[DTB] Blade Control

[Dzra]

I've thought about it... the reason I hesitate to put Jitte MD is that we don't have all the fliers of Esperblade. Put a Jitte on a flier and go to town. Put a Jitte on a Snapcaster or Mishra's Factory and you're trading creatures for Jitte counters. That's fair in some cases, but UW has so few dudes that it seems better to suit up with Pro-Green and just get in there. Against the Esper builds, it just seems like a matter of bringing in some Surgicals to deal with Lingering Souls and saving your Brainstorms for their discard.

[ivanpei]

However, I still feel jitte is a better equipment all around. You can shoot your own creatures to remove bridges or you can take down opposing weenie easily. I'm still not too sure if jitte or soff deserves the slot in the MD. Also should surgical be a 4 off in the board now? I am playing 2 surgical and 2 purify right now but surgical seems alot more useful. You need it against punishing fire, Loam and esperblade. It seems infinitely more Useful. But how many is the ideal number to board in? I don't want to flood with surgical against an opposing deck. I'm guessing 2 copies is ideal?

[Dzra]

I usually pack 4 Surgicals in the board because when I want to see it, I really want to see it. Against Reanimator and Dredge it's a fairly easy call of 4. Loam or Punishing Fire, I'd probably shoot for 2-3. Against the Punishing Loam variant, I'd go 4. Against Esperblade, it's a little tougher a call, but I'd probably go 3. Remember, removing things like FoW, Jace, SFM, etc are also totally valid aside from the Lingering Souls. Extraction effects are rarely dead. Against non-GY abusing decks, you have better ways to fill the slots, but even when it's only mediocre, it's still very live.

(Be careful of Esperblade Extracting your Extractions. They will try to go, t1 discard your SE into their own SE in order to clear their way for LS)

[ivanpei]

I've also found that jitte can be devastating against Maverick, especially with mishra's factory. They can't name colourless so a jitted factory can really wreck some face. Machine gunning down a pair of moms and cleaning up with spot removal is actually pretty strong.

I'm also likely to be playing in a budget meta this weekend so jitte feels like the stronger choice to me. I'll be expecting lots of cheaper decks like burn, Goblins, dredgers and Affinity. I doubt many people will have goyfs. In a more developed meta, soff may be the best way to go. I'm also going to play all surgicals in the board. I want to make sure I shit on dredge.

[Einherjer]

I am no Stoneblade-player any more (dropped this deck already) but how will you guys adopt your decks to Lingering Souls? Will you all swap to UWB? I ask this because Im pretty scared from this due to me playing RUG Tempo :P

Greetings

[ivanpei]

I don't see what the issue is. Lingering souls is just basically a token generator for Jitte. The way to beat it is still the same as beating the original UW Blade deck, stopping Stoneforge. If you stop Stoneforge from fetching Jitte, Lingering souls is just basically a very inefficient token maker. But once Jitte is on the board, Lingering Souls provides an infinite stream of dudes to equip. With discard in UWB, Stoneforge becomes harder to counter.

Also, UW has to adapt, because lingering souls also kills Jace bad. That's why I'm also running Jitte MD with Batterskull. If you can get Jitte online, you can control the 1/1 flyers easily or Legend rule the opposing Jitte. You can race those puny 1/1 flyers with a resoved Batterskull. The key is to stop their SFM/Jitte.

[chags]

I don't see what the issue is. Lingering souls is just basically a token generator for Jitte. The way to beat it is still the same as beating the original UW Blade deck, stopping Stoneforge. If you stop Stoneforge from fetching Jitte, Lingering souls is just basically a very inefficient token maker. But once Jitte is on the board, Lingering Souls provides an infinite stream of dudes to equip. With discard in UWB, Stoneforge becomes harder to counter.

Also, UW has to adapt, because lingering souls also kills Jace bad. That's why I'm also running Jitte MD with Batterskull. If you can get Jitte online, you can control the 1/1 flyers easily or Legend rule the opposing Jitte. You can race those puny 1/1 flyers with a resoved Batterskull. The key is to stop their SFM/Jitte.

I've been playing uw with jitte as the second equipment for the past three months, I like way more then running a sword. Jitte gives you so much control over the game, swords always struck me as being much better in bant lists. With lingering souls, mom, mongoose, and that silly hexproof nonsense running around I really like running 2 engineered explosives main with an academy.

