[Deck] BUG "Shardless" Control

[Pherion]

Glad you decided to try this deck out.
Anyway...you mentioned how you designed your sideboard to work with Agent, but with the exception of a few cards, between that and your already present main deck strategy it doesn't seem like you changed much from lists a few weeks back. I'm with the idea that Agent hurts the combo game. Sure you can rely on taking their hand apart, but it takes a few of those spells to really be effective. Its more of a 'slow down a second'. Leylines are a thing, and that stops your discard. You have 2 Golgari Charm, but thats 2 more spots in the deck your trying to fit in there with Agent. I'd still just drop the Agent and run with Flusterstorm and whatever other combo hate thats applicable for that deck. The more things you add that the Shardless Agent cannot cascade into, the worse the deck becomes.

Wow, I completely forgot about Leyline of Sanctity. You're absolutely right though, I can't rely on the discard with that out there in the meta. I guess I'll have to take a second look at the board. Thanks!

[Dzra]

I wouldn't cut all 4 Decays because of Defense Grid. Keeping Shardless Agent postboard sounds like a lot of fun. Revealing all these Golgari Charms and Flusterstorms with no targets on board.... I never tried Shardless Agent and Flusterstorm together because it sounds really bad.

I don't think I'd expect combo decks to bring in Defense Grid if they have access to Leyline. BUG runs anywhere between 3-6 pieces of counter magic, but runs a solid 7-8 discard guaranteed. Perhaps after they see Flusterstorm g3, they might decide to bring in Defense Grid, but I don't think they can dilute their deck enough to run both.

You are trying to bring in 2 Flusterstorms, 2 Thoughtseize, 1 Hymn, and possibly 2 Golgari Charms. Strix can go, but that still leaves you 3-5 slots you need to find. Abrupt Decay just makes the most sense. That doesn't even include if you have the 4th FoW, Clique, or GY hate that you might be trying to bring in.

Even if you decided to cut the Shardless Agents, you'd likely have to leave some Strix in for the count, meaning Abrupt Decay still gets the axe.

[GerryT]

Gerry, how would you change your list if you were to splash red for whip flare?

Depends what you are trying to beat. You could run my shell (which aims to be solid against everything) or you play Lejay's list with no discard which is better against fair decks.

[Kyle]

Major primer overhaul folks. Would love some feedback if y'all can provide.

[Blitzbold]

Major primer overhaul folks. Would love some feedback if y'all can provide.

Great work so far. Some points catched my eye, though - here's the feedback you asked for.

- Some of your tags are broken.

- The 'core deck' doesn't necessarily contain that many cards. Baleful Strix for example will only be there if a diverse meta is expected. No reason to take them if a control / combo heavy field lies ahead of you. Same is true for Liliana, although you mention her possible absence in the SB section.

- When describing some of the good matchups you call Deed the reason for them being good, but you mentioned before that it's one of the cards prominently missing from the usual lists. It isn't even on the list for sideboard cards.

- Greedy, but nevertheless viable splashes like 1 Badlands main, 3 Whipflare SB are missing. This is quite nice when a lot of swarm decks are expected.

[Water_Wizard]

GerryT - how do you side against the MonoU Omnitell match up?

Thanks in advance,

W_W

[Kyle]

Great work so far. Some points catched my eye, though - here's the feedback you asked for.

Hey Blitzbold, thanks for the feedback. I fixed the tags that were obviously wrong and put a "coming soon" under the Matchups section (I didn't remove it thinking there'd still be valuable info, but forgot it was incredibly dated).

I also included Whipflare in the SB section, and am looking for more cards that should go in the SB section. Flusterstorm comes to mind.

Also, I think the core list was pretty close. For example, I've noticed Baleful Strix turning up in almost every list I've seen in the past two months, but you're right that it's in there due to meta shifts. Liliana, on the other hand, I agree is not necessarily part of "the core," though more and more lists are running her. Updated!

I really appreciate the input, when you type that much stuff your eyes start to bleed after a while.

