[Archetype] CounterTop

[Nelis]

For a while I thought RMW in main over the Vendilion Cliques were a must to help out against Merfolk and >oo. With some BeB and Kitchen finks in my sideboard I think It's ok.

This is just a wild suggestion but how about Survival Cache instead of Kitchen Finks? Its downside is that it cant block but Merfolk are unblockable anyway due to islandwalk so that only leaves Zoo. Maybe its benefits can compensate? You only need 1 white mana source so it can work off one basic. It draws you cards, although probably not often since you might be lower on life vs Zoo and Merfolk anyway. But maybe when you're in control eventually its not a bad draw. Ah well, Finks is probably a tad better but maybe you can test it (so I havent typed all this for nothing :-) )?

[Frid]

The answer to B, D, E and F is natural order, directly or indirectly. I find far superior a NO-countertop build than a supreme-blue style build, just because progenitus wins the matches that you can't win with firespout or countertop. Diversifiying your powerful tools, also called "bombs", may be important to change your role depending on the match, and this is easier to do with a NO-countertop build.
Just my opinion after my many experiences in large tournaments with countertop, of course.

[routlaw]

Mackan-Have you tried a pair of Predicts instead of the Ponders? I really liked them with all of the library manipulation in the deck (Jace, Top), and the card draw is a backbreaker in the war-of-attrition control role Supreme Blue assumes. It gives you extra velocity to search both for the important pieces (Jace, Top, Counterbalance) and to get to the powerful sideboard cards in your deck. I suppose Ponder is good at this too. I'm not sure which one is correct.

[Anusien]

Playing Predict because it synergizes well with Jace is a bit ridiculous because if you resolve Jace, you don't really need any more help.

[routlaw]

It's more for when you have Top out or Brainstorm in hand, and are digging for more cards-any cards-to stabilize the game or find Counterbalance faster. But point well taken-once Jace is in play, you could probably run a deck with 4 mesa pegasus and easily win.

[Shimi]

I've been working on formulating rules and design constraints for a modern Counterbalance list. Let me post what I have and see what people think:

A) The deck should contain at minimum:
4 Brainstorm
4 Sensei's Divining Top
4 Force of Will
4 Counterbalance
2 Jace, the Mindsculptor

B) If you're short on win conditions, you should run the third Jace.

C) You should play either two or three colors. That way you can have a perfect manabase with tons of basics, like this:
N Islands
4 U/X Fetchland
1 X Basic
1 X Blue Dual
4 U/Y Fetchland
1 Y Basic
1 Y Blue Dual
0-2 Useful nonbasics that don't cast Counterbalance

D) Trying to run without Tarmogoyf to dodge Path to Exile is foolish. You should open yourself up to as many kinds of hate as possible to force people to diversify their sideboard hate. Against Zoo if they can cut Path to Exile, they get more room to bring in Grips and REB without diluting their maindeck.

E) Firespout is amazing against Goblins and Merfolk, but you need help if you just have Firespout against Zoo so you can beat their Knights and Goyfs.

F) You should have an answer to Vial somewhere in the maindeck.

I partially agree with A)Just think you should run three 4cc Must answer spells (Jace , NO).
So I agree with B.
About C I think we need a stable mana base so the goblins and merfolks MU becomes easier , 1 of each basic is correct when playing 2-3 colors and you need at least 2 islands but I don't like the idea of 1of from each dual combination because many times you need X color on T1 and Y and Z on T2 and you can't do that with 2 basics or basic + non-blue dual.There you have the 4c manabase problem, 4c make your deck very powerful but its mana stability scares me and our badmatchs will take advantage of this aspect.
Completely agree with D , if you have 2 or 3 ways to win and your opponent need to SB about it he usually will have the wrong cards in hand to counter atack you plan.
About E , Firespout is a 2 for 1 ou 3 for 2(here you usually lose a guy to a burn spell) against Zoo , against Merfolk it is a powerhouse, a resolved Firespout will leave just the mutavaults and they will come back very slow.Against Goblins you gain like 2 turns , after that they will build again a 3-4 mens army with ringleader + matrons.Of couse Firespout is good but it costs manabase stability and we need to think which is more important: manabase vs boardsweeper.
About F I think a maindeck answer to Vial is a good point but what i really belive is that the vials answer(maindeck and SB) must be effective , you don't want to pay like 3 manas on turn 3(got timewalked at a very important turn) to take care of a one mana play at turn 1-2.I also have EE to take care of Vial but I takes my T1 and T2 or take my T3 so I'm testing new ways to deal with it.

I would like to add G: A CounterTop deck should have at least 6 3cc Drops and more than 12 2cc drops to abuse CB curve.

[Alphez]

What about 3-4 Perimeter Captain as a SB card versus aggro matchups?
- he's a 1-drop, so he can be played on turn 1, being an effective answer to Lackey both on the draw and on the play
- they HAVE to deal with him, or their game plan will get severely slowed down
- therefore, he will end up eating a removal or a burn card (that won't be aimed at your Goyf or at you)
- he forces them to overextend, making Firespout even better
- he freakin' SURVIVES the aforementioned Firespout, unless they waste burn on him (win/win, isn't it?)
- no matter what, he buys you time and provides a virtual card advantage
- last, but not least, let me say he's absolutely A-MA-ZING in multiples

He's probably not stellar versus Merfolk, as they can still bypass him with Lord or a leveled Coralhelm Commander. Still, you have 7 spot removals post-SB to answer those threats (assuming you play 3 REB/Pyroblast in your SB), and the Captain alone can probably keep the rest of their deck at bay until you have enough mana to safely cast that Firespout...



P.s.: sorry for not linking the card... apparently I don't know how to do that, lol.

[Valtrix]

Perimeter Captain

You use "cards" and then "/cards", replacing the quotes with brackets. It works on whole decklists too, so you can just wrap a list around that whole thing and get the cards linked.

[Mackan]

I finished 2-1 yesterday loosing to U/W Landstill.... that deck seems to be the worst matchup. It's impossible to grind out and my clock is not fast enough to kill them before they Drop a 4mana spell with a grip full of counters.
I sideboarded -1 CB -2 Spell Snare -4 Swords to plowshares -3 Firespout for +3 Reb +2 Spell Pierce +2 Krosan Grip +1 Pithing Needle +2 Kitchen Finks
My plan was to get a creature out there making Standstill a bad card. However with Plows, Counterspell and Spell Snares it was hard to get something to stick. Then I drowned in chained standstills. For game2 I figured the best way of winning was to draw out counterspells with cb and creatures while digging for Jace. It didn't work though... Any suggestions?

Perimeter Captain
It's a good value card and the manacost is just right. The problem is that you only play 4 goyfs and 4 swords. When you need to go offensive you will still have to remove a blocker for your goyf beeing team-blocked. So it buys a few turns but is no solution imo.

Predict
What I like about Ponder is that you dig for what you need right now or the next turn. For 1 mana. Predict costs 2+1 (for setting it up). It's nowhere bad but not what I want when Im in a hurry:) I used to play Dark Confidant and Im a fan of that too but it's no longer needed due to Jace. And the same goes for any other carddrawing spell right now. The only deck that I want more CA against is Landstill.

Survival Cache
No thx, If you have higher lifetotals than Zoo on turn 3 you allready won.... otherwise it's just a pimped out healing salve for 3 mana.

Vial
This is a tricky card to play against... It's only good if your opponent land it early, but then it's really dangerous especially with Wastelands combined.
Sideboarding a lot of hate for Vial is a bad idea though, it's the creatures that kills you. And with Firespout you don't have to be afraid of beeing ran over quickly. Instead I try to make Vial as bad as possible by sideboarding out my otherwise semi-dead Fows, CB's and Counterspells.
Against merfolk I board -4 Fow -3 Counterspell +3 Reb +2 Kitchen Finks +2 Krosan Grip (for needle, jitte, control magic effects). CB is still nice since it stop brainstorms, Kira and sideboarded cards that are not merfolks.
Against goblins I take Counterbalance out instead of FoW because the creatures costs 1-5 and I need ways to stop lackey on t1... -4 Counterbalance -1 Jace +2 BeB +2 Kitchen Finks +1 Needle


... I still need better answers to Landstill and im not completely happy about Finks / Beb... Any more suggestions?

[Anusien]

Against Landstill, if you want a creature, the best one is probably Vendilion Clique.

My plan against them would never involve taking out any Counterbalances. I'd also be wary of tapping out on turn 2. Ideally you want to either resolve CB with a known 2 on top or wait to counter their Standstill and then land CB after. They can basically never win unless they resolve something ridiculous like chaning Standstills, so just don't let them.

[keys]

I used to play Dark Confidant and Im a fan of that too but it's no longer needed due to Jace.

Is this really the case? Confidant costs half as much and can beatdown. The only problem with Confidant is that it impedes your Firespout plan. In my BUG list I just play more spot removal, which works fine since good Zoo players will slow play their threats anyway.

[Mackan]

Anusien
I really like vendillion clique too... It's great how it forces the landstillplayer to waste mana on his turn and it's probably the best answer to Engineered Explosives. But, it's not enough. And I don't think draw->land->go is the ideal plan either since they benefit more from a lategame (mostly because of academy ruins, crucible of worlds and Engineered Explosives).

I do like having Sensei's Divining Top in play when they resolve Standstill (without Mishra's Factory!), but that's pretty rare.
Relaxing it out is probably better than my "beatdown-plan" with Finks though ;)

So what cards add value to this gameplan? What about Spell Pierce? It does help "force" things through but is pretty worhtless in small counterwars (because your opponent can simply tap 2). Is the fact that it halts planeswalkers until turn 6 a good enough reason to actually play it? I think it's to tempooriented to be played against anything but combo really.

Because of EE and Spell Snare I think we need something more at cmc3 or 4, preferably with flash. Any suggestions?

Or just sideboard Price of Progress? >)


keys
The reason Dark Confidant is "bad" is because it turns on the otherwise worthless cards like Lightning Bolt, Fire//Ice, Grim Lavamancer, the goblin cycling spell, jitte counters,. Not only from Zoo. +the Obv Firespout nombo.

It's also worse than Jace from a deckdesigning perspective. With bob you "must" play 4 to be able to land it turn2. Jace has a higher powerlevel and frees up 1-2 of these slots. Also it allow you play a more relaxed early game keeping Counterpell/brainstorm mana up more often than landing Bob asap. The elegant thing about Jace is that when you draw multiples you can simply pitch them to fow or put them on top when the first one resolve. Love it!
Drawing additional BoBs can be good but stress the game a bit. Overall I think Jace is more stable/consisten and that's what I prefer in a controldeck. Note that I don't mind the lifeloss from Bob. The card drawn saves you more life anyway. I remember that i won 3 matches against Sligh/zoo in Madrid with 4 bobs in the 60 each game :)

Thanks alot for the inputs!

[mans0011]

Perimeter Captain

You use "cards" and then "/cards", replacing the quotes with brackets. It works on whole decklists too, so you can just wrap a list around that whole thing and get the cards linked.

Hey there, Valtrix.

Been a while since we talked control.

How's that list working out?

[Valtrix]

Hardly seems like the place to talk about that. Catch me on Gchat if you want to talk sometime and I can let you know.

Also, I wish I had something on topic, but alas I cannot solve any problems against landstill. I've been toying around with intuition/EE/ruins/life from the loam in 4c counterbalance (despite the lack of CB synergy). I mostly theorize about it being useful, but I'm not sure if that would actually be a viable "solution" against them, since they can probably disrupt you. However, it does destroy anything non-mishra they might play to win the game with and is additional beating for anything non-aggro.

[Anusien]

I would love to go long against Landstill. I have my own Academy Ruins (I usually run 2), plus they can't beat CB/Top going long. Their Wastelands become less important.

[aTn]

I would love to go long against Landstill. I have my own Academy Ruins (I usually run 2), plus they can't beat CB/Top going long. Their Wastelands become less important.

I could understand the idea of running two A. Ruins in Extended back in the day when everyone was playing it and EE recurrence was often key in the mirror.

Is this necessary in today's Legacy metagame ? Personally I don't think so... I run 0 copies in my build of Supreme Blue since I play 2 MD EEs and rarely need to abuse my opponent with recurrence (other than recurring wins).

That being said, if CB Top infests the meta I might convert.

[blueneverfails]

This is the list that I played at the gp: Columbus

// Lands
2 [ON] Flooded Strand
1 [CHK] Island (3)
3 [R] Tropical Island
3 [R] Tundra
1 [MR] Plains (1)
3 [ZEN] Misty Rainforest
1 [FUT] Dryad Arbor
3 [ON] Windswept Heath
1 [P2] Forest (3)
1 [A] Savannah

// Creatures
4 [FUT] Tarmogoyf
4 [CFX] Noble Hierarch
1 [CFX] Progenitus
4 [ALA] Rhox War Monk
2 [ARB] Qasali Pridemage
2 [WWK] Stoneforge Mystic

// Spells
4 [CST] Swords to Plowshares
4 [5E] Brainstorm
3 [CS] Counterbalance
4 [AL] Force of Will
3 [CHK] Sensei's Divining Top
3 [VI] Natural Order
1 [BOK] Umezawa's Jitte
1 [DS] Sword of Fire and Ice
1 [WWK] Jace, the Mind Sculptor

// Sideboard
SB: 3 [TSP] Krosan Grip
SB: 2 [TSB] Tormod's Crypt
SB: 3 [10E] Pithing Needle
SB: 3 [CFX] Path to Exile
SB: 4 [ZEN] Spell Pierce

The normal list I ran, started with 3 dazes instead of the jace and the mystic package
+3 daze
+1 Jitte
-1 jace
-1 Sofi
-2 Stoneforge mystic

I got 73rd place going 8-1 day one, losing in round 9, and doing poorly day 2 with 3 losses and 2 draws.

I think that the move to the mystic package was the best choice, I prob killed with prog about 30% of the time and then jitte or sofi went the distance about another 30% with the natural aggro of goyf monk with exalted for rest of the wins.

For my matches, I played against aluren 3 times and all 3 times, won 2-0( one of my wins was against David Williams who got 31)
I only played against zoo once, merfolk once, and didn't see goblins either day.

My only loss day one, was against a supreme blue deck that was ugr, which during first game, I had to mull to 5, and he killed me with goyf with forces, and I just drew nothing, so with his lands that I saw, I thought it was tempo thresh of some sort and then game 2, I didn't side in my needles or anything and saw jace and clique, and lost to a stable jace.
my first match on day 2 was against Chapin, who I drew with, Then I played against Jason ford(who topped 8) first game, jace went the distance for him, game 2, I had a single pithing needle that was enough, then game 3 I mulled to 6 and couldn't go fast enough for him. then played against a land played that I also drew with. Beat another aluren deck, then faced against a counter-top deck who sided in natural order package and surprised this shit out of me. Then got trounced by dredge, then for the last match, I beat a lands player.

All in all, the only deck I felt at a disadvantage was against the dredge deck, and the jace decks really came down to, if I can hit my sideboard, I win, which makes me want to up the count on pithing needle, I boarded it in almost every single match.

The one thing I did find out is that this deck is still a top tier deck, and can still win. So take what you want from it but I feel very good with my list, the only thing I would change is the single jace, I didn't play it once during the 17 rounds and the only time I had it in my hand to use, I wished it was a natural order. Natural order is just a better finisher. I might try 2 of them to see if that will help its case, but at this point I would take it out to add another pridemage or a predator.

[Frid]

The stoneforge mystic + equipment package is key to beat the two worst matchups of the deck: Goblins and merfolks. I love that tech, and always play it in my countertop prgenitus build, but I leave it in the sb.

[Deady]

I still think Supreme Blue is the way to go, mainly because of Firespout (which is another 3cmc spell for CB/Top abusement) and SB options like Pyroblast/Lavamancer. Another big difference compared to Countertop Progenitus it that Supreme Blue runs Jace as a 3-off, which I think is more powerful than Progenitus at the moment. If you play NO-PRO vs Supreme Blue with Jace, you'll probably have an extremely hard time to abuse the NO-PRO package, as Supreme Blue runs more countermagic and once Jace resolves it'll only get more and more difficult for you to win the game.

That's how I look at it, but correct me if I'm wrong.

[Frid]

I think you're wrong, and I would argue exactly the opposite. You just have to look at the videos of the GP final match to see that supreme blue with firespouts, pyroblasts and lavamancer is not the way to go to beat a competent merfolks player. Jitte is the only really effective answer to their swarm. They can't cursecatcher it. They can' t pierce it if you searched it with stoneforge. They can't BEB it. They can't rely on mutavaults to finish your last lifepoints out. It makes their standstills much worse and even unplayable. If you start with turn 1 hierarch turn 2 stoneforge and it resolves, you just won the match. That easy, you don't need even to think...
And of course NO > Jace against 90% of the field, just look at the tier decks please. I think you guys overestimate jace too much in general. Jace is a good card, no doubt of it, but it does not provide so many easy and fast kills like progenitus does. Jace lets you win easily in a board under your control. NO lets you win also in a board where you have disadvantage. That's the difference. Of course there are some scenarios where you'd prefer jace over NO, but they are exceptional.
The only deck that under my point of view really makes jace shine and broken is landstill, because it makes you keep your hand always full of removal to defend it, and then just win.

[nodahero]

I strongly disagree with Frid on the NO vs Jace debate. Jace can tilt games in your favor far more efficiently and effectively when it counts that Progenitus.

Yeah the big lug can race but so can Jace given a decent situation.... the difference is... Progenitus can not create a favorable game state and Jace can. Progenitus can easily be raced which is all he can do... Jace can also be raced but he can perform other functions making him a more dynamic and fluid weapon.

[Frid]

That has no sense. Against an empty board you'd win with any of both if they resolve, but progenitus provides a decent clock. Against an unfavorable board only prgenitus wins. And against a highly unfavorable board you'd lose with both. What you're saying is that jace is better than progenitus if the board is tied or in your favor, which is evidently not true because progenitus would also win in that scenario unless youre playing against a deck full of mass removal like wrath of god, or innocent blood, or the like. But that's completely situational, and it isn't the rule. Imagine you're playing against goblins, or merfolks, or zoo, or ANY of the many agressive decks in the format. Let's assume you have dealt with somre of your opponents creatures, but they still have a pair of them on the board making pressure. You of course have zero creatures on the board as the supreme blue list from the gp plays only five. Now you land jace, and obviously brainstorm. In his turn, you opponent attacks you and jace, and kills it. What do you get in the end? A brainstorm and half a fog for 4 mana, and pray to get the sweeper or a creature/stp with the brainstorm not to scoop. Now imagine that jace were a natural order. You just win in such scenarios, which are the most. And in the countertop mirror happens the same, you land jace and pray your opponente doesn't have his to kill yours, or him to have an empty board. But a NO just wins, he can't deal with it. And so on and on, there are many cases where a NO gives you the match right away, where a jace just may be useful, or may not.
I think you're defending very hard the countertop list from GP just because it got second there, but you can be sure that list got second because of the pilot. Pros that don't play legacy nearly at all can't get decent legacy decklists unless they start practicing the format. Saito in the only one from them that does this, and consequently his lists are always good, but the rest don't. Still, their skill is high, or at least much higher than the one from the average legacy player, and they still win.
I'm completely sure that if a NO-countertop had gotten second, everyone here would agree with me. But it did not, so what got second is the only way to go now. I just judge under my personal results, not under the results from the others. You should do the same. I'm nearly sure no one here has tested intensively both countertop progenitus and supreme blue with jace to appreciate their real differences, because if you had done it you should maybe not with all, but at least agree with any of my arguments...

[Deady]

What about combining NO-PRO with Jace? I found a list on deckcheck that got 1st only about a few weeks ago. It also has Stoneforge Mystic and Jitte SB.

creature [16]

1 Dryad Arbor

4 Noble Hierarch

1 Progenitus

2 Qasali Pridemage

3 Rhox War Monk

4 Tarmogoyf

1 Trygon Predator

instant [15]

4 Brainstorm

3 Daze

4 Force of Will

4 Swords to Plowshares

sorcery [3]

3 Natural Order

enchantment [4]

4 Counterbalance

artifact [3]

3 Sensei's Divining Top

land [17]

2 Flooded Strand

1 Forest

1 Island

4 Misty Rainforest

1 Plains

3 Tropical Island

3 Tundra

2 Windswept Heath

planeswalker [2]

2 Jace, the Mind Sculptor


Sideboard:

1 Empyrial Archangel

2 Meddling Mage

2 Stoneforge Mystic

2 Krosan Grip

3 Path to Exile

3 Relic of Progenitus

2 Umezawa's Jitte



It runs only 3 SDT instead of 4...

[Shimi]

That has no sense. Against an empty board you'd win with any of both if they resolve, but progenitus provides a decent clock. Against an unfavorable board only prgenitus wins. And against a highly unfavorable board you'd lose with both. What you're saying is that jace is better than progenitus if the board is tied or in your favor, which is evidently not true because progenitus would also win in that scenario unless youre playing against a deck full of mass removal like wrath of god, or innocent blood, or the like. But that's completely situational, and it isn't the rule. Imagine you're playing against goblins, or merfolks, or zoo, or ANY of the many agressive decks in the format. Let's assume you have dealt with somre of your opponents creatures, but they still have a pair of them on the board making pressure. You of course have zero creatures on the board as the supreme blue list from the gp plays only five. Now you land jace, and obviously brainstorm. In his turn, you opponent attacks you and jace, and kills it. What do you get in the end? A brainstorm and half a fog for 4 mana, and pray to get the sweeper or a creature/stp with the brainstorm not to scoop. Now imagine that jace were a natural order. You just win in such scenarios, which are the most. And in the countertop mirror happens the same, you land jace and pray your opponente doesn't have his to kill yours, or him to have an empty board. But a NO just wins, he can't deal with it. And so on and on, there are many cases where a NO gives you the match right away, where a jace just may be useful, or may not.
I think you're defending very hard the countertop list from GP just because it got second there, but you can be sure that list got second because of the pilot. Pros that don't play legacy nearly at all can't get decent legacy decklists unless they start practicing the format. Saito in the only one from them that does this, and consequently his lists are always good, but the rest don't. Still, their skill is high, or at least much higher than the one from the average legacy player, and they still win.
I'm completely sure that if a NO-countertop had gotten second, everyone here would agree with me. But it did not, so what got second is the only way to go now. I just judge under my personal results, not under the results from the others. You should do the same. I'm nearly sure no one here has tested intensively both countertop progenitus and supreme blue with jace to appreciate their real differences, because if you had done it you should maybe not with all, but at least agree with any of my arguments...

