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PostPosted: Sat Mar 16, 2019 6:28 am 
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I got a G/W quest and played some games with the old Selesnya deck from last season. Seems the deck's actually still viable, plus quite fun! The Selesnya main deck seems quite standard with Tithe Taker taking over the Adanto Vanguard / Thorn Lieutenant slot, and some Venerated Loxodon being swapped with Unbreakable Formation, but aside from that it seems all the action's still in the sideboard. The new key sideboard card is Demystify, otherwise the same principles from last season are still present. I might iterate on it more in this season now. Instinctively, I'd try to fit at least one The Immortal Sun into the sideboard, if only to force the opponent to have artifact removal.

Still haven't played a lot of games with the deck but I did lose to monored once. It does seem beatable to me though. Maindeck, you can Unbreakable Formation with lifelink tokens on the board to gain life, and postboard you have Knight of Autumn + Lyra (whatever happened to this card in sideboards??).


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PostPosted: Sat Mar 16, 2019 3:33 pm 
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The problem with Lyra is that due to the presence of Hydroid Krasis and mono-Blue, flier hate is much more common. Cards like Kraul Harpooner, Crushing Canopy and Collision // Colossus are in very many sideboards.
I believe Esper still runs some, other decks have strayed away from her.

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PostPosted: Sun Mar 17, 2019 5:05 am 
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Kraul Harpooner would be a weird card to board in against Selesnya, because the only target is Lyra (and Shalai, if they're on that version, but it seems nobody is playing Shalai anymore). Crushing Canopy makes more sense since it can also hit History of Benalia, Conclave Tribunal and possibly Ixalan's Binding; however it still seems quite narrow to me. If I'm playing Simic Nexus for example, I'd be leery of boarding in Crushing Canopy in this matchup. Collision//Colossus ... I suppose that's a possibility, haven't played enough of the matchup to know how it goes though.

One thing I like about Selesnya is that the plays come to me very naturally :D I don't understand why, but watching Seth Manfield play the deck (http://magic.tcgplayer.com/db/article.a ... =3-15-2019) my feeling is that not only did I spot the best lines faster than him, I think he didn't actually spot them at all. For example at 20 minutes in, my immediate thought was to play Trostani, then use Trostani + 2 tokens + Emmara to convoke Conclave Tribunal on Vivien. That leaves two 2/2 lifelinkers (one made by Emmara) + Loxodon to block with, gets the planeswalker off the battlefield, and gives opponent one turn to topdeck something. Seth Manfield plays Trostani, attacks with Loxodon, and then convokes Conclave Tribunal, leaving a 1/4 and a 2/2 lifelink to block against three attackers - a much more dangerous line. This could also be why I find Temur Reclamation to be so bad. Maybe I'm just bad at it, and I dislike it because I'm comparing the deck to my experience with Selesnya last season, but the difference is simply because I play Selesnya a lot better than I play Temur Reclamation.

On the matchup against monored, I've had quite a lot of success against it now, but I'm also running the Thorn Lieutenant + Shalai version which greatly improves the matchup against monored. Shalai in particular is a complete house. Against control - shrug. It does feel like Adanto Vanguard isn't that good against control now anyway, because they're running Moment of Craving & Cry of the Carnarium, both of which get past indestructibility. I wonder what other players are doing about those cards, or if they just accept they're dead.

Theorycrafting, I see Thief of Sanity as a genuine issue. It didn't see much play previously, but now that it does, I wonder if people made space for Kraul Harpooners in the sideboard for this reason (they can also beat down the Esper opponent I guess, although they die to Cry of the Carnarium as well).


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PostPosted: Mon Mar 18, 2019 7:03 am 
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Played a couple of BO1 constructed events with the Thorn Lieutenant / Shalai list, went 1-3 and 3-3. The deck might be fun, but it certainly doesn't feel great. Sweepers simply wipe you out, and there are more sweepers now: Cry of the Carnarium is seeing maindeck play, Kaya's Wrath is in every Esper list, the Gates deck has Gates Ablaze, and Sultai has Find//Finality. Granted, I didn't play with Unbreakable Formation, but that doesn't help against the two -x/-x sweepers. To top it off, Esper now has Mortify to kill Conclave Tribunal with (which is disastrous), and Sultai's Hydroid Krasis is an omnipresent and very strong threat. I feel right now, with the "standard" lists, Sultai has gone from a 50-50 matchup at best to a flat out bad matchup. They are not likely to be overrun. Previously pre-board, you still had to fade Finality (or at least be able to get your creatures out of range with Ajani, which isn't even in standard lists anymore), but now you need to fade both Finality and Hydroid Krasis which is very unlikely. The matchup statistics back this up: in 23 matches at the Mythic Championship, GW tokens is 39.1% against Sultai (and 28.6% against Esper - haha).

Right now I'd class the deck at tier 2 at best. If I spend any more wildcards on non-lands this season, it probably won't be on this deck.


