Castle Vantress

Land

Castle Vantress enters the battlefield tapped unless you control an Island.

{T}: Gain {U}.

{2}{U}{U}, {T}: Scry 2.

Discussion (51)

abbatromebone on Jeskai Poppet

1 month ago

• Poppet Stitcher  ^Flip Is great when you have 1/1s but bad if they do anything more. Prowess is an ability so you tokens wouldn't be as strong. 3 mana is also fairly espensive. We would want to slow the game down more. I might suggest Luminarch Ascension being this is a value control deck. It helps keep card advantage and if you are holding mana you can sink it here at the end step.
• Manamorphose also seems pretty good in the deck its a spell that gives you your mana back/fixes it into any of your needed colors and is card neutral.
• Hard Evidence might be replaced with Slight of Hand or Serum Visions being you want to filter your deck better.
• You are sitting a 8 fetchlands i wouldnt go past 6, 6 shock lands is also high Jeskai control is current running 7 fetch and 3 shock lands.
• Consider Mystic Gate Castle Vantress Celestial Colonnade 1x Raugrin Triome Hall of Storm Giants 1x Eiganjo, Seat of the Empire The creature lands can help close games or stall games when needed.They also are more evasive which can help. Utility lands are worth it they really help. Fiery Islet and Sunbaked Canyon can also help draw cards and filter. I run 5 in my burn deck.
• I also think 6 basics is a lot i would only do 2-3 personally. Espically when Seachrome Coast Inspiring Vantage and Spirebluff Canal exist.
• Spectral Procession is a good value card to think about, Lingering Souls is also a card but i wouldnt go that route personally.
• Boros Charm is also a great card that can protect against board wipes or give some burst with a mentor token or just give you the needed reach to close some games.
• Let me know if you want me to look at the deck some more

Guerric on [Primer] Crouching One-Drop, Hidden Ninja *Update*

2 months ago

xram666

Castle Vantress is indeed a good card and one could argue that there isn't much of a reason not to play it. My main issue is simply that I can't see myself paying 4 mana for the scry effect. Usually, I'd rather just play ninjas and roll the dice as that tends to get the job done. The funny thing about Yuriko is it plays kind of like a {R} deck painted {U}{B}, and controlling the top-deck is generally not as important as just killing everyone fast before they gang up on you. That being said, I could see corner cases where I only have one ninja and a small amount of life left where it could be worth it, so I may indeed add it.

Thanks for the suggestion!

xram666 on [Primer] Crouching One-Drop, Hidden Ninja *Update*

2 months ago

Although only a third of your lands are islands, Castle Vantress could be another option for top-deck manipulation.

Grubbernaut on UW Control to stomp the …

3 months ago

Between the budget and insistence on playing pet cards, you're probably not going to be crushing meta decks, my man.

Fateful Absence is pretty bad in a world of 1cmc threats; you could consider Portable Hole. Doomskar isn't very good, but Terminus could be "okay" if you definitely want maindeck sweepers. 6 walkers is also a lot, you might cut that some.

Some general cards to consider: manabase, Fire / Ice splashing red, Shark Typhoon, Castle Vantress

Overall, control feels like it's in a fairly rough spot in the current meta.

cyeRunner on Grixis (No Shadow)

4 months ago

I recommend 1x Hall of Storm Giants as a wincon and 1x Castle Vantress as manasink and draw filtering.
Also get rid of the Blood Crypt: with both Counterspell and Archmage's Charm requiring a lot of you can't really afford to play lands that don't produce that color.

DreadKhan on Bouncer Brag

4 months ago

I wonder if Yorion, Sky Nomad would fit in here? Brago flickering him will let you double up on the effect, and let you untap non-creatures to hold up mana for other players' turns. You could toss in some extra mana sinks, like Castle Vantress or Faerie Formation.