I'm playing and testing NO and SupremeBlue for more than a year.I have won tournaments with both lists and I can easilly say that NO > Jace , if you solve NO versus aggro and mirror you win.Against other decks with edict effects or locks Jace can be better , it is a question of metagame but NO is more efficient than Jace against the complicated matchups.
The real focus of discussion is: Firespout vs Natural Order.The problem is that you need Noble to use NO but noble and Firespout is a bad thing( destroing your lands and runing non green sources is bad against merfolks , goblins and even zoo if you are playing NO).I found that in a aggro meta with perish and edicts effects(my teammate with RB goblins was running 4 perish in his SB and 4 edicts MD cause Progenitus was problematic) NO could not be the best option but in the mirror I found that NO eats Jace and make them hold off their counters because they just cannot afford NO resolves.
Jace obvious is powerful and I recoment people that are running NO pack to use 1 Jace in their SB(cause you don't want to play twice NO or NO + Jace against aggros in the game1).

[Deady]

So, what is the ultimate Countertop Progenitus list?

[Frid]

I'm probably trying one jace main in my NO-countertop list in the slot of the fourth daze, just because brainstorm is usually the best card in a blue deck with NO+progenitus and lately I'm eating my second and third daze when I draw into them. Don't know if it will better, but I will test it. Two are definetly too much I think. And of course 4 tops always. And I would STRONGLY recommend 18 lands plus dryad and 4 hierarchs, because I see many lists with just 17...
@Shimi: You got exactly the point.
@Deady: Don't know if it is the ultimate, but this is my CT-Progenitus list, which has given to me 28 dual lands and a lotus in two big tournaments so far (top1/2 split out of 138 people and top1 out of 68, both with the same 75 cards):

// Lands
1 [B] Plains
2 [B] Tundra
2 [B] Island
3 [B] Tropical Island
4 [ZEN] Misty Rainforest
2 [ON] Flooded Strand
1 [FUT] Dryad Arbor
3 [ON] Windswept Heath
1 [B] Forest


// Creatures
4 [ALA] Rhox War Monk
1 [DIS] Trygon Predator
1 [CNF] Progenitus
4 [FUT] Tarmogoyf
4 [CNF] Noble Hierarch

// Spells
3 [VI] Natural Order
4 [AL] Force of Will
4 [CHK] Sensei's Divining Top
4 [CS] Counterbalance
4 [MM] Brainstorm
4 [B] Swords to Plowshares
4 [NE] Daze

// Sideboard
SB: 3 [ALA] Relic of Progenitus
SB: 2 [TSP] Krosan Grip
SB: 1 [FD] Engineered Explosives
SB: 3 [ZEN] Spell Pierce
SB: 3 [WWK] Stoneforge Mystic
SB: 2 [BOK] Umezawa's Jitte
SB: 1 [ZEN] Ravenous Trap


As said, I'm trying one jace for the fourth daze. But this list, as it is, works perfectly, so probably jace won't fit in at all. Anyway I want to test it.

[BantFTW]

I played the exact same list in the old days, exept idd a jace over the 4th daze or a rafiq even..
Jace is good but idk, I think it's to many of 4 drops than...
I'll always lost from aggro (gobblins and merfolk, not zoo) because they were going to fast and I coudn't stop them.
The mystic plan ain't bad lol, going to test it lol.
Nice deck btw, and don't you think 2 stoneforge, mystic and 2 jace and 1 sword of fire and ice is better than
3 mystic and 2 jitte :O? I like that more (but it's in zoo, idk it in here?)

also gratz btw on your victory's :D

EDIT: I also think a dryad arbor is way to slow btw, okéj you can sac it but yeah I don't like it sorry..

[Frid]

I can recall discussing this some posts ago. Sword of fire and ice has three big disadvantages compared to jitte against goblins and merfolk. First, it can't deal with two merfolk lords on it's own, second, it is too expensive to hardcarst when you draw it, and third, it doesn't avoid goblins flashkills involving goblin warchief and hasted creatures like an active jitte does.
In general, both against goblins and merfolk I always prefer jitte over sword in any situation. Yes, even when I draw into my second jitte, because that way I ensure they can't deal with my jitte playing their own, or killing it with krosan grip or whatever. And drawing into stoneforge is nearly always better than drawing straight into jitte, that's why I play 3+2 and not viceversa.
Sometimes the most simple plans like this one are the most effective, I haven't lost a round against goblins of merfolks with that sb.

[BantFTW]

Cool, than I'm going to try it to lol^^ :D

[Shimi]

Sometimes the most simple plans like this one are the most effective, I haven't lost a round against goblins of merfolks with that sb.

I'm impressed , could you share your SB plan against merfolks and goblins with that SB? I would like to test and see if it is better than my new SupremeBlue list.
Thx.

[Mackan]

Sorry, but I still think the Natural Order plan (or SnT / Emrakul for that matter) is worse than a list with Jace and Firespout. As someone mentioned it becomes a "package" either way... but you are free to play withouth Rhox War Monk and Dryad Arbor if you run the latter.
Defending a poor boardposition is in my opinion better than trying to race with a 10/10. I have yet to loose the mirror and I much rather have Firespout against decks with creatures than Progenitus...

Anyway, I was thinking about the Landstillmatchup (and lands for that matter). Is Blood Moon / Magus of the Moon / Back to Basics tested as a 3-4of in the sideboard?

Blood Moon
+ They can't play spells or go bananas with something they don't have basics for. Lands kan still Krosan Grip or Oblivion Stone it (allthought they can't recurr the Stone with active Blood Moon).
- It's harder for you to play your own spells.

Magus of the Moon
+ He bea
- Most decks keep their Swords postboard so it's easier to kill than Blood Moon

B2B
+ Pitches to Fow.
+ In case they fetch basics and tap out this is better than Blood Moon.
- Dies to Red elemental blast
- They get to use their maze, mishra etc once.

You can also randomown poor built manabases and stuff like Zoo.

Edit:
After some (more) thinking I decided to rework my sideboard. I dislike Red elemental blast against Zoo but haven't found any other universal catch-all card. Kitchen finks is nice, but I rather not...

I really like Pithing Needle, Tormod's Crypt, Relic of Progenitus and Engineered Explosives. However they take to much sideboardslots to be found frequently. Introducing the one-of Trinket Mage / Enlightened Tutor. Upping each of these card by 50%.

1 of the mentioned tutor.
1 Engineered Explosives
1 Tormod's Crypt
1 Pithing Needle
1 Relic of Progenitus
3 Red elemental blast / Pyro
2 Krosan Grip
4 Blood Moon
1 Firespout

I might not respect creatures enough and removing my 2 BeB and 2 Finks for Blood Moons might be crazy. Im willing to test it out though. I actually think Blood Moon vs Zoo could be devastating since they can't really do anything about it (assuming they have other things to do with a resolved (!?) Qasali Pridemage.

My list for those of you who don't dare to scroll back.

4 Misty Rainforest
4 Scalding Tarn
3 Tundra
3 Tropical Island
2 Volcanic Island
1 Karakas
1 Mountain
1 Forest
2 Island
2 Ponder
4 Brainstorm
4 Sensei's Divining Top
4 Swords to Plowshares
2 Spell Snare
3 Counterspell
4 Counterbalance
4 Tarmogoyf
2 Vendilion Clique
3 Firespout
3 Jace, the mind Sculptor
4 Force of Will

thoughts?

[BantFTW]

And what do you guys think of tsabo's web :O?
quite a good card against land lol? I've played one in
the side but there aren't much landdecks atm so^^

[royal]

I can recall discussing this some posts ago. Sword of fire and ice has three big disadvantages compared to jitte against goblins and merfolk. First, it can't deal with two merfolk lords on it's own, second, it is too expensive to hardcarst when you draw it, and third, it doesn't avoid goblins flashkills involving goblin warchief and hasted creatures like an active jitte does.

Hi,

this sounds really cool. I´m definitively going to test this. But could you please explain how a jitte can win against two lords or avoid goblin flashkills? This seems to be quite a tough job^^

[Frid]

It's not tough at all, indeed it is very simple. A jitte with four counters on it can deal with pretty much every lord merfolks can play. Obviously it's slow if they have two or three lords out, but you just need to kill LoA and your goyfs and monks will be able to block the rest while you attack every turn and put counters on jitte. No harder than that, the problem is to have an active jitte as soon as possible, that's why I play five between stoneforge and jitte and mulligan aggresively into them postboard.
And avoiding goblins flashkills is as easy as killing warchief before they attack... Not very hard huh?

[Deady]

@ Frid: I agree on the 4th Daze instead of a 1-off Jace.

List looks quite impressive; the only thing I noticed is that you're not playing Qasali Pridemage...any reasons for that? I suppose because it would mess with the amount of 3-drops and more important 2-drops in the deck? Qasali is quite impressive with Noble Hierarch (easy to cast + exalted), but you might have your good reasons for not running it.

[Frid]

Exacly, I'm not running qasali mostly because of counterbalance shenanigans, and also because its cost makes me either fetch nonbasics in the first turns, exposing myself to wastelands, or the forest and the plains, which isn't very good to cast counterbalance and/or daze for the games you don't start with hierarch.
At the moment I run 12 cmc2, 5 cmc3, 3 cmc4. I've played in testing with 2 qasali in the slots of the predator and one daze, trying not to hurt the curve for counterbalance, and I noticed that countertop decks need at least five cmc3 in the current meta, because running less makes very hard to hit the cost with countertop when needed. You just have to look at the top8 decklists from columbus to see every single deck there runs broken cmc3 cards (pernicious deed, show and tell, vendilion clique, oblivion ring, knight of the reliquary, vindicate, meerow reejerey, loads of krosan grips post board...). And because I wanted outs for artifacts and enchantments in first games, predator fits in perfectly as the fifth cmc3 card. If you absolutely need to destroy an artifact or enchantment in the first game (such as moat for example), you can always tutor up predator with natural order.
If this deck did not run counterbalance, qasali pridemage would be an obvious 4-of. It's amazing in bant aggro-style decks.

[BantFTW]

Also, how many times do you sac qasali on a tournament?? Like one or 2 times.
The exalted ain't bad but not needed lol, so why would you play it of you got enough 2cmc?

EDIT: why 4 daze? lategame it really sucks and it's just for fow :O?
you can rarely counter than smt with daze, so I would replace it with something else, not jace bcs you've got to many 4cmc than.

[IsThisACatInAHat?]

4 Daze looks bad but actually seems to play really well. You're more likely to see it early (when you want it) and it's still a blue cmc2 card when you don't need it in the late game, so it can either pitch or float on top of your library, allowing you to cast or draw the more valuable cmc2 cards you find with SDT. 12 cmc2 is probably as low as you want to go anyway, so as good as Jace is, it's probably better to just leave the slot in this kind of list.

[Frid]

That is point by point what I think, but I need to test the singleton jace to ensure it.

[Verystrait42]

So NO-PRO > 4-Color-Countertop from GP Colombus?

[IsThisACatInAHat?]

They're probably meta-dependent.

4 colors is really greedy even if you're only splashing for 4 or 6 cards in any given color because of how heavily dependent the list is on having all of them in addition to UU. For example, if you don't find UUR and Firespout against aggro by turn 3 or 4, you will probably lose. You'll probably drop games anyway desperately trying to Top or Brainstorm into a Swords or Firespout while they're busy beating your face in.

Conversely, generic beaters like RWM and goyf can be a huge liability in heavy control environments where decks like Landstill are able to beat you on countermagic while not particularly caring about your creatures. Credit where credit is due though, when I tested Frid's list against what I assumed were poor matchups, it never felt worse than a coinflip and usually my losses were from major play mistakes. That list is seriously gangster. I've had difficulty getting 4c to work for me, but I'm aware I could be misplaying it too.

Either way, if you're going into a meta with land disruption, don't bring 4 colors. Columbus had very little at the top tables, so I assume that played largely into its success. NOprog was also severely underrepresented because of Jace fever, so it's lack of results probably had little or nothing to do with weakness in the current meta.

[Frid]

So NO-PRO > 4-Color-Countertop from GP Colombus?

No, you can't generalize like that. Both are excellent decks that can perform nicely when they're well played. But I personally prefer NO-Ctop because I find natural order to be a totally broken tool that wins under some complicated situations, or simply to win games easily and fast without having to think that much, and thus lowering the probability of misplaying when you follow that line of play with the deck.

[royal]

I'm impressed , could you share your SB plan against merfolks and goblins with that SB? I would like to test and see if it is better than my new SupremeBlue list.
Thx.

That would be cool. Could you please add your sideboarding against zoo, frid? Thanks!

[Frid]

The problem when facing zoo is that the stoneforge+jitte plan is not as effective as when you face merfolks or goblins, because you lose much time trying to equip your creatures and they burn or exile them easily. I sideboard in the singleton explosives and the two jittes I play in my sb, and take out the trygon predator, one NO and one hierarch, and mulligan aggresively into swords to plowshares or force of will for their starting nacatls. The matchup is thanks to the full playset of monks and NO slightly in our favor, but the result of the round will highly depend on you and your opponent's playskills, because the only real "oops, I win" card we run here is NO, but it is hard to have an early creature to resolve it, that is why I sideboard out one.
It's a matchup you should test intensively to know which hands are keepable and what line of play you have to follow depending on their start.

[ivanpei]

I may not be very ranked here to comment much about firespout lists vs natural order lists but I think there is no such thing as 1 deck -> another. I have tested both pretty extensively and both are not without flaws. For example, I started with Pro Bant and in my many years of playing legacy, it was the winningest deck I have ever played. It just wins off the back of progenitus brokenness. Countertop was just good against so many things and any deck with it was very consistent. Against vial decks which countertop is generally bad against, dropping the giant hydra is just win, you hold them off for 2 turns with your dudes/ removal and you should get there.

Then I started realizing that the meta had adapted to no-pro. Landstill started to be more popular with humility, deed, edicts etc etc. Countertop mirrors then started playing hard counters like counterspell which make me 2 for 1 myself when their previous out was only force. The meta shifted and no-pro, once dominant started being hated out. After seeing the success of the jace/spout lists in the GP, I gave it a try. The list is pretty good in the blue MU, having lots of hard counters like snare/counterspell along with Jace which was very powerful in beating the mirror. Then in the board it has 4 REBs which just make the blue MU extremely favourable. I think people underestimate the power of REBs from the board, it is simple, yet highly effective. No-pro lists without red don't have such efficient/versatile anti blue cards. Spell pierce was ok, but late game, it can be played around. Also spell pierce doesn't kill fishies/resolved jace/balance. I've found REBs -> Spell pierce.

However having spouts main was NOT enough to make it really good vs aggro. I found that I usually lost to a turn 1 vial. Unlike landstill which has deed/ee to deal with vial, the GP lists don't play daze, don't play pridemage/predator. It only has 4 force, which is very iffy. Vial flashes dudes out so firespout is not as devastating and eot dudes kill jace and dodge balance. I started losing to randomness and got pretty fed up with staring at jace and wishing it was NO. The jace/spout lists IMO are good but were tuned specifically for the meta. Its very very good against blue and has a respectable MU vs aggro, which I think was what the pilots of the deck were gearing for. However Raw power wise and anti-randomness, I'd play no-pro. In a highly developed meta with plenty of tier one, I'd play the jace/spout list.

[royal]

The problem when facing zoo is that the stoneforge+jitte plan is not as effective as when you face merfolks or goblins, because you lose much time trying to equip your creatures and they burn or exile them easily. I sideboard in the singleton explosives and the two jittes I play in my sb, and take out the trygon predator, one NO and one hierarch, and mulligan aggresively into swords to plowshares or force of will for their starting nacatls. The matchup is thanks to the full playset of monks and NO slightly in our favor, but the result of the round will highly depend on you and your opponent's playskills, because the only real "oops, I win" card we run here is NO, but it is hard to have an early creature to resolve it, that is why I sideboard out one.
It's a matchup you should test intensively to know which hands are keepable and what line of play you have to follow depending on their start.

Okay thanks.That matchup sounds pretty fair. What do you usually board out for the Stoneforge Mystics and Jittes when you play against Goblins or Merfolk?

[Frid]

@ivanpei. Totally agree with reb > pierce. That's one of the advantages of playing 4c.
@royal: I take out three order, one progenitus, one top, one counterbalance for the 3 stoneforge, 2 jitte and 1 explosives against merfolk. Against RB goblins the same, and against RG goblins I take out two counterbalance, two top, one order and one hierarch.

[Nicola]

Does anyone have the Paulo Victor Damo Da Rosa GP Columbus list???

Cause on "Channel Fireball" is impossible to read the strategy articles from 22 July to 12 August!!! Does anyone know why??? Does this problem will be fixed or not???

However, i am interested in PV GP list...

[Shimi]

Does anyone have the Paulo Victor Damo Da Rosa GP Columbus list???

Cause on "Channel Fireball" is impossible to read the strategy articles from 22 July to 12 August!!! Does anyone know why??? Does this problem will be fixed or not???

However, i am interested in PV GP list...

4 Flooded Strand
2 Island
1 Misty Rainforest
1 Mountain
1 Plains
4 Scalding Tarn
4 Tropical Island
3 Tundra
2 Volcanic Island
4 Tarmogoyf
1 Vendilion Clique
4 Brainstorm
4 Counterbalance
3 Counterspell
3 Firespout
4 Force of Will
3 Jace, the Mind Sculptor
1 Oblivion Ring
4 Senseis Divining Top
2 Spell Snare
4 Swords to Plowshares
1 Elspeth, Knight-Errant

Sideboard
1 Firespout
1 Grim Lavamancer
2 Krosan Grip
1 Llawan, Cephalid Empress
2 Pyroblast
1 Red Elemental Blast
2 Relic of Progenitus
2 Spell Pierce
1 Vendilion Clique
2 Pithing Needle

@Frid I tested yesterday the Stoneforge + Jitte SB plan against Ub Merfolks and I didn't found it as good as you described , Perish + Submerge can make equip + attack very dificult.The tempo loss of paying :2: to equip is a self timewalk since they have wastes and many times I found myself playing Stoneforge T3 to dodge daze , equip T4 and on T5 trading stoneforge + jitte counters for 2 merfolks and then losing to daze/fow/submerge/perish or 3/3 coralhelm commanders next turn.

[jin]

I can recall discussing this some posts ago. Sword of fire and ice has three big disadvantages compared to jitte against goblins and merfolk. First, it can't deal with two merfolk lords on it's own, second, it is too expensive to hardcarst when you draw it, and third, it doesn't avoid goblins flashkills involving goblin warchief and hasted creatures like an active jitte does.

I just wanted to jump back a bit and discuss Sword of Fire and Ice. I see what you are saying here but by bringing SOFI to the fight, wouldn't you improve your zoo match up as well? Also addressing your three points:

1. SOFI is used more to suppliment your own deck than to be the card that destroys aggro. You can use SOFI in conjunction with Swords to Plowshare to get rid of two merfolk. Either that or you can defend against the fish with your protection from blue creature while they have to build up a bigger force, in which case you can wait for your jitte since you have Stoneforge Mystics. You should have more card advantage than they do since you play CBT which generates virtual card advantage and you can naturally draw from SOFI if need be.

2. It is very expensive to hard cast, I have no argument there, but you are paying one more to guarentee that your creatures stay on the board once equipped.

3. You can always not attack and block the goblin that's going to kill you? No removal they have will stop your equipped creature. A creature you can't kill is always scarier than a creature with jitte. Goblins can always block and sacrifice their goblins to avoid counters on jitte. You can't block a creature with a SOFI.

Here are some points that make SOFI better than the 3rd Stoneforge Mystic:

1. Adds versatility to your already strong equipment set up.
2. Brings you real card advantage (more than once) and extra removal.
3. Gives your creatures protection from removal which is always more scary for aggro decks than simply killing off their creatures. (that's why progenitus and iona are scary, aggro decks can't remove them. lavamancer and arc slogger are annoying, yes, but not scary.)

I also play goblins. I don't even play artifact removal. I rarely scoop to a jitte. A jitte with counters maybe, but not just a jitte. I almost always scoop to a SOFI.

[Frid]

@Shimi: You can't play around daze against merfolks, because they simply race you. Play everything ASAP and if they daze you, assume it. It is not like playing around daze against tempo decks or countertop, their clock is just too fast. And the games you lost, think if there is something that may have saved you from losing in those same scenarios (playing UGW of course). I found the answer to be "no" everytime, that's why I ended up playing jitte, because it was the card which made me won the most games. Path to exile, dueling grounds... they simply didn't make the cut most of the time.
@jin: You don't need versatility, you just need a card in the board that wins. Jitte kills every turn a dude, so it's the same card advantage. And it also gives them protection from removal if needed (+4+4= bolts or gempalms are not enough).
Btw, you shouldn't scoop to a SoFI playing goblins ever, because with goblin warchief and piledriver (among others) you have some outs, but against an active jitte if you don't run tin street hooligang there's no way you can either win or destroy it.

[JCrawl85]

I just wanted to jump back a bit and discuss Sword of Fire and Ice. I see what you are saying here but by bringing SOFI to the fight, wouldn't you improve your zoo match up as well? Also addressing your three points:

1. SOFI is used more to suppliment your own deck than to be the card that destroys aggro. You can use SOFI in conjunction with Swords to Plowshare to get rid of two merfolk. Either that or you can defend against the fish with your protection from blue creature while they have to build up a bigger force, in which case you can wait for your jitte since you have Stoneforge Mystics. You should have more card advantage than they do since you play CBT which generates virtual card advantage and you can naturally draw from SOFI if need be.

2. It is very expensive to hard cast, I have no argument there, but you are paying one more to guarentee that your creatures stay on the board once equipped.

3. You can always not attack and block the goblin that's going to kill you? No removal they have will stop your equipped creature. A creature you can't kill is always scarier than a creature with jitte. Goblins can always block and sacrifice their goblins to avoid counters on jitte. You can't block a creature with a SOFI.

Here are some points that make SOFI better than the 3rd Stoneforge Mystic:

1. Adds versatility to your already strong equipment set up.
2. Brings you real card advantage (more than once) and extra removal.
3. Gives your creatures protection from removal which is always more scary for aggro decks than simply killing off their creatures. (that's why progenitus and iona are scary, aggro decks can't remove them. lavamancer and arc slogger are annoying, yes, but not scary.)

