Keeper Sideboard Options

[Zherbus]

With your Keeper (more colorless sources, less white mana) in particular, I would HIGHLY recommend Ensnaring Bridge. Its colorless, and it fills the hole you left open by omitting COP:Black or Compost.

[Azhrei]

Irrationality is never a sufficient reason to do something. Honestly, "Because I like it" is one of the worst reasons you can have for playing a card that isn't a genuine consideration.

You don't suddenly have a lot of dead cards in the mirror. Normally, Keeper can board in 5 cards at maximum before it starts to cut spells it really wants to keep . 5 is pushing it in most cases, so if you swap the generally worthless Sacred Ground and the markedly inferior Dwarven Miner for a fourth REB (also good against monoblue and OSE) and something like Scrying Glass, then you have really maxed out your anti-control boarding options.

[LoA]

I've found myself wondering about Ensnaring Bridge a lot lately.  You generally only side it in vs. Suicide and Mask, which makes me a little suspect of putting it in since a)I've yet to see a Mask deck in NH, MA, or CT and b)non-Reaver versions of Suicide can slip under it without too much problem by using Shades and Sarcomancy.  So, to compensate for that, I decided to make the following changes maindeck:
-2 Mishra, +1 Tundra, +1 Wasteland

And the following changes to the sideboard:
-1 Sacred Ground, -1 Miner, +1 Scrying Glass (I don't own one, so I totally forget it existed when I last posted), +1 Tormod's Crypt (might become a ReB if I see a lot of monoblue when I move down to Hartford.  With luck, no one there will play TnT or Dragon and I'll have 2 open slots for Suicide)

I know a lot of people are sold on the 4th Underground Sea, but I've been running 3 for ages and I have never had a serious problem finding the black mana I need (cutting VT probably made this easier too).

I'm still worried about the Suicide match-up; Zherbus is correct when he points out I am missing a few cards for that.  The problem is, I don't really think it's worth it to run 1 CoP or Compost in a deck without Vampiric (hence, the 2 CoP: Red...there used to be 1 and 1 CoP: Blue back in the day).  Cutting Factories makes me even more vulnerable to these decks, and I'm searching for something I can do either maindeck or in the sideboard to shore up for this (generally bad) match.

[Smmenen]

Do you realize that Ensnaring Bridge doesn't work against Mask?

If the Mask player knows what they are doing (and this happened to Cooberp at Origins), the Mask player swings with a face down 0/1 and then flips up a 12/12.  You can do the same trick with all of Masks creatures except Factories.

Steve

[LoA]

See how often I face it?    

But, it's good to know and makes me all the happier to be running Moat over Bridge right now.

[Rico Suave]

Bridge doesn't stop the first attack, but it does stop every one beyond the first.

Not as good as Moat, but better than Dwarven Miner.

On a sidenote, wouldn't Teferi's Response be a LOT better than Sacred Ground?

[Zherbus]

Quote (Rico Suave @ Oct. 02 2002,14:26)Bridge doesn't stop the first attack, but it does stop every one beyond the first.

Not as good as Moat, but better than Dwarven Miner.

On a sidenote, wouldn't Teferi's Response be a LOT better than Sacred Ground?

I would think 2 Kegs, 2 Swords, Edict and the Dismantling Blow would be enough for Masknought, not to mention the possibility of keeping Moat.

There isn't an awful lot of mask decks in the real world that I've seen. You hit, what, 1 every 5th tournament? I dont think LoA plays much online either, so it wont be as much of a factor as mono-black and TnT would be.

About Response: He runs Response maindeck.

[LoA]

If Zherbus needs to keep on reminding people I run Response maindeck, he should start handing out fines  

[verlorene]

Quote (LoA @ Oct. 02 2002,16:46)If Zherbus needs to keep on reminding people I run Response maindeck, he should start handing out fines  

People need to learn how to read.