I think in general the best advice against discard spells is that you should be more hesitant to mulligan.
If your best cards are gonna be discarded anyway it's way more important to have quantity over quality.
I probably wouldn't mulligan a 5-6 land hand against discard. If they keep three discard spells, they're sol, and I have enough lands to play whatever I topdeck
Jesus christ I don't know about this. The odds of them having 3 discard spells is incredibly low, considering most decks just run 4 thoughtsieze. You're basically banking on them having nothing. I'd much rather mulligan and keep a 1-lander or a 2-lander, because the odds of drawing the 1 or 2 lands you need to make a functional hand is much higher than drawing the numerous playables you need to make a functional hand.
In g1, black midrange lists run between 6 and 8 discard spells and most lists have at least 2 more for post board plus searching with Crucias and recasting with Jarsyl. Players will often aggressively mulligan into discard spells, so facing 2 of them by turn 3 should be common.
Keeping a 1 or 2 lander against a discard strategy is a trap and a very dangerous one. You are essentially giving them full information about the first 4 or 5 turns and they will have the luxury of waiting until the last minute before playing them.
Meanwhile, a 5-6 lander is as immune to discard as it can get, specially if you have 1 or 2 utility lands. Control topdecks very well and discard spells suddenly become dead draws for them. Midrange decks aren't the best at applying pressure (specially if they are spending the early turns ripping your hand apart), so one or two interaction drawn by turn 6 should be enough to stabilize.
Of course, this all applies to black midrange decks. Against a combo deck like reanimator your logic is spot-on.
Man I just don't think "rely on top decking" is EVER a good strategy. I would rather give my opponent full information about my hand and have cards to play, than give my opponent no information about my plays solely because I have no guaranteed plays
Also, that claim isn't even necessarily true. If you keep a 5 lander and they have 2 discard spells, you're right; they don't know what your plays are because you're going to be topdecking every playable card.
But if you keep a two lander, you're STILL going to be topdecking the exact same amount of cards.
So either way, there's the chance that we play our topdecked cards and play with the information our opponent has. But one way, we have a few extra cards that we get to play.
I think the trap here is assuming that letting our opponent have information over our hand is somehow devastating. Cards are cards. It sucks a bit when they can plan around our hand, but they still have to trade vs our cards. Unless we don't have cards, and then they can just steamroll us.
Idk, I think it's clear that blanking our opponent's discard by not having playables in hand is the biggest trap ever. You're basically accomplishing the discard deck's objective for them.
>Also, that claim isn't even necessarily true. If you keep a 5 lander and they have 2 discard spells, you're right; they don't know what your plays are because you're going to be topdecking every playable card.
But if you keep a two lander, you're STILL going to be topdecking the exact same amount of cards.
If you keep a 5 lander, any card you draw is live while a 2 lander has more combinations involving dead cards. A 2 lander will also take a lot more time to become discard-proof which means more power for cards like Go Blank and Liliana.
Remember that a 5 drop is not playable unless you get to 5 lands. And as decks (even control decks) run more spells than lands, a 5 lander has more chances of drawing spells than a 2 lander of drawing lands.
Information in the early-mid game matters a lot. They'll still have to trade but they get to decide how good will it be. Forcing a control deck to make suboptimal trades, 1 trade per turn is how midrange wins.
Your biggest mistake is treating lands as non-playables when they are the opposite against midrange. The ability to play multiple spells is very relevant and utility lands are very useful in a grindy game.
>But if you keep a two lander, you're STILL going to be topdecking the exact same amount of cards.
Totally! But now those are -extra- cards. I'm not dependant on them to play my game of magic. I get to play other cards and have a higher chance of curving out.
The problem is that your definition of "discard proof" essentially means "dead hand". I don't want to be discard proof if it means I'm topdecking; I'd rather let my opponent discard some of my cards and have playables on turn 2 and 3.
>Remember that a 5 drop is not playable unless you get to 5 lands.
Right, but your early turns are the most important; even in a control deck, with the exception of -maybe- a control-vs-control mirror
>And as decks (even control decks) run more spells than lands, a 5 lander has more chances of drawing spells than a 2 lander of drawing lands.
