Conley Woods crazy legacy brew....

Conley Woods is known for coming up with some crazy decks, so you never know what you're going to get from him.  Legacy is a format where almost anything goes.  You can die on turn two, or get your winning spell countered when your opponent has no land untapped (or even in play potentially).  Turn 4-6 wins are prevalent, and all (successful) decks are a mix of the most powerful spells in magic.

Round one of a legacy tournament on GGSLive, which shows live tournaments pretty much every weekend (Saturday = Constructed, Sunday = Legacy)
http://www.ggslive.com/

He's playing against a "Junk" (Green-White-Black, discard + removal + big creatures deck)
His opponent goes first in game one, and goes Land -> Dark Ritual (BBB) -> Hypnotic Specter.

This is one of the most feared plays from the good old days of black aggro.  The discard is random, if you don't answer it right away, you're probably dead.

So Conley goes some land that taps for colorless, and eventually loses to cards like Vindicate (BW1 -> destroy target permanent), Wasteland (Land, T, Sac, destroy target nonbasic land), Hymn to Tourach (BB Sorcery -> Target player discards two cards at random), and so on.








Game two, he is on the play, and mulligans to 6.
He plays an Inkmoth Nexus (wtf?), a Chrome Mox (0, artifact, taps for any color if you discard a land when you play it, which he does), taps both for a Arcbound Ravager.

Now, Arcbound Ravager is a pretty good card, but he hasn't played any of the artifact land from original mirrodin, or really any other card that you'd expect to see out of a "affinity" deck.


His opponent plays a land (some dual land that taps for two of Green, Black, and White, for no penalty) and passes.

Conley Plays an Ancient Tomb (Land, Taps for (2), but does 2 damage to you when you tap it), plays another ravager.  He animates his Inkmoth nexus, and attacks for 1 poison, and 1 normal damage. (rut roh?).






His opponent does something terrible (for Conley, and passes the turn back.

Conley animates the Inkmoth Nexus and attacks with it, and his two Arcbound Ravagers.  His opponent casts Swords to Plowshares (W, Instant, Remove target creature from the game, its owner gains some irrelevant life).  Conley sacrifices the targetted ravager to the other ravager, and puts the counter on the Inkmoth.  His opponent takes two poison, and two damage.  (17, 3 poison)  Conley plays a Blinkmoth Nexus (one of each now!) and passes the turn.

His opponent plays a Wasteland (Land, T, Sac, destroy a nonbasic land) and casts Pernicious Deed.

Now, this is really bad.  Deed kills basically anything that isn't a pure land (it kills artifact lands and creature lands, unlike most anything that would be printed lately, like Into the Roil, or Ratchet Bomb)

The Wasteland also threatens his only other threat, the Inkmoth, even if he doesn't animate it.

Conley plays a City of Traitors (another land with a drawback that taps for (2))

He does not animate his Inkmoth (Deed can be sacced for 0 to kill lands that are animated/artifacts), and swings in for 2 damage with the ravager.

His opponent plays a land, and passes the turn.

When Conley goes to attack with the Ravager, his opponent casts Swords to Plowshares on it.  Conley could have activated his Inkmoth, to take the counters, but he didn't playing around the deed getting that as well "for free".  But things are looking pretty bad.

Conley passes the turn, and his opponent plays a land, and casts a Hymn to Tourach, getting rid of the last card(s) in Conleys hand, and uses the Wasteland to kill Conley's Ancient Tomb, leaving him only with a land that is destroyed if he plays another land. He passes the turn.

Conley activates the Inkmoth and attacks.  His opponent pops the Deed, killing the Inkmoth and Conleys Chrome Mox.

Conley plays a Chalice of the Void for 1  (Preventing Swords, Dark Ritual, Thoughtseize?).  His opponent Vindicates it on his turn.

Conley draws, and plays...  Plague Myr.  What the heck?

Even more disturbing, his opponent casts a Krosan Grip on it.  The commentators remark that this may be the first time a Plague Myr has ever been Krosan Gripped in this history of magic.

