About Joel Calafell
Joel Calafell
Joel is a Level 6 Pro Player from Spain who helped develop well-known combo decks such as Cephalid Breakfast or the
recent Cascade Swans, he loves playing almost every format and has a number of high-profile finishes under his belt:
- Top 8 Pro Tour Kuala Lumpur
- Winner Grand Prix Barcelona
- Three Grand Prix Top 8
- 65 Lifetime Pro Points
- Level 6 Pro Players Club member
Jacerator In Rome
Since Owling Mine decks became
popular, I have always wanted to try such an engine. For Pro Tour Honolulu
2006, the Howling Mine deck was one of the most powerful choices, if not the
best, and despite that, I found myself playing that event with a deck that was
losing to the same deck, and yet was ten times worse against anything else… UR
Tron.
Back in those days, the dominating deck was
clearly Zoo, closely followed by its biggest enemy: Orzhov. The metagame at
that point was quite open, but it was hard to get out of the Tron-Zoo-Orzhov
triangle...
That was until the Owling Mine deck appeared.
The deck was able to crush both Orzhov and Tron, and not only that, but any
other deck that didn’t have Lightning Helix or Kird Ape in it. The deck was so
good at denying your opponent’s spells, bouncing mana sources or just taking “extra
turns” with Exhaustions, this means that the card advantage provided by drawing
multiple cards each turn on both sides wasn’t really symmetrical.
This deck forms part of my latest feature article:
Level 6 pro Joel Calafell is back from Worlds where he went 6-0 in the Standard portion. He brings you an
in-depth guide on his latest deck creation, shows you how to play it and how to
sideboard against the most important matchups.
| Colors |
|---|
| Artifact | 8 |
|---|
| Blue | 26 |
|---|
| Land | 22 |
|---|
| Red | 4 |
|---|
| Converted Mana Cost |
|---|
| 1 | 4 |
|---|
| 2 | 24 |
|---|
| 3 | 4 |
|---|
| 4 | 4 |
|---|
| 5 | 2 |
|---|
| Type |
|---|
| Artifact | 8 |
|---|
| Basic Land | 12 |
|---|
| Creature | 4 |
|---|
| Instant | 14 |
|---|
| Land | 10 |
|---|
| Sorcery | 12 |
|---|
In that matchup, the problem wasn’t that the
creatures were too fast, or that the Zoo deck was playing too much burn, but
more the fact that half of the card drawing engines, the four copies of Kami of the Crescent Moon, could be killed by Lightning Helix at instant speed.
Moreover, the main win condition, Sudden Impact, was hardly lethal against
them, as the Zoo player could just play all the burn in response to it and make
every Sudden Impact just insufficient to finish them off.
Years after that, the next competitive deck
with Howling Mine in it was probably Sanity Grinding. The deck tried to deck
the opponent with Twincast and Sanity Grinding, with the help of Howling Mine
and Jace Beleren, and with Evacuation / Cryptic Command back-up to reset the
board or neutralize attacks every turn. All in all, the deck was really good at
beating both control and mid-range aggro, but just wasn’t that good against
decks like BR Blightning aggro. Then, for the last Standard season the deck
evolved to a UW version with multiple fog effects and Tezzeret as a win
condition, with some interesting cards like Runed Halo. This time, the deck
could even be good against aggro or burn decks. However, decks like Faeries or
Cascade Swans were just better choices for the metagame…
But with the rotation completed, Faeries, Seismic Assault, and many other decks were gone and Jund was eventually considered the
best deck in the format, as it has already been in Shards of Alara Block. The so-called
“Turbofog” deck was also losing important pieces, such as the two best fogs: Holy Day and Pollen Lullaby, as well as the best counterspells: Broken Ambitions and Cryptic Command.
When Worlds approached I knew for sure I didn’t
want to play Jund, as it was going to be the deck everyone would be prepared
for, and I didn’t even feel like the deck was so good that there was nothing
that could beat it. I tried some control decks, then some decks like Elves, or
even Monowhite control. But all of them were just unspectacular, and were just
losing to the rest of the field. Boros Bushwhacker was also a very popular
deck, and it seemed like the metagame was going to be full of creature decks.
