If we already have Sneak, Mindbender isn't relevant because we already probably win the game. Anything else we put in that slot would be the exact same, unless it finds us Emrakul somehow. If we don't have an immediate Emrakul, we can still use Mindbender to turn whatever we have lying around (like a random sneaked Thragtusk or Inferno Titan) into a 5/5 after combat, which is a nice benefit.Originally Posted by Zirath
If we don't have Sneak, though, it's good to have an Empath target that costs less than six mana, and that interacts with fast combo decks and Miracles.
It's only less than 6 if we have Empath in play. If you play Empath and fetch up Mindbender, isn't likely the Empath will be removed asap or the opponent will try to play around it? We need to have 7 mana in a single turn to play out both Empath and Mindbender. By this logic, we should be looking at Gurmag Angler as well, which doesn't interact with combo decks at all, or Mournwhelk, which doesn't require Empath surviving. Granted Mournwhelk is a horrible card, so take that opinion as me being facetious.
Let me ask this another way, what card are you removing to fit Mindbender in from the sideboard?
@Kevin, how is Chandra, ToD?
Kagu-Tsuchi カグツチ (Jund NicFit)
Rhino's Abbondanza (Junk NicFit)
4c Aggro Loam
No idea, never touched her. I'm guessing she's good in a world with Tinder Wall and Lumberjack needing something else red and dumb to power out early, though.
Lumberjack, lolz...
Well i just ordered 1 Chandra to try (and stick into edh if it fails) but i sooo much wanna play that card. I was lucky to find a Japanese signed copy this soon already after release.
Kagu-Tsuchi カグツチ (Jund NicFit)
Rhino's Abbondanza (Junk NicFit)
4c Aggro Loam
Just played week 2 of my league. Ended up scrubbing out due to some real bad mana screw. Pretty annoying considering my build is made specifically to combat that, but I've been running pretty hot in all formats lately so the opposite is inevitable at some point (and it probably evens out with my 4-0 Modern finish tonight).
Anyways, I hit Monastery Mentor in every game, and in some I even had enough mana to play it. What I figured out is that while the cost says 2W it's not actually a 3 drop for the purposes of your curve. It's better to treat it as a 5, or atleast a 4. Tracker suffers from this too in order to get value, but to a lesser extent. I still like the Mentor/Top combo but I think I need more mana sources to make it work. It's clunky enough that it requires a lot of mana. I think in SB games where I plan to use it all my mana dorks will be coming in from now on.
Mentor is by far the fastest clock in my list, faster than Sigarda even. It's almost always a 1 or 2 turn clock, it's just a little more of a build around than I initially thought. It's the same clock speed as Grave Titan but only needs half as much mana on board.
Except Miracles fucks with you via the top of their library, so it doesn't quite help there. As for fast combo decks - you're dead by the time you might be able to pull it off. It's basically taking a tank to a dragstrip to race vs. a funnycar. In that case you're even lucky if you manage to GSZ for a Gaddock Teeg (if you were to run one ofcourse), let alone first GSZ for Empath, then feed Empath to Mindbender (which means you won't be interacting with a Storm pilot for a turn around turn 3/4. Do you really want to try and dodge that bullet?).
Seems like a very bad plan.
Teeg is irrelevant, since we're in Jund so we can't play him. If we could, Mindbender would be less interesting.
As is, the point I'm making is that against a combo deck, Empaths and Zeniths are pretty dead. The only thing we can really do with them is apply pressure, and even there the clock isn't particularly fast (especially in this version, where our threats are expensive). By adding Mindbender, we have a secondary threat to use which both applies pressure and actually interacts. I'm not saying we should replace one of our primary disruption cards (Thoughtseize, Slaughter Games, Surgical) but a slot which upgrades Zenith/Empath from "garbage" to "slow but powerful" in multiple matchups is probably not as terrible a choice as you're implying. I've found that a lot of the time, we play early disruption against combo decks which prevents them from going off quickly, but then our threats aren't fast enough and they rebuild their hand into going off again around turn five while we make dorky green monsters.
Against Miracles, just because they can play in topdeck mode doesn't mean they want to. They have very few actual CA tools which means they often can't answer more than a single threat each turn in topdeck mode.
- If they are topdecking, we can always just fetch a different threat with empath.
- If we happen to draw it in that situation, we get a 5/5 which can't be Counterbalanced, which is not great but as a worst-case scenario it's still a threat they have to spend a card to answer.
- If we fetch it with Empath and they kill him before we can Emerge, that's great. They've spent a whole removal spell on a Fierce Empath, and we can still just hardcast Mindbender in a couple turns' time, or feed a different creature to it if needed. They've still 2-for-1ed themselves, and the card we've gained is a 3-for-1 when we cast it.
Teeg in relation to speed is plenty relevant, which is what the post was about. If GSZ > Teeg, in the builds where it's played, is too slow, how can GSZ > Empath, Mindbender be considered fast enough? Empath costs 1 more and after that you also have to cast the Mindbender.
I get your point about "well, if we finally do get there", but you're playing a build that drops Emrakul for funsies. Replace Mindbender w/ a Diabolic Intent and just grab Sneak attack w/ that.