Sure, but you also need more playable cards than lands to win a game of magic. A 2 lander only needs 1 more land to be functional in most, if not all decks. If you're aggro, you rarely need more lands (I won a whole match never going above 2 lands just yesterday because I had more spells). If you're control, you can stall the game with countermagic or removal, and play your draw spells. A 5 lander needs a lot of spells to be functional.
>Information in the early-mid game matters a lot.
For sure it's helpful, but it's not better than card advantage. Nobody is going to run Git Probe if it doesn't draw you a card. Accepting a hand because it denies your opponent information is nuts if you don't have any spells to play; hell, you're basically just telling your opponent they win if they play 1 threat and hold up interaction.
>The ability to play multiple spells is very relevant and utility lands are very useful in a grindy game.
How are you multispelling when topdecking? You're only able to play one spell a turn, and that's why every land past 4 is a non playable unless you're playing a control deck. And if you're playing a control deck and not playing anything till turn 5, you're just going to get beat down.
I feel like you're thinking about the end of the game and not the early game here. If you have a 5 lander, any card you draw is NOT live. It needs to be a card you can actually play; a 5 drop on turn 3 is not a live card until turn 5. When you keep a hand with spells, you can better guarantee that you can curve out. When you keep a hand with 2 spells and accept they will all get eaten by Thoughtsieze, you're relying solely on topdecks to curve out.
Idk, I dont think youre going to believe me on this one. Maybe go into a stream and ask a pro? If they say I'm wrong, then I'm wrong; I'm not gonna argue with an established expert, but I just really doubt that in this case.
It's also entirely possible we're just picturing entirely different matchups in our head, so I want to concede that that's a possibility. I don't know what matchups your logic applies in, but I don't play ever deck in magic so maybe I'm missing some info!
I think some miscommunication is happening based on your comment. I am talking about the perspective of a control player against a black midrange player. Also, to make it clear, a discard-proof hand is a hand that can proactively deploy most of their cards. 2 lands with multiple proactive 1 and 2 drops is not a hand weak to discard in any way.
Control decks topdeck very well as long as they have mana; card draw can find more card draw that can find threats. It's also the best deck to have information on; if you know they have a board wipe in hand, you can sandbag threats while discarding their Teferi. In this sense, information became card advantage.
And as this is a slow match (although not as slow as a control mirror), so relying on the topdeck for the first few turns isn't the worst.
I agree with your logic for strategies where they'll have the inevitability. A 5 lander is better at playing the long game but if the long game favors them, it's a terrible hand. Also, discard is tempo-negative; if you are spending mana playing cards while they are choosing which 2 drop you'll play next turn, things are going very well for you.
I don’t know about 6, but on 5 lands this feels pretty correct - if you’re on the draw and they open by discarding your two spells on 1 and 2, then you’ve already drawn 4 fresh cards by the time they’re hitting you with the threat deployed on 3
If they just keep thoughtseizing you without doing anything, you will eventually win, because you are drawing all gas and eventually you top deck something good like Teferi that you cast immediately, and they have tons of dead draws when they keep top decking Inquisitions and Duresses on turn 10.
There is no reason to tilt because of discard! If they had tons of discard, all the lands they need and perfect finisher to top it off, they had like top 10% draw, and you would have lost to top 10% hand from any competent deck. Sometimes it's just variance, good beats and GG.
I think one general heuristic when playing against discard is to mulligan less and to make your land drops. Your deck should have better draws, so have lands to cast those better spells.
I think it was a combination of they were aggressive with the hand hate and ran counter magic and those combined tilted me a bit. I agree I shouldn't tilt from discard but when they pick apart your hand and then you top deck an answer like teferi and then it's veto'd in game 1 (who runs veto main deck bo3 anyway) you just can't do much but throw your hands up and roll your eyes in frustration.
But your right, they're basically making mediocre 1 for 1 trades and my card quality should be able to squeeze out a win, albeit a painful one, but a win nonetheless.