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Conley draws, and plays a Ichorclaw Myr.  What the heck is going on here?

His opponent plays a land and passes.  He appears to have two land in hand.

Conley drops a Necropede, and attacks for a point of poison, Take that!  (4 total poison for his opponent, and he's at like 12 life from fetchlands, and Ravager attacks)

His opponent plays a land and passes.

Conley plays a Cranial Plating, Equips it to the Ichorclaw myr and attacks for something like 5 poison.  His opponent has no answer, and dies on the next turn.

==================================

On to game 3, with the "Junk" deck on the play.
The Junk deck keeps their 7, and Conley looks sad, and mulligans to 6 again. (as in game 2)

He keeps his 6, and we're off to the races.

The Junk deck leads with Fetch -> Swamp -> Ritual -> Hypnotic Spectre.  Conley has no spell in his deck that can kill it outside combat. (His opponent may not know that though) That's really bad.

Conley drops a BLINKmoth Nexus, and passes the turn.  The announcers comment that he should have played the INKmoth Nexus, in the face of the random discard from the Hippie.

His opponent attacks, conley discards a land at random.  His opponent plays a land, and casts Hymn to Tourach, hitting an artifact and a creature.

So, Mull to 6, discard 3 random cards, and your opponent still has a Hypnotic Spectre in play.

Conley plays an Ancient Tomb, taps it for 2 (goes to 16) and slaps down a Crucible of Worlds.

His opponent notably doesn't play a land this time, and attacks with the Hypnotic Specter.  (The junk deck has a ton of ways to kill any perminant at 3 mana)  Conley discards one of his two last cards., which was a wasteland.

Conley plays the Wasteland from his graveyard using the Crucible, and uses it to destroy his opponent's dual land.  He passes the turn back.

His opponent swings in with the Hippie.  Conley taps the Ancient Tomb (going to 12 or something), and animates the BLINKmoth Nexus.  He blocks the Hippie, and taps the Nexus to pump itself, trading with the Specter!

             <<<









His opponent bins the Hippie, and passes the turn back.  If Conley had played the INK turn one, he would have not been able to kill the Hippie turn 3, and would have been just as dead to a 1/1 Specter (with a -1/-1 counter on it) as a 2/2.

Conley recurs the Wasteland with the Crucible, taps the Tomb (going to 10?), and drops a Necropede.

 His opponent finds a second land, and drops a Dark Confidant, an incredibly powerful card drawing tool/threat.  Conley uses the Wasteland end of turn, to kill the new land.

Conley uses the crucible to play a City of Traitors from his graveyard, taps for 4 mana, to play and equip Umezawa's Jitte.  This may very well be the first time a Necropede has held this legendary equipment.

He swings in with the Necropede, and when his opponent doesn't block, he uses one of the counters generated from that combat to put a -1/-1 counter on the Human Wizard.

On the Junk players next turn, he finds another land, and plays another Dark Confidant, but he Jitte-equipped Necropede kills it, swings in, and picks up a twin on Conley's next turn. (Along with Wasteland Recursion?)




Turn 1 Hypnotic, Turn 2 Hymn, off a mull to 6, with no removal for it in your deck?  No problem.  Just play your Scars of Mirrodin block limited deck, with some fancy lands, and you're fine!

Why people are misevaluating Lead the Stampede

There has been a lot of negative press lately about this card from people I would consider to be good magic players.  It has been bugging me for quite some time, so I feel like I have to say something about it.


People say that when it gets two creatures (when you have 20-30 creatures in your deck), that is "Divination at best".

The reason I think this is flawed logic, is the same reason I think Foresee is better than Jace's Ingenuity.

Foresee says "draw two".  Jace's Ingenuity says "Draw 3", and is an instant.  How can Foresee be better?

Well, Foresee actually lets you see 6 cards, for one less mana, and you DON'T HAVE TO DRAW the bad ones.  If you ship two cards with Foresee, which is common lategame, shipping two lands, you effectively drew FOUR cards.