There was no control to be seen, no counterspells, not even combo decks. I
realized that I really wanted to build a deck that crushed aggro decks. So I
gave Howling Mine another try:
This is the deck I played at Worlds 2009. The decklist forms part of the Blackborder Worlds coverage:
Follow the Blackborder Pro Team at the World Championships in Rome.
With videos, decklists, photo coverage, Twitter updates and much more!
| Colors |
|---|
| Artifact | 8 |
|---|
| Blue | 14 |
|---|
| Land | 24 |
|---|
| White | 14 |
|---|
| Converted Mana Cost |
|---|
| 1 | 3 |
|---|
| 2 | 12 |
|---|
| 3 | 8 |
|---|
| 4 | 7 |
|---|
| 5 | 6 |
|---|
| Type |
|---|
| Artifact | 8 |
|---|
| Basic Land | 16 |
|---|
| Enchantment | 2 |
|---|
| Instant | 15 |
|---|
| Land | 8 |
|---|
| Planeswalker | 4 |
|---|
| Sorcery | 7 |
|---|
This deck features in the following videos:
The Building Process
The concept was clear. I wanted four Howling Mine and four Jace Beleren, as well as probably four Time Warp, because the card
is sick with any of the previous ones. Since Day of Judgment was in the format,
I knew playing a UW version wasn’t going to be a problem. But the good fogs had
already rotated out. Only Angelsong and Safe Passage were available, and I was
at first a bit sceptical about playing a three mana fog. Later I would learn
that Safe Passage was actually much more than “just a fog”. At some point, Sleep was also in the deck for some time, but it was just too bad at four mana,
and wasn’t even good against creatures with haste like Bloodbraid Elf or Goblin Bushwhacker.
Also, the lists I tried at first didn’t include Font of Mythos, as I thought it would be too slow or just too vulnerable to Maelstrom Pulse, but testing against Jund proved me wrong, when I found out it
was actually a fundamental centerpiece of the deck and that you could protect
it with a simple counter like Negate, which at that point was the preferred
counter for the maindeck. For this deck to work, though, you really need a card
drawing engine in your opening hand and you should mulligan your hand if it
doesn’t contain a card drawing engine, so not playing with the Fonts was just
inconsistent, and the card was actually amazing in practice. Every game that I
was playing against Jund, I could only lose if they had multiple Pulses in the
early turns or if they could just burn me to death in the late turns, when they
had drawn almost their whole deck. But the deck was also having quite a decent
matchup against Boros Bushwhacker and was just crushing almost any other deck,
the same way the old Owling Mine decks did three years ago. And with the
metagame basically focusing on beating Jund, decks like Monowhite control,
Elves, or GW variants started to get played more and more, and there was almost
no way you could lose to those archetypes anyway, so on top of all that, the
deck was probably going to be an amazing metagame choice.
Meanwhile, I had been talking a lot to both
Kenny Oberg and my Spanish mate Rodrigo Renedo, and before deciding on the
final list, we made some minor changes. The most important of them was swapping Negate for Flashfreeze in the maindeck. It might seem like a crazy decision,
but Flashfreeze is almost as good as a Counterspell in this format if you think
of the cards that you really want to counter.
Against Jund, you counter all the creatures, Blightning and Maelstrom Pulse, against Bushwhacker you counter everything you
care about: Bushwhacker, Geopede and any burn spell, and against Elves or GW
you almost counter their whole deck as well. So what do we have left? You even
get to counter Ajani Vengeant, Double Negative or Bant Charm, which I all
countered at Worlds. The only possible downside could be against Vampires, the
mirror match or the UWB Planeswalkers deck, which I assumed wouldn’t be very
popular anyway. And against those I could just use the Negate from the
sideboard. It just made much more sense.
Another importation addition was definitely Sunspring Expedition, which was actually much better than it seemed at first
(You don’t know how many times I had to tell people this wasn’t a Path to Exile
proxy!). Usually, the only way you could lose against Jund or Boros when you
had everything under control, was being in burn range and them having multiple Lightning Bolts, Blightnings or Resounding Thunder. The card was actually much
better than that, as it could basically be a one mana fog with “suspend”, and
allowed you to tap out safely for Font of Mythos on the fourth turn.