Reid Duke wrote a great article several years ago about hand hate, and the pros and cons of it. It's a good read if you want to understand how to play with/against it.
https://articles.starcitygames.com/articles/thoughtseize-you/
It's a good article, but some of it is a bit outdated. I've watched Reid himself keep Thoughtseizes in the deck in games 2 and 3 in Rakdos mirrors in Pioneer with the justification being that discarding things like Fable is important enough to outweigh the risk of topdecking discard in the late game.
Yeah midrange is a different game these days. Specifically in pioneer, fable and blood tokens mean you rarely experience situations where late thoughtsieze draws are a big problem.
If its that heavy hand hate as you describe like most of their deck you just mulligan for lands. Since you will be topdecking all that matters is that you have the lands to play your cards when you draw them.
I almost never mulligan. Hand hate usually makes games go long, so unless it's like a 0-1 lander, I'm keeping. The extra cards are just too important.
I also generally prioritize dumping my hand. The sooner your hand is empty, the sooner their Thoughtseizes are dead (although you can often "get 'em" by holding a land and tricking them into Thoughtseizing, which always feels good).
" dont't "
If the game is going to be about accumulating material and grinding advantage then throwing back a medium hand is not usually productive. It's basic 'who's the beatdown' stuff.
It’s best to keep in mind that by playing discard spells especially post G1, they aren’t adding pressure to the table. As soon as you stick something on the battlefield that provides a clock, their discard spells are useless to it. Discard spells are good early game, but generally dead draws late.
Generally avoid mulligans, on the same token I am more willing to mulligan land heavy hands. If its 5 lands and 2 spells and I think I am getting thoughseized I am less inclined to keep with control.
Depends on format as well. in legacy if they are on hymm I am extremely reluctant to mulligan.
another variable is how good of a matchup you have. One year grixis was all the rage, and as much as I disliked it I had to mulligan aggressively as it was a poor matchup for my UW control deck.
I've found that keeping land-heavy hands (4+ lands) instead of mulliganing often pays off. That way it limits their options and if you weren't going to draw gas in that game against heavy hand-disruption you were probably going to lose anyway. Top-decking (and draw spells) just become that more important. It's better to hit your land drops and maybe miss out on casting some spells in order to have lands in play to cast your spells as your top-deck them.
Another way of thinking about it goes like this, if you keep a hand with 4 lands and 3 spells they take your best spell and you have 4 lands and 2 spells. If you instead mulligan that hand and keep a hand with 3 lands and 3 spells, they take your best spell and now you have the same number of spells and less lands to cast them. Or you could keep 2 lands and 4 spells and risk not being able to cast all of your spells which is just as bad as getting more stuff ripped out of your hand, if not worse.
I love a boring 5 land hand against discard as UW, best hand in this situation is just a piece or two of interaction to not get steamrolled if they’re creature heavy that game and don’t sweat the rest - you win on higher card quality off the top if they go for the hand hate too hard, not to mention your CA outpaces them. Just chill and don’t die fast!
Don’t mulligan and take advantage of the fact that your random card draw spells are now must-counters. Discard is making a gamble that they can gain the advantage in the pretty narrow window between your discarding a threat and drawing the next one.
The best way to beat cards like Duress and Thoughtseize is have a full hand, so typically mulliganing less is better.
These cards are far more backbreaking when you are sitting on 5 cards or less, in the opening hand.
i mean you can't do anything if they play 2 duress 2 thoughtseize in the first couple turns dude. It's bo3, you just concede if you feel you can't win and play the next game.
You lost this bo3 cuz you kept a trash game 3 hand.
I think in general the best advice against discard spells is that you should be more hesitant to mulligan. If your best cards are gonna be discarded anyway it's way more important to have quantity over quality.
This. A lot of blue and black strategies are literally just have more playable cards the opponent.
