CAB - JaceTM [Archive]

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Mon,Goblin Chief

06-20-2010, 09:03 PM

As I landed a sweet little writing-gig at SCG after the talent search, the breakdown and analysis of the current version have appeared in my articles over there. As such, if you're interested in the deck, take a look:

Deck presentation and explanation (http://www.starcitygames.com/magic/legacy/20910_Eternal_on_the_Other_Side_of_the_Ocean_CAB_Jace.html)

Gameplay primer (http://www.starcitygames.com/magic/legacy/21037_Eternal_on_the_Other_Side_of_the_Ocean_Playing_and_Sideboarding_with_Jace.html)

I'll also keep this opening post updated with my most current list, for conveniences sake.

CAB JaceTM - 04/2011

4 Brainstorm
2 Sensei's Divining Top
3 Treasure Hunt
4 Jace the Mindsculptor

4 Swords to Plowshares
4 Engineered Explosives
4 Maze of Ith
3 Punishing Fire
2 Cunning Wish

2 Forbid
4 Force of Will

1 Academy Ruins
2 Wasteland
4 Grove of the Burnwillows
3 Tundra
3 Volcanic Island
1 Underground Sea
4 Scalding Tarn
4 Flooded Strand
1 Island
1 Plains
1 Mountain

Sideboard:
1 Wing Shards
1 Dismantling Blow
2 Extirpate
1 White Sun's Zenith
2 Red Elemental Blast
2 Negate
2 Pithing Needle
1 Enlightened Tutor
1 Nihil Spellbomb
1 Ethersworn Canonist
1 Punishing Fire

Don't take the deck to an American tournament with this configuration, especially right now. My metagame is quite different and if you want to succeed in one with more combo, you need a very different Sideboard! Even I switched mine regularly, depending on what exactly I expect to play against this time, and my metagame is reasonably stable, not like the SCG circuit.

Also, for the sake of historical correctness and because there's still a lot of useful information in it, here's the original Deck breakdown and plan I wrote when I posted about the deck here for the first time:

CAB – JaceTM

I've started this thread to unveil team CAB's newest creation. If you've been playing Vintage for (quite) some time, you might remember us because of my SCG-article when I first brought the Gifts Ungiven deck into the limelight in Vintage (yes, before Smmenen :p ).

Since I have moved to Berlin (where nobody plays Vintage but there's Legacy), I have been trying to figure out some way to build a control deck that actually feels good. When I saw the new Jace, I was sure it was busted and set out with my Teammate Maxim Barkman to find the control build to totally exploit it. This is what I think this Deck has done. I proudly present to you

CAB – JaceTM.

4 Swords to Plowshares
4 Maze of Ith
3 Firespout
4 Engineered Explosives
2 Cunning Wish

2 Forbid
4 Force of Will

4 Brainstorm
3 Treasure Hunt
2 Sensei's Divining Top
4 Jace, the Mind Sculptor

1 Academy Ruins
1 Dust Bowl
4 Mishra's Factory
1 Tolaria West

1 Mountain
1 Plains
1 Island

4 Flooded Strand
3 Scalding Tarn

2 Tundra
2 Underground Sea
2 Volcanic Island
1 Tropical Island
1 Plateau

(yes, I know this is 61 cards. I have had success with the 25 lands, 36 spells setup in past control decks, as it tends to balance mana vs spells quite nicely. If you want to cut something, the 61st card is Tolaria West, the cutting of which would bring you back down to a typical 24 as are used in Landstill)

Side:
1 Blue Elemental Blast
1 Pyroblast
1 Red Elemental Blast
4 Spell Pierce
1 Forbid
3 Extirpate
1 Pulse of the Fields
1 Wing Shards
1 Diabolic Edict
1 Krosan Grip

(note: I personally only own 3 Jace and don't have the funds to get the fourth atm. Therefore I'm running the deck with 3 Jace 4 Treasure Hunt without any remarkable loss in performance. Still, 4 Jace is optimal.).

Now that you're all on the same level thinking “what a pile”, let me tell you why this pile is in my personal opinion one of the best decks in the format right now (skip to the matchup-section if you wish to be convinced).
First, to provide some numbers in support, me and Maxim are, as far as I know, the only ones who ever played this deck. Our record in tournament games with this version and its slightly different predecessor is a combined 16 : 2 : 7, five of the seven draws being ID's. Four of these happened by Maxim and me drawing in two different tournaments when paired against one another, the fifth ID was me being gracious towards a non-stalling opponent when I was guaranteed to win the tournament even with a draw and he could have stalled for the time-out but didn't. The other two draws came against Dredge, the matchup we actually decided to just give up but somehow still managed to fight to a draw.

First, strategy. This is a hardcore control deck, more defensive than even Landstill. Play it as such or loose. The decks goal is simple: get a Jace into play and keep it there. It will allow you to gain complete control over the game, than ultimate them. If you can keep Jace in play for more than one or two turns, you'll win. Guaranteed.

The Tools:

Maindeck

I)Removal

StP: should be obvious.

Maze of Ith: Maze is a hidden gem, in my opinion, and woefully underused in Legacy, being played only in Lands. It is, after all, an uncounterable zero-cost spotremoval for most creatures that are played in Legacy. The fact that it gets around Counterbalance is incredible in that matchup, as it means you can easily stall out till you can explode the damn Enchantment away. Being able to drop this under an opposing Standstill and thereby dominate all those modern Landstill builds that don't use Decree is just gravy.
In this deck in particular, it also forces the opponent to overextend into your sweepers, which provides card advantage and allows you to set up a board state where a sweeper will allow for a Jace next turn even though the opponent has held back a creature. It dieing to Wasteland sucks, but on the other hand that prevents them from manascrewing you with said Wasteland.
Finally, Maze costs a landdrop, slowing down your manadevelopment. The comparatively low cost of all the answers is therefore mandatory. Considering Firespout is the most expensive answer that cannot be broken down over multiple turns, this has proven to be manageable. I can see where Maze + Wrath would cause problems, though.

Firespout: Having tested many different builds of Landstill, the four-mana mass-removals always seemed far to clunky for me. Firespout costing only three is such a huge upside that you can support some creatures surviving it. Its cheaper casting cost is all the more important because of the use of Maze, slowing down your early mana development.

Explosives is a 4-of because it is one of the most versatile solutions in the Format. In particular, it's a fast answer to Vial, almost always gets by Counterbalance and stops Zoo's triple 1-drop kill hyper-aggro draw. In addition, it gives you maindeck outs to opposing planeswakers. It often working as mass-removal is another bonus and very relevant synergy. I actually don't see why most Landstill variants don't use this as a 4 of, it's just that good.

Cunning Wish: This deck is slow as hell. You really can't afford to autolose towards anything running Loam game 1. Pulse of the Fields provides a necessary buffer against Zoo's burn and having access to some form of Edict-effect allows you to beat Progenitus (or Reanimator pre-banning).
Usually people claim Wish sucks because it eats so much of your Sideboard, making your post-board games worse. Thing is, this isn't really the case here. Consider the SB I was going to run before I figured out I could use Wish:

1 Pyroblast
1 Red Elemental Blast
4 Spell Pierce
1 Forbid
3 Extirpate
2 Pulse of the Fields
2 Wrath of God
2 Diabolic Edict
(yes, 16 cards. As I said, this was during the tuning stages)

A ton of cheap countermagic and disruption to slow down combo till you can get Forbid online to lock them out, Pulse to survive Zoo's burn and Edict/Wrath to be able to SB something to handle Progenitus and shroud-guys from Reanimator (R.I.P). You lose basically nothing by going over to Cunning Wish.

The only real loss are the two Wraths against Bant, but the matchup is so incredibly favorable that you practically only ever lose to Progenitus. This means having MD access to Wing Shards and Edict will likely win you far more game ones than you would have won game twos and threes thanks to Wrath.

II)The Countermagic

4 FoW: Again, I don't think I need to explain these.

2 Forbid: Counterspell is clunky already, why would I run something that costs even more? Well, thing is, this deck doesn't plan on countering much early game. That's what the boatload of removal is for. Forbid on the other hand allows you to turn all this dead removal into more countering when the removal is dead (control, combo) and gives this deck a near-hardlock. With Jace on the table, you can draw two cards a turn and Forbid will then allow you to match your opponents one draw a turn with a counter a turn. Considering they're bound to draw some blanks, this translates into a locked gamestate where you can start ramping Jace till they force you to empty your hand, after which you refuel with Jace again. I have yet to lose a match where I got this going. The fact that ramping Jace practically increases their blank-count is provides further sweet locking. In addition, your draw-engine (Treasure Hunt) is likely to fill your hand with a ton of lands. Turning these into counterspells has a similar effect to full-out Jace-locking them.

III)The Engine

Brainstorm and SDT: While common inclusions in Legacy control decks, they have a special purpose here, they serve to set up your early-game draw-engine, Treasure Hunt. Both allow you to accumulate (or even put back) lands on top of your library, turning Treasure Hunt into Ancestral Recall. Due to this interaction, holding back Brainstorm as long as humanly possible is necessary. I _never_ brainstorm early, even if I have Fetchlands, unless I have run out of Landdrops or a game-winning threat is about to resolve for which I'm hoping to draw a solution.

Treasure Hunt: This is were some of the flak aimed at the deck will be incurred. The deck is perfectly set up to run Standstill, it actually works better under Standstill than most real Landstill decks thanks to Maze, Mishra and Dust Bowl. So why not use the Enchantment?
I love control-decks, and as such I have been testing many variations of Landstill before building something else. Truth be told, I've learned to hate Standstill. My cheap draw-spells are meant to allow me to create a boardposition where I'm in control even though I have to drop (and I run) more lands than they do. Standstill rarely provided this for me, as decks come out very fast in Legacy and you need to already have to established an at least stable board to be able to play Standstill, otherwise it will rot in your hand (which is where it was most of the time when I tested it). Aether Vial, the opponent going first and dropping large creatures both turn 1 and 2, opposing Wastelands on my defending Mishra's (or the simple threat of that happening) or even a simple SDT I couldn't yet drop made Standstill dead far to often. That is not to say Standstill sucked all the time. When I started the game, StPed their first drop eot and dropped a Standstill it was godlike. This simply didn't happen often enough for me to make it good.
Both Standstill and Treasure Hunt need setup to function, so lets compare the two depending on situation:

a) The opponent is advantaged and applying a lot of pressure: Standstill is simply dead. Treasure Hunt is, statistically, nearly a draw 2 (29 lands in the deck, 32 spells, Chapin's math from his Worldwake article clocks in a little over 1.9 cards. Obviously this goes down a little over the course of the game as you use Fetchlands. Thing is, in the lategame you'll either be able to setup or not need all that much draw any more). At the very least it cycles to get you closer to some much needed solution. Sometimes you will even be able to Brainstorm one turn to find some defense, then use Treasure Hunt next turn to (statistically) draw 3 cards (one guaranteed land plus the ~1.9 cards a random Hunt will draw you).

b) The opponent is slightly advantaged on the board. Standstill is still nearly dead, as you'll have to topdeck quite some manlands/mazes to stabilize and can't use drawn spells any more to change the situation. On the other hand, in a situation like this you'll likely have the time to abuse Top or Brainstorm to set up at least two lands on top of your deck.

c) The situation is stable, but the opponent has Manlands and Wastes of his own (see Fish): Standstill may work, or they may draw better than you do and force you to throw away the game by breaking it. On the other hand, you're nearly certain to set up the full-value Treasure Hunt with Brainstorm or Top.

d) The situation is 100% in your favor: Standstill is Ancestral Recall. Treasure Hunt likely is at least plus 3, too, though. Both are pretty much win more here, second turn Standstill on the play aside.

Note: I have ignored the benefits of Jace in regards to the Treasure Hunt engine here as having an active Jace usually translates into a win anyway. That being said, Treasure Hunt breaks Jace even further.

Realize something? Treasure Hunt is better in all those situations where you most need carddraw, as in when you're in trouble. Sure, drawing extra-cards is always good in a control-deck, but it's most needed when you're on the backfoot, when Standstill is worse than nothing (you can't topdeck nothing). Treasure Hunt at the very least cycles and at best removes a landclump to your hand (so that you get to make landdrops) while still finding a business spell.
Both cards need setup, though different forms of setup. Standstill asks you to draw your removal first to set up your draw. Treasure Hunt asks you to find one of your cheap draw-effects first to set up the next stage but is still an expected +2 if you can't. As I said, I see my carddrawing as a way to actually get to a stable boardstate, so I by far prefer Hunt.
So much for the “usability” part of the argument, Treasure Hunt wins, hands down. How about that other argument, the “Treasure Hunt will draw you only a bunch of lands, so who cares” one. Firstly, this is a control-deck, and a very manahungry one at that, even with the low curve (you love doing a ton of different stuff per turn) so being able to make landdrops is a good thing. Secondly, removing a landclump from the top of your deck is like FoF into 5 lands. Sure, it sucks for the FoF but at least you don't have to draw crap for five more turns. Thirdly, you have Forbid, Jace and Brainstorm to turn these crappy lands into actual spells. Fourthly, look at the lands in this deck (yes, this is where Maze comes in again). Four are removal, four are blockers, one is a Tutor, one is a repeatable Stone Rain and one is a recursion engine. That means roughly every third land you draw (34%) is actually kind of like a spell, making the odds of hitting business not seem all that bad. Also, Treasure Hunt is guaranteed to hit at least some business where Standstill might flat-out wiff (I had quite a few Treasure Hunts for 4+).

Jace the Mindsculptor: What can I say about that guy. He's still incredibly undervalued on the source, as far as I can tell. Comparing him to FoF is an insult – to Jace! This guy is so good, its hard to explain if you haven't ever played with him. An active Jace simply ends the game, usually, even though it might take another 15 turns for the game to actually finish. He digs hard for solutions, distracts your opponent from hitting you (especially if they've played against Jace before), bounces attackers in a pinch only to dig next turn when you have had time to untap and his +2 is far better than it seems. Reducing opposing card quality by roughly 50% (and having near-perfect information) is a sweet benefit if you're hitting your opponent with a clock equivalent to a Rhox War Monk (I haven't seen the ultimate not be lethal, ever). This deck was built to abuse Jace, if you try it you'll see what I mean about him being insane.

IV)The Mana

This is the second area where the decks looks extremely weird. Five colors? Only a single Tropical? Wtf? The deck started out as a basic three-color URW control-deck. I soon realized I at least wanted a single off-color dual to be able to use Explosives to blow up opposing Planeswalkers. I chose a Tropical for the ability to “kick” Firespout once in a while to clean the air of Spellstutter Sprites, Vendillion Cliques, Bitterblossom tokens and random Vampire Nighthawks. Finally, I realized that, with Extirpate being the best answer to Loam and Edict being the best out to Reanimator (as it would answer both shroud-guys and Iona-white) wanted Black in the deck. As Extirpate was Loam-hate first and foremost, at least two black sources were necessary so as to not be blanked out if I had drawn the Sea early and gotten it wasted. (I tried removing the Green instead of going five-color, but the benefits of one more basic were marginal compared to being able to hit flyers once in a while).
I agree that the manabase looks freaky, but there are a few secrets that make it work. Number one, you only need UU plus a single mana of the appropriate splash for all your spells to be active (aside from Pulse and Wing Shards in the SB). 15 blue sources (plus Tolaria West, which has been added exactly because of this, it and Dust Bowl were Wastelands for a long time) has been fine so far, and wouldn't be helped by the removal of colors anyway. You also have access to basic lands for your three major colors, providing insurance against getting your removal-colors wasted out.
Number two, the decks is 99% active if you only have URW sources on the board. Explosives is a little hampered (it can't hit 4's, but most other decks using it can't do that at all), Firespout doesn't hit flyers (again, other Landstill decks using this can't do it at all) and you're cut of from Extirpate and Edict, your wish-targets.
Number two: you only need B and G once per game, usually. Considering how rarely they're used, having your off-color source wasted after it being used is usually not crippling at all.
Number three: There are practically no matchups where you actually need all five colors. You will always need either black or green, but not both, making this essentially a four-color deck with a varying splash-color.
Number four: There are only 2 less basics (and 1 more Fetch) in comparison to most Landstill manabases, meaning this manabase is surprisingly resistant to Wasteland. In addition Mazes provide a very good Wasteland defense. They either get wasted (meaning your mana goes unmolested) or they buy the time necessary to recover from the losses inflicted on the manabase by Wasteland. Obviously recurring Wasteland just ruins the deck, though, but that's true for pretty much any control deck. At least this can wish for Extirpate to stop the recursion.
I have tested this deck quite a bit, and as random as it looks, the manabase works. It is somewhat complicated and knowing when to drop what land is one things you simply have to learn by playing. Keep these few basic principles in mind:
1)Never ever crack your Fetchlands unnecessarily for thinning. You should already be doing this in other decks to maximize Top and Brainstorm, but it is even more important here. Fetches reduce your in-library landcount (meaning Treasure Hunt gets all so slightly worse), you have ten Brainstorm-style effects (Brainstorm, Top, Jace), real lands can get wasted and finally an in-play Fetch lets you get whichever splash-color you're missing.
2)Always aim to safely establish URW: This can happen either through getting Tundra, Volcanic Plateau (the reason it is in here instead of more blue mana, I was actually missing it when testing; being able to set up URW in a way that a single Wasteland can never cut you off is pretty sweet) or by setting up the Wasteland-proof Island, Plains, Mountain. Note that it is often preferable to present something they can waste (especially drawn splash-duals that are unnecessary in the matchup) so as to bait them and protect Mazes/Mishras
3)If you're color-light, start by dropping colorless sources. Many players will perceive the threat of blocking with Mishra as high enough to hit it with Wasteland.

The special lands:
Mishra's Factory: Mishra is just that good in this format. Having your manabase block and provide an additional though rarely used win-condition is quite valuable
Dust Bowl: Manalands don't die to your sweepers, which makes them annoying. Having an additional way to deal with them in your manabase is sweet. This and T-West were Wastelands for a long time, but having another blue source that can tutor up Mazes, EE and Ruins lategame as well as this multi-wasteland won out.
Tolaria West: See under Dust Bowl. This is a rather new addition, meant to help assure regular early access to double blue.
Academy Ruins: The Explosives-Ruins lock is insane in this deck. Games usually go long and you get to build up a lot of mana. This just locks the board at some point, the same way Forbid locks the stack. It also serves as a win-condition in a pinch, making sure you can't deck before they do after you ultimated Jace.

