Sure, but bargain is restricted.  Griselbrand has taught us that there are decks that want more Bargains.  Probably worth testing this.

Also really want to highlight and give thanks for both Kevin and Steve's generous appreciation of the Sphinx Tribal archetype. 

True story.  I once show and tell'ed, putting in yawgmoth's bargain, and my opponent put in Emrakul.  My opponent attacked me on the next turn, but I sacc'd six mana sources and blocked with baleful strix.  I then won on my turn with bargain.

Well, yeah, I'd get a toxic deluge in there somehow.  If you running show and tells then prob keep the 3 + 1 sphinxes.

Usually I can't cast the sphinx of the steel wind; although its possible with lotus for white.  Mostly it's there as the tinker target.  I'd prioritize tinkering like this:

1) is it early game and I'm not playing against shops?  tinker for trinisphere.
2) does tinkering for vault or key immediately take all the turns?  Do that.
3) do I think my opponent only has green/red answers for an artifact, or is playing shops?  tinker for Sphinx of the Steel Wind.

If you keep at it, let me know how it goes!  I'm interested to hear your results. 

Interesting questions.  I don't know if the new uncounterable-sphinx is really worth it.  I mean, sure, it'd be great if that was in play alongside a conscecrated sphinx, but, you know, that scenario is a little silly.

I think the best replacement for chalice@1 is sphere of resistance.  It's probably the closest thing to slowing down a lot of 1-CC cards.  So, I'd test something like:


3 chalice ---> 3 sphere of resistance
1 lim-dul's vault ---> vampiric tutor
1 steel hellkite ---> sphinx of the steel wind

those are the changes that I'd suggest to deal with the chalice restriction.

I think ATM shops is probably the best deck, so I'd also do something like:

1 gifts ungiven ---> rebuild
1 cavern of souls ---> sensei's top

and then I'd try to fit in a toxic deluge or engineered explosives, possibly by cutting a Consecrated Sphinx.  So that reduces the combo cards and the counterspell protection slightly while giving an out to shops and more cantrips.  Incidentally, playing this list with 2 tops would probably be a decent call, too.

This deck always was awesome against shops.  I haven't played it against the aggro-shops lists en vogue now, but those lists are traditionally terrible against vault-key.  Playing Sphinx Tribal now to combat the shops meta might be a good idea.  Especially if you think the 2nd most common deck is Storm... there's enough disruption left to stop a storm deck.  I'd side in the leylines of the void against Dark Petition storm; those decks are *really* hurt by leyline.

Hmm, Toxic Deluge would probably be a good idea.

I did more testing and had trouble with shops in two cases: 1) they get down a 1/1 or 2/2 or something early, and then I play null rod and then rip all their land away - but eventually I die.  And 2) they play turn-1 Crucible of Worlds, then basically I can't win.  My only shot at removing a crucible is EE@3, but that doesn't work with null rod.

I also got the chance to play against junk hatebears, which, although a tier-two deck at best, is a nightmare matchup for TezzStax.  They have a ton of efficient threats, plus stuff like thalia, kataki, pridemage, abrupt decay, and a better draw engine than TezzStax in dark confidant.  Baleful strix was good in that matchup and so was Sphinx.

I think the maindeck extirpate should probably be vamp tutor.  I've come to realize the deck has a lot of one-of bombs (tinker, chalice, crucible, propaganda, tabernacle) and you want to be able to access those as reliably as possible. I think it does need more actual creature removal.

Anyway, not sure if that's super helpful or just super obvious.  :/

Archae, I sleeved up your Tezz AoB list, and I loved it.  It was much better than I thought it would be.  Sphere and Null Rod are both awesome in the meta now. 

But I lost to aggro-shops.  I sided in leylines and helm, but, I never got helm online and leyline was a total brick whenever I drew it.  I can't help but think more null rods would just be better.  Null Rod is a total MVP (I was pretty impressed).

I might do something like:

-4 leyline
-2 helm
+2 null rod
+1 tormod's crypt
+2 nihil spellbomb
+1 mindbreak trap

So against shops I could side something like:

-1 mindbreak trap, -1 grafdigger's cage, -1 chalice, -1 trinisphere, -2 sphere of resistance, -1 notion thief
+2 ghost quarter, +2 null rod, +1 tabernacle, +1 engineered plague...  ?