Call to Mind is NOT "draw two", it is "draw two CREATURES". (at it's worst)

Lets say you didn't have any creatures in the top 5 cards of your deck.  Would you rather put all 5 of those cards on the bottom of your deck, or draw two lands?  In the first case, you effectively drew 3 MORE cards, just by not drawing the cards at all.

Think about Fact or Fiction.

You always get a 3/2 or 4/1 split.  You can often take the two, or the one, and that is the right decision.  Would anyone argue from this data that Fact or Fiction is a more expensive (4 vs 3) Divination?

If the best cards in your deck are creatures (often true in a green deck?), Lead the Stampede seems like a poor card to underestimate.

Morbid Plunder is a card that is often considered good (in limited), but it does roughly the same thing as Lead the Stampede, except you have to have already drawn, cast, and had killed, your good creatures.  Lead the Stampede does a very similar thing, but it uses the top of your deck, instead of your graveyard.

See Beyond vs Treasure Hunt is a similar debate.

Now, Lead the Stampede can't draw you land.  It can't draw you removal (unless it is creature based, like Acidic Slime, Gatekeeper, War Priest of Thune, or the like).  It can't draw you alternative creatures, like Living Weapons, Planeswalkers, or Manlands.  It can't draw into more of itself (which I presume is some of the better FoF options).  It doesn't do everything.

But it does draw you "the business".

Like Foresee, like Fact or Fiction, make sure you don't get caught up in the pure card advantage ("I drew two cards off this").  Make sure you consider the fact that you don't need to draw those other cards, and that the cards you drew were not terrible.

Play utility creatures.  Play good creatures.  Play a moderate amount of creatures (20-30?), and Lead the Stampede isn't just "the Green Divination".  It is the Green Fact or Fiction, where YOU get to split the cards.

Side Track: Juzam 2.0

I keep thinking about this, stupid brain...

Juzám Djinn was good, right?

Well, Phyrexian Vatmother is kindof like Juzam, with a few differences:
1) It has 8 power instead of 5.
2) It doesn't deal damage to you.
3) It is $5 instead of $150
4) It is legal in standard.

Juggernaut is a 10/5 for 6 now, but that's probably too slow when you have a 8/4 flying regenerator (with maybe haste)for 5.
There is also a new ultra-grey-ogre that is immune to all sorts of removal (StP-2.0, 3.0, Bolt 1.0-n.0, Terror-2.0, etc), blocks and attacks very well, (have to have a  4+/3+, non-red, non-white, creature to trade with it...), and is hard to block to begin with.  (~35% unblockable)

Mishras Factory 2.0 is a 2/1 flyer instead of a 2/2 ground-y now.  It's not as good of a blocker, but it is a similar attacker.

Black still has good discard and creature removal to draw off.  Pumping these guys up with new fangled equipment is the trend now, and these have ~double effectiveness with this strategy.  (2-mana
+4/+2, or +8/+4 (fetchland), OR 5-mana +4/+2 with double-protection + 2 abilities)

The new Paralyze-variant works on all their creatures (but only for one of yours), twice, and does 4
damage over those two turns.  It requires going into a new color, but there are a few lands
to support that..

Sideboard into mill against control/ramp?

Burn is not an amazing strategy against ramp and control.  They don't have (credible) small creatures to get 2:1 card advantage.  They don't have medium sized creatures, to 1:1 with cards like bolt or kicked burst.  They do have large creatures, that would require multiple spells to take down, or planeswalkers which often require multiple burn spells to answer.  All you can do is throw some burn at them, and hope it's enough before you are burned out yourself from their nonbasic lands or 6/6s.

Currently, I'm siding out Lightning Bolts and Arc Trails, to bring in countermagic.  I leave in Staggershock, because:
1) It's an instant
2) It does the most damage per card
3) It does the best job charging up an Ascension.  (1 card charge)

One strategy certain other people advocated just playing a milling strategy main-deck, over the burn strategy.

