Updates:

- Solo copy of Confirm Suspicions was surprisingly solid. Just throwing two mana around over a couple turns to draw a card was good. Was unsure how it would play, but I never really had issues cracking the clues. I wouldn't ever want 3 copies and 2 may still be too much, but I like having one at the moment. Will play around with a second one.

- Drownyard Temple, Foundary, Shores, and Blighted Cataract has seemed to be the group we need to sift through for colorless sources that also provide value. It's an interesting situation at this time as Displacer is absolutely bonkers if it gets going but in order to do it we are having to find some ways to make it work with the mana base and it's not exactly the best yet. There may be merit to cutting it to ease mana issues, but I really hate doing so as it's been able to provide a ton of value in multiple matchups so far.

- From playing a fair amount of games over the last few days, the format seems to be a bit slower (the vampires deck nor the zombies deck attempts haven't been nailed yet) and as such the important cards are chandra, avacyn, and surprisingly abbey. One of the main reasons I want to keep displacer is that I've found a lot of people trying to make abbey happen and displacer just shuts it down. It reminds me of theros block constructed where the format revolved around either playing elspeth or playing something to beat it. Those are the cards to play or learn to beat so far.

- Epiphany at the drownyard was surprisingly good. I cast it for 3 a fair amount and felt good about it. I cast it for 4 a decent amount too and felt better. When I cast it for 5 or more it was just great. Was better than comparitive analysis pretty much always and I liked it a lot more than the draw 4 for 6 much more often.

- Along with epiphany, drownyard temple was pretty nice with that. Got to ensure I'd get 2 cards for 3 a lot with it. Great call anssi.



I think this is where I want to be in this format right now, but still haven't gotten it perfect yet.

awesome prerelease for me. Played in two, pulled Arlin and three other mythics plus some solid rares like thing in the ice. 3-1 then 3-0 with a draw last game. overall got 25 packs and two promos for 37 bucks

Blue is awful if you don't have Startled Awake or Jace in the mix. Geralf's messenger is solid but not enough of a reason to be in the color. Hoping blue actually works in draft.

The way flip cards work, everyone has an extra rare in their pool, plus the prerelease card so decks are a fair bit stronger than a normal format sealed.

Avacyn, the planeswalkers, startled awake are all absurdly too good in limited and this set has a much higher boom/bust rate than most sets. Which have 1 max 2 cards on this level.

Skulk is the blankest keyword I can remember, I played a ton of matches and it never was relevant. Delirium is bad in sealed in almost all pools I saw unless the card is making the deck without it.

The colors have too many sub-strats going on that conflict and sealed pools always feel a couple cards short on synergy. GR werewolves and some Madness decks aside.

Red is the best color, Green/Black/White are all very close and Blue is clearly the worst.

I think i had 3 blue cards over 12 packs that i actually wanted to play. already dumped off thing in ice, card seems destined to bust

Problem with Skulk is that there are no reward for getting the guys through, Skulk could be fun combined with "Damage player"-triggers like Looter il-kor.

Just played 1x 2HG, went 5-0. Our pool was fairly weak so we went full aggressive BR and GW with like 8 tricks, 10 removal and all reasonable cheap guys. 2x Magmatic Chasm

Blue sucks, Skulk sucks, set seems far worse than OG INN. Sad. Played BG twice, WB another time. Red never got there in my pools but I saw good aggressive decks. Green's creature base seems sick. Black has great uncommon and removal. Some guy got unbelievably salty at me after I complained about planeswalkers in limited (thanks wizards) and beat him in 3.

OG Innistrad was the best limited format until everyone else figured out spider spawning

for $35 and some random cards I didnt want I managed to get a complete blue eldrazi deck sent to me on puca that I thought would cost me $100 to make. now just need to hope the cards get to me. Im probably a fish in the grand scheme of mtg card speculation since a lot of the cards I got are lower today than they were 2-3 days ago and everyone snap-sent like I was a noob (had 5000 points transferred and they were gone in under 3 minutes), but if I actually want the cards it seems fine with me.

Im making a bant company deck as well. pretty standard build, not planning to use any SOI cards other than dual lands maybe, and I dont have any jaces.

why does this planeswalker suck so much? it seems good to me but obviously the price doesnt lie. always going to have creatures in play to make the +1 relevant and the -2 will usually be a draw 2 with den protectors/deathmist raptor synergy.

http://shop.tcgplayer.com/magic/batt...-of-the-depths

Doesn't affect board, awkward manacost, CoCo is better.

Basically Planeswalkers in standard are defined by a few things.

Do they protect themselves? I.e. Gideon makes a 2/2 ally to block. Jace, The Mind Sculptor bounces creatures.

Do they provide massive swings? Sorin, the Solemn Visitor played on a board with many tokens provides an obscene life swing.

Do they take over the game? Elspeth, Suns Champion wins in 3 turns if not damaged. Chandra, the Flamecaller wins almost immediately in an aggressive deck.

Do they fit into an archetype? Ob Nix provides a kill spell with high upside for BW control.

Unfortunately Kiora does none of these things. Played on our empty board she dies immediately. She provides small card advantage. She ramps a tiny bit. UG ramp isn't really a thing, and she can't protect herself there.

I'm a noob and have been messing around with B/W Control mostly because it doesn't use many cards that will be rotating soon.

Can someone explain to me why Declaration in Stone is supposed to be good? I get why you'd want it in an aggressive deck but I have no idea why I'd want it in a control deck. Do people really not have two mana to spare against B/W Control?