Nephalia Smuggler works pretty well with Mistbind Clique to lock someone out of their lands for 3U on their upkeep, or anything else worth blinking. Mulldrifter is a ton of value in Brago too, if you're not worried about closing the game too quickly.

zapyourtumor on ULTIMATE AZORIUS CONTROL

5 months ago

Manabase: Temple lands tend to be pretty slow for modern. The filtering is nice but if I ran it I would only run 1, 4 feels like too many. I suggest running some manlands like Hall of Storm Giants and Celestial Colonnade, and maybe some filtering with Castle Vantress (which can enter untapped unlike the temples).

Counters: Counterspell is great. Some of your other choices could probably be improved though. Dovin's Veto is more of a sideboard card, while Force of Negation isn't as good in straight-up control lists since you go down on card advantage. Archmage's Charm is a strong counterspell that can also draw cards or steal an opponents threat which could be a Ragavan, DRC, hexdrinker, esper sentinel equipped with a hammer, etc, and I'd slot it in over Render Silent.

Overwhelming Denial is very bad because you will almost never have surge. If you want to play 4 mana counters I suggest good old Cryptic Command. Ashiok's Erasure is similarly bad. Even if it handles uncounterable threats (which aren't as numerous as you might think), it's generally better to just remove those threats instead of playing a bad 4 mana counter.

Removal: Verdicts are good (4 is a lot but I frequently see 3). However, Detention Sphere and Ixalan's Binding are both pretty slow removal spells. Sphere is not bad as a 1 of, but Binding is definitely too slow. The best removal spell in white right now is Prismatic Ending which I suggest since it can deal with opponents t1 ragavan and stuff. It would be better if you ran fetches and 1 three-color triome, but it's still not bad. Solitude is another option for removing bigger creatures. Cyclonic Rift is just bad, because bounce spells require you to waste another counterspell dealing with them. This deck is maybe the one deck in modern where you would overload it, but an overloaded cyclonic rift is to save your ass when you're behind, and if you're at 7 lands you're probably far ahead already. I'd just replace with more removal/counters.

Wincons: The planeswalkers look pretty solid, but I'm not sure Luminarch Ascension is worth it, given how mana-intensive it is. You could maybe work in 1 Teferi, Hero of Dominaria which is a control powerhouse.

DrkNinja on Dead Silence

5 months ago

Ok so I didn't check to see if any of these were in the deck already but... here's my list of suggestions!

It's a lot of cards so...

• Imperial Seal
• Personal Tutor
• Vampiric Tutor
• Liliana Vess
• Cruel Tutor
• Diabolic Vision
• Nephalia Academy
• Library of Leng
• Aqueous Form
• Ashiok, Dream Render
• Augury Owl
• Baleful Mastery
• Bolas's Citadel
• Brainstorm
• Cabal Coffers
• Castle Vantress
• Commit / Memory
• Connive / Concoct
• Curse of the Cabal
• Darksteel Pendant
• Dauthi Voidwalker
• Deadly Rollick
• Devastation Tide
• Dig Through Time
• Discovery / Dispersal
• Draco
• Far / Away
• Fierce Guardianship
• Foil
• Force of Will
• Grazilaxx, Illithid Scholar
• Gudul Lurker
• Into the Story
• Invisible Stalker
• Jace, the Mind Sculptor
• Key to the City
• Krydle of Baldur's Gate
• Looter il-Kor
• Misdirection
• Mist-Cloaked Herald
• Murderous Cut
• Nether Traitor
• Never / Return
• Nexus of Fate
• Opposition Agent
• Phantom Ninja
• Rags / Riches
• Rogue Class
• Sage Owl
• Scroll Rack
• Sea Gate Restoration  ^Flip
• Sensei's Divining Top
• Siren Stormtamer
• Spire Owl
• Spite / Malice
• Strionic Resonator
• Submerge
• Temporal Trespass
• Tetsuko Umezawa, Fugitive
• Thalakos Seer
• The Cauldron of Eternity
• The Magic Mirror
• Thespian's Stage
• Throatseeker
• Tormented Soul
• Treasure Cruise
• Triton Shorestalker
• Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth
• Varragoth, Bloodsky Sire
• Whispersilk Cloak
• Deserted Temple
• Taigam's Scheming

Again some of these may be cut worthy but off the cuff this is what I came up with. Also I didn't include any ninjas... I figure they are easy enough to find