This involves playing a kill package of:
4x Archive Trap  (3UU, instant, mill 13.  Trap cost: 0.  Trap condition: they searched their library)
4x Trapmaker's Snare.  (1U, instant, tutor for a trap)
1-2x Ravenous Trap (2BB, instant, remove a graveyard from the game.  Trap cost: 0.  Trap condition: they had 3 cards go to their graveyard from anywhere)

This can kill through anything, including reshuffle effects(Eldrazi).  They are milled before the trigger goes onto the stack, so you do all your milling, then Ravenous Trap them in response (with the reshuffles on the stack).  Then they reshuffle their empty graveyard into their (empty?) library.

One advantage of this plan is that a single Trapmaker's Snare is lethal with a charged PA.  You search for two Archive Traps, then cast the two archive traps, which are doubled, giving you a mill for 52, which is plenty to kill anyone.

Valakut gets alot less dangerous when there are suddenly 2-3 valakuts, and 6-8 mountains in your deck.

Mindbreak Trap, which I'm already sideboarding, and bringing in for these matchups, is a trap, which gives some minor utililty with Trapmaker's Snare.

Currently, I have to resolve 5 burn spells to kill my opponent.  (4 damage each).  With Archive Trap, I'd have to resolve perhaps 3, depending on the game state.

Archive Trap does cost 5 to hardcast, instead of 3 for Staggershock, but the trap cost for Archive Trap is not that hard to trigger.

UW Control: Trinket Mage, Squadron Hawk, typically 1-4 fetchlands.
UB Control: Trinket Mage, typically 1-4 fetchlands.
RG Valakut: Every spell in their deck other than Explore?  8-12 fetchlands, Cultivate, Growth Spasm, Khalni Heart Expedition, Primeval Titan, Green Sun's Zenith.

There is some probability of having a turn 2-3 kill with this orientation.  You can just have 4 Archive Traps, or 3 Archive Traps and one Trapmaker's Snare.  Or probably even 2 Traps and 2 Snares.  This is pretty unlikely, but it does just win the game.  There is probably some interesting math here...  To complicated for me to do in any reasonable time frame.  Basically what we'd want to know is how many cards we have to see to see 4 of our 8 Archive + Snare, since that would give us how many cards we need in order to kill our opponent, without any Ascension help.  A charged Ascension needs only 2 Traps, or 1 Snare, and you'll be saving these until that time. 

The downside of these cards is that they have no effect on the board state.  Burn can try to kill planeswalkers (and fail), but they do take up less space as a kill condition.

4x Archive Trap
4x Trapmakers Snare
3x Mindbreak Trap
1x Ravenous Trap
3x something (Pyroclasm, Flashfreeze, Mana Leak)

This lets me bring in 12 mill + counter for my 12 burn spells.  having a sideboard against aggro could be good, and pyroclasm is pretty good at that.  I don't have much else to take out against control/ramp, so i don't think I could use the 3-4 more counters I could want to bring in.  (Bounce is not great against Ramp, but necessary against Control)

One advantage this plan has is that it is very blue.  I swap out red for blue, and that is a plan that follows my current mana base quite well.  Swapping out blue for red does not work terribly well with the mana base, which some other sideboard strategies employ.

I have quite a few potential sideboard strategies.  I'm not sure which way to go.

Echo Mage in for PA(Blue vs. Red, Creature vs. Enchantment, can target their spells, can block KFW)
Kiln Fiend for PA (Ultra-aggro, creature vs enchantment, can kill quickly with burn support)
Sphynx for burn (creature vs non, blue vs red, non-targetable)
Counters for burn (current plan - losing the long game)

Mill for burn (blue vs red, instant vs enchantment, 1-3 spells to victory)
Land disruption (one of: spreading seas, demolish, tech edge) for burn.

What do you think?

Mirrodin Beseiged - Whiff for the PA deck.

There are 91 cards that I could concievably play with R/U.

There are 16 instants or sorceries that I can play with my mana base.

