Type 1.1 Metagame Predictions

[bluemage55]

Incidently I think Slaver really wants Top for the reasons mentioned above.  Basically Fetch + Mox means top will see 6 cards which has now become very important.  Also there are those Top/Welder games so slaver can build card advantage.  I could see Slaver running as many as 3 tops!

I suspect with Top, Slaver would not need to run Night's Whisper.  In an environment with much less card drawing, I suspect Slaver can get by with Ancestral, Scroll, BS, Ponder, FoF, TfK x4, and Top x3.

Incidentally, even if the extra draw is needed, I think Slaver would be more willing to run Intuition -> AK than weaken the manabase in a Waste-heavy environment.  Intuition also has some nice synergies with Welder.

[BreathWeapon]

Have people got Counterbalance/Sensei's Divining Top to work? There doesn't appear to be enough 2cc spells to go along with Counterbalance short of Mana Drain, Impulse, Night Whispers and restricted targets, and it needs at least 16 2cc spells to be consistent, and it's counting on 1cc cards to be relevant in the format.

What adjustments are being made to the mana bases, are people just adding 1 Strip Mine and 4 Wasteland and/or using 8 blue fetchlands?

Intuition, Deep Analysis and Careful Study are officially the shit, being able to Intuition for either Life from the Loam and Stripe Mine or Dark Blast is going to be huge.

[Purple Hat]

Have people got Counterbalance/Sensei's Divining Top to work? There doesn't appear to be enough 2cc spells to go along with Counterbalance short of Mana Drain, Impulse, Night Whispers and restricted targets, and it needs at least 16 2cc spells to be consistent, and it's counting on 1cc cards to be relevant in the format.

What adjustments are being made to the mana bases, are people just adding 1 Strip Mine and 4 Wasteland and/or using 8 blue fetchlands?

Intuition, Deep Analysis and Careful Study are officially the shit, being able to Intuition for either Life from the Loam and Stripe Mine or Dark Blast is going to be huge.

dark confidant likes tops.

anyway, I've been thinking about painter's servant, and I think that the card needs you to name the most common color, whatever that is.  for a long time it was blue, but now I suspect it will be black.  The reason you have to name the most common color is that you need your "painter's cards" (REB, Reap, compost) to be not totally dead when you don't have a painter.  When the whole format was blue instants this meant play REB's and plan to name blue.  If the format turns into black sorceries (whisper, duress, thoughtcast, etc.) then you're gonna want to name black and play like G/W so you can get black hate going.  In either case I think once the format settles there will be an appropriate painter's deck to come out of all this.

[bluemage55]

dark confidant likes tops.

anyway, I've been thinking about painter's servant, and I think that the card needs you to name the most common color, whatever that is.  for a long time it was blue, but now I suspect it will be black.  The reason you have to name the most common color is that you need your "painter's cards" (REB, Reap, compost) to be not totally dead when you don't have a painter.  When the whole format was blue instants this meant play REB's and plan to name blue.  If the format turns into black sorceries (whisper, duress, thoughtcast, etc.) then you're gonna want to name black and play like G/W so you can get black hate going.  In either case I think once the format settles there will be an appropriate painter's deck to come out of all this.

I suspect the appropriate painter's deck will use a Control Slaver or Salvager-less Bomberman shell with Painter/Grindstone as a fast finish, rather than a primary piece to make the deck function.

All out REB x8 Servant just won't cut it in a format with less blue.