Rev 13:18
Commander / EDH
SCORE: 196 | 113 COMMENTS | 144872 VIEWS | IN 134 FOLDERS
6th update, kinda hasty —Nov. 16, 2017
Cuts: By Force, Talisman of Indulgence, Pongify, Pact of Negation, Sleight of Hand
Includes: Abrade, Island, Unsubstantiate, Past in Flames
, Thoughtseize
Hey I was in a podcast, come laugh at my silly and awkward voice: https://www.reddit.com/r/CompetitiveEDH/comments/7ddrok/fossil_podcast_4_w_moxnix_and_reversemermaid/
The changes here are kinda hasty and untested, but because of the podcast I felt like I needed to update the list to include them. Listen to the whole podcast to hear full reasoning/some arguments for including the cards, but here's a short version:
By Force for Abrade, small change, there's usually just 1 artifact you want to deal with, if it's a sphere being instant speed is really good because then it "costs 0 mana" because you do it eot then go off. This also kinda prevents the memey "kill your sphere, next player goes off" games. Small change, if there's literal sphere tribal and there's usually lots of targets you want to hit keep playing Vandalblast or By Force.
Talisman of Indulgence for Island, Talisman doesn't tap for U and after turn 1 and 2 rocks are basically lands anyway with this deck.
Pongify for Unsubstantiate, the "bad" Unsub is back for flexibility's sake. It's more of a meta choice if anything, Unsub does hit every spell which is good, and the creature I most commonly need to deal with is Gitrog and with that dude it doesn't really matter if i bounce it or remove it. If there's more actual factual hatebears that need actual removal and not bounce Pongify could be kept in, then again the inclusion of Abrade upped our creature removal suite by 1 so that's another reason why I'm willing to give the Unsubscribe a second chance.
Pact of Negation for Thoughtseize, listen to the podcast basically. Pact is dead early game and late game it doesn't really matter if it's Pact or just some other counterspell. It's great at what it does well but it's also really bad at what it does badly. Thoughtseize is just something I want to test, and having the "toolbox" option of it definitely has its upsides. IMO hand attack is underrated in this format anyway and doesn't see play because some guy somewhere once said so and everyone jumped the bandwagon. It makes sense, you're dealing with a threat that isn't necessarily there or you might hit the wrong player completely, but the payout of knowing the hand and sometimes being better (for example if you need to do LED shenanigans or get to snatch a Flusterstorm) than a counterspell makes it at least worth actual testing.
Sleight of Hand for PiF, tl;dr YawgWin is the best card in the deck so having a second copy as a lategame win-the-game card, mid game setup/value spell if you need to go for a more casual line, or just as a second pif if Yawgs gets exiled, is good. PiF doesn't have a double LED line but while a double Black Lotus is insane and game winning a normal Black Lotus is just fine too. Sleight of Hand was a weird shitty flex card anyway, and it's kind of cut gas for gas so this is fine. Why Sleight of Hand and not Serum Visions? Because Visions is still kinda in the testing phase, and honestly so far I've preferred it to Sleight. There's a reason why people play SV over Sleight in modern, and while these formats are two completely different monsters the reasons kinda apply here too.