What I'm saying, is, I was sort of unhappy with the shop sideboard plan.  I wish we could run something that blew up an artifact.  Or an artifact creature.  Maybe dismember?  Or EE (even though null rod.)  Or perhaps Contagion?  There's almost enough black cards to exile.

Any insight into the shops matchup?

Much ado...  does that mean I have to mistakenly marry my sister while I'm posing as a woman who watches her/his true love marry someone else (who's posing as a man), then pretend to commit suicide, and then get resurrected and married?  Cause, man, I'm pretty tired today.

Hedron Alignment, 2U
Enchantment
Hexproof

At the beginning of your upkeep, you may reveal your hand.  If you do, you win the game if you own a card named Hedron Alignment in exile, in your hand, in your graveyard, and on the battlefield.

1U: Scry 1.
-------------

Am I the only one that thinks this might work out?  It seems easy to exile one by pitching to force/misd, it seems easy to get one in the yard with baby jace / dack fayden / thirst / gifts, and it only costs 3 to cast.  Finding all 4 of them might be hard unless Intuition helps.  But it seems like it's worth considering.

Possibly too slow for a real combo deck; possibly too fragile for a control deck wincon.  But pretty cool.

This.

But ideally, she protects herself by making the missteps you use on their removal cantrip.  If she makes your missteps cantrip, this card will be amazing.

Jori En, Ruin Diver

1UR
Legendary Merfolk Wizard
2/3
Whenever you cast your second spell each turn, draw a card.


This seems awesome, and immediately playable in all kinds of cantrip-fueled UR delver/mentor-like decks.  Also, this could be among the best draw engines in the format.

Much as I love a good sphinx, this does seem a little too expensive.  Also it doesn't need a cavern to make it uncounterable; but that might actually be the best thing about it.  Could be great in monoblue where the plan is manadrain -> this.  But, in most decks this would conflict with Consecrated Sphinx for spots as sort of the control finisher.  And both that and this are sort of weak against a field of dudes like pyromancer and/or mentor.  If mono-blue had a better delver/mentor matchup, I could see this going in there, perhaps alongside consecrated sphinx.  mono-blue is missing a good boardwipe, tho...

...if only there was some other blue mythic printed in this set that bounced everything and left you with an 8/8.

Heh, I never cast Balance.  I don't think I ever saw it; and I didn't think about aggressively tutoring for it or setting it up.  Interesting that the deck has so many lines.

Its interesting you cut the Crucible of Worlds.  That was key for me in a number of games (against shops and dredge).  Also the Mentors were great.

The deck is pretty unusual in that it's basically a fast vault-key combo deck, but it uses this heavy disruptions suite (strip-crucible, tinker-trinisphere, flipped Erayo) to buy time to assemble the combo.  It seems like most decks double down on the combo plan and try to make that avenue more efficient (like Steel City Vault decks) - but this strategy seems at least as effective, and probably more resilient to hate.  Since the deck isn't a straight combo, a number of people couldn't figure out what to board in against me - but one guy did figure it out and boarded in disenchants. 

To be clear, I used 1 Daretti, 2 Jace TMS, 1 Dack Fayden, which I was pretty happy with.  Although I guess I always want more Dack.

disolusionist, I used your latest build and it was pretty strong.  Although, I changed out:

-jace the mindsculptor
+daretti, scrap savant

Just kinda on a whim; but it worked out pretty well.  The card filtering is decent and returning jar, vault/key, and sundering titan was awesome.  Beat shops, dredge, esper bomberman/control, and lost to blue belcher combo.  Was pretty fun and everyone got excited to see a new deck.

This sure looks like fun to play.  I'm pretty interested.  How has the sideboard been working out for you?

Maybe like: red rituals, blue counters, gifts, jaces, this, restricted cards, tendrils?

I think these two points disagree with each other.  It should be self evident that adding land to your blue deck makes it better against shops (which I think you agree with in your second point).  Hopefully nobody's arguing that it's the opposite.

