How has labman jace been doing in comparison to labman himself? Oloro_Magic and have any cards from Horizons or Core20 poke out at you to try?

Heretic_Dragoon:

At first I was very skeptical about Labman Jace , regardless of everything the three blue is a steep cost to pay, but in the past couple weeks I have been proven very wrong thankfully. On the combo turn (4) all it takes is a couple prism and a land drop to reliably play him meaning the cost is already redundant, especially considering he draws as his plus. His resiliency is also a real upside as coming in at 5 insulates him from a lot, and if our opponent is dedicating 5 damage to Jace instead of us we are already winning considering we drew a card. The biggest plus from Jace though is that he has utility outside the combo, Labman really didn't unless you were using him as a blocker (which is already a pretty bad spot usually). New Jace is a card to be excited about in your hand as he isn't dead, in fact I have won multiple games now drawing a card with Jace into the combo. His one problem for me is that he is susceptible to Dovin's Veto like the rest of the deck, something that has come up a couple times, and is awful against Dredge and Hogaak if you play him out. All in all though, as much as it saddens me to see it go, at this moment I don't see a solid reason to play Laboratory Maniac over Jace, he just has more use, and represents the most meaningful upgrade the deck has received in a long time.

As for new cards, I have been left underwhelmed unfortunately, in fact, like most I suspect, WAR is having a bigger effect on my decisions than Horizons. Flusterstorm is a nice option to have and be aware of, but its hardly something to get excited over in a format like modern. Force of Negation is in the same boat, it's okay, but hard for us to reliably cast with the pitch, maybe a Peer Through Depths list could make better use of it.

From Core 2020, the Leyline of Sanctity reprint is a nice thing to have as it makes the deck more accessible but as for individual cards, there really isn't anything that has popped out at me, at least yet, with every set it takes a while to go through it all and see if there is anything that may be worth trying. Drawn from Dreams right now is the only card that intrigues me from Core 2020, but I really wish it was an instant, sorcery speed is a big knock against it. I'll probably still try it in the Mystical Teachings slot at an FNM or something to be thorough but I am not optimistic. Maybe with baby Teferi it could be okay, but I haven't been blown away by him in testing either. Maybe I'm missing something though, so please if you have any thoughts I'd love to hear them, but as of right now I don't think there is anything that slots into our deck from the new sets, from Horizons we got a couple nice sideboard options, but Core looks like it isn't adding anything here after my first pass of the set for new options.

Oloro_Magic I agree with your sentiments towards horizons, it does feel real lackluster in regards to Ad Naus. The only cards I could think of would be Mox Tantalite , Force of Despair , and yes fluster. but FoD is tooo situation forthis deck imo may as well play bontu's, and mox, while strong i think, lotus is obviously better, there could be some argument to removing pentad's or even spoils, but there really isnt a point is there? As for Core20, there's a few cards i find interesting tbh. Scheming Symmetry is one of them, and i honestly think should be tried in place of spoils. yes they can tutor for answers, but like spoils you'd more than likely board it out game 2, but having a modern legal imperial seal just seems too good to not at least try. And honestly i really want to find a way to use Lotus Bloom the card is just so ridiculous. Other than that there's a few cute SB beaters like the blue cavelier

Heretic_Dragoon:

Force of Despair is an interesting one, in fact I played it for a little bit in the wake of Hogaak just because of how explosive they are, and while it had the potential to be good, the fact that (pre-ban) one could lose regardless of the instant speed wrath always felt bad so the testing didn't last long. Mox Tantalite is just unfortunately too slow, coming down on turn 4, what maybe we have 5 mana, and then we would need a guide to win or have played a Prism or Unlife prior, that seems like a lot to go right to me so I would rather just have a Black Lotus than a Mox as we plan on winning the turn it comes down.

Scheming Symmetry is a card I have seen be mentioned a lot lately and while I agree it's very powerful, the fact that it is a sorcery really hurts it in my eyes. The fact that our opponent gets whatever answer they think is best before we get the payoff for the card is very scary to me. Sure in some matchups this drawback wont matter because the opponent doesn't have interaction to begin with but in any matchup that does we just made our lives more difficult, and for those matchups where they have minimal interaction, do we really want to give them the opportunity to find their only out? Now if it were an instant then I would be completely on board with it, as I find an end step Spoils of the Vault can be the difference at times just adding that flexibility. The boarding it out argument is also not that strong, at least for me, my sideboarding philosophy for the deck relies on cutting a minimal amount of Spoils of the Vault , maybe 1 and have 1-2 left, so at least for me that argument doesn't really apply as I don't believe Spoils of the Vault is necessarily the card we want to be reaching for first when cutting cards. Cutting spoils for this removes the spoils kill as well, which, with a local meta filled with Surgical Extraction has been coming up much more frequently for me and it would be a shame to lose that option. The card reminds me a lot of Maralen of the Mornsong one of my all time favorites but a hard egg to crack as to just how playable it is. I think at this point I'm closer to playing Peer Through Depths than this just because we are built around the idea of being able to win at instant speed, keeping our opponents honest, this removes that to a degree. That said however I do agree it can and should be tested first.

I agree that Lotus Field is a busted Lotus Vale , unfortunately I don't see a place for it here, but I know I'm going to play 1 in Amulet Titan and already picked up a foil :)

Thanks for the input, this helps me a lot in my ad naus plays tbh lol

Heretic_Dragoon:

No problem, glad I could be of some help.

I wanted to build ad naus for modern, but cards are very hard to find for my lgs and in before the leylines tanked in price. I had some things for it but I brewed the concept into a EDH deck: Ad hoc ad nauseam v2 hopefully ill get back to building it before too long lol. Thanks for the build!

I wonder if 3feri could make it into the side if Grand Abolisher did?

Bit worse againt spirits though.

Flooremoji:

So when Teferi, Time Raveler was first spoiled I was very excited about it, it seemed to be a pretty big upgrade in that slot. However, after initial testing I had been left disappointed: at the time spirits was still something being played locally, as was Phoenix which I never liked Teferi, Time Raveler against, and with the arrival of Hogaak the slot felt wasted on the effect, Grand Abolisher only surviving as a result of its ability against Aether Vial shenanigans that I had to deal with some.

With all that said, and in wake of the recent bannings and unbanning I have been thinking that Teferi, Time Raveler is worth revisiting. In the past few weeks he has shown himself to be one of the better cards in the format (playing him in other decks I can say from experience that he has been the difference). I think modern has slowed to the point and is now fair enough where the principal concerns behind the card that I had are no longer an issue, and added to that the -3 ability grants an added level of utility against some of the fair and interactive decks in the format. Honestly at this point, I just haven't been sold enough to update the list here and hurt my wallet with the purchase of a foil copy. That said I am actively testing him in paper, and plan to try and compile a good amount of data in the next week or so, along with testing the new Wishclaw Talisman to see if I am wrong about that card.

Grand Abolisher has seen its time come and go for the time being, if the format were to become saturated with spirits style decks again than it would be the right choice, but in the wake of these new Stoneblade decks and the renewed focus on fair and interactive magic, Teferi, Time Raveler feels like the better option without too much testing having been done so far; there is a very big difference between sorcery speed and "your turn" which I think is becoming more pronounced.

Thassa's Oracle could be the new backup win con? Has the same hard to remove aspect of jace, but is cheaper!