I’m not struggling against BGx at all (it’s been remarkable – my current sideboard configuration hasn’t dropped a game to Jund or Abzan in months, let alone a match), and you don’t always draw Spreading Seas. In fact, in most of the games I’ve gotten Ghost Quarter, I haven’t gotten the Seas, and vice versa.

Furthermore, TecEdge doesn’t fix the problem of needing UU in case of emergency that Ghost Quarter does, plus it costs mana (bad bad bad). GQ has its warts, but I definitely prefer it over the Edge.

Someone(Brian Demars, I think) wrote about how d&t outlies in a way similar to how it did in legacy, which is an astute point.

Over the last while, I’ve been toying with the more or less typical wb build and it has a very similar feel to when I played it in legacy. I hope that its popularity doesn’t pick up or I’ll have to move on to something else. Bob is a huge card to be getting away with running. The worst games that I’ve played with the deck in Moderb have been with tweaks that move away from attacking mana with mindcensors AND arbiters. The deck gets its potence almost entirely from mana-denial.

Many, many players haven’t experienced actual mana denial strategies, which I think explains why it tends to be an anscilary strategy in the Modern. If people had any clue how powerful it was, there’d probably be an established mana disruption deck by now.

That’s why I’ve been using two main and 2 board for years.

In Merfolk I would say that Tec Edge is more potent as combined with spreading seas your opponent (ie. Tron) will have to go to 4 lands ensuring that your Tec Edge hits a Tron piece. This is important as once they get to 5 lands then can O Stone your team – so keeping them donw on lands is very important. Furthermore it keeps Spell pierce live longer. It sure is worse against Infect and Affinity (Merfolk wasnt winning that matchup anyway) but it is much preferable to Ghost Quarter against BGx – and it is often the difference between winning and losing..(also great against Scapeshift over GQ)

Yep, manlands are the unsung (under-sung) reason to play Quarter, and I hope people start to see it differently after exposure like this. You are right that Edge used to take on that role, although I haven’t seen a lot of Edge since the 2013 and early 2014 season. Good to see we have a new sheriff in town!

Even without those decks, I’m sure you’re happy to see Quarters against manlands. Ravine, Colonnade, and Wildwood are some of its best targets, along with the Nexus fliers.

Definitely, although not a lot of strategies outside Eggs and Affinity use the Citadel. Maybe some cool land destruction strategy with Boom/Bust too?

Merfolk is an awesome example of a Quarter deck. It’s mono colored, it has a colorless one-drop, and that colorless one-drop circumvents the need for high land counts on the battlefield. Look forward to seeing it in action elsewhere!

Totally disagree. Modern should encourage a huge range of strategies with similar generic answers for all of them. It’s great that Quarter is emerging as a metagame response to a new deck, much like Bolt’s profile rises when aggro gets bigger, when IoK crop up more to stop combo and aggro, etc. Any time Modern can internally regulate with cards any deck can run, it’s great for the entire format.

I don’t think Quarter is particularly good against Scapeshift. It’s just not irrelevant when you use it early to take away a third color or a tapped Valakut they had to drop. Not a great example of Quarter at its finest, but still a relevant matchup.

It’s a bit narrow, and you generally don’t want to play narrow sideboard answers to other bullets. Pithing Needle would be a much better example of a card that improves in a Quarter meta. I also love Needle and wish it saw more play generally!.

It’s a great interactive deck but suffers from some low-power draws and random losses to strong openers by an opponent. We’ve seen more of it on MTGO recently, specifically the BW version with Confidant, I think we’ll keep seeing it throughout Modern but it lacks the buzz of newer decks like Grixis and the strength of “better” decks like Twin. A lot of that is perception and not reality, but it still affects the decks’ shares.

Well, there’s a pretty big difference in between PtE’s and GQ’s drawback. PtE just ramps the target’s controller, GQ doesn’t ramp, but it slows you down considerably. Even if you cut one Tron piece at turn 3, the scenario of Tron having 4 lands and I with only 2 seems very unfavorable. Sure, GQ is amazing when you don’t need more lands or do not care because you already have a somewhat good enough board presence. But when you use it to cut turn 3 Tron, unless you’re on the play and played a strong 2 drop, the drawback is considerably large. And another thing to notice, sometimes GQing to cut turn 3 Tron will give access to Green mana they otherwise would not have, which will make it easier for Tron to rebuild. This is why the author says GQ has to be paired with pressure. It is by no means a “free” play, it is a tempo play, and as so comes with a cost. In late game scenarios the difference between GQ and Tec Edge is not that big, the advantage GQ has is as a tempo play.

I agree with this wholeheartedly.

Ghost Quarter is often bad against Scapeshift. Suppose I cast it and fetch up 6 mountains plus a Valakut. All the triggers are on the stack pointing at you. Quartering Valakut at this point does nothing due to the triggers being on the stack. Quartering a mountain at this point does 3 MORE damage to you so long as I’ve left a basic mountain in my deck (which I would into an open Ghost Quarter).

The reason? The triggers remain on the stack and when they each try to resolve they still see 5 other mountains. Yes, even the one you blew up. Yes, even the new one you just gave me.

Now, if I don’t have another basic mountain in my deck you’ve changed it from 18 damage to 3….