Sideboard

So much for the Maindeck. The Sideboard is comparatively simple, but outdated at the moment as the new banning will likely eliminate ANT and Reanimator from the format, at least until these decks have found a way to adapt or evolve. The explanation will be very short as a result

4 Spell Pierce
1 Forbid
3 Extirpate
2 REB
These were all scheduled to come in versus ANT and Reanimator (before I had Wish), the plan being to use the cheap spells to slow them down till you can get Forbid online (which is why you leave the Forbid in the SB now, having access to it four times), which in turn should buy you time to go into full Jace lockdown mode.
All of these also served as additional tools against Landstill-style control, considering you want to take out 4 StP and 3 Firespout.
Extirpate also fills the role of Graveyard hate, be it against Loam, Survival or other stuff of that ilk. Note that we simple decided to concede the Dredge matchup as there wasn't enough room to cover Dredge, Reanimator and ANT.

1 Edict
1 Wing Shards
Wishable removal that could also kill Progenitus or Iona. The Wing Shards tended to also come in against Reanimator, but again, that's gone.
Pulse of the Fields
Zoo can usually only get you with burn, this serves to make that a lot harder.

1 Blue Elemental Blast
1 Krosan Grip
Essentially the two flex-slots in the board. Grip can handle Needle on EE, which is a pain, while also being able to hit SDT, which is why we ran it over other Disenchant-effects.
BEB is mainly Blood Moon protection, but also very important against Price of Progress (that card is so good against this deck, you always have to counter it and just die if you can't).

As you can see, Spell Pierces and Edict were in the SB mainly because of combo and Reanimator. Having 15 dead removals MD, you almost never won a game one against them, which is why you hit them so hard in the Sideboard (the same is true for Dredge, but you can only hit two of the three if you want to be able to have anything else in your sideboard). On the other hand, you are practically preboarded against anything running normal creatures, meaning you don't have much room to sideboard much out there anyway.
This changes with the ban, meaning you don't have to abandon the Dredge matchup any more and will probably still get one or two other sweet spots out of it (more PoP hate is welcome).

The Matchups:

I know people will decry this part of the primer, as I will be claiming so many favorable matchups. The truth of the matter is, this deck is very, very good at killing and stopping cheap non-shroud creatures. Most decks in Legacy (aside from those the DCI just killed) win exactly through these. Hence the high number of favorable matchups.
ATTENTION: If you are not godlike at magic, you will probably have trouble reproducing these results when you pick up this deck. I've been playing control since roughly 1997 and I still had a really hard time getting used to this deck's playstyle. As an example, I went something like 2:8 versus Goblins when I first tested the matchup. By now I'm convinced it's actually a pretty good matchup. The deck is a very intricate puzzle and the correct play is often very un-obvious and counterintuitive. Until one has learned what these plays look like (and they are very different from matchup to matchup), it is pretty much impossible to reproduce our results with the deck. This is not a deck to play cold.

Goblins: Favorable. The more enablers they have, the worse this gets. They can sometimes overwhelm you lategame as Goblins is wont to do against control, but this happens comparatively rarely thanks to Forbid. This means they have to get Lackey or Vial to stick to win most of the time. If they don't, it's usually smooth sailing.

Fish: 50-50 to strongly favored. This has the best matchup against Fish of all the control-decks I have tested. If they play 2 Kira, 4 Stifle, 4 Mutavault, 4 Waste, 4 Vial, 4 Standstill as the build I'm testing against (as that is what I believe the deck should be running) it's about 50:50. If they don't have Stifle as I'm seeing a lot lately, EE eats them alive. If they don't have Kira, Maze does. Finally, if they don't have Standstill (I don't think anybody is stupid enough to cut Vial), they lose the “combo-potential” of turn 1 Vial, turn 2 Standstill. I call this a combo because I haven't found any deck that could consistently beat that sequence of plays if it couldn't be answered before Standstill hit the table.

Zoo: slightly unfavorable to strongly favored. This is utterly dependent on how many Sylvan Libraries and Price of Progress they are running. If they are the maximum speed build (Steppe Lynx, Fireblast, 4 PoP) with Sylvan Library, this is pretty damn tough. With so much pressure, they can usually catch you off-guard and stick a price for the win. Without Sylvan or PoP, they don't really stand a chance (testing against a non-PoP build, more than 50% of my losses – I still won easily more than half the games, PoP really is what makes this tough – were due to them having an early unanswered Sylvan, which not only fueled their burn but also invalidated Pulse).

Aggro-Control of all shapes and forms aside from Canadian Thresh: extremely favorable to very favorable (Wastes and Stifle tend to do better than Counterbalance). If they don't have some form of combo-kill, they might as well scoop this. You ignore counterbalance for the most part thanks to Maze and Explosives and they run far too few creatures to actually get there. Progenitus is their only reasonable way to a W, and you can answer even that (Kira from the SB works once in a while, too, though). The Survival-Iona builds are easier, as you can usually shut of the Survival after a while (or match the CA with Jace, I have done that before) and Iona doesn't ignore Maze as Prog does.

Canadian Thrash: unfavorable. What a difference a 3/3 shroud and some burn can make. Tarmogoyf is a non-issue, but all the Stifles and counters protect Mongoose long enough to get you to the point where they can simply burn you out with triple Lightning Bolt. Shroud is really a bitch against a deck with Maze. I don't see how the Landstill-players in the UW(x)-thread can claim this matchup differently, though, seeing as they have even fewer ways to take out shroud guys.

Landstill: very favorable to slightly favorable. If they are running the versions typically discussed in the thread here (without a fourth color and without Decree), you are very favored. You run more draw than they do, your deck actually works better under Standstill than theirs does, meaning they loose most of their draw-engine and you have more Jaces (they usually only run 2. Considering having Jace online usually beats whatever else the other player does, this is big). You also have the ability to explode their Planeswalkers thanks to the many colors while they have maybe two Jaces to answer yours. Preboard, Forbid provides another huge advantage, transforming dead removal into countermagic as long as you take care not to run it into their counters (they usually have one or two counterspells more than you do Forbids, not counting the Wishes, so don't run Forbid-buyback on everything they play, you're sure to get hit by Counterspell at some point). This only counts preboard, as they're boarding out most of theirs the same way you do.
If they splash the forth color, they draw even on Planeswalker removal, if they run Decree they get their draw-engine back (even though you can slow this down a lot by playing a preemptive EE @ 0). As such your only advantage is having more Jaces and Forbid game 1 at that point, making the game a lot more equal.

Lands: I honestly don't have the slightest idea as nobody plays this here and I haven't tested a single game against Lands. I suppose it should be ok, just try to FoW the Manabond, then drop Fetches/basics into play till you can wish for Extirpate and take Loam out. Postboard this gets even easier, as you have more access to your Loam hate.

Reanimator and ANT: The two bad matchups the DCI decided to be so friendly to remove (even though I disagree with the ban, but this is not the place for that discussion). Preboard you have nearly no chance as you simply don't do anything the opponent cares about before turn 3+ if they are skilled (gets a shroud-guy/doesn't run headfirst into FoW but also doesn't wait till Forbid is fully established). Postboard you are ok, with all the cheap disruption into Forbid-lock but not good enough by far to compensate for the atrocious first game percentage.

Dredge: The conceded matchup. If they run only Ichorid and Moeba, Extirpate on Ichorid can actually win this because you are very very good at picking of Zombies again and again. There is nearly no way to win game 1, though. Thanks to your defensive nature, you can often fight game 1 for quite some time, than screw them with Extirpate in the second and simply survive for the draw in the third (as both Maxim and I managed in our only tournament matches against Dredge). Still, a horrible matchup you'll be happy to escape with a draw. This will get a lot better now that we have room in the Sideboard.

Considering this is Legacy, there are likely a million decks I haven't mentioned. As a guideline, if it uses non-shroud creatures to win, you want to play against it. If it uses spells only to win, you don't.

I hope you'll give this deck a try, as I think the deck is a lot of fun and very good right now. I'll write about the new SB once I have figured it out (if there is any interest) and I'll be happy to answer any questions you might have.

Thanks for reading,

Carsten Kötter

Team CAB

PS: If enough people show interest, I'll try to write a guide on how to play each matchup. This is very difficult to simply write down, though, as minor decisions have a huge impact and therefore nothing can replace some solid playtesting.

Blitzbold

06-21-2010, 03:40 PM

Thanks for all the work and giving birth to an interesting new deck. Unfortunately, Jace 2.0 is such a pain to get your hands on. As a friend of mine posted on Facebook just today: "So... Jace TMS (0.064 ounces = 80 USD) is actually worth his weight in gold (1 ounce = roughly 1,255 USD). Fascinating."

I also have to differ in finding CB / Top quite good against this. When playing against you with Ur Dreadstill it felt like everything but Jace himself was manageable. Jace is killable with REB, though, so at least such a build could give you some fits. An updated version of Nassif's UGr list might be interesting, too, although it tries to win with non-shrouded creatures.

There's been also some talk about picking up Burning-Tree Shaman in aggressive decks again. This guy can deal quite some damage, especially when paired with some more cats and burn. Did you test against such a build?

Mon,Goblin Chief

06-21-2010, 04:34 PM

Lol, Wizards has figured out the secret all the alchemists were searching for: transmutation.^^

Dreadstill: Hah, you directly caught the first one I forgot.
I don't count Dreadstill among those aggro-control decks, as it is a quite different deck as far as the threats it presents are concerned. Instead of having midsized creatures trying to hit you for a few turns, it has either Naughts, which kill in one to two swings (which makes relying on Maze dangerous because of Stifle/Waste) and Mishra's, which, contrary to the aggro-control creatures can't be exploded away. Add to this that the deck combines both mana denial (in particular Stifle, which makes it hard to actually get through with the EEs) and CB-Top and you have what is likely the hardest of the Countertop matchups. I would call it roughly even and very draw dependant (especially on the Dreadstill side some of draws are very good, others really bad), even though it might actually be slightly favorable for Jace just following my intuition after playing. I haven't played more than a few games against Dreadstill, though.
To comment on our games, we should both not draw to many conclusions from three games, two of which were decided essentially by bad opening hands (me getting naturally mana-screwed game 1, you needing to mulligan to 5 game 2 and having to drop a Standstill on my Top). I'm still annoyed at that stupid early singleton crucible that killed me game 3 as you proceeded to Wastelock me out from turn 4 onward - Crucible-Waste is truly sick in the control mirror! ;) (you are, by the way, the only one to whom I have dropped a tournament match with Jace so far, so congrats!)

Nassif-build: you mean his GP decklist (not UGr)? I actually tested against the original build (not an updated version, admittedly) and stopped when it was 6 - 0 for Jace with not a single game being even close...

I haven't tested against BTS-Zoo, I think the Shaman would probably perform slightly better than KotR, actually, but not make a huge difference (Knight usually deals 0-4 damage, being to slow to work before you've established yourself somewhat. BTS probably will slip through a few points thanks to making Maze a painland). Zoo's creatures all have a tendency to die a lot, though. BTS or no, the matchup will still revolve around Sylvan and PoP resolving.

Heresy

06-21-2010, 04:56 PM

Won 2 games in a row against UW Tempo. Did not side anything. First game was one sided once he was in topdeck mode. Second game was closer (ended at 2 life) and despite all his amazing tricks with waste and wayfarer, still got the forbid recursion going on. Firesprout is a wrath except for Jotun Grunt and Jace is amazing as usual.

Sisyphos

06-21-2010, 05:18 PM

CAB – JaceTM
Thanks to your defensive nature, you can often fight game 1 for quite some time, than screw them with Loam in the second and simply survive for the draw in the third (as both Maxim and I managed in our only tournament matches against Dredge).

I was just wondering about that statement and my recollection of seeing you use Life from the Loam in several of your games to lock opponents out of the game completely with Forbid. The list in your post does not have a Life from the Loam in it anymore. Did you find it too clunky? Are Jace and Treasure Hunt enough, thus making Loam as another lock engine overkill? Doesn't seem like you forgot to put it in the list unless I miscounted because the posted one has 61 cards.

Mon,Goblin Chief

06-21-2010, 06:20 PM

@Heresy: Sweet, someone testing the deck :) The "didn't side anything" is something that you'll get used to against creature-decks. I hope you'll continue to enjoy the deck!

@ Sisyphos:

Argh, this is simply slip-up in my writing. I replaced the card I meant (Extirpate) with its most common target (Loam). I've corrected that. Thanks :)

The games with Loam you remember on the other hand were with a deck that tried to apply the same gameplan through slightly different means (though the mass-removal + Maze into Jace plan and the Forbid-lock were both present in that deck). Essentially the Treasure Hunt engine was replaced with an Intuition-Loam engine in that version and Loam was indeed excellent at allowing you to establish a complete Forbid-lock asap.
In the end, though, the gains from Loam were not worth the effort. Treasure Hunt provides similar card-advantage in a more straight-forward way (in particular because Hunt delivers one business-spell when cast, while Loaming actually costs you a drawstep were you draw only lands) and there are fewer cards you don't really want to draw in the deck. Intuition plus Loam also is 5 mana, while Treasure Hunt comes online as early as turn 2.
In addition, using the Loam-engine sets you up to be blown out by the opponents graveyard hate postboard. Over all, Hunt is cheaper and provides more deck velocity while being harder to totally negate with hate. Loam simply didn't prove worth the effort it took to accomodate it (both overkill and too clunky, as you put it so rightly).

Phoenix Ignition

06-21-2010, 06:45 PM

I really like the build and will be testing it in the next 2 days, but can you answer the quick question of why there is no The Tabernacle at Pendrell Vale? If you don't own any it is understandable, but it is as underused (if not more underused) than Maze of Ith, and its effect is so profitable for any deck that is creature light that it really should see more play.

There could be cost issues, but why aren't you running it? It seems especially good with the transmute land.

EDIT: Also can you Edit your opening post with the [ cards] [/ cards] tag so it is easier to look through?

Mon,Goblin Chief

06-21-2010, 07:37 PM

Sweet, happy testing :D

There is no Tabernacle for two reasons:
a) I don't have access to one. Simple.
b) I don't want one. In Lands, Tabernacle is great as it forces the opponent to limit his creature-drops and has synergy with the mana-denial plan. JaceTM on the other hand doesn't play any manadenial and wants the opponent to commit to the board as much as possible so as to kill even more creatures with its mass-removals. In addition, Jace doesn't run any Exploration-effects, meaning any non-mana land you drop early actually slows you down by a turn. Mazes make up for that by working as removal on the spot. Tabernacle means you take damage while the opponent doesn't develop his board further. Without the manadenial Lands has, he'll still easily get to three creatures, meaning you take a ton more damage for forcing him to do something that he should be doing anyway - not overextend into your sweepers (That being said, there are certain Goblins-draws where Tabernacle would be sweet, Lackey->SGC in particular. More Firespout/Pyroclasm would be even better, though).

I'll take care of the tags, good idea.

Rico Suave

06-21-2010, 07:56 PM

A few of us Americans are fans of yours.

We've been testing this deck, and it has performed very well against Zoo. The interaction of Maze and Firespout is quite potent against aggro. Previously one of the biggest problems facing a control deck was that it would run out of answers before the Zoo player ran out of threats. Maze forcing them to overextend into a Firespout, however, is back-breaking.

And with Treasure Hunt taking advantage of Maze, the deck is quite clever.

Now that M.Tutor is getting banned, previously difficult matches like Reanimator and ANT are now on their way out and there is a lot of incentive to play this deck. We still found it to struggle against aggro-control decks like Merfolk though. Wasteland puts the deck in an awkward position, since it can no longer rely on Maze of Ith to make the aggro player overextend anymore.

My hat is off to you for yet another fine Eternal deck though.

klaus

06-22-2010, 07:02 AM

Gotta say, I dig the deck's style!
I guess New Horizons, the new kid on the block, should be addressed somewhere, since it's probably a rather tough MU, circumventing both - Firespout and Maze, via tutorable Wastelands, while being able to stifle potential EEs.

Mon,Goblin Chief

06-24-2010, 10:42 AM

Hi Rico, nice to see someone still remebers us :D
Zoo is actually one of the harder aggro-matchups simply because Price is so good against this deck. Wait till you test against blue aggro-control, that's even more fun ;)

@Jaschar: New Horizons should be fairly ok, if they spent all their manadenial defending their creatures, your draw-engines will just take over, usually. After that the additional removal you draw plus Jace (bouncing) into Forbid should clean the board quite rapidly. I haven't played this matchup much yet (more the original Stifle-Bant), but anything that drops non-shroud creatures has such a hard time dealing with the draw-engine coupled with the oodles of removal that I'm not afraid of Horizons at all. It all comes down to the fact that Horizons assumes they will manascrew their opponent at least slightly, which is highly unlikely between 25 manasources, Mazes they kind of have to Waste with only 13 creatures and Stifle having to pull double duty against EE. That means they either have to try to kill you fast (very difficult for the deck as they're all about one big threat) or Jace (the card) will just allow you to take over between Bouncing, Brainstorming and finding Forbid. C-Wish->Wing Shards is also quite insane against this kind of deck.

/edit: Just played another five-game set against Maxim (me playing Horizons, him playing Jace). In the end, Horizons went 1:4 against Jace, which felt pretty much right from the interaction between the two decks. Horizons is really slow to get its beat on (meaning Jace has a lot of time to set up defenses) and mana-screwing Jace is quite impossible, especially as Mazes make throwing away your Wastelands pretty painful.
Now, while these are clearly not statistically significant numbers, trends start to reveal themselves (as in we get to see "what matters"). Turns out, the only thing Horizons does that really matters is KotR. The one game I managed to win with Horizons I drew 3 KotR while Maxim, arguably unnecessarily, StPed an early Terravore and I then ate his Mazes with repeated Wastelands. Whenever Knight didn't survive for more than a turn, the result was basically a one-sided slaughter. So "fight about the Knight" seems to be the right gameplan from the Jace-side. Also: The deck has a really hard time beating Forbid. There is just so much other stuff you need to Force.

