[Deck] ANT (Ad Nauseam Tendrils)

[ThomasDowd]

I'm considering maindecking an Empty the Warrens as it just seems so good against RUG and BUG decks. I'm on basically Timo's GP list, -1 Chrome Mox +1 Island. Any suggestions on what to cut from the main for it? Or tell me why it's a bad idea?

Also, how does this seem for a sideboard for GP Denver in a 3 BW list? Anything I'm obviously missing here?

3 Surgical Extraction
1 Tropical Island
3 Abrupt Decay
3 Inquisition of Kozilek

1 Past in Flames
1 Ill-Gotten Gains
1 Grim Tutor
1 Empty the Warrens
1 Infest

I cut AN from my list for EtW. it has been fine. but i also main 2 grims and no other IMS other than petals so AN is kind of sub par.

[DarkJester]

I don't know if this is relevant for you, but with this sideboard you fold to leyline of sanctity (with the exception of EtW, but against a field with terminus, batterskulls,EE's or even elephant grass this shouldn't be a viable option). I would try to squeeze in 2-3 chain of vapors...

Just my 2 cents....

Edit: Why don't you try something like this to work with:
(Explanation: My Maindeck plays 8 Discard-Spells and three Probes and I found it a rare scenario to wish for an additional discard-spell)

//Sideboard
SB: 1 Tendrils of Agony
SB: 1 Grim Tutor
SB: 1 Empty the Warrens
SB: 1 Ill-Gotten Gains
SB: 3 Abrupt Decay
SB: 1 Tropical Island
SB: 3 Grafdigger's Cage /Surgical /Extirpate
SB: 3 Chain of Vapor
SB: 1 Pyroclasm/Infest/Meltdown/Reverent Silence (Meta-Slot)

As you mentioned you cutted the singleton C-Mox from your MD for an additional Island, but why not replace it with the Trop to make room for another card of your wish in your SB? (I know, Trop is not exactly the Land you want to see in your opening seven... I'm just brainstorming here)

[Koby]

I've done extensive testing on MTGO in 2man queues (money on the line). Here are the results:

I sorted the games to see how my FoW winrates were.. not pretty - 40% win rate. 4 losses to CBtop (expected).

The series went thus:
Match Winrate
58.6%
Game Winrate
53.5%
Games Played
71
Matches Played
29


Games Wins Losses
Sneak Show 2 0
BUG tempo 2 0
4c Deathrite 2 1
Esperblade 2 1
Cbtop 0 2
UWr Cbtop 0 2
UWb Cbtop 1 2
EsperBlade 1 2
BUG tempo 0 2
UWr Cbtop 0 2
ANT 2 1
Enchantress 2 1
Zombies 2 0
Dredge 2 0
ANT 2 0
Elves 2 0
Affinity 2 1
Enchantress 2 0
Junk 2 1
Zombies 2 1
Affinity 2 0
Junk 2 1
NO Elves 2 1
Affinity 0 2
Zombies 1 2
ANT 0 2
ANT 0 2
ANT 1 2
Junk 0 2

[phazonmutant]

I've done extensive testing on MTGO in 2man queues (money on the line). Here are the results:

I sorted the games to see how my FoW winrates were.. not pretty - 40% win rate. 4 losses to CBtop (expected).

I'm glad to see people posting statistics like this. Data is always useful, but not the most important thing.

- How did you feel about each matchup? Specifically, did you feel like you really had to struggle to win, despite the raw numbers looking good?
- What list did you play? 16-cantrip / Grim / Wish / other?
- Do you have any thoughts about individual card/sidboard choices?

I'm surprised you didn't see any Thresh at all. That's something I'm worried about for GP Denver.

[Holden1669]

I've done extensive testing on MTGO in 2man queues (money on the line). Here are the results:

I sorted the games to see how my FoW winrates were.. not pretty - 40% win rate. 4 losses to CBtop (expected).

The series went thus:
Match Winrate
58.6%
Game Winrate
53.5%
Games Played
71
Matches Played
29


Games Wins Losses
Sneak Show 2 0
BUG tempo 2 0
4c Deathrite 2 1
Esperblade 2 1
Cbtop 0 2
UWr Cbtop 0 2
UWb Cbtop 1 2
EsperBlade 1 2
BUG tempo 0 2
UWr Cbtop 0 2
ANT 2 1
Enchantress 2 1
Zombies 2 0
Dredge 2 0
ANT 2 0
Elves 2 0
Affinity 2 1
Enchantress 2 0
Junk 2 1
Zombies 2 1
Affinity 2 0
Junk 2 1
NO Elves 2 1
Affinity 0 2
Zombies 1 2
ANT 0 2
ANT 0 2
ANT 1 2
Junk 0 2


Sorry if I missed a previous post but what's your list?

[Patrunkenphat7]

Empty the Warrens has been testing very well for me over the last few days. It is especially good against some of our bad tempo matchups like RUG Delver. It forces your opponent to board in some bad cards like Engineered Plague or Rough // Tumble if you beat them with it game 1. The interaction with Cabal Therapy is actually quite relevant, and I have won several games by flashing back Therapy in testing. Overall the card gives some nice options to the deck.

[SaberTooth]

Empty the Warrens has been testing very well for me over the last few days. It is especially good against some of our bad tempo matchups like RUG Delver. It forces your opponent to board in some bad cards like Engineered Plague or Rough // Tumble if you beat them with it game 1. The interaction with Cabal Therapy is actually quite relevant, and I have won several games by flashing back Therapy in testing. Overall the card gives some nice options to the deck.


i'm just talking without testing, but i think that ant is a little slower than tes to use etw in the maindeck

[Patrunkenphat7]

i'm just talking without testing, but i think that ant is a little slower than tes to use etw in the maindeck

It's not built very well to Empty on turn 1 (although it obviously happens occasionally), but turn 2 Empty is easy and is very strong against certain opponents. It helps to have Empty in your deck against Daze/Pierce Tempo opponents when they keep durdly hands.

[Arew]

In non-wish Grim Tutor versions w/ Empty in the board, against Daze decks, do you just swap Empty and Tendrils? Or do you take something out and run both?

[aaronm678]

The only decks that you're reliably racing with ETW over Ad Naus maindeck are some RUG draws and some BUG draws...

Against BUG, Ad Naus is probably just better -- you can't reliably use the Graveyard, they have a lot of discard, they're 1-2 turns slower than RUG, and they don't run burn (so you can safely Ad Naus down to 1, and you'll usually have time to get 3-4 lands out and still have a fairly healthy life total). Not to mention, they run a lot of blockers and have life gain, so ETW isn't getting there that often.

Against RUG, ETW is probably better...so you have to decide if the slightly better RUG matchup is worth making all of the random matchups where Ad Naus is pretty good (any deck that doesn't really aggressively attack your life total, any discard deck, any other combo deck).

I think with this deck, everyone learns pretty quickly that Ad Naus with 0 floating isn't really what you want to be doing...so they over correct and just never cast it. Especially post board, I tend to cast Ad Naus a fair amount (probably 30%ish of games), as it's a very high percentage kill if you can float 2 mana, and it makes it so we don't really care that much about GY hate.


In non-wish Grim Tutor versions w/ Empty in the board, against Daze decks, do you just swap Empty and Tendrils? Or do you take something out and run both?

I cut a Grim Tutor for a ETW, I don't think you should cut Tendrils from the main pretty much ever.

[Arew]

I cut a Grim Tutor for a ETW, I don't think you should cut Tendrils from the main pretty much ever.

This is what I thought, I always get a little nervous not having access to Tendrils, but I just wanted to make sure that wasn't just me.

[Sigyn]

I've tested EtW against both tempo decks and, IMO, it only worths against RUG, for some reasons:

-They usually put more pressure on board, if they start with Delver maybe it's the same, but is not if BUG starts with Shaman or Thoughtseize.
-They have lightning bolt (Main reason).
-Mostly every RUG has stifle, in BUG decks is not as common. Stifle can also put kind of pressure on you since you'll have some trouble developing your manabase.
-BUG has more ways to control your PIF plan (shaman+GY hate post board).

Even against RUG I side out Ad nauseam (which I almost never use unless I have no other choice or I'm in a pretty good shape which is not common at all), goblins are not my main plan, they're usually like an emergency button for hard situations. We must also be careful with them, because they often bring EE for Etw or blowing up our 0cc Artifacts (this can happen mostly against BUG when you lay LED in order to protect it from discard).

I must say I found BUG a much more harder matchup than RUG, not the control build, but the tempo one is like a nightmare, free counters+wasteland+stifle+delver+discard+shaman...:frown:

I'm playing the UB version, only splashing red for PIF+Etw and green for SB cards.

[aaronm678]

I've tested EtW against both tempo decks and, IMO, it only worths against RUG, for some reasons:

-They usually put more pressure on board, if they start with Delver maybe it's the same, but is not if BUG starts with Shaman or Thoughtseize.
-They have lightning bolt (Main reason).
-Mostly every RUG has stifle, in BUG decks is not as common. Stifle can also put kind of pressure on you since you'll have some trouble developing your manabase.
-BUG has more ways to control your PIF plan (shaman+GY hate post board).

Even against RUG I side out Ad nauseam (which I almost never use unless I have no other choice or I'm in a pretty good shape which is not common at all), goblins are not my main plan, they're usually like an emergency button for hard situations. We must also be careful with them, because they often bring EE for Etw or blowing up our 0cc Artifacts (this can happen mostly against BUG when you lay LED in order to protect it from discard).

I must say I found BUG a much more harder matchup than RUG, not the control build, but the tempo one is like a nightmare, free counters+wasteland+stifle+delver+discard+shaman...:frown:

I'm playing the UB version, only splashing red for PIF+Etw and green for SB cards.

I have actually found Tempo BUG to be a little easier than tempo RUG - it's usually very obvious when they're holding up stifle, since they run a lot of sorcery speed disruption, and I generally think it's a little easier to play around Thoughtseizes than spell pieces and snares, and BUG runs a lot more dead cards against us than RUG (decay, often other removal).

Part of the reason I don't mind the BUG matchup is there are no surprises - you can tell when you're dead by just counting the board, so you know exactly when to try and combo. Against RUG they have burn, sometimes a mongoose gets thresh out of nowhere, etc, so sometimes we just die without even testing their hand.

I also haven't really been impressed by shaman when I've seen it in play - there were a few awkward matches where I forgot it's abilities and accidentally unthresh a C-Rit or accidentally die to Ad Naus, but now that I'm used to playing around it, it's very slow, and it's still pretty trivial for us to be thresholded on turn 3, and it presents essentially no clock. It's better than mongoose from RUG, but not by that much.

[Patrunkenphat7]

If people are actually playing well with Shaman, it is a lot better than you are giving it credit for. It really messes with the Past in Flames plan if the opponent knows what they're doing.

[ponder]

Is anyone from the thread going to scg Columbus? I
I'd like to meet other ant players

[Dzra]

Shaman doesn't seem like much of an issue. All of their tricks are on board, just don't walk into them. Hymn with Daze/FoW to back it up does seem like a problem though.

[Patrunkenphat7]

Shaman doesn't seem like much of an issue. All of their tricks are on board, just don't walk into them. Hymn with Daze/FoW to back it up does seem like a problem though.

Does it not SEEM like an issue, or has it not been an issue in your playtesting against good players? In my 20+ hours of testing against a skilled BUG pilot, it is sometimes a frustrating card to play against. Notice I said "skilled" because Shaman literally does nothing if your opponent doesn't realize that it can be an important card in the matchup.

Sometimes you don't care about it, but other times it forces you to find an additional tutor for Past in Flames loop while you are being killed and never obtaining threshold. When you win with Past in Flames, there is often a specific set of cards that you need to loop to reach maximum mana, maximum storm, and to find the tendrils. The Shaman can really mess with this. Now it's obviously not a card that you "walk into"... But not all hate has to win on the spot...

There's not much point in talking about Shaman, cause there isn't much you can do about it other than power through. I will say that Shaman gives another reason to have Empty the Warrens in your deck, because it makes Past in Flames a little more unreliable in a matchup where it would usually be very good.

[aaronm678]

Does it not SEEM like an issue, or has it not been an issue in your playtesting against good players? In my 20+ hours of testing against a skilled BUG pilot, it is sometimes a frustrating card to play against. Notice I said "skilled" because Shaman literally does nothing if your opponent doesn't realize that it can be an important card in the matchup.

Sometimes you don't care about it, but other times it forces you to find an additional tutor for Past in Flames loop while you are being killed and never obtaining threshold. When you win with Past in Flames, there is often a specific set of cards that you need to loop to reach maximum mana, maximum storm, and to find the tendrils. The Shaman can really mess with this. Now it's obviously not a card that you "walk into"... But not all hate has to win on the spot...

There's not much point in talking about Shaman, cause there isn't much you can do about it other than power through. I will say that Shaman gives another reason to have Empty the Warrens in your deck, because it makes Past in Flames a little more unreliable in a matchup where it would usually be very good.

I think Shaman is a very good reason to not have EtW in your deck if you're cutting Ad Naus for it. When PiF is less reliable, Ad Nauseam is pretty good, especially since most of the Tempo BUG draws are quite slow, and Ad Naus is usually live on turn 4+. When I run EtW in my SB, I don't even board it in against BUG, as we usually don't have enough cards in hand against them to make a winning number of goblins.

[Sigyn]

I think Shaman is a very good reason to not have EtW in your deck if you're cutting Ad Naus for it. When PiF is less reliable, Ad Nauseam is pretty good, especially since most of the Tempo BUG draws are quite slow, and Ad Naus is usually live on turn 4+. When I run EtW in my SB, I don't even board it in against BUG, as we usually don't have enough cards in hand against them to make a winning number of goblins.

I really agree. If you're on the Burning Wish build, EtW plan is perfectly fine against BUG, but with the infernal+grim build you have to cut Ad nauseam for it, and I've found Ad Nauseam plan pretty good against BUG as I said before.

By the way, what do you guys think about xantid swarm plan?, now I'm still running 4 on my SB, but I see some people who are cutting them for Thoughtseize (talking about Infernal+grim MD build of course).

[ThomasDowd]

I really agree. If you're on the Burning Wish build, EtW plan is perfectly fine against BUG, but with the infernal+grim build you have to cut Ad nauseam for it, and I've found Ad Nauseam plan pretty good against BUG as I said before.

By the way, what do you guys think about xantid swarm plan?, now I'm still running 4 on my SB, but I see some people who are cutting them for Thoughtseize (talking about Infernal+grim MD build of course).


i am down to 3 swarm, the 4th one is kind of redundant and you only really want the 4th for fish and show and tell.

[Koby]

I'm glad to see people posting statistics like this. Data is always useful, but not the most important thing.

- How did you feel about each matchup? Specifically, did you feel like you really had to struggle to win, despite the raw numbers looking good?
- What list did you play? 16-cantrip / Grim / Wish / other?
- Do you have any thoughts about individual card/sidboard choices?

I'm surprised you didn't see any Thresh at all. That's something I'm worried about for GP Denver.

This was the list I more-or-less used: http://www.mtgstats.com/Deck.aspx?DeckID=564728

I didn't feel very comfortable against UB/x decks since their discard was very potent and any number of soft counters and FOW meant I couldn't race to go off. When I did manage to go off fast, I was often hamstrung on mana - without Empty the Warrens it was hard to reach lethal storm or enough mana to go PIF route. That resulted in poor results vs FOW based decks. My win-rate vs those matches was 39% out of about 15-18 matches played. Many of these came from BUG Tempo builds and CB-Top based lists.

Xantid Swarm was fine vs BUG, but it didn't stop the Discard.
Liliana was tough to fight against from both fronts -- she could remove Xantid Swarm and keep up the discard pressure on the back pedal. Backed by cheap counters meant I couldn't go off reliably.
Surgical played against me never stopped me from going off directly. It was more of a nuisance and I was already behind when it did affect me.

Top + FOW is a hard battle. Xantid Swarm helps, but since those decks also play Counterbalance, you still need to find Abrupt Decay to be able to actually win.

Vendilion Clique is not fun to see, and caused many blow outs.

RUG Delver is much easier to deal with IMO - discard is very effective against them, and Xantid Swarm helps that out.
Discard + Counters is a much harder battle. That's even before considering DRS messing up Cabal Ritual enabling.

[ThomasDowd]

This was the list I more-or-less used: http://www.mtgstats.com/Deck.aspx?DeckID=564728

I didn't feel very comfortable against UB/x decks since their discard was very potent and any number of soft counters and FOW meant I couldn't race to go off. When I did manage to go off fast, I was often hamstrung on mana - without Empty the Warrens it was hard to reach lethal storm or enough mana to go PIF route. That resulted in poor results vs FOW based decks. My win-rate vs those matches was 39% out of about 15-18 matches played. Many of these came from BUG Tempo builds and CB-Top based lists.

Xantid Swarm was fine vs BUG, but it didn't stop the Discard.
Liliana was tough to fight against from both fronts -- she could remove Xantid Swarm and keep up the discard pressure on the back pedal. Backed by cheap counters meant I couldn't go off reliably.
Surgical played against me never stopped me from going off directly. It was more of a nuisance and I was already behind when it did affect me.

Top + FOW is a hard battle. Xantid Swarm helps, but since those decks also play Counterbalance, you still need to find Abrupt Decay to be able to actually win.

Vendilion Clique is not fun to see, and caused many blow outs.

RUG Delver is much easier to deal with IMO - discard is very effective against them, and Xantid Swarm helps that out.
Discard + Counters is a much harder battle. That's even before considering DRS messing up Cabal Ritual enabling.

My list is very similar to yours now. I cut a grim as well(only playing 1 grim now) and have been playing with 2 chrome mox and one less discard. I have not found the decrease in tutors or disruption too big of a deal, I may board the 4th piece of discard. I wanted to try out autumn's veil(2x out of the board,unsure of if it is better than swarm) at my weekly but I did not run into blue decks. lost to junk and golem stax and then dropped and played some netrunner.

It is effectively a green silence except you can't " chant walk" them which I am willing to sacrifice to beat blue spells. Discard may still be a beating but AN should help that a bit, I could see maybe playing a D returns? but that is sketchy without wish.

edit: draw 4's, doomsday, and top, are all things that help beat discard but at that point you should just be playing doomsday.

Or just killing them on turn 1-2 (insert TES argument here).

[blindspotxxx]

I played Prosak's 75, which for reference is

4 Ponder
4 Preordain
4 Brainstorm
4 Gitaxian Probe
4 Dark Ritual
4 Cabal Ritual
4 Infernal Tutor
4 Lion's Eye Diamond
4 Lotus Petal
1 Ad Nauseam
1 Tendrils of Agony
1 Past in Flames
4 Duress
2 Cabal Therapy
2 Underground Sea
1 Volcanic Island
4 Polluted Delta
2 Scalding Tarn
1 Misty Rainforest
2 Island
1 Swamp
2 Gemstone Mine

4 Abrupt Decay
1 Cabal Therapy
2 Chain of Vapor
3 Carpet of Flowers
1 Karakas
2 Slaughter Pact
1 Tendrils of Agony
1 Tropical Island

I've 4-0'd the last 2 Legacy Dailies with his list, playing against bug twice, sneakshow twice, merfolk, reanimator, zoo, and pox. The deck feels very good, the extra cantrips help you play around discard by letting you float business on the top of your library more often and also make the deck operate very smoothly. The trade off is that you're about a turn slower protected, but that doesn't really matter against the decks you want protection against. The gemstone mines help splash both red and green, I was skeptical initially but they let you keep island+gemstone and cast your black spells unlike island+trop.

The sideboard isn't ideal, I think the 2 Slaughter Pact could become a second Karakas and a third Chain of Vapor. The Carpets are pretty sweet against BUG, they let you play around all of their soft permission and let you cast the business spells you topdeck. I've been boarding out lotus petals for them because the matchup is super attrition-y and a 1-mana boost isn't usually what you need to win the game.



I'm not sure either, but swarm is really good against U/W as well, it in conjunction with abrupt decay lets you stop the top floating force method they have of beating you and the counterbalance method they have of beating you. Its also good against reanimator, and for a tournament like a grand prix I would expect to get paired against Show and Tell and Merfolk several times which makes the sideboard slots worth it in my eyes.

I've been boarding it in because you have discard to stop their initial combo, meaning that a topdecked show and tell is likely their way to win. Karakas stops that. I think sneak show is more popular because it's more resiliant to discard because both combos are 2-card, but I could be wrong. I'm absolutely not a Show and Tell player.

Adam Prosak said in a website during the tournament that the Carpet of Flowers aren't helpful at all. Now I'm no longer sure if they are worth the 3 slots, they can be replaced by Xantid Swarm though. Is the 4 Infernal Tutor really enough as Kill conditions? I'm still tempted to use a couple of Burning Wishes as it can fetch Pyroclasms on SB games and well you will draw it faster :)

[Troll Slayer]

Has anyone considered going back to Dark Confidants in the board to beat BUG? It seems like it would be good, digs you out of discard holes and allows you to flashback Cabal Therapy the turn you go off. I played carpet of flowers a couple weeks ago at a local weekly and it was very bad. Anyone but UW Miracles can play around it pretty easily. I plan to try a clean swap next week.

[ponder]

I top8ed a mox tourney last week with Ub ant
4 delta
4 misty
2 underground
1 volcanic
1 trop
2 island
1 swamp
4 ponder
4 brainstorm
4 probe
3 preordain
4 lotus petal
4 led
4 duress
2 cabal therapy
4 dark ritual
4 cabal ritual
4 infernal tutor
1 grim tutor
1 past in flames
1 ad nauseam
1 tendrils
sb
4 dark confidant
4 abrupt decay
3 xantid swarm
2 chain of vapor
1 echoing truth
1 karakas
my one loss of the day was against pox and it was a very close game 3
Most matchups went like this... i cantrip a bunch duress them and then shoot them in the face.
The board was awesome i never used karakas due to matchups.
Confidants and xantids were awesome.

[aaronm678]

I top8ed a mox tourney last week with Ub ant
4 delta
4 misty
2 underground
1 volcanic
1 trop
2 island
1 swamp
4 ponder
4 brainstorm
4 probe
3 preordain
4 lotus petal
4 led
4 duress
2 cabal therapy
4 dark ritual
4 cabal ritual
4 infernal tutor
1 grim tutor
1 past in flames
1 ad nauseam
1 tendrils
sb
4 dark confidant
4 abrupt decay
3 xantid swarm
2 chain of vapor
1 echoing truth
1 karakas
my one loss of the day was against pox and it was a very close game 3
Most matchups went like this... i cantrip a bunch duress them and then shoot them in the face.
The board was awesome i never used karakas due to matchups.
Confidants and xantids were awesome.

My SB is very similar:
2 Chain of Vapor
3 Dark Confidant
4 Xantid Swarm
3 Abrupt Decay
1 Tropical Island
2 Karakas

If you plan on playing against BUG, Bob is very good, as all their removal kinda sucks against him, except the occasional misers Darkblast that they run. With all the green cards in the SB, are you comfortable on just the one Trop?

[pocari79]

Just wondering if anybody has tried Leyline of Sanctity in the sideboard against the discard heavy decks? I know it makes Ad Nauseum way worse but not having your hand ripped apart usually means you should be able to win without it. Or Dark Confidant's just better since it replaces the cards that was discarded?

I played against BUG and Zombardment last weekend and ugh, I don't see how ANT can beat Zombardment since it's got so much hand disruption with therapies, thoughtseizes and tidehollow scullers. I know it's not a deck to prepare for but it just sucks to lose to random discard heavy decks.

