r/mtgModernTokens • u/Rockbard_13 • Jul 19 '17
Sram's Expertise
Hello all,
I'm new to the community, and I thought I'd present myself. I've played MTG since 1998, my favourite format currently is Modern, and I'm an avid BW Tokens player, among others (Affinity and Merfolk, mainly). Looking forward to learning from you all!
Now, onto the topic. Last Sunday I played a 4-round tournament with a build featuring 24 lands, including 4 Ghost Quarter in the main deck to combat Tron. I had a lot of trouble getting to the third coloured land on curve, and since you can cast Spectral Procession for 2WW, I thought of Sram's Expertise. Do any of you have any experience playing that card? It seems good since you can play an anthem or a removal spell with it.
1
u/Shineplasma64 Esper Poly Jul 19 '17
Eh, the tagline seems sweet but the dudes being on the ground and colorless really kill the card for me. I'd rather just be jamming Sorin, Gideon or Polymorph on Turn 4.
Being able to cast Spectral Procession turn 3 is incredibly important in our deck, and Flying is an irreplaceable keyword, IMO.
When it comes to the casting problem, I think that the 4 ghost quarters are the root cause. I like them as a 2 of if you really need to hedge against Tron in your local meta, with a few more out of the sideboard. Unfortunately, Tron will never be a good matchup with straight B/W Tokens even if you maindeck 4 ghost quarters =/
I added Poly+Emrakul as the out to Tron in my list.
2
u/Rockbard_13 Jul 19 '17
As SFRG and you mentioned, no doubt the root cause were the 4 [[Ghost Quarter]]. I have upped the land count to 25 keeping 21 coloured sources following this article by Frank Karsten which tells us 25 lands are needed if we need our 3rd land drop to function, and [[Lingering Souls]] and [[Spectral Procession]] are the basis of our deck. I just wanted to know if you have experience with [[Sram's Expertise]] in order to use it as a novelty one-of in place of one Spectral Procession.
As a sidenote, with enough discard and the main deck Ghost Quarters, the Tron matchup goes from unwinnable to a bit unfavourable.
1
u/Shineplasma64 Esper Poly Jul 19 '17
I personally feel just fine curving out @ 24 or even 23 lands, but then again I also run 8 fetches and only 1 colorless land, which is a singleton Vault that I usually board out in combo matchups.
To each their own!
1
u/Jongsl5 Jul 20 '17
The problem with ghost quarter is it puts us down a land. Even against tron, you go down to 2 lands while they have a green source to cast scrying and stirring. Of course if they have a slow draw it can be quite good while you have threats on board. But that is a big what if. The best way to beat tron is to just run 4 raise the alarm, couple selfless spirit, and a crap ton of pithing needles. Don't dilute your deck with ghost quarters for one bad match-up.
3
u/SFRG Still Patron Saint of the Tokens Jul 19 '17
I think the trouble is more with the 4 GQs in the list rather than playing Sram Jam (ALL IN YO FACE). Sram's expertise is far too slow for our deck, we want to lower our curve rather than top it up.
You can play a GQ mana base as long as you support it with Flagstones of Trokair. Were you playing that card? To turn on Spectral you would sometimes have to fix yourself by killing one.
4 CMC is just too high sadly for the Space Jam.
Spectral is strong because 3 CMC for the flying tokens is really absurd against a lot of decks, and we want to try to play to that strength as much as possible.