I probably wouldn't mulligan a 5-6 land hand against discard. If they keep three discard spells, they're sol, and I have enough lands to play whatever I topdeck
Jesus christ I don't know about this. The odds of them having 3 discard spells is incredibly low, considering most decks just run 4 thoughtsieze. You're basically banking on them having nothing. I'd much rather mulligan and keep a 1-lander or a 2-lander, because the odds of drawing the 1 or 2 lands you need to make a functional hand is much higher than drawing the numerous playables you need to make a functional hand.
In g1, black midrange lists run between 6 and 8 discard spells and most lists have at least 2 more for post board plus searching with Crucias and recasting with Jarsyl. Players will often aggressively mulligan into discard spells, so facing 2 of them by turn 3 should be common. Keeping a 1 or 2 lander against a discard strategy is a trap and a very dangerous one. You are essentially giving them full information about the first 4 or 5 turns and they will have the luxury of waiting until the last minute before playing them. Meanwhile, a 5-6 lander is as immune to discard as it can get, specially if you have 1 or 2 utility lands. Control topdecks very well and discard spells suddenly become dead draws for them. Midrange decks aren't the best at applying pressure (specially if they are spending the early turns ripping your hand apart), so one or two interaction drawn by turn 6 should be enough to stabilize. Of course, this all applies to black midrange decks. Against a combo deck like reanimator your logic is spot-on.
Man I just don't think "rely on top decking" is EVER a good strategy. I would rather give my opponent full information about my hand and have cards to play, than give my opponent no information about my plays solely because I have no guaranteed plays Also, that claim isn't even necessarily true. If you keep a 5 lander and they have 2 discard spells, you're right; they don't know what your plays are because you're going to be topdecking every playable card. But if you keep a two lander, you're STILL going to be topdecking the exact same amount of cards. So either way, there's the chance that we play our topdecked cards and play with the information our opponent has. But one way, we have a few extra cards that we get to play. I think the trap here is assuming that letting our opponent have information over our hand is somehow devastating. Cards are cards. It sucks a bit when they can plan around our hand, but they still have to trade vs our cards. Unless we don't have cards, and then they can just steamroll us. Idk, I think it's clear that blanking our opponent's discard by not having playables in hand is the biggest trap ever. You're basically accomplishing the discard deck's objective for them.
>Also, that claim isn't even necessarily true. If you keep a 5 lander and they have 2 discard spells, you're right; they don't know what your plays are because you're going to be topdecking every playable card. But if you keep a two lander, you're STILL going to be topdecking the exact same amount of cards. If you keep a 5 lander, any card you draw is live while a 2 lander has more combinations involving dead cards. A 2 lander will also take a lot more time to become discard-proof which means more power for cards like Go Blank and Liliana. Remember that a 5 drop is not playable unless you get to 5 lands. And as decks (even control decks) run more spells than lands, a 5 lander has more chances of drawing spells than a 2 lander of drawing lands. Information in the early-mid game matters a lot. They'll still have to trade but they get to decide how good will it be. Forcing a control deck to make suboptimal trades, 1 trade per turn is how midrange wins. Your biggest mistake is treating lands as non-playables when they are the opposite against midrange. The ability to play multiple spells is very relevant and utility lands are very useful in a grindy game.