[Patrunkenphat7]

@aaron: I did not cut Ad Nauseam for Empty the Warrens, so I don't understand where your comment is coming from... I like having options, and while Ad Nauseam is occasionally decent against BUG, I actually think Empty is better. Because of their interesting mix of disruption along with the Deathrites, having Empty, AN, and PiF really helps your percentages.

@pocari: I tested Leyline for a while against BUG, and I didn't like it. I also tested 1-2 Divert. The theory there was that even Diverting Thoughtseize could be good because I get information. Both of these cards were way too unreliable, and you really need to streamline this deck against high disruption opponents. Dark Confidant was also pretty poor in my testing, because those decks are able to kill you much faster when they need to... And their Jaces (that they definitely leave in for blue count) really trump the Dark Confidant. I don't know how to completely explain why Bob didn't work out. He used to be amazing in this deck's SB... It's unfortunate that all these cards did not test well, but at the end of the day the deck has operated the best when we don't dilute the gameplan, and all our hate hits as much of their hate as possible (AKA targeted discard).

The regular "Zombardment" deck is a great matchup, but I don't know what the BUG version runs. Does it have countermagic? One of my friends plays the Brw build, and the games are rarely close. You can turn 5 Past in Flames kill without worrying about countermagic; I dream for these matchups! I don't know anything about BUG variants though.

@everyone: Where is Xantid Swarm actually good? It seems like a terrible card in this metagame. It is marginally decent against RUG Delver, but it still eats a Bolt (and they are not boarding out their Bolts...) and opens you up to Wasteland. It's terrible against BUG midrange/control/tempo. It's terrible against Esper. It's terrible against UW of any kind. It's useless against any non-blue deck. The only deck it is great against is Fish, which is a terrible, unplayed deck that we already beat easily with PiF. It is OK against Show and Tell and High Tide, but I would rather have discard that let's me choose to be the control or combo player on a given turn sequence. I bet it stinks to play a turn 1 Xantid Swarm only to have them kill you first. Our deck is not THAT much faster than those decks. So in conclusion, Xantid Swarm is great against Fish, OK against Show and Tell and High Tide, playable but unreliable against RUG, and not good against anything else. I just don't feel like I could warrant playing the card.

My list has evolved a lot through my playtesting and a couple small tournaments. I will post my list so that people know where I'm coming from when I add to the conversation.

4 Brainstorm
4 Ponder
4 Gitaxian Probe

4 Duress
3 Cabal Therapy

4 Lotus Petal
4 Lion's Eye Diamond
4 Dark Ritual
4 Cabal Ritual

4 Infernal Tutor
2 Grim Tutor
1 Ad Nauseam
1 Past in Flames

1 Tendrils of Agony
1 Empty the Warrens

4 Polluted Delta
2 Flooded Strand
1 Scalding Tarn
1 Misty Rainforest
1 Bloodstained Mire
2 Underground Sea
1 Volcanic Island
2 Island
1 Swamp

SB
2 Thoughtseize
2 Surgical Extraction
3 Abrupt Decay
1 Tropical Island
3 Chain of Vapor
4 Dread of Night

I feel 100% about my maindeck, but my SB has bee changing almost daily over the past couple weeks. At one point I wasn't playing so much hate for Maverick, a deck on the decline, but I realized that I wanted to stop diluting my deck in a lot of other matchups. And I don't know how many people test against it, but Maverick is actually a pretty poor matchup if you don't have Dread of Night in your deck... It's annoying. The Karakas I ran originally was sadly suboptimal against Show and Tell variants, because they either recast with Omniscience, have an extra red mana for Sneak Attack, or draw a fresh 7 off Griselbrand. It was really only good when they slammed Emrakul off their Show and Tell, but that's their worst play against us anyways. It was also not as good as I wanted it to be against Maverick.

I board in the Thoughtseizes A LOT because people have so much varied hate post-SB. Against BUG I usually board -1 Therapy, -1 Probe, +2 Thoughtseize to hit their Hymns and whatever else they bring in. You can't overboard for those cards though, because then you just lose to Force... It can be annoying. I board nothing against RUG. I win with Empty the Warrens relatively often against them, so I view my deck as being preboarded against that questionable matchup. None of the SB otpions were ever really that good. The best card in testing was Inquisition of Kozilek, but I decided to do without it. The matchup is not as bad as some people think if they don't have Surgical Extraction in their SB. Between Empty the Warrens and Past in Flames, you can usually put together a good kill. You REALLY hope they play a Tarmogoyf on turn 2.

Well that's all for now. I am leaving for GP Denver tomorrow; is anyone else going?

[emidln]

I board nothing against RUG. I win with Empty the Warrens relatively often against them, so I view my deck as being preboarded against that questionable matchup. None of the SB otpions were ever really that good. The best card in testing was Inquisition of Kozilek, but I decided to do without it. The matchup is not as bad as some people think if they don't have Surgical Extraction in their SB. Between Empty the Warrens and Past in Flames, you can usually put together a good kill. You REALLY hope they play a Tarmogoyf on turn 2.


I have no idea what the cool kids do these days, but in the past, it was recommended to side out Tarmogoyf vs combo because hitting 3 mana was awkward and tapping down tended to be a game loss. Now that you have Delver + Mongoose, I have no idea why someone would keep Goyf in their deck for g2 unless they had nothing to side out.

[aaronm678]

@aaron: I did not cut Ad Nauseam for Empty the Warrens, so I don't understand where your comment is coming from... I like having options, and while Ad Nauseam is occasionally decent against BUG, I actually think Empty is better. Because of their interesting mix of disruption along with the Deathrites, having Empty, AN, and PiF really helps your percentages.


People were discussing cutting Ad Naus for EtW a few posts back, I figured that's how you were fitting it in. Do you cut a Grim Tutor for it? I don't know that you can support 2 Grims and EtW in the same deck as Ad Naus. Cutting a Grim for it seems fine though, and I think there's definitely an argument for that.

@pocari You should definitely not be having trouble against Zombies, that's a great matchup. Don't keep do-nothing hands, and leave mana up for Brainstorm.


Dark Confidant was also pretty poor in my testing, because those decks are able to kill you much faster when they need to... And their Jaces (that they definitely leave in for blue count) really trump the Dark Confidant.

I like boarding in Bob against the Tempo BUG lists, which don't run Jaces, and usually don't run much removal. Those lists seem to be a little more popular, and they're also a much more difficult matchup. The Control BUG lists you just play against like they're any other slow control deck without counterbalance, it should be a very strong matchup (though, admittedly, I haven't played against that deck nearly as much as the tempo one).




@everyone: Where is Xantid Swarm actually good?


My SB is currently built for the online meta, where Sneak/Show and High Tide are quite popular, and it's definitely better than Discard against those decks -- Sneak/Show and High Tide aren't really the type of decks that kill you turn 1 after you play a swarm. It's actually excellent against U/W, too -- they usually can't afford to leave in much removal on the off chance that we're boarding in Swarms. I usually board in 1-2 against RUG/BUG, it's extremely mediocre there, though. The fact that it's bad against any non-blue deck is pretty irrelevant, since we have pretty good matchups against all of the non-blue decks, we don't really need a million SB cards against them.

[Uranium]

OK I'm back with another outside-the-box idea. What if we go -2 Gitaxian Probe +2 Surgical Extraction in the main (with 4 Cabal Therapy)? It serves the same purpose of letting us see their hand but also lets us Surgical their Force of Wills so we don't lose to a topdeck.

Or what about those times when you go Therapy -> they Brainstorm in response. You can instant speed Surgical their Brainstorm after it resolves but before Therapy resolves. You still get to see their hand and hit with Therapy, they have no more Brainstorms, and you get to shuffle away the cards they hid with Brainstorm. In that scenario Surgical is a virtual 3-for-1, since your opponent will probably hide their most important cards!

And it has incidental benefits of improving the G1 matchup against Dredge, Reanimator, and other ANT decks. Or any other deck that requires a specific card to combo (Show and Tell, Hive Mind, Painted Stone, Cephalid Breakfast, Aluren). Oh and it's a free shuffle effect if you need one off Brainstorm (target yourself, fail to find). And counters a Deathrite Shaman activation. Or protects yourself from enemy Surgical Extractions.

And it frees up two sideboard slots.

edit: Speaking of sideboard slots, what is our best weapon against BUG/RUG Delver? I know these aren't great matchups but nobody seems to be boarding for them specifically. There has got to be something better than Inquisition of Kozilek here.

[ponder]

@aaronm87
The one trop has been more than enough. Worst comes to worst you pop a petal. The bobs have been stellar.

[SirTylerGalt]

Adam Prosak's report from SCG Invitational in Los Angeles:

http://www.starcitygames.com/article/25438_Braving-The-Storm-In-Los-Angeles-8th.html

[phazonmutant]

If you're stuffing your decks full of 4-drops (like the list above that has 2 Grims and 3 4-drops), why are you even playing Ad Nauseam? Isn't it just going to kill you more often than not?

[ponder]

In the lists like that ad naus is an "oh shit" button and deserves a slot because of that.

[mike1987]

My SB is very similar:
2 Chain of Vapor
3 Dark Confidant
4 Xantid Swarm
3 Abrupt Decay
1 Tropical Island
2 Karakas

If you plan on playing against BUG, Bob is very good, as all their removal kinda sucks against him, except the occasional misers Darkblast that they run. With all the green cards in the SB, are you comfortable on just the one Trop?

Looking at your SB, how would you side against miracles? Because every card is quite good against them. Bob, swarm, abrupt decay. What are you going to remove then?

[DragoFireheart]

Which matchup would you say is the single most difficult for this deck?

Miracle Control
Blade Control
Goblins
RUG Tempo
Sneak Attack
GW/x Maverick
Team America (BUG tempo or control)
Omniscience

And why do you feel that is the most difficult matchup?

[Rekk]

Which matchup would you say is the single most difficult for this deck?

Miracle Control
Blade Control
Goblins
RUG Tempo
Sneak Attack
GW/x Maverick
Team America (BUG tempo or control)
Omniscience

And why do you feel that is the most difficult matchup?

Goblins, since their hand is usually all creatures my duress's are dead.

[aaronm678]

Looking at your SB, how would you side against miracles? Because every card is quite good against them. Bob, swarm, abrupt decay. What are you going to remove then?

Against Miracles I'd:

-4 Probe
-1 Fetch
-1 Grim Tutor
-2 Cabal Therapy


+3 Abrupt Decay
+1 Trop
+4 Swarm

Bob is fine, and I can see an argument for running it instead of swarm, especially if you're going to be stifled on Green Mana. Most of the time, you'll have plenty of time to cast two green spells against them. Bob is kind of sweet against Miracles, but it's not really what you need to be doing -- very rarely is cards in hand going to be your limiting factor, as you have 10 turns to draw your perfect hand, Bob isn't really going to make that much of a difference.

If they don't run Wasteland, it's probably correct to cut the Island for a second cabal Therapy in my list...I don't know that I would game 1, though, probably only if I knew the list didn't have wasteland.

[MTG Junkie]

Surprised that there is no ANT decks in GP Denver's top 8.

Any body make top 16 or 32? If so I'd be interested in what you sleeved up for a board.

[aaronm678]

Surprised that there is no ANT decks in GP Denver's top 8.

Any body make top 16 or 32? If so I'd be interested in what you sleeved up for a board.

I went to Denver and had a very unexciting tournament

Rd 1: Enchantress (1-2) - kind of an awkward match without ETW, as they tend to overwhelm my 2 chain of vapors
Rd 2: Burn (2-0)
Rd 3: Sneak Attack (0-2) -- both games had Turn 2 Griselbrand, once w/ force, once w/ Brainstorm backup. Was close to beating it once, was not the other.
Rd 4: Belcher (0-2) - G1 I keep a pretty grindy hand, he kills me turn 1. G2 I mull to 4 looking for a fast hand and/or one with duress, he kills me turn 2.

I won some packs in the scrub tourney, kinda disappointing overall, though.

[Zieby]

Rd 1: Enchantress (1-2) - kind of an awkward match without ETW, as they tend to overwhelm my 2 chain of vapors


Didn't you board the Abrubt Decays against Enchantress?
This is one ot the match-ups I have never lost in the past years, so I am very surprised.

[aaronm678]

Didn't you board the Abrubt Decays against Enchantress?
This is one ot the match-ups I have never lost in the past years, so I am very surprised.

I did, basically G1 it was a race between me getting hellbent and him drawing a tutor or solitary confinement (I run no maindeck outs). My hand was a bunch of rituals + IT + 1 land, I hit land for a couple turns and he hits solitary.

G2 I raced him, G3 the board state was something like:

Choke, Nevermore on Tendrils, Solitary Confinement, Rest in Peace, Aura of Silence, my hand was 2 CoV, some other stuff. Basically, I couldn't generate enough U due to choke, so I needed to bounce RiP to go PiF flash back chain after LEDs, but that put me strained on mana due to aura.

Kind of an awkward match, and I definitely underestimated how annoying Aura was, and there were a few times I probably could have gotten him to crack it.

EDIT:

Also, on the last game, I was fairly certain I couldn't just pass the turn, as he'd just drawn like 15 cards, so it was fairly likely there were more solitaries and/or shroud effects coming, at which point I was probably dead.

[DarkJester]

Hey folks, after playing Burning-Wish-Ant with some success I'm now working on a BUG-ANT-List. I have a question for you:
How many copies of ToA would you play in your Sideboard (1 main) to board it in for Matchups where you sometimes need a natural Tendrils? (do I even really need additional copies?)
I'm unsure, because without access to Burning Wish Tendrils would be my only win-condition.

[Troll Slayer]

I played a singleton Ethersworn Canonist in my SB at the last weekly I played in. I didn't face the mirror in the actual tournament but I played against a friend afterwards and the Canonist won me consecutive games(I hilariously topdecked it after being therapied). It's easy to cast on turn one and you can just go all in on it with LED. If they haven't seen it they won't have any bounce in their deck g2. If they don't play BW they are sunk and even if they do they have to Wish and then wait a turn and you can just keep a discard spell handy to strip their answer. If they don't have a Brainstorm to hide it you just beatdown ten times ftw. Seems cute but I think it is actually good for 1 spot in the SB if the Prosak list keeps showing up.

[aaronm678]

I played a singleton Ethersworn Canonist in my SB at the last weekly I played in. I didn't face the mirror in the actual tournament but I played against a friend afterwards and the Canonist won me consecutive games(I hilariously topdecked it after being therapied). It's easy to cast on turn one and you can just go all in on it with LED. If they haven't seen it they won't have any bounce in their deck g2. If they don't play BW they are sunk and even if they do they have to Wish and then wait a turn and you can just keep a discard spell handy to strip their answer. If they don't have a Brainstorm to hide it you just beatdown ten times ftw. Seems cute but I think it is actually good for 1 spot in the SB if the Prosak list keeps showing up.


There HAVE to be better cards than Canonist for the mirror...not only is it about as narrow as can be (You can literally bring it in vs no other decks, as you'll just lose if you do), it also isn't even guaranteed to be good in the mirror. If the mirror is that common, it's probably better to play TES, since the deck with Silences beats the deck without.

[j_rb]

I personally like Ubw ad nauseam if ant and TES decks are popping up all over the place. The chants give you a good MU against the mirror and are still very good in other situations, but that's just my opinion as I know most people aren't too fond of chants in Ant.

[Troll Slayer]

Something to add Thomas? :D

[lordofthepit]

Something to add Thomas? :D

He probably wanted to say he was losing to Jund during playtesting. :D

[ThomasDowd]

He probably wanted to say he was losing to Jund during playtesting. :D



get outta here. ya god damn locals.

jordan: fuck your cute bullshit.

shawn: i hate you.

[LowBeyonder]

I played a version with Burning Wish, no Grim Tutors, at SCG San Diego and got 37th, which I was pretty happy with.

I posted a somewhat rambling tournament report (http://www.diepointyhat.com/?p=390), but short version -- I did occasionally want a Grim Tutor in the board, and Dark Confidant was a standout champion. I did bring him in once when I shouldn't have -- round six vs Elves, where I badly overboarded; the other matches where he came in, he was fantastic. My other losses were to RUG and the mirror.

I was pretty happy with the deck and I expect to keep working on this list or a similar one for a while.

[MTG Junkie]

Lowbeyonder nice report.

I'm playing the wish version at a tornament sat. I don't know what I want do with the board yet though.
So far its...
6 wish targets
3 Bob

I'm not sure what to do with the rest. I was thinking 2 bounce 3 Chants and 1 Tundra or 3 Swarm and 1 Trop.
I might even go 2 bounce 2 meekstone 2 Surgical Extraction.

What do you guys think?

[Troll Slayer]

I wouldn't be caught dead without some number(4) of Abrupt Decays in my board these days.
(4 might be tough in a wish board but they are definitely awesome.)

[MTG Junkie]

I wouldn't be caught dead without some number(4) of Abrupt Decays in my board these days.
(4 might be tough in a wish board but they are definitely awesome.)

If I suspected a room full of Counterbalance I would make room for them. Bounce is more vesitle and most important hit Leyline of Sanctity.
I personally feel Abrupt Decay is just a lot of hyp,for ANT side boards anyway.

[Troll Slayer]

If I suspected a room full of Counterbalance I would make room for them. Bounce is more vesitle and most important hit Leyline of Sanctity.
I personally feel Abrupt Decay is just a lot of hyp,for ANT side boards anyway.

It hits every permanent besides LOS which I see less of than basically every other hate card. Plus it's nice to just kill a dude sometimes to buy a draw step or two. Kills Deathrite Shaman to keep PiF alive. Mostly I like it because it kills the two spells which most often leave me dead in the water, counterbalance and chalice of the void. It's been fantastic for me.

[LowBeyonder]

At least two. I wouldn't run the full set unless I were expecting a very Counterbalance-heavy metagame.

Hull Breach (or some other reasonable wish target) exists as an out to Leyline of Sanctity but it's not ideal; I prefer having two Chains to board in for it as well.

[Koby]

If I suspected a room full of Counterbalance I would make room for them. Bounce is more vesitle and most important hit Leyline of Sanctity.
I personally feel Abrupt Decay is just a lot of hyp,for ANT side boards anyway.

What manner of sorcery is this? We don't allow people to tailor sideboards for their expected metagames! Out! Out with this witchcraft!! /s

[emidln]

Obviously if you're losing with the one true 75 you're a terrible player and should re-evaluate your life decisions to this point. Adjusting the sideboard is for those who are unfortunate enough to misplay their Brainstorms so that they don't always draw LaserTherapyTM, Lion's Eye Diamond, Infernal Tutor.

[pingpong]

is it plausible in a burning wish version of ant to replace the two undergrounds for two basics ???

I ask because I have the 2 volcanics and the one badlands but havent found undergrounds yet and id like to play it this weekend.

currently looks like

4x scalding tarn
4x Polluted Delta
2x volcanic island
1x Badlands
1x swamp
1x island

which leaves with 2ish spots which are currently proxied duals.

[Troll Slayer]

is it plausible in a burning wish version of ant to replace the two undergrounds for two basics ???

I ask because I have the 2 volcanics and the one badlands but havent found undergrounds yet and id like to play it this weekend.

currently looks like

4x scalding tarn
4x Polluted Delta
2x volcanic island
1x Badlands
1x swamp
1x island

which leaves with 2ish spots which are currently proxied duals.
I'd say you probably need at least one Sea for it to be playable. If you are in a budget crunch you could even try a watery grave.

[pingpong]

I'd say you probably need at least one Sea for it to be playable. If you are in a budget crunch you could even try a watery grave.

Its not that im on a budget crunch persay I just havent found a price id be willing to pay sure ill trade for them at about 130-150 but cash up front not so much.

But ill see what i can do i might be able to dig up both or at least one. Other than that does my manabase look good?? (no trop sideboard or abrupt decays)

[mort-]

I am kind of confused. I had the luck to win a Grim Tutor, a card which I didn't find that good in storm decks and therefor was always way too greedy to buy one. So now I could test it and I always hated it. I can see why one would play UB ANT with G splash for Decays, but why so many people play this card is beyond my understanding. In every game it was available to me, I hated it. Can someone please explain me why so many people like this card so much? Thank you.

[DarkJester]

I am kind of confused. I had the luck to win a Grim Tutor, a card which I didn't find that good in storm decks and therefor was always way too greedy to buy one. So now I could test it and I always hated it. I can see why one would play UB ANT with G splash for Decays, but why so many people play this card is beyond my understanding. In every game it was available to me, I hated it. Can someone please explain me why so many people like this card so much? Thank you.

Without Burning Wish, this seems to be a necessary evil. Just 4 Infernal Tutor are not enough business, at least from my point of view.

[Rekk]

I got 9th at jupiter games 40 land duals event. got back a bit late I plan on writing at least some what of a mini report. some highlights are comboing off through a lodestome golem game 1 match 1.
I also had a feature match round 4 against helm counterbalance.

[Troll Slayer]

Ping Pong: I think 14 or 15 lands would be better. 13 is a little light for ANT imo. A second island is nice.

[Tammit67]

I got 9th at jupiter games 40 land duals event. got back a bit late I plan on writing at least some what of a mini report. some highlights are comboing off through a lodestome golem game 1 match 1.
I also had a feature match round 4 against helm counterbalance.

Congrats!

[MTG Junkie]

I got 9th at jupiter games 40 land duals event. got back a bit late I plan on writing at least some what of a mini report. some highlights are comboing off through a lodestome golem game 1 match 1.
I also had a feature match round 4 against helm counterbalance.

What's up with the report? Eagerly waiting lol.

[GoldenCid]

Ping Pong: I think 14 or 15 lands would be better. 13 is a little light for ANT imo. A second island is nice.
15 is a pretty good number. 14 is ok. 13 is wrong.

GC.

[Rekk]

Congratulations To Matt (Tammit67)
http://www.thecouncil.es/tcdecks/deck.php?id=10024&iddeck=73078
(report will be down by tonight)

[Tammit67]

I really want to find a second Grim tutor. I'm sick of losing to blade because my Infernals get discarded/extracted, but really don't want to go back to the Wish version just yet.

[Rekk]

So this is a realllly bad tourney report, classes started and what not. I lost my notes so its all from memory if you have any questions please ask.



round 1 lodestone mud

i probe seeing city, tomb, lodestone golem, weilder (and other things) well i have to go off quickly, draw into a second probe, cast probe, fetch with delta getting sea and ponder seeing cabal ritual. my hand is something like cabal ritual petal led tutor tutor? (i can't go off now but i can next turn) i believe he goes tomb grim pass,
ok well this is bad, i don't draw what i need i play land and cast a petal because i don't read golem and think its thalia.
he goes petal tomb tap grim greaves golem swing im at 10. I untap play land cast cabal rit x2 led infernal tutor grabing pif rince repeat tendrils.

game two i keep my 7 he goes turn one chalice at one. my chain is locked out now uhhh ok not to bad. play underground sea pass. he plays trinasphere pass. well that hardly seems fair, i play volcanic pass, he plays trinasphere cavern of souls weilder, i play tropical pass, he plays blood moon anddd i scoop.

I keep a ponder heavy hand with abrupt decay, and ponder into one, i just go ad ad two hate cards then untap kill him.
Sideboarding: out 4 probe 3 duress 1 swamp, in 4 ad 3 cov 1 bayou.)


