So I played my list back again and unlike the last times, this time it all fell apart.

Im going to try a list much closer to yours, as it felt like my deck failed me more than it was out of posiition. Im going to add in the manland package of tectonic edge because the edges were just worthless all night and I absolutely ran out of threats.

In addition, Im going to flip out the mindstones for mimics, as getting onto the board really is the biggest thing.

As for the SB, the thorns were a lot were in real games than they were on cockatrice texting, so Im going to flip those for some ghostfireblades (for more aggression) and pithing needles (catch all) for the times when chalice isnt at its best and I just need to get em dead faster or answer something random

I think I was mostly afraid of Ad Nauseam because of how weak the matchup was when I put this deck back together and we got Eternal Scourge. Dredge was on my mind and soon rose to prominence in the format, and I felt more comfortable playing mainboard Relics than Chalices. With this standard, Guide-Chalice build, AN becomes much easier to defeat.

In my testing experience, EldraTron is favorable. I have a friend who’s sworn by the deck since Eye was legal and never had trouble beating him. It’s been easy for me to get under them with Mimics, 3/3s, Quarters, and Dismembers. Things didn’t work out that way at the event so I’ll be putting more time into this matchup shortly.

Gemstone is superb in this deck and one of the pieces of glue that holds it together. Without Gemstone or Powder, I would advocate for just playing Bant Eldrazi. Current Eldrazi decks need additional consistency tools to get their fast mana online without Eye (Bant has Hierarch and Stirrings; Tron has Map; we have Gemstone and Powder). So Cavern of Souls, if anything, would play a role as a flex land, probably replacing a Sea Gate or a manland or two.

Blue decks have been laughably easy for me to beat with Relic + Scourge though, not to mention the mana/card advantage generated by Temple and Sea Gate, the extra bodies on lands, and the weight pulled by Chalice. So I don’t even see a need to try Cavern. See the match against Jeskai (Round 9) for a specific example. Most matches against midrange permission decks play out in a similar fashion.

Notably, Bant Eldrazi lacks these anti-Mana Leak plans and needs the color consistency that Cavern offers, and EldraTron can search Cavern with Map, so the land makes a lot more sense in those decks than in this one.

Yeah, I am pretty sure your chalice version is much stronger, and hopefully I will be able to upgrade someday. Thanks for showig this deck a bit, you convinced me to play colorless eldrazi with your articles on it, and it is by far the most fun I have had in modern.

Short answer is not relevant.

Longer answer: the hands you end up keeping are so good that you rarely care if you open one or two dead Powders, and the upside of finding great hands without losing too many cards and potentially going “up cards” with Scourge makes awkward Powders down the road totally worth it. But it occasionally has in-game utility too, sometimes ramping us from three to five for Smasher, or functioning as a slow but necessary land drop (like in my third game of Round 5 against Burn).

It’s fun deck, thanks for creating it and writing about it.

I love that too. Best aspect of the format, and the most under-admitted!

That was mildly… Very annoying.

Love the deck. Congrats on the results

Ghostfire Blade I think is fine in this deck so long as you don’t play Chalice. That means running Relic in the mainboard, and in this metagame, I don’t see Relic having a place over Chalice in our primary 60. With Dredge gone, it would actually take a lot to change that. Chalice is where we want to be for the foreseeable future, which is bad news for Ghostfire Blade. Obviously priorities shift on a budget, but I don’t brew with that dimension in mind, instead preferring to optimize decks for Modern.

I haven’t found lifegain to be needed in this deck, but Tomb is definitely a flex option for lands should that change. Interesting scenario vs. 8Rack.

Sweet meme bro. I actually tested Tec Edge against Valakut decks and was not impressed. The variants that give us trouble run Through the Breach, which lets them just dump a ton of lands onto the battlefield at once and overwhelm any kind of single-destroy effects we might have. TTB decks are our worst matchup, and none of your changes actually address these decks.

Thorn doesn’t do anything I want. Ad Nauseam is not a very difficult matchup, as evidenced by this report (although I can see how your build, which lacks Mimic, would have a harder time beating it). Chalice handles the rest of the cantrip decks pretty efficiently.

As for Mind Stone, I think if you’re going to go that route, you might as well just play Eldrazi Tron. The point of this deck is to come out blazing. If you want to cut Mimics and play ramp, you’d benefit from actually playing the best ramp available (UrzaTron and Map). Of course, in doing that, you give up points against strategies you need to just race.

I like two right now. Really hate drawing multiples and it’s weaker than extra threats in many scenarios.

I wrote up a report that can be found here: https://scontent-dft4-2.xx.fbcdn.net/v/t1.0-9/16602602_1866401953629513_4903523642261816957_n.jpg?oh=0f97f5c867c587737990a813432adc47&oe=590AF3A9

But basically the biggest differences are that I drop mimic for mindstone and the manlands for tectonic edge and I play thorn of amathyst in the side. Collectively these changes all improve the worst matchups as tec edge + thorn is amazing vs all the big mana combo (valakut and ad naus)