[GerryT]

GerryT - how do you side against the MonoU Omnitell match up?

Thanks in advance,

W_W

From my Somerset list:

+ 2 Golgari Charm, 2 Thoughtseize, 2 Flusterstorm, 1 Thoughtseize, 1 Liliana of the Veil
- 4 Abrupt Decay, 1 Ancestral Vision, 2 Baleful Strix, 1 Shardless Agent

I think the ideal sideboard plan would be +2 Arcane Laboratory (maybe Mana Maze, but Lab seems better) and cutting all the Shardless Agents.

[Blitzbold]

From my Somerset list:

+ 2 Golgari Charm, 2 Thoughtseize, 2 Flusterstorm, 1 Thoughtseize, 1 Liliana of the Veil
- 4 Abrupt Decay, 1 Ancestral Vision, 2 Baleful Strix, 1 Shardless Agent

I think the ideal sideboard plan would be +2 Arcane Laboratory (maybe Mana Maze, but Lab seems better) and cutting all the Shardless Agents.

Arcane Lab sounds nice. I have to reconsider my SB to fit 2 of them, though, this won't be easy.

Regarding the boarding question - wouldn't it be reasonable to leave 1-2 Decay in the Deck for cards like Defense Grid and such?

[Pherion]

Arcane Lab sounds nice. I have to reconsider my SB to fit 2 of them, though, this won't be easy.

Regarding the boarding question - wouldn't it be reasonable to leave 1-2 Decay in the Deck for cards like Defense Grid and such?

I feel like Arcane Laboratory is counterproductive. We want to resolve an visions and be able to generate tempo from it. Once we have a lab in play, our only real card advantage engine becomes Shardless Agent (which probably comes out in the match-ups we want lab). We lose physical card advantage by only being able to play one spell per turn, and are reduced to card quality (by nature of having so many cards in hand).

It might be good in a storm match-up, but I think I'd still stick with Flusterstorm.

Just my two cents :)

[Madmankevinx]

Are there any SB options to deal with Blood Moon aside from ratchet bomb/powers keg? Assume we have no Deathrite out and no basic swamp in the deck to cast him if we find him.

[jarvisyu]

Depends what you are trying to beat. You could run my shell (which aims to be solid against everything) or you play Lejay's list with no discard which is better against fair decks.

I ran the 'no discard' plan in Somerset.

Wasn't really where I wanted to be, I think.

[Darkness]

I ran the 'no discard' plan in Somerset.

Wasn't really where I wanted to be, I think.

Agreed, I'm going back to a list with more discard, hymn is a card I'm liking more and more against all types of decks.

[Darkness]

Tested against a new UWR Delver player and went 4-1 all pre board games. I was playing with Gerry T's NJ Invitational List. Interesting points to point out.

-Visions, though not the best card, is better in this matchup compared to RUG Delver due to their much slower clock.
-Strix is Slightly worse when they land a Lavamancer but is still a great card.
-Their ability to lay a turn one threat and attack your mana is much less potent than RUG, thus why I think the matchup pre board is heavily in our favor.

Anyone else have input on this matchup post board? I'm sure REBs are annoying.

[Kyle]

I ran the 'no discard' plan in Somerset.

Wasn't really where I wanted to be, I think.

I think the discard shell is definitely the way to go, but I like the inclusion of a couple FoWs MD for the unexpected "fuck I need to counter that topdecked hate".

[SansSerif]

Agreed, I'm going back to a list with more discard, hymn is a card I'm liking more and more against all types of decks.

I think the key choice when building this deck is to decide how much (if any) discard to run. There has been some discussion on this thread on targeted discard (Thoughtseize, Duress, ect) and on Hymn, but these conversations usually boil down to one of the following points:
- I like Hymn for the card advantage.
- I do not like the randomness of Hymn.
- Hymn does not help with tempo.
- Discard is a bad top deck late game.