Round 2 i believe is my friend with affinity, game one i ad naus and miss a grim tutor kill when i was at 4 life, i then flip go to 3 see it and well its too late. game 2 i mull to 5 which is brainstorm land dark rit x 2 infernal. i go land go he goes land go, i play brainstorm draw dark rit ad nuase land. i put back tutor and i believe a duress ad naus 2 floating kill him.
board in abrupt decay and chains for duresses and probes (leaving one probe in) the cabals hit cannonist and plating.

Round 3 i keep a slow hand of lands and rituals plus a led. im playing against a nic fit valakut list which does nothing except burning wish for therapy then die on like turn 6. game two he boards in extirpate hits a duress out of my hand then dies with a thragtusk in hand.

(I board in bobs for probes to fight the fact that he is a slow deck with therapy.)

Round 4 against helm, this is on camera. game 1 i sculpt a hand that can beat 2 force of wills and power through his apparent nothing. game 2 i die with a grim tutor in my hand that would have fetched an abrupt decay to kill the cannonist but sadly that never happened. game 3 my hand once again can beat a force of will because of the natural drawn pif.

round 5 play against TES and lose to silences and in game 3 i get turn one probed therapied for leds.

Round 6 lost to Helm floating a force of will. i think i should have tried to slow the game down and find the tendrils main to beat him like that, but i got to anxious of him finding cb soon. lost game 2 in much the same way.

round 7 i played against bug agent. that deck struggles to beat combo with no forces game one, i kill him on turn 2 or 3 both games with no worries. I boarded in bobs.

[aaronm678]

Has anyone done much testing against the Jund lists? I have found them to be pretty annoying to play against, since, especially post board, since they run enough discard to force us to try and grind them out, and that's not that awesome of a plan, since they board in a bunch of Chains as well, and that card is very tough to grind out, especially when combined with Graveyard hate.

I've started playing -4 Bob in the SB, +3 Chrome Mox and a 2nd Ad Nauseam again - I haven't really found Bob to be all that awesome, even against BUG, since he usually just ends up dying to a Liliana or Abrupt Decay after drawing 1 card, and I really like being able to board into a plan that lets me very reliably race any of the discard and/or fair decks (typically when I board into this plan, I play similar to I would with TES -- I'm very aggressive with my cantrips, and I will often Ad Naus with 0 floating if my hand isn't going to hold up to a Hymn or a Thoughtseize).

Also, it's pretty sweet being able to board into a second Ad Nauseam against BUG, since even the aggressive version of that deck seems to be fairly clunky, so naturally drawing Ad Naus is pretty good.

[ThomasDowd]

Has anyone done much testing against the Jund lists? I have found them to be pretty annoying to play against, since, especially post board, since they run enough discard to force us to try and grind them out, and that's not that awesome of a plan, since they board in a bunch of Chains as well, and that card is very tough to grind out, especially when combined with Graveyard hate.

I've started playing -4 Bob in the SB, +3 Chrome Mox and a 2nd Ad Nauseam again - I haven't really found Bob to be all that awesome, even against BUG, since he usually just ends up dying to a Liliana or Abrupt Decay after drawing 1 card, and I really like being able to board into a plan that lets me very reliably race any of the discard and/or fair decks (typically when I board into this plan, I play similar to I would with TES -- I'm very aggressive with my cantrips, and I will often Ad Naus with 0 floating if my hand isn't going to hold up to a Hymn or a Thoughtseize).

Also, it's pretty sweet being able to board into a second Ad Nauseam against BUG, since even the aggressive version of that deck seems to be fairly clunky, so naturally drawing Ad Naus is pretty good.

I have been on this recently:

1 Ad Nauseam
4 Brainstorm
4 Cabal Ritual
3 Cabal Therapy
2 Chrome Mox
4 Dark Ritual
4 Duress
4 Gitaxian Probe
1 Grim Tutor
4 Infernal Tutor
4 Lion's Eye Diamond
4 Lotus Petal
1 Past in Flames
4 Ponder
1 Tendrils of Agony

2 Island
4 Misty Rainforest
4 Polluted Delta
1 Swamp
1 Tropical Island
2 Underground Sea
1 Volcanic Island

Sideboard:
4 ?
3 Abrupt Decay
1 Bayou
1 Cabal Therapy
3 Chain of Vapor
1 Empty the Warrens
2 Karakas

Your G1 AN are pretty good with the chrome mox and you never really need the 6th tutor. the 4 board spots are constantly in flux for the meta. I found that it helps having the early AN line against most decks in game one and you hardly ever board it out for game 2 since you want access to that line(before an active CB or versus discard decks)

I don't know if i would add the 2nd AN since it makes your first one not as good, but just natural'ing it is pretty awesome.

CB has taken a significant decline in my meta so I don't need the 4th decay and chain is better versus some random hate and generates storm if need be.

PiF loses some value versus the discard decks because they have grave hate but having that path is very good. they need to both have discard + grave hate. their clock isn't that fast, and with the extra IMS you can often AN from lower life totals(cutting the 2nd grim and a piece of protection also makes your AN significantly better) avg CMC in this version .91 versus .95 which does not look significant but can be. This may or may not include SB cards I am not sure how tcgplayer stats work.

I may board the third chrome moxen though. but the problem is that doesn't help fight discard as well since you are down a card/ need a card to make it good.

[Rekk]

Has anyone done much testing against the Jund lists? I have found them to be pretty annoying to play against, since, especially post board, since they run enough discard to force us to try and grind them out, and that's not that awesome of a plan, since they board in a bunch of Chains as well, and that card is very tough to grind out, especially when combined with Graveyard hate.

I've started playing -4 Bob in the SB, +3 Chrome Mox and a 2nd Ad Nauseam again - I haven't really found Bob to be all that awesome, even against BUG, since he usually just ends up dying to a Liliana or Abrupt Decay after drawing 1 card, and I really like being able to board into a plan that lets me very reliably race any of the discard and/or fair decks (typically when I board into this plan, I play similar to I would with TES -- I'm very aggressive with my cantrips, and I will often Ad Naus with 0 floating if my hand isn't going to hold up to a Hymn or a Thoughtseize).

Also, it's pretty sweet being able to board into a second Ad Nauseam against BUG, since even the aggressive version of that deck seems to be fairly clunky, so naturally drawing Ad Naus is pretty good.

thats why i play bob in the board he is fantastic for that game changer against the deck

[aaronm678]

@ThomasDowd

I agree it feels unintuitive to board in Chrome Mox against discard decks -- it makes sense when you consider that your primary win condition is Ad Nauseam, though. As for the number, I just copied it from TES, since that deck casts Ad Nauseam so well.

I do like your mainboard configuration. I don't mind being on 15 land with the 2 Chrome Mox. 8 fetches seems a little low to me (I've often run up to 11), but I think the second island is important enough to be worth it...I think my biggest concern is only 5 ways to find the basic swamp, which is quite important vs. RUG.

I've liked the 2nd Ad Nauseam so far, as I'm currently cutting the 2nd Grim Tutor for it after SB, which ends up being kind of a wash as far as CMC goes. I haven't tested much with cutting the 2nd Grim Tutor from the 75 all together, but it seems pretty logical (definitely the worst card in the deck).

[egosum]

(definitely the worst card in the deck).

Worst card in the deck is Ad Nauseam.

Greetings,

Iñaki.-

[aaronm678]

Worst card in the deck is Ad Nauseam.

Greetings,

Iñaki.-

That's not really true when you're playing against a bunch of decks whose entire gameplan against you is to remove your graveyard and make you discard your hand. In the current meta of Hymns, Lilianas, and Deathrites, it's worth it to try and make Ad Nauseam better.

But yeah, if you're running 2 Grim Tutors and 4 petals for IMS, Ad Naus is pretty bad.

[egosum]

That's not really true when you're playing against a bunch of decks whose entire gameplan against you is to remove your graveyard and make you discard your hand. In the current meta of Hymns, Lilianas, and Deathrites, it's worth it to try and make Ad Nauseam better.

But yeah, if you're running 2 Grim Tutors and 4 petals for IMS, Ad Naus is pretty bad.

I' m not saying is not a necessary evil, just like Grim Tutor. I' m not cutting it from main deck, and in very strange situations I side it out. Though it is plain the worst card in the whole deck.

Greetings,

Iñaki.-

[ThomasDowd]

@ThomasDowd

I agree it feels unintuitive to board in Chrome Mox against discard decks -- it makes sense when you consider that your primary win condition is Ad Nauseam, though. As for the number, I just copied it from TES, since that deck casts Ad Nauseam so well.

I do like your mainboard configuration. I don't mind being on 15 land with the 2 Chrome Mox. 8 fetches seems a little low to me (I've often run up to 11), but I think the second island is important enough to be worth it...I think my biggest concern is only 5 ways to find the basic swamp, which is quite important vs. RUG.

I've liked the 2nd Ad Nauseam so far, as I'm currently cutting the 2nd Grim Tutor for it after SB, which ends up being kind of a wash as far as CMC goes. I haven't tested much with cutting the 2nd Grim Tutor from the 75 all together, but it seems pretty logical (definitely the worst card in the deck).


getting basic swamp isn't that bad, you could cut a misty for a verdant but that might be pushing it a touch since it will only get a trop for blue. plus with 6 IMS hitting your first black source isn't so bad. AN also gets better with more IMS (6) making it a really legitimate early line. you only ever really need 1 maybe 2 black sources to go off, i like having excess blue for cantrips and on the off chance i need that PiF route. you may be able to get away with a badlands over volcanic there. my undergrounds typically only ever tap for black mana unless I am cantripping the turn before. also they only have 4 wastelands and misty get underground. I always cut AN vs RUG. Too much mana.

[Rekk]

Ok so i have a new card i want to try out, Ignorant Bliss.
old board
4 dread of night
3 chain of vapor
3 bob
1 bayou
4 abrupt decay

new
2 ib
2 karakas
3 cov
3 bob
1 bayou
4 a decay


mav plan before
-4 probe
- 4 dures
- 3 therapy
-1 swamp
+4 dread
+3 chain
+ 4 abrupt
+1 bayou


new board plan: should i board out lands? is it weird to board in 2 karakas as spells

[MTG Junkie]

Rekk,What's the theory behind Ignorant Bliss?

When I played 2 Karakas,I boarded out a fetch and a spell.
I was never disappointed.



Lately iv been wanting a non graveyard engine to wish for. I was thinking about main boarding a Cruel Bargain and having a Doomsday to wish for. Haven't tested it yet. Although I have en goldfishing with Doomsday and it seems like it could work

Constructive criticism only please.

[Rampart]

Rekk,What's the theory behind Ignorant Bliss?

Lately iv been wanting a non graveyard engine to wish for. I was thinking about main boarding a Cruel Bargain and having a Doomsday to wish for. Haven't tested it yet. Although I have en goldfishing with Doomsday and it seems like it could work

Constructive criticism only please.

That's asking for a lot. When I play with wishes I usually run a Time Spiral in the board as the extra engine. It has been working very well for me.

As for doomsday and cruel bargain, your going to need to modify the standard storm deck to make those work consistently. I can see doomsday as an option if you can fit in an a couple SDT for the draw effect, but at that point in time you might as well be playing Doomsday storm. The big thing with doomsday is playing a draw spell after you play DD to continue your storm chain, which means that you cannot break an LED in response given a standard burning wish storm setup. You are going to need a very select hand on average to make the work as well as alot of mana unless you have a SDT in play.

I have a very bias option of Cruel Bargain, so I will spare you that. There is also Ideas Unbound to try (also from DD)

[GexxX]

What situations do you want a wishable storm engine in?

I personally dislike Draw7s without chant effects. It's never really a good effect when you're facing interactive decks. Draw4 are Not really good either as they take away your life total plus 4 cards are not that many resources unless you draw the right ones. Doomsday + Infernal Contract is a mana-intensive plan plus needs a draw trigger. I don't really know why you want an engine to wish for, but have you tried Past in Flames? It's as narrow as a Draw4 basically, but doesn't eat your life-total and you can use it twice.

There are situations for all of the above mentioned, but for me it came down to playing without Wishes. My List is suboptimal, I know, but for some strange reason it works for me:

Land:
4 Polluted Delta
4 Misty Rainforest
1 Volcanic Island
1 Tropical Island
3 Underground Sea
1 Swamp
1 Island

Spells:
4 Dark Ritual
4 Cabal Ritual
4 Lion's Eye Diamond
4 Lotus Petal
4 Brainstorm
4 Ponder
4 Gitaxian Probe
2 Lim Dûl's Vault
1 Preordain
4 Infernal Tutor
4 Duress
3 Cabal Therapy
1 Tendrils of Agony
1 Past in Flames
1 Ad Nauseam

Sideboard is pretty much the usual, no Karakas though.

I am quite impressed with the list. Even more that it somehow works for me. I know it shouldn't work. But for about two weeks now I've not missed a thing. LDV is quite cool as it looks for many different things, although you need several draws to get all of them, but in some situations that's even better than any of the other tutors. I don't know. Maybe I'm just having luck...

[Rampart]

What situations do you want a wishable storm engine in?

I personally dislike Draw7s without chant effects. It's never really a good effect when you're facing interactive decks. Draw4 are Not really good either as they take away your life total plus 4 cards are not that many resources unless you draw the right ones. Doomsday + Infernal Contract is a mana-intensive plan plus needs a draw trigger. I don't really know why you want an engine to wish for, but have you tried Past in Flames? It's as narrow as a Draw4 basically, but doesn't eat your life-total and you can use it twice.



The op asked for a non-graveyard (not past in flames) wishable storm engines. Its not like there is a lot of that. Diminishing Returns and Time Spiral are the only good ones that come to mind. Against things like Jund and Deadguy or even dredge it gives the burning wish build the ablility to reset the game with out them really being able to interact which is really good against decks that attack your hand. Its also give you the ability to play to outs were games should be out of reach if you happen to get a good seven.

I agree with you about doomsday and the draw fours.

[GexxX]

The op asked for a non-graveyard (not past in flames) wishable storm engines. Its not like there is a lot of that. Diminishing Returns and Time Spiral are the only good ones that come to mind. Against things like Jund and Deadguy or even dredge it gives the burning wish build the ablility to reset the game with out them really being able to interact which is really good against decks that attack your hand. Its also give you the ability to play to outs were games should be out of reach if you happen to get a good seven.

I agree with you about doomsday and the draw fours.

Well I didn't really think about the graveyard aspect when I recommended PiF, true. It does still prove the point, doesn't it? There aren't many options for wishable engines. On top of that most are situational or plain crap. I think you should not sacrifice many slots in the board for situational engines. What you can do is try to figure out which situation you fear most and pick the best and maybe second best card for them. Just think about your board carefully in general. Many have said that before, but once again: This type of deck changes its playstyle dramatically even with only a few cards swapped out.
Draw7s do benefit from matchups where you encounter discard, but so does PiF. He can't really want us to suggest cards for those matchups, right? Artifact mana will be cast as soon as we know he packs discard anyway. So what's the point of dodging the yard as resource!?

@MTG Junkie: Right now I am confused whether or not we are able to answer without knowing more facts...

[Rampart]

Well I didn't really think about the graveyard aspect when I recommended PiF, true. It does still prove the point, doesn't it? There aren't many options for wishable engines. On top of that most are situational or plain crap. I think you should not sacrifice many slots in the board for situational engines. What you can do is try to figure out which situation you fear most and pick the best and maybe second best card for them. Just think about your board carefully in general. Many have said that before, but once again: This type of deck changes its playstyle dramatically even with only a few cards swapped out.
Draw7s do benefit from matchups where you encounter discard, but so does PiF. He can't really want us to suggest cards for those matchups, right? Artifact mana will be cast as soon as we know he packs discard anyway. So what's the point of dodging the yard as resource!?

@MTG Junkie: Right now I am confused whether or not we are able to answer without knowing more facts...

The point was that the OP was asking for non-graveyard engines that are burning wishable. Usually when you cast burning wish is its for the situational issues that you run into as the game progress or to solve a problem or just to win. Also most Burning Wish builds run a PIF in the side board anyway.

Sometimes your graveyard isn't a resource that you can use. Deathrite Shaman and Rest in Piece are maindeck playable cards that completely disrupt the PIF plan. then you have to deal with sideboard cards after game one.

There also tends to be this reoccurring issue with burning wish, it gets exiled when you cast it. In some games that will be the only tutor that you draw, its not going to win you the game, but with a Spiral or Returns in the board it gives you outs to play to. I would rather have a chance to win the game then to just loose.

[MTG Junkie]

The point was that the OP was asking for non-graveyard engines that are burning wishable. Usually when you cast burning wish is its for the situational issues that you run into as the game progress or to solve a problem or just to win. Also most Burning Wish builds run a PIF in the side board anyway.

Sometimes your graveyard isn't a resource that you can use. Deathrite Shaman and Rest in Piece are maindeck playable cards that completely disrupt the PIF plan. then you have to deal with sideboard cards after game one.
There also tends to be this reoccurring issue with burning wish, it gets exiled when you cast it. In some games that will be the only tutor that you draw, its not going to win you the game, but with a Spiral or Returns in the board it gives you outs to play to. I would rather have a chance to win the game then to just loose.

You couldn't have said it better,thanks.

I'm not a fan of Dim Returns or Time Spiral. In a deck with 8-9 fetches and no Chrome Mox its real easy to wif. Not to mention hurts your C Rits and is bad verse counter spells.
But hey if it works for you guys,cool.

A lot of people board in there grave hate against ANT just because its there. That's why I want a non graveyard engine

Rekk,I'm wondering if you saw my comment about your post?

[Tammit67]

Rekk,I'm wondering if you saw my comment about your post?


its new and i wanna try it
i dont think its good
Want it against Hymn

Here ya go

[Rekk]

Rekk,What's the theory behind Ignorant Bliss?

When I played 2 Karakas,I boarded out a fetch and a spell.
I was never disappointed.



Lately iv been wanting a non graveyard engine to wish for. I was thinking about main boarding a Cruel Bargain and having a Doomsday to wish for. Haven't tested it yet. Although I have en goldfishing with Doomsday and it seems like it could work

Constructive criticism only please.

my oppinion on doomsday for ant is that it might be hard to cast dd after a burning wish because you can't crack an led. Basically top is the best card in the doomsday deck, but is a little to slow and doesn't give cabal thresh, thus cannot be a 4 of. I could be convinced of cruel bargain, and as i said on facebook, reforge could be a sweet options but the infi red and no silences in our deck. against nonblue decks aka jund having a time sprial would be insane probably just win. playing petals and leds survives hymn, basically just pull a high tide.

So now im on roll.
awesome burning wish targets list
Reforge
Grim
Spiral
Empty
Doomsday (we can find room for 2 tops if we do this)
Diminishing returns
(tendrils)

[phazonmutant]

You couldn't have said it better,thanks.

I'm not a fan of Dim Returns or Time Spiral. In a deck with 8-9 fetches and no Chrome Mox its real easy to wif. Not to mention hurts your C Rits and is bad verse counter spells.
But hey if it works for you guys,cool.

A lot of people board in there grave hate against ANT just because its there. That's why I want a non graveyard engine

Rekk,I'm wondering if you saw my comment about your post?

The other option that some people have talked about in TES is Reforge the Soul. You guys are going to have a hard time casting it off of anything but LED since you essentially need triple R, but it does help out with Cabal Ritual. I suspect that Diminishing Returns or Time Spiral are going to be better though.

Whispering Madness is another potential D7...but it doesn't seem very good in the late-game topdeck situations where you want a D7.

[Sigyn]

Hi guys!

I've been working on a UBgr ANT list, when I started building I put myself some goals to achieve:

-Be wasteland resilient.
-Have a solid manabase even I'm splashing 2 more colors, in the way of being capable of casting all your spells most times.
-Have a plan to beat discard spells as BUG/Jund are rising in popularity nowadays.
-Be prepared to beat counterbalance.
-Have a plan against RUG and Esper Blade.
-I won't be prepared for MUD or another tomb chalice.decks because it would be too greedy with only 15 slots on SB.
-Achieve those goals with a list as fast as possible.

So... after testing I've come to this:

Pretty standard I must say...

4 Polluted Delta
3 Misty rainforest
1 Verdant Catacombs
2 Underground Sea
1 Volcanic Island
2 Gemstone Mine
1 Island
1 Swamp


I run 15 lands, I tried 14+Chrome mox but in a metagame full of discard-spells I think is not a good idea 2 for 1 yourself, even though Chrome mox makes the deck faster by making Ad Nauseam a much better choice when you go off.

2 Gemstone Mines are from Adam Prosak's list. At first I disliked them because I thought they made my manabase worse, but now i don't think so, I know they are wasteable, but Trop/Bayou MD also are, and they can produce every color you need to play all your splashes in addition to Volcanic Island and trop SB. They are also inmune to stifle effects, which is relevant against RUG/BUG, you just hold them in hand until you go off, in this scenario are way better than other land because makes every colour you need and can't be stifled. The worse side is when you only have gemstones in your hand against a wasteland deck and that's the reason I only run 2 of them. The fact that they only have 3 maximum uses wouldn't be relevant in this deck if you play them correctly.

I've been playing 3 basics (2 island 1 swamp) since I started working on ANT, I love the 2nd island against stifle+waste decks where you need to cast a ton of cantrips to grind them out and be resilient to wasteland at the same time. I also love the 8th fetch because it provides you another shuffle-effect and can find basic swamp. I prefer the fetch against most of the decks but tempo, so that's the reason I only play 2. I must say i'm not sold on any side of this question, I'm still testing it. What do you guys think about it?


1 ToA
1 Ad Nauseam
1 Past in Flames
4 Brainstorm
4 Ponder
4 Gitaxian Probe
2 Preordain
4 Infernal Tutor
1 Grim Tutor
4 LED
4 Lotus Petal
4 Duress
3 Cabal Therapy
4 Dark Ritual
4 Cabal Ritual


Pretty standard build as i said before. I'm running 5 tutors because when I tested with 2 Grims I had hands with too much business, besides the fact that Grim Tutor is sooo terrible, with 1 Grim you're not dead to a surgical on your infernals, and I feel I have good chances of finding the business as I would have if only I was playing 4 tutors. Running that build allows me to play 2 preordain which I really like to filter my top anyway I only own 1 Grim so there's nothing I can do about it. :laugh:

I would like to play 8 discard spells MD but I only have room for 7, so the 8th goes to the SB.


Sideboard:

4 Dark Confidant
3 Abrupt Decay
3 Chain of vapor
2 Tormod's Crypt
1 Thoughtseize
1 Cabal Therapy
1 Tropical Island



4 Dark confidant: Mostly against discard spells, some people said me I was making my opp removal usefull, but honestly, I think Dark confidant worth it, my opponents usually left a little spot removal post board, 4 stp, 4 lightning... stuff like that, so there're sometimes where they have to burn cantrips to find the card that deals with Dark Confidant, that's why I run 4, I often want a 2nd to start overwhelming my opp in card advantage.
I think that's the best way to deal against discard spells, PIF makes us some kind of resilient if we have a ritual-heavy hand but with the appereance
of Deathrite Shaman, we definitely need to run something to refill our's deck gas.

At first, I used the green splash to play Xantid Swarm, I really like those insects because they are insane against blue decks, they have to find an answer or loose. In the current metagame I think dark confidant covers way more matchups, so that's the reason I don't play any of them, against RUG I preffer Xantid instead of Confidant, but the wizard is not bat at all and help us a lot against other decks.