I don't think Zenith - Teeg is too slow, generally. It's not good enough as a primary game plan, but it's just fine as a followup after your initial disruption. The problem with Teeg, though, is that if they draw an answer before they die (which takes a while because he's a 2/2) then his disruption stops. If they draw an answer to Mindbender, that stops the bleeding but doesn't actually get back the cards he exiles.
Intent is not what we want. It doesn't do shit without another creature on the board and a combo piece in hand already. The best case scenario is Empath - Emrakul - Intent Empath - Sneak Attack, right? Well, that takes up two turns of doing nothing, since we won't have the mana to cast Intent and Sneak in the same turn early in a game. If you think we won't live long enough to resolve Mindbender, how on earth do you expect to survive waiting another turn on top of that to make Emrakul? He kills them when he comes in, yes, but Mindbender already puts them in a position they are unlikely to be able to recover from and gives them a four turn clock.
Mindbender turns Zenith/Empath into a one card threat+disruption. That's really a big deal in a deck which otherwise needs two or more cards to get anything threatening done beyond just making a couple big green creatures.
Still doesn't take away you don't interact w/ your Storm opponent when their fundamental turn is coming up...
If you happen to survive, sure, you're in a good place. Odds are you'll be dead though. That's the choice you make.
The point I'm making is that you don't have any choice there. Fetching Mindbender with Empath/Zenith is relevant because if you aren't playing Mindbender, you don't have any other relevant targets that do something before next turn. It upgrades those cards from "do nothing" to "next turn, do something very relevant"- not as good as "do something relevant this turn" but we take what we can get. If there's a target you can fetch up with Green Sun's Zenith and Fierce Empath that disrupts a combo player on that turn, go ahead and let me know, but as far as I'm aware there's no options there, unless you want to splash white in your heavy three-colour deck which plays Grove and six basics so you can play Teeg, who also turns off your primary wincon and also doesn't make Empath relevant, only GSZ.
Regarding tech against combo decks, has anyone had any success with Lost Legacy? Think it was mentioned when it was previewed for Kaladesh. Even in our decks that have access to red for Slaughter Games, it does come down a full turn sooner. I imagine very less optimal against Miracles due to being able to be countered.
Edit: Shoot, I think I missed some talk about it a few pages back. I'll go re-read.
To put it simply:
If you're not in red, you can now play Lost Legacy rather than splashing, which is nice.
If you're in red, Slaughter Games is probably better. Being uncounterable is a big deal.
Discard and Extraction effects are still strong competition for the same sideboard slots.
This has fallen heavily into the realm of theorycraft. You have to actually play with the card and prove it's good at this point. Most of these situations are close to idealized.
The idea that it's a clock isn't really true. It's only a 5/5. Against Miracles and almost any combo deck, their life total only matters when they would die. We have no additional reach to end the game.
You sidebord in Lost Legacy or Slaughter Games aginst combo. Then I would rather cast it a turn eariler then have uncounterable for one more mana.
Well yes, that's the point.
However, with regards to the 3 vs 4 mana difference, we have a lot of hands which provide us with 4+ mana on turn three. However we only have a small number of hands which provide us with 3+ mana on turn two:
- Vet + Therapy
- Vet + Tower
- DRS
Vet + Therapy is the most common of these - however it's also the one where being able to cast Lost Legacy matters least. We've already Therapied the opponent twice - they are not going to untap and kill us immediately. Waiting a turn to SG instead isn't actually an issue.
Vet + Tower is uncommon, and we could cast SG anyway.
DRS is often a 1-of. If you're playing a list with lots of copies of DRS, LL gets better in comparison to SG. I'm gonna assume you aren't, though, since most people aren't.
If you're Zenithing for any of these components, you don't have the mana to LL on turn two anyway, so you might as well have Slaughter Games on turn 3.
In exchange, we get:
- Can't be countered, which means it's actually good against Miracles
- Targets opponents rather than players, if anyone still plays Misdirection
- Easier on the manabase if we're red- a lot of Jund builds play Grove, which means they're light on black sources
You're missing a few openers that give you 3 mana @ turn 2.
Fetch Bayou, GSZ -> Dryad Arbor, T2 drop another black source, is one. T1 Dryad Arbor, T2 Phyrexian Tower (however horrible and incredibly rare this line may be) is another.
And this, by the way, is why you should run plenty of ramp stuff - it helps you improve a bad MU (while doing a ton of other stuff for you, but that's not relevant now). It gives you a better chance to have the opening you need to power out your powerful hatecards against them.
This is true. I pretty much never run Arbor, so I didn't add it in.
Then again Arbor is rarely in red lists, so Arbor lists want LL anyway and don't need more incentive to take it over SG.
So your big point is "Yes, well, Jund Fit lists normally don't run Arbor so we should just stick with the more expensive card"?
Shouldn't it be "Yes, maybe we should run Dryad Arbor, b/c it can either allow us to play a faster card which is rather important in one of our worst MUs or at least increases the number of lines we have to reach 4 mana on turn 3 so we might be able to power out that more expensive card in time more often"?
I might be an idiot for thinking that improving a bad MU by even the slightest bit is a good thing though.
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