But, Yes, I agree with the second point: 17-mana blue decks which cheat their mana count by playing 12-20 one-mana cantrips, although these decks auto-lose to a single sphere effect or a chalice@1, they are very well-positioned to fight big blue decks through virtual card advantage. 24-mana blue decks that have better % against shops have worse % against high-cantrip, low-mana blue.  A lot of people decided, as you suggest, to run decks structurally similar to a 17-mana blue list, cause it's better against most of the field, although worse against shops.  The problem is these decks are extremely uninteractive against shops, cause they fold to chalice@1 or a single sphere, particularly if they're on the draw.  Of course, sometime they land a turn-1 delver and the shops player has no answer and the game ends.  My suggestion is that this effect gave people an exaggerated sense of the coin-flip-ness or fair-ness of the blue-vs-shops matchup, and lead to an inappropriate banning of Chalice.  I further suggest that this could have been avoided by blue players using more mana and just meta-gaming against delver lists better.

You can't literally be arguing that a blue deck with 24 mana sources has a worse shops matchup than a blue deck with 17 mana sources, right?

IDK, but as already observed, losing chalice makes tangle wire a whole lot worse.

It still dodges Thorn, which nothing else does, and it's the only anti-shops card that's an efficient 1-for-1 early in the game that helps you climb back into it, while simultaneously being a 2-for-1 and/or win con late in the game when you can pay full price.

Isn't the Rise of Workshops just due to The Decline Of Mana in blue decks?  I mean, the most popular blue decks play 17 mana sources.  Of course those decks lose to workshops.  Blue decks used to play 24 mana sources.  Those decks don't lose to workshops very often.  It seems to me like a meta gaming issue.  Blue decks could increase their mana counts and greatly increase their percentages against shops. Or, I guess, try to get something banned from shops.

Gha.  The huge reason Griselbrand is better than RSD is that you only need one Griselbrand to win.  That means you can win off Show and Tell into Griselbrand.  Show and Tell into RSD doesn't really do much for you cause you have to assemble Oath + Orchard to repeatedly get RSDs into play off the time walks you tutor up.  RSD oath was the best oath build before grafdigger's cage got printed.  After Grafdigger's cage, Show and Tell was a much better plan B, and that necessitated a move to Griselbrand.

The RSD plan is a lot more subtle and versatile than it might look.  You can frequently tutor up something kind of clever to solve whatever situation you're facing.  But, that assumes you've assembled Oath + Orchard, and they don't have grafdigger's cage / containment priest.  RSD works pretty well in transformational Oath sideboards, where your opponent isn't expecting it.

Now the best plan B is to just cast your oath targets.  So, for example, mana draining into a RSD is a lot more reasonable than trying to hardcast griselbrand somehow.  But maybe hardcasting salvagers and Dromoka is even better?

"cast on resolution" means that spell you tutor for is put onto the stack.  Then Bring to Light finishes resolving, then both players get priority while the tutored spell is on the stack, and it can be countered.

Why not Brian Kelly's Champs package?  Surely bomberman has a lot of synergies with Thirst.

That's a fair point.  But not just oath.  Something with drains and chalices could use this as a finisher, although, those decks usually use consecrated sphinx and I'm not sure this is better.

Doesn't this shut off pretty much all combo decks?  Tendrils or empty the warrens, Salvagers & Lotus, Charbelcher, ... what am I missing?  I guess tezzeret/welder -> time vault still works.

Fixed that for you.

on a related note, I'm pretty confident that 7-10 games is enough to get an idea of how a particular matchup goes, and whether or not it's in my favor.  After 7-10 games I can usually tell what cards are important in the matchup and what I want to side out and in; or possibly make changes to the sideboard.  Of course, if those are significant changes, it takes another 7-10 games to decide how *those* impact the matchcup.

Brian, I really enjoyed the chance to read about your take on Oath and the success you've had with it.  Some of your innovations are undeniably valuable.  One question I have, tho, is why the Gitaxian Probes?  It would seem that more preordains would be the typical include over them, but I could also imagine some of Vamp Tutor, Thoughtseize, StP, Flusterstorm, or the 4th Force.

Its on like donkey kong.  If, as I assume, donkey kong is a thing that is still on.