In a deck that runs 4 Cabal therapy post SB I also found really nice having the opportunity to flash my therapies back! :wink:

3 Abrupt Decay: Against Cbalance, if I expect them I would probably run 4.

3 Cov: Really good against a lot of things, you know...

2 Tormod's Crypt: I want to have some GY hate, to have a chance against Reanimator or a high speed start of LED Dredge, I know since DRS was printed GY decks are not as common as before, but I wanted to be covered if I could.

Those are my actual SB plans:

RUG/BUG/Esper Blade:

-4 Probe
-2 Preordain
+4 Dark confidant
+1 Cabal Therapy
+1 Thoughtseize

I do not bring the 16th land, but I don't splash green, so the manabase is less tricky with this plan. I tried carpet of flowers and is nice, but I have no room for it.

UW Miracles:

-4 Probe
-1 Lotus Petal
-1 Verdant Catacombs

+3 Abrupt Decay
+1 Cabal Therapy
+1 Thoughtseize
+1 Tropical Island

Reanimator:

-4 Probe
+2 Tormod's Crypt
+1 Thoughtseize
+1 Cabal Therapy

Show and tell:

-4 Probe
-2 Preordain
+4 Dark Confidant (they have no way to interact and if you can slow them with your discard spells, Dark confidant can provide you a huge advantage)
+1 Thoughtseize
+1 Cabal Therapy

Dredge:

-2 Cabal Therapy
+2 Tormod's Crypt

Jund:

-4 Duress
+4 Dark Confidant

Hatebears:

-4 Duress
-2 Preordain
-1 Verdant catacombs
+3 Abrupt Decay
+3 Chain of Vapor
+1 Tropical Island

Notice I left my 3 cabal therapies in against non blue, that's because I always try to fire one naming mindbreak trap just in case, and, in worst case scenario it can be used to discard some guys to buy us some time.


I'll appreciate comments to improve my deck!

Thanks!

[leegoo]

Hi guys!

I've been working on a UBgr ANT list, when I started building I put myself some goals to achieve:

-Be wasteland resilient.
-Have a solid manabase even I'm splashing 2 more colors, in the way of being capable of casting all your spells most times.
-Have a plan to beat discard spells as BUG/Jund are rising in popularity nowadays.
-Be prepared to beat counterbalance.
-Have a plan against RUG and Esper Blade.
-I won't be prepared for MUD or another tomb chalice.decks because it would be too greedy with only 15 slots on SB.
-Achieve those goals with a list as fast as possible.



- You aren't very resilient to wasteland. Volcanic Island doesn't make sense in your list. You have enough red sources for PiF without it.
- Get rid of Gemstone Mine. After you add Trop in the board you'll have enough G sources to cast AD. More basics
- If I were on the "must beat discard" train, I'd rather have Ad Nauseam #2 than Grim Tutor
- Looks like you've got CB as covered as possible. The only other option is DD/SDI/Emrakul
- Storm has a plan against those decks.
- Why aren't you prepared for MUD/Chalice? Abrupt Decay blows up chalice on 2.

[mike1987]

Sorry i might be wols but is there a reason why recent ANT lists aren't running burning wishes anymore? (Timo to Prosak's list) I also feel that having a wishable board means we can go ETW and IGG as alternative win cons. Plus it can even search out pyroclasm for a turn 2 thalia or teeg in game 1. Preordain seems to make the deck more streamlined for Pif or Ad Nauseum but is it worth sacrificing burning wish for?

Secondly, I am not sure those playing UB lists have their tendrils being discarded and extracted before? If that is the case, isn't it an auto win since we dont have ETW in the SB anymore?

Thanks for clarifying!

[Sigyn]

- You aren't very resilient to wasteland. Volcanic Island doesn't make sense in your list. You have enough red sources for PiF without it.


Volcanic is necessary to cast PIF, you don't always have the petals, or simply you want to shuffle them with brainstorm in exchange for rituals or another things. I never feel I wasn't resilient to wasteland because of the Volcanic.



-Get rid of Gemstone Mine. After you add Trop in the board you'll have enough G sources to cast AD. More basics


I played 1 trop MD in my older builds and was fine, but a little awkward when i need another land and I only have the trop... I'm gonna try it on the SB with more basics, you're maybe right.



- If I were on the "must beat discard" train, I'd rather have Ad Nauseam #2 than Grim Tutor


But 2nd AN makes your Ad Nauseams worse by uping your curve, and Ad Nauseam is always my last choice if I can go another way.



- Looks like you've got CB as covered as possible. The only other option is DD/SDI/Emrakul


Interesting... It's not a bad idea if I expect a lot of counterbalance.



- Storm has a plan against those decks.


Yeah, I mean I must build a plan with my SB, Xantid, confidant, adding more discard... you know.



- Why aren't you prepared for MUD/Chalice? Abrupt Decay blows up chalice on 2.
[/QUOTE]

Because they play Lodestone golem, Torn of Amethyst and stuff like that, to be well prepared I would run Hurkyls recall+rebuild, but yeah, AD give us a chance.

[leegoo]

If you want the Volc go for it... but 1 spell that isn't necessarily even your route to victory is sketchy imo. I'm not sure that not having volc to cast PiF has cost me a game... I'm sure it's cost me less than having nonbasic vs. basic island in my opening hand has. If you are dead set on the Volc, it seems criminal not to have an EtW somewhere in the board.

2nd Ad Nauseam doesn't really up your cost as opposed to grim tutor. Flipping AdN = 5 life. Flipping/casting Grim = 6. That said, I said in the context of vs. discard the 2nd AdN was better... not that it was better overall.

I mean yeah... if they resolve Golem and thorn you're in trouble... but you're in trouble even if a hurkyl's / rebuild is in your sb.

[Sigyn]

I used to have EtW, I recently cut it from the SB because it hasn't been great, what card do you side out for Etw? Ad Nauseam?.

Do you like 1 IGG on the SB?, It's like PIF but you can loop with x2 LED + infernal against non-blue decks.


Thanks for the answers!

[egosum]

2nd Ad Nauseam doesn't really up your cost as opposed to grim tutor. Flipping AdN = 5 life. Flipping/casting Grim = 6. That said, I said in the context of vs. discard the 2nd AdN was better... not that it was better overall.


This is a falacy. While if you REVEAL AND PLAY Grim tutor you are losing 6 life in the process. REvaling GT cost only 3 life, and this means that you can still keep revealing and gain 2-5 cards in the process extra, and if one of those cards is an Infernal Tutor (now you have effectively lost 5 life) you can go off while you won't be able to do that when revealing that second Ad Nauseam that you compared to GT.

Greetings,

Iñaki.-

[leegoo]

This is a falacy. While if you REVEAL AND PLAY Grim tutor you are losing 6 life in the process. REvaling GT cost only 3 life, and this means that you can still keep revealing and gain 2-5 cards in the process extra, and if one of those cards is an Infernal Tutor (now you have effectively lost 5 life) you can go off while you won't be able to do that when revealing that second Ad Nauseam that you compared to GT.

Greetings,

Iñaki.-

Right, only if you want to use your tutor will it cost you 6 life... you know what I meant however. But you are right, revealing it and NOT casting it saves you (maybe) one life if the next card you flip is LED/Petal and then IT. Point conceded.
Grim Tutor is a bad card. It's simply the best card ANT has access to for the slot. It's been this way ever since Mystical was banned. It still is.

I said if he wanted to beat discard decks the 2nd Ad Nauseam is better than the Grim Tutor. Having 2 chances at raw drawing Ad Nauseam as opposed to having to tutor for it is huge against discard decks.

[aaronm678]

Sorry i might be wols but is there a reason why recent ANT lists aren't running burning wishes anymore? (Timo to Prosak's list) I also feel that having a wishable board means we can go ETW and IGG as alternative win cons. Plus it can even search out pyroclasm for a turn 2 thalia or teeg in game 1. Preordain seems to make the deck more streamlined for Pif or Ad Nauseum but is it worth sacrificing burning wish for?
Thanks for clarifying!

BW was fairly difficult to cast before the green splash, it's certainly not possible to play 4 BW along with a green splash. You can still play BW if you want, you just can't play Abrupt Decay with it. Non-BW builds have very few outs to Thalia and no outs to Hatebears G1, it's just part of playing the non-BW version.



Secondly, I am not sure those playing UB lists have their tendrils being discarded and extracted before? If that is the case, isn't it an auto win since we dont have ETW in the SB anymore?


It's an auto lose, you definitely have to avoid drawing Tendrils if you can against discard decks, or you need to protect it if you draw it, since they often have Deathrite, and Discard + Deathrite is also autolose. That said, it's not that difficult to prevent exposing your Tendrils to those cards, so it's mostly a non-issue.

[leegoo]

I used to have EtW, I recently cut it from the SB because it hasn't been great, what card do you side out for Etw? Ad Nauseam?.

Do you like 1 IGG on the SB?, It's like PIF but you can loop with x2 LED + infernal against non-blue decks.


Thanks for the answers!

I haven't used EtW in ANT (but I don't play a volc) so it could just be poop in a list w/o burning wish. It's a card I like to see a lot in TES vs. Delver decks, but TES has a lot better chance of making a bunch of gobbos. I guess I'm saying the more I think about it the more I don't like EtW :P So yeah...awkward.

IGG is fine I suppose. I feel like against non-blue decks PiF, while a bit worse, is at least serviceable, and you may need the SB space to actually fight through their hate(bears/thorns/whatever) so if you had the extra room it's ok, but it would definitely be the 15th slot on the sb.

[ThomasDowd]

Hi guys!

I've been working on a UBgr ANT list, when I started building I put myself some goals to achieve:

-Be wasteland resilient.
-Have a solid manabase even I'm splashing 2 more colors, in the way of being capable of casting all your spells most times.
-Have a plan to beat discard spells as BUG/Jund are rising in popularity nowadays.
-Be prepared to beat counterbalance.
-Have a plan against RUG and Esper Blade.
-I won't be prepared for MUD or another tomb chalice.decks because it would be too greedy with only 15 slots on SB.
-Achieve those goals with a list as fast as possible.

So... after testing I've come to this:

Pretty standard I must say...

4 Polluted Delta
3 Misty rainforest
1 Verdant Catacombs
2 Underground Sea
1 Volcanic Island
2 Gemstone Mine
1 Island
1 Swamp


I run 15 lands, I tried 14+Chrome mox but in a metagame full of discard-spells I think is not a good idea 2 for 1 yourself, even though Chrome mox makes the deck faster by making Ad Nauseam a much better choice when you go off.

2 Gemstone Mines are from Adam Prosak's list. At first I disliked them because I thought they made my manabase worse, but now i don't think so, I know they are wasteable, but Trop/Bayou MD also are, and they can produce every color you need to play all your splashes in addition to Volcanic Island and trop SB. They are also inmune to stifle effects, which is relevant against RUG/BUG, you just hold them in hand until you go off, in this scenario are way better than other land because makes every colour you need and can't be stifled. The worse side is when you only have gemstones in your hand against a wasteland deck and that's the reason I only run 2 of them. The fact that they only have 3 maximum uses wouldn't be relevant in this deck if you play them correctly.

I've been playing 3 basics (2 island 1 swamp) since I started working on ANT, I love the 2nd island against stifle+waste decks where you need to cast a ton of cantrips to grind them out and be resilient to wasteland at the same time. I also love the 8th fetch because it provides you another shuffle-effect and can find basic swamp. I prefer the fetch against most of the decks but tempo, so that's the reason I only play 2. I must say i'm not sold on any side of this question, I'm still testing it. What do you guys think about it?


1 ToA
1 Ad Nauseam
1 Past in Flames
4 Brainstorm
4 Ponder
4 Gitaxian Probe
2 Preordain
4 Infernal Tutor
1 Grim Tutor
4 LED
4 Lotus Petal
4 Duress
3 Cabal Therapy
4 Dark Ritual
4 Cabal Ritual


Pretty standard build as i said before. I'm running 5 tutors because when I tested with 2 Grims I had hands with too much business, besides the fact that Grim Tutor is sooo terrible, with 1 Grim you're not dead to a surgical on your infernals, and I feel I have good chances of finding the business as I would have if only I was playing 4 tutors. Running that build allows me to play 2 preordain which I really like to filter my top anyway I only own 1 Grim so there's nothing I can do about it. :laugh:

I would like to play 8 discard spells MD but I only have room for 7, so the 8th goes to the SB.


Sideboard:

4 Dark Confidant
3 Abrupt Decay
3 Chain of vapor
2 Tormod's Crypt
1 Thoughtseize
1 Cabal Therapy
1 Tropical Island



4 Dark confidant: Mostly against discard spells, some people said me I was making my opp removal usefull, but honestly, I think Dark confidant worth it, my opponents usually left a little spot removal post board, 4 stp, 4 lightning... stuff like that, so there're sometimes where they have to burn cantrips to find the card that deals with Dark Confidant, that's why I run 4, I often want a 2nd to start overwhelming my opp in card advantage.
I think that's the best way to deal against discard spells, PIF makes us some kind of resilient if we have a ritual-heavy hand but with the appereance
of Deathrite Shaman, we definitely need to run something to refill our's deck gas.

At first, I used the green splash to play Xantid Swarm, I really like those insects because they are insane against blue decks, they have to find an answer or loose. In the current metagame I think dark confidant covers way more matchups, so that's the reason I don't play any of them, against RUG I preffer Xantid instead of Confidant, but the wizard is not bat at all and help us a lot against other decks.

In a deck that runs 4 Cabal therapy post SB I also found really nice having the opportunity to flash my therapies back! :wink:

3 Abrupt Decay: Against Cbalance, if I expect them I would probably run 4.

3 Cov: Really good against a lot of things, you know...

2 Tormod's Crypt: I want to have some GY hate, to have a chance against Reanimator or a high speed start of LED Dredge, I know since DRS was printed GY decks are not as common as before, but I wanted to be covered if I could.

Those are my actual SB plans:

RUG/BUG/Esper Blade:

-4 Probe
-2 Preordain
+4 Dark confidant
+1 Cabal Therapy
+1 Thoughtseize

I do not bring the 16th land, but I don't splash green, so the manabase is less tricky with this plan. I tried carpet of flowers and is nice, but I have no room for it.

UW Miracles:

-4 Probe
-1 Lotus Petal
-1 Verdant Catacombs

+3 Abrupt Decay
+1 Cabal Therapy
+1 Thoughtseize
+1 Tropical Island

Reanimator:

-4 Probe
+2 Tormod's Crypt
+1 Thoughtseize
+1 Cabal Therapy

Show and tell:

-4 Probe
-2 Preordain
+4 Dark Confidant (they have no way to interact and if you can slow them with your discard spells, Dark confidant can provide you a huge advantage)
+1 Thoughtseize
+1 Cabal Therapy

Dredge:

-2 Cabal Therapy
+2 Tormod's Crypt

Jund:

-4 Duress
+4 Dark Confidant

Hatebears:

-4 Duress
-2 Preordain
-1 Verdant catacombs
+3 Abrupt Decay
+3 Chain of Vapor
+1 Tropical Island

Notice I left my 3 cabal therapies in against non blue, that's because I always try to fire one naming mindbreak trap just in case, and, in worst case scenario it can be used to discard some guys to buy us some time.


I'll appreciate comments to improve my deck!

Thanks!


cut preordain, play chrome mox in those spots, makes your AN way better, 15 land is fine. gemstone is bad, play 8 min fetches, makes your brainstorms better, the 2nd grim is not really worth it, at least you "figured" that one out. bob is pretty bad unless it is against landstill and even then he is maybe ok (but still pretty bad), but those decks don't exist anymore, jund will just kill him. don't know what matches you want to be on 9 discard, but whatever. I posted a list on the last page(229) that is practically identical to yours, I didn't give a detailed breakdown since I figured at this point people get it. but more power to ya. reading is cool. I'm a dick.

I wouldn't board in bobs versus RUG. I would board in the extra land since they have wasteland/ stifle i would also board out AN for ETW since you can just kill them with 12 goblins pretty easily.

[Rekk]

cut preordain, play chrome mox in those spots, makes your AN way better, 15 land is fine. gemstone is bad, play 8 min fetches, makes your brainstorms better, the 2nd grim is not really worth it, at least you "figured" that one out. bob is pretty bad unless it is against landstill and even then he is maybe ok (but still pretty bad), but those decks don't exist anymore, jund will just kill him. don't know what matches you want to be on 9 discard, but whatever. I posted a list on the last page(229) that is practically identical to yours, I didn't give a detailed breakdown since I figured at this point people get it. but more power to ya. reading is cool. I'm a dick.

I wouldn't board in bobs versus RUG. I would board in the extra land since they have wasteland/ stifle i would also board out AN for ETW since you can just kill them with 12 goblins pretty easily.


Bob is actually very good against jund, they have no deck manipulation and usually board out bolt, if not abrupt decay is slow as hell. I have had no problem with bob vs jund or Bug, I agree with you on rug, just board in an empty (more chances of drawing a threat naturally, even if ad naus is now more risky) the land is also pretty good.

Also we now play therapy! don't forget this. Bob is also insane in the mirror and vs sneak.

[Tammit67]

Bob is actually very good against jund, they have no deck manipulation and usually board out bolt, if not abrupt decay is slow as hell. I have had no problem with bob vs jund or Bug, I agree with you on rug, just board in an empty (more chances of drawing a threat naturally, even if ad naus is now more risky) the land is also pretty good.

Also we now play therapy! don't forget this. Bob is also insane in the mirror and vs sneak.

Every Show and Tell opponent I have played recently has had some number of Leylines :(

[Rekk]

Every Show and Tell opponent I have played recently has had some number of Leylines :(

grrr i love hate that card in show, the deck is clunky already but leyline is just insane for the deck.

i guess you have to prioritize chain over bob in those cases. I ususally try to win game one not mess with the chains then hopefully they mull and don't get it or i just try to win game 3.
(also you watch how quickly they board in 4 cards) considering misdirection is actually bad against us. I always try to bait it with duress saying Targeting you.

[egosum]

Right, only if you want to use your tutor will it cost you 6 life... you know what I meant however. But you are right, revealing it and NOT casting it saves you (maybe) one life if the next card you flip is LED/Petal and then IT. Point conceded.
Grim Tutor is a bad card. It's simply the best card ANT has access to for the slot. It's been this way ever since Mystical was banned. It still is.

I said if he wanted to beat discard decks the 2nd Ad Nauseam is better than the Grim Tutor. Having 2 chances at raw drawing Ad Nauseam as opposed to having to tutor for it is huge against discard decks.

Granted. ;-)

Greetings,

Iñaki.-

[mishima_kazuya]

Made top 8 of SCG Edison with a pretty standard list that someone gave me after I decided to not play Jund.

Deck is well positioned if even a novice like me (haven't played ANT in 18 months) can top 8.

[Tammit67]

Made top 8 of SCG Edison with a pretty standard list that someone gave me after I decided to not play Jund.

Deck is well positioned if even a novice like me (haven't played ANT in 18 months) can top 8.

Congrats! Anything you felt was clunky or out of place?

[VeniVidiVici]

Hey guys, got 9th at the Legacy side-event at GP London yesterday. I hadn't played Legacy Storm (or much Legacy at all) before and I was ill so I muddled my way through the tournament, but I had a lot of fun and the deck was solid.

4 Dark Ritual
4 Cabal Ritual
4 Lotus Petal
4 Lion's Eye Diamond

4 Brainstorm
4 Ponder
3 Preordain
2 Gitaxian Probe

4 Infernal Tutor
4 Burning Wish

1 Ad Nauseam
1 Past in Flames
1 Tendrils of Agony

3 Duress
1 Thoughtseize

1 Chrome Mox
4 Scalding Tarn
4 Misty Rainforest
1 Bloodstained Mire
2 Gemstone Mine
1 Badlands
1 Underground Sea
1 Steam Vents (couldn't find a Volc ;/)
1 Island

SB:
1 Time Spiral
1 Reforge the Soul
1 Ill-Gotten Gains
1 Tendrils of Agony
2 Empty the Warrens
2 Cabal Therapy
1 Duress
1 Pyroclasm
1 Deathmark
1 Grapeshot
1 Chain of Vapor
1 Echoing Truth
1 Slaughter Pact

A few comments about the list:

- I never used the SB Time Spiral and there were at least two games where Diminishing Returns would have been better. A SB Past in Flames would have been nice as well (since frequently either it or IGG would have led to a guaranteed win but I had needed to Duress/Therapy away a FoW). The rest of the wishboard was kinda thrown together last minute.
- I usually get worried about such low land counts but 15 felt about right; I only had to mulligan no-landers twice.
- Reforge was meant for the discard-heavy matchups like Jund (the idea being that you can Wish for it and Brainstorm it back) and it can play the same role as Returns/Spiral as well. I think there's some potential for a Reforge-fueled Storm deck, but not in a shell like this.
- I chose to run more action spells over additional discard; I'm not sure if this is correct, since the majority of ANT players seem to be doing fine with the discard-heavy configuration and I ended up missing discard more often than missing action. My theory was that against decks like Stoneblade I would have time to Wish for discard if I needed it and that I'd want Wish if I was comboing. This didn't account for permanent-based hate, which I didn't face very often, but non-Thoughtseize discard can be hit-and-miss against that too.

Might write up a short report when I get back from class.

[Tammit67]

Hey guys, got 9th at the Legacy side-event at GP London yesterday. I hadn't played Legacy Storm (or much Legacy at all) before and I was ill so I muddled my way through the tournament, but I had a lot of fun and the deck was solid.


Your list looks like an amalgamation of Ant with a TES sideboard. I really dislike the so few protection spells, and the manabase looks awkward. I'm glad it worked for you though! Reports are always appreciated

[mishima_kazuya]

Congrats! Anything you felt was clunky or out of place?

MVP: The whole maindeck

LVP: The Karakas and Dread of Night

Of course I didn't play against a single Maverick, Reanimator or SnT variant.

But if you expect more SnT and Maverick I could see SBing Karakas, otherwise I'd change those 2 cards for something else.

[Sigyn]

MVP: The whole maindeck

LVP: The Karakas and Dread of Night

Of course I didn't play against a single Maverick, Reanimator or SnT variant.

But if you expect more SnT and Maverick I could see SBing Karakas, otherwise I'd change those 2 cards for something else.

Do you like Badlands over 2nd Island Maindeck?, with such a little red splash I don't think the Badlands is necessary, I like playing 3 basics to fight against BUG/RUG, being able to chain some cantrips and stuff without been exposed to wasteland is pretty good.

Gz for your finish! ANT is a really cool deck! :)

[mishima_kazuya]

Do you like Badlands over 2nd Island Maindeck?, with such a little red splash I don't think the Badlands is necessary, I like playing 3 basics to fight against BUG/RUG, being able to chain some cantrips and stuff without been exposed to wasteland is pretty good.

Gz for your finish! ANT is a really cool deck! :)

Getting Wastelanded into mana screw rarely mattered (played against Jund (win), BUG midrange (loss), and BUG Delver (win))

Fetching for the 2 basics is fine, however you usually end up fetching for Underground Sea since the deck really wants to play multiple cantrips and disruption in a single turn.

I could see Badlands getting cut for a 2nd basic if you really expect a lot of Wastelands.

[VeniVidiVici]

As you can probably tell from the Steam Vents, the manabase wasn't ideal :P. I had one game that was much harder than it should have been due to Rainforest not fetching Badlands, and I couldn't try SB Decay or w/e since I couldn't find a Trop.