For the finishers, Archive Trap was just the
best one, and it was actually so good, that I even considered adding a third
copy, just in case I’d need to mill my opponents faster. But I realized that
was just unnecessary, and that a two Archive Trap hand could be fatal when
mulliganing. I also tried Martial Coup as plan B, but seriously, no plan B was
needed, Archive Trap was everything I needed.
Joel Calafell shows off his 6-0 Standard deck sitting at the top of the standings here at 2009 Worlds featuring Jace Beleren, lots of card drawing, and Archive Traps.
Tips and Tricks
Don’t be Afraid to Mulligan
That is true, if you have a hand without Howling Mine, Jace Beleren or Font of Mythos, that hand is an auto-mulligan.
For this deck to work, you need to develop your game plan, and casting fog
after fog if you don’t have a refill engine is just worthless. Obviously there
are some exceptions to this rule, especially if you add Baneslayer Angel to the
mix, but I’m pretty sure you will do better if you follow this one on average.
Also, I won many games on 5 or 6 cards with only Howling Mine in them, as even
a hand with four lands and Howling Mine should be good enough. Since you will
be drawing cards each turn thanks to those artifacts or Planeswalkers you have,
starting with 1 or 2 cards less hardly even matters.
Jace Beleren and Safe
Passage
At Worlds, some people didn’t really know about
the interaction between Safe Passage and the blue Planeswalker. The thing is
that you get to kill Jace if you attack it, even if Safe Passage is cast,
because it only prevents damage that would be dealt to players. This is
obviously different than Angelsong, which actually prevents all combat
damage.
I’m not sure if those tricks would work, now
that everyone knows about the deck, but some of the tricks you could do
included for instance casting Safe Passage on the beginning of combat, so that
many people unfamiliar with the card would not even attack. That doesn’t mean
that you can only win by playing bad people or people that don’t know how the
cards work, I couldn’t even use this trick at Worlds because I didn’t find a
window to use it, was it either because I was playing good people or just
because it didn’t matter at all.
But there’s something else that was really
happening and it was quite surprising for me: People played as if I wasn’t just
going to play a fog effect every turn. They thought it was just better to
attack with their whole team to try and kill me, and sometimes they even forgot
about Jace Beleren.
Get the Best out of
Time Warp
This is probably a common mistake, but I have
seen people playing this deck, and they just can’t hold on to Time Warp until
it’s really necessary. It’s not like if it’s in your hand, you need to cast it
automatically if you have the mana. The key is to cast it at the very last
possible moment, as the more card drawing engines there are on the board, the
better it gets, and it can be crucial to reach the ultimate of Jace Beleren,
casting the Warps consecutively, before passing the turn back.
Play around Maelstrom
Pulse
This is really important in all the matchups
that have it, as it’s really important to not get your resources destroyed. You
can do that by not playing Howling Mine on turn 2, and save it until turn 4 if
you have the Flashfreeze, or if you have Font of Mythos, it might be worth to
go Time Warp on the 5th turn, just to reach the 6th land
and play Font with 2 mana open for Flashfreeze backup. Either way, don’t forget
to never play the second Mine or the second Font if you already have one on the
board, as it will only make sure that Maelstrom Pulse crushes you even more. If
you instead save one of those in hand until you draw a counter, you will just
be able to play it next turn as if nothing had happened.
Calculate your Life Total
for the Next Turns
With this deck you have to calculate your possible
life total every turn, and consider what your opponent might play on each turn,
just to know if keeping mana open for a fog effect will be crucial or not. For
instance, if you have Jace and it’s turn 4 against Jund, you will have to play
around Bloodbraid, so it might be actually better to play something like a Day of Judgment first, and then Jace followed by Flashfreeze or Angelsong. Another
example can be when you have Font of Mythos and you need to calculate how much
damage you can possibly take in order to be able to tap out safely on turn
four. If in order to do so, you need to play some fogs on turn two and three,
that shouldn’t be a problem, as drawing three cards per turn, this deck should
be able to basically draw either Angelsong, Safe Passage, Time Warp or Day of Judgment, which give you more time to get another draw step safely and repeat
the process.
Matchups
I guess you will all be interested in what my
sideboard plans against each of the top decks looked like:
Jund
This is really the kind of matchup were you
can’t make mistakes, as some games are really, really close. If you are on the
play and have Howling Mine or Jace, you can have an easy game if they don’t
have an early Pulse for every card draw engine you play, or if you manage to
protect them with Flashfreeze. Let me say this, Jund is not really a fast deck,
and it has actually many mana problems to curve out all the creatures so there
are a lot of chances that they are not going turn 2 Leech, turn 3 Pulse anyway.
