The math on colour screw by Black Initial Mana Sources per Frank Karsten. I assume you always have a black card to imprint if you want to cast a black card. I assume if you don’t have black lands you kept a hand with at least 1 sol land.
New manabase: 6 swamp 2 Urborg 2 Field 6 sol lands 4 saga 4 Mox 4 mauling
Old manabase: 7 swamp 2 Urborg 3 City 7 sol lands 4 saga 4 Mox 4 mauling
Traditional manabase 11 Swamp 8 sol lands 4 Mox
new old trad Turn Sources % screw Sources % Screw Sources % Screw 1 12 13.7 13 10.9 15 6.4 2 18 1.4 17 2.1 15 4.2 3 22 0 21 0.1 15 2.7 4 26 0 25 0 19 0
Comparing to other decks 3c ragavan decks usually only have 11-12 T1 Red sources (3 volc 8ish fetches)
Lands has only 13-14 green sources (3 grove 2 fetch 2 taiga 1 Forest 1-2 yavimaya 4 mox)
Elves has around 13-14 (20 - 4 cradle -2 dryad -0-1 bog)
Anzid 4c miracles has 13 W sources (1 Savannah 3 tundra 9 fetch) with 4 plows 4 ending
Last edited by Reeplcheep; 10-13-2021 at 04:07 PM.
Field of ruin testing went decently. It wasn’t insane but the mana felt ok and I did get the cantripping strip mine once.
Tweet below:
I took a bit of a breather on curses; I tried to brew legacy spirits and got r1 as meme killers on DeadByDaylight. I am testing a build with slightly more urza's saga answers; currently 9-1 in leagues with it. No Curse of Leechs as it is bugged.
Matchups:
WLW jesksai monkey superfriends
WW Snoop Goblins
WW 4c Loam
WW UW B2B control
WW The Epic Gamble
List:
2 Field of Ruin
4 Ancient Tomb
2 City of Traitors
2 Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth
6 Swamp
4 Urza’s Saga
4 Hagra’s Mauling
4 Chrome Mox
4 Dark Ritual
1 Retrofitter Foundry
4 Chalice of the Void
3 Trinisphere
4 Sudden Edict
4 Leyline of the Void
4 Karn, The Great Creator
4 Curse of Misfortunes
1 Cruel Reality
1 Curse of Fool’s Wisdom
1 Curse of Deaths Hold
1 Overwhelming Splendor
SB
2 Sphere of Annihilation
1 Torpor Orb
4 Plague Engineer
2 Opposition Agent
1 Vault of Whispers
1 Pithing Needle
1 Liquimettal coating
1 Mycrosynth Lattice
1 Ensnaring Bridge
1 Helm of Obedience
For further testing I think I should see if I need lattice. There aren’t a ton of matchups where coating or helm wouldn’t do the job (mostly lands/12 post)
Lots of good results recently. Chalice is very strong right now if you dodge prismatic ending, and Leyline is also well positioned.
The 5-0 mentioned above.
McGuirecj is still doing decently in challenges with it.
I went 4-0 in a webcam legacy league. A lot more fair non-blue makes the deck well positioned.
W don’t remember
2-1 TES got t1 emptied for 18 game 2 but both games OTP felt solidly in my control.
2-0 D&T. T1 karn OTP is good enough. g2 pe into pe into mauling into curse FTW.
2-0 MonoB zombies. OTD mox rit rit karn -> sphere to answer his champion of the perished. I get punished by the bone splinters variant that kills a PW but top deck chalice is GG. G2 t0 Leyline t2 PE is good enough.
Went 3-2 in the anzid 1.2k for 11th/40. in round 3 I got on coverage as the backup match. Losses were to D&T (got trounced by kaldra, hence why I think a bunch of sphere of annihilations might be good. And vs aluren it had been a long day and I made several poor plays in a row.
Paper list
4 Ancient Tomb
3 City of Traitors
2 Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth
7 Swamp
4 Urza’s Saga
4 Hagra’s Mauling
4 Chrome Mox
4 Dark Ritual
1 Retrofitter Foundry
4 Chalice of the Void
3 Trinisphere
4 Sudden Edict
4 Leyline of the Void
4 Karn, The Great Creator
4 Curse of Misfortunes
1 Cruel Reality
1 Curse of Leeches
1 Curse of Deaths Hold
1 Overwhelming Splendor
SB
1 Sphere of Annihilation
1 Torpor Orb
1 Tormod's Crypt
4 Plague Engineer
2 Opposition Agent
1 Vault of Whispers
1 Pithing Needle
1 Liquimettal coating
1 Mycrosynth Lattice
1 Ensnaring Bridge
1 Helm of Obedience
Is Sphere of Annihilation helping in those matchups?
How's the 4x Sudden Edict main performing? Seems great against Depths, Reanimator, SneakShow, and threat-light blue decks. But what about fair creature decks that can sacrifice an irrelevant creature (D&T, Goblins, Maverick, Merfolk, Elves)? Do you wish it was a different removal often, or is it doing its job?