Blue Sun's Zenith (UUUX, target player draws X cards, instant) is okay as a 1-of in the deck.  It will only give PA counters if a previous one was countered, so it is pretty terrible at charging up PA.  It's also not amazing post-ascending, but it is potentially better than Foresee as a topdeck on an open board, or as a way of punishing an opponent for tapping out.  I was cautiously optimistic about this card for a while, but it is pretty hard to be better than Foresee, and I am not playing Foresee.  I am already not playing Jace's Ingenuity, because Foresee is better, and less expensive, but BSZ could be draw-6 late-game against anyone, at instant speed.

I might play one.  I won't play more than one.  I'm may play 0.

Burn the Impure seems like a bad Searing Blaze.  I do like me some Searing Blaze (incidental damage to them is great), but I'm not playing that, and if I'm not playing that, this is a non-starter.

Concussive Bolt is for a different deck. (Worse than Lava Axe, that's saying something?)  I have considered playing Lava Axe, but I am not.

Crush is a bad Shatter.

Distant Memories is a card draw spell, sortof.  Apparently you do have to reveal the card you are exiling (I wouldn't have thought that).  A good way of thinking about this, is that it is Foresee, or a 4-mana draw one, whichever is worse for you.  I can draw the best 2 cards out of the top 4-6 with Foresee, which is better than "draw 3" to me.  Modal cards that give your opponent the choices are not good, period.

Fuel for the Cause seems inferior to Mindbreak Trap, and Steady Progress.  Mindbreak Trap is a counter that does great things.  Steady Progress is a cantrip one-card PA-charger, which this deck loves.  Fuel for the Cause is a one-card (+1 in the graveyard) charger for PA, which is great, but it costs 4, and requires your opponent to do something in order for you to get a "charge" out of it.  (and you need to cast another 4-mana counterspell beforehand).  It is 4cc, so it dodges Inquisition, and it is a hard counter.  So this may bear watching.

Into the Core may be a bad shatter/demolish.  You have to have two targets to cast this, and the PA deck is not playing any artifacts to allow you to cast it in a worst-case scenario.  Exiling is very good against Wurmcoil Engine, but that's about it.  (ITR is very good against that "colorless titan")

Metallic Mastery is for a different deck.  It is a 3-mana, Sorcery-speed, shatter against ratchet bomb.  Seems strictly inferior to Mark of Mutiny in all cases.  (Getting any creature(titan) > Getting any artifact)

Mitotic Manipulation is strange.  It is the "Blue Rampant Growth", which seems like about all it'd do in this deck.  The only perminant other than land we're playing is PA, and we don't need another out if we have one.

Quicksilver Geyser is higher-volume than ITR, in that it returns two perminants, but it costs 4U instead of 2UU, and doesn't draw a card (important for PA).  It also doesn't have the option to be cast for 1U in an emergency.   Combine that with the PA deck doing a pretty good job at perminant-control as-is, and this card is a downgrade to current cards in the deck.

Rally the forces: Aggro deck.  Not great even for the KF sideboard (3 mana -> 4 damage is about as terrible as ratios get for KF)

Red Sun's Zenith is actually interesting.  I am playing Mindbreak Trap, and bringing it in to deal with recursion creatures (Vengevine + Bloodghast).  MBT also has secondary uses against things like Titans, non-counterable spells (Gaea's Revenge, Emrakul, Thrun), whereas this has a secondary use of "just killing them".  It is a competitor for Mindbreak Trap in some roles, and like the Blue Sun's Zenith, charges PA poorly.  (I will have 0 copies in the graveyard).  If this could deal with Kor Firewalker, it might make slots just as a counter-hate-creature sideboard card.  As is, it likely doesn't make it.