FloSun

07-18-2010, 06:03 PM

hey, i really like this deck.
it is exactly what i was searching for.

i built the deck and tested it against some of my friends (decks: zoo, goblins, landstill)

at first i made several misplays, but after a couple of matches i learned to play the deck more efficient.
jace is just so good, you almost can't lose the game once he is online!
i think the deck is very strong, if you manage to play it.... i don't think, that i can play it as good as carsten, but i got some good results in testing against the mentioned decks.

PS: If enough people show interest, I'll try to write a guide on how to play each matchup. This is very difficult to simply write down, though, as minor decisions have a huge impact and therefore nothing can replace some solid playtesting.

are there already enough interested people? ;)
I'd like to read that guide =)

K_Rot_T

07-18-2010, 07:12 PM

A really really fine looking Deck.
I just have one question: you always say that Maze keeps you from getting colorscrewed by Wasteland. But if Maze would be another Basic-/Dual-/Fetchland, wouldn't that make you safe from colorscrew too? I hope you know what I mean.

I thought hard about the Wish Board, but honestly didn't come up with much, maybe Consume the Meek as a Wishable Firespout+X....but stil,l you already got lots of creature removel and the card isn't really that great.

So thx for the Deck.

Monochrome

07-18-2010, 07:13 PM

This deck looks pretty interesting to me as well. Between CounterTop Thopters, Hanni's U/W/x CounterTop Walker, the original Ultimate Walker list, and this, I'm having a rough time trying to decide on what kind of control deck I want to run.

What do you think this deck offers over the others I mentioned? Better match ups overall, better match ups against the decks that matter, or something else?

deadlock

07-19-2010, 07:58 AM

Very interesting deck, i like how people start to explore control again: Thopters, Ubg Landstill and now this - great!

Two questions:
- Ugb LS runs Deed as sweeper of choice, compared to your EE (and Spout), what are your thoughts on that?
- What do think of a single Loam as you run Maze in addition to the usual Mishras / Ruins. It would strengthen your manbase against Wasteland too.

Mon,Goblin Chief

07-19-2010, 09:08 AM

@FloSun: Thanks :) I'll try to get to work on the matchup guide soon, lots of stuff to do fo
r university, though.

@K_Rot_T: Sure, replacing Mazes with Fetches/Duals/Basics would make color-screwing practially impossible. Those lands don't stop creatures from attacking you, though. ;) The Maze-defense is one of the things that makes the deck insane against most creature-decks, the side-effect that they usually work as a way to protect your mana is just bonus.

What do you think this deck offers over the others I mentioned? Better match ups overall, better match ups against the decks that matter, or something else?
1.) Absoute brutality against anything with creatures. Maze + EE is just insane against most creature-based decks. Many of them don't run Wastelands, at which point it becomes practically impossible for them to win. In particular, JaceTM is, to my knowledge, the only control-deck that has even to favorable pre-SB matchups against Vial-Aggro and Zoo.
2.) The deck has 4 Jace and Jace is simply absurd. I've lost two games so far through testing and tournaments in which I got to keep Jace for more than one untap. I have raced the CA generated by an active Survival multiple times and weathered the full four Ringleaders in Goblins resolving with him, for example.
3.) You laugh at Counterbalance in most decks. Most CB-decks can only control the 1 and 2 slot with consistency, which means you can still Maze, Forbid, CWish to buy time till you find one of your four Explosives or drop Jace - and Jace is simply stronger than active CB-Top.
4.) Treasure Hunt. Having a card that will usually draw you at least three cards for U1 and doesn't ask you to get ahead on the board first is pretty filthy.
5.) Few actual bad matchups. Dredge, LoamPox with 16 LD and fast combo with protection are the only things I'd really prefer dodging when playing this.

@deadlock:
Deed: I played decks with Deed before and it always felt clunky. Deed also doesn't allow you to kill Planeswalkers and doesn't give you the sick Ruins-lock. EE is faster and more versatile than Deed in most cases. I feel that not running four EE in control-decks that don't have CBs is a mistake due to how good EE is against anything else. That being said, in certain metagames, modifying the manabase and running Deed instead of the Firespouts would make sense (few Zoo/Goblins and many Uwg aggro-control decks/fatty decks).

Loam: Loam would be great in the deck but isn't worth screwing up the manabase. I'd rather run Crucible, if I wanted land-recursion. If you go for the Deed-modification just mentioned and therefore run more green sources anyway, a singleton Loam is probably very good. (We tested a version that used Intuition-Loam instead of Treasure Hunt and using Loam to fuel Forbid is pretty sick. It wasn't really worth the extra effort in the manabase as well as the slower flow and vulnerability to post-SB graveyard-hate though).

I'm happy to see all this interest, keep the questions coming :D

deadlock

07-19-2010, 10:10 AM

Mon,Goblin Chief

07-19-2010, 12:07 PM

First of thanks for the quick answer!
I see your point concerning Deed and Loam, i feel a little uncomfortable with the manabase though.
Definitly keep the 4 Mazes, this is hot tech, but i would either concentrate on Uwr (currently prefered) or Ugb.

Ugb gives nice utility from the board and has Deed and Loam.
However Uwr gives you very strong maindeck cards in STP and Spout and live gain in the board.

What do you think of this manabase:

// Lands
3 [B] Tundra
4 [ON] Flooded Strand
1 [FUT] Tolaria West
1 [TSP] Academy Ruins
1 [MM] Dust Bowl
3 [B] Volcanic Island
4 [DK] Maze of Ith
3 [ZEN] Scalding Tarn
1 [OD] Plains (4)
1 [ROE] Mountain (1)
1 [MI] Island (1)
1 [B] Underground Sea
4 [AQ] Mishra's Factory (1)

EE at 5 is not important i think, the single USea allows for EE @ 4 and a single Extirpate as Whish target. Plateau isnt needed either, just for very few board cards like Pulse of the Field. Having UU for Jace is more important.
Also Play at least one Crypt in the board, as you are already running Tolaria West. A single Chalice is an option too (against combo), but i dont know if it screws oneself too much.

Sidenote: As i see it Treasure Hunt ans Standstill compete for the same slot as a second draw engine beside Jace. I havent played with TH and it could very well be that it is (far?) superior, however one should at least keep Standstill in mind as a possibility in that slot.

The manabase you suggest looks fine, but isn't really all that much of an improvement imo. You still have as many non-basic lands and no additional Fetches (the 8th fetch is what I'd like to get in there most, actually). More Tundras/Volcanics actually don't provide real benefits, as you have basics to assure that you can't ever lose all your colored sources and drawing the duals is not a very large factor (especially as you don't really need double-non-blue mana for anything Wish-bullets aside). If you are looking for greater color-consistency additional Fetches are they way to go.
I rarely ever have trouble getting URW together and having only a single Sea means you lose if they manage to waste it before you can cast your Extirpate (either because you drew it or because you need to set it up early because you don't have more Fetchlands but need the mana for the CWish). As for the Tropical, it's not meant to allow you to EE for five, it's there because without it Firespout often becomes a liability against decks with flyers (all kinds of Faeries most of the time but most importantly Kira). The benefits the deck accumulates through these two additional Islands that happen to produce another color largely outway the minor cost in secondary color consistency as compared to running more Tundras/Volcs. As for the Plateau, I originally didn't have one in the deck but through playing found that I often wanted to set up my first lands as Tundra, Volc, Plateau to make sure I couldn't be screwed out of either of my removal colors by a single Wasteland. I agree that having another blue source in that slot would be kind of nice, but so far I've been very happy with the Plateau.

As for the Standstill thing, the deck would probably work ok with them, simply because you're already well set-up to abuse them, but I simply hate carddraw that doesn't work when you're behind, because those are usually the times when you need carddrawing most. The fact that half the other decks in the meta abuse it better than you do doesn't help, either. Treasure Hunt is, imo, miles better than Standstill and I'd adopt Hanni's Predict engine before running Standstill myself.

FloSun

07-19-2010, 10:58 PM

Yesterday I totally got smashed by a monored burn deck. (lavamancer was the only creature in his deck)

I didn't found out how to beat it...

Has anyone an idea??

Hanni

07-19-2010, 11:26 PM

After looking at your list, Mon, I'd highly recommend 4 Sensei's Divining Top. I'm not sure how you've felt about that card in testing, but I know from my experiences with other control decks, Top has always been the best card in my deck. I always want to see one in my opener, it's almost always my best first turn play, and it wins me games.

I would think that in your deck, where you attempt to abuse a draw engine dependant upon the top cards of your library (just like Predict for me), that Top would be incredibily important.

Other than that, I just want to ask: how has Firespout been? Have you ever found yourself wanting them to be Wrath of God's instead?

Mon,Goblin Chief

07-20-2010, 01:24 PM

Red Burn: I've played (and won) against mono Red burn twice. The keys to winning are fetching basics early (to mitigate PoP early on) and go into race through library mode to find Forbid/CWish (-> Pulse). Jace should be ramped once and than used to Brainstorm till you find one of the four trumps. At that point, ramp them out ASAP.

After looking at your list, Mon, I'd highly recommend 4 Sensei's Divining Top. I'm not sure how you've felt about that card in testing, but I know from my experiences with other control decks, Top has always been the best card in my deck. I always want to see one in my opener, it's almost always my best first turn play, and it wins me games.

I would think that in your deck, where you attempt to abuse a draw engine dependant upon the top cards of your library (just like Predict for me), that Top would be incredibily important.

Other than that, I just want to ask: how has Firespout been? Have you ever found yourself wanting them to be Wrath of God's instead?

Top is great in the deck, I completely agree. The problem I have is that I don't see what to cut from the maindeck (the overload of removal is what allows the deck to work, Treasure Hunt cardadvantage is very important to set up your landdrops and Wishes are necessary for many matchups you otherwise autolose game 1 - something such a slow deck cannot really accept; Jace and some countermagic are non-negotiable). The best card in the deck is clearly Jace, though ;). Luckily, I don't need Top as much as you do, as Treasure Hunt has a very reasonable chance to work even if not set up with 29 lands in the deck.

Firespout is great and mediocre at the same time. Having access to Firespout is what makes the deck so incredibly strong vs Goblins, Zoo and Fish, as turn 3 mass removal is really what tips the balance against those decks good draws (particularly important because of the Mazes, too, as it allows you to drop a Maze to stop the bleeding and still sweep turn 4). This is also important against anything that goes after my mana. Otoh against something like Horizons or AggroLoam, Wrath would obviously be a million times better because it can actually kill the creatures they play instead of being a waste of a card. So there have obviously been moments where I'd have prefered having Wrath in my hand, what card I prefer is strongly dependant on the matchup I'm facing and I wouldn't fault anyone for running Wrath (or even Deed) in metagames where that is appropriate. Personally, I feel that the big-creature matchups are usually pretty good because Maze is so insane against them, which is why we built the deck with Firespout originally. That being said, contrary to what most people expected post-Mystical, our personal metagame is moving further and further away from Weenies and towards more Wastelands plus fatties at the moment, switching out Firespouts for some alternative is something we are considering atm, too,

Hanni

07-20-2010, 01:32 PM

Having a Top in play increases your card quality, increasing the chance to see specific spells. That means that not only are you more likely to see removal spells (the reason for your removal density), but you are also able to more consistently find your draw (Treasure Hunt), land drops, and whatever else you need.

It's kind of like the same argument as old Threshold decks, where you were capable of cutting lands and creatures for more cantrips, yet you still "saw" the lands and creatures just as often, even with the lower density. Difference being, you find the right mix you want, when you want.

I can understand being unsure what you'd like to cut for them, but I still think even without needing as much setup for Treasure Hunt, that you'd greatly benefit from running 4 Top's instead of 2. That's just my personal suggestion though, and your deck is pretty good at beating aggro with or without it do to your removal density (I lost 1-2 to it on MWS while I was playtesting a weird build of Merfolk).

Knoll

07-21-2010, 01:22 PM

after an year passed playing "The Fear" & other controllish decks i started testing this deck a week ago on MWS and tbh it makes you feel kinda godlike if you manage to play it atleast 70% correctly ( all games besides just a few ends 1-0 for me since peoples gets pissed when they find a deck that they can't actually beat even with their best draws :/... )...
The only problematic match was vs a guy playing deam halls that managed to stick it through double force of will Q_Q

tbh i never felt the need of WoG over Firesprout since often when you cast sprout just 1 or at max 2 creatures remains alive and then you can manage them with mazes/stps/jace bouncing.

ATM i'm testing the following SB:

1 BeB
1 hydro
1 Reb
1 Pyro
1 Pulse
1 Krosan
1 Forbid
1 MISDIRECTION
1 Wing Shards
1 Tormod
1 Relic
1 RAVENOUS TRAP
3 Extipate

Misdi works kinda fine for its surprise effect or when you don't have the mana for Wish+forbid.
The ravenous was added just to have more chances vs Ichorid G1 praying for a slow start from the opponent (or with an hand with double force active+wish... that is kinda impossible...).

Would like to find some space between MD+SB for 1 or 2 crucibles but actually i don't know really what i would cut for them since the deck feel so smooth as it is for now. Really nice work team CAB (luv ya guys).

Mon,Goblin Chief

07-21-2010, 02:18 PM

@Hanni: I definitely don't want to cut lands from the MD a la Threshold, simply because I need so many to be fully functional. If I find room, a third Top is one of the first things I'd like to add (a fourth Treasure Hunt being the second candidate, Crucible another because Wasteland is becoming extremely prevalent here and it interferes with the Maze-lock).

after an year passed playing "The Fear" & other controllish decks i started testing this deck a week ago on MWS and tbh it makes you feel kinda godlike if you manage to play it atleast 70% correctly ( all games besides just a few ends 1-0 for me since peoples gets pissed when they find a deck that they can't actually beat even with their best draws :/... )...
The only problematic match was vs a guy playing deam halls that managed to stick it through double force of will Q_Q

Isn't that what a control-deck is supposed to do - make you feel on top of the world and throw your opponents into the pits of despair? ;) Thanks for the props, I'm happy to see this deck is getting picked up. I just hope I'll never have to play three rounds of mirror-matchups in a row...

tbh i never felt the need of WoG over Firesprout since often when you cast sprout just 1 or at max 2 creatures remains alive and then you can manage them with mazes/stps/jace bouncing.

ATM i'm testing the following SB:

1 BeB
1 hydro
1 Reb
1 Pyro
1 Pulse
1 Krosan
1 Forbid
1 MISDIRECTION
1 Wing Shards
1 Tormod
1 Relic
1 RAVENOUS TRAP
3 Extipate

Misdi works kinda fine for its surprise effect or when you don't have the mana for Wish+forbid.
The ravenous was added just to have more chances vs Ichorid G1 praying for a slow start from the opponent (or with an hand with double force active+wish... that is kinda impossible...).

Would like to find some space between MD+SB for 1 or 2 crucibles but actually i don't know really what i would cut for them since the deck feel so smooth as it is for now. Really nice work team CAB (luv ya guys).

The Wrath-thing is really meta-dependant, some decks simply don't have targets for Firespout while being weak to Wrath - a trend getting more and more common around Berlin (especially annoying when they have Wastes to kill the Mazes). Adding Crucible is something else we're thinking about - as mentioned, Wasteland is rapidly becoming the most-played card in our metagame. With Crucible, it only de-fogs them for a turn instead of actually getting rid of the Maze permanently, which is pretty powerful.

@SB: This is two cards from our Sideboard from the last event. We were running Vindicates over MisD/Rav Trap to have more possible spot-removal for matchups like Horizons and more Planeswalker removal - they weren't great, as so many things during experimental stages. We aren't happy with the SB yet, though, which is why I haven't updated the opening post. With Trap, you can probably remove the Relic from the SB, five GY removals should be fine vs almost anything - that'd give you room for a first Crucible. Misd is a solid idea, I'm not sure how often it will come up, though (I haven't yet encountered a situation where I really wanted to Wish for it and couldn't, but in general MisD is another very underrated card in this format - better when you're running your own creatures, though).

Hanni

07-21-2010, 02:31 PM

Mon,Goblin Chief

07-21-2010, 02:52 PM

Agreed, that's the slot I was most eyeing when trying to figure out where I could possibly squeeze in another Top, too.

paK0

07-21-2010, 02:53 PM

Mon,Goblin Chief

07-21-2010, 03:08 PM

So, I play this Deck every now and then on MWS and I really like it. Since I have got some other Decks going on right now I can't really share a lot of results, but I modified the list a little and I love the changes:

// Lands
3 [ZEN] Scalding Tarn
2 [A] Tundra
2 [A] Underground Sea
2 [U] Volcanic Island
1 [B] Tropical Island
1 [B] Plateau
4 [ON] Flooded Strand
4 [DK] Maze of Ith
1 [UNH] Plains
1 [TSP] Academy Ruins
1 [MM] Dust Bowl
1 [FUT] Tolaria West
4 [4E] Mishra's Factory
1 [UNH] Mountain
1 [UNH] Island

// Spells
4 [R] Swords to Plowshares
2 [CHK] Sensei's Divining Top
3 [SHM] Firespout
4 [FD] Engineered Explosives
2 [JU] Cunning Wish
4 [AL] Force of Will
4 [5E] Brainstorm
4 [WWK] Treasure Hunt
3 [WWK] Jace, the Mind Sculptor
2 [DIS] Spell Snare

// Sideboard
SB: 1 [EX] Forbid
SB: 4 [ZEN] Spell Pierce
SB: 1 [PLC] Extirpate
SB: 1 [DS] Pulse of the Fields
SB: 1 [SC] Wing Shards
SB: 1 [TE] Diabolic Edict
SB: 1 [TSP] Krosan Grip
SB: 4 [GP] Leyline of the Void
SB: 1 [IN] Fact or Fiction

I never liked the clunkiness of Forbid, Spell Snare takes care of a lot of cards that we don't want to see, I kept one in the board though. But I dunno, this might be because I don't play as much with this, but I rarely wish for it.

I play the 4th Hunt over Jace, since on MWS Lands seem to be glued together, so its almost always like Ancestral, even if you cast it blind.

Anyways, I retinkered the board a little. Leyline makes Dredge winnable, since unlike Extirpate or Crypt I locks them out and they have to rely on Critter beatdown. You are sure to loose g1, but g2 is almost auto win, since very few Dredge players suspect Leyline.

