Dies to Removal

If you have YP$ out, they have to +1; if you have Eidolon out, they have a choice. Remember that planeswalkers are good because they are flexible.

Jace +1 makes all of our dudes into 1-power creatures, so there's no difference between AZ, YP$, EotGR when facing a Jace +1. The difference is that YP$ forces their decision.

I don't play as UW control often, but from burn's side I would much rather attack for 1 damage and them draw one card than attack for 2 damage and them draw 3 cards. Divination + gain 2 life is better than Nyx-Fleece Ram, IMO.

I would rather have more burn which I can point at him when I run him out of creatures. Topdecking a Chain when your opponent is at 2 is a very bad feeling.

If you've run him out of creatures, he's not at 2.

Rage, tokens are not cards! Remember, Jace doesn't make YP$ bad, it's the other way around.

None of our cards are "castrated" by Jace. We usually have one 2-power card on the battlefield at a time, so if Hushwing isn't castrated, then nothing is.

Is it correct to drop YP$ in the mirror? My thoughts are he basically reads 1/1 for 2 mana in the mirror, I still see a lot searing blood, and he and his tokens are weak to Chandra. At the same time, he is a must deal with threat that will divert burn from the face. I like Phoenix because it forces them to have the chained but it does seem like somewhat of a tempo loss to cast him sometimes.

What are you guys doing in the mirror?

He's a 1/1 + discard a card for 2 mana in the mirror. That's fine. If you play him on T5 or later, he's literally game-ending.

Have you ever got D. Sphere + tapped-out Elixir?

You can expect to face Eidolon, but that doesn't mean you have to run it.

@Aodh nope, he flat out refused to attack into tokens or open mana with yp. Same goes for his pumps. Sorry for being blunt about the black devo matchups. I'll write something up about those when I'm done cooking dinner.

Okay haha, just being snarky! I understand the B(x)D matchup thoroughly; it just seems like always seem to lose the unlosable matchups even when drawing relevant spells haha. Just bad runs.

Fated Conflagration isn't necessary. I don't want to spend four mana on anything other than "drain 4" or "draw lots of cards."

Nice report HK.

Game 1 I drew two young pyromancers... Two for 1s didnt occur as he played around them and I just didnt care too much about them anyways.

Did you ever trade with a YP$ token? That's a 2-for-1.

I seem to have rotten luck with "textbook" matchups. I've lost numerous games to B(x)D with Assemble the Legion draws even before Temple of Malady enticed Golgari Charm inclusion and also to MUD with multiple Satyr Firedancers in-play. Once I resleeve up a stock list, I'm hoping my luck changes.

Hi, scrubbed out of FNM with my creatureless brew. Metagaming too hard--haven't played against Bg Devotion at all to benefit from Dreadbore in lieu of Chained to the Rocks. I'm very conservative with manabase construction, so is Shouta's good enpugh?

Took Creatureless to 3-1 at SNM. 2-0 against Bg, 2-1 against Little Kid Selesnya, 1-2 against Bg, 2-0 against Bant Control. Same pilot for the last round as the one who beat me last FNM. Manabase killed me again. Not sure why all the aggro draws.

MDU, why do you call a round "game" and a game "round"? It bothers me every time I read it, though of course it's trivial.

It confuses me when you guys call a game "round" and a round "games"

Nah, its just something we all use to do as Kids back home - in fighting games like MK or SF before a game/fight begins the announcer always goes "Round 1 fight", then "Round 2 fight" and so on (we usually make our games best of 3) thus I've gotten
accustomed into call a set of rounds a "game".

Makes sense haha. Just curious.

MDU, why do you call a round "game" and a game "round"? It bothers me every time I read it, though of course it's trivial.

Ran creatureless burn (my list from a few pages ago) to FNM. 0-2 vs. MUD (very close, Mana Confluence hurt me a lot); 2-1 vs. RDW (kept a 1-lander off of a mulligan to 6 and get steam-rolled; Peak Eruptioned him out of G3 and Spark Trooper stole G2); 2-1 vs. AIR (steam-rolled G1, SFD destroyed in the subsequent games); 1-2 vs. Bg Devotion (my mana and Erebos did a lot of damage to me and then I died in the two games I loss); 2-0 vs. Esper Control (Toil // Trouble >). 3-2 for 9th place. :\

How about this list for creatureless?

[deck]Spells

3 Thoughtseize
4 Dreadbore
4 Boros Charm
4 Magma Jet
4 Searing Blood
4 Lightning Strike
4 Skullcrack
4 Toil // Trouble
4 Warleader's Helix

Lands

4 Mutavault
2 Temple of Silence
4 Temple of Malice
4 Blood Crypt
4 Temple of Triumph
4 Sacred Foundry
3 Mana Confluence

Sideboard

4 Satyr Firedancer
4 Peak Eruption
3 Glare of Heresy
1 Erebos, God of the Dead
3 Spark Trooper[/deck]

Pretty straight-forward, just need to see how it does in testing.

Control isn't a hard MU with this deck... That's why we're playing it in the first place. Before they adopted sketchy tech like Fiendslayer Paladin in Esper and Staff in MBD, those matches were "byes".

A singleton Erebos is fine on 8 sources, yeah.