Slagstorm is the card most likely to make the deck.  It is a 3 damage pyroclasm, for 3 mana, or it is a 3-damage-to-them spell in a control/ramp matchup.  (against those decks, doing 3 to yourself is irrelevant).  Unfortunately, Staggershock and Arc Trail already occupy slots as mass creature sweeping in the deck, and both are quite good.  Less mana intensive (matters for the killing turn, and call to mind), less red mana intensive (end game I'll have 3-4 total red mana in play, with 10 blue), and sorcery speed are knocks agaisnt this card.  However, it does do 3 damage, which is good against the green leyline, Kor Skyfisher, and doubled it kills everything (which pyroclasm can't claim).  Probably not making the deck, but it's a card that warrants investigation.

Steel Sabotage.  I do love me some ITR, but I don't need more ITRs that target less things than ITR (ITR is already somewhat problematic for not being able to target (man) lands - or valakut, that'd be sweet...).  Countering less things than any other spell is also not a great mode.  (Deprive, Cancel, Mana Leak, Mindbreak Trap, etc, are all pretty good, and/or better than Steel Sabotage).  Getting the choice of which bad effect I want (and any time one effect is dead, the other is also dead) doesn't make this card any better.  Meh, I say.

Turn the Tide.  -2/-0 is kind of like a fog, but I'd rather Into the Roil to prevent creature damage.  ITR prevents all the damage, and Pyroclasm kills all the creatures.  I'm not sure which of these you're supposed to not play, in order to make this card make any kind of sense.

Vivisection:  If i did have creatures, and didn't mind saccing them, I'd still rather cast Foresee, than Vivisection.  Foresee draws something like 3.5 cards, for the same mana cost, and no drawback.  I'd have to be saccing something for benefit on the sac in order to play this even in a creature deck, much less in mine.

So, overall, it seems like we got almost 100% inferior to currently played (or "better" yet unplayable) cards in this new set, as far as fueling the combo.

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Blue Sun's Zenith might be worth it as a 1-of, instant-cast, draw x.
Slagstorm might be worth it (over pyroclasm), as a versitile hate-card.  It would be a fine main-deck card, but I already have Arc Trail main, which seems like a equally general-purpose card, that is easier to cast, gets in splash damage while killing their team, and kills their guys on turn 2, instead of turn 3 (turn dead).  As a 3 damage sweeper, it starts to run into Chain Reaction, which is another slow creature-sweeper that could be great or terrible.

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As far as creatures, Consecrated Sphynx competes in the Sphynx of Jwar Isle slot.  4/6 vs 5/5 is about the same.  Both give some card advantage. (Saccing Fetchlands to shuffle, or Treasure Hunt hits) Combos well with little Jace on your side, and a brainstorming Jace on the other (draw 6?  Okay...).  I guess it is not terrible against big Jace, since they can only bounce after they draw their card for the turn, so you're still drawing 3 for every one they draw, and they're using jace's -1.

Neurok Commando is a better (?) Scroll Thief.  But we're not playing Scroll Thief, and NC blocks poorly, and attacks just as bad into things that stop Scroll Thief.

Phyrexian Revoker doesn't stop PA, so that's a card that may take up sideboard slots to no benefit against PA.  It also does almost nothing against valakut (shuts down KHE?  ha?)  Activated abilities require a : for the most part, so look for that when you consider how good this is.  (It does stop planeswalkers, which can be a problem)

Vs. Non-Aggro -> Play Aggro?

The other option, when faced with people who you can't control very well, and who have pretty good answers to your primary plan (Slime, Nature's Claim, Primeval Titan, Valakut, OR Negate, Cancel, Celestial Purge, Revoke Existance), is to go with a secondary plan.

The secondary plan being to kill them before they get going.

In at least one of the games I'd be going first, and counters are a pretty bad answer to a resolved threat.  Also counters to non-creatures(Spell Pierce, Negate, Dispel) are a pretty bad answer to creatures.

Unfortunately, as far as burn goes, I am already using quite a bit of the relevant burn.  Anything I might bring in at this point is of the "2 damage for 1 mana" variety, which is really not very good at killing people.

Burst Lightning is okay against control, because you do it on the end of their turn with a full hand, and either way you're probably good to go.  But cards like Galvanic Blast, Punishing Fire, Forked Bolt, and the like are pretty uninspiring.  Lava Axe as a sorcery doesn't accomplish much.