I also play goblins. I don't even play artifact removal. I rarely scoop to a jitte. A jitte with counters maybe, but not just a jitte. I almost always scoop to a SOFI.

I have found it very interesting that so many people are advocates of the Mystic/Equipment package. I have tested this and it is blatantly too slow. To get a dude with active equipment is usually at the earliest turn 5 (turn 4 if you draw the equipment you sided in). In my opinion (I've played CounterTop for over a year now) there are two viable options to deal with aggro depending on what version you play. Although greedy, the 4 color list with Firespout is one option. If you're playing the NO Pro version, Wrath of God is your best answer. I'm also going to try a 3 color list with no Swords with 4 Bolts as well. I will post my list if it works.

[Frid]

If firespout is usually bad against merfolk because of its sorcery condition, its mana cost and because it's easy to play around it with mutavaults and leveled commanders, imagine wrath of god. Not to mention that you also play many dudes.
I think most of you don't get the point of the stoneforge-jitte plan, which makes it the best option in bant decks: It costs TWO mana (either jitte or stoneforge),and they simply CAN'T deal with it because it's a permanent, not a sorcery or instant. It may be slower than firespout? Sure, because playing+equipping costs 4, but being cheap permanent and being able to "split" the 4 mana it costs makes it simply faster, because they niether can't play around it nor deal with it attacking your mana or with cursecatchers/spell pierce. That is why jitte>everything in bant.

[blueneverfails]

wow, lots of discussion in this thread lately.... First thing that should be noted, is that any and every jace deck has a bad matchup against Zoo, since a lightning bolt is just as effective as a REB against jace.( and zoo runs alot more burn and then boards in the REB), and as long as they don't over extend, since more jace decks do not run many creatures, zoo walks over jace decks. And after personally talking to Saito bout merfolk and playing beside him a couple of times at the GP day 2, I saw him walk all over jace decks. Now on my personal experience with countertop and my placing at GP I found that with the meta, No-prog is actually very good, because it is not expected because people don't think it is good anymore.

Spoiler!!!!!!!! if you have Stone forge mystics or have a place that has them cheap, buy as many as you can, for one reason, they will be played alot in type 2 very soon, and the card will be a staple in countertop by next year, at the last minute at GP I took out my 3 dazes and put in 2 mystics, 1 jitte, and 1 SOFI, and it went the distance way too many times for me not to love it. Jitte alone beat the doomsday deck that made top 8.(I was his only loss day 1) Personally, out of 16 rounds(which I played all 16 without a Bye) Prog won me about 15 games, and stoneforge won me another 15 and then exalted tarmogoyf won me the rest.

I personally think that this deck, like everything else needs to evolve, but not evolve in the way of completely change the deck around, you just need to change the deck to not focus on counterbalance, make it a package that is there as just another option.
Now to explain this better, my meaning is, I have played countertop since it came out, and most of the time when you put it in a deck, the deck is built around Countertop, and it is crucial in many matchups for it to hit the board early. I feel that the deck, need to change to have the deck build around a more aggro style, which with exalted, it is easy and then have countertop to have as more of a side option. I got 3 game wins at gp on the back of an equipped noble hierarch because of exalted. This deck has the ability to be an aggro deck, and I used that to a strong finish at the gp. (my list was posted 2 pages ago.)

[DFY889]

wow, lots of discussion in this thread lately.... First thing that should be noted, is that any and every jace deck has a bad matchup against Zoo, since a lightning bolt is just as effective as a REB against jace.( and zoo runs alot more burn and then boards in the REB), and as long as they don't over extend, since more jace decks do not run many creatures, zoo walks over jace decks.

This is incorrect. With REB, jace is countered and you don't get a brainstorm out of him. With lightning bolt, you still get to brainstorm since the active player receives priority first after the resolution of a spell. I run a supreme blue style build and look forward to playing zoo because of the tension between counterbalance and firespout. Once countertop is assembled, zoo is basically locked out, but if they commit too many creatures to the board, they get 3 or 4 for 1'd with a firespout. Jace isn't that good against zoo but when he comes down to an empty board, he usually seals (often fateseals) the game. Even having jace hit with a bolt effect isn't that bad if you got a brainstorm out of it and effectively gained three life.

The thing about NO-Prog is that you really need more than 4x Tarmogoyf to make the plan work. You probably need noble hierarchs and rhox war monks (and maybe some wall of blossoms or whatever too). The problem with noble hierarch is that you don't really want to be losing creatures in a firespout. At the point where you don't want to run noble hierarch, NO-Prog is probably not worth it.

I agree that No-Prog is by itself more powerful than Jace, but firespout is just so good that you can't really afford to be playing with noble hierarch. Besides Jace is pretty insane too. People seem to be breaking the debate down into Jace vs. Natural Order, which I don't think is really accurate. I think it is more NO vs. Firespout, and I think firespout is better, but from there flows the debate I suppose.

[blueneverfails]

Well with jace, if you really think that paying 4 mana for a brainstorm is worth it then yes a jace is great against zoo, but I think that you are also expecting to draw a counterbalance, top, and firespout in the opening hand, cuz if not they can race you, and even if they go burn heavy and has a small amount of creatures, if you play firespout turn 3, then you are tapped out, if they are smart, the wouldnt over play and still have things to play, also firespout does not stop knight of reliquary, which unless you run 4 colors, you don't have anything to stop that card after it hits.

And yes you are right with the idea that you don't want to kill your noble heirarchs with firespout, but personally if played well, I find that with nobles, qasalis, tarmogoyf, and rhox are formidable creatures and with swords back up is usually enough to make the game 50/50 and you can bring in paths from the board which should be in there to help against zoo, merfolk, and goblins, makes the match up a lot better.

I don't obv know what your guys meta are, but if you noticed anything from GP that zoo is on the decline(which surprised me) and merfolk and supreme blue lists are all the rage.

[IsThisACatInAHat?]

Results from SCG: Denver are up and they're... interesting. Aside from the rogue Trinket-top deck that made the 4 (not sure I understand how it keeps itself alive when it looks like any creature would threaten game over, that's what goyf is for), 3 other cbtop lists made top 16, all 4-colors within a few cards of Martell's or Sperling's from the GP.

It looks like the meta was solidly dominated by tribal, which makes sense considering 'folk and goblins' strength against 4-color and 4-color's strength against everything else. Without as much Zoo to check them and 4-color relying pretty much 99% on profitably resolving a cmc3 splash color sorcery to win, tribal looks like a solid choice. This kind of meta also looks like it'd have been perfect for the noprog lists with their faster setup time, higher creature count and readily accessible lifegain from RWM.

Either that, or just play Burn. Apparently Patrick Sullivan turned the worst established archetype into... a dark horse contender? Not as much of a joke? Good enough to make the finals once?

[Nelis]

also firespout does not stop knight of reliquary, which unless you run 4 colors, you don't have anything to stop that card after it hits.

Then you bounce it.

[blueneverfails]

Then you bounce it.

then they play it again, and before you say, then you have the ability to counter it, that means they just 2 for 1 you and are gaining card advantage. If zoo ever gets card advantage you might as well scoop. Oh and bounce isn't that great unless you can do it every single turn which you wont be able to because they will burn jace, or you are swinging for the win and need to bounce that single goyf thats in your win, aka stingscourger, or submerge in tempo thresh.

[Whit3 Ghost]

If someone wants to post a link to the t8 that would be great. I'm a huge fan of Trinket Mage and can't find the list on my phone.

[Whit3 Ghost]

If someone wants to post a link to the t8 that would be great. I'm a huge fan of Trinket Mage and can't find the list on my phone.

[Valtrix]

Top 16 (http://sales.starcitygames.com//deckdatabase/deckshow.php?&t[C1]=leg&start_date=2010-08-22&end_date=2010-08-22&event_type=SCLO&city=Denver)

Trinket Mage list was 3rd.

[DFY889]

I 4-0'd a daily yesterday with 4-color counterbalance. List: http://www.wizards.com/Magic/Digital/MagicOnlineTourn.aspx?x=mtg/digital/magiconline/tourn/1505821. It's under Berdan.

[Shimi]

For some reference I own a ~50 people tournament yesterday with CTop Progenitus making 6-0(My friend with Ctop progenitus also made 4-1-1 and ended at 9th) the field had lot's of Zoo , Merfolks and CTop lists(thopter and 4c), the suiss top8 was D&T , BG Dark Depths , Food Chain , Survival Elves , UG Survival Madness , GW Progenitus , Enchantress , CTop Progenitus.

[keys]

I 4-0'd a daily yesterday with 4-color counterbalance. List: http://www.wizards.com/Magic/Digital/MagicOnlineTourn.aspx?x=mtg/digital/magiconline/tourn/1505821. It's under Berdan.

I like your minor improvements. Very handsome deck.

[DFY889]

I actually didn't change anything from Matt Sperling's list from the GP (except REBs becoming pyroblasts because of modo), but I just wanted to run his 75 as a starting point and tune it from there since that was my first online legacy event. I wouldn't change a card in the maindeck, but I'm not sold on the sideboard.

[jin]

@Shimi: You can't play around daze against merfolks, because they simply race you. Play everything ASAP and if they daze you, assume it. It is not like playing around daze against tempo decks or countertop, their clock is just too fast. And the games you lost, think if there is something that may have saved you from losing in those same scenarios (playing UGW of course). I found the answer to be "no" everytime, that's why I ended up playing jitte, because it was the card which made me won the most games. Path to exile, dueling grounds... they simply didn't make the cut most of the time.
@jin: You don't need versatility, you just need a card in the board that wins. Jitte kills every turn a dude, so it's the same card advantage. And it also gives them protection from removal if needed (+4+4= bolts or gempalms are not enough).
Btw, you shouldn't scoop to a SoFI playing goblins ever, because with goblin warchief and piledriver (among others) you have some outs, but against an active jitte if you don't run tin street hooligang there's no way you can either win or destroy it.

I gempalmed an 8/8 wtih ease, you need 4 counters on jitte and by that time, you might be dead.
jitte doesn't get counters agianst me so I don't have to scoop to it, SOFI walks through.
warchief + piledriver doesn't win games because swords to plowshare is still there to deal with warchief
so SOFI pretty much means scooping.

[Mackan]

@Back to basics / Blood Moon
It was to cute, but I had to try.

I went 2-1-1 last Tuesday. Win against VengevineMadness and Goblins. The Draw was against burn/zoo (He took his time, I hardly drew anything relevant and it was a 40 min round). I had 3 counters, cb-lock and a huge goyf to his nothing in the last extra turn... akward).
Then I got raped by Dredge. For the first time ever I decided to play without my Tormod's crypt (in favor of testing Blood Moon)... How much hate do you think is needed for this matchup? Im thinking 3-4 pure gravehate aswell as some "bonus" cards (I'll get to that later).

@Equipments
I like the transform sideboard plan with No -> SFM+equipments because Progentius is worse on the draw aswell as harder to resolve after sideboarding (however he could be put back for g3). I don't like SFM in Tom Martell-like lists though.... I just think it takes to much precious sideboardspace for little impact. Please let me know how Sword of fire and Ice (or Jitte) been working for you against Merfolk and goblins!

@Meddling Mage
How has this been working out for you people? what cards do you name? I can see it beeing good against combo, but isn't that a good matchup?

@Gravehate
Im going to try 1-2 relics and 2 crypts. I like to split them up because of pithing needle and cabal therapy. I also want to mention a card I forgot when thinking about hate for red decks; Burrenton Forge-Tender. This little dude blocks lackey (and can even protect you if he play warren weirding turn2!), survive Firespout, counters Price of Progress when tapped out, protect against red elemental blast. AND is a sacrificer against Dredge! How amazing is he? You can counter scg, ring-leaders etc with BeB but that's about it... I prefer this little bugger. He's also an unblockable beatstick that can team up and take down a piledriver!

My new sideboard is
2 Pyroblast
2 Red elemental blast
2 krosan grip
2 relic of progenitus
2 tormod's crypt
2 burrenton forge-tender
2 pithing needle
1 firespout

thoughts?

[BantFTW]

try to spread out your graveyard hate:

2x relic
1x tormod's crypt
1x ravenous trap

it works better cause dredge plays some discard that they can return so :P
Tested this matchup and it's hard but sometimes it's totally not...

[jin]

@Equipments
I like the transform sideboard plan with No -> SFM+equipments because Progentius is worse on the draw aswell as harder to resolve after sideboarding (however he could be put back for g3). I don't like SFM in Tom Martell-like lists though.... I just think it takes to much precious sideboardspace for little impact. Please let me know how Sword of fire and Ice (or Jitte) been working for you against Merfolk and goblins!



SOFI is generally stronger against Goblins while Jitte is stronger against Fish. This is because of SOFI's protection and its guarenteed 2 damage vs Jitte's defensive capabilities and multiple targetting which requires counters but also nullifies Kira, the Great Glass Spinner. Obviously Jitte can work against Goblins and SOFI can work against Fish but that requires for Jitte to get counters (which is sometimes difficult) and for the FISH player to have no other Lords (which is rare).

[_erbs_]

For some reference I own a ~50 people tournament yesterday with CTop Progenitus making 6-0(My friend with Ctop progenitus also made 4-1-1 and ended at 9th) the field had lot's of Zoo , Merfolks and CTop lists(thopter and 4c), the suiss top8 was D&T , BG Dark Depths , Food Chain , Survival Elves , UG Survival Madness , GW Progenitus , Enchantress , CTop Progenitus.

Hello,
Can you post the list and sb you used for the said tourny. Currently i don't have a good game 1 against merfs and zoo. I use NO Bant.

Thanks

[keys]

I actually didn't change anything from Matt Sperling's list from the GP (except REBs becoming pyroblasts because of modo), but I just wanted to run his 75 as a starting point and tune it from there since that was my first online legacy event. I wouldn't change a card in the maindeck, but I'm not sold on the sideboard.

I thought Tom Martell's list (http://sales.starcitygames.com//deckdatabase/displaydeck.php?DeckID=34499) from the Columbus GP was the original 4C CounterTop list. The change I was referring to was -1 Oblivion Ring, -1 Counterspell, +2 Predict.

Your SB looks more tuned as well.

[Mackan]

What happens when I finally get satisfied with a CB-top list? I rebuild one that didn't work before...

As I mentioned earlier I don't like running bad cards maindeck (bad cards mostly means creatures and removal).
Firespout seems like THE anticreature card these days killing both goblins and fish. However it kinda suck against the other half of the field and is now known and "expected".

I got inspired by Adam Prosak's new and old lists and with some sick cards in the sideboard (Moat) I think goblins and merfolk is doable.
However I like goyf to much to play without him... Making moat less than optimal. I found a replacement for Moat in in Dueling Grounds against goblins and LLawan for merfolk. Goblins run little to no hate for dueling grounds and Merfolk can't spell pierce llawan.

The list;

CREATURES (8)
4 Tarmogoyf
2 Vendilion Clique
2 Trinket Mage
ENCHANTMENTS (4)
4 Counterbalance
SORCERIES (2)
2 Ponder
INSTANTS (16)
4 Swords to Plowshares
4 Force of Will
2 Spell Snare
2 Counterspell
4 Brainstorm
PLANESWALKERS (2)
2 Jace, the Mind Sculptor
ARTIFACTS (7)
2 Vedalken Shackles
1 Engineered Explosives
4 Sensei’s Divining Top
LANDS (21)
1 Seat of the Synod
1 Karakas
4 Misty Rainforest
4 Flooded Strand
4 Tundra
4 Tropical Island
1 Forest
2 Island
SIDEBOARD
1 Engineered Explosives
1 Tormod’s Crypt
1 Relic of Progenitus
1 Pithing Needle
2 Krosan Grip
3 Spell Pierce
2 Llawan, Cephalid Empress
2 Dueling Grounds
2 Path to Exile

It's hard to argue about specific cards in this deck as most cars play very different roles. Trinket mage is a favorite of mine and with the proper setup he can be really awesome. Same with Vedalken Shackles that seems to slow and "bad against folk because of LOA" (but it's not).
with 8 creatures I went down to 2 jace, not sure about that beeing correct though.
Also the deck might need one more land aswell as more counterspells. What do you guys think? The deck is very powerful and has a perfect line of play against most decks. The number of dead cards is low and the searching/diggin' is high.

Cursed scroll is also something to consider.

...and Zoo might be a problem.

[Frid]

If you don't want zoo to be a problem and merfolks to be impossible, run rhox war monk. As easy as that.

[Mackan]

If you don't want zoo to be a problem and merfolks to be impossible, run rhox war monk. As easy as that.

That is not true...
Monk is nice but dies to ReB/path from Zoo, get stolen with seasinger/countered from merfolk (or just taped/islandwalked).
Monk is also hard on the mana vs goblin/merfolk with waste...

Instead of creatures I want to be creative... That's pretty hard in this format heh.
I'd like a spotremoval for cmc 1. I Don't like Beb, forge tender is ok, path is bad... So my friend suggestend Condemn. Have anyone tried that? I don't think the "only attacking creatures" is that much of a problem. It's good against goblins, zoo and merfolk.

[Frid]

LOL?. So, monk is not good against zoo or merfolks but condemn (gosh, a card that is bad even in extended) it is?
Thanks for posting and good luck beating them.

[BantFTW]

condemn really sucks dude lol^^
just play PTE and STP...
STp main and PTE side

I would suggest the stoneforge - jitte/SOFI plan, it really wins the game.
If you don't have space/don't like it (just try it I would say), try dueling grounds.
I like that card also^^

[AggroSteve]

i was thinking about the following thing for my maindeck, it is basically the same mainboard as the one posted by DFY889 in his link found on top of this page in post #1563,
the only changings i thought of were

only 2 jace (only got 2, but i'm fine with this number)
4x counterspell
2x lightning helix instead of predict
and playing kitchen finks or maybe even loxodon hierarch mainboard as 2-3 -of, would be awesome with jace i could imagine

don't know what you are thinking but these few lifepoints definitely help a lot, and its a CIP-effect or burn/removal, so the you will definitely get them

[_erbs_]

@CONDEMN
i don't think its a good card. i would rather have oblivion ring or bant charm.

@DUELING GROUNDs
Yeah its good its almost has the same effect as ghostly prison. I guess either of the two could be used.

@RHOX WAR MONK / STONEFORGE MYSTIC
Yes i would agree that rhox is good against zoo and goblins but to some extent only. But one of the biggest problems of rhox is its casting cost bec of your lands being wasteland and other land destruction effects. Rhox dies to PTE / REB even on a counter-top setup if your opponent knows how to go around CB rhox will die.

Stoneforge + equip is really nice but tends to be very very mana hungry. Normally i could beat zoo come post board but its still a very very close game. Now that the meta is aggro atleast in our area CB lock is not as good as it used to be.

I run 4 rhox main with 2 jitte 4 pte on the board. As for jace i don't think he could survive in our meta with all the direct damage and fast decks running around NO + progen would be a better choice.

I tried to run more creatures like kitchenfinks but the deck tends to be very slow and if don't get to 3 mana early you'll suffer and force of is almost a dead card without a blue card to feed it. And by the time you could NO+progen your life is almost down to 5-7 making progen just a blocker.

The current list im running
LANDS [19]
2 island
1 forest
1 plains
1 dryad arbor
3 misty rainforest
3 flooded strand
2 windswept heath
3 tundra
3 tropical island

CREATURES [17]
4 noble hierarch
4 tarmogoyf
3 qasali pridemage
4 rhox war monk
1 trygon predator
1 progenitus

SPELLS [24]
3 counterbalance
3 sensei's divinning top
4 force of will
3 daze
4 swords to plowshares
4 brainstorm
3 natural order

SB [15]
4 path to exile
2 umezawa's jitte
2 tormod's crypt
2 relic of progenitus
1 trygon predator
2 krosan grip
2 spell pierce

[justjake54]

I think that looks more like a Probant deck list, but it does look like a fun build.

[justjake54]

This is my current CounterTop build that I've been messing with.


Lands
4 Misty Rainforest
4 Scalding Tarn
1 Forest
6 Island
3 Tropical Island
2 Volcanic Island

Creatures
4 Tarmogoyf
2 Sower of Temptation
2 Trygon Predator

Spells
4 Force of Will
3 Spell Snare
2 Daze
4 Brainstorm
4 Ponder
2 Vedalken Shackles
4 Sensei's Divining Top
4 Counterbalance
3 Firespout
2 Jace the mind sculptor

Sideboard
3 Krosan Grip
2 Engineered Explosives
3 Submerge
2 Hydroblast
2 Blue Elemental Blast
3 Relic of Progenitus



I like running mostly 2 colors for a consistent mana base only slightly splashing red for Firespout which really helps against some of my poorer match ups against aggressive decks like Merfolk/Goblins or Zoo.
Jace is just a boss against control decks and is nice to have the occasional 4 on top for CB
The sowers and shackles obviously do very well against larger creatures and definitely help against any creature heavy deck.
Trygon Predators I find very useful as either a flying beater or against jittes or survival and a variety of other things. Also having 7 three drops in the deck for counterbalance is nice because it seems most people don't see that coming from a counterbalance deck.
and from there it's a pretty standard counterbalance shell. Let me know what you think!

[Shimi]

@Justjake54: What about your Goblins and Merfolks Matchup without StP? How do you deal with lackey or LoA? Shackles + Firespout seems very good but a bit slow and I would like to know if you really can survive until you wash the board and them start stealing your opponents creatures.

I'm just not convinced about nowdays 4-Color Counterbalance lists , it seems too slow to defeat Merfolks/Goblins and have non solid manabase with just a few threats.I'll test out a old SupremeBlue list(with jace now) and see if daze is still playable and if 8 big guys still have some chance now.

[justjake54]

they aren't exactly favorable matchups I admit, but goyfs can help stall the board and hopefully a well placed counterspell or two and or a quick counterbalance/top set up. I definitely side in EE and BEB for that matchup.

Yeah, thats why I'm working with a 2 color (pretty much) I much prefer a reliable manabase as a well placed wasteland can really hurt the tempo of the deck.

[DFY889]

they aren't exactly favorable matchups I admit, but goyfs can help stall the board and hopefully a well placed counterspell or two and or a quick counterbalance/top set up. I definitely side in EE and BEB for that matchup.

