Last night I was testing the deck online and I wanted to tweak the mainboard a little bit more. Most strategies seemed to want to play a grindy creature on creature game. This deck seems to want to beat that strategy. While Sphinx's Revelation is supurb in the late game, it doesn't do anything other than rot in my hand if it's in my opening 7. After watching mrscottymac play with his geist list, I decided to kick the revelation to my SB and add another Path to Exile to the main. Exile is another removal spell that gets creatures out of the way of our geist which is what we want. I removed the karanos, god of storms from my SB because he doesn't seem very useful.
MB
-1 Sphinx's Revelation +1 Path to Exile
SB
-1 Keranos, God of Storms +1 Sphinx's Revelation
I also decided that the mainboard Grim Lavamancer was kind of narrow. He was good against decks that ran Lingering Souls but only if we get him out early. In the late game he takes a turn to be effective. Once again I looked to mrscottymac's list and cut the lavaman for something that is also good as a hoser for an infestation of souls and put in a Thundermaw Hellkite. Thundermaw is a great top deck because it will never be a dead card unless I draw before turn 5. It is protectable and also has a relevent ETB that I can abuse with Restoration Angel.
MB
-1 Grim Lavamancer +1 Thundermaw Hellkite
The final change to my mainboard was taking out the 3 tectonic edges and putting in Ghost Quarter. While tec edge seems better in the long run, Ghost Quarter is cheaper and is able to kill a land on turn 2 or 3. This can be important when a Bloom Titan player plays a Cavern of Souls, when a Urzatron player plays their 3rd tron land or when a control player activates a manland like Creeping Tar Pit. These are the things I want to hit with my land hate. Anything else is not relevent. As much as I'd like to keep my opponent off of an important color, the turn to try to do it is turn 2 or 3 and tec edge can't be activated.
MB
-3 Tectonic Edge +3 Ghost Quarter
This was the list I used in testing last night and it was brilliant. I played in two matches.
The first was against a Bloom Titan player. I went 2-0.
The first game I was able to play a threat and keep it going. He played a turn 1 Amulet of Vigor into a turn 3 Azusa, Lost but Seeking. When he went to drop his next land, I bolted his Azusa with the untap trigger on the stack. He later attempted to play a Hive Mind but I was able to remand it and keep him off of comboing off.
The second match was a little more grindy. I played a turn 2 Snapcaster Mage with nothing to flashback and began the beats while he durdled with his lands. I kept attacking and added a Restoration Angel to the board at his end step and remanded his Titan. By turn 5 or 6 he had a lot of lands, including a Cavern of Souls. I played a Vendilion Clique at his end step and saw that his hand was Gruul Turf, 2 Primeval Titan and a Summoner's Pact. My hand had a Steam Vents and a Valorous Stance. Because I didn’t have any countermagic, I knew that if he top decked a Hive Mind, I would be dead. I sent the pact to the bottom of his deck. I untapped and drew a Restoration Angel. I had the ability blink the snapcaster in the field and flashback the remand in my yard if he attempted to play anything but a titan. I attacked with my creatures and brought him down to 5 life. I then passed the turn.
He had enough mana to play 1 Primeval Titan which I couldn’t counter due to the Cavern of Souls. Using his titan trigger he searched up a Sunhome, Fortress of the Legion and a Slayers' Stronghold and pumped up his Prime Time to give it haste and doublestrike. When he moved to his attack phase, I killed his titan and he conceded.
In my second match I played against a RUG (Temur) Vial Deck. I went 1-1 because my opponent decided to quit the match before we could begin game 3.
In game 1 I played the control by trying to kill his creatures. His turn 1 vial allowed him to play his creatures through countermagic and he was able to counter all of my creatures. Toward the 5th or 6th turn I attempted to kill his Vedilion Clique with a Lightning Helix but the program didn’t register the damage and the Clique was able to beat me to death while I drew only lands. He didn't play another creature, so I wonder how this game would've turned out if I had managed to kill the Clique.
In game 2 I was able to win with a very intricate use of the stack. We both utilized Remand but I was able to use mine to sneak around his negate and kill his 4/4 germ token with a Batterskull while I beat him to death with 2 Restoration Angels.
In the end, I thought my deck performed really well. Thanks for reading.