Report up here: http://www.mtgthesource.com/forums/showthread.php?25522-9th-with-Storm-GP-London-Legacy-Champs&p=703778

[Rekk]

MVP: The whole maindeck

LVP: The Karakas and Dread of Night

Of course I didn't play against a single Maverick, Reanimator or SnT variant.

But if you expect more SnT and Maverick I could see SBing Karakas, otherwise I'd change those 2 cards for something else.

this was a last min change to the board what i suggested we do was 2 karakas, or we cut a abrupt decay for the 4th bob and play 3 dread of night.

as a sidenote, with the popularity of LoS i could also see adding 1 e truth

[Rekk]

Getting Wastelanded into mana screw rarely mattered (played against Jund (win), BUG midrange (loss), and BUG Delver (win))

Fetching for the 2 basics is fine, however you usually end up fetching for Underground Sea since the deck really wants to play multiple cantrips and disruption in a single turn.

I could see Badlands getting cut for a 2nd basic if you really expect a lot of Wastelands.

sorry to butt in once again, (i lent the deck out for preface)

the second island got cut for the trop if you want two islands move the trop to the board cut the bayou. green is a much lighter splash then red and you really want a land that can cast duress after brainstrom, fetch, bandlands, duress, untap kill with access to red and black.

[Seraph2k]

Just started to play ANT with a wishboard, but there are some free slots.
What do you think about X. Swarm? Isn't it exactly the card we need in this deck? It can be casted early and protect all spells.

[Koby]

Just started to play ANT with a wishboard, but there are some free slots.
What do you think about X. Swarm? Isn't it exactly the card we need in this deck? It can be casted early and protect all spells.

I tried Xantid Swarm for the longest time. It's pretty bad most of the time except against Griselbrand decks.
I'm rocking Dark Confidants right now against the Tempo decks, and planning to go slow-Tendrils plan.

[n0mad]

I tried Xantid Swarm for the longest time. It's pretty bad most of the time except against Griselbrand decks.
I'm rocking Dark Confidants right now against the Tempo decks, and planning to go slow-Tendrils plan.

im on this plan as well. Jack Wang did just fine with it last weekend while I was in NJ.

[mishima_kazuya]

sorry to butt in once again, (i lent the deck out for preface)

the second island got cut for the trop if you want two islands move the trop to the board cut the bayou. green is a much lighter splash then red and you really want a land that can cast duress after brainstrom, fetch, bandlands, duress, untap kill with access to red and black.

That sideboard change seems fine. The Trop could have been an Island and I would have never noticed a difference.

[mike1987]

What is the general strategy against rug? I find myself losing most of if not all my matches to them. Do I board in bobs or just xantid swarms?

[Lejay]

First stop siding these in and you should do better. -1 ad nauseam +1 empty the warrens is a good idea.

[GoblinZ]

What is the general strategy against rug? I find myself losing most of if not all my matches to them. Do I board in bobs or just xantid swarms?

Bob and swarms are really useless against rug, I used to side out ad nauseam and side in multiple empty warren. carpet of flowers is the best choice in this mu in my opinion.

[ThomasDowd]

Bob and swarms are really useless against rug, I used to side out ad nauseam and side in multiple empty warren. carpet of flowers is the best choice in this mu in my opinion.


they can operate on two mana. they will also daze carpet on site and then waste your green source. rough times.

i usually just go up to 8 pack of discard and bring in warrens.

[Malakai]

RUG isnt' hard, but you have to be able to read them. Their deck telegraphs what's in their hand pretty hard. If they have no turn 1 play you can make reasonable assumptions about their full grip.

Fetch basics.

Know when to make them want to stifle your land, and when not to.

[Patrunkenphat7]

I have started doing much better with this deck since I started playing one Empty the Warrens and no Ad Nauseams main.

[Rekk]

I have started doing much better with this deck since I started playing one Empty the Warrens and no Ad Nauseams main.

I assure you, you should be playing the Ad Nauseam main.

[Patrunkenphat7]

At GP Denver I went 9-5 in the main event, 3-0 in a side event, and 2-1 in another side event, and I only ever cast Ad Nauseam once. My record was mediocre, but it gave me a lot of sanctioned experience with the deck during the course of one weekend. The one time I cast AN I realized that Ill-gotten Gains would have also won that game (not saying anything one way or another about this card). I think if people find they are consistently tutoring for Ad Nauseam, they are probably doing something wrong.

[Rekk]

At GP Denver I went 9-5 in the main event, 3-0 in a side event, and 2-1 in another side event, and I only ever cast Ad Nauseam once. My record was mediocre, but it gave me a lot of sanctioned experience with the deck during the course of one weekend. The one time I cast AN I realized that Ill-gotten Gains would have also won that game (not saying anything one way or another about this card). I think if people find they are consistently tutoring for Ad Nauseam, they are probably doing something wrong.

its a good way to get past a drs on the draw turn 2 without needing excessive mana to get an extra tutor.

[Dark Ritual]

DRS is awkward for two reasons - You tutor for an extra tutor first, thus requiring an actual boatload of mana to combo. You do this, and they strip a dark ritual from your graveyard to manascrew you. You don't do this, you have to rely on cantrips to combo out. It all depends on the hand. If they have more than one DRS and more than one black mana, prepare to try to slog through. You'll need a stacked hand to combo at this point.

Ad nauseam is completely necessary. Try cutting it, I know I wouldn't. It's nice to draw almost yawg's bargain naturally to just go 5 mana into ad nauseam without requiring LED's or infernal tutors.

[Koby]

I think both PIF and IGG are easier to go off, since they are deterministic.

But neither replaces the need for some hands to go for Ad Nauseam. The card has no substitute in the deck.

[GoblinZ]

I just re-pick my ANT recently and I see there are a lot of people who have one empty warren in their sb. I think it is for the tempo deck like canadian. Does it work?

[Star|Scream]

Stealing a decklist someone posted on storm boards, what does everyone think?

Luftlande-Sturm

Qty ED Name
// Lands
1 ON Island
1 MM Swamp
2 U Underground Sea
1 B Volcanic Island
2 R Tropical Island
1 R Badlands
4 ON Polluted Delta
3 ZEN Scalding Tarn
1 ON Bloodstained Mire
//\
// Spells
4 MM Brainstorm
4 M10 Ponder
4 NPH Gitaxian Probe
4 JU Cabal Therapy
3 US Duress
4 R Dark Ritual
4 TO Cabal Ritual
4 TE Lotus Petal
4 MI Lion's Eye Diamond
4 DIS Infernal Tutor
2 JU Burning Wish
2 ISD Past in Flames
1 ALA Ad Nauseam
1 SC Tendrils of Agony
//\
// Sideboard
1 SC Tendrils of Agony
1 TSP Empty the Warrens
1 PT Virtue's Ruin
1 ON Chain of Vapor
1 DS Echoing Truth
2 RTR Abrupt Decay
4 SC Xantid Swarm
4 RAV Dark Confidant

He said he went 6-0 in a 40ppl event.

[GoblinZ]

Stealing a decklist someone posted on storm boards, what does everyone think?



why play 2 past in flames? I think it is absurd

[Sigyn]

I just re-pick my ANT recently and I see there are a lot of people who have one empty warren in their sb. I think it is for the tempo deck like canadian. Does it work?

Yeah, for Canadian, BUG and Jund.

Well... it works, it's not like... OMG super good, but it's OK, imo is a win condition with less requirements than others (less mana, less storm), so in those matchups where you are facing quite a lot of disruption does the work pretty well since those kind of decks don't usually run many ways to get rid of a bunch of 1/1s.

EDIT:

He runs 2 past in flames in order to increase the chances of having 1 in hand, actually you can even go off through countermagic with the appropiate amount of mana which is nice, that been said i'd never go for 2 PIF maideck since you're uping your converted mana cost and making Ad nauseams even worse, and yeah, Ad nauseam is bad but you have to run it, ther're hands or situations where Ad nauseam is the best option.

If you want to focus on PIF engine, play another deck (PIF storm or something like that).

[Sloshthedark]

why play 2 past in flames? I think it is absurd

it's really good, shines vs. Threshold and makes deck both a little bit faster+resilient, making sure you ~never lose G1... it's presence in Deathrite Shaman meta is questionable so I don't play it regularly, used to be absurd not to play two until RtR

+I know the guy & I actually have "developed" the tech ;) he went 6-0 quite easily beating me round 1 in the mirror (because he had 2 btw ;)

[Star|Scream]

it's really good, shines vs. Threshold and makes deck both a little bit faster+resilient, making sure you ~never lose G1... it's presence in Deathrite Shaman meta is questionable so I don't play it regularly, used to be absurd not to play two until RtR

+I know the guy & I actually have "developed" the tech ;) he went 6-0 quite easily beating me round 1 in the mirror (because he had 2 btw ;)

Even with DRS, the inclusion of burning wish AND infernal tutor gives you *some* outs against extraction effects

[Sloshthedark]

With release of DrShaman the deck got significantly weaker, discard alone doesn't matter, experiencing a loss with Jund or similar bx stupidity is frustrating

[Koby]

With release of DrShaman the deck got significantly weaker, discard alone doesn't matter, experiencing a loss with Jund or similar bx stupidity is frustrating

This.

[MTG Junkie]

How often do you find yourself boarding in Abrupt Decay?

[Sigyn]

How often do you find yourself boarding in Abrupt Decay?

Not a lot but it's because my meta is like tons of Esper Blade.

I board them against:

UW Miracles
Maverick and things like that with Thalia and Gaddock combined with chain of vapor, is not as good as chain but I need to bring as much answers as I can.
Infect
Chalice of the void decks.

[GoblinZ]

How often do you find yourself boarding in Abrupt Decay?

I board three in against miracle. I think three is enough for they seem to not play 4 counterbalance recently

[End3r000]

Placed 5th at SCG Indy. Played poorly in the top 8 to lose to RUG Delver. List is posted on SCG.

[countorlandea]

I see people wondering about grim tutor. I'm not so sure about today's consensus, but I personally feel it is very powerful.

I'd say that in game 1 I'm winning about 35% of the time without needing AD and its often thanks to grim (I can also grim tutor for an LED if thats all I need and don't have it, to set up for next turn if I don't think that they will somehow interact with me, or I can get a cabal ritual if I need more gas and I'm at thresh.)


and I've learned that even if I lose game 1 against non-interactive decks with slower clocks, I might want to play on the draw for game 2....

[Sigyn]

Grim tutor is pretty lose IMO, cost 1BB, pay 3 life... It's a real demonic but the cost is so high, even though I feel It's a necessary evil, I mean, talking about UB ANT version, 4 tutors is just not enough, I wish I could play 6 infernals so Grim is the best alternative, since I'd like to play as less bad tutors as posible I went down to 1 Grim an add a couple of preordains which are fairly good, It has been performing well for me.

In the Burning wish version is necessay in order to make your wishes a real bussiness spell.

[aaronm678]

Placed 5th at SCG Indy. Played poorly in the top 8 to lose to RUG Delver. List is posted on SCG.

Did you need all those wish targets? It seems like a lot, especially with only 2 red lands main. Usually it seems like people have the 1 PiF main, 1 IGG Side, and then 1 Tendrils and 1 Empty split between main and side.

Congrats on your finish...I've come to a similar conclusion, that it wasn't really worth the effort for me to try a green splash.



I've learned that even if I lose game 1 against non-interactive decks with slower clocks, I might want to play on the draw for game 2....

I don't know what non-interactive decks with a slow clock you're talking about that you could possibly ever lose G1. Either way...I really don't think this deck ever wants to be on the draw, the extra card doesn't really speed up our clock much.

[Stoyrm]

I've played T.E.S to a reasonable success at my local game store. However it has way to little game against RUG for me to justify playing it at a large Grand Prix. With Strasbourg coming up, i've been playing this deck and it seems strong. I'm wondering if there's anything i should look out for, that is way different than with T.E.S. Obviously Ad Nauseum is a bit weaker (though you sometimes need it) and Past in Flames is really strong. Haven't played against Deathrite Shaman yet though :).

[Lemnear]

Just wondering: How can it be, that after ANT was seriously hurt by RIP, DRS and the metashift towards BUG, this deck made it back to the DtB section over TES?

[Zombie]

ANT is easier to play, for one. The metagame is also not the same everywhere, and what the player is comfortable with matters a bunch, too - I feel much more at ease playing Elves or ANT than TES, for example. So even though TES is probably a better deck than those two, I'd do better with them.

[Zombie]

I've played T.E.S to a reasonable success at my local game store. However it has way to little game against RUG for me to justify playing it at a large Grand Prix. With Strasbourg coming up, i've been playing this deck and it seems strong. I'm wondering if there's anything i should look out for, that is way different than with T.E.S. Obviously Ad Nauseum is a bit weaker (though you sometimes need it) and Past in Flames is really strong. Haven't played against Deathrite Shaman yet though :).

You can murder RUG pretty well with TES. A fast Warrens is something they just don't recover from. It's a volatile match, though.

[aaronm678]

Just wondering: How can it be, that after ANT was seriously hurt by RIP, DRS and the metashift towards BUG, this deck made it back to the DtB section over TES?

ANT is more consistent (DTB only looks at large tournaments), and it's more popular, RIP is a fairly niche card that's played in a deck that has no clock, DRS isn't really that hard to play around, and BUG isn't much different than RUG against this deck (very close matchup, not particularly close if the BUG deck cut Force).

[Lans89]

And discard hurts TES way more than ANT.. It does hurt ANT a lot as well, but players often side in Dark Confidants that are often absent in TES sideboards.

[jin]

ANT is more consistent (DTB only looks at large tournaments), and it's more popular, RIP is a fairly niche card that's played in a deck that has no clock, DRS isn't really that hard to play around, and BUG isn't much different than RUG against this deck (very close matchup, not particularly close if the BUG deck cut Force).


And discard hurts TES way more than ANT.. It does hurt ANT a lot as well, but players often side in Dark Confidants that are often absent in TES sideboards.

Diminishing Returns, Brainstorm, Ad Nauseam, Past in Flames all make discard negligible to TES. The move from RUG to BUG is actually favourable for ANT players playing Dark Confidant because in the RUG match up, Lightning Bolt doesn't come out, but in the BUG match up, Abrupt Decays do.

[SaberTooth]

Grim tutor is pretty lose IMO, cost 1BB, pay 3 life... It's a real demonic but the cost is so high, even though I feel It's a necessary evil, I mean, talking about UB ANT version, 4 tutors is just not enough, I wish I could play 6 infernals so Grim is the best alternative, since I'd like to play as less bad tutors as posible I went down to 1 Grim an add a couple of preordains which are fairly good, It has been performing well for me.

In the Burning wish version is necessay in order to make your wishes a real bussiness spell.

im testing ub ant (see prosak article) but with 1 grim tutor and 3 preordains. The deck looks fine, but i think that tnt is just better, the only issue with this is the green splash

[End3r000]

Did you need all those wish targets? It seems like a lot, especially with only 2 red lands main. Usually it seems like people have the 1 PiF main, 1 IGG Side, and then 1 Tendrils and 1 Empty split between main and side.

Congrats on your finish...I've come to a similar conclusion, that it wasn't really worth the effort for me to try a green splash.




I don't know what non-interactive decks with a slow clock you're talking about that you could possibly ever lose G1. Either way...I really don't think this deck ever wants to be on the draw, the extra card doesn't really speed up our clock much.

The wish targets all have won me games. Iggy and Tendrils are the most common, but Grim, EtW, PiF have all pulled out games that I would have otherwise lost. As for the Pyroclasm and the Shattering Spree, they stop you from losing to random hate. Your second quote which has my name on it is not mine either. I would never want to draw with this deck. Also the only time I've lost the non-interactive mu was when I got too greedy with AdN.

[End3r000]

im testing ub ant (see prosak article) but with 1 grim tutor and 3 preordains. The deck looks fine, but i think that tnt is just better, the only issue with this is the green splash

Can I suggest you look at my list from Indy? Aside from the SB it's Teemo's list that he won the GP with. I've found the extra cantrips are just too slow most of the time. I'd rather be winning than cantriping.

[AlleywayJack]

I played a really small local tournament today. it was only 4 rounds and i made a few misplays but i feel very good about the deck. here's the list i was playing

-----
2x bloodstained mire
2x misty rainforest
2x scalding tarn
1x polluted delta
2x marshflats
2x underground sea
1x badlands
1x volcanic island
1x island
1x swamp

3x lion's eye diamond ( the fourth didn't come in the mail in time! x_x', it should be -1 fetch +1 LED)
4x lotus petal
1x chrome mox

4x dark ritual
4x cabal ritual

4x infernal tutor
2x burning wish

4x brainstorm
4x ponder
3x gitaxian probe

4x duress
3x cabal therapy
2x inquisition of kozilek

1x ad nauseam
1x tendrils of agony
1x past in flames
------
2x chain of vapor
1x echoing truth
2x wipe away
4x dread of night
1x pyroclasm
1x cabal therapy
1x inquisition of kozilek
1x empty the warrens
1x past in flames
1x tendrils of agony
-----
i don't have notes but it went something like this..

round 1 i played against maverick.
g1 t1 i play inquisition of kozilek and get thalia. t2 i ponder into some business and t3 i storm him out with some ramp into past in flames and a tendrils.
g2 i land an early dread of night. he plays an ethersworn canonist. and then another. i wish for pyroclasm and next turn i wipe his field and play the 2nd dread of night. a few turns pass and i try to go off but i pop my lotus petal for black instead of red and force myself into a mini tendrils instead of a bunch of goblins x_x i end up getting beat down by an ooze.
g3 we have less than 3 minutes to play. i keep a pretty bad hand and get beatdown by 2 moms and a jitte

round 2 is mirror against an ant list without burning wish or grim tutor.
g1 i have some discard and business and get there off PiF
g2 he has the discard and business and gets there off an ad nauseam
g3 i have discard and a t2 ad nauseam with 1 black floating. i draw a bunch of rituals and a burning wish but no lotus petal. i end up killing myself with ad nauseam trying to find the petal. in retrospect i should have just fired off a dark ritual and some discard to strip his hand and try to go off again next turn.

round 3 was against goblins
g1 i went off t3 with some ramp, infernal tutor, past in flames into tendrils.
g2 i went of t3 into an empty the warrens for 14 tokens and won shortly after.

round 4 was against my buddy playing big red
game 1 i go off t2 or t3 and make 14 goblins. he draws something, but i guess it wasnt good enough because he scoops.
game 2 he plays a t1 pyrostatic pillar. on my turn i duress him and get a trinisphere. he draws lands for a few turns and i play a few cantrips and sculpt my hand. once im at 10 life i find an echoing truth. i bounce his pillar on the end of his turn and then on my turn i go off and finish with a tendrils.

and that's about it. all in all i feel very good about the deck and i feel like i could have done alot better today if it wasn't for a few minor misplays. i definitely plan on playing this list again in a few weeks at the next event.

[mishima_kazuya]

Why this deck usually makes DtB status instead of TES usually?

Having a more consistent mana base, more cantrips and just more consistency overall is better in the long run.

Playing 8+ Rounds in SCG Opens, GPs, etc exposes your matches to more variance. TES adds more to the variance part with a manabase more vulnerable to Wasteland and games less resistant to disruption. Being faster with those drawbacks is great on paper, but when you play so many rounds you expose yourself to greater chances to mulliganing, hate, etc.

[End3r000]

I find it funny that ANT only top 8s and TES wins, yet ANT, not TES, ends up in the DTB section.

[Megadeus]

I find it funny that ANT only top 8s and TES wins, yet ANT, not TES, ends up in the DTB section.

More people are probably prone to pick up ANT. It seems to be a bit easier to play. Also Bryant is a great player with TES! Less Colors also makes it a bit more consistent in some peoples eyes.

[Zombie]

The stronger late game also helps in dealing with the variance that was mentioned before. Besides that, it's a bit about aggro/control personality, too. TES is far more of an aggro deck than ANT can ever hope to be, and vice versa to a good extent.

[Lemnear]

ANT is easier to play, for one. .

So we evaluate the strength of a deck not because of it's performance but of the a) amount of players which pick it up and b) the linearity to play it without practice? No wonder Burn was considered a DtB last year on TheSource lol

[Koby]

So we evaluate the strength of a deck not because of it's performance but of the a) amount of players which pick it up and b) the linearity to play it without practice? No wonder Burn was considered a DtB last year on TheSource lol

It may not be elegant, but it's simple and consistent. Either way, if people wanted to spike the DTB status, they could all play Dredge for 4 weeks straight, and that would work just as well. The DTB isn't tracking "most powerful deck"; it's tracking "the most likely deck you'll face". That latter does get influenced by the frequency of people playing a given deck.

[Zombie]

Well, the DTB is part what performs well, part what is played a lot. Basically, doesn't matter if Lich is the bees knees, preparing for it is largely useless.

There's a saying in Finland that goes roughly "When shit gets paired against shit, shit wins", or more politically correctly, be mindful of sheer clout.

[AlleywayJack]

I find it funny that ANT only top 8s and TES wins, yet ANT, not TES, ends up in the DTB section.

http://www.mtgtop8.com/event?e=4172&d=224385
its labeled as TES for some reason, but its obviously an ANT deck. actually the only 1st place on page one of storm is one ANT deck.

also i didn't realize this was the place to incessantly argue over which storm deck is better. each deck has its own strengths and weaknesses. people are going to play what they want to play. as far as i know, DTB is a representation of what people are playing and what you should expect to be playing against. not a representation of the most powerful deck in the format. obviously there is a link when comparing the two, but in no way does DTB status make a deck better. if anything being on the dtb page is worse for a deck because then everyone knows the latest tech.

a productive conversation on how to make either deck better would be time much better spent, rather than uttering repetitive babble over TES vs ANT. its a circular conversation. the ANT players are going to play ANT and the TES players are going to play TES.

[mort-]

Isn't the question if this or TES should be DTB kind of offtopic?

To be ontopic, I think Prosak did the right thing by splashing Gemstone Mines into the deck and this should be looked into further.
=> http://sales.starcitygames.com//deckdatabase/displaydeck.php?DeckID=53166 his list, for reference.

I've been toying around with that list a bit and came to the conclusion that, if one plays 4 Gemstone Mine (-1 Underground Sea, -1 Island), the disruption package can easily be changed to 2 Cabal Therapy, 1 Duress, 3 Silence.
Which has been the bomb. Currently, I feel there is so much going on between Misdirectionn, Divert, Flusterstorm, Mindbreak Trap, etc. that Silence is an absolute monster. So I tested it and never looked back. The other change I made was swapping 2 Preordain with a Grim Tutor and a card that has imho been greatly overlooked in decks running GT - Chain of Vapor.

With the mentioned changes I made I'm actually testing (with GP Straßbourg in mind) the following list:

Lands:
1 Island
1 Swamp
4 Gemstone Mine
1 Bloodstained Mire
4 Polluted Delta
2 Scalding Tarn
1 Underground Sea
1 Volcanic Island

Spells:
4 Lion's Eye Diamond
4 Lotus Petal
1 Ad Nauseam
4 Brainstorm
4 Cabal Ritual
1 Chain of Vapor
4 Dark Ritual
2 Cabal Therapy
1 Duress
4 Gitaxian Probe
1 Grim TUtor
4 Infernal Tutor
1 Past in Flames
4 Ponder
2 Preordain
1 Tendrils of Agony

Sideboard:
3 Carpet of Flowers
3 Abrupt Decay
1 Chain of Vapor
1 Hurkyl's Recall
2 Ignorant Bliss (love this so much)
1 Cabal Therapy
1 Empty the Warrens
2 Massacre
1 Tropical Island

Will post a small report of noticable events while testing this list when I have a bit more of time, so the list isn't so alone in here ;D What I can say (and can't say enough) that Silence is brilliantly good atm.