Yeah, thats why I'm working with a 2 color (pretty much) I much prefer a reliable manabase as a well placed wasteland can really hurt the tempo of the deck.

20 lands seems a little greedy though even with ponders.

[cyclopsismydad]

I went 6-0-2 followed by splitting top 2 at a local 40 man legacy tournament with the 4c counterbalance list. The decklist and tournament report can be found here (http://www.mtgthesource.com/forums/showthread.php?18677-Split-1st-2nd-40-man-legacy-in-PA-playing-UGWR-CB-Top).

It really feels like the deck can't lose to anything other than landstill, insane merfolk draws, maybe some GB rock decks, and EE recursion (which even clique can handle). I proposed a few changes, but nothing too significant, at the end of my tournament report.

Also, can someone explain to me why predict is even worth a slot in the deck? I get that it messes up enlightened tutors and sterling groves, makes your opponent use an extra mana when playing with sensei's divining top, and occasionally bin's a dead card off the top of your library that you could probably just shuffle away or top away while potentially growing goyf slightly. But while drawing 2 cards for 2 mana is nice, it doesn't really seem necessary, and it is pretty tricky to pull off earlier in the game anyway. Too much set up for too little gain. Jace is a much more efficient/permanant card draw engine, and you can usually get what you need with tops. I would rather run other cards that can give me more utility than a predict does, or just straight up counterspells, which can actually answer something while predict sits in your hand waiting to work properly. Things like pithing needle and o-ring are usually almost never dead, but even if they are, you can just not draw them with top, or shuffle them back with brainstorm/jace assuming you know how to play brainstorm at the proper time in a game. Predict just seems like a waste of a card.

[Frid]

An average merfolk hand crushes an average 4c counterbalance hand. Merfolk does not need insane hands there because it beats consistently any countertop build

[Shimi]

Also well piloted Goblins is a hard matchup for 4c Counterbalance decks..and facing the actual aggro decks(read Goblins and Merfolks) I'm not confortable about running 4c against them , as I can see the excellets results of 4c Counterbalance envolve not getting paried with Merfolks and Goblins.

[BantFTW]

@Cyclopsismydead, I think you're really lucky bcs you didn't have one aggro-deck against you?
ofcourse you have than a quite good deck lol :)
But gratz
I don't know what to play at pro tour amsterdam side events all days @legacy^^

[ivanpei]

Predict IMO is the weakest slot in the deck. I've cut it because it is pretty average. Have been using 2 Fire/Ice instead and its been pretty useful. Its a 2cc for balance, extra removal vs aggro, and a pretty useful tempo tool vs anything that burn is bad against. I think that 2/3 jaces alongside 4 tops is enough Card Advantage/Quality. Also in such a fast meta, interacting early is pretty important. Fire/Ice does just that. Its surprisingly useful in the blue mirror by tapping down your opponent's counter mana (for snare, counterspell or pierce) EOT then dropping your balance/jace on your turn.

[Pemmin]

Hey, does anyone know where I can find the Columbus report from PV? I know he also played 4c-CB.. Its no longer on channelfireball. If anybody safed on his PC you can also send me an email (oats.com@gmail.com)

[jin]

Also well piloted Goblins is a hard matchup for 4c Counterbalance decks..and facing the actual aggro decks(read Goblins and Merfolks) I'm not confortable about running 4c against them , as I can see the excellets results of 4c Counterbalance envolve not getting paried with Merfolks and Goblins.

Sorry I have to disagree with this one. I've recently played a 4c CBT against a pretty good goblin player playing mono red goblins and did fine. Although in game 1, I was dropped down to 2, I stabilized after a firespout. I think the important thing about fighting Goblins is to keep them off of vial and lackey and set up CBT asap. Goyf is pretty much a wall and once Jace2.0 drops you can relax. The important thing is to keep cantripping/topping for your landdrops. When they can't resolve goblins and port is weakened by Sensei's Top, wasteland is the only thing that kind of hurts, but that is only 4 lands out of 20... so you should be fine. Just hold the plows for the warchiefs that might land though.

Post board becomes easier with blasts and lavamancers. It's not that much different from game one I think. I myself was surprised how much the firespout hurt the goblin player; if they cannot resolve a Goblin Ringleader or Goblin Matron they basically can't recover.

Against the Fish match up is a lot more difficult. I don't really have much to say about that except llawan owns.

[AggroSteve]

i myself am playing in a more aggro - aggrocontrol meta, and i have to say that i love the idea of fire/ice which ivanpei brought up

personally i like lightning helix in this slot better, probably because of the more aggro meta, and i am playing RWM instead of Cliques right now, but i still have to test more with cliques

what were your impressions of cliques compared to RWM, i really have to say i love the lifegain

@ ivanpei: i allready told i play lightning helix in the slot where you have fire/ice, so i wanted to ask you whats your meta like and if you prefer fire/ice also because of the mana cost

[dar482]

Monk seems fine in a more aggro metagame. Otherwise, Clique just seems better as an alternate win condition, disruption, and some kind of action against control/combo since Monk is dead in those matchups.

[jin]

Monk seems fine in a more aggro metagame. Otherwise, Clique just seems better as an alternate win condition, disruption, and some kind of action against control/combo since Monk is dead in those matchups.

I agree that clique ends games faster.. the flash really helps to get it attacking asap. It might as well have haste. Monk usually just sits there alongside goyf. Clique dosen't relaly do that.

[Shimi]

Sorry I have to disagree with this one. I've recently played a 4c CBT against a pretty good goblin player playing mono red goblins and did fine. Although in game 1, I was dropped down to 2, I stabilized after a firespout. I think the important thing about fighting Goblins is to keep them off of vial and lackey and set up CBT asap. Goyf is pretty much a wall and once Jace2.0 drops you can relax. The important thing is to keep cantripping/topping for your landdrops. When they can't resolve goblins and port is weakened by Sensei's Top, wasteland is the only thing that kind of hurts, but that is only 4 lands out of 20... so you should be fine. Just hold the plows for the warchiefs that might land though.

Post board becomes easier with blasts and lavamancers. It's not that much different from game one I think. I myself was surprised how much the firespout hurt the goblin player; if they cannot resolve a Goblin Ringleader or Goblin Matron they basically can't recover.

Against the Fish match up is a lot more difficult. I don't really have much to say about that except llawan owns.

Monored Goblins are much easier than Rb Goblins(with alot of hate pos-board) , I was refering to Rb Goblins where a Simple Goyf can't stop their army and a pos-board perish + needle plan.

[jin]

Monored Goblins are much easier than Rb Goblins(with alot of hate pos-board) , I was refering to Rb Goblins where a Simple Goyf can't stop their army and a pos-board perish + needle plan.

huh...
I thought mono red goblins would be more difficult..
Maybe I'll playtest against that and get back to you..

but perish is the same casting cost as most of their creatures.. wouldn't you float 3 on top? ...
I guess you can't if needle resolves too early..

[ScatmanX]

Sorry I have to disagree with this one....
When they can't resolve goblins and port is weakened by Sensei's Top...
I myself was surprised how much the firespout hurt the goblin player...
if they cannot resolve a Goblin Ringleader or Goblin Matron they basically can't recover..

1- We can resolve goblins. You need to use some counters turn1-3, so that lets our 4-5cc dudes come in trough CB/Top.
2- Port is weakened by Top? You have to find some better goblin pilots...
3- Firespout does not hurt goblins all that much. Usually, for me, it kills 2-3 goblins. 1 or 2 of those goblins got me at least 1 or 2 other goblins, so no real card advantage for you here...
4- We WILL resolve at least 2-3 Ringleaders against CB. Also, there are lists that play Wort (a must kill for you) and Boartusk Liege (unfirespoutable).
Also, isn't casting a Siege-Gang a pretty good recover after a Firespout?
For me, it is...

[JCrawl85]

huh...
but perish is the same casting cost as most of their creatures.. wouldn't you float 3 on top? ...
I guess you can't if needle resolves too early..

Currently I am running a 4 color CB Top list and this is what I have found:

Pre-board 3 and (if you can get it) 4 are the best things to float. The problematic creatures in this match are Matron, Ringleader and Warchief. If you let these resolve you will be buried in their card advantage.

Post-board it's best to side out CB and bring in Lavamancers and Blue Blasts. Same goes for Merfolk just bring in REBs.

[jin]

1- We can resolve goblins. You need to use some counters turn1-3, so that lets our 4-5cc dudes come in trough CB/Top.
2- Port is weakened by Top? You have to find some better goblin pilots...
3- Firespout does not hurt goblins all that much. Usually, for me, it kills 2-3 goblins. 1 or 2 of those goblins got me at least 1 or 2 other goblins, so no real card advantage for you here...
4- We WILL resolve at least 2-3 Ringleaders against CB. Also, there are lists that play Wort (a must kill for you) and Boartusk Liege (unfirespoutable).
Also, isn't casting a Siege-Gang a pretty good recover after a Firespout?
For me, it is...

1. turn 1-3? more like 1-2. I don't see anything I'd need to counter on turn 3.. I save all of my hard counters for lackey/vial/ringleader
2. I don't understand, can your port stop them from topping for more lands?
3. yeah I admit firespout is weak in this match up; but it seems that if I can stabilize a strong board position with a CBT lock, I am fine.. granted I keep vial/lackey off of the table which I usually do.
4. to be honest, if one ringleader resolves, it's not a problem. Sometimes the ringleaders are hot, sometimes they are not. I'm willing to risk it as long as CBT locks you out from those cards. Wort seems like a problem, but I have no experience there.
5.yes casting the SGC is recovering. I usually try to remove the SGC asap. That's all I can say about that.


Currently I am running a 4 color CB Top list and this is what I have found:

Pre-board 3 and (if you can get it) 4 are the best things to float. The problematic creatures in this match are Matron, Ringleader and Warchief. If you let these resolve you will be buried in their card advantage.

Post-board it's best to side out CB and bring in Lavamancers and Blue Blasts. Same goes for Merfolk just bring in REBs.

Oh yes, 3 and 4 cmc on top always. I agree.
Really? You side out CBT? That's our only way to have card advantage though. Albiet virtual, it is still card advantage. I never side it out. I guess I can give it a try. Does REB work against Fish? What about kira, the great glass spinner? That really hurts your REB

[DFY889]

So just red blast Kira or firespout the board away.

[jin]

So just red blast Kira or firespout the board away.

you mean when it's coming into play right?.. yes I guess that is the way to go..

[ivanpei]

It's honestly pretty heavy blue, some combo (not so much, TES and enchantress mainly), low zoo numbers (Only myself and another guy have it built), some tribal. I've been testing against alot of blue. And even against blue, predict didn't pan out for me. Its definitely very cool (And I own 4 foil ones, LOVE Rebecca Guay art), but not practical and "win more". Fire/Ice helped alot against tribal aggro which I saw was a bad MU (Due to vial etc). Goblin matchup was pretty terrible, you can't kill them fast enough because you play just goyfs and cliques, so they usually outgrind you. They recover from sweepers very fast due to ringleader obviously. Having fire/ice was very good in stalling for the jace fate-seal soft lock (let them have anything except ringleader/siegegang/matron and sit behind goyfs/removal).

Against folk, this deck is actually pretty good, with Fire/Ice its even better. Just keep their standstills off the board, and you should be ok. They don't have that much gas. Against zoo, this deck is very solid. Having fire/ice is also very beneficial as you can zap a T1 2/2 necatl on the play, or an annoying pridemage that threatens your balance in hand. It can also nuke a steppe lynx + lavamancer which is very juicy. Has worked out very well for me. Fire/Ice's tap a land to turn off counter mana EOT has been very useful. It is incredibly annoying and has won me alot of games against blue. It gives me that window of opportunity to resolve my jace/balance and ride them to victory. Also, fire/Ice is blue which is pretty useful to pitch to force as compared to helix. I think helix is better against Zoo/sligh based aggo whereas Fire/Ice is slightly worse vs aggro but much better vs control strategies.

Rhox war monk is good, I think its a fine switch if your meta is heavy aggro, then your deck will look alot like the traditional supreme blue lists which bash aggro. Clique's instant speed is important because you can keep counter mana up and eot flash clique if you end up not using the mana. However warmonk is just much better vs aggro. I'll stick with the cliques, but I've boarded them out every time I play against aggro, I hate a 3 mana lightning bolt that can be zapped before blocks -_-. I've recently found my love for regular no-pro countertop. Mainly due to a Russian friend of mine's (Oleg) suggestion to play counterspells instead of daze and the 19th land instead of ponder. Its been very solid, having hard counters in the blue MU was very strong. I've been able to force through a late game NO with hard counters. Everybody plays around daze. It hasnt been working well for me. Daze is still better vs tightly curved decks like goblins, but most other decks can afford to play around daze. I hate being a landdrop back vs folk and zoo, so daze gets the cut. I'm testing 2 wall of blossoms currently to make up for the clunkiness of counterspell against aggro but I'm still not set on them yet. I'm unsure if I should play the walls or 2 spell snares.

EDIT: I'm talking about RBg gobbos splash warren weirding MD and sb perish + grips (what I play and lend out). Warren weirding MD hurts alot against such a creature light deck like 4c countertop. Helps lackey connect very often and is a a very efficient answer to wall of goyf. I honestly think RB gobbos is much harder than mono red.

[Bongo]

Simple question: What is the best-performing CounterTop archetype?
How many colours? With or without Thopter Foundry?

Unlike the question, I suspect the answer is difficult.

[IsThisACatInAHat?]

Pretty simple answer too, actually: 4-color Supreme Blue is currently the best-performing CBtop deck in major American tournaments. That doesn't necessarily mean it's the best deck though.

Since GP Columbus, it:
Made the finals of GP Columbus (http://www.wizards.com/magic/magazine/article.aspx?x=mtg/daily/eventcoverage/gpcol10/welcome#1) itself with another player going undefeated Day 1 (http://www.wizards.com/Magic/Magazine/Article.aspx?x=mtg/daily/eventcoverage/gpcol10/day2#1) and a handful of others in the top 16 (Craig Wescoe, Paulo Vitor made 17th). The only other CBtop list to my knowledge was the DQ'd kid, who played UGR CBtop with painterstone (rogue).

Put one player in the top 8 of SCG 5k Denver (http://sales.starcitygames.com//deckdatabase/deckshow.php?&t[C1]=leg&start_date=2010-08-22&end_date=2010-08-22&event_type=SCLO&city=Denver) with 2 others in the top 16, though SCG mislabeled it as UGR. The only other CBtop deck (which finished ahead of all 3 Supreme Blue lists) was a rogue UWb list.

No CBtop archetypes made the top 16 of SCG 5k Minneapolis, but 5 U/G Madness decks do. Wizards considers banning Vengevine... not really.
...aaand thoptertop is still too heavy on card disadvantage to be tier 1.

[dar482]

Without Firespout and a robust sideboard, the Merfolk matchup is pretty atrocious. That's why the 4 color Top deck has become best performing.

[jparula]

Hi,

I've been playing countertop in a few tournaments in my area and have had some decent results however i have not yet managed to win a tournament by now (hopefully i will soon), my best result was 2nd place. I'm playing the ProBant version and my build is the following:

Lands[19]:
4x Windswept Heath
4x Misty Rainforest
4x Tropical Island
2x Tundra
1x Taiga
1x Dryad Arbor
1x Island
1x Plains
1x Forest

Here i chose only "Forest" Fetch Lands (no Flooded Strands) since they allow me to fetch Dryad Arbor anytime and also my lone Taiga (which is there for the Sideboard Firespouts).

Creatures[14]
4x Noble Hierarch
4x Tarmogoyf
4x Rhox War Monk
1x Trygon Predator
1x Progenitus

This is pretty much the standard creatures used in pro bant, Rhox War Monk is always great against zoo (cause it doesn't die to bolts) and even against merfolks/reanimator, it becomes a dude they can't try to outrace, i've won several matches only due to his lifelink + hierarch's. I don't include pridemages cause they're like rly awful against zoo and for a control deck like counterbalance they don't rly block all that well either.

Spells[27]
4x Force of Will
4x Counterbalance
4x Sensei's Divining Top
4x Daze
4x Brainstorm
4x Swords to Plowshares
3x Natural Order

Only the usual here. I'm rly convinced that 4x instances of countertop is rly the correct number here, they just don't work without each other and you rly need as many as possible.

Sideboard[15 duh :P]:
4x Spell Pierce
4x Reliq of Progenitus
4x Firespout
3x Ethersworn Canonist

I know firespout is not great when playing hierarchs but i've tryed the stoneforge mystic + jitte plan and i never once got any counter on my jittes when playing against creature aggro decks, i've won and i've lost games but i've never once got my jitte active...it's just too slow to have an impact by my experience. I'm also considering changing canonists for krosan grips but, however, in my area there are very few SotF players and only one other Countertop player so i haven't rly needed them that badly.

My SB plans:

Against storm decks: -3x Natural Order -4x Swords to Plowshares +4x Spell Pierce + 3x Ethersworn Canonist

Against Tribal Aggro decks(merfolk,goblins and Zoo): -4x Daze (on the draw) or -4x Force of Wil (on the play) +4x Firespout
(if these decks have access to perish i consider siding out NO+ Progenitus, i wonder if this is correct)

Against Dredge: -4x Counterbalance -4x Daze +4x Firespout + 4x Reliq of Progenitus

Against New Horizons: -4x Daze (on the draw) or -4x Force of Wil (on the play) +4x Reliq of Progenitus

I'd like to hear your opinions on my build + SB Plans, and what i could change to make it better.

Thanks ;)

[Izor]

My SB plans:

Against storm decks: -3x Natural Order -4x Swords to Plowshares +4x Spell Pierce + 3x Ethersworn Canonist

Against Tribal Aggro decks(merfolk,goblins and Zoo): -4x Daze (on the draw) or -4x Force of Wil (on the play) +4x Firespout
(if these decks have access to perish i consider siding out NO+ Progenitus, i wonder if this is correct)

Against Dredge: -4x Counterbalance -4x Daze +4x Firespout + 4x Reliq of Progenitus

Against New Horizons: -4x Daze (on the draw) or -4x Force of Wil (on the play) +4x Reliq of Progenitus

I'd like to hear your opinions on my build + SB Plans, and what i could change to make it better.

Thanks ;)

Storm: You leave in Progenitus without NO ? I see that you don't have anything to replace Pro against Storm but still NO without Pro is better than Pro without NO. The rest looks fine.

Aggro: Firespout is a must of course. Against Vial decks cutting counters might be the right choice but against Zoo they can be vital. Don't know what to cut for it though.

Dredge: CB out and Relics in for sure. But I'd probably leave in the Dazes. Countering their discard outlets is your best chance to win besides relics. Maybe you should rather cut SDTs to 2, Trygon and something else.

NH: Again, counters can be vital... but again it's hard to cut anything... I'm not sure about this

[Neuad]

I like the NOPRO Bant countertop posted by jparula, but being a huge fan of Master Shakes UWx Landstill build, is there any popular NOPRO Countertop builds that fit Cunning Wish packages in while retaining a nice curve? I'm about to start building my own and would like to see some starting points

[1rakete]

Actually, you usually dont have problems with this deck in mid- or lategame unless you are in topdeckmodus and in a very bad board- and lifetotal-position. So I think adding cunning wishes, which are only good in longer games, does just nothing. Additionally, but this may of course differ if its the correct metagamecall, Cunning Wish is only playble with black at the moment. I think Extirpate, Edict and Tsabos Decree are very important targets, which UWG just does not have access to.

[slaydo]

I tested a couple of games pre board with Martell´s list against Canadian ***** with punishing fire-grove of the burnwillows added and I have to conclude that this matchup is horrible for us. In order to lock them we need to get CB-Top in play asap however they have as many relevant counters as us with all the tempo disruption added.

How would you play with Martell´s list against tempo decks? Help would be appreciated.

regards,

Slaydo

[DFY889]

I tested a couple of games pre board with Martell´s list against Canadian ***** with punishing fire-grove of the burnwillows added and I have to conclude that this matchup is horrible for us. In order to lock them we need to get CB-Top in play asap however they have as many relevant counters as us with all the tempo disruption added.

How would you play with Martell´s list against tempo decks? Help would be appreciated.

regards,

Slaydo

Could you post the 60 cards you're playing against. I'd be happy to run it a few times and give you thoughts on the matchup.

[slaydo]

He plays the following:

4 FoW
4 Daze
3 Spell Snare
3 Fire//Ice
4 Stifle
4 Brainstorm
2 Ponder
2 Jace 2.0
4 Punishing Fire
4 Lightning Bolt
4 Goyf

22 lands including 4 Grove of the Burnwillows and 4 Wasteland

I can only win if I have a god hand to burn through his initial counters and he doesn't kill my tempo too much (stifle/wasteland). Really annoying. Should I worry about this deck or is this a rogue version nobody will play in an upcoming national tournament in November?

regards,

Slaydo

[ivanpei]

I did more testing with firespout countertop and realised a few things. As good as goyf and clique were as finishers, they are simply removal magnets. Without countertop lock, they almost always eat removal. Not having a high enough creature count severely limits they're usefulness early game. Has anyone else found this annoying? I've played countertop thopther for ages and I loved the fact that opponents always had dead removal. Therefore I'd like to propose a creatureless version of countertop:

4 Brainstorm
4 Force of will
4 Counterspell
3 Spell snare

4 Counterbalance
4 Sensei's divining top
2 Jace TMS
2 Intuition
1 Life from the loam

4 Swords to Plowshares
2 Fire/Ice
3 Firespout

2 Maze of Ith
3 Mishra's factory
9 Blue Fetch
3 Volcanic Island
2 Tundra
2 Tropical Island
2 Island

Basically its my firespout list with 2 Cliques -> 2 Intuition, 4 Goyf -> 2 Maze of ith, 1 loam, 1 counterspell. Some basics -> mishra's factory. I don't claim to be original, big props to CAB Jace's creator for this idea.

Ok lets have a look at what clique is good against -> combo + control, its a flash, evasive, disruptive beater against combo/control, excellent! But Its is terrible vs aggro, how I loathe this fact.

Intuition -> excellent vs combo, finds balance/top for the soft lock straight away, basically an instant speed demonic tutor. Against control, finds countertop or loam/ factory vs opponents with wastelock, smokestack etc. Very flexible. Against aggro, panic button firespout @ instant speed, deliciously yummy, later it gets loam, double maze, also extremely yummy.