[crovakiet]

However, I still feel jitte is a better equipment all around. You can shoot your own creatures to remove bridges or you can take down opposing weenie easily. I'm still not too sure if jitte or soff deserves the slot in the MD. Also should surgical be a 4 off in the board now? I am playing 2 surgical and 2 purify right now but surgical seems alot more useful. You need it against punishing fire, Loam and esperblade. It seems infinitely more Useful. But how many is the ideal number to board in? I don't want to flood with surgical against an opposing deck. I'm guessing 2 copies is ideal?

If you were playing UW Blade Control and up against Esperblade, surgical extractions are a LOT less useful against lingering souls. Since this is a control mirror, its all about lands/resource management. Once the esperblade player reaches 5 lands, you can't depend on surgical to extract lingering souls because they can cast lingering souls retain priority once its resolved and/or countered and flashback lingering souls. At no point in there can you extract if you had the surgical extraction in hand. You would have to make them NOT have the 2 mana sources in order to flashback right after.

[Koby]

The black splash also gives the deck better tools against one of its worse matchups (Maverick) in the form of Perish. That's a pretty good reason to splash the Black.

[Dzra]

UW should have the advantage as far as resolving SFM goes. Spell Snare stops SFM better than discard. It is extremely key to save your Brainstorms in this MU though.

[Malakai]

It makes absolutely zero sense to go through all of this trouble to adapt to Lingering Souls, when UW is already getting crushed by Maverick, a much more popular deck. You don't want to in-breed even more against blue decks--you want to beat the expected field, and that starts with beating Mom and company.

[Dzra]

The advantage of Lingering Souls is that it's the best way to utilize Jitte and Jitte is really, really good against Maverick. I think that straight UW still has its advantages though, like more basics and access to Wasteland. Perish and Zealous Persecution are also good tools against Maverick. This isn't anything new though, Black has always had the deepest SB options.

[matunos]

It makes absolutely zero sense to go through all of this trouble to adapt to Lingering Souls, when UW is already getting crushed by Maverick, a much more popular deck. You don't want to in-breed even more against blue decks--you want to beat the expected field, and that starts with beating Mom and company.

I think the concern is that after the GP:Indy, there will be a surge of Esperblade decks. I've already seen one in my meta (from someone who was previously playing Maverick, though not happy about it, I don't think).

I don't think it's unreasonable then to discuss what to do differently in preparation for Esperblade; on the other hand, you're right that it would be an overreaction to change anything big given that Esper's neither dominant nor likely to overtake existing Maverick in local metas.

Anyway, I don't see the UW decklist needing to change much. As others have said here: stop SFM, prevent Jitte; get your own Jitte. EE seems useful, as does Tower of the Magistrate. Oh, and maybe this is one of the few matchups in which playing your Wastelands for mana denial will pay dividends. Martell's GP list at least has fewer basics than we do, fewer lands overall, and a greater dependence on multicolor, it would seem.

Unlike crovakiet, I think Surgical Extraction is useful. Is your opponent going to wait until 5 lands if a Lingering Souls is in his hand (especially if only running 22 lands)? And if he Intuitions into Lingering Souls, Surgical is very relevant. And even if Lingering Souls never makes for a good target, Extraction is always useful against control if for little more than to see his hand, maybe remove some counters/StPs. Now... is Extraction useful enough to board out cards in your MD? That's another question...

[Dzra]

Just a mild rules question. I pass the turn. EoT, my opponent casts Intuition for Lingering Souls. When do I get priority again to Surgical? Ideally I don't want to wait until they untap and potentially open up Counterspell mana.

[Basaka]

After they finish resolving Intuition.

More accurately, intuition resolves and goes to the graveyard. active player then gets priority. You're probably going to be the active player, so you're welcome to extract the souls.

[Malakai]

I am not saying that it is wrong to prepare for Esperblade with Lingering Souls. Not at all. What I am saying is that people are already unprepared for Maverick, as evidenced by the results of literally every open. The current measures are completely insufficient. UW Blade needs to change in order to make that matchup at least 50/50, and from there re-evaluate UW vs. Esper.

The matchup is bad enough, and exists in sufficient numbers, that "extreme" plans are warranted. I don't know what that plan is, but I do know that a couple paths and a couple wraths aren't it. It could be something as out-there as boarding into a combo deck.

[matunos]

Are there full event reports for the Opens? My schedule doesn't usually align with following them live; I have a backlog of featured matches from the podcasts, and I try to make sure to watch any matches involving Stoneblade. The last time I see Stoneblade vs. Maverick is the Tampa semifinals (William Cao vs. Michael Caffrey), but it wasn't a featured match. All I can see is that Cao won in 2. I haven't started watching the mirror match final yet.

Is there a more comprehensive reports summary, including outside the Top 16?