Greetings,

Florian

[AlleywayJack]

Isn't the question if this or TES should be DTB kind of offtopic?

I've been toying around with that list a bit and came to the conclusion that, if one plays 4 Gemstone Mine (-1 Underground Sea, -1 Island), the disruption package can easily be changed to 2 Cabal Therapy, 1 Duress, 3 Silence.
Which has been the bomb. Currently, I feel there is so much going on between Misdirectionn, Divert, Flusterstorm, Mindbreak Trap, etc. that Silence is an absolute monster. So I tested it and never looked back.


instead of going to all that trouble to play silence, couldn't you just keep the discard set up play SB xantid swarm instead? your already splashing for abrupt decay. carpet of flowers isnt very good so you already have 3 open slots. xantid swarm also dodges spell pierce, spell snare, flusterstorm, easily dodges daze, and fits into your colors without any trouble.

also imo chant effects are only good in certain matchups. i like that you can "chant-walk" against non blue decks, but again, imo, discard does alot more damage to a wider variety of the field.

[mort-]

instead of going to all that trouble to play silence, couldn't you just keep the discard set up play SB xantid swarm instead? your already splashing for abrupt decay. carpet of flowers isnt very good so you already have 3 open slots. xantid swarm also dodges spell pierce, spell snare, flusterstorm, easily dodges daze, and fits into your colors without any trouble.

also imo chant effects are only good in certain matchups. i like that you can "chant-walk" against non blue decks, but again, imo, discard does alot more damage to a wider variety of the field.

I'm not a fan of Xantid Swarm. The choice Swarm against Carpet is imho solely dependend on the RUG matchup (which might be a german thing, because RUG makes a pretty big part of the meta here). So, Swarm does basicly nothing here, because they'll most certainly leave Bolts in, while Carpet nets you at least two mana, even if you get wasted to death. That was the most important point which got me to switch the two sets.

Splashing Silence isn't trouble at all, it's just 2 up to 4 Gemstone Mines, which actually fit quite nicely into the mana base. Currently.. in this meta, combo is on the rise everywhere and I always felt kind of naked playing the mirror without Chanteffects while my opponent had them. Against Maverick it's a Time Walk where Duress might miss Thalia. It's super against a Force under a Top (yes, Swarm does that too, but you do have to untap with it). It helps at least a bit against Tin Fins / Reanimator / SnT. Snapcaster are everywhere, so discard doesn't do that much here again. And of course, being able to fetch it with Grim Tutor while comboing off (serving as bait, also) is great - which is, by the way, one of the situations I wanted to describe later.

So, in my oppinion, Silence decks most of the archetypes that are currently dominant better than discard does.

[Megadeus]

TES also plays City of Brass to make it more likely that we can cast our Silences. 4 Gemstones may not be enough. And for this deck relying heavier on a land that eventually depletes itself may be a problem.

[mort-]

TES also plays City of Brass to make it more likely that we can cast our Silences. 4 Gemstones may not be enough. And for this deck relying heavier on a land that eventually depletes itself may be a problem.

Funny that you mention it :D I actually played City of Brass on Sunday instead of Gemstone Mine (well.. because I got them altered and stuff) which got me almost killed in two games. I don't think you'll use the land more than three times, but if you happen to draw two, CoB could turn into a problem.

[Megadeus]

Well TES usually does 4 Gemstones and 2 City of Brass. But it mitigates the life loss/depletion of counters by just being faster and therefore not using the lands as many times per turn. I have had issues of using up all of my counters on mine. Im sure that ANT probably would activate their Mine/City of Brass an average of almost one time more than TES. Which is why I am not sure if you really want to risk stretching the mana base too far here.

Not to mention that if you are playing something like this you play less fetches which not only weakens your Brainstorms, but Cabal Ritual becomes much slower.

[mort-]

Not to mention that if you are playing something like this you play less fetches which not only weakens your Brainstorms, but Cabal Ritual becomes much slower.

I switched 1 Underground Sea and 1 Island for the two extra Mines, so no, no Fetchlands cut.
And I don't get why you have issues with the depletion of counters. I mean, even if TES is faster, this is still a combo deck. So even IF you land a Gemstone Mine T1, you should kill T3, meaning your last counter goes into the combo turn. If not, I think something is going wrong.

[DarkJester]

Isn't the question if this or TES should be DTB kind of offtopic?

To be ontopic, I think Prosak did the right thing by splashing Gemstone Mines into the deck and this should be looked into further.
=> http://sales.starcitygames.com//deckdatabase/displaydeck.php?DeckID=53166 his list, for reference.

I've been toying around with that list a bit and came to the conclusion that, if one plays 4 Gemstone Mine (-1 Underground Sea, -1 Island), the disruption package can easily be changed to 2 Cabal Therapy, 1 Duress, 3 Silence.
Which has been the bomb. Currently, I feel there is so much going on between Misdirectionn, Divert, Flusterstorm, Mindbreak Trap, etc. that Silence is an absolute monster. So I tested it and never looked back. The other change I made was swapping 2 Preordain with a Grim Tutor and a card that has imho been greatly overlooked in decks running GT - Chain of Vapor.

With the mentioned changes I made I'm actually testing (with GP Straßbourg in mind) the following list:

Lands:
1 Island
1 Swamp
4 Gemstone Mine
1 Bloodstained Mire
4 Polluted Delta
2 Scalding Tarn
1 Underground Sea
1 Volcanic Island

Spells:
4 Lion's Eye Diamond
4 Lotus Petal
1 Ad Nauseam
4 Brainstorm
4 Cabal Ritual
1 Chain of Vapor
4 Dark Ritual
2 Cabal Therapy
1 Duress
4 Gitaxian Probe
1 Grim TUtor
4 Infernal Tutor
1 Past in Flames
4 Ponder
2 Preordain
1 Tendrils of Agony

Sideboard:
3 Carpet of Flowers
3 Abrupt Decay
1 Chain of Vapor
1 Hurkyl's Recall
2 Ignorant Bliss (love this so much)
1 Cabal Therapy
1 Empty the Warrens
2 Massacre
1 Tropical Island

Will post a small report of noticable events while testing this list when I have a bit more of time, so the list isn't so alone in here ;D What I can say (and can't say enough) that Silence is brilliantly good atm.

Greetings,

Florian

Hey, list looks very nice. I think I will give it a try at my next tournament (btw. your list has 57 cards, I think you forgot the Silences :wink: ). Is Ignorant Bliss really that good? And ETW comes in against Canadian I think, wouldn't the 4th copy of Silence be better in that specific MU?

[Zombie]

In my experience Delver's way of dealing with a fast Warrens is "die horribly".

[DarkJester]

In my experience Delver's way of dealing with a fast Warrens is "die horribly".

That's true, but is this deck build to support an early warrens consistently? Just asking questions, I never tested mort's list but know the Etw-power from TES (really good in here) and from the UBR-WishANT (where ETW rarely shines during the first turns of a match. It seems to be more of a grinding card in here).

[mort-]

Yeah.. Silences are missing. Whooops :D
I think I'll also upgrade to 4 Silences and cut the Duress.
And yes, Ignorant Bliss is that good. Nothing beats the face of "Hymn to Tourach, you." "Response, Ignorant Bliss". And then... the face :)

Edit: Yeah, early Warrens works quite well, especially with the Chain to add 2 / 3 Stormcounts.

[Zombie]

I wouldn't board Warrens in. This is a longer game deck built on the power of Cabal Ritual and Past in Flames fueled by Cabal Rituals. Not ideal ground for getting off those fast Warrens.

[Dzra]

Is there a reason that Carpet of Flowers or Xantid Swarm is favored over something like Defense Grid when boarding against RUG? I feel like I'd rather wait the extra turn and be able to fetch basics than have to open up a Bayou to Wasteland.

[Lemnear]

Amazing ... after burning wishes, chrome moxen, empty the warrens and Rainbow Land Players try out Silences in ANT?

I have no idea why ANT still Claims it's own identity because of Cabal Ritual and PIF maindeck (instead wishboard) if the Rest of the deck mimicries some TES' techs here and there in a rotation.

Divert > Ignorant Bliss

[Sigyn]

Divert > Ignorant Bliss

Both are pretty bad imo, if I had to run one of those I'd definitely agree with you, but since divert doesn't provide protection from duress I prefer running Dark confidant instead even though is sensible to removal spells.

I personally don't like silences at all in this kind of decks, I understand them in DDFT or TES since you want to stop all kind of interaction when you go diminishing returns/Tspiral/Doomsday, but in ANT is much better going for the discard plan, one of the strenghs of ANT over the other storm combo decks is the manabase, which is pretty solid, adding white makes it more vulnerable.

[Pdingo]

Hei Guys

Im from Switzerland and a great fan of ANT and TES but at the moment now i play ANT/TNT.
Here is my list:

4 Polluted Delta
2 Underground Sea
1 Volcanic Island
1 Badlands
1 Island
1 Swamp
4 Infernal Tutor
4 Gitaxian Probe
4 Dark Ritual
2 Cabal Therapy
4 Cabal Ritual
4 Brainstorm
4 Duress
4 Ponder
3 Burning Wish
1 Tendrils of Agony
1 Past in Flames
1 Ad Nauseam
4 Lion's Eye Diamond
4 Lotus Petal
1 Chrome Mox
2 Verdant Catacombs
2 Scalding Tarn
1 Tropical Island

SB: 1 Tendrils of Agony
SB: 1 Ill-Gotten Gains
SB: 1 Empty the Warrens
SB: 1 Pyroclasm (We have a lot esperblade player and it takes the hatebears)
SB: 4 Dark Confidant(Should be have to play! so good against Discard and Combo)
SB: 4 Abrupt Decay (I play 4 decays because: They are to good in the meta right now and in Switzerland we have a lot Miracle and other match up where are the decay so good)
SB: 1 Cabal Therapy
SB: 1 Bayou
SB: 1 Meltdown (Changing Slot but when i know, someone play MuD, affinity etc)

The list perform very well with the green split to.
I like the SB very much.

I hope your enjoy my list:)

@Silence , i think its not a good card in ANT because its not TES! Why we should the mana base bader when we cut basics or discard for silence and gemstone mine? ANT play enough discard for protect the Combo Turn and it is more conistant with basic and discard.
I only like Silence in TES because its fast combo and have to go off faster then ANT!


Greets from Switzerland

[Zombie]

Amazing ... after burning wishes, chrome moxen, empty the warrens and Rainbow Land Players try out Silences in ANT?

I have no idea why ANT still Claims it's own identity because of Cabal Ritual and PIF maindeck (instead wishboard) if the Rest of the deck mimicries some TES' techs here and there in a rotation.

Take that head out of the ass, would you?

Cabal Rit, PiF and Tendrils main do funny things. Like, dunno, turn the deck into more of a control one, with a better long game, more resiliency to discard and makes an aggro mentality worse because AdN actually costs 6 and you have no EtW and other fun stuff. Same thing as when you swap Bob/Tombstalker in BUG. One is a control deck, the other more of a tempo/beatdown thing. Just by changing one card.

Oh, Prosak also wrote an ANT primer: http://www.starcitygames.com/article/25829_Legacy-Storm-Primer.html
Sure looks a lot like TES to me. But yeah. Gemstone Mines. Same deck, I guess.

[mort-]

Amazing ... after burning wishes, chrome moxen, empty the warrens and Rainbow Land Players try out Silences in ANT?

I have no idea why ANT still Claims it's own identity because of Cabal Ritual and PIF maindeck (instead wishboard) if the Rest of the deck mimicries some TES' techs here and there in a rotation.

Divert > Ignorant Bliss

Oh, that's actually explained pretty easily. If it's good (and not High Tide), I'll play it. Currently, I just don't see it. Too many Snapcaster Mages around for discard to be worth it imho, but oh well.
And Ignorant Bliss > Divert. Not only can you not Divert a Duress, but IB also acts as LED 5 - 6 if needed.

[Lemnear]

Take that head out of the ass, would you?

Cabal Rit, PiF and Tendrils main do funny things. Like, dunno, turn the deck into more of a control one, with a better long game, more resiliency to discard and makes an aggro mentality worse because AdN actually costs 6 and you have no EtW and other fun stuff. Same thing as when you swap Bob/Tombstalker in BUG. One is a control deck, the other more of a tempo/beatdown thing. Just by changing one card.

Oh, Prosak also wrote an ANT primer: http://www.starcitygames.com/article/25829_Legacy-Storm-Primer.html
Sure looks a lot like TES to me. But yeah. Gemstone Mines. Same deck, I guess.

Slow riding, ranger ;)

Hit'n on me and presenting bold, false Infos wields no class. BUG Control and Team America differs much more than you try to paint in the Sky. Goofy, Bob, Tombstalker, Deed, Ponder, Dismember, Sylvan Library etc. belong in One or the other Concept ... there is no shared Space as Big as you describe. Much more than "just by changing a Card".

While TES and ANT both Play PIF in their 75, please explain me how Tendrils and Cabal Ritual define a Control Mode? Keep the fairytale about "resiliancy to discard". Both Decks have Access to PIF but TES has more buisness with the wishes compared with the preordains in ANT. Dood, I played both decks a lot and this topic is bullshit, especially because TES can win before Hymn hits which is unlikely with ANT. The only thing which was 100% true, was the resiliancy to Stifle/Wasteland ... and then came first the Burning Wish tests, then the 4th color for Abrupt Decay and finally Gemstone Mine to Support the 4th color (and Silence for the 5th Color as suggested)



Oh, that's actually explained pretty easily. If it's good (and not High Tide), I'll play it. Currently, I just don't see it. Too many Snapcaster Mages around for discard to be worth it imho, but oh well.
And Ignorant Bliss > Divert. Not only can you not Divert a Duress, but IB also acts as LED 5 - 6 if needed.

I don't think either option is good but I see a lot more Inquisitions, Thoughtseize and Hymns than Duress around atm which lead me to the conclusion that Divert would be better. I did see the interaction with infernal tutor and as an Option to dodge LED discard but the additional cost of 1R feels too high for such tricks.

[RaNDoMxGeSTuReS]

Might as well chime in here:
@Zombie: Don't confuse a control role with durdling around with cantrips until you can ritual/tutor chain into a lethal tendrils. They're not the same thing. ANT is a clunky deck and has significantly more issues against discard/counter decks (i.e. Esperblade) than TES because it's so god damn slow. Ponder? Ponder? Brainstorm? Ponder? Ponder? Oops, I lose.

[Kich867]

Might as well chime in here:
@Zombie: Don't confuse a control role with durdling around with cantrips until you can ritual/tutor chain into a lethal tendrils. They're not the same thing. ANT is a clunky deck and has significantly more issues against discard/counter decks (i.e. Esperblade) than TES because it's so god damn slow. Ponder? Ponder? Brainstorm? Ponder? Ponder? Oops, I lose.

This has been my experience playing against the deck as well. I Cabal Therapied naming LED, he didn't play anything for the rest of the game and died.

Game two he got two bobs down, and then I pulsed them and killed him. I wasn't really sure why I wasn't dead either game.

[AlleywayJack]

Amazing ... after burning wishes, chrome moxen, empty the warrens and Rainbow Land Players try out Silences in ANT?

I have no idea why ANT still Claims it's own identity because of Cabal Ritual and PIF maindeck (instead wishboard) if the Rest of the deck mimicries some TES' techs here and there in a rotation.


i have yet to see a productive comment come out of you lemnaer. TES fanboy much? just because a few random kids wants to dilute their ANT decks with rainbowlands and silence doesn't mean that's what the general consensus agrees on as the ANT list. TES and ANT are different decks, with different strengths and weaknesses. get over it.

and sure while Crit and tendrils doesn't make you more of a control deck, running 8-9 discard effects MD does make you more of a control deck than TES. being able to strip your opponents hand of anything relative, even in the non blue matches makes a big deal. now im not saying ANT is a control deck or even that it has real control qualities, because that's not true. however it does do a better job of slowing down the opponent for 2-3 turns than TES does, because that's exactly what its supposed to do.


Might as well chime in here:
@Zombie: Don't confuse a control role with durdling around with cantrips until you can ritual/tutor chain into a lethal tendrils. They're not the same thing. ANT is a clunky deck and has significantly more issues against discard/counter decks (i.e. Esperblade) than TES because it's so god damn slow. Ponder? Ponder? Brainstorm? Ponder? Ponder? Oops, I lose.

this is the exact reason why i don't see the fuss with prosak's list. running only 4 tutors 6 discard and 16 cantrips seems like total nonsense to me. not having enough disruption and cantriping into cantrips doesn't seem like what you want to be doing when your playing ANT. To me, it seems like every innovation he's made has been in the completely wrong direction. ANT with no BW or Grim and only 6 disruption?? what is the appeal here???


This has been my experience playing against the deck as well. I Cabal Therapied naming LED, he didn't play anything for the rest of the game and died.
Game two he got two bobs down, and then I pulsed them and killed him. I wasn't really sure why I wasn't dead either game

im not sure why he would keep a hand with LED and no discard or cantrips or anything else to play. or why he didnt just play his LED before you could discard it if he knew he was playing against discard.

g2 theres no way hes playing both bobs at once, so he at least got 1 free card off the original bob. now if you backed up that pulse with some more discard and a fast clock i could see the game ending in your favor. but in no way was it simply. " i pulse his confidants and he loses the game"

this comment seems like bs to me, either that or the ANT player you were playing is a terrible player, or just having completely crap draws

[RaNDoMxGeSTuReS]

blah

Grammar much?

It boils down to this:
If you're playing storm -- one of the fastest decks in Legacy -- why the hell are you trying to win on turn 4/5 by assuming the "control-role" instead of just winning now.

If I have two Bobs in hand while playing ANT, I'm sure as hell running both out. If you don't, you're forcing yourself to have LED to win with any non-Burning Wish tutor.

P.S. Silence stops them for 1 turn, not slows them for 2 or 3. But guess what? Then you win, obviously. Also Duress/Thoughtseize/Cabal Therapy doesn't beat a hand stacked with multiple blue permission spells.

[Kich867]

im not sure why he would keep a hand with LED and no discard or cantrips or anything else to play. or why he didnt just play his LED before you could discard it if he knew he was playing against discard.

g2 theres no way hes playing both bobs at once, so he at least got 1 free card off the original bob. now if you backed up that pulse with some more discard and a fast clock i could see the game ending in your favor. but in no way was it simply. " i pulse his confidants and he loses the game"

this comment seems like bs to me, either that or the ANT player you were playing is a terrible player, or just having completely crap draws

He went lotus petal, cracked for brainstorm, land, and probe. I therapy on LED because he's obviously storm and beat him to death after.

Next game, he probes me, therapies me and takes my surgical, he flashed a dark rit when sloppily flipping cards around in his hand, so I hit that with my therapy, duress him, then beat him to death with Knight / DRS.

[AlleywayJack]

Grammar much?

It boils down to this:
If you're playing storm -- one of the fastest decks in Legacy -- why the hell are you trying to win on turn 4/5 by assuming the "control-role" instead of just winning now.

If I have two Bobs in hand while playing ANT, I'm sure as hell running both out. If you don't, you're forcing yourself to have LED to win with any non-Burning Wish tutor.

P.S. Silence stops them for 1 turn, not slows them for 2 or 3. But guess what? Then you win, obviously. Also Duress/Thoughtseize/Cabal Therapy doesn't beat a hand stacked with multiple blue permission spells.

when did i say you win turn 4/5? generally ant wins 2-3 and rarely t4+.
you play ant because you want to be consistent. i agree TES is the more powerful, and the faster deck, but its not the most resilient, consistent, or inevitable. like i keep saying. each deck has its own strengths and weaknesses. and like you said, storm is one of the fastest(and strongest) decks in legacy. whether your playing ANT or TES comes down to preference and what you feel most familiar and comfortable with. im so sick of this ANT vs TES conversation.



If I have two Bobs in hand while playing ANT, I'm sure as hell running both out. If you don't, you're forcing yourself to have LED to win with any non-Burning Wish tutor.

im not sure what the point of this is? obviously you would play both your confidants. all i was saying is pulse alone didn't win that game.


p.s cabal therapy strips multiples out of hands, and is just fine as stopping hands full of blue permission.

[Tammit67]

Let's be clear: the disruption package of AnT is almost antihate. That is, it is a set of cards we use against the cards they will use to stop us. We are not at all interested in stopping another decks game plan unless their plan is highly disruptive to our own.

I would never say 'deck X is the control deck in the matchup' unless deck X only needs to prevent itself from losing and let its natural inevitability over the opposition take root. IE- High tide plays the control role against Belcher.

My issues with AnT as opposed to TES are three fold.
A) Active GY hate is much harder to beat for AnT
B) Sensei's divining top with a counter spell on the top of the deck is very difficult to beat
C) Snapcaster with snare/counterspell in GY is harder to beat

Most of those TES can just cast silence and not care. TES being half a turn faster is just icing

[AlleywayJack]

He went lotus petal, cracked for brainstorm, land, and probe. I therapy on LED because he's obviously storm and beat him to death after.

Next game, he probes me, therapies me and takes my surgical, he flashed a dark rit when sloppily flipping cards around in his hand, so I hit that with my therapy, duress him, then beat him to death with Knight / DRS.

well this makes alot more sense. you were definitely on fire both these games ;D

[Lemnear]

i have yet to see a productive comment come out of you lemnaer. TES fanboy much? just because a few random kid wants to dilute there ANT decks with rainbowlands and silence doesn't doesn't mean that's what the general consensus agrees on as the ANT list. TES and ANT are different decks, with defferent strengths and weaknesses. get over it.

and sure while Crit and tendrils doesn't make you more of a control deck, running 8-9 discard effects MD does make you more of a control deck than TES. being able to strip your opponents hand of anything relative, even in the non blue matches makes a big deal. now im not saying ANT is a control deck or even that it has real control qualities, because that's not true. however it does do a better job of slowing down the opponent for 2-3 turns than TES does, because thats exactly what its supposed to do.


If you are looking for productive comments, check out the last few hundreds i've done in this forum.

I was questioning the strict differing between the two decks which both develop towards each other (See Probe in TES). As I said before: I've played both approaches to storm and have made my conclusions. Feel free to disagree/argue about my analysis of both concepts development. Throwing my outlayed arguments uncontested and uncommented overboard by trying to put People into boxes like "you are a fanboy, period" is a niveau 5th graders debate about Sony Playstation vs. Microsoft Xbox.

Tbh I have never seen a successful ANT list running 9 discard spells. I rather repeat the question of RandomGestures (sorry for skipping the caps-thing) and ask about the mindset to put more than 2 Playsets of Control elements in a Combo Deck, which WILL Slow you down, brick your hand or are complete deaddraws against permament-focused-Decks. This throws up 2 questions: Why should a deck, that sculpts his Hand for 3-4 Turn and runs additional cantrips to grab protection and Combo pieces with higher reliance run even more protection than TES? Why Slow down your Deck with redundant cantrips and protection to fights things you could outrace otherways?

[Kich867]

It felt good, since prior I was convinced I couldn't beat storm haha.

[AlleywayJack]

Let's be clear: the disruption package of AnT is almost antihate. That is, it is a set of cards we use against the cards they will use to stop us. We are not at all interested in stopping another decks game plan unless their plan is highly disruptive to our own.