Goyfs-> Excellent vs everything but, removal magnet and I've found him very lacklustre against anything but tribal. Simply not enough dudes to justify running him. Counterspell is always excellent, I've loved drawing it, now with so many ways to find removal and keep the board empty, the 4th was a no-brainer, also needed a higher 2cc count. Maze of ith is actually really great, if could have been path but that's a speed boost for the opponent while maze is a tempo lost for us if we drop it turns 2/3. What it does is that it can be found and recurred through intuition, is an excellent removal spell and FORCES opponents to overextend into firespout. Merfolk/zoo can no longer slow roll you with a single dude etc. This serves the same sort of roll as wall of tarmogoyf (without enabling swords to plowshares).

Loam is actually very underated in countertop. I used to play "Its The Fear" by Gearheart and it only had limited targets. With intuition, you have more ways to find it and it really helps you hard lock up the game by giving you infinite fetches. Infinite fetches + countertop = GG. Also it recurs maze/factories and protects you from wasteland/ opponents hate very well.

Factories are an alternate win condition next to Jace. Also very good with loam. Factory is also underated IMO as a blocker. Having a factory already in play, I've intuitioned for double maze, loam and pretty much locked aggro out of the game. They have to over extend heavily and I just drop a spout to clean up.

Some problems are: killing in time, this has the same clock as landstill, which is pretty slow. But with so much library manipulation and now Jace, it should be ok.

Anyway food for thought. :)

[rogue.nine]

Intuition -> excellent vs combo, finds balance/top for the soft lock

What combo do you play against where you can tap out turn 3 to get one of your lock pieces to play on turn 4 and not die on the spot?

and as you pointed out why not just play landstill at this point?

[ivanpei]

It's instant speed sir. You can hold your mana open for counterspell/spell snare and can drop it for balance/top eot if he doesn't go off that turn. Obviously countertop rapes storm combo.

Why not landstill? Well landstill is clunky vs combo (no countertop). Also landstill has problems vs fast disruptive aggro like folk. I'm talking about the deed-jace lists that most people are playing. Firespout is better because it is easier to cast when facing wastelands. Zoo lists are running wastelands now too. Standstill is also not very good vs folk or when in a bad board position against the many aggro decls in legacy. Of course by losing deed, you lose the catch all answer of deed.

I would say this list is better against fast aggro, better agains combo, slightly worse in the dedicated control mu (all countertop lists have problems vs deed). What my creatureless lists improves is the interactive creature mu like aggro and mid range as well as the countertop mirror due to the dead removal in opponents hands. Also intuition get countertop lock online faster and also gives you long term inevitability with life of the loam and factories.

[Valtrix]

I've actually been playing something in a similar vein with very good results:

// Lands
2 [IN] Island (2)
2 [R] Tundra
1 [TSP] Academy Ruins
3 [R] Volcanic Island
3 [R] Tropical Island
1 [ZEN] Scalding Tarn
1 [RAV] Forest (2)
4 [ZEN] Misty Rainforest
1 [DK] Maze of Ith
1 [OD] Plains (3)
4 [ON] Flooded Strand

// Creatures
4 [FUT] Tarmogoyf

// Spells
1 [FD] Engineered Explosives
3 [WWK] Jace, the Mind Sculptor
4 [R] Swords to Plowshares
4 [AL] Force of Will
4 [5E] Brainstorm
4 [V09] Sensei's Divining Top
3 [SHM] Firespout
1 [RAV] Life from the Loam
2 [TE] Intuition
1 [FD] Vedalken Shackles
4 [CS] Counterbalance
2 [DLM] Counterspell

// Sideboard
SB: 2 [FD] Engineered Explosives
SB: 1 [SHM] Firespout
SB: 1 [TSP] Krosan Grip
SB: 1 [4E] Red Elemental Blast
SB: 3 [CFX] Path to Exile
SB: 1 [OD] Ray of Distortion
SB: 4 [ZEN] Spell Pierce
SB: 1 [CH] Tormod's Crypt
SB: 1 [OV] Pyroblast

In particular, I like the 4-method approach to winning the game, because I think it makes it difficult for opponents to deal with all 4 ways you have to win: Goyf, Jace, Countertop, EE recursion. Namely because each one requires a different specific answer, sideboarding becomes very tricky. I've found intuition to be particularly strong against almost anything non-aggro, non-control, as setting up EE-lock is simply back-breaking. Or, if necessary intuition is just a blue demonic tutor at instant speed which I'm pretty okay with. I like that each part of the lock is good by itself, so I don't sacrifice anything for intuition. Maze and shackles are there for a little extra abuse, but I've found maze useful for extension into 2-for-1s with spouts or EEs and shackles is insane in any MU where an opponent needs/wants a creature.

I think I also need to have an aside for life from the loam, because it is absurd in this deck. It has so much synergy with top it's unreal, since it brings fetchlands for the rest of the game and dredges things you don't want from the top. It also plays well to get you a 2cc for balance if you have a brainstorm in hand and a loam in the yard. I also think it's necessary in terms of land drops, because it's made me a lot more consistent and games where you can always get lands tend to work in your favor. After goyfs and balance, I think it's the next best 2cc card you can play.

As for the sideboard, I think it complements the main deck quite a bit. On a first glance a lot of it appears redundant with the main deck, but it gives a lot of tools to have a very high density of the best cards in your deck for certain MUs. For example, versus aggro you can bring in 6 creature hate cards (paths, firespout, EEs) which leaves you with 16 ways + 4 goyfs to deal with creatures, which is a nightmare for aggro decks, even merfolk, to deal with. There's a lot of cross hate as well, as things like EEs, pierces, and REBs tend to be useful in a lot of MUs.

That's all I have for now, but I'm willing to discuss it more if people like it.

[rogue.nine]

Your point about being able to instant speed at eot is valid, but it still seems slow. The popular combo decks like Belcher or TES like to go off by turn 3 or earlier (or try to at least :P) where as something like painterstone or doomsday -> emrakul doesn't care near as much about counterbalance.

I like intuition overall, its really versatile, and the way you built you built it into your list seems solid and if it works for you great. My concern would be the slowness of this deck that comes at the price of running no creatures, especially if your factories start getting hit by swords, putting your ability to win matches on time in the realm of landstill while sacrificing some of the board control power of landstill.

As for the assertion regarding dead removal: well in my experience if its path/swords they remove your factories so you can't loam them, removing one of your two win conditions, and burn still can still dome you while they run you over with dudes. So the cards are never fully dead and in return you are forcing yourself not to play with legacies strongest creatures.

I mean this is all speculative based on just eying your list. I'm sure you have done testing and have actual results instead of theorycraft to go of off and I have to respect that but these are just some of my thoughts on the matter.

[IsThisACatInAHat?]

I did more testing with firespout countertop and realised a few things. As good as goyf and clique were as finishers, they are simply removal magnets. Without countertop lock, they almost always eat removal. Not having a high enough creature count severely limits they're usefulness early game. Has anyone else found this annoying? I've played countertop thopther for ages and I loved the fact that opponents always had dead removal.
It looks like you've essentially created Landstill with fewer "oh shit!" buttons and a weaker manabase in favor of running the soft-lock it normally chooses not to. I agree with the above poster that, at this point, just play UW(x) Landstill or UBg Deedstill. You'll have more Jaces, the same clock and a strictly better deck than CAB (which remains a rogue deck like this one (http://www.deckcheck.net/deck.php?id=36913) despite claims that it's the new face of control). You could also just play a CBtop thopter shell, which sounds like what you want anyway (and which there's a separate thread for).

The purpose of Tarmogoyf in 4c Supreme Blue is as a finisher (as you say), so unless you've got countertop online or a grip full of counters, it should really still be in your hand most of the time. Similarly, Vendilion Clique is less a creature and more a kind of 1-for-1 removal spell (assuming a card off the top is worth less than the card you put on bottom) that helps win counterwars. Its P/T value, unless you've got a big goyf too, is mostly irrelevant except to kill opposing planeswalkers. More importantly, the deck really plays nothing like Landstill or Thoptersword even if they share a lot of overlap in card choices.

[ivanpei]

Your observations are correct. I am unaware that this thread is more or less countertop-goyf and not just counter-top. I was going to post it on the UW thopther thread but it is a fundamentally different deck too with the enlightened tutor toolbox as its signature. Perhaps I should start a new thread in New/developmental. Tarmogoyf, as pointed out, is a finisher and a very quick/good one at that. There's no denying that fact, IMO its just fallen out of favor with me (how blasphemous) due to the godly amounts of removal played now, and the deck's lack of other creature. I agree that Factories get plowed too and cannot be recurred with loam. However, if you are activating and bashing with factory, you better have the countertop soft lock out to protect the factories. Like IsThisACatInAHat said, Tarmogoyf serves a similar function, don't drop it until you have countertop lock. Clique also eats removal and trades well vs merfolk which does not have removal, but against zoo, clique is very bad. Factories are built into your manabase, they just stick around making mana, occasionally blocking when under pressure until you get your soft lock up and they start swinging with countertop protection. Tarmogoyfs sit in your hand early game because I know its gonna get plowed when I plunk in down early game. Just my two cents

@ Valtrix, I'll open another thread and we can iron out our intuition countertop lists over there. Your's is looking very sexy, I hope I can convince you to drop the goyfs. :)

Edit: Opened the thread in N/D. Please contribute over there. All thoughts welcome! All criticism and suggestion appreciated!
http://www.mtgthesource.com/forums/showthread.php?18957-Intuition-Countertop&p=491841

[207gmachine]

Here is my take on a possible countertop list.

Control:

Top 4
counterbalance 4
fow 4
daze 2
counter spell 2
spell pierce 1

draw / search:

brainstorm 4
enlightened tutor 2

Win:

jace 3
painters servant 2
Grindstone 2

Removal / additional control:

peacekeeper 3
swords to plowshares 3
doom blade 3

land: 21

4x flooded strand
4x polluted delta
1x academy ruins
3x underground sea
4x tundra
3x island
2x plains

sb:

perish 3
extirpate 3
engineered plague 3
peacekeeper 1

Sideboard is really up for debate. Black just seems to offer a lot of options to help in the zoo and combo matchups. I am thinking running the full 4 counterspells instead of daze / cspell split would be better for this deck. Just threw the mana base together. Let me know what you think.

[IsThisACatInAHat?]

Hey guys,
As much as choosing a good list, knowing and understanding correct lines of play is critical to success with CBtop. Since the last several pages have been mostly just lists, I wanted to pose a couple of scenarios to the CBtop community to gather feedback on what people would do once they're actually forced to use the cards they spend so much time choosing.

Depending on how they're received, I'd be willing to continue posting scenarios (most of them real, from games I've played) and encourage others to do the same. With such a decision-heavy deck, it's not uncommon to have multiple valid lines of play that all lead to game losses and a single, possibly unintuitive play that gives you the win. I personally learn much more from watching and listening to others play real than I do from reading lists with unusual choices explained.

Situation 1- It's a pure theory question, but one I'm not sure I know the answer to.
Your opening hand is Volcanic Island, Tropical Island, Misty Rainforest, Tarmogoyf, Counterbalance, Sensei's Divining Top, Brainstorm (you keep), versus an unknown opponent G1 on the play.
The question is what are your t1, t2 plays? Obviously if your opponent has a relevant t1 play (wasteland, Duress, etc.) it will change what you do. The point is to understand the theoretically correct opening given multiple relevant options and no prior information on your opponent.

In my opinion, this is one of the most decision-heavy hands you can draw and as long as you've got CB, top, Brainstorm, exactly 1 fetchland and some other cards, the exact contents aren't too relevant. What I mean is, this hand is pretty common and requires more thought than I think a lot of CBtop players realize.

The easiest play would be Volcanic, top, go. Tropical Island is never correct because you don't know if they run/ have Wastelands in their deck/ hand. Most people who do will blindly waste your first land, which itself is usually a mistake against an opponent who keeps their 7, but you don't want to be wasted off relevant (G) mana (for the goyf in hand) and the fetch would be better saved for either a basic or if you need to open another color (like if you draw Swords). T1 top is obviously a strong play, but there's another one that I think is almost always correct.

Instead, you could play Rainforest, go. At their EOT, you'll crack the fetch (probably for a basic Island or Tundra, assuming their first turn was innocuous) and play Brainstorm. The reason you played the fetch was to dodge that t1 Wasteland. It's irrelevant what Brainstorm finds, you'll put back Tarmogoyf first and any other card on top. You'll draw the top card during your turn, putting goyf on top. T2 your play is Volcanic, Counterbalance, go. This leaves you in an extremely strong position; it's the only play that guarantees wasteproof t2 CB, even encouraging your opponent to sandbag it if they've got it. You also guarantee countering their 2-drop if they try it (goyf on top), giving you the opportunity to play Top next turn with mana up. Wasting a shuffle effect kind of sucks, but you don't want to shuffle anyway once you've set up CB and the classic t1 Top, t2 CB (assuming you kept your land) still forces you to blindflip. This can be relevant if their play is Pridemage, Confidant, Survival, or some other 2-drop you can't afford to resolve.

I'm sure there are other valid t1, t2 plays from this hand (though I don't think any includes a t2 goyf, including an opponent's t1 Mountain, Lackey, go). I'd be especially interested to hear people's thoughts on this hand, since it's probably the one I think about the most without ever having an especially good answer to.

Situation 2- Came up for me today during the Legacy side event at WizCon.
You're in G1 against Merfolk. His board is 2 Islands, Mutavault, Vial @2, Tarmogoyf, Lord of Atlantis. He has 4 cards in hand and 2 Cursecatcher and Daze in the 'yard. Your board is Counterbalance, Top, Tarmogoyf and 4 lands (one of each colored dual + Island). Your hand is Jace, Fire/Ice and Brainstorm, with Counterbalance, Fire/Ice and some fetchlands in the 'yard. He passes the turn and your EOT top finds Force of Will, Vendilion Clique, Counterspell.

The question is, beginning with ordering them correctly and continuing through your upcoming turn, what do you do?
Given I didn't have time to poll the Source, this was my decision: order them (from top to bottom) Counterspell, Clique, Force. I drew into CS during my turn (Clique on top) and passed. During his turn he attempted Merrow Reejerey, which was countered revealing Clique. EOT I spun top, seeing a Tarn 3rd down. I put it on top, Force second and Clique on bottom. During my turn I played the Tarn, attempted Jace (resolved) and fatesealed for the win.

The reasoning behind CS on top (after first spin) was because I knew I couldn't draw a 5th land and didn't want to run Jace into Daze. I assumed any relevant 2-drop would be played through the Vial, so CB@3 vs. Reejerey was the play while I could still have Counterspell up for any must-counter. It also gave me mana for F/I, Counterspell or both, or one + EOT top. Putting FoW second (after Tarn) next turn gave me the option for protected Jace that would've needed double Force, triple Daze or Force+ double Daze to beat. In hindsight I think this was wrong because a Standstill during his previous turn (instead of Reejerey) would've been pretty bad and would've forced me to re-spin, then activate Top to stop it. Drawing Force may have been better, closing off 3-drops and 2-drops not done through Vial.

The difficulty with the hand was being presented with multiple valid lines of play in a fast-closing window. Choosing to play draw-go during a crucial turn, let me set up a protected Jace through multiple threats. LoA online with only Fire/Ice to stop it could get really bad really fast, especially if his hand has some gas. Since Fire/Ice, Clique and Jace all offer their own pros and cons, the choice wasn't necessarily clear-cut. Would you have played differently?

[DFY889]

Hey guys,
Situation 1- It's a pure theory question, but one I'm not sure I know the answer to.
Your opening hand is Volcanic Island, Tropical Island, Misty Rainforest, Tarmogoyf, Counterbalance, Sensei's Divining Top, Brainstorm (you keep), versus an unknown opponent G1 on the play.
The question is what are your t1, t2 plays? Obviously if your opponent has a relevant t1 play (wasteland, Duress, etc.) it will change what you do. The point is to understand the theoretically correct opening given multiple relevant options and no prior information on your opponent.

In my opinion, this is one of the most decision-heavy hands you can draw and as long as you've got CB, top, Brainstorm, exactly 1 fetchland and some other cards, the exact contents aren't too relevant. What I mean is, this hand is pretty common and requires more thought than I think a lot of CBtop players realize.

The easiest play would be Volcanic, top, go. Tropical Island is never correct because you don't know if they run/ have Wastelands in their deck/ hand. Most people who do will blindly waste your first land, which itself is usually a mistake against an opponent who keeps their 7, but you don't want to be wasted off relevant (G) mana (for the goyf in hand) and the fetch would be better saved for either a basic or if you need to open another color (like if you draw Swords). T1 top is obviously a strong play, but there's another one that I think is almost always correct.

Instead, you could play Rainforest, go. At their EOT, you'll crack the fetch (probably for a basic Island or Tundra, assuming their first turn was innocuous) and play Brainstorm. The reason you played the fetch was to dodge that t1 Wasteland. It's irrelevant what Brainstorm finds, you'll put back Tarmogoyf first and any other card on top. You'll draw the top card during your turn, putting goyf on top. T2 your play is Volcanic, Counterbalance, go. This leaves you in an extremely strong position; it's the only play that guarantees wasteproof t2 CB, even encouraging your opponent to sandbag it if they've got it. You also guarantee countering their 2-drop if they try it (goyf on top), giving you the opportunity to play Top next turn with mana up. Wasting a shuffle effect kind of sucks, but you don't want to shuffle anyway once you've set up CB and the classic t1 Top, t2 CB (assuming you kept your land) still forces you to blindflip. This can be relevant if their play is Pridemage, Confidant, Survival, or some other 2-drop you can't afford to resolve.

I'm sure there are other valid t1, t2 plays from this hand (though I don't think any includes a t2 goyf, including an opponent's t1 Mountain, Lackey, go). I'd be especially interested to hear people's thoughts on this hand, since it's probably the one I think about the most without ever having an especially good answer to.


I would lead with volcanic island pass, and then do nothing unless they duressed me or I need to brainstorm into force or something. I really hate brainstorming when I have no idea what I am playing against. What do I do if my opponent goes misty rainforest, pass? You play a suboptimal brainstorm, which is not always incorrect but I believe with so little information, it is. On my turn two I would play a fetch and pass. Presumably by turn two I will have enough information to brainstorm, put back my two worst cards and shuffle. This also plays around daze nicely which could be devastating on a turn 2 counterbalance. I think after this the possibilities of what could be played and draw are too many to theorize further. Another line I could see is turn one volcanic go, turn two trop, top, go, eot top, then misty, counterbalance with brainstorm up.

[Mizeri]

Going first
T1:volc, top
T2:rainforest go. Eot on their turn brainstorm, pop forest. Spin top.
T3:Land, Cb go.

My two cents. Maybe I'm too passive, but that's assuming daze aswell.

[Rune]

@Situation 1

I would lead with Volcanic, put Goyf on top EOT and play Counterbalance with the 2 duals next turn. This way you can play top on turn 3 and almost be sure to keep 2cc spells blocked since you have the fetch. If you used the fetch already, there is a higher risk of losing to Survival, Standstill, Pridemage etc. if you don't find a 2-drop in your top 3 cards. This hand seems pretty Wasteland-proof, so I don't see the point in playing around the potential turn 1 Wasteland.

[ivanpei]

I think your decision to draw go (situation 2) was the correct one. Having mana up for emergencies when you are not under pressure is usually correct. Anyway I can see you have been testing with Fire/Ice. How has it been for you? Just curious. :)

In situation 1, I would lead with volc, top. Then fetch T2, eot storm and fix hand, crack fetch and top. (same as Mizeri) Then T3 balance. Of course if I knew I was playing against storm combo, I'd keep mana open T1 for the emergency brainstorm if the opponent decides to go for it Turn 1. I almost always never play brainstorm T1 anymore, unless I'm under pressure to find a Force.

[IsThisACatInAHat?]

Interesting mix of answers... I see most people are more loathe to use early Brainstorms than I (the "Sacher Effect"?). Next time this hand comes up in a local, I think I'll give it a try with a more passive play and see how it turns out. Clearly everyone values information over speed given an unknown opponent. In my defense though, there are a bunch of t2 plays just can just wreck you (or specifically, me) if they resolve and you can't find (or don't MD) an answer to. I think my top 3 right now would be Survival, Mongrel and Confidant. Clearly that gimmicky Vengevival deck has had its influence. I'll try to think of some other interesting scenarios that came up today, but unfortunately 3 rounds is kind of anemic.


I think your decision to draw go (situation 2) was the correct one. Having mana up for emergencies when you are not under pressure is usually correct. Anyway I can see you have been testing with Fire/Ice. How has it been for you? Just curious. :)
For reference, I'm playing Matt Sperling's list from the GP, -2 Predict +2 Fire/ Ice in the main and -1 Firespout -2 Meddling Mage +3 Ensnaring Bridge in the board. Fire/Ice is no longer among my flex slots, but a permanent choice in my maindeck until something replaces it. Rather than being the weakest slot (as Predict), it's now tied for weakest with Counterspell.

However, Fire is good in our bad matchups (Goblins, Merfolk and until I figure out how to beat it, Vengevival). It hits a ton of cards we either don't want to see (Confidant, Lavamancer, Hierarch, Lackey, Cursecatcher), eases pressure on your removal without forcing you to blow a Firespout and can often set up 2-for-1s. The Ice side is also great against a handful of cards that are annoying to the point where they're a problem, like Rishadan Port and Trinisphere (especially Port, since Goblins can easily waste/tap down your R sources until it's too late). Sometimes it's dead, yes, but the ratio of matchups where it's good:bad is pretty much the exact same as Counterspell, except opposite. It still doesn't solve the problems I've been having with (mostly) tribal and Vengevival, hence the Ensnaring Bridges (replacing, previously, Peacekeeper... total disappointment thus far).

[Mizeri]

Spell snare hits most of the broken turn 2 plays.. Lol. Spell pierce and daze also work well. And fire patches up the lacky and confident problems. I hope that with the top and the brainstorm you could pull something out. Maybe not a cat tho.. Needs a bigger hat.