Even when they tap out for turn 3 Maelstrom Pulse, they are not playing a
threat on that same turn, so that gives you actually another turn to recover
and play yet another card draw engine. After all, you play 12 of them, and they
only have 4 Pulses.
On top of that, a quarter of their deck is just
useless against you or just not as good as it would be in almost any other
situation, which is what happens when they start casting Blightning with an
active Howling Mine on board for example, or after combat if you have cast Safe Passage that turn. If you manage to survive the first waves, it will be very
hard for you to lose. After sideboard, they will yet have another permanent
that they have to Pulse away: Baneslayer Angel
-1 Path to Exile -1 Archive Trap -3 Day of Judgment +1 Sunspring Expedition +4 Baneslayer Angel
Boros Bushwhacker
This matchup is slightly favourable and depends
a lot on the post board games. Pre-board, everything you need to do is try to
get out of burn range, so that means try to have a fog for every Bushwhacker
hit, and try to set up a card drawing engine lock as soon as possible, so that
it assures you a fog each turn. Sometimes that means tapping out for Font on
turn four, and going down to 5 or 6 life, but it’s ok if after that you can get
back some life with Kabira Crossroads and Time Warps, just to fill up your hand
with Safe Passages, Angelsongs or Flashfreezes. After board, the real problem
is Manabarbs, so basically keep in mind to play around that.
-1 Path to Exile, -1 Archive Trap, -2 Jace Beleren, -1 Time Warp, -1 Font of Mythos, -1 Flashfreeze
+4 Baneslayer Angel, +2 Wall of Denial +1 Sunspring Expedition
Eldrazi Green / Elves
This matchup is very easy, and you should only
pay attention to sideboard cards like Acidic Slime, which are easily trumped by Flashfreeze. In the first game, they have nothing against your game plan, so
just sit there, cast some card draw engines, and play a fog only when you
really need to do so, as they won’t even have burn to kill you. If they somehow
play the red splash, the matchup is not complicated either, as you only need
Sunspring Expedition in that case for their burn.
-1 Path to Exile, +1 Tezzeret the Seeker
GW / GWb / Dark Bant
Cards like Qasali Pridemage, Oblivion Ring or Maelstrom Pulse might be problematic if you don’t play around them, but the
very truth is that this matchup will never get harder than Jund, so this means
it will be favourable anyway. They are slow, and you can even counter the
creatures with Flashfreeze or reset the board with Day of Judgment…
-2 Sunspring Expedition, -1 Path to Exile, -1 Archive Trap
UGW Bant
-2 Sunspring Expedition -1 Path to Exile -1 Archive Trap -1 Flashfreeze, -2 Time Warp +4 Baneslayer Angel +3 Negate
Just be careful with Negates or other counters
post board. As for maindeck, just pay attention to Bant Charm, which is like an
instant Pulse that can also counter your fog, so better be prepared to have
either Flashfreeze or the second fog, just in case. Anyway, Time Warp is not
very good after board, at least not until the very last turns, as it’s really
bad if they manage to counter it with Negate: You don’t get the extra turn, you
get tapped out, and get killed next turn.
UWB Planeswalkers
-2 Sunspring Expedition, -4 Safe Passage, -1 Angelsong, -1 Path to Exile, -4 Flashfreeze, +4 Baneslayer Angel, +2 Pithing Needle, +1 Tezzeret the Seeker, +2 Wall of Denial, +3 Negate
This matchup is only problematic if they manage
to counter your early card draw engines with multiple Negates, and then proceed
to resolve Jace Beleren or Sorin Markov. Other than that, Tezzeret and Pithing Needles after sideboard are just too good.
Vampires
-4 Flashfreeze, -1 Safe Passage, -1 Path to Exile, +1 Tezzeret the Seeker, +1 Pithing Needle, +3 Negate, -1 Sunspring Expedition
Not a good matchup, but it’s not that bad
either with Sunspring Expedition to get out of the range of Malakir Blood Witch.
