[Deck] Imperial Bomberman

[ElDorte]

I tested the deck abit and Ballista und Hope were outstanding for me. Even the collar was great when it came up. Atm im Running Wanderlusts lastest list without the CoP:R.
The problem i had was getting the opals going early in the game early against fast decks.
Weekly is comming up on Wednesday hope to gather better insights then.

[Wanderlust]

Ballista und Hope were outstanding for me.

I think the plan may be to just run 4 Hope.

I'm leaning towards playing 4x Hope tomorrow at my local. It's been great for me in testing so far as well!

There are two other cards that I'm tempted by in that flex slot right now. The first is Sacred Guide - since we don't run any other white cards in the main anymore, it's like a Recruiter that can only get Auriok Salvagers but whose cost can be spread out over two turns. Obviously the fact that the other cards are exiled is a bummer, but hey, at least it's a human. The second is Simian Spirit Guide since it's a mana source tutorable with Imperial Recruiter.

I hope i can help making the deck better and bomb some people.

Yes, excellent! The more people playing the deck an improving it the better. I think we are on the verge of pushing this into Established Decks.

[ElDorte]

Im not sold on the Sacred Guide. Feels abit to cute but you can sure test it.
What i'm running in my board since were already play Basilisk Collar is a 1off Izzet Staticaster wher you play your CoP:R.

[Dice_Box]

I am going to try this tomorrow with Peacekeeper in the side. I don't have everything for the listed main but I can make do.

[Wanderlust]

Im not sold on the Sacred Guide. Feels abit to cute but you can sure test it.
What i'm running in my board since were already play Basilisk Collar is a 1off Izzet Staticaster wher you play your CoP:R.

What is your reasoning behind Izzet Staticaster?

Sacred Guide could be too cute, but I'm a sucker for old obscure cards so I'm at least going to test it ;-).

[ElDorte]

Staticaster is great against Grixis Delver, DnT and Elves. Equiped with the Collar you can Gun down everything except TNN.
The main reason is DnT where he shines and kills almost every Creature.

[.dk]

Staticaster is great against Grixis Delver, DnT and Elves. Equiped with the Collar you can Gun down everything except TNN.
The main reason is DnT where he shines and kills almost every Creature.

Do you really need that though vs. D&T? Feels like with Pyrite Spellbomb and Walking Ballista, we can already deal with their creatures quite handily. Just feels a bit like overkill - maybe in the Grixis and Elves matchups. I haven't played those very much.

[Wanderlust]

I've been pondering the deck's apparent good and bad matchups post Aether Revolt. This is the rough list I came up with based on my testing so far:

(Preliminary categorization)
Good matchups:
Death and Taxes
Grixis, 4-color, and RUG Delver
BUG Control (Hierarch + TNN)
Dredge (but right now, who cares?)

Close Matchups:
Infect
Eldrazi
Miracles
Shardless BUG
BUG Delver
Deathblade
Sneak Attack
BR and BU Reanimator
Imperial Painter
Elves
Aggro Loam

Mediocre matchups:
Lands (specifically the builds with 4x Ghost Quarter instead of Rishadan Ports)
Belcher

Bad matchups:
Storm
Omnishow
Burn
Tin Fins

Does anyone beg to differ on any of these?

[Dice_Box]

Does anyone beg to differ on any of these?

Not from me. I bested Grixis and Shardless tonight, falling to Beltcher and R/B Reanimator. I leant a friend Lands before the event and jammed 6 games. The only one I won was the game I pulled the combo turn two.

[ElDorte]

Cannot say much about the Matchups. I did not have played the deck enough to tell much.
But im not sure about Belcher. How can that matchup be better than Storm if we dont play Staticaster?
And Second i dont think DnT is that good. A good player will Revoker your Bombs and Flickerwhisp blanks your Ballistas. Additionally 1 Thalia shuts down our combo. But maybe im to pessimistic here.
And i dont know about Burn. If its really that bad maybe we should get space in the Sideboard for Elixir of Immortality or the White Spellbomb.

[KaiSchafroth]

But im not sure about Belcher. How can that matchup be better than Storm if we dont play Staticaster?

unsure myself on some of the MUs but if you're concerned about covering the goblins plan; EE does that just fine and is a broader answer.
Storm is also going to have more discard to disrupt us and card draw to get to their missing pieces and kill more reliably

[.dk]

I would agree with the list that Wanderlust posted - except maybe (and I'm probably biased due to my matches last night at our local) I would put Lands in "bad matchups." I'm sure it can be fixed - my sideboard was a pile of hot garbage, so that didn't help.

And to address Belcher and DnT:

Belcher isn't great, but it's certainly better than storm. You can Needle Charbelcher and EE their goblins (or even Ensnaring Bridge them). You have answers and outs - but they can't have that super perfect Charbelcher hand on the play. Not beating that.

Death and Taxes... since Walking Ballista, I have had 0 problems with this matchup. Needle is an All-star naming Vial, Jitte, SFM, Wasteland, whatever - and Pyrite Spellbomb and Walking Ballista mow down their team. We run Mox Opal and Sol lands, so Port isn't as big of a deal. For Flickerwisp - who cares if it comes in and targets Walking Ballista? Shoot Flickerwisp in response to the trigger and hopefully kill something else on the way out (looking at you Thalia). It goes to your graveyard anyway - you can always Salvagers or Academy Ruins it back if you don't have an LED to combo off. EE is amazing here too - EE on 2 wrecks Revoker, Thalia, SFM, Serra Avenger, and Jitte. So, we have 6-7 pieces of removal and tutorable sweepers for lock pieces. What's not to like here? Hope of Ghirapur also does good work - blocks Flickerwisp all day and can turn off Swords on your Salvagers if you can do damage with him. And if not, a lot of times it will draw a removal spell itself - so they burn it there instead of on Salvagers.