I understand how discard works against unfair decks, but I wonder how effective it is against fair decks. Our problem against fair decks is tempo, especially in the early turns. With discard, we are investing our resources to take our opponent's potential threat(s) while having no direct impact on the board state. This is fine if our opponent has only 1 threat in hand, but if he has multiple threats in hand, or already has a strong board presence, our discard is lackluster.

My questions: Is discard good enough in fair match-ups to include it in our Maindeck? If we don't have discard MD, is FOW + Liliana good enough game 1 against combo decks?

EDIT: I forgot to mention Lejay's post a little while back. He goes into great detail comparing GerryT's build against his own build vs. ANT. He concludes that this build (with no discard MD) still leaves us with a favorable match up. I am wondering how things would look against the other combo decks.

[demonlord340]

I can only speak of my own experience but after playing lejay's list and Gerry's I greatly prefer Gerry's. I am running 3x whip flare in the board which really helps against the fair decks that might lead somebody to play lejay's list. As far as hymn being random, I never felt bad blindly cascading into one and in some cases it led to a complete blow out. On the other hand, with lejay's list I was very underwhelmed with the 4x Lilliana's which you can't cascade into. There were a number of games where I would have rather just played hymn than dropping Lilly. I guess my feeling is that the advantage you get against fair decks by running less discard isn't significant enough to not run Gerry's far more versatile list.

[GerryT]

Arcane Lab sounds nice. I have to reconsider my SB to fit 2 of them, though, this won't be easy.

Regarding the boarding question - wouldn't it be reasonable to leave 1-2 Decay in the Deck for cards like Defense Grid and such?

I do not expect them to board in Defense Grid against my 3-4 FOWs. If they do, I'm fine with them having more semi-dead cards like Leyline of Sanctity that they can cantrip into.

I feel like Arcane Laboratory is counterproductive. We want to resolve an visions and be able to generate tempo from it. Once we have a lab in play, our only real card advantage engine becomes Shardless Agent (which probably comes out in the match-ups we want lab). We lose physical card advantage by only being able to play one spell per turn, and are reduced to card quality (by nature of having so many cards in hand).

It might be good in a storm match-up, but I think I'd still stick with Flusterstorm.

Just my two cents :)

I would not be worried about gaining card advantage against a combo deck.

Are there any SB options to deal with Blood Moon aside from ratchet bomb/powers keg? Assume we have no Deathrite out and no basic swamp in the deck to cast him if we find him.

If you are worried about Blood Moon, you should play a different deck.

[phazonmutant]

I've played a 2-2-2 split of Thoughtseize, Hymn, and Liliana before, and it was pretty excellent. Lately lists have been cutting down on discard a little bit, so you may not be able to fit in all 6 pieces of discard, but having a split of similar effects prevents you from being flooded on one when others might be better. 4 Liliana is strong against Leyline of Sanctity, but it can be too slow in the combo matchup, so I prefer to run some number of cheaper effects.

SansSerif - a lot of time discard serves as removal in the fair matchups. The biggest problem with it is that it sets us back on tempo, but in the creature matchups that's usually fine since the bottleneck is enough removal. Most non-tempo fair decks don't kill quickly enough that being a little behind on tempo is a big deal, and the tempo decks are threat-light so you can sometimes catch their only man. If you can cast her, Liliana is usually very good because she's tempo-positive.

[Dragonslayer_90]

@ GerryT: So Darkness and I were playtesting a mirror the other day. We got into a discussion about siding out FoW in the mirror. He kept in two for our post-board games while I had mine sided out for most of them. He was able to either tempo me out or at least stop me from getting to far ahead in many games. I tried keeping two in at some point. It seemed to work out pretty good for me sometimes, but I just still wasn't sure whether it was good enough to keep MD since they seem like terrible top decks late game. I know your known for having a different opinion on when or when not side FoW out whereas many others just seem to side all of them out when playing against non-combo decks. I guess my question is do you keep any FoWs in the mirror or against any Jace deck? Also, is Maelstrom Pulse worth having in the deck for Jace mirrors despite the potential draw back post-board?