She’s great against a few decks. Strategies that put a lot of stock into a few threats, like Delver and midrange, and strategies that rely on hand advantage like UWx Control, really hate seeing Liliana on the other side of the table. Combined with postboard removal, she does a number on creature-based aggro too, including Abzan CoCo and Merfolk.

There are plenty of options you can play over Liliana, but the ones you want depend on your metagame. In a linear meta, play Mimics and skip Lili altogether. In an Eldrazi meta, try Endbringer or Sower. In a meta full of Twin knock-offs and Infect, play whatever you want and you’ll win anyway.

I quite like the “CRUNCH” tagline ^^

Well designed.
Fun.
Fair.
Balanced.
Skill intensive.
Playable by anyone who likes to actually play Magic.
Breeder of good taglines; as exemplified by “CRUNCH!”.
Fun.

What do you think? If you only had 3 Liliana, what would you replace?

Guarateed it will continue to climb, as crazy as that sounds, because there are still plenty of people, like me, who haven’t bought in yet. And many others who are realizing the deck is real and broken. And no one will be leaving the deck because why would you? It is infinitely customizable as the base is colorless. Literally can work with any freaking color.

Just watch. I’m going to build a Mono U eldrazi deck and jam 4 copies of Storm Crow and I will probably still have a lot of success.

Chalice is a meta punishing card. It’s not always good. In a linear aggro meta, chalice is just the right card to play. No card should be banned because it punishes a narrow field.

“Unless you are already far behind on cards and/or board, which for an aggro deck usually means you’ve already lost, eldrazi doesn’t have many cards that let you pull back in. Better to just get ahead and try to stay there.”

Of course, but that doesn’t always happen. I prefer to build the deck so we can claw our way back into games we fall behind in relatively painlessly. With Eldrazi like Reality Smasher and Endbringer, or stabilizers like Liliana of the Veil, that’s more than possible.

If Wizards bans any thing it will be lands. The majority of all the creatures are still playable and will see some play without the fast mana.

In my testing it is still very difficult to beat them even if they dont hit a sol land. They are OPed creatures for the cost most with a built in 2-1. Its only ever busted with the fast mana; with the format quickly devolving into Modern Oath of the Gatewatch block cunstructed if this keeps up banning wills will happen. It wont be chalice, im on UR Delver and tbh T1 chalice sucks but easy to board against; but being able to drop T2 3/4 drop and following it up on T3 two 4 drops or a 6 all of which put you down on cards if you manage to kill them.

I was trying UW control leaning on supreme verdict gave it up for now; to often would i be SVing a bunch of matter reshapers and endlessones just to have the opponennt untap into TKS+Reality Smasher.

I know that, but they are beatable in testing. The main reason the eldrazi went so well in Pro Tour Oath was chalice….. the winner (UR eldrazi without chalice) was favorite also because in top8 met all the time good match ups (colorless eldrazi decks with main chalice, a card the UR didn’t care). But all these colorless eldrazi did their job previously and eliminated all the aggro decks – small combo decks (as infect), the reason was chalice.

For the record, many of the new Eldrazi decks popping up (GW, GR, BG, all linked in the article) do not play Chalice.

I started with 3 Gemstone Caverns and eventually cut them down to 1. Guide is much more reliable and great on turns outside of the first (i.e. for turn 2 Smashers or Lilis).

Mimic is a great card in certain metagames, especially when you need to race and aren’t expecting many Bolts. I’m anticipating a metagame shift towards interactive strategies that have no problem killing a turn one Mimic, and Reshaper will be better there. If the metagame remains highly linear, Mimic is a stronger choice.

Disagree. Turn 2 Thought-Knot usually wins by itself, sure.
But T1 Mimic into T2 smasher is one sequence with SSG that isn’t a likely win without mimic.
Yes mimic is weak to removal, but dealing with it T1 will often mean the opp needs to take extra damage from a shock land or something, which is non-negligable when you are playing an aggro deck. If the only removal they have is say Path and I curve into smasher, I’m happy to deal 2 and either get ramped or have them discard to deal with my T1 play. And I’m still hitting for 5.
Let’s see how it fairs vs some archetypes:
(a) against aggro, they are usually too busy trying to drop their threats to deal with mimic. And if they use their first turn to deal with it, then I retain tempo and I will win the race, which is all I really care about vs aggro
(b) against combo, you really just want the most explosive starts possible, since you aren’t winning the long game
(c) against control, what T1 removal are you really worried about? Probably just bolt, which actually isn’t seeing much play in the matchups you care about right now.

Plus, mimic is *not* a bad topdeck, since you can often play it for free along with whatever else you were doing that turn, which is a nice tempo swing. Unless you are already far behind on cards and/or board, which for an aggro deck usually means you’ve already lost, eldrazi doesn’t have many cards that let you pull back in. Better to just get ahead and try to stay there.

I would be surprised if cutting Mimic ultimately proves to be correct for this archetype.

If we’re playing Serum Powder, why not cut the Spirit Guides for Gemstone Caverns? Curving out 3-4-5 from turn 1 seems appealing. We can even pitch the Powder to Caverns in a non-zero number of games.

Could be sweet in the Colorless version. So far I’m getting by with Gut Shots. I usually play black, though, and Flaying Tendrils creams them.

Those are all good points, guys. These decisions make more sense to me now. Thanks!

^All of this! Reshaper can actually kill opponents on his own, too; 3 is a way bigger number than 2 when it comes to clocking. Chalice for two is really nice against most interactive decks, and it usually shuts off artifact removal at that number.

I think Mimic is usually win-more. The dream is turn one Mimic, turn two Thought-Knot, turn three Smasher, right? That draw probably wins without Mimic, and I don’t think he’s worth running to improve good draws because he’s such a bad topdeck later.

I bet it is a concession to the mirror. Matter reshaper is never a dead draw, and even if he is outclassed on board, he still represents a card. Typically, the slightly bigger agro deck wins over the slightly smaller

in addition, being able to play chalice on 2 without compromising any threats is just a huge game