The other notable change is the addition of Fact or Fiction, having a way to dig for Jace is awesome. Its probably bonkers in the Control Mirror as well, but I never played that MU so far.

Im not sure yet, but I might turn the Dustbowl into something else, most likely 2nd Ruins, recurring EE is too strong to not abuse.

This looks like a solid modification, you might even get away with running a third Wish as you already made room for FoF in your SB and it would allow you better access to the Forbid-lock (I win a ton of games that way, not sure why it doesn't work out like that for many others^^).

Three things I don't like here, though:
1) Not running four Jaces has to be wrong. I'm doing it when I can't borrow the last Jace, but on MWS I don't see myself ever running less than the full set. That card is nuts.
2) Not running at least a single REB is just wrong. Being able to blow up opposing Jaces with Wish is extremely important.
3) Leyline is good if you can mulligan into it, but that is extremely risky against anything not Dredge. Loam-decks are far more prevalent than Dredge in my experience and not having any good answers to SB in (casting Leyline against them if you don't have it turn one is a pipedream). Even against Dredge the deck is pretty good at staying alive for quite some time, meaning you don't have to necessary mulligan (as) aggressively into your graveyard hate. Once you don't forcefully mulligan for it, playing hate you can actually draw into and cast it is pretty sweet. I'd rather go with a mix of Relic, Crypt and Extirpate to be honest. Lastly, both Relic and Extirpate have value in non-graveyard based matchups (Horizons and Thopter Foundry/Control respectively), which can be important considering you run roughly a million dead removal spells against control and want to replace them.

paK0

07-21-2010, 04:19 PM

1: Probably true. Just Treasure Hunt on MWS is too broken to not play 4. If I play this in real life I will probably play the 4 Jaces setup.
2: I never faced a Jace in paper up to now. And even on MWS the number of Jaces that I have to battle is relatively low. I'll add the blast as soon as I need, but right now I think I'm better off without it. But I will keep track of what I go for with Wish. Forbid is already on my watchlist so in the near Future I might in fact get REB back in.
3: I keep a single Extipate in the board for Loam and stuff like that. My primary concern was the Dredge MU when I added Leyline, but I would probably board it in against New Horizons as well. You can't really afford to mull for it, but If you have it they either have the Grip or they loose. If you want to run Gravehate (and I know I do) I would always opt for Leyline here, since of all cards affecting the Grave it is the most "brutal" one.

nicoledc109

07-21-2010, 11:28 PM

Knoll

07-22-2010, 01:09 PM

@Mon&Hanni : tbh i don't think you can cut 1 firesprout since it's one of those "broken" cards that you want to see everytime in the first 4, max 5 turns, vs half of the field (bant -> hierarchs/quasali/trygons/small goyfs,goblin,merfolk & zoo).

about switching forbid for spellsnares MD: probably that could be a good choice since with snares you can handle easier the first turns that are actually the ones where you are suffering.

about GY hate: if i would have to cut something between 3 Extirpate 1 relic 1 tormod 1 ravenous probably i would cut one extirpate since it's not so devastating as relic vs ichorid.

Mister Agent

07-22-2010, 10:07 PM

I have been playing this deck lately on mws. I have been having a blast smashing merfolks and countertop goyf with this deck. Wasteland doesn't really matter that much because treasure hunt tempo you back into the game.

Here is my list:

Lands
1 Plains
4 Flooded Strand
3 Scalding Tarn
1 Island
4 Maze of Ith
1 Tropical Island
1 Academy Ruins
1 Dustbowl
4 Mishra's Factory
2 Tundra
2 Volcanic Island
1 Plateau
2 Underground Sea
1 Tolaria West
1 Mountain

Spells
2 Forbid
3 Jace, the Mind Sculptor
4 Brainstorm
4 Engineered Explosives
4 Treasure Hunt
4 Force of Will
4 Swords to Plowshares
3 Firespout
2 Cunning Wish
1 Crucible of Worlds
1 Sensei's Divining Top

Sideboard
3 Spell Pierce
1 Red Elemental Blast
1 Pyroblast
3 Extirpate
1 Pulse of the Fields
1 Krosan Grip
1 Diabolic Edict
1 Blue Elemental Blast
1 Path to Exile
1 Dominate
1 Enlightened Tutor

I am going to go over some different card choices in my list:

Tolaria West: It's been great at fetching me any utility land I want and fetching for EE can still win you games I hear.

Crucible of worlds: A single COW seems random yes but this is why I have E. tutor in the board and C.wish in the main. So it's like I have three copies of the card which can be relevant.

Path to exile: A strong 1 spot removal and a worthy wishboard slot. It has been pulling it's weight against decks like new horizons and zoo.

Dominate: I am going to have to give credit to my teammate Jander78 for suggesting this to me since it's his idea. Yes, taking control of something like a knight of the reliquary, terravore, or even goyf can just win you games. ;)

Krosan Grip: Seems like an obvious wish target especially if you have a tropical island somewhere in your manabase.

SMR0079

07-23-2010, 01:20 AM

Nice deck - and a familiar name from the Drain. This so reminds me of old school Keeper.

Your deck is an example of true control returning to the format after the death of Landstill. Your observations on Standstill in control are spot on. I made the same observations when people were still hanging onto the dying corpse of Landstill. Midrange Countertop control is slowly being squeezed out of the format with the shift toward aggro with the Thopterbalance build talking it's place. This environment is ripe for a traditional control deck to be successful.

The only real problem I have with the list is the manabase - it screams for the stability of basics, and as you noted, a well timed Price is game over. I would immediately cut black and add more basics.

One of the vulnerabilities to the control deck is tempo based strategies that can attack your mana base. My playgroup found that the ThopterBalance deck would beat both Merfolk and Horizons as long as it could develop it's mana with basics. The main way it lost to either of those decks was when we drew a our duals and got wastelanded or got an early fetch stifled. When we dropped down to 2.5 colors this weakness was greatly improved. Now I'm not suggesting the same thing here, but fortifying your manabase a bit should lead to more overall victories.

I would cut the 2 Seas for the 4th Tarn and a second island. If you want to find room for alternatives such as additional Tops, or something else (I like Snare) I would consider cutting Toleria West because it's so slow, the 4th EE, and the 2nd Forbid.

Keep up the good work!

Ciberon

07-23-2010, 11:17 AM

This deck is awesome. Just gave it a spin and drew 7 cards out of Treasure Hunt.

It worked for me with just 3 Jaces. I'm not sure if you need the fourth.

Mon,Goblin Chief

07-23-2010, 04:49 PM

@Mister Agent: Your list looks solid. One of the Extirpates should be a Tormod's Crypt because you run E-Tutor. Between 2 Extirpate, Crypt, Tutor and TWest you'll likely be able to actually beat Dredge once in a while with that set-up. If you already run the Tutor, might as well take advantage from it.
Dominate is so expensive (Wish + 5-6 mana usually) that it likely falls under danger of cool things (we thought of it, too). Wing Shards has been so awesome for me and Maxim that I'd never cut it by now.

@SMR0079 - yes, Keeper is what I was aiming for when building this anyway *g*. Long live the old-school!

As for adding basics, the gains from running more basics imo don't outweigh those gained from the extra-possibilities. Let's say I add a second Tarn and Island over the Seas. Results:
- I now lose to any Loam-deck MD because only Extirpate keeps them from finding another Loam even if Wish happens to deal with the first (this deck will give them the time). I actually might cut Wishes if it wasn't for Loam.
- I still lose to PoP (having one more basic - four - doesn't change that I usually have around ten lands out, some of which are Mazes and Mishras)
- I can usually be tempo-wasted as easily with one more Island and Fetch, as I still have far more non-basics than basics and I will draw them. I also often tend to fetch for duals even against the Wasteland-decks if I'm on limited resources, as I need UURW to be fully functional and many hands are like Dual, Dual, Fetch, Mishra for manasources. This really only changes when you have 6+ basics and 7+Fetches (aka 2.5 colors). If I wanted to follow that plan, I'd have to stop running Mishras, at the very least.
- I still don't function under Waste-lock because four mana is simply not enough
- My problems against Fish/Horizons usually aren't related to being blown out by Wastelands on my mana. I have more were those lands came from, usually. What is relevant is that they can kill my Mazes, invalidating my permanent defenses. I can see how this was very different in CBThopter, your real answer costs 4 (Moat) and is supported only by STP, one EE and one ORing. The additional removal makes a world of difference.
In short, I don't think cutting black from this is worth it, the gains are by far not substantial enough. What would do a world of good is cutting red, but to do this we'd have to find an actually workable replacement for Firespout. This might be possible, depending on metagame factors.

The second Forbid might be cutable. TWest is a mana source and should only be cut for another land or to get down to sixty cards (which messes less with mana-ratios than actually replacing a land with a spell). EE finally is, in my opinion, a definite 4-of in this deck. The card is your most flexible answer, and is also fast (against stuff like Vial/Zoos mass-1-drop starts). I don't see how anybody wouldn't want to run 4, I'd likely run 5 or 6 if I could (instead of Spouts).

Btw, if anybody testing this deck would be ready to post something about their results (especially matchups and how they played out), I'd appreciate it :D

Mister Agent

07-23-2010, 05:57 PM

Mon,Goblin Chief

07-23-2010, 08:22 PM

I actually cut a wingshards for a path to exile in the board and yeah dominate unfortunately does cost too much. Oh well, it was fun while it lasted. :) With that said, I am considering running wing shards again that's for sure and anyone that has at least tried out dominant for a C. wish target is cool in my books.

Actually we rather considered it and decided it'd be to expensive, sorry :p

On another note, I am actually considering running zuran orb for the zoo matchup. On paper it sounds awesome but in actual practice I will have to wait and see. I think it's worth testing at the very least.

Another card we considered after seeing how good PoP is against us. The problem with it is that half the Zoo-players seem to board in KGrip against us (no idea why, but they do). At that point, Orb becomes a liability because if you play it early, it makes their really bad cards good and if played late you might just get hit with PoP before you've dropped it. If your Zoo-players are better than ours, I think it might make for a quite powerful SB card, at least game 2 before they get to boarding again. Just remember to look out for Pridemage (quite annoying, too, because you run so few counters and would rather use them for the PoP itself).

Also, I got a chance to test the Dredge matchup with this deck and I was able to win 2-1. Extirpate on Ichorids slowed my opponent down to buy me enough time to set up explosives/ruins as a defensive maneuver against the later zombie tokens. Not to mention, paying green to firespout narcomoebas before bridges hit the grave can be strong. However, if your opponent gets a savagely fast start there is nothing you can really do.

For boarding in this matchup I did something like: -2 C. Wish, -2 Forbid, -1 Crucible of worlds, -2 firespout. +3 Spell Pierce, +3 Extirpate, +1 path to exile. Not sure if this is the right call or not but it did feel appropiate.

Our SBing is quite similar though we usually shave a Treasure Hunt and a Jace instead of the Firespouts. Once you're in a position to Jace, it's usually safe so you don't really need the full 4. It's also pretty slow in this matchup. Congrats on winning the decks worst matchup!

Mister Agent

07-23-2010, 09:49 PM

Actually we rather considered it and decided it'd be to expensive, sorry :p
Fair enough. :P

Another card we considered after seeing how good PoP is against us. The problem with it is that half the Zoo-players seem to board in KGrip against us (no idea why, but they do). At that point, Orb becomes a liability because if you play it early, it makes their really bad cards good and if played late you might just get hit with PoP before you've dropped it. If your Zoo-players are better than ours, I think it might make for a quite powerful SB card, at least game 2 before they get to boarding again. Just remember to look out for Pridemage (quite annoying, too, because you run so few counters and would rather use them for the PoP itself).
Yeah, I agree with this actually. As for them boarding KGrip against us maybe its because they think we are playing humility, who knows. ;)

Our SBing is quite similar though we usually shave a Treasure Hunt and a Jace instead of the Firespouts. Once you're in a position to Jace, it's usually safe so you don't really need the full 4. It's also pretty slow in this matchup. Congrats on winning the decks worst matchup!

Yeah, I actually was thinking about shaving off a treasure hunt and/or Jace as well when I was typing up that previous post. Also, agreed, Jace even as a 2-of against the matchup is more then enough. It's definitely too slow but if I cast him, it won't be until the late game anyway when I have control of the game or to maintain control by casting Jace. Although, jace can indirectly punish dredge for being so slow by bouncing a narcomoeba when they have no cabal therapies and dread returns in there yard. With that said, I will definitely keep this in mind next time I play against dredge with this deck though!

Lastly, Thanks for the congrats! :) Second game he got the nuts draw and was able to outplay me like nothing in the first 2-3 turns. Fortunately for me, he had a slow start in the other two games. However, in the first game I thought he was going to win but I think me C. wishing for extirpate on Ichorid has something to do with that.

FloSun

07-31-2010, 03:44 AM

Has anyone of you played this deck in a tournament so far?

Rigero

07-31-2010, 05:58 AM

You mean except Carsten here (http://www.deckcheck.net/list.php?creator=Carsten%20K%F6tter) and Maxim here (http://www.deckcheck.net/list.php?creator=Maxim+Barkman)?

FloSun

07-31-2010, 06:53 AM

yes, that's what i meant :)

Mister Agent

08-03-2010, 11:40 PM

I am going to try to play in a magic-league legacy trial next week with this deck to see how I will do. I really enjoy playing this deck as it's been running well for me.

perm

08-04-2010, 01:04 AM

How is your forbid sustained? Treasure hunt?

from Cairo

08-04-2010, 02:29 AM

How is your forbid sustained? Treasure hunt?

And Jace.

Knoll

08-27-2010, 09:41 AM

The thread looks kinda dead tho i see CAB team keeps up the good results on deckcheck :>
Kept testing the deck in the last month and made some small changes to MD & Sb having really good results on MWS.

Here is the list :

4 Swords to Plowshares
3 Firespout
4 Engineered Explosives
4 CUNNING WISH
4 Force of Will
4 Brainstorm
3 Treasure Hunt
2 Sensei's Divining Top
4 Jace, the Mind Sculptor

4 Maze of Ith
1 Academy Ruins
1 Dust Bowl
4 Mishra's Factory
1 Tolaria West

1 Mountain
1 Plains
2 Island
4 Flooded Strand
3 Scalding Tarn
2 Tundra
2 Underground Sea
2 Volcanic Island
1 Plateau

Side:
1 Blue Elemental Blast
1 Pyroblast
1 Red Elemental Blast
1 Forbid
1 Misdirection
3 Mindbreak trap

3 Extirpate
1 Ravenous trap

1 Pulse of the fields
1 Wing Shards

While testing i felt like forbid was too clunky and that i would use it just on turns 5> ... at the same time i felt that every time i had a Cunning wish in my hand i was in total control of the situation so...
Switched them with a pair of wishes and the results were kinda Overpwn! Wish in this deck is a "bomb". Why? Because it allows you to get total control of the game on turn 3/4 (the crucial ones besides vs ANT/TPS) just before dropping jace, and ofc in later turns it allows us to get the damn forbid.

The main change in the SB was the addition of the 3 Mindbreak traps. krosan was pushed out since i never really felt the need of it while testing even vs CB decks... Explosives solves any kind of problems there..

Opinions/thoughts? let's keep the topic active! ^_^

gesùbeppe

08-27-2010, 10:53 AM

Well Knoll, I have to say that I like your changes (I'm also glad to see this topic reusrrecting since it's a deck that I like a lot ;))!

Cunning Wish is awesome, I never stopped playing it, also in my landstill deck :) !

BTW, here there are some thoughts that may be useful for new testing...

Shriekmaw: i've seen some versions of this deck playing 3 shriekmaw instead of firespout, it may be a nice solution in metagames poors of merfolk or goblin decks, where a specific removal may be more useful that firespout, I'll try them. Plus, adding a volrath's stronghold in the MD also, it can be a nice revomal recursion.

Second, I'm testing also a tsabo's decree in the sideboard, the 6 mana CC is not a problem usually and when i played it against merfolk or gobs they almost always scoop, it's a nice way to have a 6 mana victory against them in the SB playing the fullset of cunning wishes.

Keep the topic alive guys !

Regards.

Mon,Goblin Chief

08-27-2010, 02:19 PM

Nice to see some people still test our deck, it seemed like it had gotten lost somehow, which would be a shame in my (biased) opinion because the deck is pretty insane against anything that isn't really fast combo (If the DDay player for example misjudges the matchup and tries to beat you going very long, Forbid often ruins his day pretty fiercely).

@Knoll: That's an interesting direction to take the deck in. The Wishes can be pretty clunky at times, though, which is why I always avoided going to more than two. Once I get to 3+ Wishes, I'd also want a FoF in the SB to turn the Wishes into card advantage against other blue decks (the Forbids I run instead do this by letting you dump useless cards in hand for "more" countermagic). I also think that Spell Pierce is simply better than Mindbreak Trap (at least the second and third Trap) because they help you defend against Chant/Duress from Combo before you can get the Forbid-lock online and also give you something to SB against Sinkhole + Vindicate + Wasteland.dec.

We also have gone back to the two Wasteland version by now (instead of TWest/Dust Bowl) because the response-speed has proven to be pretty relevant during further testing and we rarely ever wanted to transmute TWest, making it a worse Island.
The KGrip (or simply a Dismantling Blow, which we are running now) is kind of necessary to be able to answer well-played Pithing Needles (when the first one hits EE as it should). I personally wouldn't want to leave home without it now that people in my meta have learned how to play against this. I suggest you drop the MisD for it, which is cute but not really that good without any creatures.

@gesùbeppe: We developed the Shriekmaw-version once we found our metagame to be pretty much devoid of tribal and full of blue mana-denial aggro-control (against which it is much better than the Firespout version for obvious reasons). Naturally when we took it to the next tournament, there were like 25% tribal decks in the room. If you aren't very sure that tribal is absent, I'd suggest using the Firespout version simply because you don't lose all that much power against the decks Shriekmaw shines against while not having Firespout can make Goblins a pretty hard matchup. The Shriekmaws also have the amusing side-effect of being able to beat Dredge far easier because they get rid of Bridges.

As for Tsabo's Decree, I don't have any real testing with it, as it looks like a waste with only two Wishes (and is reaaally slow for B5), especially because you're usually trying to get a Forbid-lock running against them anyway, at which point you don't really need Decree any more. But I can see how you could sculpt your gameplan around stalling for Decree, so if it works well for you, by all means run it.