Threatens are always good against midrange decks, but with monsters being such a small portion of the meta, it's pretty narrow. If you also plan on being frisky and catching a DD alone, it could be okay. The reason it's not AMAZING in burn is that their big dumb creatures aren't really blocking ours. In a traditional RDW kind of deck, it removed a/the blocking threat, allowing us to attack with our 3-4 dwarved creatures alongside their fatty.

I think Glare of Heresy is the best sideboard card against UWx because it hits anything they have to threaten our advantage (FSP, exile effects for Phoenix/Chandra, AAoT, BlOb, etc.) definitely the most versatile and you won't be caught with your pants down.

Got shit on by burn and UW at TNM while running MBA. I'm likely coming back to this deck. I'll be on 0/4 Phoenix, 0/4 YP$, 0 EotGR.

Preboard, I think MBA, MBD (with only one demon), Esper, and the mirror (us vs. rando) are favorable independent of our choice of 2-drop, whereas Monsters, Junk, and Dredge necessitate YP$ and MUD is easier with EotGR.

Monsters is not an easy match-up. If they have any Polukranos -> Dragon (esp. with acceleration), then it's very hard to win.

Just beat UW on a mulligab to 4 lol. Keep Sacred Foundry, Boros Charm, Temple of Triumph, and Magma Jet. Win involves main phase Boros Charm to evade counter magic, Trouble for 7, Dreadbore on Archangel of Thune, and Annihilating Fire + Lightning Strike in response to Sphinx's Tegelation.

Dictate's awesome but probably not correct. I messed around with Dega no-permanent burn today and I literally one-hit KO'd an Esper and a UW player because of it. Did some work, but probably just overkill. 2-0 Esper, 2-1 UW, 1-2 Bant, 2-0 MBA, 2-1 Bg Devotion, 1-2 Bw Devotion, 2-0 MBD.

That's wrong.

I think Eidolon is more powerful the faster the format is (I.e., best in legacy or modern). Prophetic Flamespeaker's a different discussion, but I don't like him terribly much ATM.

I don't think it's good in standard; and even if it was, it wouldn't be good in our deck with 33 3>-mana spells.

Took the deck to FNM last week to a 4-1 4th in standings finish. Beat Bantchant, MBD, lost to MBD, beat Br devotion, MBD. Dat meta.

Yeah, we like our opponent's removal to be bad, not really good. If they 2-for-1 us, it's miserable, and if they keep killing our critters and we get stuck with Strengths in hand, we're in trouble.

That depends on what kind of aggro decks you expect to face... A 2-for-1, 2-for-1 plus 1 dmg to the dome, or 3-for-1 is DEFINITELY better than a 1-for-1 plus 3 dmg to the dome. If you don't expect X/1s, then yeah Searing Blood is king. But if any of the other situations are likely to arise, then FotF is almost strictly better, IMO. Plus, FotF can dome Esper players, kill Nightveil Specters pre-combat, or take out Elspeth tokens if you need to attack. It also can take out a Courser of Kruphix that blocks YP$ tokens. They both have their place and different versatilities...

Yeah, I understand that. Does the same paradigm hold on mulligans?

General practice is to reserve out scrylands for as long as possible, right? What if we have mulliganned down to a borderline 6 or any 5? Do we jam temples as quickly as possible to strengthen our draws?

Burning Earth is very strong against 3-color decks. It's not seeing play right now because there's only one of those. After the last two guilds get their scrylands and we have City of Brass, plenty of people will be experimenting with shards. I think BE will be very powerful during weak 1, but its long-term applications will be weakened if either the meta reverts back to fewer-color decks, or once the tri-color decks look into instant-speed enchantment hate.

I didn't necessarily mean YP$ > AZ (although this is what I believe). I was just making note that AZ lists might be the ones posting results because of their popularity over YP$ lists. I'm just glad this deck's still hot.

The placing lists have AZ because most lists have AZ because most lists are two or so weeks behind MODO and consequently DtR tech.

Lazer. Nice FNM results, guys. Good to see the deck's still working at the FNM-level as well. I didn't make it to FNM, but will give whatever-DM report this upcoming week!

+4 Mortars, +1 Chains, +2 Assemble the Legion (mandatory for MBD, IMO)

(This is not posted directly at you Aodh)

This is prevalent view among our new posters, board in 10000x removals or reactive cards against control decks (including the likes of Esper, Bx and UW).

I tried too explain that diluting your deck is bad vs anything with CA just last page (it maybe two pages back at this point) but - the discussion continues, can someone who shares this view justify it too me?

Miscommunication. 6 cards for control, 4 mortars for monsters, 1 CtR for monsters and MBD,
assemble for mbd. I wasn't recommending all of the mortars against MBD at all, sorry!

If Xathrid Necromancer or Voice of Resurgence become popular, it might be worthy of consideration. I miss Pillar of Flame, TBH.

Sorry, I didn't mean to come off as bossy or anything. 75% monsters is outrageous. It's probably wrong, but if that's the ACTUAL metagame, then you absolutely don't need to focus on your anti-control cards. Our deck is meant to beat theirs without any help. I'd advocate enough sideboard slots to cover your chains (2-3) and bloods (0-3), then call it quits. In monsters metagame, you probably want the 3/3/3 package, so you'll need 6 sideboard cards for Esper (shock's still fine to buy back phoenixes and for pyromancer). +4 Mortars, +1 Chains, +2 Assemble the Legion (mandatory for MBD, IMO), so you have two slots left. Id run 2 BlOb or Spark Trooper, given your meta.