[keys]

However, Fire is good in our bad matchups (Goblins, Merfolk and until I figure out how to beat it, Vengevival). It hits a ton of cards we either don't want to see (Confidant, Lavamancer, Hierarch, Lackey, Cursecatcher), eases pressure on your removal without forcing you to blow a Firespout and can often set up 2-for-1s

F//I seems decent. I'm still playing Tom Martell's original 60, but I think I may try it in place of the O Ring. Everyone has a way to remove the ring these days, and additional 2cc spells are always welcome. Add Pridemage and LoA to your list of targets.


Got anymore teachable scenarios? I'm actually learning a lot from these responses!

[ivanpei]

I'm glad to see the uptake of Fire/Ice. I've been playing it forever and its been working well for me. Yeap looking forward to situations. Countertop is tricky to play, and I still make mistakes in unfamiliar situations.

[IsThisACatInAHat?]

Got anymore teachable scenarios? I'm actually learning a lot from these responses!
Somehow I didn't think they'd receive so many responses so quickly... like, in under 24 hours. I'll have to be more diligent about recording tight decision points in the future and hopefully I'll get some this weekend on the way to a t8 finish at the Vestal power tourney. In the mean time, I'll see if I can find/ remember enough from a previous game to put up a third scenario by the end of the week. If anyone else has one they'd like to share, by all means feel free.

[Valtrix]

However, Fire is good in our bad matchups (Goblins, Merfolk and until I figure out how to beat it, Vengevival).

For now I think I'm going to try 3x Peacekeeper in my board, which I think should be a valid solution for awhile, seeing as they have no way to deal with besides trying to stop it from getting into play in the first place.

Back to the scenarios:

The reasoning in one is seriously flawed. Why? Because if they waste your turn one land, then you're just starting the game over. You still get to a T3 counterbalance (which in this case is just like a T2 balance) if you really want it, since you have 3 lands. Besides, wasting your land first turn is usually good for you anyway.

Now, this is a tough decision against an unknown opponent. The lines of play are very tough depending on who you're against. Now, you probably don't need to play top first turn, as if you need to assemble balance lock top on turn 3 will almost function the same as already having it on turn one. I think the best play is to play your volc and pass as well. This way you can brainstorm end of turn to keep your goyf second from the top, so that when you play counterbalance you already have a two drop on top. While you would like to save brainstorm to get other CCs on your library if possible, since you have a top and fetch there's a good chance you can find whatever you'll end up needing. Plus, if you're playing against combo saving your balance and top from duress is the strongest play for you. While using brainstorms early is not always ideal because of their lategame power, top is already diminishing the advantage it gives you.

[Mizeri]

Peacekeeper doesn't do well against stingscouger or a cycyled gempalm. Both are main in most goblin builds? Along with a sgc acctivation. Goblins are tricky little devils..

[Valtrix]

It was directed to his comment where he said, "and until I figure out how to beat it, vengevival". As it stands Peacekeeper is a fine option against them since they run no way to interact with it besides counters/trying to prevent you from playing it. It's certainly not great against goblins, but depending on your build it's possible it could be useful to attempt to buy you time. However, it's also very good against merfolk, as few builds run ways to stop it as well, and completely stops dredge. Seems pretty strong to me right now.

[Mizeri]

I agree it works well against vengevine and merfolk. All of dredges hate that removes jailer also removes peacekeeper? That's why I run one darkblast in mine. Along with the singleton firestorm. But countertop should answer that. Seems still good. I'm amazed how peacekeepers came out of the wood work after that starcity games article. Almost every deck that has white is trying to sideboard them it seems. Maybe its just me.

[Valtrix]

Yeah, I guess there is some hate for the peacekeeper in dredge, but I would still say it's useful against them at the very least. From what I've seen not a lot of dredge lists do run the creature hate, so I was basing it off that. I think it's pretty funny too that so many people are trying to sideboard them, but with the current meta of blue aggro decks that don't interact with creatures much it's a very strong choice. Since most decks running it are running Jace it puts the opposing player into a situation where they need to deal with peacekeeper or simply lose. Even if they have an answer, the control player is almost certainly putting that time to better use than they were, which makes it still useful.

[Mizeri]

Teferi's Moat? Lol. I think that card still sucks. Dunno tho. I like how hibernation has started showing up. Also clears survival and prog. Then you should have countertop running by then? Saw it in a few merfolk boards.

[Mizeri]

Wow. Nevermind. Bad moat costs too much. Thought it was 3. I need to read more!

[COBBLER]

Situation 1

Why don't you play fetch crack island top then u good againt waste land then turn 2 top balance

[IsThisACatInAHat?]

Why don't you play fetch crack island top then u good againt waste land then turn 2 top balance
Because that would be the loosest play you could make. It wastes your shuffle, exposes Counterbalance to Daze, exposes your hand to t1 Duress and fails to guarantee a 2-drop on top during your opponent's second turn, when it would be most relevant. The idea behind having options is exercising them. Fetches, SDT and Brainstorm are all powerful cards because they give you more than decks without them have. By tapping out each turn and wasting your resources without purpose, CBtop just becomes a weak Bant deck.

I'm starting to like the idea of Volcanic, go more and more now. Without Firespout in-hand or an immediate need to find it, the power of tempting your opponent into a misplay (waste, activate, go) and taking your opponent's first draw back without risking a delayed CB sounds really good. Even if your opponent does something really awful (Trop, Hierarch makes me cringe now more than Mountain, Lackey or Island, Vial), you can still BStorm the goyf on top, dig for FoW, then go for the turn 2 CB if you're feeling lucky.

@Valtrix,
I'd be interested to hear what you think of Peacekeeper after you've tried it. I personally couldn't stand them because of Submerge. It felt like the upkeep cost always gave them enough time to find a protected answer and set up an alpha strike before I could Jace them out of the game. Peacekeeper may also become a victim of its own success (if not it's speed) as both decks adapt either by splashing white or running more cards like Submerge. If Ensnaring Bridge doesn't work out, I may be tempted to retry Peacekeeper if it turns out to be a decent catchall answer to both decks.

[Valtrix]

My thoughts are that a card that forces them to have submerge or I win seems pretty strong. Submerge is somewhat prevalent, but not all that much so. I think that you'll catch a lot of people off-guard with it still. I like it way more than bridge, especially against UG vengevine they usually run trygon predator, which can easily sneak under, and it doesn't help you quite as soon. But we'll have to see how it tests, maybe it's not as fantastic as I could hope for. As it stands it seems like my most promising board card for Vengevine Survival, Merfolk, and Dredge, while having uses elsewhere as well.

[Lammina]

@Valtrix and all: Why not use Dueling Grounds in the place of the Peacekeeper? Seems more consistent to me (is more difficult to cast, but this problem is irrelevant... an enchantment is more difficult to bounce/finish in the metagame than a creature (StP, Gempalms, Burns...).

The New Madness (Vengevine Mad.) are causing a lot of trouble to me (NO+Pro and the Supreme Blue versions), and the DG are given me good results!

I was thinking in bring a Black splash for the decks, to put 4x Extirpate in side, in the place of all the hate grave stuff (relics, crypts, faries...) wich a have...


Appears a nice try!


Hope helps,

Lammina

[IsThisACatInAHat?]

Dueling grounds has come up on my gatherer searches and it's my next card to test. Ensnaring Bridge was fucking awful, but I'm currently enjoying Peacekeeper much more than I was. In testing, I still lose almost all g1s, then easily win g2 and 3. Resolved Peacekeeper is just such a beating. Being a creature is actually a blessing in 4c Jacespout, since decks he comes in against don't run creature removal and if they do, they probably board it out g2. Meanwhile, almost all those decks run artifact/ enchantment hate and will bring it in for the soft lock anyway. If you're siding Peacekeeper against Zoo, Goblins or any decks with actual removal suites, you're playing the wrong deck.

On a related note, I took 4c Jacespout to Jupiter Games this weekend and wrote a short report for the thread. We got to Vestal just past midnight, but I didn't fall asleep until 6am. When I woke up at 9, I downed coffee until I was fucking amped. Round 1 was posted about an hour late, so in hindsight I could have probably gotten more sleep. Of 115 people, I was literally the only cbtop deck in the room unless someone dropped before I could walk the floor in round 4. My games were as follows:

Round 1 vs. John (RG Vengevival) 2-0
G1- He wins the roll and plays t1 hierarch into t2 survival+ goblin guide. I force survival and try to stabilize with goyf at 9 life, but he drops jitte. Top into firespout wipes his board with me at 2 life. Another goyf, another firespout and double 5/6 for 1G wins.
G2- T2 vengevine puts me at 14 before I swords it and drop goyf. Next turn he drops me to 6, then 3 even after another swords. I rip firespout off the top and wipe his board. Goyf+cbtop guard Jace until ultimate.

Round 2 vs. John (Death & Taxes) 1-2
G1- I force t1 vial pitching Jace, then he double wastes me. With only a topdecked island and a grip full of nonblue cards, I figure I can still win unless he puts me on a clock. T3 karakas, EOT vialed mangara gets the scoop.
G2- Equally one-sided game: he mulls to 6, no t1 vial, blind cb does nothing while he dumps his hand into play. EOT swords on mom taps her, I firespout the board and drop Jace ftw.
G3- Again he mulls to 6, I keep a sketchy 7. T1 vial into mom+ avenger puts me under pressure and EOT mangara draws the game-tipping play mistake. Some turns later I die to white weenie beats.

Round 3 vs. Torsten (RGW Cat Sligh) 1-2
G1- Mull to 6 and keep a hand with cbtop and 2 blue lands. I stabilize at 14 and double 5/6 goyf against a goblin guide puts us in game 2.
G2- I keep an otherwise strong 1-land hand, he keeps an apparently empty one. We play draw-go for awhile, me choked and him flooded. I decide to start winning and tap out for Clique around turn 10. He casts double price in response. I have 3 nonbasics and 11 life. I stare at the counterspell and spell snare in my hand awkwardly.
G3- T1 lynx, t2 nacatl+ reckless charge, t3 double nacatl puts me on 7 life before I stabilize with Jace and cbtop. I make another game+match-losing mistake and get fireblasted for exacties.

Round 4 BYE (guy left without dropping)

Round 5 vs. Scott (Zoo) 1-2
G1- Mull to 6 with cbtop and blue lands for the lock, then drop Clique to pressure a scoop. He eventually attempts 9 cards over 2 turns, one resolves and it’s dead EOT, off to game 2.
G2- Early cbtop eats grip into a board full of cats. Firespout puts us both into topdeck mode, except I have 3 tops and a bunch of fetches. 4 fetches and continuous tops finds nothing but lands into lands into lands into lands. Eventually he topdecks nonlands. I answer the first 2, then lose.
G3- Mull to 6, I keep a 1-land hand with double bstorm and cbtop. I’m still on 1 land by turn 4, even with aggressive top+ bstorms. Aggressive sylvan library draws gas him into a t6-7 win. Double firespout and quad counterbalance stare back at me blankly from my hand.

Round 6 vs. Bryant (NLTES) 2-0
G1- I keep a hand with 1 land, bstorm, counterbalance and 4 of anything else. T3 cb into t4 Jace prompts him to go off through cmc1 on top of my library. Wish cracking double LED leaves him dead to force.
G2- T1 duress takes my cb, then EOT t3 brainstorm finds force, cb, blue land. Active cbtop+ goyf pressure a combo attempt. EOT grip eats the firespout I’m floating on top and he’s stuck on awkward mana without UU for the wipe away in his hand. He scoops short after.

Round 7 vs. Mike (LED Ichorid) 2-0
G1- Both mull to 6, mine has cbtop+ Jace, his has no dredger. T4 Jace fateseals the win fairly quickly.
G2- He mulls to 6, this time with 2 stinkweed imps and a flood of mana (literally, 6 of 12 lands by game’s end). First hardcast imp eats swords, second eats relic. Tiny goyfs turn sideways for 4 turns.

Thus ended my tournament, with a hugely disappointing 4-3 record. Somehow I managed to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory, losing 2 heavily favorable matchups and 1 probably favorable matchup. Tough, tough beats, but I was absolutely exhausted from lack of sleep. My unwillingness to pile shuffle more than once after long games and numerous play mistakes definitely lost me a handful of games. Oh well, there's always next time. It was still awesome to get to play at Jupiter for the second time. The distance is prohibitively far for me, but if I had a car, I'd drive up for every tournament they hold.

In the mean time, my notes are much, much more detailed than the report implies; I tried to keep it relatively vague because I'll be posting a handful of new situations with detailed answers later in the week. That should be enough for now, though.

[DFY889]

Has anyone tried Ethersworn Canonist against the vengevine decks? They obviously can't recur vengevines and it is also pretty good against most combo decks (Belcher, Storm variants, Aluren) not that those were really tough matchups to begin with. It also kinda sorta helps if they're on the natural order sideboard plan in that if they play NO and you force or counterspell it, they can't force or daze it because they've already cast their spell for turn.

Also, it can get in there.

[Lammina]

Hi everybody!


I have a Shelldrazi, and in this deck, I removed all the grave hate and bring for the side 4 Extirpates.

Basically, Extirpate can ruin all the cemitery based decks (the most commons and strongers): Dredge, Vengevine, threshold...

I was thinking in put 2-3 Undreground Seas in main deck and the 4 e. in the side in the countertop.

Isn´t a good call?


Cyah,

Lammina

[ivanpei]

Good effort though Acatinthehat. I can see there was a lot of bad luck on your end, like 20% of your games (flood or screw). Death and taxes wasn't easy eh? I've found that matchup pretty difficult too, anything with vials is a nightmare. Don't beat yourself up over losing to double price, that shit happens. :(

[Valtrix]

@Valtrix and all: Why not use Dueling Grounds in the place of the Peacekeeper? Seems more consistent to me (is more difficult to cast, but this problem is irrelevant... an enchantment is more difficult to bounce/finish in the metagame than a creature (StP, Gempalms, Burns...).

For me, the main pull of peacekeeper is that it's an absolute beating in the UG vengevine survival matchup. I've found that matchup terrible, and would gladly have 3 slots for it. The fact that it's also very good versus merfolk and sometimes other decks is pure bonus. To me peacekeeper is a card that can really seal the UG vengevine survival matchup, since they run no removal and only occasionally some bounce (And if they do, then you need to protect it with counters). Now, dueling grounds cannot fill this role. Vengevine survival has answers to an enchantment quite easily, and could just swing over a creature with dueling grounds.

One thing I really don't like about dueling grounds is that it requires you to have a creature still for it to be useful, and that creature has to be at least equal to their best creature.


Has anyone tried Ethersworn Canonist against the vengevine decks?

Canonist is a poor answer against the deck, I think, since most builds run trygon/will bring in grips. Effectively making canonist only a 1-turn roadblock which seems weak to me.

[Shinwei]

Thanks for the report, IsThisACatInAHat?

By any chance, would you like to share the final decklist you decided to take with you to Jupiter?

Much appreciated.

[IsThisACatInAHat?]

By any chance, would you like to share the final decklist you decided to take with you to Jupiter?
I used Matt Sperling's (http://www.wizards.com/Magic/Magazine/Article.aspx?x=mtg/daily/eventcoverage/gpcol10/day2#1) list, -2 Predict +2 Fire/ Ice maindeck and -1 Firespout -2 Meddling Mage +3 Peacekeeper sideboard. I also switched the manabase so white is secondary and green is tertiary like Tom Martell had it, so instead of 4 Misty Rainforest, 1 Flooded Strand, 1 Forest I ran 4 Flooded Strand, 1 Misty Rainforest, 1 Plains. This was a nod to Peacekeeper in the board being more relevant against creatures with wasteland than Kgrip against artifacts and enchantments with wasteland.

Given the chance, I would make no changes right now, but once that Vengevival trash falls back into obscurity, I plan to restore the original sideboard and manabase. In the mean time, Peacekeeper is versatile enough to come in against Merfolk, Dredge, Sneak Attack SNT, Reanimator, Aeon Bridge and Elves as well, so it earns its place at the cost of weakening Goblins, Zoo and control matchups.

[ivanpei]

Maybe doing a little advertising here but give intuition counter top a try? I am confident enough to swear by it nowadays, and I've pretty much settled on a tuned list.

Link here (latest list at the bottom):
http://www.mtgthesource.com/forums/showthread.php?18957-Intuition-Countertop

Its the Sperling list with the following changes:
- 2 predict
-2 clique
-1 karakas
-1 dual
+ 1 loam
+ 1 counterspell
+ 2 intuition
+ 1 maze of ith
+ 1 cephalid colleseum

Exact same mana curve, more answers (+ 1 maze, + 1 counterspell), more control bombs (intuition).Loses nothing vs aggro MUs. Better control MUs. About same vs combo.

[Valtrix]

Maybe doing a little advertising here but give intuition counter top a try? I am confident enough to swear by it nowadays, and I've pretty much settled on a tuned list.

I disagree that your list is tuned. For example, You have no proven the value of cephalid coliseum. It's redundant with what you're doing because tops + fetches from loam + brainstorm + Jace are plenty of ways to generate card advantage against an opponent. I still think it's really a poor decision in my view to run intuition without EE/Ruins/Loam. That combination is what breaks slower MUs and just stomps on control. Additionally I think that 3 counterspell is too many, as well. It's super awesome, but they can be very awkward sometimes in multiples, even though it's probably the best option for the 12th 2cc card. Also, 21 lands with one of them being coliseum seems incredibly greedy to me. You're going to get rocked by wastelands, and you'll probably have to mulligan a lot more.

Just thoughts. From what I've seen (with the amount of decklists I've seen), you've been doing a lot what I do too. Namely, making lists with a good shell, but moving the parts around a lot without letting it settle for awhile to see what's working well and what's not.

[ivanpei]

To each his own. The intuition package of EE/Shackles/Ruins is better in some MUs compared to others as I have admitted on the Intuition countertop thread. However, I prefer the loose slots that the Maze/Loam/Cephalid generates for spell snare/ more counterspells, making you less prone to getting blown out in the early turns. I respect your list and did the testing, I just prefer a different version, I do not claim my package to be superior. I may have <150 posts here but I don't talk out of my ass, it's a solid list and a solid intuition package. Try it out.

[gamegeek2]

Have been playing around with 4-color Jace since the Grand Prix. I like the deck, and I'm trying out a few changes to my previous version, including a couple new singletons - and CounterTop is one of the best decks for non-tutorable singletons.

Here's my current list:

4 Misty Rainforest
4 Flooded Strand
1 Scalding Tarn
2 Tropical Island
3 Volcanic Island
3 Tundra
2 Island
1 Forest
1 Plains

4 Tarmogoyf
1 Vendilion Clique
2 Jace, the Mind Sculptor
1 Elspeth, Knight Errant

4 Swords to Plowshares
4 Brainstorm
1 Preordain
4 Sensei's Divining Top
4 Counterbalance
4 Force of Will
3 Counterspell
2 Spell Snare
3 Firespout
1 Vedalken Shackles
1 Oblivion Ring

--- Sideboard ---
2 Relic of Progenitus
1 Tormod's Crypt
4 Spell Pierce
3 Pyroblast
1 Firespout
2 Peacekeeper
2 Krosan Grip

V. Clique is great in the slower matchups, but hasn't impressed my against the large amount of aggro in my local area. I've traded it off for more defensive measures. Going down to 8 win conditions makes Elspeth all the more important, as she helps a lot with the problem of going to time, which can be a problem with this deck.

I'm trying out 1 Preordain because I'm not sure what else to have there - 3 Spell Snare has seemed like too many to me, despite the Survival decks, and I'm not sure what else to put in. It seems like it fills the same function as Predict mid-game, though it doesn't give you the extra card - but it's a better early game play, and 21 lands sometimes hasn't seemed like enough, though I want to have plenty of business.

On the sideboard, I'm going to try out Peacekeeper. He seems like he'd be solid against Merfolk, Goblins, and UG Survival.

[DFY889]

If you're playing preordain because you have a slot and are feeling light on land at 21, might I suggest a 22nd land. You may want a basic mountain to keep merfolk,goblins, and some zoo variants from wasting firespout mana. Of course you'd have to shuffle around your fetchland configuration but that's a detail. I've never been a huge fan of Elspeth in legacy as she is pretty slow. She is good once you land her, but I would almost always just slam a Jace. Your cards are so powerful in countertop and in legacy in general that the brainstorm(s) are insane. Yeah I could see Elspeth being better against Zoo or Goblins or whatever but I don't really think four-drops are the way to fight those decks anyway. Similar story with vedalken shackles, I've had success with them against midrangish bant decks like new horizons or Pro-bant, but not really agains the three big aggro decks (zoo, merfolk, goblins). I would play 3 spell snare right now as survival decks are everywhere plus it's pretty good against zoo and merfolk. I also haven't had great results with Oblivion Ring as it's slow and vulnerable. Cards I have had success with are Fire // Ice. It's not insane or anything but it looks a lot better against a turn one lackey than an elspeth. Plus is cycles with a bit of benefit. Though I almost never find myself casting Ice for any actual benefit. Predict is another option and one I was using before but I think it is not quite proactive enough in the current metagame. Anyway just my 2 cents. Good luck in brewing and playing.

[Valtrix]

You may want a basic mountain to keep merfolk,goblins, and some zoo variants from wasting firespout mana.

First, I believe that you should be running 4 basics, 2 island and 2 basics of other colors. Running all 4 basics makes your mana really awkward. I think one of those should always be green because it's always very important to cast goyf. For the second I used to think it should be a mountain for the same reasoning, but since then I have changed my mind. The main reason is that any matchup where you want firespout, you also want swords. You generally want swords sooner than you want firespout however, so it's very important to not have that early mana wasted from you. It's very easy, however, to sandbag a red source until you need to firespout. So, in the MUs with firespout the plains seems more important. Now, there are matchups where you may want white (New horizons, aggro loam, landstill, etc.), but not really red for firespout. In these cases you would for sure like to have that plains, since red is irrelevant.

[pippo84]

Isn't there something that can replace Firespout? I don't like the ideaof splashing a 4th colour just for 3 cards.
I know that there is Wrath of God, but it seems too slow..
Does black have something better than Infest (that's terrible)?

[keys]

@Pippo84:

Red also gives you REB in the board which is significant against Merfolk and other control decks.

You can, however, play Vedalken Shackles instead of splashing red but it isn't quite as strong.

[GGoober]

Anyone know if UGbw Nassif list is still viable?

I was playtesting a similar version and it worked well, but it's depressing how Bob just DIEs all the time. He eats all the StPs when I play him whereas Goyf doesn't. It's almost like he's a magnet to removal...