Hope this helps!

PS: If any of you actually take this to a tournament, I'd be happy to hear how you've done. Only having me and Maxim ever play this doesn't really give the deck much credibility, sadly.

GGoober

09-01-2010, 05:46 PM

Hey Mon, great deck, definitely got my interest. I've been trying to make 24+ Land blue control decks in Legacy work but failed to identify Treasure Hunt + 4 Maze being a great synergy.

I was always bent on the Standstill engine (turn 1 Standstill with Mox Diamonds). Being a Landstill player at heart, I still think Standstill is undisputedly the best card draw regardless of what people say. Your analysis on Standstill is correct, but don't forget that the Landstill player usually ALWAYS has the advantage when dropping Standstill since it is the heart of the deck. Landstill players that fail to drop Standstills most of the time have a deck design flaw that needs to be reconsidered. Regardless, an optimized Landstill deck tweaked to maximize Standstill still has the bad matchups in Vial.decs, in particular Merfolk. This is very true on the draw and less true on the play, depending on how the Landstill deck is built. My reason to experiment with CAB Jace is therefore not a belief that Landstill/Standstill is dead (I hold the opinion Landstill is a very good choice for the meta right now if it deals with vial decs), therefore I would like to make that clear before I discuss my list with CAB Jace :)

Having looked at this thread and your analysis, I did observe a tremendous synergy using Maze as a creature removal. The only issues are that Maze takes up a land slot, therefore slowing you down a turn, but if we reverse this thinking and think again: what other removal parallels to an uncounterable permanent effect as maze? Even StP sometimes has to bow before Maze as it untaps Iona naming white. Maze still doesn't solve Progenitus/Emrakul but neither does StP, so in this situation, Maze is a strong contendant as a spot 'removal' in control decks. It is not removal since the board keeps growing bigger, and that's the flaw of Maze. But paired up with a strategy, this can be deadly. In your analysis, Maze prompts opponents to overextend, and this is where the strategy of the deck makes Maze shines. A firespout then takes out a swarm of aggro, leaving opponents at a card/board disadvantage while you resolve Jace and recoup with Treasure Hunt. This is the beauty I find in Maze after thinking more. Many times playing Landstill with WoG, I have hoped my opponents are dumb to overextend but they never did, so Wrath becomes a 2-1 or 1-1 at best. From experience, the way to make my opponents overextend are to play cards like EPlague, Humility, Shackles, forcing them to drop more creatures or not be able to do anything about my life total. I have since moved away from the WoG plan, and play non-WoG Landstill builds (Scepter-Chant recently has been very successful due to favorable game 1s against bad matchups like Emrakul/Progenitus/combo, and it still halts aggro in game1). With this in mind, CAB Jace has much appealed to me, since it was performing the same operations as Humility/Shackles without the need on resolving spells and potentially be destroyed by a grip/counterspell. Maze does die to Wasteland, but you play 4 of them, as opposed to running just 1-2 Humilities in classic landstill builds, therefore there are more (and free) of these strategic pieces available in this deck than in Landstill. From there I started to explore how this can be abused.

I was following your list but for personal preference, I dislike some choices (they are solid choices but for personal preference I do not like them). Your deck is aimed to destroy any aggro deck out there in the format and I feel that it strongly does so, however it forgoes the game1 (maybe even game2/3) against combo (which is an evolving archetype making a comeback since the banning of mystical tutor). The enchantress matchup is also not too favorable outside of EE. In short, the non-aggro matchup are not too favorable although you have a great control matchup due to the denial-strategy of making your opponents drop Standstills. From what I observed and reasoned and piecing a decklist that suits me best, I have come up with the following CAB Jace build (Creatures are Bad yes :D)

Lands: 24
3 Wasteland
1 Volrath's Stronghold
3 Factory
4 Delta
2 Misty Rainforest
3 Underground Sea
3 Tropical Island
1 Lonely Sandbar
2 Island
1 Swamp
1 Forest

Aggro-hate: 10
4 Maze of Ith
4 Pernicious Deed
2 Shriekmaw

Card filtering/draw: 17
3 Top
4 Brainstorm
4 Treasure Hunt
1 Life from the Loam
2 Cunning Wish
3 Jace

Counters: 10
3 Spell Pierce
3 Counterspell
4 Force of Will

SB:
1 Intuition
1 Forbid
2 Krosan Grip
3 Extirpate
4 Counterbalance
1 Diabolic Edict
3 Engineerined Plague/Innocent Blood/Shriekmaw

Comments:

Creature Removal:
Do not compare the creature-removal package against your deck, my chocies did not develop from analyzing CAB Jace. Instead I was referring to recent UBg Landstill builds that did well. These builds typically run 4 Deeds, 4-6 mix of Innocent Blood/Ghastly Demise. I base my analysis off on UBg Landstill and made the choice to swap 4 Maze for the Blood/Demises. 2 Shriekmaw complements the removal package, with the ability to hit a specific target (goyf etc) when needed. There is recursion with Stronghold (Intuition for Stronghold/Loam/Shriekmaw), and most importantly shriekmaw actually hits Emrakul, and provides another means of win-condition (not a good one though). I personally feel that in the early game, Maze trumps Innocent Blood since it defends just as well. In the mid game, Blood becomes subpar as more creatures flood in whereas Maze still picks the best creature to fog. Ghastly Demise is straight up removal so 2 Shriekmaws replaced those slots. The net effect is a comparable creature-control package to UBg builds (weaker on the REMOVAL side but stronger on the stalling side). This stalling strategy will be exploited with Pernicious Deeds. You mentioned that you feel Deeds is clunky and I do agree with you that to use it on the same turn, you require quite a lot of mana. With Maze stalling, you can let your opponents build up a board over turns, and by turn 5+, Deeds seems much stronger than Firespout. Firespout is undoubtedly the best removal on turn3, but I feel Deeds becomes much stronger as turns pass on. It is also a straight answer all to enchantments (CB), artifacts (Stax/Chalice) and creatures, which is a plus in game1 matchups. Deeds is the only reason why UBg Landstill builds are viable even without the all powerful removal StP.

Card Filtering
3 Top + 4 Brainstorm synergizes nicely with Treasure Hunt. Top is solid with LftL engine, dredging crap away and digging deeper. Top is just that good in control. Everytime I played Landstill with/without 2 Tops, I do better with 2 Tops. The ability to have a 3-card knowledge is crucial to control decks that are constantly pressurized. 3 Top with 4 CBtop postboard (total of 12 1cc, 12 2cc spells) aid against non-aggro decks).

Life from the Loam is just a solid card by itself. There's no need to Intuition for the engine but the option is always there in the Wishboard. I usually just grab Forbid or Extirpate to answer relevant threats but if Wish sits dead in your hand, go setup an engine to seal the game instead of risk losing the game over drawn out turns. LftL synergizes with Top, Forbid, Lonely Sandbar, Shriekmaw/Stronghold, Wasteland. It's just a card that has added utility in this deck and its presence is just a comfort knowing that options are out there with the engines available.

2 Cunning Wish: I've tried cutting these, but working out the decklist, it's the most flexible slot that finds Intuition/Loam/Shriekmaw/Stronghold/Wasteland engine, and also grabs Forbid in the SB instead of clunking up the maindeck. A timed wish on Extirpate can be wrecking especially if opponents allow Wish to resolve, then they can't respond to Extirpate.
3 Jace: I would want to play 4 Jace, but I feel that since the deck has inevitable engines by itself and already generates tremendous board/card advantage, the 4th Jace does not make early-game matchups favorable. I opted for 4 Treasure Hunt 3 Jace instead of 3 Hunts, 4 Jace since I want to stabilize early game and Hunt is more relevant than Jace then. Minimum of 3 Jace is needed to at least consistently draw into one when the board is locked out.

Counterspells
Perhaps the main reasons I geared away from your decklist is my personal dislike at the countersuite. You mentioned Counterspell to be clunky, but I think Forbid is even more clunky. Even if Forbid-recursion goes on, this just means you already have the game sealed and Forbid has nothing to do with winning the game, it was the situation where you COULD cast forbid that won you the game i.e. resolving a 3cc counterspell usually means that you are in a position to stabilize and win the game. Imagine situations where you are hardpressed and decks are aggresive on turns 1-2 (zoo/merfolks/gobs/combo/reanimator), then forbid would never improve those matchups since it is always a turn late, or that Maze landdrop interferred. Counterspell has resurged in control decks (UWx, UBg landstill now all run 4). It is a hard counter to anything. Spell Snare used to be the dominant choice but the meta has shifted to 'cheating combo' decks like Show and Tell, and combo doesn't get too disrupted by Spell Snare (Doomsday, Rituals, Ad Nauseams etc). Spell Snare was MVP when CBTop decks were the most prominent, and back when those decks did not run much 3cc spells like Warmonk/Cliques. The format has changed, even Zoo is packing more 3cc knights, and some even planeswalker. Spell Snare is becoming too narrow, so Counterspell has been showing back again. Forbid is just a mana more, but the format has not slown down that much to warrant it as the counterspell of choice in today's matter. I do love forbid in the deck, but my philosophy is that it's a lockpiece, a win condition, and a lockpiece and win condition are usually only relevant in gameplay after you stabilize and have control. My main concerns for control decks are stabilizing early game. If you can't do that, you have nothing. Hence my choice of Counterspell over Forbid. I do have the option to lock the game with Forbid with Cunning Wish.

I run 3 Spell Pierce, debating against Spell Snare but realized the things I do not want to see are where Spell Pierce mattered the most: Vial, Planeswalker, Counterbalance, Top, EE, Natural Order, Show and Tell, Ad Nauseam. Spell Pierce is more relevant for my strategy as I can handle aggro fairly well, but can't deal with the cards mentioned earlier if they resolve. Again, you see my philosophy of 'maximizing the potential to stabilize early game in order to win'. 3 MD Spell Pierce gives you a better game 1 against non-aggro decks, something which I felt your deck is lacking outside of forbid lock (assuming if they are that slow to setup Ad Nauseam, Chokes, Show&Tell etc).

In total, I have 10 Counterspells (7 hard counters), this is comparable to most control/landstill builds of 10-12 counters (8-10hard counters).

aggro matchups
My aggro matchups are much weaker compared to your decks, but I feel despite that comparison, just referring against UBg builds and a control-mentality, it has a decent chance of stabilizing againt bulk of the aggro field (merfolks an exception but Maze helps a ton except when they have kira). I did not mention that 4 Factories also stall off aggro. Postboard EPlagues/Perish help shore up weaker matchups.

Control matchups
Similar to your analysis, you should beat any Standstill.control decks since you operate better under Standstill and have more draw power from Hunt. My CBTop matchup is slightly weaker since I cannot dodge CB with Deeds as easily as you can with EE set at 4,5,6,7 etc. Grips postboard does help in that matchup since my deck is more G than your list.

combo/non-aggro matchups
My list wins on this one. MD Counterspells/Spell Pierce are hard counters against such decks. Against these decks, I board: -4 Maze, -2 Shriekmaw, +2 Extirpate +4 Counterbalance (last extirpate in wishboard), This makes me have: 12 1cc spells and 12 2cc spells, good enough for CBTop engine to start potentially locking these matchups out on top of the MD Counterspells/Spell Pierce/FoWs.

Thoughts/'Jank' ideas:
- I have been thinking with the loam engine, the possibility of running Scroll Rack over SDT is quite brutal. Accumulate a bunch of lands from Loam, and put them back with Rack, and then procede to draw off a ton with Treasure Hunt getting about 10 cards. This is overkill, but Scroll Rack sometimes always seem like a strong replacement over SDT in pure control decks to dig for more relevant answers.
- In total, I have 10 Counterspells (7 hard counters), this is comparable to most control/landstill builds of 10-12 counters (8-10hard counters).
- My aggro matchups are much weaker compared to your decks, but I feel despite that comparison, just referring against UBg builds and a control-mentality, it has a decent chance of stabilizing againt bulk of the aggro field (merfolks an exception but Maze helps a ton except when they have kira). I did not mention that 4 Factories also stall off aggro.
- This deck has built-in engines that are not required but is always available if you need it: Intuition/Loam/Shriekmaw/Wasteland/Volrath's Stronghold. I have thought about adding a 4th color dual, Ruins over Stronghold, and 1 EE MD as an Intuition engine but I feel that this does not make up for the missing removal against the bad matchups of Emrakul/Iona.dec. Shriekmaw solves this problem and still provides a win-con. There's already 4 Deeds so EE recursion is not needed, although that option and strategy is always out there and works better against swarm aggro/zoo. If the ruins engine is adopted, a singleton etched oracle can also be run, mimicking ITF deck variants.
- I think CAB Jace can also support 2-4 Standstills if they find a spot for it. I personally think it is THE Strongest deck under Standstill aside from turn 1 vial turn 2 standstill in Merfolks.
- All in all, props to CAB team for designing this gem. I feel that UWrb is a decklist that is solid against aggro and control, but this UGb list that I am proposing has a slightly weaker matchup but shores up the game1 matchup against many other non-aggro decks.

Oiolosse

09-01-2010, 11:06 PM

Shriekmaw + Stronghold seems kinda weak. I mean, 2 Shriekmaw isn't really enough to warrent the spots.

Also, EE recursion is just soo good and quite better against Zoo than Deed.

Also, EE jacks up tokens with much better efficiency than Deed. Do you find this relevant in your meta?

Lastly, a singleton cycling land doesn't really make sense. Loam with cycling lands can be fantastic, but I'd run no less than 4.

EDIT: AHHH, No Mox Diamond! Nothing like a turn one, "Counterspell"

Mon,Goblin Chief

01-14-2011, 09:26 AM

Wow, I haven't been here for far to long. I've been busy and somehow missed people still posting. Sorry about that. I'd respond to what was said but I suspect anything posted is far out of date by now.
For those still interested in the deck, I luckily secured a writing spot in spite of being voted of the Talent Search, so you might want to check this out: http://www.starcitygames.com/magic/legacy/20910_Eternal_on_the_Other_Side_of_the_Ocean_CAB_Jace.html

The Treefolk Master

01-14-2011, 11:48 AM

I was going to run this at my local legacy Tournament, but I tested it against Pox, which I usually run into during the tournament, but got my skull bashed in again and again. I was trying to defend myself but I couldn't because my hand was being slaughtered by hymns, duress and smallpox, while my manabase was being destroyed by 4 Vindicates, 4 Sinkholes, 4 Smallpox, 4 Wasteland (and 2 crucibles).

Any tips on how to better this match up? I found Wish to be really clunky and slow in that match up, so I suppose I could sideboard them out for sdome dedicated hate such as Divert, or Spell Pierce?

I'd really like to find a way to consistently beat said deck, as I bought the Mazes just to play this, and I want to use them! :P

PS: Glad to see you back on SCG. That page needs more Eternal Articles, and you're a very talented writer.

Mon,Goblin Chief

01-14-2011, 12:14 PM

Same thing with the Mazes for me (though I still had two from back in the day) *G* . I'm happy to hear such devotion for a creation of mine :D

Pox is really tough because of all the LD. Wish definitely comes out and I'd suggest running a bunch of Spell Pierces (helps against Combo, too) plus a Crucible or two in the SB. That should help keep them honest. Divert is more high-impact but doesn't stop Smallpox, not to mention that there really isn't any other matchup you'd really want it in. If you really want to hate on Pox, though, Divert and MisD are probably best, as well as an old favorite of mine: Teferi's Response. Pretty great because it not only counters the LD but also restocks your hand to compensate for the discard. It's also really solid against Goblins ports.

PS: Thanks for the praise, it's always sweet to hear one's work is appreciated.

The Treefolk Master

01-17-2011, 11:13 AM

I see you and you're teammate continue to make top 8 (according to deckdb.com). The next tournament you play in, could you write a report so we can see what decks you played against and how you fared? I think this would do good to increase the interest in the deck.

Hanni

01-17-2011, 11:36 AM

The Treefolk Master

01-17-2011, 12:05 PM

Spell Snare seems better for a Control deck like this. It still hits Hymn, Sinkhole, and Smallpox, but it can also keep Tarmogoyf, Qasali, Lord of Atlantis, Standstill, and a number of other problematic 2 drops from resolving. It's still valuable against combo, because it hits Infernal Tutor and Burning Wish. Spell Pierce might be great early if you're hitting with Wasteland, but they are really bad by midgame, and obviously this deck goes into the lategame.

You mean in the board instead of Divert/Misdirection/Teferi's Response?

EDIT: I will try Leyline of Sancity, which was an indicential advantage vs. Combo (bad match up) and burn (I've won but I was very lucky as I topdecked 4 counterspells in a draw in game 3. Pulse trumps them, but is too slow and you only have 2 wish).

Mon,Goblin Chief

01-18-2011, 07:56 AM

I'll write a report when I have slept for more than two hours and I'm not totally hung over. I threw away two complete rounds from dominating positions that I should have won easily by playing like an absolute tool. Not minor mistakes, either, things like "Forbid something I shouldn't even have countered, tapping all my white and Grove with two StP in hand and a Fire in the yard, keeping useless Volcs open. Opponent Vials in Ringleader, hits 4 Gobs, casts Warchief, Piledriver, hits me for 9" which left me a turn short of stabilizing with Fire anyway. Or having Jace in play for like 6 turns against Loam and not Brainstorming (worst strategy ever, which I usually know but for some reason ignored... not sure what I was thinking - probably nothing). I also caught myself at the last moment before EEing away my own Jace against Stax that had two useless Magus of the Tabernacle running into Mazes, and that's only a fraction of the moronity I exhibited. Having won the other three rounds is kind of a testament to the decks strength because I'd have definitely merited the 0-5 that day on playskill. Reading a report where the person plays like they've never touched Magic cards before isn't much fun, imo, so I'll wait for next time (and go to bed earlier).

Spell Snare definitely is another solid option for the SB, I'm just used to Spell Pierce because it can counter combo's disruption so I usually prefer that.

Leyline also sounds solid, as I think I mentioned in the other threat, though personally I prefer simply having more countermagic because Leyline doesn't answer the worst threads out of red (PoPand Sylvan, it should be GG against burn though) and doesn't do anything about Ad Nauseam itself. Being immune to Duress-effects against them is quite strong though, so this is definitely something that might turn out to be excellent.