I haven't had occasion to play against Maverick. I've played against Punishing Zoo, and have done okay there (won 1 match in 3, lost another match in 3, different weeks). I've had to deal with Mother of Runes. She sucks, but it's rarely the end of the world. At worst, she two-for-ones you, negating that wonderful CA of Snapcaster. Wrath removes her (and everyone else), EE removes her, Jitte removes her. Flying usually gets past her.

I've recently picked up some Mutavaults to test out the faerie package, as I hadn't played that before. I didn't do very well with it this week, but I faced Dredge and two ANT decks, not my personal strengths (first time playing Dredge in a tournament, and I made a stupid keep decision in game 2; just couldn't get enough counters when I needed them against ANT w/Orim's Chant/Silence; also should have Surg. Extracted Dark Ritual when I had the chance, just in case it would have mattered; also didn't enough additional counter in the SB as I didn't expect to see so much storm). But in terms of stopping 1-drops and occasionally more (I've re-added Clique in place of Geist due to the Spellstutters), the Spellstutters are kind of nice. They seem like they could be useful against ANT, where they can't be Duressed; too bad I didn't draw one in my combo matchups.

I know others have experienced problems like getting the sprites killed in response to their trigger; I guess that's one less removal for SFM. I'll see. I'm basically playing them in place of Lightning Bolt right now (still have REB in the sideboard, but maindeck the red is only useful for EE@3).

Anyway, I don't know how much all that helps against Maverick. I did witness Esperblade take down Maverick, FWIW, but GP:Indy already showed that much (and the same Maverick that took down U/W Stoneblade), right?

EDIT: Just saw the Cao vs. Caffrey coverage show up in my podcast, so, at least there's that. :)

[mairou]

We had a 53-player legacy event here in Finland and I got 2nd place with following list:

4x Tundra
3x Underground Sea
1x Scrubland
1x Karakas
4x Flooded Strand
3x Polluted Delta
2x Marsh Flats
2x Island
1x Plains
1x Swamp
2x Wasteland

4x Snapcaster Mage
4x Stoneforge Mystic
1x Vendilion Clique

3x Lingering Souls
4x Force of Will
4x Spell Snare
4x Brainstorm
4x Swords to Plowshares
1x Sword of Feast and Famine
1x Batterskull
1x Umezawa's Jitte
3x Jace, the Mind Sculptor
2x Thoughtseize

Sideboard:

2x Path to Exile
1x Vendilion Clique
1x Thoughtseize
2x Perish
2x Engineered Explosives
1x Flusterstorm
2x Spell Pierce
2x Surgical Extraction
2x Grafdigger's Cage

I really liked this list, though I may cut some Spell Snares for Inquistion of Kozileks. I am a huge fan of spell snare in current meta, so thats why I played 4 of them, but I guess Inquisition does the same thing. Also I would cut the maindeck SoFaF and add the fourth Lingering Souls, it just wasn't as impressive it had been previously.

What comes to the Intuition and Vindicate in Martell's list, I just wasn't convinced about them. Vindicate surely takes care of opposing jaces, chokes and so on and with Intuition you can search up for some value with Snapcaster, but 3 mana is lot in legacy. Also what Martell's list had that I wouldnt ever do is play this deck with 22 lands. 23 is the absolute minimum.

Overall sideboard was success, Cage's were pretty amazing against dredge and reanimator along Surgical Extractions. Perishes and EE's helped against Maverick. The one thing I didn't like was the extra clique in sideboard. I did board it against dredge and reanimator but in the other matchups it wasn't needed and I sided out the maindeck one also.

Meta was what I expected it to be: Lots of Maverick, UW(b) Blade and RUG.

Quick sum of tournament:

R1 - RUG 2-0
R2 - Mirror - Martell's list w/ few alterations. 2-1
R3 - U/B Merfolk 2-1
R4 - Punishing Maverick 1-1-1
R5 - Dredge 2-1
R6 - ID w/ Maverick
TOP8 - Reanimator 2-1
TOP4 - RUG CounterTop 2-0
TOP2 - SPLIT w/ R3 opponent & played for lols and lost g1, scooped him the extra points due the clock was already so late.

[Dzra]

How necessary do people think Mishra's Factory (or any manland) is? I may be crusading, but I keep wanting more basics and more fetches, maybe even 2-3 Glacial Fortress... Against most decks, especially Maverick, losing generally feels like a result of being mana-locked out of the game.

[Koby]

Try this manabase out for size:

2 Mishra's Factory
1 Karakas
3 Wasteland
3 Tundra
7 fetchland
2 Plains
5 Island
1 Glacial Fortress