with that exact 75 you played at the GP.
Thanks in advance!

I tried Mishra’s Bauble but it was too bad against attrition decks for me to want it (see my primer on the deck here: http://quietspeculation.com/welcome-to-the-jungle-mandrills-in-modern/ for more info on Bauble). We don’t want “slow and methodical;” just play Grixis Control if that’s your style. This is a tempo deck. Decay is sweet, but Delver really wants the reach from Lightning Bolt. Adam Fronsee had some success with a BUG list utilizing my shell at Columbus (he placed 12th). But IMO Mandrills is better than Tasigur in tempo, especially with Bolt for extra damage. Bolt is also super relevant right now, as discussed above. Finally, looking ahead, as Day’s Undoing looms over the Modern format, I really wouldn’t want to run a deck without Lightning Bolt.

Yes, Curiosity brings the Jund matchup favorable, at least according to my testing. And while it gives us some help in the Abzan matchup, we still can’t really win that one.

I´m working on that one too. One addition to your list is Grisly Salvage and Rancor. Rancor pretty much is Curiousity and Bolt married together and can lead to blowouts like T2 flipped Delver with Rancor on top protected by Shoal, backupped by Denial. Further it breaks Tas/Goys deadlocks. Salvage is a nice possible one-off as it accelerates both Goyf, pays for Tas/Mandrills aswell as digs deep.

Also, GP Copenhagen’s results disagree with your assertion of Merfolk being lower-tier. The deck may be linear, but underestimate it at your peril.

I lack the tarns/mistys so have been working with sultai and grixis builds (you can live without one fetch type but not both).

In a nutshell you lose bolt, gain abrupt decay and tasigur. It plays a slower, more methodical (4 snapcaster) game than RUG since you don’t have bolt to burn people out and you can grind better with tasigur and snapcaster if it goes long.

My assessment has been that mandrils, charms, curiosity and shoals all need to go together as a package. But I think once you’re on decay instead of bolt eeking quick points of damage off of charm pumps and mandrils trample loses some of its lustre as you’re less likely to just get there with lethal.

Also – no baubles?

It was good playing with you. I ran a similar list to yours this week at the local shops and enjoyed it. I found I wanted the moon main deck and Simi Charm is where it was at all night.

Thanks!

The Ghost Way decklist is on the coverage page along with lots of other decks that were outside the Top 16.

http://magic.wizards.com/en/events/coverage/gpcop15/archetype-exemplar-decklists-2015-06-21

Also in all likelihood your predictions would’ve been wrong 😛

12 Aether Vials and 0 Collected Company in the top 8!
Death & Taxes
Fish wins (and has a friend in the top 8)
Goryo.dec is under-control (just Jacob Wilson in top 16)
No Amulet Bloom
Scapeshift
Death & Taxes for crying out loud
Coverage showed us the Ghostway deck (would love to see the decklist and a bit of a tournament report)

The only ‘bad’ thing to come out of GP Copenhagen was Twin’s 15% Day 2 share – which is ban talk level.

We could have done a pre-GP Copenhagen article with predictions, but it was a little too close to the previous GP to be too interesting. Also, with GP Charlotte wrapping up last week, we felt it more important to do retrospective and reflective articles on that huge event than just do predictions for the next one.

Next week will have a number of GP Copenhagen articles though!

I am sure that there will be articles on it this week. They are analyzing what happened at the events after they happened.

Hey Jordan,

Thanks for the advice; as a side note, I chose firespout mainly for the option to kill non flyers because of the delvers. The 3 damage of spout I see advantageous mainly against merfolk and collected decks but the 3cmc came up in a few games. I will try running your version because I think your assessment is spot on about being a strict tempo deck game 1, and the issue of value is properly addressed post-board as you said. I do agree simic charm is in a good place right now for the meta.

cheers,

Evan

Depends how many x/3 creatures you want to kill. I can’t think of any, so Pyroclasm’s fine. A one-mana difference matters a lot in this deck (as evidenced by how good Stubborn Denial is). If you haven’t tried more Simic Charm, give it a go; I’d call it the best card in the deck. Not really into mid-game value Game 1, so I’d rather have tempo plays like Simic Charm than Snapcaster Mage. Not having to worry about leaving specific cards in the graveyard is nice, too. Game 2, Huntmaster just does a better job at generating value than Tiago.

I just recently topped 8’ed at my local IQ with about 50 people, going 5-1-1. My build was very similar to yours but I had 18 lands and 1 dismember and 2 mimic charms in the main. I currently have 2 firespouts in the board and kept 2 snapcasters in the main deck as well. What are your thoughts about firespout vs. pyroclasm? Snapcaster seems to have so much mid-game value, did you find it too clunky, or was he cut to make room for clasm?

cheers,

Evan

Not worth it. This deck is not designed to get to RR.

Did you put any thought into running Anger of the Gods over Pyroclasm to deal with Kitchen Finks and other persist creatures, or do you just not think it’s worth the extra mana?

I divided Modern into linear decks, interactive decks (URx and BGx), and fair aggro decks. Here’s a breakdown of the Top 16 using these parameters:

Linear decks in the Top 1 (5 in Top 8):
Elves (1st)
Affinity (3rd)
Ad Nauseam (4th)
Goryo’s Vengeance (5th)
Burn (8th, 12th)
GR Tron (13th)
Lantern Control (15th)

Interactive decks in the Top 16 (2 in Top 8):
U/R Twin (2nd, 7th)
Grixis Control (9th)

Fair aggro decks in the Top 16 (1 in Top 8):
Abzan Company (6th, 11th, 14th, 16th)
Naya Company (10th)

GR Tron is the only deck that doesn’t exactly fit into any of these categories, falling somewhere between linear and interactive. I’ve put it with “linear decks” since it mostly attacks other midrange strategies in a very linear way, running expensive blanket answers that deal with anything (Oblivion Stone and Karn, Silver Golem). Like other linear decks, it’s easy to disrupt and follows a single trajectory to victory (assemble Tron while slowing down opponents via effects like Pyroclasm, cast whatever fatty you have in hand, win).

In the Top 8, we had two interactive decks (both URx), five linear decks (all of different flavors), and a single fair aggro deck. I accounted for each of these in my article, though I do consider fair aggro weaker than interactive (URx/BGx) and linear decks (the Top 8 supports this assessment). Collected Company obviously gives these decks a huge boost, more than pushing them into the realm of playable, but Modern’s history tells us that URx and BGx have and will use the tools necessary to beat these decks. Anger of the Gods, Dispel, and Grafdigger’s Cage all come to mind as splashable, effective answers.

Oops, seems like we were using pre-M10 rules. That’s embarrassing. I did have an extra land that turn, but thanks for the rules tip!