Spigore

01-26-2011, 12:14 PM

I would love to see your report Carsten. Are you planning on writing up soon?

I've been playing your original list of CAB-Jace for a while and monitored this threat as well. All I can say that this deck is absolutely stunning. Treasure Hunt is king!
My friend plays White Staxx and it's always a braincracker to get out of his early game drops. Though I must say that Smokestack isn't the big issue I'm dealing with, since mostly it's kept at 1 and barely sees a second counter. The issue is the Crucible/Wasteland lock and an eventual Armageddon.
Canadian Threshold is a bitch, but very winnable. Cunning Wish to Extirpate is the best way to go, removing Mongoose if it's buried or taking out Stifles is key! Never worried about Goyf actually.

As I can see you are piloting the Groveburn combo now, I wasn't very impressed by that turn. I've always loved Mishra's Factory, though I barely beat opponents down with it, it gives you the extra pack of defense until you stabilize and drop Jace.

Basically the only change I made, was taking out 2 Firespouts and added 2 Ajani Vengeant.
Unfortunately I haven't played any tribal/zoo matchups with this setup yet. I'm quite sure it will still perform pretty well versus these decks.
Ajani just makes a lockpiece on its own, and occasionally pops out his Lightning Helix ability. It's lovely to keep an Aether Vial locked up, or a key land tapped. (Yes I know Aether Vial starts spitting in turn 2-3-4 but still, it locks up!)

Anyway, I'll stop myself from ranting on, here's your list, though -2 Spout +2 Ajani Vengeant.
All I can say is that I'm very impressed by Ajani and so far not missing the Firespout (still running a singleton, replacing it soon?).
I'll be happy to face any tribal/zoo player with this setup and see how it goes.
Made a minor change to the sideboard! Not sure about the Crypts though.

Instant
4 Swords to Plowshares
4 Force of Will
2 Forbid
2 Cunning Wish
4 Brainstorm

Sorcery
3 Treasure Hunt
1 Firespout

Artifact
4 Engineered Explosives
2 Sensei's Divining Top

Land
1 Island
1 Mountain
1 Plains
2 Underground Sea
2 Tundra
2 Volcanic Island
1 Tropical Island
4 Scalding Tarn
4 Flooded Strand
4 Maze of Ith
4 Mishra's Factory
2 Wasteland
1 Academy Ruins

Planeswalker
4 Jace, the Mind Sculptor
2 Ajani Vengeant

SIDEBOARD
1 Hydroblast
1 Dismantling Blow
1 Pyroblast
1 Red Elemental Blast
2 Spell Pierce
1 Forbid
3 Extirpate
1 Wing Shards
2 Diabolic Edict
2 Tormod's Crypt

Oh by the way, first post! :wink:

The Treefolk Master

01-26-2011, 12:26 PM

In my humble opinion, a single Firespout is too random. I'd ran something else, something blue probably, to up the blue count. Or crucible. Ideas?

Spigore

01-26-2011, 04:13 PM

In my humble opinion, a single Firespout is too random. I'd ran something else, something blue probably, to up the blue count. Or crucible. Ideas?

I totally agree with you, however, I'm not sure how to fill the slot.
Dropping the Firespouts makes the tribal and zoo matchups are more tricky.
Three wishes makes the board more accessible, and would make Tsabo's Decree interesting if you're alive-ish in turn 6 (or even 7-8 if you dropped two Mazes).
Although naming Cat or Wizard won't net you much removal in Zoo. :)

More input?

Mon,Goblin Chief

01-27-2011, 12:44 PM

Happy to see there are people playing the deck. Let me know how things turn out for you, what performs and what doesn't, etc. I hope the deck will be as much fun for you as it is for me (and as powerful).

Concerning my report, I was rather referring to my state at the tournament, not while posting, so I probably won't write a report, rereading how someone plays like sh*t isn't all that entertaining and won't help anybody understand the deck. Not to mention I don't really remember enough of the tournament to write a solid report. Again, next time I'll be in better shape and let you know what happened.

As for your decklist, seems like a solid variant of the decks original version even though I suspect you'll have some trouble with the tribal-decks without Firespout and an additional two four-drops. I'd run the ones you've removed in the sideboard at least.
As to Ajani, I considered running him, too, but disliked his non-synergy with the Mazes. Once you have a Maze out, Ajani's tap-ability is harder to use effectively because you need to take a hit (or worse, have Ajani take a hit) to be able to tap opposing creatures down because if you don't Maze untaps them :/
As to removing the last Firespout, personally I'd rather have another one in the main (probably in place of the second Ajani) :p If you want to cut it, though (maybe people play control all the time in your meta?), other options than those mentioned already you could try out are Pithing Needle (good even if it only protects Mazes), Trinket Mage (more EEs and SdTs) or Vindicate (Needle-protection and flexible removal). From what was mentioned already, especially in a version without Firespout, the third Cunning Wish with a Tsabo's Decree in the sideboard seems like a good idea. That way you at least have a way to clear out whatever attack-force remains if you get to six mana, compensating for the lack of Firespout. If you run a third Wish, I'd try to also get a FoF into the SB, being able to wish for carddraw is pretty useful with three Wishes which can otherwise have a tendency to clog up your hand.

Finally, I urge anybody who wants to play this deck to at least try out the Punishing Fire engine. I enjoyed the Mishra's quite a bit, too, but recurring Fires are so insane, it's hard to believe they haven't achieved wider use in the format yet.

Philipp2293

01-27-2011, 01:23 PM

Do you still think Extirpate is needed as wishtarget, now with survival gone? I'd feel pretty happy about a 2nd basic island, as this would enable me to cast Jace from just basics under a wastelock.

Mon,Goblin Chief

01-28-2011, 10:38 AM

I don't think Extirpate is utterly necessary any more, though it is rather important against the Loam-decks. I'm quite sure you want a fourth color dual in the deck, though, to set EE @ 4 when necessary, so I don't think cutting the Extirpate really lets you replace the Sea with the Island you want. I'd rather cut one of the Tundras and then consider removing the Pulse from the board (depending on how much Zoo and Burn you expect to see).

Mon,Goblin Chief

01-31-2011, 07:42 AM

Sorry for the double-post, just wanted to mention that, while I didn't write the matchup-guide for the thread, it's now available on SCG:

http://www.starcitygames.com/magic/legacy/21037_Eternal_on_the_Other_Side_of_the_Ocean_Playing_and_Sideboarding_with_Jace.html

Let me know what you think, especially what was good and what you didn't like. Wanna make these as enjoyable as possible after all. As for questions, ask away!

Catitas

02-01-2011, 04:45 AM

// Lands
1 [TSP] Academy Ruins
2 [TE] Wasteland
1 [A] Mountain (1)
1 [A] Underground Sea
4 [FUT] Grove of the Burnwillows
3 [A] Tundra
3 [B] Volcanic Island
1 [A] Plains (2)
4 [ON] Flooded Strand
4 [ZEN] Scalding Tarn
4 [DK] Maze of Ith
1 [A] Island (1)

// Spells
4 [FD] Engineered Explosives
2 [CHK] Sensei's Divining Top
4 [ZEN] Punishing Fire
2 [EX] Forbid
4 [MM] Brainstorm
4 [IA] Swords to Plowshares
4 [AL] Force of Will
3 [WWK] Treasure Hunt
4 [WWK] Jace, the Mind Sculptor

// Sideboard
SB: 1 [A] Red Elemental Blast
SB: 3 [ZEN] Mindbreak Trap
SB: 4 [PS] Meddling Mage
SB: 2 [ZEN] Ravenous Trap
SB: 1 [IA] Pyroblast
SB: 2 [DK] Tormod's Crypt
SB: 1 [TE] Perish
SB: 1 [PT] Nature's Ruin

I remember back in the extended days where wishes were good, that people only played them when there was a non defined meta so i tryed without them... I also thought about urborg tomb of yawgmoth to make mazes better...

Spigore

02-01-2011, 04:34 PM

After some testingy vs Tribal and Zoo, I quicky switched back to the triple Firespout.
Indeed, Maze of Ith & AjaniV is a no-go!

Carsten, although I haven't played the Grove/Fire combo yet, it seems kinda mana expensive and slower than running Factories and Spouts. Sure it is recurring damage and it does keep little critters off the board; Firespout kinda sweeps all...
Besides that, Factory doesn't need Spout to be effective, P. Fire needs the Grove to even get online.
I'm quite fond on Spout in the current meta you are describing in your SCG-article.

Imho, I would stay with Mishra's Factories as a 3/3 blocker backed up with Firespouts for the board cleaning.
It just seems so much more stable and less fragile.

Still loving the deck, very versatile!

Mon,Goblin Chief

02-02-2011, 12:01 PM

@Catitas: In a version without Wish, I'd definitly want 1-2 Needles MD to help against Waste-locks and similar stuff. The first card that I think can go is the fourth Fire, it went to the SB because you don't really need four against anything that isn't Tribal and I think it should stay there even without Wish. You'll also want something along the lines of Vindicate, Bant Charm or Ratchet Bomb in the SB (some way to kill Needle outside of EE is important because opposing Needles usually hit EE first, at which point you'll have a really hard time dealing with artifacts/enchantments). I'd also replace the Meddling Mages with a mix of Spell Snare, Spell Pierce, Negate and Vendilion Clique. As good against combo but better against Control and, in particular, Zoo. You really want to cheaper counters that hit PoP there.

@Spigore: Fire/Grove and Firespout-Mishra versions play slightly differently. In the Firespout-version, anything that leads the opponent to overextend is really good (because you have seven mass-removals). Mishra does this by holding back single small creatures, and Maze obviously does. That way Firespout leads to extremely advantageous blow-outs, whose card-advantage you ride for the win. The Fire-Grove version on the other hand doesn't plan to ride card-advantage as its gameplan (though it can do so perfectly well), at least against decks where Firespout would be useful, instead you gain inevitability. If the game keeps going, you'll eventually lock them out of any chance of ever getting a meaningful attackstep through Fire/Grove. Both plans are equally valid, but in my mind Fire/Grove has a few decisive advantages:

- It allows you to do something really unfair other than Jace. Assuming you don't get Wastelanded, simply having a starting hand that contains land, land, Grove, Punishing Fire means Tribal usually scoops. You kill their first guy on two and another one every turn thereafter. Being able to do something so unfair it just wins the game is one of the big things control-decks are missing in Legacy, at least at a relevant cost. Picking up random games because you opened with a certain combination of cards in hand is worth quite a bit in the longterm.

- You're less reliant on actual card-advantage. Sure, every time you buyback Fire to kill something you create card-advantage, but that isn't the important point. Because of the inevitability Fire/Grove grants you by allowing you to play an infinite number of removal-spells in your deck, you're quite capable of winning even if a (Weenie)creature-deck massively outdraws you as long as you have enough mana online. Immagine Goblins gets to resolve all four of its Ringleaders during the game. You can definitely win against that with the Firespout-version, but the fact that the opponent will only play a creature or two a turn (due to mana-demands) means that you'll quite possibly have to sweep before everything is deployed, leaving you hoping to find another sweeper pronto. With Fire on the other hand, by the time they have so many Ringleaders online, you'll often manage to hold their numbers down, turn after turn, killing the same amount of creatures they can play. As long as the board is stable when the Ringleadered Goblins come down, it remains stable.

- Fire/Grove is a lot better against non-aggro decks. Punishing Fire kills Jace and Mishras, fuels Forbid and is likely even a more reliable kill than Mishra against opposing control-decks. Firespout does none of the above.

- Your removal is cheaper. While it hits only one creature, Fire starts killing stuff earlier, which can be important against either mana denial or when you have a bunch of Mazes in hand you want to deploy but also want to stop taking damage. As such I wouldn't exactly call it slow. Sure, it kills only one creature at a time, but it does so earlier, before things haven gotten as far out of hand.

- Instant speed. No more annoying Warchief or Vial shenanigans at my eot to hit me on a simingly clear board. Also: no porting me out of it.

Advantages of Firespout:

- Better against turn 1 Lackey on the draw.

- Sweeps most of Zoo's board, Fire is somewhat lackluster

- can kill Lords when there are two of them out

- doesn't need help to deal with a bunch of creatures

The reason I'm convinced Grove is better is because of the inevitability it creates in so many matchups. Not having Mishra isn't a big deal to me, most of the time it dies to removal anyway when it gets activated and Punishing Fire mimicks Firespouts CA-generation to a surprising point due to the StP-synergy. Finally, while Punishing Fire clearly isn't a great card on its own, it still gets the job done reasonably well. Enough creatures die to 2 damage that you usually get to pay 2 to kill something, a trade you're fine with, particularly because of the Mazes and once you start buying it back, even if only with StPs, you rapidly approach the value of a Firespout (hitting more than three creatures at once is comparatively rare even with Mazes in my experience). Once you factor in the wider applicability of Fire/Grove, I think we have a clear winner.

With all of that being said, this is only my point of view. If you are more comfortable playing the Spout-version, go for it, you know what fits your playstyle best. Happy you enjoy the deck! (Still, try the Grove/Fire-combo for a few games. Trust me you're missing out on some sick fun)

Spigore

02-08-2011, 03:24 AM

Hey Carsten,

I see you made another listing on deckcheck.org.
Must say that I kinda like the Enlightened Tutor to Canonist tech in the sideboard. Looks very nice on paper, have you pulled it off or playtested it?
And you definately have to speak up about that White Sun's Zenith in the board, looks interesting too, and might serve even as a third win condition. How's it working out for you so far?

Mon,Goblin Chief

02-08-2011, 10:55 AM

Well, I knew there was going to be a little more combo than usually in the tournament this time so I wanted some additional form of defense. While Spell Pierces are better there if you get the set in because of their flexibilty (I think), I didn't have room and just having ETutor and Canonist means I get to keep at least three pieces of GY-hate (Crypt, Tutor, Extirpate). Never drew either and only played against combo (Solidarity) once - winning a 45 min game 1 (Forbid + Fire is some good), so there isn't all that much to talk about there. I did however Wish for Tutor more than once in testing. Wish for EE can be some good against aggro, another cute benefit of using this SB configuration. The one thing I'm going to change is turn the Crypt into a Spellbomb, makes it better when boarded in against Loam and you have already dealt with the Wastelands in some other way (or against Vine-decks that don't happen to hit the Vines). Cantripping also means you get another card that does something useful (however minor) against combo.

As for the Zenith, if you want a SB wincon I think this is it. It delivers a lot of bang for the buck by producing a really fast clock lategame. Actually haven't needed it yet, during the tournament Jace took all the games. I could have won one game off of it a few turns earlier but decided to rather get a Wing Shards to make sure my opponent would never be able to attack my Jace, which was at 7 counters at that point (in testing we usually just scoop things up once it's clear Jace is going to win, more time to get more games in so actually winning doesn't happen that often). Needing a backup wincon just doesn't come up all that often but I like the ability to end games faster than ramping Jace and waiting for them to deck would (when you cast it, it should usually be a two turn clock not counting the turn you Wish for it). As such Zenith should help quite a bit if you have a tendency to time out with the deck.

PS: Oh yeah, my next article will include a report for this tournament in the bonus-section :)

GGoober

02-08-2011, 11:59 AM

I can chime in on Firespout v.s. PFires/Groves from testing done in the past. As much as Firespout is well-accepted to be good against tribal, I do not feel that Firespout grants you the trump card unless you follow up with a controllock e.g. Jace or Countertop. Firespout is a 1-turn solution to a messy board, which is why it's that good, however, against decks like Goblins and Merfolks, if you do not rebuild fast, they will rebuild very fast assuming they are not dumb enough to go 100% out against a Urx control deck.

PFires/Groves although being an untraditional approach, is much better against tribal for the various reasons:
1) It will hit any target usually (except double lorded merfolks)
2) Once it starts going, you will always keep check on the board, hitting only the most dangerous targets. They can rebuild, but you will always have card-advantage (they spent 1 card playing their dude, you're using the same card to deal with the new threat). I'll go as much to say that tribal cannot beat PFires/Groves unless they beat you fast enough, so as long as you stop the initial onslaugh e.g. Lackey, PFires will lock up games that Firespout is unable to do so.

Also PFires is much stronger against the control mirror.

People can argue that Firespout hits 3-toughness dudes, this is relevant but only really towards Zoo, where Firespout is also usually too slow. PFires is not that great against Zoo, but regardless, you should be boarding out both PFires and Firespout against Zoo. I've seen good Zoo players just play around a Firespout letting you take 3 damage a turn from a single-cat when the bad control player is trying to wait for the zoo player to play more 1-drop to x-1 the Zoo player. But when you play Firespout with Countertop, that becomes a very solid strategy against Zoo, decks without Countertop can't really use the power of firespout as well as Countertop decks can since they cannot lock out the mid-late post-spout games.

Mon,Goblin Chief

02-08-2011, 01:44 PM

While I agree Punishing Fire is much stronger against Tribal than Firespout is (for all the reasons you gave), Firespout is actually excellent against Zoo in CAB Jace. Turn 3 is rarely too slow and, different from other control-decks, the Mazes in CAB Jace force even good players that try to ration their treats to overextend into Firespout if they want to win.

The Treefolk Master

02-14-2011, 09:20 PM

Spigore

02-15-2011, 05:36 AM

That's quite a nice turn of the table.
I've had some very nice plays with White Sun's Zenith as well. I think it's definately worth having a slot in the board.
Negate in the SB is a charm as well, when going into lategame it really outshines Spell Pierce/Snare.
Unfortunately, haven't been able to playtest the Canonist vs combo yet.

P.Fire/Grove is as discussed in most cases better than Firespout. As mentioned, end of turn vialed in creatures don't get any more hits and in D&T it really outshines Firespout. Loving it.

Although I know it's not a very heavily played deck, I'm afraid Sneaky-Show is a hard matchup;
Though the Mazes can net some creatures, it won't be very effective vs Progenitus or Emrakul's triggered ability.
I'm not sure if our counterpackage is enough to win 'counterwars' versus 4 Daze 4 FoW.
Besides that, is wishing into Wing Shards fast enough to prevent the big creatures from hitting you for lethal?

Will be taking the deck to a 20-30 player tournament on the 26th this month. Definately will make a short write-up.

