The other thing I don't like about Leyline is that it's not great against decks with both discard and counterspells.
Against BUG Delver you can easily lose if you have a Leyline hand and they have mono counterspells. I'd rather board in additional counters to fight their discard 1 for 1.
Leyline is obviously awesome against stuff like Jund, but I haven't seen the deck in a long time.
In my last tournament, I round 1 lossed against Jund. Your meta may vary.Originally Posted by Baum
If you are looking for an all-around compromise SB slot, Divert is a reasonable option. It also works in counterwars. Competes with Flusterstorm and Swan Song depending on your meta. IMO, Spell Pierce and Pact of Negation are top MD contenders depending on your build. MD Flusterstorm not hitting opposing Liliana of the Veil after they have spot discarded us some can really hurt.
Could you explain your reasoning for Divert a little more? It seems that it's inferior to both Spell Pierce (doesn't counter Lilliana) and Flusterstorm (only one copy versus two and usually more from storm trigger). Do you think it's worth including over those cards purely for the possibility of creating value through a misdirected discard spell? And even then, it doesn't work against Duress and if you target a Cabal Therapy they'll just name Black Lotus and you've generated no value. I ran Divert in my Doomsday list but it was to protect my Laboratory Manic from Abrupt Decay. We don't need that function here.
I suppose Divert is reasonable if you're more concerned with countering Thoughtseize and Hymn than the combo mirror. It's miserable to be holding Divert when your opponent casts a key spell like Glimpse, Show and Tell, etc.
BZK! - Storm Boards
Been there, tried that, still casting Doomsday.
Drawing my deck for 0 mana since 2013.
But both Flusterstorm and Spell Pierce counter Thoughtseize and Hymn to Tourach, and don't leave you miserable when someone rams a Glimpse or Show and Tell. I am sceptical about whether generating value off opponent's discard is worth not being able to counter such key spells.
Flusterstorm has been serving me admirably in that regard. Although I'm occasionally miserable when someone casts a Liliana or a Jace. I was thinking about a 2/2 split of Pierce/Flusterstorm for that reason.
As far as the sideboard goes, running less than 4 white Leylines against discard seems unoptimal because you need to mulligan into it. Running 4 Leylines robs you from a lot of SB space, depleting the wish board. If there is significantly more Hymn to Tourach and Thoughtseize in the metagame than there is storm, Divert becomes a viable side board option over Flusterstorm. Hitting a Hymn with Divert is especially profitable for us, and can almost single handedly buy us enough time to win that game compared to "only" Spell Piercing the Hymn.
Of course, what you should be using in the SB depends on what you are running MD. If you are not runnign any Spell Pierce in the main, then in that case, yes Spell Pierce is an even better catch-all one mana counter in the SB. But supposing that you already have some Spell Pierce in the main, then in that case the selection of additional counters to use in the SB (instead of using white Leylines) is not very clear cut IMO. Especially if you are playing in a small-ish FLGS metagame and have knowledge about what decks you will be running into a lot in the tournament.
Divert also has some very fringe/niche uses. One of the less infrequent ones is finding out g1 opponent is running Stifles, in which case you can bring Diverts in and only fetch in response to the opponent's fetches with a blue mana open for Divert.
tl;dr Lots of Hymn to Tourach and Stifle in the meta without a lot of storm decks -> Divert for "greedy" profit
...and in case you were wondering what some of the less frequent Divert uses are, here are a few:
Lightning Bolt into Goblin Guide
Sinkhole
non-Wipe Away Bounce aimed at Omniscience
Red Blast into opponent's blue permanent
Sure, these cards are played much less in contemporary decks than they used to back in the day. Furthermore, the current Decks to Beat on this forum run very few cards which target anything in the first place. Which is precisely why these are all fringe targets. Additionally, for pretty much all of them you are just happy enough to counter them without redirection. So Thoughtseize, Hymn to Tourach and Stifle (and blue counterspells, same as Spell Pierce but worse than Flusterstorm) is where it's at with Divert value.
The two most interesting things about LDV are that it makes the deck more stable and lets you cut all actual win conditions from the deck. You can purely play for Wish->FF->Wish+LDV+BS and then LDV+BS into more cantrips into another Wish. This requires having 2 wishes left, but is pretty reasonable. If you didn't want to be as greedy, you could also play Split Decision to get with FF with the upside that a lot of the time it can target someone (you or your opponent's Dig through Time). I want to run 3-4 LDV, and probably Lotus Petal to really maximize LDV (Petals make it more likely to negate the cost of your cantrip by using Brainstorm to find combo piece + petal). As an interesting aside, Petal really opens up the Mentor splash.
BZK! - Storm Boards
Been there, tried that, still casting Doomsday.
Drawing my deck for 0 mana since 2013.
I put a lot of thought into a black splash for hand disruption, massacre, ability to pay for Slaughter Pact and Lim Dul's Vault... but just having to fetch an underground sea and be open for a Wasteland really sucks.
I enjoy being virtually Wasteland proof :D
Macky - Blood Moon Gaming
THE COMBO KING
www.BloodMoonGaming.com
Streaming Legacy - www.twitch.tv/Macky984
I board a Swamp, but I only bring in Black from the sideboard. Seas are juicy Wasteland targets indeed. But your Sold lands would survive longer!
Also, I am considering ditching Slaughter Pact for Snuff Out. Thoughts?
Talking about your version (LabMan and sans Emrakul) aren't all win conditions already cut from your deck? Are your comments more directed towards the Emrakul/RtA version?
Why cut all the wincons? Live just one and then find it with LDV and win) be it Emri for Emri or Ants plan, or Enter for Maniac plan. Now I play a single LDV, because I found a way to effectively combo out with LDV in graveyard. I'll write how things turned out after today's Russian Legacy Championship.
It cannot hit Teeg.
I hear they got twisters miles wide in the Midwest.
That's the deal-breaker then. Slaughter Pact stays. Thanks for reminding me, I haven't seen a Teeg in so long I had almost forgotten the card existed! But it would be embarrassing to run into one and get caught with your pants down, so to speak.
Can I ask why we're playing Slaughter Pact, or is it exclusively a Black build card?
The conspiracy goes deeper than you might think.Can I pay you for not posting in this thread?
No it's played in almost every mono blue version. Slaughter Pact is good because it's cheap. You need that versus decks like D&T. But there are also situations like this:
You have 3 Islands and your show and tell combo in hand, but face a meddling mage on show and tell. You can cunning wish for slaughter pact (maybe at the end of your opponents turn). Pact the meddling mage in your next turn and still be able to win with your 3 Islands in play.
Ah, so you do actually just cast it and die if it doesn't go well. That's fine. Wanted to make sure I wasn't missing something.
The conspiracy goes deeper than you might think.Can I pay you for not posting in this thread?
I think Dismember is the safer SB option for mono-U.
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