Anzi played; there is very little SB cost to FoV, and if his deck wanted it Kaheera as well.
Aside from targeted artifact hate from the SB, Wasteland is the cleanest generic answer and you need it immediately before Level 2 (otherwise they get an X/X in response and you got 2-for-1ed). Waste & FoV on their other mana sources can manascrew them, but this is easy for them to adapt around by running more basics.
Wraths help, but even if you Wrath the 2 X/X tokens they still get a free Retrofitter Foundry and 2-for-1 your Wrath. Awkward. And that's if you burn a card to kill Retrofitter immediately. If it sticks around, using spot removal on Retrofitter is trading down. You have to deal with the tokens too. That's why after resolving 4 Terminus Anzi was still struggling to stabilize in one game. Urza's Saga + Retrofitter Foundry kept churning out gas without having to really use up cards and dodging all counterspells, like Field of the Dead on roids. Very few non-SB cards other than Pernicious Deed really get the job done here. That doesn't mean it's unbeatable, but like Dredge it can sure punish fair decks that don't dedicate SB space to hate it out.
I can't wait for people to use Urza's Saga to get 1-of Hex Parasite and then keep another Urza's Saga alive forever. Urza's Saga.dec: cast no spells, win with infinite Pack Rats.
Alpine moon costs 1 mana, kills all Urza's sagas you don't control and prevents future ones too. It also does double duty against post.
Overloading those made it weak to Affinity, but also crushed Delver. 7 1cmc removal is strong vs 1 drop Delver. Endurance is an absolute beating against DRC (to a lesser extent also Murkfiend, Delver and Ragavan). AnziD's build created a structural weakness against some matchups, but in exchange absolutely thrashed others. Sure he could still be >50% against UR without overloading (maindeck Carpet really says you're on a mission) but overloading pushed him even higher. With UR as the obvious DTB, that wasn't necessarily a bad metagame call. Let's not forget he went undefeated in every other match and took 2nd place, running on no sleep and making play mistakes, because his deck was so far ahead in other matches.
There are currently 1 users browsing this thread. (0 members and 1 guests)