I myself like the lists with the ~4 Delve creatures. I think it allows for more option of changing your play style depending on your opponent to be more tempo or more control. Especially with cards like thought scour. It looks to me as though the lists’ following that follow a more strict control heavy playstyle with lots of card draw( Probably the ‘oh snap, Jace is super good when he sticks! let’s have 4 so he always sticks!’ philosophy) . But, Aye, that’s just me.

I really like the flavor of Thing in the Ice, it’s a really cool card. although, I have my reservations about it for it to be truly competitive, at least within a grixis shell.

My problem with it is that, it kind of just sits there and has to stick, and you have to protect it. Which is fine, but I am not so sure it will consistently be able to be protected, whereas ideally, the delve creatures and the other utility creatures in these lists can have an immediate impact to the game. The delve creatures and kalitas need to be dealt with immediately if the opponent has any hope of winning, and snapcaster’s /dark dwellers/ Jace allow you to find/use what you need to keep control of the board/opponent.

Thing in the nice is none of those things until you cast your 4th spell after spending two mana to get it no the board to begin with.

I guess I’m saying I don’t like a win condition that can ever have the possibility to be ignored. I feel like if its your playstyle to want your win condition to hit the board, and you just play with your opponent to try and keep it sticking, then maybe a list that would normally support a young pyromancer with this in its place may be better, or just this in a UW control list in general would be a better home than grixis. But, maybe I’m wrong, maybe ancestral visions will allow it to be played at a tempo similar to the delve creatures with more ouch.

Thanks for the article!

That sounds good, I’ve always been a fan of both those spells (LotV and Tribute) but I can see where they can be kinda poor in some situations.

Once finals are over I intend to get back to streaming as much as possible! Thanks for asking and I wish I had time to spare for it now.

Absolutely, and for me I think it depends entirely on the metagame. If the context seems to be as hyper-aggressive as it has been, Remand and the like are pretty bad.

You make good points, I’m inclined to believe for now that a Thing in the Ice list should be focused on maximizing that spell, it seems to require a little more as far as deckbuilding than something like a singleton Tasigur, the Golden Fang that can be slotted in without much thought.

I think Ancestral Vision out of the board of Scapeshift for post-board games against control is quite potent, it makes Remand a necessity in that matchup where there were only ever a few spells of your opponent’s that you were looking to Remand. Scapeshift often is well set up to just wait a few extra turns anyways.

Check out Leridan his post – this weekend also had Dutch Modern Open with 11 more players than SCG Baltimore – a grixis list run by Robbert Bal went 7-1-1 and placed 9th missing top 8 only on breakers. There is more than USA 😉

Also a singleton slaughter pact is a house in any deck with kalitas. Swap out a terminate with one of those bad boys and you can get some pretty sweet turns.

As long as there are creature-based aggro decks trying to slip under control and make sure that they never live to see the T5 upkeep they need for Ancestral Vision to resolve (and those aren’t going anywhere), Jund will live on. Liliana may be somewhat diminished in its ability to shut down control, but it’s not dead yet, and it can do the job in any hand that’s backed up by enough creature density and/or targeted discard to force a control player to go trade 2-3 cards before she lands. Jund is the #1 deck in Sheridan’s way-too-early meta analysis, and while I don’t expect it to retain 11% of the field, I do expect it to remain a Tier 1 deck, and to have a respectable control matchup.

On the Scapeshift front, I think Ancestral Vision doesn’t quite strike the right chords for the deck. For example, the SCG Modern Classic at Baltimore over last weekend had 2 Scapeshift decks in the Top 8, and neither had any Ancestral Visions. I also doubt that it was an issue of availability – the Grixis Control players at that same event managed to get their hands on 4 apiece. Vision skews what was already a slow deck even slower, and I don’t think that’s the way to go.