Burn.... ugh. Yes, Wanderlust and I have discussed Sunbeam Spellbomb a few times in the past. Also run it as well, and it may be correct. Based on our local meta, I'm with Wanderlust running a COP:Red as an Enlightened Tutor target in the sideboard for them. It's the best answer, albeit very narrow. Price of Progress can still kill you after Sunbeam activations - we run a lot of non-basics, and at least 3 of them do damage to us. Pretty brutal. But, if there is a case for lifegain in other matchups being good, I could easily see that slot being Sunbeam Spellbomb (or 2) in the sideboard (or possibly 1 main).

And regarding Statiscaster in general - couple things. The casting cost is abysmal - making UR isn't always easy. You also can't cast it off of a Sol land. This is very sub-optimal if you're wanting to board it vs. Elves. If you're looking for that kind of effect, I would play Goblin Sharpshooter before Staticaster, even though it's not a human. Making 1 red is fine (you can always name Goblin on a Cavern if you need to - these decks you're talking about don't run countermagic anyway, so it's not that big of a deal), and you can cast it on Turn 1 sometimes off of a Sol Land. And then it can basically mow down Elves' entire team. That seems a lot better to me.

[ElDorte]

Yeah i can give better insights tomorrow after our Legacy Weekly.
For the Staticaster i just wanted to play something that improves the Mainboard Collar. Maybe you are right and i just test Cunning Sparkmage due to improve its cost. We have alot Elves Players around here. Maybe i dont need it but there is still space in the Board.

I can look deeper into the Burn matchup. Im not really satisfied by a Card that only comes in for one really one sided Matchup. Maybe there is something better to play.

[.dk]

Yeah i can give better insights tomorrow after our Legacy Weekly.
For the Staticaster i just wanted to play something that improves the Mainboard Collar. Maybe you are right and i just test Cunning Sparkmage due to improve its cost. We have alot Elves Players around here. Maybe i dont need it but there is still space in the Board.

I can look deeper into the Burn matchup. Im not really satisfied by a Card that only comes in for one really one sided Matchup. Maybe there is something better to play.

Depending on the rest of your meta, Containment Priest is very good against Elves too. But it's hard for any creature deck to beat Goblin Sharpshooter + Basilisk Collar.

Yes, I'm not in love with running COP:Red, as it is really just for that single match. If there were something that had a lot of impact in that matchup as well as one or 2 other important ones, I would run that instead, I think. But as of yet, I haven't found anything else that is good enough against other decks (hence enlightened tutor). If you come up with something, let us know! :)

[JBlaze]

Umezawas Jitte is pretty solid against burn

[Wanderlust]

Maybe you are right and i just test Cunning Sparkmage due to improve its cost. We have alot Elves Players around here.

Krark-Clan Shaman is the cheapest Recruitable sweeper I've found for the Elves matchup. Grafdigger's Cage is also a good option as it shuts off Natural Order and Green Sun's Zenith. Something to keep in mind in that matchup is that many lists will board in Ruric Thar - so Karakas and Aether Spellbomb can become very important.

As far as Burn, rehashing an idea from earlier in the thread: Children of Korlis is alright there and has applications in other matchups (Storm, Dredge).

[ElDorte]

I dont think Jitte is a good plan. A 1-off that you cannot Tutor for feels to weak.
For Elves i may go with Containment Priest and Grafdiggers Cage. They dont seem to be the best answers but look the most solid overall regarding other matchups aswell.

.dk you sayd that you have problems with Lands. Maybe consider a Sacred Ground for your Sideboard. It just shuts off Wasteland and Ghost Quater.

[.dk]

I dont think Jitte is a good plan. A 1-off that you cannot Tutor for feels to weak.
For Elves i may go with Containment Priest and Grafdiggers Cage. They dont seem to be the best answers but look the most solid overall regarding other matchups aswell.

.dk you sayd that you have problems with Lands. Maybe consider a Sacred Ground for your Sideboard. It just shuts off Wasteland and Ghost Quater.

I agree with Jitte. Also can be difficult to get counters on it vs. burn since they will just insta-kill your dorks as soon as it hits the table. You can find it as easily as COP:Red, but has a lower impact.

Sacred Ground is awesome! But it also suffers the same problem as COP:Red. I'll keep it in mind if I can't find a more flexible solution - I think I'm going to go with 2 Pithing Needles for now (along with a bunch of other swaps). But it's a good idea!

[Dice_Box]

I found when playing that I disliked the lack of solid interaction. I think I have been playing too much Modern of late, but I love the discard I have access to there. Here it felt like I was waiting at the mercy of my opponent's plan hoping to fire off mine faster. If they had creatures, I can interact, but if they are not planing on that I just could not do anything. The games against Lands I knew what to play around, all the same I felt like I was a lamb at dinner time.

[.dk]

I found when playing that I disliked the lack of solid interaction. I think I have been playing too much Modern of late, but I love the discard I have access to there. Here it felt like I was waiting at the mercy of my opponent's plan hoping to fire off mine faster. If they had creatures, I can interact, but if they are not planing on that I just could not do anything. The games against Lands I knew what to play around, all the same I felt like I was a lamb at dinner time.

Yeah, coming from Tin Fins and DDFT (and recently Aluren), I do miss access to Cabal Therapy. That card would be quite good here, I think, given the amount of dorks we run - but I don't see a great way to fit black into the manabase. And discard doesn't really help much against Lands.