Artifacts, like Sphynx-Bone Wand tend to fall victim to similar removal that is already being brought in against the PA.  Acidic Slime, Nature's Claim, Negate, Revoke Existance, Naturalize, and so on, all also kill SBW.  Some cards, like Kor Firewalker, War Priest of Thune, Flashfreeze and Dispel are avoided, but the 7cc of this monstrosity makes it prone to things we can normally play around, like Mana Leak and Spell Pierce.

This is a pretty sweet artifact though, and it falls into the same vein as the deck in general.  Cards like Steady Progress, Staggershock, Surreal Memoir, and draw spells work quite well with this.  It just costs seven freaking mana.

So, it falls to creatures to try and answer this.

The most obvious is Kiln Fiend.  It comes down early, gets a massive 3 power per spell, and kills quite quickly.  It is vulnerable to some of the same removal as PA (Ratchet Bomb, Flashfreeze, Celestial Purge), but not alot, especially if I am going first.  The turn 4 PT can't kill the KF without a Khalni Heart Expedition, so I might have that turn to kill them, with a bounce on the KHE or PT.

The next best options to compliment that are Chandra's Spitfire, Goblin Guide, Plated Geopede and Calcite Snapper.

The 3cc options are pretty slow (slow to come down -> More counterable, slow to kill).
Geopede and guide do damage fairly fast, but not fast enough to kill on their own without some serious help from specific spells/lands (and no blockers)

Kiln Fiend + Goblin Guide put up some pretty respectable T4 kill numbers with the old baseline deck (Mana Leak still in).   With an even more dedicated plan, the numbers might get even better.
(+4 KF, +4 GG/Spitfire, +4 Burst Lightning, +3Twisted Image, -4 PA, -4ITR, -4 Deprive, -3CTM or CTM).  Screwing around with that will give me something to do on the bus ride to work today...

Vs. Non-Aggro -> Play Control?

I have been trying to take the control role against control decks, and ramp decks, in games 2-3.

In game 1, control's creature removal is dead, and their draw (Wall of Omens, Spreading Seas) are often sorcery-speed cyclers.  Their removal for my win condition is near-zero.  This often means a win game 1 against control, because in many ways I'm a better control deck game 1.

Ramp doesn't play pure creature-removal, or bad card-draw, and is fairly non-interactive on it's way to killing me with a Titan or Trap.  (problems I don't have good main-deck answers to)  This often leads to a G1 loss, since I don't have good answers, and they don't worry about having answers.  I am not a very good control deck game 1 (Titan->Trap ->Loss, Titan -> no counter -> loss, so many times 2x threats = loss).  The only way I win game 1 is to "aggro" them out with a turn 4-5 kill off an early PA + charge with staggershock, etc.

The control matchup feels like more of a coin-flip, once they bring in Purge/Memoricide for dead removal, and I bring in counters.  It is pretty easy to lose to discard -> Grave Titan, or "activate collonade on 12 land".

The ramp matchup feels nigh unwinnable with the current strat.  I can counter all I want, and they can still just play valakuts and kill me.  (especially when my clock goes infinite at 4x staggershock as my offense)

So if I am going to go control against these control + ramp decks, I need a answer to their non-counterable threats (MBT + Tectonic Edge), a way to deal with their removal for my threat post-side (Nature's Claim, Celestial Purge, Discard -> Memoricide, Ratchet Bomb)

Sideboard consequences:
I typically take out Burst, Bolt, and bring in 8x counter.
ITR is not awesome against most ramp.  ITR is probably manditory in some quantity against control, because it is defensive against removal for the PA, and offensive against answers like Leyline.

Having a planeswalker (Jace B.) to grant recurring card advantage and/or kill opposing Jaces could be necessary, in place of something?

I have a ton of sideboard slots I can dedicate to these match-ups, but I'm not sure what to take out after the initial 8.