Well, it also enables processors. Your deck probably have better lategame so you can give opponent extra card t6 if it means you survive the early game.

It's cheap, unconditional removal in white. Allows straight UW without the need for a splash.

Despite its huge downside, Path to Exile is played heavily in modern, and this can be evaluated similarly.

uh, do not compare this fringe card to path to exile

path is 1 mana and instant, its a legacy, vintage, and modern playable. just because its white exile doesn't mean they have anything in common

Well that's silly. You can definitely compare the two, he isn't saying it's as good. Like why can't I compare Fiery Temper to Bolt, Days Undoing to Timetwister or Planar Outburst to Wrath of God? Just because they aren't as good doesn't mean that you can't use the other card as a baseline.

Anssi hit the nail on the head why it is good. It kills their best threat and gives them 2/3rds of a nonland card when they run out of things to do. If they run out of things to do, you're looking great as control.

what I meant is you can't evaluate how good the card is in comparison to path to exile.

fiery temper is similar and much worse than bolt, and you can't evaluate how good temper would be in a format based on how good bolt is because bolt is just so much better.

I guess I'm just talking about Declaration in Stone in the context of B/W. Every list I see on the internet has it and I don't understand why you'd run this when there's so much competition for removal in B/W. Being sorcery speed makes it pretty bad on two mana, when if you're not removing something you're probably just floating mana, and it also means it doesn't trade favorably with Westvale Abbey since they get a swing in before you can remove it. Being instant speed would also be important when you're threatening Avacyn and Secure the Wastes.

I guess it's good against Deathmist Raptor because they can often kill your Silkwraps and Stasis Snares, and you don't feel great losing the life on Anguish Unmaking.

So yeah, after playing some more I really, really like UW in this format. I played around with UB and UWB as well, but UW just seems the best.

I've been testing against various forms of zombies, mono red, bw, different version of coco, GW megamorph, and eldrazi ramp and am having pretty solid results (more importantly, I never feel overwhelmed by anything).

It's far from perfect, but at this point in the process I'm pretty happy.




Basically the way I've been doing it is putting in a couple of copies of the cards I wanted to check out in the deck and keep track of when I wished they were other things/when I was glad I had them. I still haven't gotten into the tuning portion of it, so the numbers are far from correct. But what I've been dicking around with has been:










Again, the numbers aren't even trying to be perfect. It's still during the "do I want to play these cards or not" phase rather than the "how many copies of this card do I want to play" phase.




Various notes:

- A lot of the decks I've been testing against are aggro or midrange. This has resulted in a fair amount of removal spells, which may or may not get shifted around as we get to the next phase.

- I've cut the scorns so far because I often just wanted to play something t2/t3/t4 instead. The 4/5 mana counters come into play during turns where I want to hold up mana anyways for Avacyn/Drownyard.

- The confirm suspicions has actually been quite good for me. I find myself cracking all 3 clues in a very high % of the games where I cast it.

- Descend upon the Sinful has been really good. Drownyard and having so many sorceries/instants/enchantments has resulted in getting delirium frequently by turn 6.

- I'd like to find some more instants/sorceries to take advantage of Jace with, but not sure what.

- Displacer continues to dominate games at a much higher clip than I regret the inclusion it brings on the mana base. There are token decks it wrecks, abbey it wrecks, negates value from morphs, does work with our own mage/avacyn (I've flipped avacyn, trigger on stack blinked it to deal 3 to all opponents stuff and none of mine multiple times), and makes blocking a nightmare on opponents in the games we get aggressive in.



I'd be curious on thoughts (again, ignore specific numbers) on here. I've not been involved in constructed in quite a long time and this is my first serious foray back into it.

I feel Gideon might belong to the maindeck. He is just so strong. I doubt you want Grotto.

I also think 1-of Planar Cleansing is too strong not to play.

Have you thought about Thought-Knot Seer?

Mage-Ring Network seems fine colorless land that can fuel large Field or Epiphany.

Excellent call on mage ring. Along with your examples, mass displacing was one thing I wished I had the ability to do from time to time and that provides it in the lategame. I haven't thought of the seer, but that's mainly due to a concern on the colorless manabase. It's clearly a very strong card and one I'll try out more. As for Gideon, it's definitely very powerful.

Looking at the SCG stuff today, have seen no pure UW decks. Looks like anything going for control is going for esper dragons for the silumgar, unmaking, sorin, and languish. What I noticed during my attempt to go in that direction for a bit was that there were a lot of things that languish didn't truly deal with. Raptors come back, it doesn't kill advocate late, the zombie just comes back, Kalitas can be a 5/6, etc. That's why the removal I've used is all exile (stone, silkwrap, snare, descend). Sorin is great, but damn I'm just really impressed with Displacer and it's hard to do both esper and activate displacer.

Appreciate the response

the solution wasnt "find a new deck to exploit how powerful displacer, mage, and avacyn are". The solution was to just jam displacer and avacyn into bant company. testing was fun though and it's nice to feel like I was right in wanting to focus on displacer so much (even if thats not really anything special. Its a process.)

i am rolling with some bant company (along with most top players it seems), although i still use the 4 den protector/deathmist set up which everyone else seems to have abandoned. played my first constructed tournaments starting last week and have two 3-1s and a 4-0. collecting all those prize packs!

are you running a wastes for displacer or just yamivayas?

I doubt the deck can afford Wastes. I think Deathmist isn't good enough for Bant any more, Duskwatch is better CA card. Deathmist might have a place in some jund/sultai self-mill deck though.