Mon,Goblin Chief

02-15-2011, 08:09 AM

Newsflash: Casting a wished-for 11 mana White Sun's Zenith when you'r opponent just fowed (becoming handless) your fow to force through a needle on maze (other needle on jace) in order for his vendilion to get to attack causes him to become extremely angry, critisize your deck and quit.

The card is freaking nuts.

Lol! Excellent :mrburnshands: Thanks for the laugh!

@Spigore: Looking forward to the report. If you're expecting a lot of Sneak and Tell you could either run a few additional Spell Pierce/REB in the board or Retribution of the Meek. Happens to be quite useful against Loam, Horizons etc at the same time.

The Treefolk Master

02-15-2011, 08:51 AM

@Spigore: Looking forward to the report. .

That

If you're expecting a lot of Sneak and Tell you could either run a few additional Spell Pierce/REB in the board or Retribution of the Meek. Happens to be quite useful against Loam, Horizons etc at the same time

Retribution of the Meek is a sorcery. If you already knew this and you're proposing it as a non-wishable answer, wouldn't Ensnaring Bridge be better?

I agree, the negates from the sideboard are very good. What is found a little underwhelming is E. Tutor. My meta is really heavy on the affinity and elf aggro side (weird, I know), so I've been running 1 Fracturing Gust (still testing, also good vs. stax, it's been good up to know) and 1 Tsabo's Decree (OMG so much win in one card).

@Mon: If dredge is such a bad matchup, woulnd't it be profitable to add a bit more hate?

Mon,Goblin Chief

02-15-2011, 10:38 AM

Yep, I'm perfectly aware Retribution of the Meek is a sorcery. It's the perfect removal to board in though because it takes care of everything PFire has problems with. The problem with Ensnaring Bridge is you really don't want that as your out to Progenitus from the NoPro decks, they seem to always board in a few Grips because they usually don't have much else to replace the removal they run.
Also: Killing Knight with EE kills Bridge, which sucks, and you often have seven cards in hand, making Bridge really stop nothing but Prog but Retribution also cleans a squad of Goyfs and Knights.

The Tutor is there because I needed room and it can find Needle, Canonist and Crypt, leaving you with a little more room (and the ability to kind of Wish for Needle postboard). It's a fine card but far from necessary imo.

As for Tsabo's Decree, do you really need that? If I live to the point where I can Wish for it, they're usually blown out by PFire or something similar already, otherwise I'd be dead. It is however a great answer to a massive Glimpse-turn that doesn't lead to a win, I'll give you that.
In general both Fracturing Gust and Decree seem like nail-in-the-coffin-type cards, which on the one hand is obviously powerful but I'm not sure it's needed. I always avoided them because they're too slow to help you survive their really dangerous early draws, lategame has always been all about me having fun. If they work for you, excellent, and good to know in case I have to play in that kind of meta at some point.

As to Dredge, well, with the amount of play that deck sees I'm ready to gamble dodging it because otherwise I'd use a ton of space for cards I don't want to bring in anywhere else (Needles are far better against Loam than non-Extirpate GY-hate and having multiple Extirpates makes a second Sea necessary). If you see a lot of it, by all means increase the gy-hate count. I'd be using Nihil Spellbombs, far better against Loam than Crypt because you can cycle it if Loam isn't online but you're under pressure and probably as good against Dredge.

The Treefolk Master

02-15-2011, 05:45 PM

Gust and Decree have both saved my ass a couple of times. I'm not sure (yet) if they are win more cards, but I'll let you know how my testing goes.

When the 3rd volcanic arrives (really delayed, not really sure what happened) and my groves arrive (should come any day as from tomorrow), I'll take this to my local tournament.

The Treefolk Master

02-16-2011, 08:11 PM

Saw your report in SCG, kudos on beating solidarity.

Philipp2293

02-17-2011, 02:38 PM

Thanks for the report. Seems like you didn't have your brightest day, but we're all just humans. I think I might grab this deck, as Wasteland is really underplayed in my meta right now, and combo is held back by countertop variants.

Mon,Goblin Chief

02-17-2011, 03:34 PM

Wow, I forgot to link to the article with the bonus-report here.^^ To correct that:

http://www.starcitygames.com/magic/legacy/21150_Eternal_on_the_Other_Side_of_the_Ocean_ComboControl_Rising.html

@ Treefolk Master: Thanks :) Beating Solidarity definitely was the highlight of the day, no question *g* Did you get your cards yet?

@Philipp2293: That sounds like a prime-environment to whip this out! Be prepared to face more Wastelands and Pithing Needles soon, at least that's what happened where I play - before that have fun cruisin' *g*.

The Treefolk Master

02-17-2011, 05:41 PM

The Grove's, Fires and Wishes arrived today. No sign from the volcanic island though; I'm getting a bit scared now :S (I hate my country's mail)

Once it gets here (IF it gets here), I'll be playing the deck.

Mon,Goblin Chief

02-19-2011, 11:05 AM

Sorry to hear the Volc is that late... if you want to play the deck before it finally arrives, it should do fine with a Fetch or Island instead even though you lose a little bit of Fire-power (excuse the pun) in the lategame.

The Treefolk Master

03-03-2011, 07:43 PM

So, the Volcanic Island never arrived, and likely never will, so I got sick of waiting and decided to take the deck to a local, 16 man, legacy tournament, replacing the missing dual with a lousy Island.

My maindeck was exactly the same as that posted in Mon's last article, although my sideboard was radically different, due to card availability and expected metamage (tons of aggro and affintiy).

SB:

2 Energy Flux
2 Tormod's Crypt
1 Enlightened Tutor
1 Punishing Fire
1 Extirpate
1 Krosan Grip (should have been Dismantling Blow)
1 Diabolic Edict (should have been Wing Shards)
1 Pulse of the Fields
1 White Sun's Zenith
1 Tsabo's Decree
2 Negate
1 Ravenous Trap

Now, on to the rounds:

Round 1 vs. Affinity

G1: He has a slow start, presenting no Enforcers, and his only significant creatures, a pair of ravagers are contained by mazes, while the rest are fired away. He gets ravager ravager plating down, I EE for 2. He eventually concedes to Jace with no board position and no hand.

Boarded the tutor + the fluxes in.

G2: I keep 4 Mazes, Wasteland, E. Tutor, Swords, as I figure out I can generate time with mazes until a draw a white source, in which case I should win. I rip a tundra off the top and let the fun begin, drawing another land the next turn. He concedes with 1 Ravager on board vs. 3 Mazes and Jace.

2-0
1-0

Round 2 vs. Burn

Wasn't even close, not worth spending any words, so I'll use a quote: "Yes, I think ‘toast' is an appropriate description.—Jaya Ballard, task mage"

0-2
1-1

Round 3 vs. Junk (forgot his wastelands at home)

G1: I swords/fire/EE all his guys, and wasteland his Stirring Wildwood, so the game stalls as we are both in topdeck mode. However, he gets stuck on 2 lands, so I extirpate his fetchlands, rip jace, fateseal, fateseal, fateseal, fateseal, fateseal, counter, he dies.

G2: I go to 6 and keep a risky hand of grove wasteland top + removal, as I can't risk going to 5. He of course leads with duress (and takes top after a thinking for like 2 minutes...) but I draw into more fetches and duals. I kill all his guys and drop all 4 mazes into the table. Eventually, were both in topdeck move, both of us drawing dead, BUT I'mdoing 1 damage per turn, puting him in a 27 turn clock (yeah baby!). He concedes on the precarious life total of 19.

2-0
2-1

Round 4 vs. Jund Rock

G1: Play lands, Fire away bloodbraid elf, fow blightning, swords S. Thrinax (WTF) EE various cards of all shapes and sizes, drop jace, ramp it, win.

G2: Identical to game 2, although I have to EE a freaking Glissa (WTF number 2) 3 times due to he ripping Unearths from the top like his life depended on it.

2-0
3-1

I ended up getting 2nd.

Thoughts:

-The burn MU sucks, this, added to the fact that the combo matchup isn't very positive either, encourage me to try out leylines of sancity in the SB, ideas?
-P. FIRE > Firespout any day of the week.
Mazes rock!

Comments?

Mon,Goblin Chief

03-04-2011, 04:02 AM

Man, bad luck for the Volc :( Thanks for the report, though!

Some comments:
Round 1: I think you don't need EFlux to beat Affinity *G*

Round 2: Ouch. Maybe Leyline would really be a good idea, you're not the only one who seems to be having trouble vs burn.

Round 3: I don't think you should ever Extirpate opposing lands, you're wasting a card for no effect on the board. WSZenith maybe?

Round 4: WTF extended?

If your meta doesn't have any combo, you could also simply try boarding a few Samite Ministrations vs burn instead of Leylines. To make room in your SB I don't think you really need Tsabo's Decree or Energy Flux - Affinity/Tribal feels utterly beatable without them.

The Treefolk Master

03-04-2011, 03:47 PM

1. Probably not, but I expected a crapload of affinity, so I decided to put them in the board just because I couldn't think of anything else.

2. Point taken.

3. He duressed me when I only had a wish in hand, with 4 mana open, I had top, and it was the best thing I could think of. It was probably a missplay though, thanks.

4. Agreed

I'll try the manistrations, although I prefer the leylines on paper.

The Treefolk Master

03-08-2011, 06:11 PM

So, I'm probably taking CAB Jace to a big tournament 2 weeks from now, and I need help with my SB. I was thinking of something like this:

1 Dismantling Blow
1 Extirpate
1 Wing Shards
1 Punishing Fire
2 Negate
1 Pulse of the Fields
1 Red Elemental Blast
1 Pyroblast
1 Ravenous Trap
1 White Sun's Zenith
4 Free Slots

For the empty spaces I´m thinking about:

4 Leyline of Sanctity
3 Pithing Needle 1 Something
2 Tormod's Crypt 2 Pithing Needles
4 Something else you folks can come up with :P

I'm also not sold on the Ravenous Trap, it seems a bit clunky. Of course the rest of the sideboard is not 100% fixed and can vary before the tournament.

Ideas?

Suggestions?

EDIT: Oh, I forgot to post what the last metagame looked like:

Zoo: 5
Goblins: 5
Merfolks: 4
Eva Green: 4
Dredge: 3
WW: 3
Mono Red Burn: 3
Landstill: 2
Pro Bant: 2
UW Control: 2
Mono Black Aggro: 2
Sneak Attack: 2
UW Fish: 2
Mono Green Destroyland: 1
Solidarity: 1
Infect: 1
Chaimera: 1
Painter: 1
Survival WG: 1
Aggro Loam: 1
Canadian ********: 1
TPS: 1
Belcher: 1
Dark Depths: 1
BW Aggro: 1
Dark Horizons: 1
BG Control: 1
Pox: 1
Mono Green Aggro: 1
Enchantress: 1
Survival UGw: 2
Survival GB: 1
Survival UG: 1

As you can see, there are lots of aggro (Zoo, Tribal, others) decks, along with 1 of pretty much every semi competitive deck in the format. There's also quite a lot of burn (sad face), but not A LOT of combo (happy face). There are also a few discard heavy decks, making the Leylines look better and better.

Mon,Goblin Chief

03-08-2011, 06:52 PM

How confident are you the meta next time will at least be close to what you posted? As in, how many of the players are likely to be picking up some form of combo influenced by the latest SCG-results?
Because with what's happening lately (more and more S&T, ANT, High Tide etc) I'd be tempted to fill those last four slots with Spell Pierces and call it a day. Boarding an additional six cheap counters has worked fine for me against Burn before and makes all the Progenitus and spell-based combo-decks far more beatable than they otherwise are while also helping against Team America and similar tempo-decks post SB.

Additional dredge-hate might also make sense considering there were three already last time. The R. Trap could also be another Extirpate even with only a single Sea, seeing as there is practically no Loam in that metagame and Extirpate is totally fine to make Dredge beatable (as soon as they don't have Bridges any more, the removal-engine actually works quite well to keep them under control).

/edit: Extirpate has the additional advantage of being relevant against combo and burn, which is why I might run another instead of the RTrap. If you really want to beat Dredge consistently, you'll probably need the full set though - which is why I originally decided to largely ignore dredge when building the deck. Takes up so much space for cards you don't need elsewhere.

The Treefolk Master

03-08-2011, 07:02 PM

I'm 99% sure to see a similar metagame repeat itself, because every time a tournament of these caracteristics is held, there is always a HUGE amount of Zoo and Tribal. People don't seem to care, for some reason, about SCG results... As Legacy isn't that big in my country, people try to build cheap/semi cheap decks=> goblins/Merfolk=>many have the whole zoo decks from old extended and just need the necessary duals and fringe cards.

I'll try 4 Pierces and Extirpate number 2.

Thanks!

Catitas

03-11-2011, 10:46 AM

Carsten, what about removing both wastelands for a dust bowl and keep 60 card build?

The Treefolk Master

03-12-2011, 09:56 PM

Time for another report, small tournament, 14 people.

Same mainboard as before, though the SB was:

2 Tormod's Crypt
1 Punishing Fire
2 Extirpate
1 Dismantling Blow
1 Wing Shards
1 Pulse of the Fields
1 White Sun's Zenith
2 Negate
2 Warmth (couldn't find leylines in time)
2 Red Elemental Blast

R1 vs. Burn (facepalm)

Again, wasn't even close, he set me on fire both games, although he was really lucky with his draws while I wasn't.

0-2
0-1

R2 vs Infectstompy

G1: He gets 2 dudes down, I P. Fire, drop Maze, drop Grove, ramp jace, Win.

G2: The same thing, although he got me to 6 poison counters.

2-0
1-1

R3 vs. NO Bant

G1: He mana screw, I waste a key land, drop Maze to hold down a Tarmo, drop jace, ramp, win again.

G2: He drops an early NO and pushes it through my FOW, not much to say here.

G3: His few threats are dismantled with EE and Maze, when he goes for the NO I have the Negate, he passes, EOT Wish por Extirpate, bye bye NO. I see his hand is dead, with Plow-Fow-Land-Noble. Without NO, he can't beat me, but doesn't concede until I begin to fateseal with THE MAN.

2-1
2-1

R4 vs. Dark Horizons

G1: He plays land go for like 8 turns, which gives me TONS of time to build my defenses. He begins to drop dudes, they begin to die horribly. He draws 3 Vindicates for Jaces and Groves, and drops a few dudes, so it looks like he might manage to pull out a win. However, I Plow and drop & blow EE. Both libraries are really small right now, and I'm drawing dead until I find a Top to match his freshly drawn Top. I finally find my 4th jace, begin to fateseal my self, sending crap to the bottom while floating a counterspell on top. He finally he concedes to Jace on 13 counters.

Note: G1 took a whole lot of time, so there are only 7 minutes left in the clock.

G2: I use my removals and Fows aggresively, trying not to loose intead of winning. We go to turns and I win.

1-0
3-1

I ended up in 3rd place.

Notes:
Unless I can find a good solution for the Burn matchup, I may not be rocking this in the next big tournamet, as that plus the chances of facing combo are greatly discouraging. Leylines haven't been all that great during testing.

Comments?

Mon,Goblin Chief

03-13-2011, 10:27 AM

Thanks for the report, seems like the deck performed pretty well over all (aside from burn again). Have you tried the mass-counters from the SB setup? I've beaten burn both times I had to play it in tournaments with that setup. Other than that, I'm pretty sure you can make burn a really good matchup simply by playing 4 Samite Ministrations in the board (slow-roll them until he goes for PoP if you can), though that's a lot of space for a single deck.

@Catitas: Dust Bowl was tested but the acivation-cost made it clunkier than was worth the repeatability. I'd rather just run a single Waste in that case.

The Treefolk Master

03-13-2011, 11:22 AM

I didn't have time to test the mass-counters version before the tournament, I'll try to find some time to test online before this saturday (vs. know opponents, not some idiot who tries to stifle the additional cost on Silvergiill Adept...).

4 Samit Ministratioms seems to much, as you said.

Have you tried the Intuition Loam version with the Punishing Grove combo in it? It seems really powerful, although a bit slow...

dEDIT: The one bad thing I see in the 4 Spell Pierce SB is the lack of Pithing Needles, which are probably the best sideboard card in like, ever. They offer protection from wasteland and 9495747954 other cards.Mon, Do you run Needles? Comments on them?

Nizmox

03-15-2011, 09:43 PM

Lands: 24
3 Wasteland
1 Volrath's Stronghold
3 Factory
4 Delta
2 Misty Rainforest
3 Underground Sea
3 Tropical Island
1 Lonely Sandbar
2 Island
1 Swamp
1 Forest

Aggro-hate: 10
4 Maze of Ith
4 Pernicious Deed
2 Shriekmaw

Card filtering/draw: 17
3 Top
4 Brainstorm
4 Treasure Hunt
1 Life from the Loam
2 Cunning Wish
3 Jace

Counters: 10
3 Spell Pierce
3 Counterspell
4 Force of Will

SB:
1 Intuition
1 Forbid
2 Krosan Grip
3 Extirpate
4 Counterbalance
1 Diabolic Edict
3 Engineerined Plague/Innocent Blood/Shriekmaw

I really like this suggestion and am going to try it out for myself (with a few changes). I enjoy playing my UBG landstill but have contemplated putting Maze of Ith in the deck for quite some time. It forces your opponent to over extend and with Deed you punish them for it. Deed is such a beating in Landstill and I love that it is also great against non creature based decks which is why I feel it's better than firespout or punishing fires. By adding Maze of Ith you're likely going up to 28 lands and then Treasure hunt becomes viable instead of standstill.

I definitely won't be running shriekmaw, i would advocate running Explosives with Ruins (instead of Stronghold) over that any day. And Explosives is awesome because again it isn't limited to affecting creature based decks.

Other ideas would be to increase the number of cycling lands to ~3, drop loam to 1 and include intuition.
Cycling lands + Loam + Ruins + Explosives all fit nicely into an intuition package.

I'm not sure if cunning wish is required in this build either. Black has awesome sideboard options though, extirpate in particular answers many problems.

Has anyone properly tested a UBG version of this deck using Treasure Hunt?