I would never say 'deck X is the control deck in the matchup' unless deck X only needs to prevent itself from losing and let its natural inevitability over the opposition take root. IE- High tide plays the control role against Belcher.

My issues with AnT as opposed to TES are three fold.
A) Active GY hate is much harder to beat for AnT
B) Sensei's divining top with a counter spell on the top of the deck is very difficult to beat
C) Snapcaster with snare/counterspell in GY is harder to beat

Most of those TES can just cast silence and not care. TES being half a turn faster is just icing

your never trying to be the control deck with ant. and its no where near being able to be a control deck. and your right, the discard functions as anti-hate generally speaking. but when you play a probe and see a shaman, or counterbalance, or literally anything that can screw you up, you can strip it, and keep yourself alive. silence can only be played after the fact. sure, i suppose you can "chant-walk"them and try to go off next turn. but you better be able to go off that turn.

as far as your issues with ANT.
1) not true, alot of the ANT lists are running 2-3 burning wish. you either grab ETW with wish, or go for AdN, or just tutor chain.
2) you got his one, silence is the clear winner. SB bounce/ abrupt decay does the trick though, or BW shattering spree/hull breach
3) easy, discard snapcaster/ win before they have 3-4 mana.

its true that silence can be amazing in certain situations. hence the reason why people play it and why TES is a great deck.
like ive said though, i dont think TES vs ANT is a productive conversation. and i think both decks are great and both thrive in different situations.

[Lemnear]

He went lotus petal, cracked for brainstorm, land, and probe. I therapy on LED because he's obviously storm and beat him to death after.

Next game, he probes me, therapies me and takes my surgical, he flashed a dark rit when sloppily flipping cards around in his hand, so I hit that with my therapy, duress him, then beat him to death with Knight / DRS.

Therapy on LED or Dark Riutal are your best outs. Wise choice. However, to me it doesn't make sense to play petal, bs, Probe in the first place. If he's looking for a Land he should Probe first; if he desperates wants to shuffle cards back, burning a petal + Brainstorm he might should have mulliganed instead (like Ad Nauseam in Hand) or wait till Turn 2 to shuffle via a follow-up fetchland. In this case he could dodge a discard spell with that Brainstorm off the 1st land. In either case: poorly played.

[Kich867]

Therapy on LED or Dark Riutal are your best outs. Wise choice. However, to me it doesn't make sense to play petal, bs, Probe in the first place. If he's looking for a Land he should Probe first; if he desperates wants to shuffle cards back, burning a petal + Brainstorm he might should have mulliganed instead (like Ad Nauseam in Hand) or wait till Turn 2 to shuffle via a follow-up fetchland. In this case he could dodge a discard spell with that Brainstorm off the 1st land. In either case: poorly played.

Who needs Thoughtseize when you just name shit in their hand! And it flashes back!

It's super hard to play but, Therapy is definitely the best discard spell out there. I generally run it over other options, going on like 8 or 9 months experience with the card.

[Tammit67]

as far as your issues with ANT.
1) not true, alot of the ANT lists are running 2-3 burning wish. you either grab ETW with wish, or go for AdN, or just tutor chain.
2) you got his one, silence is the clear winner. SB bounce/ abrupt decay does the trick though, or BW shattering spree/hull breach
3) easy, discard snapcaster/ win before they have 3-4 mana.

I've found Grim tutor versions to be much better than the BW main versions. Having the mana to continue post ad nausem (which is notably plan 2 or 3 in this deck most of the time) is reliant on threshed cabal rituals, as is tutor chain. Often not much of a concern, but much more so than the -1 R nabbing a rite of flame with deathrite shaman does.

Against blue decks featuring top, i got enough targets for decay with beating CB that I don't often want to find another to get top too.

Discarding snapcaster is hard with 3 therapy, sometimes you just dont find it. Between UBx's discard and soft permission, it takes time to work around them to the point they often have the 3-4 mana to play with snapcaster.

Talking about TES x ANT is somewhat relevant. We get to see where we'd prefer one over the other (silence dont care about spell snare/stifle, for example) and let us tune AnT in hopefully a way to incorporate the ideas TES has been successful with. If we can understand why one 'thrives in certain situations' perhaps we can tailor the other in a way to operate fine under those conditions

[AlleywayJack]

Tbh I have never seen a successful ANT list running 9 discard spells. I rather repeat the question of RandomGestures (sorry for skipping the caps-thing) and ask about the mindset to put more than 2 Playsets of Control elements in a Combo Deck, which WILL Slow you down, brick your hand or are complete deaddraws against permament-focused-Decks. This throws up 2 questions: Why should a deck, that sculpts his Hand for 3-4 Turn and runs additional cantrips to grab protection and Combo pieces with higher reliance run even more protection than TES? Why Slow down your Deck with redundant cantrips and protection to fights things you could outrace otherways?

your not trying to go off t1, so being the fastest deck isn't relevant. your trying to go off, anywhere from t2-3. and sometimes t4+. so you play around 8 disruption spells to let you go off t2-3 through countermagic. running 6 disruption can lead you into scenarios where you have everything to go off, but no disruption to protect it, and like iv previously stated i dont think running 16 cantrips to find your goods is where you want to be either. wasting time cantiping into cantips can, and will probably get you killed. you want to be consistently drawing what you need, with minimal hand sculpting. im my experience, 8-9 discard effects enables you to almost always have some to fire off before trying to combo out. and again, your not sculpting for 3-4 turns. your sculpting, generally, for 1-2 and winning anywhere from 2-4.

TES literally justcan't run as much disruption, as it dilutes the deck so much, and the only thing TES is trying to do, is be faster. but is it more consistent? how many times do you draw hands full of chrome moxs, or multiple burning wish that don't do anything, or have rite of flame and dark ritual but you no access to red mana, etc. both decks are good for different reasons, and both decks have issues regarding different aspects.

another thing, discard is just fine against permanent based decks. as far as i know Cabal therapy, IoK, and thoughtseize can still hit just about anything.

[AlleywayJack]

I've found Grim tutor versions to be much better than the BW main versions. Having the mana to continue post ad nausem (which is notably plan 2 or 3 in this deck most of the time) is reliant on threshed cabal rituals, as is tutor chain. Often not much of a concern, but much more so than the -1 R nabbing a rite of flame with deathrite shaman does.

Against blue decks featuring top, i got enough targets for decay with beating CB that I don't often want to find another to get top too.

Discarding snapcaster is hard with 3 therapy, sometimes you just dont find it. Between UBx's discard and soft permission, it takes time to work around them to the point they often have the 3-4 mana to play with snapcaster.

Talking about TES x ANT is somewhat relevant. We get to see where we'd prefer one over the other (silence dont care about spell snare/stifle, for example) and let us tune AnT in hopefully a way to incorporate the ideas TES has been successful with. If we can understand why one 'thrives in certain situations' perhaps we can tailor the other in a way to operate fine under those conditions

ahh i see. you have made a few valid points!
1) your right, non threshed Crit aren't doing all that much for you, and certainly aren't going to get you tutor chaining. that being said deathrite shaman isn't usually much of a problem, iv actually never had him rob my Crits of thresh before. more intense grave hate like rest in peace is alot more difficult to play around. and usually forces you into awkward AdNs or EtW
2)top and Cb causing you problems? hull breech
3) depending on which discard you usuing. IoK, thoughtseize, cabal therapy all hit snappy


the discussion of TES vs ANT is somewhat relevant but both decks play different cards for different reasons. so you cant exactly say "this card is good in TES so it must be good in ANT" because it doesn't exactly work that way

[RaNDoMxGeSTuReS]

TES literally justcan't run as much disruption

The ANT deck that won GP Ghent played 8 distruption spells. TES plays 7. What's your point?

Grammar. Grammar. Grammar.

Also, people will take you seriously once you stop being such an asshat.

[Lemnear]

TES literally justcan't run as much disruption, as it dilutes the deck so much, and the only TES is trying to do, is be faster. but is it more consistent? how many times do you draw hands full of chrome moxs, or multiple burning wish that don't do anything, or have rite of flame and dark ritual but you no access to red mana, etc. both decks are good for different reasons, and both decks have issues regarding different aspects.

another thing, discard is just fine against permanent based decks. as far as i know Cabal therapy, IoK, and thoughtseize can still hit just about anything.

Bricking on moxen was an issue which got the playset reduced to a 3-off Time ago. Additional burning wishes can be imprinted into moxen or grab protection Out of the Sideboard (like Therapy). If i remember correctly Bryant's winning list from SCGDC had 4 gemstones, 2 Cities, a volcanic, 3 fetches and 4 Lotus Petals (aside from the chrome moxen) as initial red mana sources. Sure this doesn't mean, you have Access to Rite + Ritual Turn 1 every time.

You won't run IoK in a Storm Deck. I have to admit I was unclear in my statemen about permaments. I was aiming for problems with quick permament hate like Thalia, Teeg or Co. from the hate-perspective or swarm.dec's like Goblins, Meerfolk, Zoo and other quick Aggro which make drawn protection blanks (especially duress). This is more of an issue if you are on the draw and face Lackey, Vial, delver, etc. already on the table. Postboard you can adjust those deaddraws by switching the discard for perm. hate like Decay or Chain of Vapor, but game 1 can be a pain with all the useless discard. During my playtime additional Protection was less of an issue in TES because of "chant-walking" and chrome moxen

[Pdingo]

Guys what do you think its the better choice tutor/maybe cantrip. Maybe its only a Meta choice? or own playstyle?
i like the TNT/ANT feat BW a lot and the UB ANT to.

Burning Wish(3off+chrome mox maybe) ( Allowed to use SB tricks to give us a empty, hatebear removal but BW goes to exil. But you find faster a Tutor when you play it)
or
Preordain 4off (another Cantrip, i like it 4off, more constistant but can be slower insteat of BW)
or
a 2-3 off preordain and 1off Grim Tutor (Well its a tutor more but cc is 3 and the life loss can be relevant and bader with Ad nauseam, for me the badest option)

What would you play? What do you like at the moest?

sry for my bad english..


Greets Dingo

[Lemnear]

My friend your topic is exactly part of the identity crisis this thread faces the last few pages. If you are into Burning Wish + Chrome Mox, you may visit the TES thread in the established forum. For advice concerning the UB Version with red-Splash for Past in Flames, you are right in this thread.

Because we have A LOT of experiments with the deck atm I refuse to give a clear advice for your concern. For an UB(r) Version the Choice of a Single Grim Tutor among preordains is solid. You may check the Last 10 Pages here and in the TES thread. They will answer your question.

[mort-]

just because a few random kids wants to dilute their ANT decks with rainbowlands and silence doesn't mean that's what the general consensus agrees on as the ANT list.

I'm a bit offended by that and actually do not see, neither through your posts, nor through the list you posted, where you come from to call other people "random kids".

So, as to not derail this thread by personal ramblings, I'd like to analyse our options of discard - which is what brought me to Silence.
We do have Inquisition of Kozilek, which doesn't hit Force of Will. So that's a big minus. Thoughtseize does hit it, but as you are aware, Divert and Missdirection are cards now. So to be honest, I'm pretty sure that running either of both is the worst thing you could do.
That leaves us with Duress and Cabal Therapy. Duress is obviously awesome, but leaves Snapcaster in their hand. Which came up pretty often while using it.. so dawww. It also is pretty much dead against Maverick. Yeah, that's not that much of a problem because the deck sunk in popularity, but at a very big event, you should think about playing it 1 or 2 rounds.
Which brings me to Cabal Therapy. It can be missdirected, but does no harm, except for wasting a spell. It's also very hard to play, but can hit everything. Problem, it can be pretty much worthless if you didn't see their hand and/or do not have the luxury to chose the only card that would hinder you. Can also easily be outplayed by Brainstorm.
All of them suck against Sensei's.

So, by pure strength, I'd rate them like CT > Duress > TS > IoK.
Feel free to add additional info I forgot.

As you might have seen from my earlier posts, I'll generally hate TES' stupid, nonsolid manabase and chose ANT over TES because of that in the past. But, there have always been weaknesses to the discard plan. Now, currently, they are at an all time high. Yet alone, when you look at the DtB section:

Mirror - Hands down, Silence will win this, easily.

Jund - Well, Silence/discard don't give too much. Main point should be to avoid the Hymn T2, the rest is a cakewalk. If they start (otp) with discard, they'll most likely hit your protection spell (as long as the kill is not imminent) to go into T2 Hymn. Nothing won here, I guess you will not be naming Hymn against an unknown opponent T1 (otp). Of course, Duress wins here, so be it.

Blade Control - I actually like this matchup. Generally, targeting their discard with yours always counts as a win for discard, but the diversity of their countermagic and protective spells makes it hard to target an unseen hand with Cabal Therapy. Also, Snapcaster Mages. Pretty easy matchup, but I do think Silence has the edge here, maybe not preboard, but postboard, when they bring in Flusterstorms, most definitely.

Miracle Control - Top, CB, yes. Discarding Counterbalance can be great, but one of their many counterspells beneath an active top can be way too destructive. No good matchup, even after boarding, still, Silence has the edge because of the obvious top action.

Team America - Against the tempo oriented version, Discard wins. You can target their discard and they usually have not that much / diverse countermagic to warrant playing Silence. Also, hitting Hymn with Duress is just fun. The opposite can be said about the control version of the deck. Diverse countermagic and Snapcaster Mages make chanting the better option. This should probably be split up, but as I get tired, I'll do it as one and count it as a tie ;D

Sneak Attack - They are usually as fast as you, so you have to not only discard their protection, but also their kill. Can also be hidden very nice in a Brainstorm. Postboard, if they bring in Leylines, you're sailing with your eyes blindfolded, so clear win for Silence. I also like the option to chant them the turn they want to kill, as it's usually stronger to try and discard something.

RUG - Yeah, this is THE deck you want to chant. You can't hit everything with discard, as they usually are holding at least Stifle and another counterspell. So this can be really a pain in the ass. Of course, plus points for discard for not playing more wasteable lands.

You see, I can understand why one would want to stay with the discard plan. It has worked, it will again, but currently - and if you can proof me wrong, please do and I will jump the discard bandwagon - the most logical decission is to adapt to the situation and play the protection spell that hits most of your opponents spells and protects your combo the best.

mort-

[AlleywayJack]

The ANT deck that won GP Ghent played 8 distruption spells. TES plays 7. What's your point?

Grammar. Grammar. Grammar.

Also, people will take you seriously once you stop being such an asshat.

You're right. I feel like i may have been coming off stronger than i intended. If i offended anyone i'm sorry!

The only point i was trying to make was in response to

Tbh I have never seen a successful ANT list running 9 discard spells. I rather repeat the question of RandomGestures (sorry for skipping the caps-thing) and ask about the mindset to put more than 2 Playsets of Control elements in a Combo Deck, which WILL Slow you down, brick your hand or are complete deaddraws against permament-focused-Decks.

that playing 8-9 discard effects isn't necessarily a terrible thing

[Lemnear]

... and I gave you scenarios in which those overload of discard is harming your gameplan and TES CAN and DOES run a near equal amount of protection without bricking, something you ignore from the beginning



TES literally just can't run as much disruption, as it dilutes the deck so much, and the only TES is trying to do, is be faster.

Hope I catched enough flames and bold, false Statements to this point, that we can continue in a civilized manner

[Pdingo]

Well i know the answers but i was only intrestet what people here think about the BW/cantrip discussion.

It seems in the USA you see more UB ANT and in Europe more ANT with BW lists in the top 8.

[Lemnear]

There is always a red-Splash for PIF. I don't think an UB ANT is playable

[Pdingo]

I mean with UB ANT the UBr ANT(PiF), but you know that;)

[Lemnear]

I mean with UB ANT the UBr ANT(PiF), but you know that;)

Yep, but there once was a pure UB ANT with Iggy-Loop, which I still have in mind hearing "UB ANT" :)

[Asthereal]

Same here. That deck won the Dutch Nationals a couple of years back, and ever since the Dutch have called that deck 'Robbin ANT', after its pilot. Even though Robbin didn't actually invest the list. One of his teammates did, and reconed it wasn't optimal, so he opted to play something else and saw Robbin win the event. :eek:

It's actually pretty strong. We shouldn't discard that list too quickly.

[Lemnear]

Same here. That deck won the Dutch Nationals a couple of years back, and ever since the Dutch have called that deck 'Robbin ANT', after its pilot. Even though Robbin didn't actually invest the list. One of his teammates did, and reconed it wasn't optimal, so he opted to play something else and saw Robbin win the event. :eek:

It's actually pretty strong. We shouldn't discard that list too quickly.

Decks are never named by/after their inventor but the one who places with it in a grand tournament. I lol'd about the last sentence, because "discard" was the issue which the deck once faced before PIF came.

[jin]

TES literally justcan't run as much disruption, as it dilutes the deck so much


Additional burning wishes can [...] grab protection Out of the Sideboard (like Therapy).

This means that TES effectively plays 11 protection spells and thats... more.


Same here. That deck won the Dutch Nationals a couple of years back, and ever since the Dutch have called that deck 'Robbin ANT', after its pilot. Even though Robbin didn't actually invest the list. One of his teammates did, and reconed it wasn't optimal, so he opted to play something else and saw Robbin win the event. :eek:

It's actually pretty strong. We shouldn't discard that list too quickly.

Are you sure it wasn't Saito with City of Traitors main and Dark Confidants in the SB?



So, by pure strength, I'd rate them like CT > Duress > TS > IoK.


I would say: Duress > CT > TS > IoK

Duress can't be misdirected. It also has a much lower chance of completely missing its mark. Therapy is great, but it's not that hot game 1 when you are blind to their hand. Therapy is better than Thoughtseize because it makes Ad Nauseam better. 2 life is a lot. With Gitaxian Probe, the deck just takes too much damage. Thoughtseize can still get Force of Will and Mindbreak Trap. Inquisition sucks at that. I've lost because I couldn't pull out a Mindbreak trap before. That was annoying...

If you encounter Maverick (and it's game 1), you should just Brainstorm away some discard.

[Asthereal]

Yep, very sure. Robbin played these 75:

4 Lion's Eye Diamond
4 Lotus Petal
2 Chrome Mox
4 Dark Ritual
4 Cabal Ritual /18

4 Brainstorm
4 Ponder
4 Preordain
4 Infernal Tutor
2 Ad Nauseam
1 Ill-Gotten Gains
1 Tendrils of Agony /20

4 Duress
3 Thoughtseize /7

2 Underground Sea
2 Island
1 Swamp
4 Polluted Delta
4 Misty Rainforest
2 Verdant Catacombs /15

Side:
1 Tropical Island
4 Xantid Swarm
4 Chain of Vapor
4 Doomsday
1 Shelldock Isle
1 Emrakul, the Aeons Torn /15

The list obviously isn't very up-to-date (no Probes, weren't printed back then), but it's a nice list.
I've tried it at a tournament, and this is by far the easiest-to-play Storm list I've ever played.
City of Traitors is bad in ANT imho. It doesn't make blue, so your lovely consistent mana base goes out the window...

Edit: agree with you on the Duress > Cabal Therapy btw. Duress always works, Therapy needs either Probe or another discard spell to work, and you don't always get those, especially with my luck. :tongue: Therapy gets better in lists that rely heavily on Empty the Warrens though. Blind Therapy on FoW. Misses. Then make 12 Goblins and sac one to get that answer they still had for your army.

[JamieW89]

This means that TES effectively plays 11 protection spells and thats... more.



Are you sure it wasn't Saito with City of Traitors main and Dark Confidants in the SB?

Robbin won the dutch nationals in 2010 with UB ANT playing 2 AdN, 4 IT as business (and the DD package for CB postboard) after the mystical ban. Saito played UB ANT with Mystical still legal. I've tried City of Traitors (and Crystal Vein) quite a while back but wasn't too impressed.




I would say: Duress > CT > TS > IoK

Duress can't be misdirected. It also has a much lower chance of completely missing its mark. Therapy is great, but it's not that hot game 1 when you are blind to their hand. Therapy is better than Thoughtseize because it makes Ad Nauseam better. 2 life is a lot. With Gitaxian Probe, the deck just takes too much damage. Thoughtseize can still get Force of Will and Mindbreak Trap. Inquisition sucks at that. I've lost because I couldn't pull out a Mindbreak trap before. That was annoying...

If you encounter Maverick (and it's game 1), you should just Brainstorm away some discard.

It's a matter of the metagame really. If there is loads of Maverick and other hatebear decks you'll want therapy or thoughtseize. If not, duress is by far the best MD discard. I would never even consider Inquisition MD in storm.



Regarding Silence
I've been playing UBw ANT lists for over two years, with the exception of GP Ghent when UBr was clearly better positioned (which turned out correct as Timo won the event with almost an identical MD as I failed with). For Strasbourg I'm not so sure if I want to play UB(g), UBw(g) or UBr (possibly even UBr(g), but sb space would be a problem).
Chant effects are really good versus RUG and the mirror, which I expect to be two very common matchups there. They are also fine in plenty of other matchups (being semi-timewalks at worst). I don't think a list with 7 chants is correct right now though, so I'll likely play 4-5 combined with 2-3 discard spells.

IGG also isn't as terrible as some people make it out to be. I'd play it every time if playing 7 chants, since LED is still your prime accelerant. With fewer chants PiF is better though.



Regarding TES
TES is faster, can more easily splash SB options, has wish versatility (not applicable for UBr ANT) and is better versed to make goblin tokens (UBr can once again do this fairly well).
ANT has a better manabase and better brainstorms in exchange for this. I believe it's better against discard as well (if we forget the speed for a second, which is relevant here too).

Splashing the green postboard is not a real issue since CB doesn't play wasteland usually, and if you board decays versus maverick-ish decks I board out white if I play UBw, so it's still 3 colors. If you want to play Swarms it's also fine since SnT/Reanimate decks don't play waste either and I don't even like swarms versus RUG right now.

While wish is versatile it's also a weak business spell at times.

Making goblins your main plan against some decks is really good but ANT can also board one empty without too much problems.

I don't think ANT is better than TES per sé, but I don't agree with the opposite either. It's a matter of preference to me.

[Lemnear]

This means that TES effectively plays 11 protection spells and thats... more.

Actually there are 2 Cabal Therapy you can wish for in Bryant's suggested Sample list so this math lacks; even more if you want to be picky and add infernal Tutor for Protection into your calc

The Beauty lies within the wishes, morphing from buisness into Protection on demand

[jin]

Edit: agree with you on the Duress > Cabal Therapy btw. Duress always works, Therapy needs either Probe or another discard spell to work, and you don't always get those, especially with my luck. :tongue: Therapy gets better in lists that rely heavily on Empty the Warrens though. Blind Therapy on FoW. Misses. Then make 12 Goblins and sac one to get that answer they still had for your army.

Yep. Although some people are just really good and hit every single time. I'm not sure if that's luck or skill. Either way, I don't have it, so I play Duress.


Actually there are 2 Cabal Therapy you can wish for in Bryant's suggested Sample list so this math lacks; even more if you want to be picky and add infernal Tutor for Protection into your calc

The Beauty lies within the wishes, morphing from buisness into Protection on demand

Math wasn't my strength, but seriously.. who wishes for both Cabal Therapies? LOL. Post board, I usually board in 1x Cabal Therapy, so typically I only have 1 left in the SB.

Right, Infernal Tutor getting protection is quite common for me.