It’s definitely not at its best vs go wide decks. You do have 4 PE in the board for those though. The thought was that sphere helps answer those situations it has trouble with (sai/elves/kaldra complete/saga tokens). It can be slow and gets hurt by artifact hate though.
Vs tempo having an uncounterable answer to a threat is so important. Several games you can just go chrome mox, saga, edict their dude and then win without ever casting another spell. So many games are decided by murktide, force your removal. An undazeable 2 drop is amazing for curving out too.
Good point. Saga makes those starts even more powerful, never casting a counterable spell.
More people picking up the deck means the deck has most chances to prove itself.
SuperCow got top 4 in yesterday’s challenge with my standard 60
Sideboard choices are a tad higher on doomsday hate than what I have been playing, but it is still within 2-3 cards of my “ stock” 75. I don’t know who this person is but it is impressive! In semis they faced GW Depths which is one of the worst mus so it’s possible they could have won the whole thing with different pairings. Another thing to add to the trophy case!
I had a fun co-stream with phil this week.
I apologize for my audio quality but this is great if you want to see how the saga list plays.
Great! Good matches! but...why 2 x Sphere of Annihilation? I think is little redundant.
By the way, my metagame is full of force of vigor so I removed Mycrosynth Lattice, and Sphere of Annihilation from the side adding 3 collective brutality.
I also play 1 pelakka predation in the main instead of Curse of Fool’s Wisdom to get 1 more land/discard.
So my recent sideboard is:
3 Plague Engineer
4 Opposition Agent (amazing against Jeskai Ragavan and green decks)
1 Vault of Whispers
1 Pithing Needle
3 Collective Brutality
1 Mycrosynth Lattice
1 Ensnaring Bridge
1 Helm of Obedience
The spheres are boardwipe you can board in, and karn will still be able to get them after they go off.
————-
Got 3rd in the challenge! The deck feels great! I got a bit lucky with slow opponents. Vs GW I got a Magical Christmas land t2 rit rit rit karn get helm cast helm activate win.
UR Delver L(Time out G2, i had 18 min)
UW Yorion Affinity WW
Elves WW
GW Depths WW
URWg Control WW
MonoB stax WLW
Lands WL(Time out)
URWb control LL
Congrats on making 3rd!
Prison and maindeck Leyline seem strong in that meta: 2nd place was full HelmLine combo (4 Voidwalker, 4 Leyline, 3 Helm, 4 Karn) and 4th place was Blood Moon. Looking at the other lists in the top brackets I see a lot of Reanimator, Lands, combo, and of course UR.
You need to play tight & get a bit lucky to do well in tournaments. I did neither in this showcase this Sunday.
LL Affinity
LL Jeksai Monkey
WLW Dauthi Helm
WLW UR Monkey
WW Hogaak
LL The Epic Gamble
WLW Eldrazipost
LWW Bant Control
5-2 for 53rd.
More interestingly, curses had 5 pilots in the 177 person event, which is in the top 10 most frequent decks! An overall win rate of 50% plus another player in 35th really proves the deck is Tier 2. The other player MathiasHardstyle plays it a bunch too and gets most of the 5-0s recently.
data sheet for the showcase
——
There isn’t much to do with deck development. The only consideration would be cutting Karn. Karn is awesome against everything except delver. But if half the format is delver game 1, perhaps I should just play MD helms? A lot more meltdowns are seeing play than null rods.
Edit: another consideration is saga has made the deck even more full of gas and mana hungry. Perhaps I can cut the mauling for a swamp to have the proper 14 t1 black sources.
Last edited by Reeplcheep; 11-08-2021 at 11:22 AM.
Pacification array looked pretty great here. Perhaps it is worth testing as an anti delver saga bullet? Generally the hardest matchups for me are jesksai and GW and it seems like it could be great against murktide and marit lage.
Went 3-4 in the challenge. Adding the 8th swamp felt decent. Pacification array was too mana intensive. There were lots of jesksai monkey decks so sphere might not be good any more.
Thoughts on the new path of peril? It doesn’t hit kaldra getm/KOTR/murktide. But it does miss some of the disadvantages of the other options.
Bontu’s Last Reckoning
Damnation
Sphere of Annihilation
Edit: Legion’s End is another option and hits the cards I need to cheaply (DRC, kaldra, and constructs). It isn’t as good vs d&t and elves but maybe that’s ok.
Last edited by Reeplcheep; 11-15-2021 at 03:30 PM.
Prepping for EW:
Lots and lots of jesksai monkey. The sideboard plan of Leyline + kill everything has been working moderately well. Having a non permanent source of card advantage could be good to beat their plan of fow/ending everything -> expressive iteration.
I am considering darkblast or murderous rider. Darkblast means the monkey will die through counters. Rider is CA and helps vs Jace decks. I am considering splitting the 4th mauling to karakas as it is better vs monkey and uro.
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