Also, Pithing Needle on Vampire Hexmage after sideboard makes things much easier, so
you get to stick Jace Beleren and win faster with the Ultimate. Mind Sludge is
not even such a problem when you have resolved multiple card draw engines.
Unearth Combo
-4 Flashfreeze, -4 Safe Passage, +1 Tezzeret the Seeker, +3 Negate, +2 Pithing Needle, +2 Relic of Progenitus
This is the worst matchup, by far. The problem
is not even the unearth synergy and Extractor Demon, but the Hedron Crab
ability, and the fact that they will eventually draw it and deck you soon
enough. You still have Day of Judgment, and Path to Exile, but a smart opponent
will just play the Crabs one by one, and trigger them with some fetchlands. You
need to race them with Archive Traps and, in the meantime, annul their main
game plan, which also includes milling, with Relic of Progenitus or Pithing Needle. Seems easy? Well, it’s not.
The Future of Jacerator
As for the future of the deck, it’s still
uncertain, but I really think Jacerator is more than a metagame deck. It’s
probably not going to be ever considered the best deck, but in Rome I felt like
it was the best deck by far. The problem is, that now people will be prepared
for it, and I’m even expecting some kind of hate, in the form of Naturalize or
even Pithing Needle (hopefully not Unstable Footing). But that doesn’t even
kill the deck. The main problem I’ve found is that now everyone will keep
removal after board, thus making Baneslayer Angel not a very good plan B
anymore. Maybe something else can be added, but the lifelink was really what
made it shine in most matchups. Maybe something like multiple Martial Coups in
the sideboard, or some Sphinx of Jwar Isle, but then again the angel is just
the best creature in the format anyway, so there is no need to change it even
if they have the removal. And you could still trick your opponent with something
like bringing them in for game 3 only.
The maindeck is almost perfect to me, and although
I was asked if I would change a card, I don’t think I would. If so, if you
expect a lot of Boros or red decks, just go for +1 Sunspring Expedition and
take out the lone Path to Exile, but it was good at removing random early
creatures, protecting Jace, and removing problematic guys like Siege-Gang Commander, Ob-Nixilis, the Fallen or…Hedron Crab.
If you haven’t tried the deck yet, I recommend
doing so; you will enjoy it for sure…or hate it! But at least you will get to
play some Islands!
I hope you liked the guide! See you next week!
Joel
PS: Yay! This time I didn’t miss my flight!
Blue
Red
White
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Kudos for originality. I always love it when someone manages to take something completely unorthodox and goes rogue on the meta - and succeed. I put together your deck list and played with it over the weekend, and though I personally despise the lack of interaction - as far as play style is concerned - I respect its power.
I just hope Manabarbs are enough to Bushwhack any soul that might try this out at FNM.
Thanks for the write-up, Joel!
Question: you didn't actually say what 4 cards you're bringing in vs. GW/GWb/Dark Bant; is it just the 4 Baneslayers?
Now that more people are likely to play the deck, what are your thoughts on the mirror? Should the SB have more Archive Traps for that matchup?
Luis
The quest for ancient secret !!
You didn't mention the very first Howling Mine Deck (well, unless you count Howling Mine / Winter Orb + Icy Manipulator Decks) - Turbo Stasis. What a beautiful deck that was =)
Oops, sorry about that. Yeah, the missing cards you are supposed to sideboard in are 4 Baneslayer Angel.
As for the mirror, you got it, Quest for Ancient Secrets is probably the best card! (I had been thinking about this even before the event)
Anyway, I know there were some Howling Mine decks before, but I wasn't really playing back then, so I just took the most recent ones I guess : P
Joel.
oh lord, how i loved turbo stasis back in the days....gratz for building and piloting such a beautiful deck :)
@ Alash - That's why you float 2W and cast Safe Passage in response to the 'barbs triggers :)
@ Joel Calafell - Can you elaborate a bit on why the 1 Path to Exile is in there? You board it out in every matchup except Unearth, which I haven't heard is a major player in the metagame. Is there any other card you considered for that slot?
BTW - Your Cascade Swans win was what initially interested me in following Pro Tour Magic. I'll never have the budget for either, but a fine deck nevertheless.