Sample list:

4 BS
4 Top
4 StP

4 CB
4 Goyf
4 Bob
3 Daze

2 Shackles
2 Clique/Sower/Trygon

2 Jace

4 FoW

2 Flex slots (I played 2 EE)

21 Lands


I was testing UWb No-Goyf CBTop to maximize the power of one-sided Perish and Peacekeepers against Zoo/New Horizons/Thresh/Survival and Merfolks/Emrakul/Vengevine/Dredge respectively, but hands with Non-goyflike creatures e.g. Jotun Grunt just paled in comparison to Goyf. Had to go back to 4 colors, but I was wondering if anyone worked on a UWb No-Goyf Countertop list? (I.e. If you can basically play Atog Lord's UWb Bob/Peacenought without Dreadnoughts.)

[keys]

I was testing UWb No-Goyf CBTop to maximize the power of one-sided Perish and Peacekeepers against Zoo/New Horizons/Thresh/Survival and Merfolks/Emrakul/Vengevine/Dredge respectively, but hands with Non-goyflike creatures e.g. Jotun Grunt just paled in comparison to Goyf. Had to go back to 4 colors, but I was wondering if anyone worked on a UWb No-Goyf Countertop list? (I.e. If you can basically play Atog Lord's UWb Bob/Peacenought without Dreadnoughts.)

Well if you're basically playing Uwb Dreadstill without the Noughts, you're going to have the problem of winning the game in time. It seems like the consensus in this forum is that Goyf belongs in CounterTop as a way to reliably kill your opponent.

If you want to go creature light or cut them entirely, Landstill (UW, Walker Control, and BUG variants) is generally better at capitalizing on that asymmetry, and accelerating into the late game in order to win with Jace.

[The Treefolk Master]

I was testing UWb No-Goyf CBTop to maximize the power of one-sided Perish and Peacekeepers against Zoo/New Horizons/Thresh/Survival and Merfolks/Emrakul/Vengevine/Dredge respectively, but hands with Non-goyflike creatures e.g. Jotun Grunt just paled in comparison to Goyf. Had to go back to 4 colors, but I was wondering if anyone worked on a UWb No-Goyf Countertop list? (I.e. If you can basically play Atog Lord's UWb Bob/Peacenought without Dreadnoughts.)

Why don't you try Adam Prosak's list that came 3rd in a SSG 5k:

creature [4]
2 Trinket Mage
2 Vendilion Clique

instant [19]
4 Brainstorm
3 Counterspell
4 Force of Will
2 Predict
2 Spell Snare
4 Swords to Plowshares

sorcery [2]
2 Ponder

enchantment [4]
4 Counterbalance
artifact [6]

1 Pithing Needle
4 Sensei's Divining Top
1 Vedalken Shackles
land [22]

4 Flooded Strand
5 Island
1 Karakas
4 Misty Rainforest
1 Plains
1 Seat of the Synod
4 Tundra
2 Underground Sea

planeswalker [3]
3 Jace, the Mind Sculptor

Here (http://www.starcitygames.com/magic/legacy/20084_A_Deeper_Look_at_CounterTop_in_Legacy.html)is an analysis done by him on the deck:

[GGoober]

I read the article about 1-2 weeks ago and liked the list. I was just curious is Bob unplayable in Countertop? From my experience, he is not playable simply because he just dies all the time lol. I was going to discuss if -2 Predict -2 Ponder, +4 Bob on Prosak's list creates a stronger/weaker deck? I have found Daze to be weak in Jace.dec, so I'm going to cut it as wel folloowing the above list, and add some Snares/Counterspells.

Basically, I want to play Bob control, and I know Bob control doesn't work in a Landstill shell (too many high cmc, and he works best with an ongoing Countertop engine supporting draws/protecting him). Nassif's old-school list ran bob successfully so I'm reverting back to that, also after the success of Rick's UWb Peacenought. I feel underwhelmed without Goyf, but I think my list wasn't optimized for a UWb Countertop. The power of one-sided Perish/Peacekeeper against the bad matchups seems a little too strong to pass, and I've always felt green was a weak color in control and it was only justified because Goyf is that strong. However, in all honesty, Bob is stronger, but a UWb shell would not be able to win-games as fast, or steal games with Goyf beats.

[The Treefolk Master]

Why not try a single Chimeric Mass to fetch with the Trinket Mage? That should speed up your clock a bit.

I honestly have no idea about Bob in this deck. In paper he sounds good, giving you a lot of card advantage, but he is a hate magnet, so he might get killed too often. However, you should be able to protect him if you get the countertop online.

How does this deck (the UWb version) fare against Merfolk and Goblins? Are Peacekeepers enough?

[Valtrix]

I disagree about bob. Namely, the cost of running him is hurting your aggro MUs a lot. Goyf is a serious beater in that MU. Plus, by running bob you're not able to run firespout which is a huge disadvantage in my opinion. I like that he gets you cards, but a problem is that he won't actually run through opponent creatures and can't end a game quickly. The ability of goyf to close the game in 4 swings is incredibly powerful, and not worth passing up in my opinion.

[gamegeek2]

If you're playing preordain because you have a slot and are feeling light on land at 21, might I suggest a 22nd land. You may want a basic mountain to keep merfolk,goblins, and some zoo variants from wasting firespout mana. Of course you'd have to shuffle around your fetchland configuration but that's a detail. I've never been a huge fan of Elspeth in legacy as she is pretty slow. She is good once you land her, but I would almost always just slam a Jace. Your cards are so powerful in countertop and in legacy in general that the brainstorm(s) are insane. Yeah I could see Elspeth being better against Zoo or Goblins or whatever but I don't really think four-drops are the way to fight those decks anyway. Similar story with vedalken shackles, I've had success with them against midrangish bant decks like new horizons or Pro-bant, but not really agains the three big aggro decks (zoo, merfolk, goblins). I would play 3 spell snare right now as survival decks are everywhere plus it's pretty good against zoo and merfolk. I also haven't had great results with Oblivion Ring as it's slow and vulnerable. Cards I have had success with are Fire // Ice. It's not insane or anything but it looks a lot better against a turn one lackey than an elspeth. Plus is cycles with a bit of benefit. Though I almost never find myself casting Ice for any actual benefit. Predict is another option and one I was using before but I think it is not quite proactive enough in the current metagame. Anyway just my 2 cents. Good luck in brewing and playing.

For a 22nd land, what do you think would be best - another blue fetch or a Trop? I'm not playing a Mountain, it really doesn't seem worth it - Forest and Plains just do much more. Firespout is often just a one-time card, whereas you often plan to have multiple swords per game.

For reference, I have 3 Tundras, 3 Volcanics, 3 Trops, and a Savannah as the relevant duals for this deck (I traded 2 Trops and some other stuff for 2 Tundras and some other stuff sometime back). I have 4 of every blue fetch.

I've tried 3 Spell Snare, it's been OK for me. I might cut the O-Ring for it, but I really like having outs to random crap.

Elspeth has been great for me every time I've played her. As long as she keeps putting up results, I'll keep playing her. There's been plenty of times where she's done more for me than Jace. The Shackles is just something I'm trying out - I wouldn't play more than 1.

Bob just dies too quickly to be a reliable engine. He's pretty crappy against aggro even if they let him stick.

I might try out 1 or 2 Vindicate in the Prosak list.

[gamegeek2]

EDIT: Moved to previous post.

[DFY889]

For a 22nd land, what do you think would be best - another blue fetch or a Trop? I'm not playing a Mountain, it really doesn't seem worth it - Forest and Plains just do much more. Firespout is often just a one-time card, whereas you often plan to have multiple swords per game.

I've tried 3 Spell Snare, it's been OK for me. I might cut the O-Ring for it, but I really like having outs to random crap.

Elspeth has been great for me every time I've played her. As long as she keeps putting up results, I'll keep playing her. There's been plenty of times where she's done more for me than Jace. The Shackles is just something I'm trying out - I wouldn't play more than 1.

.

For basics, I play 2 Island, 1 Forest, 1 Mountain, but you could run a plains in place of the mountain if you're set on it. Just out of curisotiy what matchups are you testing against? I've been trying pretty hard to tweak countertop against the vengevine survival decks, so spell snare has been insane.

[gamegeek2]

I went back up to 3 Spell Snare

[jazzykat]

Honestly, I don't know why we can't go up to 4 Spell Snare.

[DFY889]

Honestly, I don't know why we can't go up to 4 Spell Snare.

I've been toying with this idea as well. I played 4 spell snare for most of the last extended season where dark depths was public enemy number one. The way the recent events have gone down it looks as though survival decks are really going to be the archetype to beat and spell snare certainly helps that matchup since a lot of the hands they keep fall apart without survival.

[ivanpei]

3 Snare, 3 counterspell split is ideally what I would play if I was facing a survival-infested meta. I would play the 4th counterspell over the 4th snare as it is less narrow. If you see plenty of survival and the mirror, no harm in upping to 4 spell snares. Tempo threshold/canadian threshold in the old days played 4 snares and did well, however that was a meta deck. I see no problems playing 4 today with survival being the rage.

[DragoFireheart]

On a unrelated note among all the talk about U/G Madness, is there a reason Thopter Sword is not discussed in this thread? Is the deck simply too different and is classified as it's own arch-type? Is this thread not about all Counter-Top decks and it's variants? Isn't the Thopter Foundry and Sword of the Meek combo with the Counterbalance/Sensei's Divining Top a powerful and competitive combination?

[keys]

On a unrelated note among all the talk about U/G Madness, is there a reason Thopter Sword is not discussed in this thread?

There is a thread in the Established Decks forum devoted solely to that deck.

[ivanpei]

I actually submitted an article to the SCG writing contest about countertop. I'll wait a bit, if it doesn't get published, I'll just post it here. In that article I examine countertop-thopters and why people are dropping it in favor of other decks. I also look at the various countertop archtypes and the evolution of the Martell/Sperling list. Let me know if interested and I'll put it up on google docs or something. But in summary, countertop thopters is very weak to krosan grip and spell pierce/reb post board. The card disadvantage built into the enlightened tutor engine makes the deck lose out after the opponent's dead creature removal is boarded out for "live" cards. I played the deck and my moat (which I bought just for the deck) has been sitting around sad faced in my box. :(

[pippo84]

I actually submitted an article to the SCG writing contest about countertop. I'll wait a bit, if it doesn't get published, I'll just post it here. In that article I examine countertop-thopters and why people are dropping it in favor of other decks. I also look at the various countertop archtypes and the evolution of the Martell/Sperling list. Let me know if interested and I'll put it up on google docs or something. But in summary, countertop thopters is very weak to krosan grip and spell pierce/reb post board. The card disadvantage built into the enlightened tutor engine makes the deck lose out after the opponent's dead creature removal is boarded out for "live" cards. I played the deck and my moat (which I bought just for the deck) has been sitting around sad faced in my box. :(

That's way after game 1 you side in creatures with CTT.
You then have 3 Jace 2.0, 2 Thopter Foundry + 1 Sword of the Meek and 3-4 creatures as win conditions.

[Malakai]

Thopter-Sword is awful. That's why it's over in its own thread.

I think the decision of how many Counterspell/Spell Snares to play comes down to how many cmc=2 you have. Your deck wants 10, at minimum. At least that's what I've discovered, and I've been playing Countertop since the card came out.

[DFY889]

I'd say that's generally true if spell snare didn't read "target spell with converted mana cost two" basically making it able to hit a one via an enabled counterbalance or a two by, you know, casting it.

[keys]

I'd say that's generally true if spell snare didn't read "target spell with converted mana cost two" basically making it able to hit a one via an enabled counterbalance or a two by, you know, casting it.

Yeah but we want to enable the softlock, not just counter one spell.

[DFY889]

Our problem isn't winning with countertop down. It's beating a survival.

[Beware]

Wow. It's absolutely staggering how sick I am of hearing that. If I ever catch Evan Erwin on a bad day I'm just going to wring his overbearing, hyperbole-slinging neck...

[sporenfrosch1411]

Ehm,

with Spell Pierce and Needle, is it still THAT hard of a matchup?

If so:
WHY is it that hard?

(haven't come to test against G/W Survival yet.....)

[Beware]

It's nowhere near as hard as most people like to pretend it is. There's just a whole lot of hype around Vengevival. It's a good deck, with good MUs, but it's currently the "flavor of the month," as it were. It's been around for years, but Vengevine has given it a lot of press.

[ivanpei]

I agree, it's honestly not that hard to beat. The deck is just performing well right now and T8ing alot. But if over half the field is playing it, obviously its gonna put up good results. But in all seriousness, the UG lists are a joke but the WG ones are quite formidable. I'm already running 2 needles in the board for goblins, so those are great against survival. I also have 3 grips there. I honestly don't think its that difficult. MD though I advise everyone to just up their spell snare and counterspell numbers. Seriously, plow the venges, keep survival off the board and firespout away/ goyfwall their little weenies. Its not that difficult.

[Beware]

Force of Will and Tarmogoyf make a whole lot of top 8s also. :P

[DragoFireheart]

U/G Madness looses to stupid random crap like Peacekeeper.

The G/W version on the other hand seems like a monster. Even if you get rid of the Vengevines, they still pack Gofys and Knights that they can fetch.

[Beware]

How DARE you deface the glorious and pristine name of Peacekeeper?! :P Peacekeeper and Faerie Macabre are finding their way into a lot of decklists as of late, mayhaps they should be banned preemptively.

[Stifle]

Here's (http://www.mtgthesource.com/forums/showthread.php?19163-[Report]On-the-frontiers-of-Top-8-4c-CBTop-%283rd-Legacy-Tournament%29&p=497250) a report on a bi-monthly dual lands event I attended yesterday.

[COBBLER]

IS PeaceKeeper Better then Llawan againt folk ? and what are good side opttions against Goblins these days?

[DragoFireheart]

IS PeaceKeeper Better then Llawan againt folk ? and what are good side opttions against Goblins these days?

Llawan is more expensive but once it drops it's basically game over for merfolk. Drop Llawan, kill the vial and they lose.

With Peacekeeper they can still amass an army and simply cast Wipe Away once they are ready for their alpha strike. However, peacekeeper is better against Vengevine.

[Antonius]

I've been thinking about playing Needles main in my UWr build, not only to cope with vial/mutavault/survival shenanigans, but also because I don't have Jaces, so my only option is to hate Jace.

[COBBLER]

I Think Needle is realy good, but at that point you might just want to play trinket mage , you can get it and also get top and explosives and be able to play like 1 needle instead of a couple.

[DFY889]

I Think Needle is realy good, but at that point you might just want to play trinket mage , you can get it and also get top and explosives and be able to play like 1 needle instead of a couple.

I love trinket mage and may possible play him in some flex slots, but I cannot agree that one needle is correct to stop survival. You really need four. Trinket mage is a three-drop and survival is two, even on the play you won't have enough mana to stop them from untapping with a survival in play. Even if you counterspell/snare/force their first survival, they will have a turn and a little bit of mana to play a second survival and tutor a trygon or something.

[Antonius]

Trinket Mage seems OK, but his 2/2 body is so irrelevant he might as well be a Fabricate. I think Spout and O-Ring are both > Trinket Mage.

Has anyone played with Ajani Vengeant?

[PanderAlexander]

Trinket Mage seems OK, but his 2/2 body is so irrelevant he might as well be a Fabricate. I think Spout and O-Ring are both > Trinket Mage.


Not only does trinket mage gets your pithings, but it gets your sensei's tops and tormods/relic from the SB.

[sporenfrosch1411]

The question is if some Tutor would be better here, since Trinket just dies to your Firespout. What do you think?

[DFY889]

The question is if some Tutor would be better here, since Trinket just dies to your Firespout. What do you think?

I think that you need to figure out which card or strategy you need to attack and hate on those rather than trying to hedge against everything.

[sporenfrosch1411]

I think that you need to figure out which card or strategy you need to attack and hate on those rather than trying to hedge against everything.

So what would that be? Share some of your wisdom

[neckfire]

so this past weekend i attended the scg open in north carolina,you can see my glorious defeat on ggslive in the 8th and final round :( *we were playing for the top 8 slot*

anyways i basically played the gp list with these changes.
-1 misty rainforest *the 9th fetch*
-1 tarmogoyf
-1 forest
+1plains
+1seat of synod
+2 trinket mage
+1 pithing needle...yes i played 61 cards no it did not hurt me in the end.

and my sb was
3 peacekeeper
2 krosan grip
1 red elemental blast
1 blue elemental blast
2 hibernation
1 pithing needle
1 tormod's crypt
1 spell snare
1 engineered explosives
2 metagame slots

anyways the point i am making is peacekeeper is solid for 4 colorcountertop.Most games i would do g1 firespout g2 i would switch out the 3 spouts for 3 peacekeepers.

my final record was 5-2-1 my loses being in the final round and in the third round vs a very weird merfolk deck who scouted me and sided in vedalken shackles to steal my peacekeeper.my draw was actually round 1 vs a friend of mine we went to time in game 3 he was aggro loam.

i faced
naya allies 2-0
affinity 2-1
storm 2-0
uwbg countertop 2-0
team america with show and tell emruakul 2-0
i ended the day unfortunatly at 19th :( but it was still a fun tournament and a very good experience.

[Malakai]

The question is if some Tutor would be better here, since Trinket just dies to your Firespout. What do you think?

It seems like you don't understand the role either of the cards play in the deck.

For the record, Trinket Mage is very, very good in CounterTop, provided you aren't playing some bad cards along with it, where "bad cards" means Noble Hierarch/Jace/Thopter Foundry/Show and Tell. OHMYGODHEHATESJACEWHATANOOB

[DragoFireheart]

It seems like you don't understand the role either of the cards play in the deck.

For the record, Trinket Mage is very, very good in CounterTop, provided you aren't playing some bad cards along with it, where "bad cards" means Noble Hierarch/Jace/Thopter Foundry/Show and Tell. OHMYGODHEHATESJACEWHATANOOB

Wait, Jace the Waller Sculptor is bad now?

[neckfire]

Wait, Jace the Waller Sculptor is bad now?

yeah when did this happen?

[neckfire]

so did this forum die or something?i know countertop isnt flashy or exciting but damn people it's still a good damn deck.

[kicks_422]

Is CounterTop possible to build without spalshing green? And it's not just because I don't want to shel out for Goyfs - aren't there any other good color combinations out there?

[rogue.nine]

That's the nice thing with the counterTop shell once you get the mandatory blue core out the way you have a fair bit of flexibility in what other colours you want to play with. Granted green for goyf and company is pretty sweet but the other colors give you access to:

Black -> dark confidant! / various pieces of removal / extirpate
white -> swords/Etutor (if you're into that)/thoptersword/Oring/moat/humilty
Red -> firespout

Right now I'm playing a UWr build with tutors and a grindstone kill condition and red for some sideboard shenanigans with blood moon/lavamancers/pyroblast which are 1 cost vindicates + counter with a painter in play :)

[Shimi]

so did this forum die or something?i know countertop isnt flashy or exciting but damn people it's still a good damn deck.

Survivals decks and Merfolks flood make it somehow not a good choice today, so we need to lock them before Survival and remove vines or pack more spellsnares and ench hate or Ctop lock become a plan B.
Anyway I'm testing UGB countertop but the lack of StP hurts , I also tried some mox diamond for T1 CB/BoB/Goyf/Sensei + Counterbackup.
Find out that the low threat number can be a problem(like the 4c versions) and that Survival can be faster than NO and more consistent.
Anyone get some good results or tested something new?Let's just brainstorm and find out a way to beat Survival.

[rancOr_]

I think that with all the VV now,most 'old' counterbalance lists are too slow. Thats why I like the idea of the painter/grindstone kill alot these days. Trinket mage is a good option to look for Pithing Needle,Grindstone,EE,.. so u dont have to play all of them.
Enlightened tutor may be a valid option like rogue.nine mentioned,although I think its too much carddisadvantage combined with Fow.

[Rune]

I think that with all the VV now,most 'old' counterbalance lists are too slow. Thats why I like the idea of the painter/grindstone kill alot these days. Trinket mage is a good option to look for Pithing Needle,Grindstone,EE,.. so u dont have to play all of them.
Enlightened tutor may be a valid option like rogue.nine mentioned,although I think its too much carddisadvantage combined with Fow.

Yep, it's near impossble for control decks to answer everything the Survival decks throw at you. The best way for a CB deck to beat them is to race their combo with something like Painter or Dreadnought. There was a CB player with maindeck Needles and Trinket Mages who finished 12th in the latest SCG5k, but I don't know if that amount of maindeck "hate" is going to do it, to be honest.

[Anusien]

Needle is great against Survival. Trinket Mage is too slow.

[rogue.nine]

Trinket mage for finding needle in sliver bullet fashion against survival is too slow but trinket mage finding your wincon (either naught or grindstone) after you've somewhat stabilized the board works okay. Versus slower decks like lands trinket -> needle is still okay as well.

Ofcourse maybe some people just have an unhealthy love for the trinket :)

[SMR0079]

StifleNought CounterTop is good right now, but I recommend cutting Standstills and Factories.

I played a controling Uw version at our weekly legacy event winning a Vengavine. Peacekeeper out of the board is a good option right now. I'm running Trinket Mage but I agree that it is slow and probably not sufficient. Not playing Goyf means you really have to be mindful of the time as you win with Jace and sometimes Clique.

Here is an outline of the list.

Force/Counterbalance/Snare/Counterspell
Swords/EE/Needle
Brainstorm/top/Predict
Clique/Trinket Mage
JAce
22 Land

SB: Peacekeeper, MMage, ect.

[Stifle]

I think 4c CounterTop is still viable as long as you employ every strategy you possibly can. In a Survival-heavy meta like this upping the count on MD counters is not a bad idea & plus, firespout is just too good not to play in the opening 60 right now.

As far as Dreadstill Countertop goes, it looks to be pretty solid but it seems like the Zoo/Merfolk matchups are more compromised by playing this archetype.

[COBBLER]

Yea I think the 4colour vesrion is still good, but their is alot of bad matchups right now so it might be time to adapt even more, with aggro and survival being not great and the lack of fast combo, the deck might need alot of retuning.