Robbin won the dutch nationals in 2010 with UB ANT playing 2 AdN, 4 IT as business (and the DD package for CB postboard) after the mystical ban. Saito played UB ANT with Mystical still legal. I've tried City of Traitors (and Crystal Vein) quite a while back but wasn't too impressed.

Thanks for clearing that up. Like I said, Saito DID play it first...



It's a matter of the metagame really. If there is loads of Maverick and other hatebear decks you'll want therapy or thoughtseize. If not, duress is by far the best MD discard. I would never even consider Inquisition MD in storm.

I think if it's mostly Maverick, you should just kill them with the inherent advantage your deck has. I wouldn't mess around with Thoughtseizes...



TES is faster, can more easily splash SB options, has wish versatility (not applicable for UBr ANT) and is better versed to make goblin tokens (UBr can once again do this fairly well).
ANT has a better manabase and better brainstorms in exchange for this. I believe it's better against discard as well (if we forget the speed for a second, which is relevant here too).

Splashing the green postboard is not a real issue since CB doesn't play wasteland usually, and if you board decays versus maverick-ish decks I board out white if I play UBw, so it's still 3 colors. If you want to play Swarms it's also fine since SnT/Reanimate decks don't play waste either and I don't even like swarms versus RUG right now.

While wish is versatile it's also a weak business spell at times.

Making goblins your main plan against some decks is really good but ANT can also board one empty without too much problems.

I don't think ANT is better than TES per sé, but I don't agree with the opposite either. It's a matter of preference to me.

Sorry, Wish is a what? I'm sorry, but Burning Wish is the closest card legacy has to Demonic Tutor. I would argue it is the best tutor in legacy (in the traditional sense. I'm not counting Doomsday here..) I also disagree with you in terms of the Discard match up. The only advantage ANT has over TES in the discard match up is you can play Cabal Ritual in to Ad Nauseam with 2 lands in play. TES would have to play Dark Ritual with 3 lands in play, or Dark Ritual + Rite of Flame. That said, TES have more outs to discard match up than ANT. TES plays all that ANT plays, plus Diminishing Returns. In this sense, I would argue that TES is better against discard than ANT. Of course, ANT fixes this problem with Dark Confidant, but that's not something TES can't play.

You also say that ANT has better mana base. Better is very subjective. You have more basics and more lands, but this is both a strength and a weakness.

[Lemnear]

History lesson

There's no use to debate about the "ANT is resiliant to Discard" Mantra some People repeat for the last 2 years. It was a basic feature to hook up players for the mystical tutor Version in which the sentence HAD substance, but then the Tutor got banned but the phrase remained which is still worth a laugh, 'cause it was due to mystical tutor's topdeck ability in response to discard not because of ANT itself

[JamieW89]

I think if it's mostly Maverick, you should just kill them with the inherent advantage your deck has. I wouldn't mess around with Thoughtseizes...
You're still going to play protection spells, why not play those that are better against popular decks while still being solid versus blue? Turn-2 hatebear can be quite the problematic play for ANT game-1.




Sorry, Wish is a what? I'm sorry, but Burning Wish is the closest card legacy has to Demonic Tutor. I would argue it is the best tutor in legacy (in the traditional sense. I'm not counting Doomsday here..)
Except that it doesn't find acceleration, doesn't find Ad Nauseam and doesn't win by finding PiF/IGG without another tutor. Not saying Grim Tutor is better, since it's also pretty weak, but I find Infernal a much better tutor in the current tutor-based storm decks, despite Wish having more versatility.




You also say that ANT has better mana base. Better is very subjective. You have more basics and more lands, but this is both a strength and a weakness.
Maybe I should have formulated that differently, since TES' manabase obviously has advantages too (less susceptible to stifle & easier to fix colors), and Moxen over lands gives you explosiveness with the drawback of drawing multiple moxen.


Discard
I'll drop the discard argument. I like cabal ritual, the solid manabase with improved cantrips, PiF and SB options such as Confidant and Divert in those matchups, but I don't think there's much point in arguing this.

[Lemnear]

Except that it doesn't find acceleration, doesn't find Ad Nauseam and doesn't win by finding PiF/IGG without another tutor. Not saying Grim Tutor is better, since it's also pretty weak, but I find Infernal a much better tutor in the current tutor-based storm decks, despite Wish having more versatility.

-snip-

I'll drop the discard argument. I like cabal ritual, the solid manabase with improved cantrips, PiF and SB options such as Confidant and Divert in those matchups, but I don't think there's much point in arguing this.

My local Judge and crowd aren't ok with me Running 8 Infernals so I have to use Wish in addition *shrug*

improved Sideboard Space and solid manabase ARE arguments for UB(r) ANT, no doubt. No one will question this and neither was topic for the last 3 pages. It was the "solid manabase" argument for 4c/5c ANT's (Silence, Abrupt Decay, Xantid Swarms, whatever else) which forced Rainbow Lands into the deck

[JamieW89]

My local Judge and crowd aren't ok with me Running 8 Infernals so I have to use Wish in addition *shrug*

improved Sideboard Space and solid manabase ARE arguments for UB(r) ANT, no doubt. No one will question this and neither was topic for the last 3 pages. It was the "solid manabase" argument for 4c/5c ANT's (Silence, Abrupt Decay, Xantid Swarms, whatever else) which forced Rainbow Lands into the deck

The remark about infernal being better was a response to his claim that Wish is the best tutor in legacy. I know we need to supplement IT's, and Wish is one of the two logical options.

The thing is UBr with wishes and UBw with Grim Tutor can both splash Decays without making the manabase terrible since the matchup you mainly want them in doesn't play wasteland. It's more problematic in UBr since it would have to go 4 colors against hatebear decks since it cannot board out red (UBw changes into UBg, which keeps the manabase solid enough) and neither does it really have the SB space to play Decays and Chain of Vapors.

If you were to transform into a deck with 4 colors MD and rainbow lands I'd rather play TES (or Doomsday without the rainbow lands) myself as well. For the same reason I'd only really play Xantid Swarm (and possibly Carpet of Flowers) in the straight UB(g) version.

[Asthereal]

Who says we desperately need the Decays in ANT anyway?
Only against CounterTop they are an absolute must, but Miracles seems on its return anyway.
In a meta full of Jund, Junk and Show&Tell decks, UBr seems just fine. No need to splash more.
Something like this perhaps:

4 Gitaxian Probe
4 Brainstorm
4 Ponder
4 Infernal Tutor
3 Burning Wish
1 Ad Nauseam
1 Past in Flames
1 Tendrils of Agony /22

4 Lion's Eye Diamond
4 Lotus Petal
1 Chrome Mox
4 Dark Ritual
4 Cabal Ritual /17

4 Duress
3 Cabal Therapy /7

2 Underground sea
2 Volcanic Island
1 Island
1 Swamp
4 Polluted Delta
2 Scalding Tarn
2 Bloodstained Mire /14

Side:
1 Tendrils of Agony
3 Empty the Warrens
1 Ill-Gotten Gains
1 Reforge the Soul
1 Shattering Spree
1 Pyroclasm / Grapeshot
1 Cabal Therapy
2 Thoughtseize
2 Chain of Vapor
2 Echoing Truth /15

Or maybe some REBs/Pyroblasts in the side somewhere. Looks fine to me.

[Lemnear]

The remark about infernal being better was a response to his claim that Wish is the best tutor in legacy. I know we need to supplement IT's, and Wish is one of the two logical options.

If you were to transform into a deck with 4 colors MD and rainbow lands I'd rather play TES (or Doomsday without the rainbow lands) myself as well. For the same reason I'd only really play Xantid Swarm (and possibly Carpet of Flowers) in the straight UB(g) version.

I know about your intention in case of Infernal, which I agree with. Just made a lil' joke in a dust-dry discussion ;)

The second paragraph is important, because I don't consider a list with 2-3 Wishes, Decays, Swarms, 2 Gemstone, 1-2 Volcanics, 1 Tropical and 2-3 U.Seas a deck with stable manabase postboard. You can't have everything without sacrifice

[jin]

You're still going to play protection spells, why not play those that are better against popular decks while still being solid versus blue? Turn-2 hatebear can be quite the problematic play for ANT game-1.

You are playing a spell that will take 3 life from your life total off of Ad Nauseam. I don't consider that stronger at all. I'd play Cabal Therapy before Thoughtseize. If you play Thoughtseize before Ad Nauseam, you just lost a few cards to draw. That sucks. If you are not trying to win off of Ad Nauseam versus hate bears, then I don't know what this deck is trying to do.



Except that it doesn't find acceleration, doesn't find Ad Nauseam and doesn't win by finding PiF/IGG without another tutor. Not saying Grim Tutor is better, since it's also pretty weak, but I find Infernal a much better tutor in the current tutor-based storm decks, despite Wish having more versatility.

Half the deck is mana. Why on Earth would you need to tutor for acceleration? I'm sorry, but without LED, Infernal Tutor is often not a tutor. It might as well be a Cantrip. Infernal Tutor only finds Ad Nauseam. Burning Wish can find so much more. Burning Wish also doesn't require emptying your hand (HEHE, pun intended)


ANT VS CB

You may also use WipeAway + Discard.

[JamieW89]

You are playing a spell that will take 3 life from your life total off of Ad Nauseam. I don't consider that stronger at all. I'd play Cabal Therapy before Thoughtseize. If you play Thoughtseize before Ad Nauseam, you just lost a few cards to draw. That sucks. If you are not trying to win off of Ad Nauseam versus hate bears, then I don't know what this deck is trying to do.
I believe I mentioned both Thoughtseize and Therapy in my earlier post. In either case, this deck is NOT an Ad Nauseam deck, it's a PiF(/IGG) deck, unlike TES which relies much more on quick Ad Nauseams (and EtW).



Half the deck is mana. Why on Earth would you need to tutor for acceleration? I'm sorry, but without LED, Infernal Tutor is often not a tutor. It might as well be a Cantrip. Infernal Tutor only finds Ad Nauseam. Burning Wish can find so much more. Burning Wish also doesn't require emptying your hand (HEHE, pun intended)
Sometimes it happens that you're short on acceleration. A second tutor can add storm and mana by finding extra cabal rituals or LEDs, which is certainly not irrelevant. Infernal also (actually mainly) finds your graveyard engine, which is the main way of killing your opponent. Burning Wish, on its own, does not (where Grim Tutor does). Not to mention that Infernal Tutors can chain to reach lethal storm naturally quite commonly.
But this argument adds nothing to this topic. Everyone agrees that 4 Infernal Tutors are correct, it's the Wish/Grim Tutor that requires discussion. So I'll leave it here.


You may also use WipeAway + Discard.
Yes, although it is strictly worse.


UBr without the green splash > UBr(g)
Yes, I agree that UBr is probably better than UBrg (some small nuances: I don't like the Reforge the Soul and Echoing Truths and I would probably play a 15th land, but that is not the main point). I do prefer the Decays in the Grim Tutor (UB or UBw) versions though. Counterbalance is still a real card, which is also hard to beat.

To start a new 'debate': What do you guys think about the MUD matchup? I've lost to it a fair bit the past couple of years in important matches and I'm not quite sure if I'm ready to ignore it with my sideboard.. On the other hand, even with a few Hurkyl's Recalls/Serenity it will still not become positive and the matchup isn't that common. (Assuming a list without red, with the extra sideboard space.)

[Dzra]

Any deck that is adding acceleration to speed it up is also making its late game weaker. ANT has a better late game and better mulligans. It has more lands and doesn't worry about top decking junk like Chrome Mox. Preordain is unnecessarily durdly and the flexibility of Burning Wish is too good. These days, the only real differences between TES and ANT are Chrome Mox/Rite of Flame verses Cabal Ritual/more land and Silence verses more discard.

When playing against a deck that is proactively trying to disrupt us (ie Counterbalance and discard), I would much rather be proactive with discard myself. Against something like RUG that runs a lot of condition and reactive counter magic, I'd rather be running Silence.

The decks are so similar that arguing over these little things is fairly useless. Some of it comes down to play style. A lot of it comes down to expected meta. It'd be much more constructive to talk about matchups, sideboarding, and tech rather than whose pet storm build is better than whose.

If MUD gets a good hand, ie t1 Chalice or Trinisphere then I see potential problems, but MUD is a lot slower and mulligans a lot worse and if we are able to fire off discard then it should roll over. Abrupt Decay isn't bad here, but I'd be wary of Wasteland.

[HammafistRoob]

Adding to the tutor discussion here. If you put an Infernal Tutor in the board, it makes your burning wishes much more versatile. Granted tutoring for a tutor is slow as balls but I can see it being quite a good idea siding out one Infernal against slower decks to give you more options. It's at least worth a try I would think.

EDIT- I know slow decks aren't problematic matchups. But it can't hurt to make matchups better.

[Stoyrm]

Any one tried Sylvan Library instead of Dark Confidants in the board? Tried it today, it seemed very solid in the Miracles matchup at least :).

[phazonmutant]

Adding to the tutor discussion here. If you put an Infernal Tutor in the board, it makes your burning wishes much more versatile. Granted tutoring for a tutor is slow as balls but I can see it being quite a good idea siding out one Infernal against slower decks to give you more options. It's at least worth a try I would think.

EDIT- I know slow decks aren't problematic matchups. But it can't hurt to make matchups better.

I was under the impression that Burning Wish ANT variants always played some form of tutor in the board, usually Grim Tutor, so they could find Ad Naus with Burning Wish. In a deck with Cabal Ritual, I really don't think it's unrealistic.

In TES, we quite often board out an Infernal for another piece of protection in the U matchups, especially the ones with Surgical, and Wishing for Tutor for Ad Naus definitely has come up for me. We don't need to have a million mana floating to make AN viable though.


Stoyrm - I'm surprised you're not happy with Bob against Miracles. I hear good things about Confidant from both good ANT and CB players (or should I say, very very bad things from the CB player!)

[Stoyrm]

Stoyrm - I'm surprised you're not happy with Bob against Miracles. I hear good things about Confidant from both good ANT and CB players (or should I say, very very bad things from the CB player!)

They don't have all to many cards to side in against us, so they usually leave some terminus or swords in, as well as they actually have time to play a long game where they can actually Jace bounce him. We started with 3 bobs, shifted out one for a Library. Then shifted to two libraries. The libraries were amazing all day, Dark Confidant was mediocre (actually, there was one game where the Bob was amazing, but i doubt it would have mattered whether it was a library).

[entreri_fans]

wow, Ad Nauseam Tendrils is the SCG's champion for this week!

http://sales.starcitygames.com//deckdatabase/displaydeck.php?DeckID=54221

congratulations to Grant Wilkinson!

I notice he has 1 tendrils in the sideboard(but running no Burning Wish), someone plz tell me why?

[Rampart]

wow, Ad Nauseam Tendrils is the SCG's champion for this week!

http://sales.starcitygames.com//deckdatabase/displaydeck.php?DeckID=54221

congratulations to Grant Wilkinson!

I notice he has 1 tendrils in the sideboard(but running no Burning Wish), someone plz tell me why?

Sometimes people run a second tendrils in the board to hedge against matchups like burn or the tempo decks. It also increases the chances of getting and setting up a natural Tendrils.

[phazonmutant]

wow, Ad Nauseam Tendrils is the SCG's champion for this week!

http://sales.starcitygames.com//deckdatabase/displaydeck.php?DeckID=54221

congratulations to Grant Wilkinson!

I notice he has 1 tendrils in the sideboard(but running no Burning Wish), someone plz tell me why?

When I played ANT, I boarded in a Tendrils and Bobs to try to turn into Tendrils Aggro against decks lots of permission. It didn't really work, though...it's still pretty hard to find 2 Tendrils or get enough storm. Maybe he was trying to do something similar, but without Confidant?

[aaronm678]

Adding to the tutor discussion here. If you put an Infernal Tutor in the board, it makes your burning wishes much more versatile. Granted tutoring for a tutor is slow as balls but I can see it being quite a good idea siding out one Infernal against slower decks to give you more options. It's at least worth a try I would think.

EDIT- I know slow decks aren't problematic matchups. But it can't hurt to make matchups better.

You really shouldn't put an Infernal Tutor in the board -- it's the card you're most often digging for in any game, you really want to have 4 of them main. If you really need a tutor in the board, run Grim Tutor -- both IT and GT kind of suck off BW anyway, since it takes infinite mana to do anything productive with that line.



I notice he has 1 tendrils in the sideboard(but running no Burning Wish), someone plz tell me why?


Against slower decks is kind of nice to be able to board in a second Tendrils -- I find pretty often my line against decks with infinite counter magic is to just draw up to 8 spells and natural tendrils them. I don't think it's good enough usually to be worth the slot (there are other things that are better here, like a Snapcaster or something). It looks like that list is the same as the Prosak's from Starcity, so it could just be there because he couldn't find anything better.

[RaNDoMxGeSTuReS]

The second Tendrils is for discard decks. Grant played Prosak's list.

[Julian23]

I started playtesting with Prosak's list yesterday and accidentally put the 2nd Tendrils in the sb. While playing I realized I actually needed it, especially against decks that would sometimes discard my lone Tendrils and then eat it with Shaman *nomnomnom*.

[phazonmutant]

I started playtesting with Prosak's list yesterday and accidentally put the 2nd Tendrils in the sb. While playing I realized I actually needed it, especially against decks that would sometimes discard my lone Tendrils and then eat it with Shaman *nomnomnom*.

That seems more like an argument for Burning Wish than an argument for (yet another) card that makes your Ad Nauseams worse.

Is anyone on the Source a fan of Prosack's list? I really don't understand its appeal.

[Julian23]

Haven't made up my mind yet. My intuition tells me to go with Burning Wish. That's why I decided to go with Prosak's built first to fall back to TNT in case I don't like the wishless solution he keeps promoting.

[alderon666]

Playing without Wishes is really scary. Being completely cold to stuff like Earwig Squad, discard on Tendrils + Shaman ability or Extirpate is not cool. Wish also gives you outs like Empty the Warrens and Diminishing Returns (not good at all without Moxes).

Are they a crutch or a point for flexibility?

[Megadeus]

It just seems odd that everyone here hates it so much, and yet it is the list that keeps doing well at larger events. Is it just because of the cantrips adding consistency to the gameplan? Also His version doesnt seem very difficult to pilot either.

[phazonmutant]

It just seems odd that everyone here hates it so much, and yet it is the list that keeps doing well at larger events. Is it just because of the cantrips adding consistency to the gameplan? Also His version doesnt seem very difficult to pilot either.

You're right, it's hard to discount his list out-of-hand given how much success he and now Grant have had with it.
The argument that extra cantrips are a crutch makes sense. It definitely makes evaluating openers easier.

[Megadeus]

Also it helps in the discard MU's. They discard and you can just cantrip like hell to find another key spell you lost. Im aboard the train of it doesn't seem great, but there is no discounting the success. Maybe Ive played TES too much, but just watching Prozak stream his deck, it just seems like abominably slow.

[End3r000]

Hey I'd like to point out I did better with BW at Indy than Prosak himself did with his list. http://www.twitch.tv/scglive/b/376043351 and this is an example of why I like Grim Tutor in the board. Start the video at 11:10. They only gave me one game on video all day.

[Megadeus]

No offense to you. Just saying that prozak has had a top 8 and a couple of top 16's. And then this guy just won the whole thing yesterday. Ill definitely watch your link when I get back. Im truly curious as to why this list has been so good recently despite all of the hate that people give it on here

[Kich867]

No offense to you. Just saying that prozak has had a top 8 and a couple of top 16's. And then this guy just won the whole thing yesterday. Ill definitely watch your link when I get back. Im truly curious as to why this list has been so good recently despite all of the hate that people give it on here

I mean, to be pretty frank about it, the vast majority of people that post on this site have absolutely no idea what they're talking about. Most people suggest things without having the faintest idea of how it affects the deck or have any knowledge of the deck or have ever even tried what they're proposing before saying it.

There's only a handful of people's posts I bother reading and fewer people's posts that I take with anything more than a grain of salt.

[End3r000]

I feel like Prosaks list is ok, but it is very luck dependent and even slower than BW ANT. It does actually have a decent game against discard due to being able to float cards on the top of the library just like top, but is has to get so much luckier when it comes to drawing the tutor.

[Fade]

I used to play a TnT version of storm with Wishes about two years ago and often found myself drawing too many tutor effects when I needed more rituals or spells to cast (4 Burning Wish, 3 Infernal Tutor main - 1 Infernal Tutor side). This is generally the downfall of the Burning wish variants and one of the many reasons why Prosak only runs Infernal Tutors.

I know Prosak personally and a few weeks ago we switched legacy decks for a local. I ended up going 2-2 with his version of the deck mostly having to mulligan a few more times than expected and also being super rusty with ANT after playing DDFT for the past 5 months. I felt like his version has a lot of play though. The cantrips allow you to proactively dig through your deck looking for anything you need whether it be a discard effect, rituals, or a tutor fairly well. The low count in tutors was a concern when piloting the deck as it can get a bit clunky when having to search for them.

I'm going to try to build a version of the deck that is a mixture of the current Burning Wish variant and Prosak's list (Maybe just having 2 Wishes to bump up the tutors to 6). However, I think the manabase will be a bit strained as Abrupt Decay seems like it will need to be included for the SCG: Invitational as players are going to be gearing up to beat combo. What I assume that I will find in testing is that Prosak's list is just going to be more consistent while being able to fight off the most amount of hate (Abrupt Decay, ample amounts of discard) by sacrificing some of the speed Wish variants have.

[Final Fortune]

You're right, it's hard to discount his list out-of-hand given how much success he and now Grant have had with it.
The argument that extra cantrips are a crutch makes sense. It definitely makes evaluating openers easier.

I think the list is perfectly fine, ANT really doesn't need to win before it needs to win vs the majority of the field, beating Counterbalance to the board in 2013 is no where near as important as it was in 2012 and ANT has always been a deck that has preferred to hit its land drops, build Threshold and then kill the opponent at its convenience.

The deck is just resilient and to a certain extent more difficult/rewarding to play because you're making more micro decisions with cantrips than just trying to win with Grim Tutor.

[phazonmutant]

I think the list is perfectly fine, ANT really doesn't need to win before it needs to win vs the majority of the field, beating Counterbalance to the board in 2013 is no where near as important as it was in 2012 and ANT has always been a deck that has preferred to hit its land drops, build Threshold and then kill the opponent at its convenience.

The deck is just resilient and to a certain extent more difficult/rewarding to play because you're making more micro decisions with cantrips than just trying to win with Grim Tutor.

You're right, why bother winning when you could instead demonstrate your mastery of cantrips? :tongue:

[ThediscoPower]

I feel like Prosaks list is ok, but it is very luck dependent and even slower than BW ANT. It does actually have a decent game against discard due to being able to float cards on the top of the library just like top, but is has to get so much luckier when it comes to drawing the tutor.

luck dependant? With what? 16 cantrips and 7 fetchlands? Are you sure that you tested his list to say that, or even, played a 2012 ant list before? Because that just doesn't sound right, if you ask me.

There is a very old article that Adrian sullivan wrote, way back when, that partially explain why a brainstorm and a fetchland can help you find a singleton in your deck, in average, pretty quickly. (it's a long article, where half of it talks about a completely unlrelated deck, but there is some information in there anyways).

Here :

http://www.starcitygames.com/php/news/print.php?Article=6444

Now, I am asking you to find a 4 -of, with 16 cantrips (4 of which come complete, with a shuffle effect and all) and another 7 fetchlands... Doesn't seem that luck dependant to me...