Thanks for giving a rouge player some hope. I have piloted GWU Turbofog since rotation, and it's probably the most fun I have had. Im so happy to see that turbo fog had a showing among the pros. Awesome job.
thanks for sharing the insights.
i put the deck together and tested against a friend of mine that played a Jund homebrew(with Acidic Slimes and Lotus Cobras main instead of blightning, which accelerated him into T3 Bloodbraid Nuts quite often) oh...he didnt know i would bring Jacerator.
Pre Board was slightly in my favour, but after he boarded in 3xPithing Needle (on Jace, obviously) and freaking Goblin Ruinblaster (i felt like i really needed all the mana i can get) i lost like 6 games in a row.
sure, this might not represent the usual Jund list but still, i felt like P. Needle on Jace was game over a lot of times.
the hasty Ruinblasters and Elves put up a lot of pressure and i found myself in a bad position a lot of the time, where i needed to fog earlier than i wanted, tapping out and open myself vulnerable to pulses/needles/garruk/slimes.
meh, he crushed me.
thoughts about the mirror? the deck surely has gotten some attention and you might stumble accross the mirror at larger tournaments.
@Jenesis: The previous list included more than one Path to Exile first, with something like 2 Sunspring Expedition and 2 Path to Exile, but the card was only a "maindeck card", as you usually had something better post board against almost everything else that didn't include Ob Nixilis, Siege-Gangs or other relevant creatures.
For maindeck purposes, though, the most relevant thing about it, is that it was nor the 4th Day of Judgment, nor the 3rd Sunspring Expedition, which I didn't like at all, but instead, 1 Path to Exile seemed just fine against pretty much everything, and was quite good on the 4th turn to protect Jace and in the late game to force the Archive Traps. More copies of Path to Exile weren't really needed in the end, hence only one copy included.
On the other hand, the mirror seems a bit crazy, but if you really expect a lot of it, you definitelly need to try something that includes a Quest for Ancient Secrets package, or if you feel like you need something extra, you might try something like Hedron Crab (yes, even without the fetchlands),and some Ranger of Eos. Not. Kidding. Here.
Joel.
Thanks for your comments, Joel; they're very helpful.
If you were playing the same 75 cards you played at Worlds and ran into the mirror match, how would you SB?
If you expected the mirror and modified your SB, what would the new one look like and how would you board?
Luis
Loved the deck Joel, I had been playing a similar buw build to take advantage of mind funerals and hedron crabs in it, my friends and I agreed that the favorite play to do was path to exile a birds of paradise and hit with a free archive trap or two, had one game where I majorly lucked out had three in opening hand with the path and my opponent just started laughing/crying at the same time. can't wait to see what the next two sets give the deck. On a side note I was using silence rather than the time warps wondered what you thought of them.
@ducat: you can also use Time Warps on your opponent to mill them out more quickly if they don't have much on the board or you have the mana for Warp + fog effect.
true enough about the warps, the silence I've found works well early almost like another fog to slow down development of aggro decks, I guess it's potatoe potato really
Hey Joel
Everyone is saying the quest for ancient secrets main deck, i very much agree with this one but would telemin performance not be a better sideboard card? I played the mirror with telemin and it is a powerhouse, with 6 creatures in a deck of 60 drawing 8 cards a turn they are likely to fold to a 2nd Telemin performance plus 2 archive trap as well would this not work? and maybe 1 quest for ancient secrets as well to shuffle all back in just in case.
This is not a "potatoe potato" difference. Time Warp allows you to ultimate on Jace. Time Warp is also a fog in addition to a Silence effect.
What you need to keep in mind, is that in the mirror, this becomes just a mill battle on both sides, as there's really no other way to win this matchup, so that means you should focus on either decking faster than them, or just prevent them from doing so. Things will be awkward anyway, as most card drawing effects are symmetric here...
Quest for Ancient Secrets is both good to give you a better late game range against decking and to "counter" Telemin's Perfomance, so I pretty much think this enchantment is the best card in the mirror by far. However, smart oponents might have a set of Pithing Needles and Tezzeret/s ready for that, so I don't think you can rely only on that.
On the other side, Hedron Crabs and Ranger of Eos are also very good when facing Telemin's Perfomance, it that ever becomes the main win condition for them. I must admit that I haven't tried them on paper, but since there's no way to actually counter a Crab or a Ranger, and they are also inmune to Pithing Needle, I'd say the plan looks pretty good. However, it will be hard to fit all that in the sideboard, so don't do that unless you expect really A LOT of mirror. Otherwise, just try to play more Quest for Ancient Secrets than your opponent.