[CaBaaL]

hi to all, I own a bant-agro deck but after seen probanttop deck in action i want to add counter/top ant progrenitus package. I read this forum but i couldn't find what is the best list (i know it is meta-depentant but i would like what is the best list in random meta).
1 more question, is dreadstil better than probanttop? cause as far as i have seen dreadstill lack a fast wincondition (unless they get lucky) so it gives time to the opponent to break your counter-top lock. On the other hand probanttop gives you more threat/per round to deal with and in the end overweld the opponent.

Is this list any good in mostly agro meta (maybe 1 combo and 2-3 enchantress)

//creature
1 Dryad Arbor
4 Noble Hierarch
1 Progenitus
2 Qasali Pridemage
3 Rhox War Monk
4 Tarmogoyf
2 Vendilion Clique

//instant
4 Brainstorm
3 Daze
4 Force of Will
4 Swords to Plowshares

//sorcery
3 Natural Order
2 Ponder

//enchantment- artifact
4 Counterbalance
3 Sensei's Divining Top

//land
3 Flooded Strand
1 Forest
2 Island
4 Misty Rainforest
1 Plains
3 Tropical Island
2 Tundra
1 Volcanic Island

//Sideboard:
2 Gaddock Teeg
2 Ethersworn Cannonist
2 Trygon Predator
2 Krosan Grip
2 Path to Exile
3 Firespout
2 Tormod's Crypt

thanks for your time reading this sorry for my english and my noob questions

[Frid]

I lost finals yesterday in a 50 man tournament with my usual list with some changes in the sb to fight the current metagame:


// Lands
1 [B] Plains
2 [B] Tundra
2 [B] Island
3 [B] Tropical Island
4 [ZEN] Misty Rainforest
2 [ON] Flooded Strand
1 [FUT] Dryad Arbor
3 [ON] Windswept Heath
1 [B] Forest


// Creatures
4 [ALA] Rhox War Monk
1 [CNF] Progenitus
4 [FUT] Tarmogoyf
4 [CNF] Noble Hierarch
1 [DIS] Trygon Predator

// Spells
3 [VI] Natural Order
4 [AL] Force of Will
4 [CHK] Sensei's Divining Top
4 [CS] Counterbalance
4 [MM] Brainstorm
4 [B] Swords to Plowshares
4 [NE] Daze


// Sideboard
SB: 4 [ALA] Relic of Progenitus
SB: 2 [TSP] Krosan Grip
SB: 4 [DIS] Spell Snare
SB: 3 [WWK] Stoneforge Mystic
SB: 2 [BOK] Umezawa's Jitte


Defeated one survival deck in the rounds, doing 4-0+ID+ID and then in the top 8 faced three of them in a row (UG+UG+BGW), losing finally against the last one in three intense games. Which proves countertop progenitus still remains a perfectly valid option to reach finals in any tournament with a correct play and sb strategy. Another good point to this deck is that you can easily race vengevine survival builds without wonder once they've resolved their enchantment with a resolved natural order of your own, even if you resolve it the turn after they get their survival, you just need 2-3 chumpblockers. Which is a huge advantage compared to other countertop builds that can't do anything if survival resolves.
And answering to what most of you will ask: no, pithing needle is not remotely needed. I never liked it and tried to find a better answer. Spell snare hits many other relevant cards from any survival build apart from the enchantment, and is incredible against half of the legacy metagame.

[Mana Drain]

Frid, how was the Stoneforge+Jitte plan? Did you find it to be too slow or mana-intensive? And what matchups did it come in?

Also, why the 4 Relic over Crypt, if your meta has so much Survival? Coming down a turn faster and not costing any mana to activate to stop their gameplan sounds a lot better than versatility in other, less relevant matchups.

[Frid]

Didn't use the stoneforges in the whole day as I didn't face any vial decks, but they've proven enough in my last tournaments. They are the best answer an UWG deck with creatures can run to beat merfolk and goblins by far, and I've tested loads of cards, from a red splash for firespout to cards like path to exile, dueling grounds, propaganda, magus of the tabernacle (not a joke, seriously)...
About relic, I think exactly the opposite. I mean, relic and crypt have the same effect against survival: both of them buy time to you. They don't defeat survival builds on their own, like jitte does in the merfolks matchup for example, but they give you time to beat them in the meantime. So, we have two different cards (relic and crypt) that have the same effect, one is cantrip but a bit mana intensive and the other one is free but doesn't give you a card back. We are speaking about cards that just buy time, and this way being cantrip makes a huge difference here. So I find relic to be far away from crypt in the survival matchup. In the ichorid matchup for example this would be different, as here these cards buy so much time to you that sometimes they win the game on their own, so here speed is clearly more important that being cantrip and therefore crypt is usually better than relic.

[CaBaaL]

Is there any U/b/g deklist? with cofidant and goyfs?

[SMR0079]

Is there any U/b/g deklist? with cofidant and goyfs?

I've been running U/b Dark Depths with some success. Maindeck you get ThoughtSeize/Spell Snare/Bob and a quick kill. Post board you get Extirpate and Perish

[AggroSteve]

i was wondering how this Ub list would look like, because i did start of thinking of a dark dephts list as well, but as a UBg/list

i thought of the following 2 variations of that list

21 lands (1x urborg, 3x dark dephts included)

4x dark confidant
4x tarmogoyf
3x vampire hexmage
2x trygon predator/maelstrom pulse

4x divining top
4x counterbalance

4x spell pierce/daze
3x smother
2x ghastly demise
4x brainstorm
2x ponder
4x force of will

total of 61 cards but that is a thing i allways do with every deck, i just can't help it, i have to^^

i would have loved to fit in 1x grim discovery thought

2nd list

21 lands (including 1x academy ruins, 1x urborg, 3x dark depths)

4x tarmogoyf
3x vampire hexmage
2x vendilion clique

4x divining top
4x counterbalance

4x brainstorm
2x ponder
2x spell pierce
3x counterspell
4x force of will
3x smother
2x ghastly demise
2x engineered explosives/ mealstrom pulse

something like this.... fist list with more CA due to confidant, 2nd list more counterheavy and eventually with recurring EE

i wanted to know what you guys think of these list, and if someone wants/has the time for it (sadly i haven't because of exams at university) try these lists out, and report me back how they worked, that would be just awesome
thx in advance for any comment and maybe also testing-reports^^

[rogue.nine]

If you're running green anyways, have you considered Crop rotation? It's a nice little tutor to consistently get DD and is extra funny when you do it in response to someone wasting your underground sea/trop island.

Personally I've found DD/mage fairly clunky but I have to admit I didn't try very hard to put it in a CB shell. I mostly ran it some janky rock build with Knight of the reliquary but its kinda a win more there, that also makes you less consistent :\

I think someone used a DD list with decent results...*goes to google*...here it is if you need some inspiration:

http://www.deckcheck.org/?x=8QRflGWV2M4iF31hlGRfiavdvdc7k9

Looking at the list I think the sideboard and mainboard got mashed together in the reporter bu it should still be good as food for thought.

[AggroSteve]

hehe if you click on more information about this deck, you will get the real playlist where main- and sideboard are correct

but i find it kind of odd to only play 2 divining tops

[rogue.nine]

Yeah, although if you count it all up the mainboard only has 59 cards in it, so they might have left of a top for all we know when they reported it.

TBH vendetta looks weirder to me, I don't think this deck is so fast that the additional life loss wouldn't be an issue so I'd probably run ghastly demise in that slot.

[neckfire]

so i recently got 9th at the scg open due to tie breaks i went x-1-1 for the day my only loss was to rb goblins i drew with new horizons with black in a tight 3 games. for reference here is the deck
http://sales.starcitygames.com//deckdatabase/displaydeck.php?DeckID=35756

[gypsy]

so i recently got 9th at the scg open due to tie breaks i went x-1-1 for the day my only loss was to rb goblins i drew with new horizons with black in a tight 3 games. for reference here is the deck
http://sales.starcitygames.com//deckdatabase/displaydeck.php?DeckID=35756

anything you would change in the deck? i want to play cb this weekend, leyline seems kind of weird and theres little to no storm combo here so i dont think it would be that good

[neckfire]

well il be honost..the leylines were there to help me in the top 8.I expected alot of ooze combo and storm combo.and leyline while costing me a card does protect me for at least a couple turns if it's in my opener.
it's mainly there to protect vs discard.i sided it in against the gate to protect my hand and it worked like a charm.
but if i were to replace it*which i would as it was a meta call*
id do -3 leyline -1 needle
+1 reb
+1 spell pierce
+1 dispell
+1 meta slot

the second needle in the board is useless it never came in.

[gypsy]

well il be honost..the leylines were there to help me in the top 8.I expected alot of ooze combo and storm combo.and leyline while costing me a card does protect me for at least a couple turns if it's in my opener.
it's mainly there to protect vs discard.i sided it in against the gate to protect my hand and it worked like a charm.
but if i were to replace it*which i would as it was a meta call*
id do -3 leyline -1 needle
+1 reb
+1 spell pierce
+1 dispell
+1 meta slot

the second needle in the board is useless it never came in.

gonna try your list, how would u sb vs the survival variants and other popular decks

thanks in advance for any helo u can give me

[The Duck!!]

hey guys,would like to get your opinions on this 2 decklists that I'm planning to use.

probant countertop list 1:

4 noble hierarch
4 tarmogoyf
3 rhox war monk
2 qasali pridemage
1 progenitus

4 force of will
4 daze
4 brainstorm
3 swords to plowshares
3 natural order
2 jace,the mind sculptor
1 elspeth, knight errant
3 counterbalance
3 sensei divining top

3 misty rainforest
2 flooded strand
2 windswept heath
3 tropical island
3 tundra
1 savannah
1 dryad arbor
2 island
1 forest
1 plains

probant countertop list 2:

4 noble hierarch
4 tarmogoyf
3 rhox war monk
2 qasali pridemage
1 progenitus

4 force of will
4 daze
4 brainstorm
3 natural order
3 swords to plowshares
2 jace,the mind sculptor
1 elspeth,knight errant
3 counterbalance
2 sensei divining top

3 misty rainforest
2 flooded strand
2 windswept heath
3 tropical island
3 tundra
1 savannah
1 horizons canopy
1 dryad arbor
2 island
1 forest
1 plains

the only difference of the 2 builds is that the 1st build, I run 3 tops. In the 2nd build, I removed 1 top and put in 1 canopy instead. which do you prefer? why? thanks a lot.

[bokepa]

I prefer list 1 eventhough i dont like neither of them.

In list one with only 3 CMC=3 and 6 CMC=4 your countertops will not be very strong. Jace and Elspeth provide a good late game but you will not be able to reach the lategame with only 3 removal and a bad lock. You should choose between planeswalkers and NO package and up your control elements.

In list two 1 random Horyzon Canopy will do nothing for you. If you run Canopy you should run Knight of the Reliquary with Crucible and other utlity lands.

And finally, I can understand playing with 3 CB, but top its always good at 4 copies. Especially with Jace and Fetchlands to get rid of extra copies.

I would pick list 1 and do:

-1 Jace
-1 Elspeth
+1 SDT
+1 Predict / CB / SToP / Vedalken Shakles / Oblivion Ring / Jitte / Trygon Predator

[The Duck!!]

I prefer list 1 eventhough i dont like neither of them.

In list one with only 3 CMC=3 and 6 CMC=4 your countertops will not be very strong. Jace and Elspeth provide a good late game but you will not be able to reach the lategame with only 3 removal and a bad lock. You should choose between planeswalkers and NO package and up your control elements.

In list two 1 random Horyzon Canopy will do nothing for you. If you run Canopy you should run Knight of the Reliquary with Crucible and other utlity lands.

And finally, I can understand playing with 3 CB, but top its always good at 4 copies. Especially with Jace and Fetchlands to get rid of extra copies.

I would pick list 1 and do:

-1 Jace
-1 Elspeth
+1 SDT
+1 Predict / CB / SToP / Vedalken Shakles / Oblivion Ring / Jitte / Trygon Predator

thanks for the comment. I think running 3 sdt is enough. I could probably make cb into 4. I'm actually thinking of putting 1 rafiq of the many mainboard. i'm planning of running list 1 and probably take out 1 island and put in rafiq. I think 18 lands + 4 hierarchs is pretty enough to run the deck. still gonna test it though. thanks again.

[neckfire]

gonna try your list, how would u sb vs the survival variants and other popular decks

thanks in advance for any helo u can give me
peacekeeper swaps for the firespouts
spell snare comes in over counterspell unless you are on the play
depending on the varient you can bring in reb or spell pierce
hibernation is really good. i usually take out a clique and a goyf as they dont block well and you rarely win via aggro post board.
it depends on the build and if you think they have a tool box against you or a more definite sideboard.

if your vs ooze remember your pithing needles name necrotic ooze so they can't combo out then drop a peacekeeper..save your counterspells to protect it at all cost.

in game 1 dont be afraid to spout away mana dorks.especially vs ooze as they keep mana light hands.spouting away 1 noble or a birds is worth it in my opinion.jace bounce your dork works well also.
im sure you noticed i dont bring in my gy hate vs non ooze deck's well the reason being is i dont like it.
you can do it if you wish go 0 goyf post board. the clique is valued more in my opinion bc of its cipt it has.
hope that helps if you have any more question's let me know.

[neckfire]

vs merfolk i found myself doing this plan
-1 spout
-1 counterbalance
-1 top
-1 clique
+3 peacekeeper
+1 spell pierce

the idea is you have 5 definite hate trump cards post board.play to whichever one you draw. between card drawing and your trump cards merfolk really isnt that hard of a match.I know that's alot to boast but i havent been beaten by it yet in the 3 times iv faced it in tournament play.
in richmond i faced the hardest version for this deck Uw fish.Not only is he just fish so he trumps blue non aggro decks he has swords for the peacekeeper.

[Catitas]

Does anyone have Paulo Vitor Damo da Rosa report from gp columbus or the decklist?

[Piceli89]

Dear Countertop players,

My most sincere compliments for returning back into the scene and fill top8s with your boring, frustrating presence.

Yours,
Legacy metagame

[Valtrix]

Does anyone have Paulo Vitor Damo da Rosa report from gp columbus or the decklist?

I looked for the report and list, but for some reason it seems to have been deleted from Channel Fireball where it was originally. I did go back through the thread to see if his list was posted either, but unfortunately I didn't find it. However, I did find Martell's list, which took 2nd place in the tournament and is very similar to PV's except for perhaps the sideboard:


4 Flooded Strand
2 Island
1 Karakas
1 Misty Rainforest
1 Mountain
1 Plains
4 Scalding Tarn
3 Tropical Island
3 Tundra
2 Volcanic Island
22 lands

4 Tarmogoyf
2 Vendilion Clique
6 creatures

4 Brainstorm
4 Counterbalance
3 Counterspell
3 Firespout
4 Force of Will
3 Jace, the Mind Sculptor
1 Oblivion Ring
4 Sensei's Divining Top
2 Spell Snare
4 Swords to Plowshares
32 other spells

Sideboard
1 Blue Elemental Blast
1 Firespout
1 Grim Lavamancer
1 Hydroblast
3 Krosan Grip
1 Llawan, Cephalid Empress
1 Meddling Mage
1 Pyroblast
1 Red Elemental Blast
2 Relic of Progenitus
2 Spell Pierce

[DragoFireheart]

Dear Countertop players,

My most sincere compliments for returning back into the scene and fill top8s with your boring, frustrating presence.

Yours,
Legacy metagame

Don't fret too much: many are still tinkering with Vengevine to see if it can be competitive without SotF.

[Piceli89]

Don't fret too much: many are still tinkering with Vengevine to see if it can be competitive without SotF.

Vengevine alone is easily solvable, the problem was when a Survival resolved and you knew you had to run and they tutored for every single counter-hate. The new Intuition-based lists are going to be much less consistent, just as the new ANT configurations.

[DragoFireheart]

Vengevine alone is easily solvable, the problem was when a Survival resolved and you knew you had to run and they tutored for every single counter-hate. The new Intuition-based lists are going to be much less consistent, just as the new ANT configurations.

Post-game 1 yes, but then they tend to bring in stuff to replace the Vengeine with like Natural Order.

[Barbwire]

Hey guys, been a viewer of the site for awhile now and finally registered to make a post. I've been reading this thread for awhile and I've seen alot of post about issues with fast aggro or SotF (banned now so there is no issue now, though I didn't have to much of one to begin with.) I built my Countertop Thopter a few months ago but it doesnt really match anything being thrown around on the forum, It's won a few misc legacy tournaments against zoo (burn pkg,equip pkg, and the recent build that took Japan.) survival, stacks, burn, MBC, and RB Gobs without to many issues, usually stabalizing around 6 life. Well here's my current build and I'd like to see what everybody thinks about it and get some critiques on bettering it, thanks

4x Swords to Plowshares
3x Brainstorm
1x Pithing Needle
4x Sensei's Divining Top
4x Enlightened Tutor
4x Counterbalance
1x Sword of the Meek
2x Thopter Foundry
2x Counterspell
1x Ashnod's Altar
1x Humility
3x Wrath of God
3x Jace, the Mind Sculptor
4x Force of Will
4x Tundra
4x Island
3x Plains
1x Misty Rainforest
1x Scalding Tarn
4x Flooded Strand
3x Wasteland
1x Ancient Den
1x Seat of Synod
1x Academy Ruins

Sideboard: (Varies on where im playing but this is usual setup)
1x Engineered Explosives
1x Crucible of Worlds
3x Leyline of Sanctity
2x Grindstone
2x Painter's Servant
3x Echoing Truth
3x Path to Exile

I've found that tutoring for a 1-4cc enchant/artifact for the trigger on CB works very well, I usually can always find what I need and have the CBT combo down by T3 90% of the time. But anyways, I'd like to see what everyone else thinks of my build, thanks again.
-Sean

[Hanni]

Vengevine alone is easily solvable, the problem was when a Survival resolved and you knew you had to run and they tutored for every single counter-hate. The new Intuition-based lists are going to be much less consistent, just as the new ANT configurations.

Talking about Vengevine in this thread seems a little premature right now, but I disagree with you. U/G/b Vengevine w/ Intuition/Entomb is far more broken than the Survival version, and once people realize this, you have another (6?) more months of Vengevine until the next banned/restricted announcement. Seriously.

[Antonius]

Have any of the Trinket Mage proponents ever considered running Cursed Scroll as a tutor target? I was testing Merfolk recently and locked down by it pretty hard.

[The Treefolk Master]

Adam Prosak was a huge fan of it in his UW Countertop decks. He ran 1 in the sideboard.

[keys]

Talking about Vengevine in this thread seems a little premature right now, but I disagree with you. U/G/b Vengevine w/ Intuition/Entomb is far more broken than the Survival version, and once people realize this, you have another (6?) more months of Vengevine until the next banned/restricted announcement. Seriously.

Without Survival, you can't just tutor up a Shriekmaw to kill my Peacekeeper, or a Pridemage to destroy my Tormod's Crypt. Our hate will actually be reliable now that Vengevine players don't also have a toolbox of answers.

These Intuition/Buried Alive Vengevine decks are more of a one-trick pony.

[Hanni]

Without Survival, you can't just tutor up a Shriekmaw to kill my Peacekeeper, or a Pridemage to destroy my Tormod's Crypt. Our hate will actually be reliable now that Vengevine players don't also have a toolbox of answers.


Except the deck is 1-2 turns faster than Survival versions, which makes it possible to race relevant hate. Plus, you know, there's a sideboard, allowing Vengevine to bring in a backup plan.

[keys]

Except the deck is 1-2 turns faster than Survival versions, which makes it possible to race relevant hate. Plus, you know, there's a sideboard, allowing Vengevine to bring in a backup plan.

Typical Survival Vengevine had about a 4 turn clock. Are you saying this deck wins on turn 2 or 3 consistently? Intuition costs 2U... how often are you expecting to get turn 1 Imp/Rootwalla/Vine hands? You have a 10% chance of having all three in your starting 7... I call bullshit.

[Barbwire]

Typical Survival Vengevine had about a 4 turn clock. Are you saying this deck wins on turn 2 or 3 consistently? Intuition costs 2U... how often are you expecting to get turn 1 Imp/Rootwalla/Vine hands? You have a 10% chance of having all three in your starting 7... I call bullshit.

<---Concure, though I believe the actual % rate is lower than 10 ;)

[keys]

The chance of having one card in your opening 7 is about 47%. The probability of all three is .47 ^ 3, correct? Maybe I'm doing this wrong...

Of course there are other combinations of cards that will put Vengevines into play on turn 2, but none of these will be faster than a turn 3 kill.

[Barbwire]

The chance of having one card in your opening 7 is about 47%. The probability of all three is .47 ^ 3, correct? Maybe I'm doing this wrong...

Of course there are other combinations of cards that will put Vengevines into play on turn 2, but none of these will be faster than a turn 3 kill.

I believe the % of having 1 card out of 60 in your opening hand is 1.6% this number increases according to copies of the card within the deck so for a consistant scenario we'll go with 4 = 6.4%. Now wanting to have 3 of the cards you need to pull it off in opening hand you do 6.4/3 = 2.13% overall. I believe, though I'm not that great at statistics.

[Barbwire]

Regarless of the actual % rate, I don't believe that deck spits out a consistant 2-3 kill

[luma]

The odds for having at least one specific card in your hand doesn't increase straight according to the number of copies. The odds for a one-off to appear in your opening 7 is 7/60 = 11.7%. For a card that you have two in your deck, 22.1%; three: 31.5%, four: 39.9%.

If you need one each of three cards in your opening 7 (imp/rootwalla/vine for example), and there's four of each in your deck, the odds for that are 6.5% if you allow multiples of those three cards, 3,2% if you don't.

[Barbwire]

So ya...I was closeish, forgot to divide the opening 7

[Mantis]

IIRC from math 5 years ago, this is the way to calculate:
For a 1-of to show up in your opening 7: 1 - (59/60 x 58/59 x 57/58 x 56/57 x 55/56 x 54/55 x 53/54 ) = don't have a caluclator here
For a 2 - of it's 1 - (58/60 x 57/59 x etc. etc.)
For 3-of: 1 - (57/60 - 56/59 etc.)
Etc.

First you calculate the chance of not drawing the card and then you have to substract that chance from 1 (or 100%)
You have to keep in mind that with each card you draw, when opening your hand of 7, the number of cards left in your deck decreases and the chances of drawing the card become higher.

[Nidd]

Anyone got a recent list of a Bant CounterTop without the Red splash at hand?