miracleHat twin didn't get unbanned

miracleHat The descriptions are very old.

Triple Cryptic is as high as I go since it's an expensive spell and I don't want to ruin my early game. Instead of the third I'm running Venser. He can Remand or bounce anything, including uncounterable cards. He acts as a threat, which is helpful. I have enough card draw from Serum Visions and enough counterspells. Cryptic is a very strong card, but like all strong cards it has its downsides.

Hey bro,

I absolutely love everything about your deck. Great card choices, awesome description.

Would you please take some time in commenting my The American Geist?

Thanks!

Yeah Jex imma go ahead and add you to the list :)

Hey there, nice deck! A guy at my lgs used to run something similar back when I was playing my Affinity deck a lot. It wrecked me every single time.

I'm curious about your choice of Secure the Wastes. Have you considered Increasing Devotion? It gives you better token to mana ratio whether you cast it normally or flash it back. Being able to cast it twice helps for those games where you have to chump block for a number of turns or they are able to wrath the board. Also it has a great synergy with Snapcaster mage, allowing you to target it and get 10 tokens for 5 mana. Just a thought.

PayOneLife Increasing Devotion is a very bad card for this deck. The first problem is that it's a sorcery, not an instant. This deck plays best at instant speed. There's the second problem of not being an x cost spell. Secure the Wastes can be good at any point in the game, and gets better as the game goes on. Using it once for 3 can be good at the midgame, and a flashback with Snap can give you a lategame win.

The versatility and instant speed of Secure the Wastes makes it a clearly better card for the deck. My second choice after Secure the Wastes would be White Sun's Zenith, which is far too slow and has almost no use early game.

What about Venser, the Sojourner? He has good synergy with your creatures and if you get him to ultimate, they'll be quite dead

Deathbend

Not worth getting planeswalker Venser on to the field. He costs a very high amount for a sorcery speed spell that doesn't change the board state. His ultimate is amazing but his other abilities are very mediocre. His -1 is useless and his +2 is unhelpful unless we bounce a land to get more untapped mana for the next turn. Bouncing Snapcaster is a problem because to get use out of it we would be tapping lands on our turn. Keeping mana open on the opponent's turn is one of the features of the deck so planeswalker Venser would clash with that.

I think 3 Cryptic should be the lowest you go. Also, you have way too many burn spells in here for the current meta, 5 is the absolute ceiling, with 3-4 being preferable.

Hey dude, I like the list but have a few questions.

1) Why the Venser over the Clique?

2) Why the Molten Rain in the board over a couple Ghost Quarters?

Thanks!

Also, why no Runed Halo in the board?

tlhunter07

Venser is a versatile counterspell/unsummon with a clock. Clique is a powerful Peek with a 3/1 flying body. Clique is a very good card but I prefer Venser because he affects the board which can turn a bad situation into a better one. Clique turns a neutral situation into a likely better one. There are more cases where you need to get out of a bad situation than needing to prevent something from happening.

Molten Rain has changed to Spreading Seas. I liked Molten Rain for the bonus damage but since I've already got a ton, I don't need it. Spreading Seas grants a draw and screws mana, which is likely going to be better for us than dealing some extra damage. There are some decks where Molten Rain is better against, but they're not very big in the meta.

Runed Halo is good against Storm and combo decks, but I figure it's better to not rely on a 1/40 chance of having the right card at the right time and better to use the sideboard for stronger cards.

On Cryptic, I'd say the contrary. 3 is the highest you should go. Cryptic is a very powerful card but it can't get you out of all bad situations. Running 2 Cryptics means we'll probably have it when we need it, and probably won't have it during the early game where it's bad. Generally you can last through 5 turns with a decent hand and end up with a Cryptic to effectively win the game.

Helix is very underrated and Electrolyze is a free win against small aggro decks.

Runed Halo is not just for combo decks.

It's for Death's Shadow

Kjartan That's already a good matchup. Blessed Alliance is a better sideboard card than Runed Halo because it's more useful in more situations.

Okay... So what about Valakut, the Molten Pinnacle, there is nothing good about that matchup.

Runed Halo is broken, m8

Kjartan You'd need to run 3 Halos for it to be a consistent choice against Valakut. There's not that much space in the sideboard considering the meta percentage of Valakut. Running a singleton may work some of the time, but it's not like Valakut decks are going to sit idly and do nothing if you drop Halo.

The Valakut matchup sucks even with Halo. It's better to concede that matchup and board against more decks. Overall it gives a higher winrate.

JexInfinite That's illogical, dude.

Why would you only have 1 Celestial Purge? If there's not a huge chance of you drawing it, there's no reason in running it, right?

And you talk about Halo like it somehow has a bad matchup spread, but it really, really doesn't. It comes in against a lot of matchups, including some of the most played, and also some of your worst mathups.

Valakut, Bogles, Death's Shadow, Eldrazi Tron, Titan Bloom, Dredge, Storm, Tokens and reanimator.

Backing up a bit, I figured that it actually doesn't work against tokens. Still good though.

Kjartan Blessed Alliance is better against Bogles, Death's Shadow, sometimes Eldrazi Tron and sometimes the others. Bogles and Reanimator are matchups that I don't encounter at all so I don't consider them at all for sideboarding.

Celestial Purge is an additional removal spell against red decks and BGx decks. It's never a crutch but it always improves the matchup because it increases the number of removal I could draw into. It can be randomly good against variance decks, unlike Halo which is a waste of a sideboard slot until the Valakut matchup comes up. For the random combo decks, they can be beaten entirely with the mainboard because they are bad decks. If they didn't suck they would be popular.

For the Dredge matchup I have Anger of the Gods, which is also very good against Company decks.

Halo is a not wasted space until you face spicificallly Valakut (btw, the most played deck). It has other uses than naming that one card.

It's also better against bogles than Blessed Alliance, as long as they don't run Dromoka's Command.

And saying that unpopular decks are bad is not the greatest way to approach the geme.

Kjartan Blessed Alliance is better against Bogles than Halo because you can use Snapcaster to get a second hit, and it deals with Kor Spiritdancer in addition to Slippery Bogle and Gladecover Scout. Halo can name one card, Blessed Alliance hits anything that attacks you.

Unpopular decks aren't always bad, but unpopular combo decks are bad. Combo decks rely on abusing mechanics to win the game and if they were good and consistent they would be popular. There are barely any old combo strategies that are unpopular and good.

Also @Kjartan, Valakut is definitely not the most played deck. The MTGGoldfish Metagame page is screwy.

I strongly disagree.

What if your opponent controls a giant hexbeaproof beater, and a vanilla Gladecover Scout.

Halo can name the correct card, whilst blessed alliance is gonna fail to. (+ if they are both the same halo gets double value).

Also, Bogles pretty much only has two cards that should frighten you, Bogle and Scout. After you choose the one that's gonna get you, you have completely diables almost half of all the threats in your oppoents deck for the rest of the game.

(Also, Bogle player may side in Leyline.)

I mean honestly, both are correct. We shouldn't be having an argument over SB space about which is better against Bogles.

I don't really like Ajani in the side.