If you are not worried about monored or the crypt decks, you could go with something like this:
2 Quest for Ancient Secrets
2 Ranger of Eos
4 Hedron Crab
2 Negate
2 Baneslayer Angel
2 Pithing Needle
1 Tezzeret, the Seeker
On a side note don't forget that you can go infinite with multiple Time Warps, one Quest for Ancient Secrets and enough carddrawing effects! You still need to cast/cycle/discard end step 5 cards in between, but you can do that with enough Font of Mythos in play!
Joel.
Thanks, Joel.
I may end up running a few copies of Quest for Ancient Secrets, but going overboard with a Ranger/Crab package is probably not necessary, since I don't expect that many people to run the deck, and I wouldn't want to make more common matchups like Jund worse by cutting Baneslayers, etc.
Assuming the same 75 cards from Worlds, how would you SB for the mirror? You obviously have lots of dead/suboptimal cards (e.g. Flashfreeze), but if you expect opposing Baneslayers then you probably need to leave some amount of creature control/fogs in there, etc.
Luis
Hey joel have you thought about spellbook in place of path to exile? Just wondering. would you change that?
spell book also works with tezzeret
Does O-ring have any merit in a deck like this?-
I tried the Unearth matchup today and it was pretty bad, even post-SB games. Quest for Ancient Secrets would also be good in that matchup, I think, but to reliably draw it you need multiple copies, so that it doesn't just get Crabbed.
Granted I don't think it'll be a huge part of the metagame, due to having a rough Boros matchup, so perhaps it's not such a big deal.
Luis
With the same 75 cards, it becomes a bit tricky, but I guess I would go with:
-4 Flashfreeze, -4 Safe Passage,-2 Sunspring Expedition -1 Day of Judgment
+1 Tezzeret, the Seeker, +2 Pithing Needle (so you get to search for it if they have Jace and you don't or against possible Quests), +2 Relic of Progenitus (you can cycle it, and "counters" Quest for Ancient Secrets) +3 Negate, +3 Baneslayer Angel (you get to kill Jace with it if they have boarded out enough fogs or creature removal).
As for Spellbook, you are ok with seven cards in hand really, the only important thing is to survive every possible turn, so it's not like you are trying to get an insane amount of card advantage. Besides a whole new hand every turn is more than enough.
Unearth matchup is really bad yeah, still, nothing you can really do about it. In fact, I almost thought about not playing Relics at all, because that doesn't even mean you will have a "fair" game, but I think I'd still like to have some chances. But overall don't expect to win that matchup.
Ok so I plan on playing jacerator at states and I came across a problem. People are running alot of sideboard hate for this deck. Runeflare trap, quest for ancient secrets, and unstable footing. What do you suggest to deal with that I understand flashfreeze and negate are great ways to work against the red cards and pithing needle deals with quest, but I was curious if you had any other suggestions. I was thinking about running pithing mainboard or oblivion ring mainboard. To deal with the hate cards, and the obvious issue like anaji and with the stable card draw I do not think running the extra two cards would be an issue but I want to ask your opinion.
Hi Joel,
Any thoughts on how to SB vs. RDW decks, like the one Petr Brodzek ran at Worlds?
I imagine you'd board similarly to the Boros matchup, but that you'd also want Pithing Needle for their Ajanis and Unearth creatures; Day of Judgment seems lackluster when most of their guys die at EOT, but they still have Guides and Geopedes, so perhaps they have to stay in.
Luis
Just wondering, how come Sejiri Refuge doesn't fit in the land slots in place of 2 Islands and 2 Plains? is the "enters the battlefield tapped" that match of a drawback for this deck? it seems like the life plus mana fixing would be decent.
Is there any place for Luminarch Ascension in this list or do you think that card simply does not belond?
Why would Luminarch Ascension be good the idea is to mill them anyway you need your mana every turn and cant waste it pumping out angels
i have the same question someone else asked: why no Sejiri Refuge?
in place of the m10 rare lands, I have 2 refuge, 1 island and 1 reliquary tower. Granted you dont NEED 15 cards in hand, but it's fun
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