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PostPosted: Mon Mar 18, 2019 9:06 am 
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The thing @Banedon is that there isn´t any T1 deck ATM... and that is great for the meta, I dont think you are going to find a deck with more than 55-58% win rate.

did you ever tried the Esper midrange deck? that deck is very good and remarkably hard to SB against.

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PostPosted: Mon Mar 18, 2019 4:34 pm 
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I think 58% win rate is enough to be tier 1! I just don't think Selesnya tokens is anywhere near 58%, in fact it might well be under 50% against a prepared field.

Never tried Esper midrange - I've heard tell it's an underpowered version of Sultai (as a midrange deck) and Esper (as a control deck), and I'm really trying not to commit more wildcards.


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PostPosted: Mon Mar 18, 2019 5:08 pm 
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Well hell.... my mono white has a 67% win rate the last time I looked in the Tool.
Edit: Nope. It's 64%.

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PostPosted: Mon Mar 18, 2019 5:32 pm 
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how many games?

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PostPosted: Tue Mar 19, 2019 3:06 am 
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Uhh, what's your win rate overall? If the average is 50%, getting 64% is fantastic with any deck.


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PostPosted: Thu Apr 11, 2019 7:51 am 
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Some quick notes having played this deck a lot (using 4x Thorn Lieutenant + Huatli + Ajani).

- I'm no longer convinced monowhite or monored are particularly good matchups. Maybe 60-40, but that's about it. Unbreakable Formation is very scary out of monowhite decks; if they're not running that card it's much better but they can still overwhelm you with Loxodon especially on the play. Monored has simply become a much better deck. Thorn Lieutenant is as good as ever though against monored.
- Monoblue still looks favorable pre-board. Your board spirals out of control quite fast. Post-board I have no idea since I have not been playing BO3 with this deck.
- Esper is a surprisingly good matchup. I don't mean you are favored, you are still roughly 35-65 against it, but it's less scary than Jeskai. The point is they take so long to kill you that you have time to build a plan around their sweepers; further, flipping Legion's Landing is often game. They're also not very good at killing planeswalkers if you resolve them, and Thorn Lieutenant survives Cry of the Carnarium.
- Sultai feels disfavored in game 1 because Krasis is such a bomb. You can improve post-board, but their deck is just so customizable. If they're running Thief of Sanity that's bad news, Krasis is still a problem, Vivien deals with your enchantment removal, and even The Immortal Sun isn't game-winning either because even though they no longer have Thrashing Brontodon, Hostage Taker can still remove it. At least they don't usually have even more sweepers post-board.
- Wilderness Reclamation decks are surprisingly good game 1 too. It tends to become a straight-up race and your clock is not the fastest, but you are consistent, and you have maindeck enchantment removal. Postboard you have Demystify.
- Huatli hasn't been very impressive. Ideally she comes down and threatens the ultimate immediately, but if I have that many creatures I'm likely winning already. Meanwhile if I get to tick up often then yeah, but Ajani wins those games too. Maybe as a one-off in the sideboard since Ajani feels like the better planeswalker overall.

Overall I think Selesnya hasn't gotten weaker, but opponents have gotten stronger. Result, deck isn't very good anymore. If it was T1.5 before, it's at best T2 now.


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PostPosted: Sat May 25, 2019 9:52 am 
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Quick update about Selesnya, I tried playing the deck in WAR. After all it's the only deck in which The Immortal Sun slots cleanly into. It didn't go well. Some of the things I noted were:

- You probably want to run Thorn Lieutenant now instead of Adanto Vanguard. The Lieutenant is resilient to being bounced by Teferi, and survives Cry of the Carnarium (which looks like the most common sweeper). Besides, monored is now a very respectable deck.
- The deck lacks power level. History of Benalia for example seems to be barely playable now - you play it, and the token just gets bounced by Teferi. Even if it doesn't get bounced, it feels like half the decks have the Explore package, against which the token isn't attacking past either.
- In the same vein as the above, when I tried it, I had my chances to play the "nut draw" with Saproling Migration into Loxodon. Except it never worked. One 4/4 and two 2/2s on turn 3 isn't effective enough anymore. For example I got destroyed by a Jeskai superfriends deck who played an early Saheeli and followed it with lots of planeswalkers bouncing my stuff.
- Speaking of Jeskai superfriends, that's actually the deck that The Immortal Sun is supposed to beat. But I can't get to 6 mana reliably. If I can do that while maintaining some pressure then sure, but typically by the time I get to 6 mana, all my creatures are either dead or bounced (History of Benalia is soooo bad against bounce), or opponent has infinite chump blockers, or they've been ticking up with planeswalkers many times already. The Sun will only win the game then if and only if it isn't countered, which isn't even a bad thing to have, because Selesnya has a considerable number of noncreature spells.

I genuinely think Selesnya is not competitive now, but then as my results the past couple of days have shown, I'm a has-been in WAR standard so I might be wrong ;)


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