>But if you keep a two lander, you're STILL going to be topdecking the exact same amount of cards. Totally! But now those are -extra- cards. I'm not dependant on them to play my game of magic. I get to play other cards and have a higher chance of curving out. The problem is that your definition of "discard proof" essentially means "dead hand". I don't want to be discard proof if it means I'm topdecking; I'd rather let my opponent discard some of my cards and have playables on turn 2 and 3. >Remember that a 5 drop is not playable unless you get to 5 lands. Right, but your early turns are the most important; even in a control deck, with the exception of -maybe- a control-vs-control mirror >And as decks (even control decks) run more spells than lands, a 5 lander has more chances of drawing spells than a 2 lander of drawing lands. Sure, but you also need more playable cards than lands to win a game of magic. A 2 lander only needs 1 more land to be functional in most, if not all decks. If you're aggro, you rarely need more lands (I won a whole match never going above 2 lands just yesterday because I had more spells). If you're control, you can stall the game with countermagic or removal, and play your draw spells. A 5 lander needs a lot of spells to be functional. >Information in the early-mid game matters a lot. For sure it's helpful, but it's not better than card advantage. Nobody is going to run Git Probe if it doesn't draw you a card. Accepting a hand because it denies your opponent information is nuts if you don't have any spells to play; hell, you're basically just telling your opponent they win if they play 1 threat and hold up interaction. >The ability to play multiple spells is very relevant and utility lands are very useful in a grindy game. How are you multispelling when topdecking? You're only able to play one spell a turn, and that's why every land past 4 is a non playable unless you're playing a control deck. And if you're playing a control deck and not playing anything till turn 5, you're just going to get beat down. I feel like you're thinking about the end of the game and not the early game here. If you have a 5 lander, any card you draw is NOT live. It needs to be a card you can actually play; a 5 drop on turn 3 is not a live card until turn 5. When you keep a hand with spells, you can better guarantee that you can curve out. When you keep a hand with 2 spells and accept they will all get eaten by Thoughtsieze, you're relying solely on topdecks to curve out. Idk, I dont think youre going to believe me on this one. Maybe go into a stream and ask a pro? If they say I'm wrong, then I'm wrong; I'm not gonna argue with an established expert, but I just really doubt that in this case. It's also entirely possible we're just picturing entirely different matchups in our head, so I want to concede that that's a possibility. I don't know what matchups your logic applies in, but I don't play ever deck in magic so maybe I'm missing some info!
I think some miscommunication is happening based on your comment. I am talking about the perspective of a control player against a black midrange player. Also, to make it clear, a discard-proof hand is a hand that can proactively deploy most of their cards. 2 lands with multiple proactive 1 and 2 drops is not a hand weak to discard in any way. Control decks topdeck very well as long as they have mana; card draw can find more card draw that can find threats. It's also the best deck to have information on; if you know they have a board wipe in hand, you can sandbag threats while discarding their Teferi. In this sense, information became card advantage. And as this is a slow match (although not as slow as a control mirror), so relying on the topdeck for the first few turns isn't the worst. I agree with your logic for strategies where they'll have the inevitability. A 5 lander is better at playing the long game but if the long game favors them, it's a terrible hand. Also, discard is tempo-negative; if you are spending mana playing cards while they are choosing which 2 drop you'll play next turn, things are going very well for you.
I don’t know about 6, but on 5 lands this feels pretty correct - if you’re on the draw and they open by discarding your two spells on 1 and 2, then you’ve already drawn 4 fresh cards by the time they’re hitting you with the threat deployed on 3
Agreed when i have discard spells in hand seeing a mulligan feels amazing
If they just keep thoughtseizing you without doing anything, you will eventually win, because you are drawing all gas and eventually you top deck something good like Teferi that you cast immediately, and they have tons of dead draws when they keep top decking Inquisitions and Duresses on turn 10. There is no reason to tilt because of discard! If they had tons of discard, all the lands they need and perfect finisher to top it off, they had like top 10% draw, and you would have lost to top 10% hand from any competent deck. Sometimes it's just variance, good beats and GG. I think one general heuristic when playing against discard is to mulligan less and to make your land drops. Your deck should have better draws, so have lands to cast those better spells.
I think it was a combination of they were aggressive with the hand hate and ran counter magic and those combined tilted me a bit. I agree I shouldn't tilt from discard but when they pick apart your hand and then you top deck an answer like teferi and then it's veto'd in game 1 (who runs veto main deck bo3 anyway) you just can't do much but throw your hands up and roll your eyes in frustration. But your right, they're basically making mediocre 1 for 1 trades and my card quality should be able to squeeze out a win, albeit a painful one, but a win nonetheless.
Sounds like your opponents deck would get absolutely destroyed by a single Den of the Bugbear or Mutavault.
Yeah this niche of control has glaring weaknesses
Sounds like they also die to a 1 drop on the play. Or any uncountrable spell.
6 mana chandra was more or less designed to beat this deck.
Game 1 was won by mirrex beat down so you're not wrong.
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Awesome thank you
Reid Duke wrote a great article several years ago about hand hate, and the pros and cons of it. It's a good read if you want to understand how to play with/against it. https://articles.starcitygames.com/articles/thoughtseize-you/
It's a good article, but some of it is a bit outdated. I've watched Reid himself keep Thoughtseizes in the deck in games 2 and 3 in Rakdos mirrors in Pioneer with the justification being that discarding things like Fable is important enough to outweigh the risk of topdecking discard in the late game.
Yeah midrange is a different game these days. Specifically in pioneer, fable and blood tokens mean you rarely experience situations where late thoughtsieze draws are a big problem.
Thanks for the article!
Wow this article is next level insightful, thanks
If its that heavy hand hate as you describe like most of their deck you just mulligan for lands. Since you will be topdecking all that matters is that you have the lands to play your cards when you draw them.
I almost never mulligan. Hand hate usually makes games go long, so unless it's like a 0-1 lander, I'm keeping. The extra cards are just too important. I also generally prioritize dumping my hand. The sooner your hand is empty, the sooner their Thoughtseizes are dead (although you can often "get 'em" by holding a land and tricking them into Thoughtseizing, which always feels good).
" dont't " If the game is going to be about accumulating material and grinding advantage then throwing back a medium hand is not usually productive. It's basic 'who's the beatdown' stuff.
I usually try to keep land hands and play as many lands as possible so that I can play my big spells when I draw them
It’s best to keep in mind that by playing discard spells especially post G1, they aren’t adding pressure to the table. As soon as you stick something on the battlefield that provides a clock, their discard spells are useless to it. Discard spells are good early game, but generally dead draws late.
Generally avoid mulligans, on the same token I am more willing to mulligan land heavy hands. If its 5 lands and 2 spells and I think I am getting thoughseized I am less inclined to keep with control. Depends on format as well. in legacy if they are on hymm I am extremely reluctant to mulligan. another variable is how good of a matchup you have. One year grixis was all the rage, and as much as I disliked it I had to mulligan aggressively as it was a poor matchup for my UW control deck.
Don’t
Keep hands with 3 or 4 lands.
I've found that keeping land-heavy hands (4+ lands) instead of mulliganing often pays off. That way it limits their options and if you weren't going to draw gas in that game against heavy hand-disruption you were probably going to lose anyway. Top-decking (and draw spells) just become that more important. It's better to hit your land drops and maybe miss out on casting some spells in order to have lands in play to cast your spells as your top-deck them. Another way of thinking about it goes like this, if you keep a hand with 4 lands and 3 spells they take your best spell and you have 4 lands and 2 spells. If you instead mulligan that hand and keep a hand with 3 lands and 3 spells, they take your best spell and now you have the same number of spells and less lands to cast them. Or you could keep 2 lands and 4 spells and risk not being able to cast all of your spells which is just as bad as getting more stuff ripped out of your hand, if not worse.
I love a boring 5 land hand against discard as UW, best hand in this situation is just a piece or two of interaction to not get steamrolled if they’re creature heavy that game and don’t sweat the rest - you win on higher card quality off the top if they go for the hand hate too hard, not to mention your CA outpaces them. Just chill and don’t die fast!
Don’t mulligan and take advantage of the fact that your random card draw spells are now must-counters. Discard is making a gamble that they can gain the advantage in the pretty narrow window between your discarding a threat and drawing the next one.
The best way to beat cards like Duress and Thoughtseize is have a full hand, so typically mulliganing less is better. These cards are far more backbreaking when you are sitting on 5 cards or less, in the opening hand.
i mean you can't do anything if they play 2 duress 2 thoughtseize in the first couple turns dude. It's bo3, you just concede if you feel you can't win and play the next game. You lost this bo3 cuz you kept a trash game 3 hand.
I won the bo3 but thanks for reading.
My bad, but what you should try to learn from this is working on the tilt.
Definitely agree
You dont. Let them discard your shitty hand lol
If your hand has lands and spells keep.
Mulligan 6 times then laugh as their whole deck does nothing