Mon,Goblin Chief

03-21-2011, 10:38 AM

@Treefolk Master: Yep, I do run Needles. There simply isn't enough combo or burn in my meta to justify spending slots on the Pierces yet (not to mention I've been playing NBS aka Spiral Tide lately - still, I have Jace built simply so that I can chose to play whatever I feel like). My current SB looks like this:

1 Wing Shards
1 Dismantling Blow
1 Pulse of the Fields
1 White Sun's Zenith
1 Extirpate
2 Negate
1 REB
1 Pyroblast
1 Punishing Fire
1 Enlightened Tutor
1 Nihil Spellbomb
1 Ethersworn Canonist
2 Pithing Needle

Probably won't beat Burn with it outside of a lucky draw (though adding some ETutor-target like CoP: Red to the board would probably help) and Dredge/Combo still sucks but as those decks are rare where I play, I don't need pierces. The Tutor makes setting up something they can't beat easier, though - Canonist + Forbid is GG against Combo and I'd probably try to set up the same against burn - if you Forbid every spell he aims at Canonist, he can't win either. Ruins + Spellbomb beats Dredge and you buy a lot of time with the removal to set that up). Needles are insane against all decks with Wastelands but not really necessary to be favored against them (outside of Loam) so those are the first things I'd cut in a meta with more Combo/Dredge/Burn and the E-Tutor package can become whatever you feel comfortable with/need for your meta. I just like flexible answers.
Maxim has come up with the interesting idea of running a Top and 3 CBs in the SB if you expect a lot of combo and burn. While usually your curve doesn't support CB all that well, it does if most things you want to hit cost 0 or 1 - something to think about.

@Nizmox: I don't have any testing with it, but that list has two problems, imo: First you don't have any cheap removal once you cut the Shriekmaws (and those are only 2 for 2 mana), meaning any Aggro-draw that includes a Wasteland probably just kills you. This is compounded by the fact that you run Deed over EE, which in my experience is just to slow to be worth it in Legacy - and which therefore makes it even more likely to get overrun*. EE is also better against CB because they can't just keep a 3 on top and cold you (the reason this deck is so good against CB is that they usually can't kill you through your Mazes, which means you get to EE their board at some point). Also three Jace is definitely wrong.

*I know others have enjoyed success with the card, for me Deed has been a tempo-black hole too often that made me take far too much damage before my removal came online. It also doesn't kill Planeswalkers.

DukeDemonKn1ght

03-21-2011, 02:40 PM

If Burn has been giving people so much trouble, why not try Aegis of Honor? As a bonus, it's Enlightened Tutor-able, so you don't have to waste too many sideboard slots on it.

Seems way better than Samite Ministration to me. You're welcome ;)

Hedgy22

04-02-2011, 02:26 PM

I've been following this forum for awhile ever since the introduction of the deck on SCG (atleast the introduction for me, as this was when I first became aware of the archetype), and after some testing at local legacy tournaments I wanted to contribute my 2 cents in this discussion.

Has anyone tried removing the cunning wish package and replacing an enlightened tutor package? It seems like most the cunning wish targets aren't super powerful in most matchups. They help when you are already winning, but not powerful enough to turn a game around. An enlightened tutor package would also allow leyline of sanctity to be run in the sideboard, which would greatly improve both this deck's poor matchups (burn and combo). Ensnaring bridge and/or moat help with NO and show and tell decks. Enlightened tutor also helps with the problem that lead to the inclusion of cunning wish (dead draws late game). I think it should definitely be considered, as it seems to fit perfectly in this deck.

Maybe I'm mistaken, but maybe I'm on to something. Let me know what you all think!

Jiaozy

04-03-2011, 04:20 AM

Warning, possible TL; DR post ahead!

I've been playing around with a similar idea (ETutor package) for a while and he're where I'm at, as of now:

4 Volcanic Island
4 Tundra
1 Glacial Fortress
3 Flooded Strand
3 Scalding Tarn
1 Island
1 Plains
1 Mountain
4 Grove of the Burnwillows
1 Seat of the Synod
4 Maze of Ith
1 Academy Ruins

4 Brainstorm
4 Force of Will
2 Forbid
2 Spell Snare
4 Swords to Plowshares
3 Punishing Fire
3 Enlightened Tutor
2 Jace, the Mind Sculptor
2 Treasure Hunt
3 Sensei's Divining Top
1 Ensnaring Bridge
1 Humility
1 Pithing Needle
1 Enginereed Explosives
1 Crucible of Worlds

Sidebord
4 Counterbalance
4 Red Elemental Blast
1 Humility
3 Pithing Needle
2 Tormod's Crypt
1 Warmth

I had to up the number of Tops to better support the CB plan in the SB, that solves horrible MUs like Burn and ANT with the ETutors to find the pieces of the "lock".

Crucible is just a blowout against decks packing Wasteland.

Seat of the Synod is there as a "just-in-case" card to fetch via Tutor for a mana-light hand or to fight a Choke, a card that I found very hard to beat and the reason for the Glacial Fortress in the MD as the 5th Tundra.

The full set of Needles between MD and SB is there beacause against Gobbos you have very little that you want to Force so I usually take them out in favour of something better: Needles for Vial and a second Humility.
It can also come in against a number of other decks, even naming Wasteland against tempo isn't a bad option.

Humility wins alone in a ridiculous number of MUs, be it Goblins, NO Show, GW, Zoo and the like, while Moat just sucks in those MUs since it allows them a comeback via Zenith for Qasali, Qasali, Siege-Gang Commander to shoot your face, Elspeth to give a Reliquary flying till EoT and such.
With Humility you solve ALL of these problems and more.
For the same mana you get a free win (Humility + PFire is some good, I hear), whereas with Moat you just time-walk you opponent, if that.

Warmth is awesome against Burn,because it lets you take just 1 damage for each of their burn spells if it resolves, but you gain 2 even if it gets countered!
You just have to try your best not to get Sulfuric Vortex'd! ;)
In this MU I usually take out Needle, Bridge, Humility, a Maze and Crucible for 4 CB and the Warmth.
Other options could be Dragon's Claw (you gain life from your own PFires too), Zuran Orb (+Crucible), Trigon of Mending (a bit slow, tho, but has a HUGE potential) or Sun Droplet.

VS ANT and Spiral Tide I usually side out STP, Humility, Bridge, Explosives and Crucible/Needle so I have room for 8 side in: CB and REB. I leave in the Needle only against Spiral Tide for their Candelabra.

VS Emrakul/Progeniti decks there are 2 Humility between MD and SB and a Bridge in the MD.
They can't basically beat a resolved/put into play via S&T Humility and post SB you have a LOT of counters.
VS Sneak Attack I usually do: -4 STP, -4 Maze for +3 Needle, +1 Humility, +4 REB. REB for Show and Tell, Needles for Sneak Attack. The STP and Mazes tend to go due to their critters being immune to them (Progenitus and Emrakul).
VS NO Show I do: -4 Maze, -1 Needle, +1 Humility, +4 REB. Here the STP stay in since they have lots of targets for them and along with PFire you can try to keep their board clean from green creatures to make it harder for them to Natural Order a Progenitus in play. REBs are for the usual suspects (Force, S&T).

VS Zoo/GW Order I do: -1 Forbid +1 Humility. Siding in CB against them is usually worthless since they can easily play around it with Zenith and/or Planeswalkers.

Dredge is an horrible MU as usual and you have to get REALLY lucky to win anyway, so 2 Tormod's are all that I feel like devoting to them. As always you should mulligan any hand not containing ETutor or Crypt and possibly the Ruins. The perfect hand consists of 2 lands, Ruins, ETutor/Crypt, don't be afraid to mulligan because keeping a mediocre 7 cards hand will make you lose anyway if you have no hate. The Crypts could easily go if you suspect/know there are no Dredges in the room to make room for something else.

My 2 cents :P

The Treefolk Master

04-03-2011, 11:01 AM

Some insight on your list:

Post your Counterbalance curve is:

1 drops: 21
2 drops: 9
3 drops: 4

You're a bit low on the 2 drops, and obviously very high on the 1 drops. You could consider adding some counterspells to ease this.

Your blue count for Force of Will is also a little low, at only 16 cards maindeck, counting the FOWs themselves. I think the bare minimum is 18, but you would be more confortable with 19/20.

2 Jace. NO. Run 4. For budget reasons, 3 may be acceptable, but the optimum number is 4. It's your main win condition, it bounces single threats, it turns into a better Phyrexian Arena, it pitches to FOW.

There is no sinergy between Humility and Engsnaring Bridge main deck. You could look towards cutting one of them.

You're also a bit wrong on moat. Moat is a complete blowout against Goblins; you WILL win 99.9% of the time, they should never be able to kill you with SGC, and if they do, Humility probably wasn´t going to save you anyway. Humility is superios vs. Bant, GW, Zoo and Progenitus decks (all of which, if you remove Pridemage from the equation, Moat is a blowout against). I think I prefer Moat, but I could be wrong, it deserves more testing. MAYBE you could go -1 Bridge +1 Moat, but it could be pushing the curve a little.

I do like the Crucible MD, kudos on that.

With E. Tutor, Aegis of Honor > Warmth in the sideboard.

3 Tops looks like a bit too much. Maybe moving on to the sideboard woud be a good move.

2 Treasure Hunts seems a bit ramdom, maybe add another counterspell or something (also, Treasure Hunt and Bridge is a no go).

Forbid seems a bit clunky (it was always the worst card when playing CAB Jace), maybe Counterspell would help.

Huge fan of Spell Snares.

I'm not entirely convinced by your manabase, you could try going:

-1 Tundra
-1 V. Island
-1 Glacial Fortress/Seat of the Synod

+1 Flooded Strand
+1 Scalding Tarn
+1 Island/Wasteland

You're running Crucible, so a single Wasteland/Dust Bowl looks good.

Comments?

Jiaozy

04-03-2011, 05:10 PM

The list is wrong, I just copy/pasted it from MWS, I actually dropped Forbid in favour of Counterspell!

I noticed the problems with Treasure Hunt and Bridge and was thinking of taking them out and play 3 Counterspell and 3 Snare.

Humility + Bridge isn't that big of a problem because you rarely have both out or if you do you can easily play the top card of your deck without problems and recur Fires in EoT leaving them in the yard during your turn.

The count for CB is right, mainly because the spells you fear the most in the burn and ANT MU cost 1 (Ritual, Chant, Silence, High Tide, Lightning X) and by the time a spell that costs 2 becomes problematic (Price of Progress, Infernal, Merchant Scroll) you should've found one.

As for the mana base I'm having good results with this one, more fetched aren't needed with Crucible. The Dust Bowl/Wasteland idea is good, tho, I'll try that!

The Treefolk Master

04-03-2011, 05:18 PM

You could also try 2/3 Ethersworn Canonists instead of Counterbalances, because a good ANT player will just sculp the perfect hand, bounce the CB and then kill you, canonist at least presents a clock, albeit not a very fast one. However, Canonist + Fire can put pressure on the opp.

I think removing the Bridge and leaving in Humility is probably the way to do. Having Humility + Fire online is probably on the same level as Humility + Engineered Plage (although the best feeling EVAH is Humility + Moat).

The Treefolk Master

04-03-2011, 08:01 PM

Sorry for double post, but I just realized your list is 62 cards, which is 1/2 too much. What's up with that?

Jiaozy

04-04-2011, 07:31 AM

Hurr....
I don't have the deck handy and can't double check it, but I know it's 61 cards, not 62!
Not sure why that list is 62!

About the Canonist, they allow them to sculpt their hand via cantrips and tutors and then kill you after bouncing them, while CB stops cantrips, tutors and the possible combo and against Burn they do nothing relevant.
I know very well how Humility + Moat feels, I used to play both a while ago, but Bridge is just more flexible and against decks with no/few outs to them (Sneak Attack, NO Show) is a turn faster than Humility.

I'll try the Aegis of Honour out, I totally forgot about the card!

Jiaozy

04-10-2011, 05:28 AM

Sorry for the double post, but I do so for the thread to update!
I've got my deck back and here's what the list actually looked like, it was a bit off in the previous post since it was a somewhat old list from an MWS file:

1 Engineered Explosives
1 Humility
1 Ensnaring Bridge
1 Pithing Needle
1 Crucible of Worlds
4 Brainstorm
4 Force of Will
2 Jace, the Mind Sculptor
2 Treasure Hunt
2 Spell Snare
3 Sensei's Divining Top
3 Punishing Fire
4 Swords to Plowshares
3 Enlightened Tutor

4 Volcanic Island
4 Tundra
4 Grove of the Burnwillows
4 Maze of Ith
3 Scalding Tarn
3 Flooded Strand
1 Glacial Fortress
1 Academy Ruins
1 Island
1 Mountain
1 Plains
1 Seat of the Synod

Sidebord
4 Counterbalance
4 Red Elemental Blast
1 Humility
3 Pithing Needle
2 Tormod's Crypt
1 Warmth

There aren't the 2 MD Forbid but just 2 Snare, I do realize the blue card count is very low but the only card you want to force turn 1 is Goblin Lackey if you don't have a StP in hand, since Vial can be resolved with a Tutor for Needle or Explosives, making it a lot less relevant than it was before so between BStorm and Tops you can find a pitch for when you need one.
Combo is for sure a weak MU with this MD but after SBing it becomes much more winnable and the blue cards count goes up by 4 while you have 4 more counters.

With the recent discussion I think I'll try the following changes:

MD
-2 Treasure Hunt
-1 Ensnaring Bridge
+2 Counterspell
+1 Jace, TMS

SB
-1 Warmth
-2 Tormod's Crypt (not very useful in my meta as of now)
+1 Aegis of Honor
+2 Dispel/Negate still not sure about which one!

Hedgy22

04-10-2011, 09:50 PM

dont run this deck with less than 4 jaces, thats all I'm going to say. there were plenty other issues I saw, but this is critical.

Jiaozy

04-11-2011, 04:36 PM

dont run this deck with less than 4 jaces, thats all I'm going to say. there were plenty other issues I saw, but this is critical.Thanks for having thoroughly tested my build and for the extremely useful reply!

Noted and NO THANKS, 2-3 Jace are plenty since you don't lose them in a single attack like with other builds, thanks to Humility.

Once you land a Jace the 2nd and 3rd usually pitch to Force of Will since it'll hardly ever die from anything other than Vindicate and/or Maelstrom Pulse.

Also, an opening hand with double/triple Jace is ALWAYS a mulligan and I'd like to avoid that as much as possible.

Hedgy22

04-11-2011, 07:20 PM

I've been playing this deck at local legacy tournaments for a couple months now. Carston really knows what he is doing with this deck, and one of the things he stressed in an SCG articles was the need for 4 Jaces (albeit he was running only 3, due to not having a fourth). Therefore, the creator of the archetype disagrees with you as well.

Ensnaring bridge + Humility + Treasure Hunt = ?!

If you want to run only 2 win conditions, play a prison deck. Control needs to actually threaten winning, or it just dies. Running 2 Jaces and no wish package is just begging for dead draws, which is precisely what happened in my testing.

Discard wrecks you if it hits a Jace, leaving you with a single win condition remaining in your deck.

Don't be concerned with drawing multiples, as they can be pitched to FoW or brainstormed away. In my time playing this deck (hundreds of games), multiple Jaces have NEVER been a problem.

I conclude that 4 Jace is optimal.

If you don't have 4 Jaces, thats another issue. You can always replace the other two with another win condition (subpar, but ajani vengeant has been previously mentioned as an alternative).

I understand the desire to innovate, but in order to improve you must impartially consider criticism.

Jiaozy

04-11-2011, 08:50 PM

Maybe reading what I already posted would help you give some constructive criticism.
I said in the reply exactly above your first one that I'm cutting Bridge and Treasure Hunt for the issues already pointed out (altho it hardly never happened in the 40 odd games I played with them in the deck :S ) and you insist on that point?

I'm not sure I understand your NEED for a Jace in play.
Why would you want 4 win conditions?
With Humility in play you have all the time in the world to find a Jace and win with it, are you in a hurry?
The decks that you lose against don't care about Jace and if one hits and stays more than a single turn it's because you're either already winning by far or they're doing nothing.
I'd much rather have a card that can stabilize my board position than a Jace, any turn of the game.

The thing that I miss the most about the original build?
The 4 Explosives.
THOSE are useful and never a bad topdeck, but there's no space to run more than one.

The Wish package as of now is incredibly slow, with fast decks like ANT, Dredge, Sligh and the like you can't afford 2 full turns of doing nothing just to play a SB card...
If you're in a meta where people just play Landeed, Bant or GW Order then by all means run it, but in another meta it's just clunky because you need solutions right away and not after 2 turns.
ETutor + Brainstorm/Top means you're fetching your solution NOW for 1/2 mana, not 3 mana + X to play it.

I played the deck BOTH with the original list AND with my configuration and having a consistent and flexible out to Progenitus and Emrakul (Tutor for Humility) along with a gameplan against Burn and combo is leaps and bounds better than having a full playset of foil Jaces in my deck.

The Treefolk Master

04-11-2011, 08:51 PM

Jiaozy

04-11-2011, 08:59 PM

Couldn't have said it better. Seriously, 4 Jaces are a MUST.

In your time playing the deck, what have you done to solve the burn match up?

An idea popped, which would also help in the combo match up: Chalice of the Void. Thoughts?From the look of it, the people in this thread are just giving up the ANT, Burn and High Tide MU because the deck MUST be played as originally posted by Carsten.

Don't get me wrong, I love the basic list and have played it a lot myself, both before and after the Punishing Fire package, but as of now the deck in his original configuration just flat out loses from a shitload of things: resolved S&T, resolved Natural Order, any storm combo, Sligh Zoo, Burn, Dredge, Team America.

With the list I'm trying and that I have proposed the Burn, ANT, S&T and Natural Order MUs are FAR less troublesome than they were before.
But if you're sure there's none of these decks in your meta, by all means keep playing the classic list with Wishes and 4 Jace.

Hedgy22

04-12-2011, 12:42 PM

Here's something I wish everyone could understand better about legacy: there will ALWAYS be a bad matchup. You can't try to control every aspect of the game. If you want a deck that beats burn, ANT, or high tide, play Countertop.

I'm very sorry to say this, but your comments, Jiaozy, are only causing detriment to this forum at the moment. I think legacy players really underestimate Jace. I really think 4 Jace is optimal, as does everyone else.

I thought of chalice as a sideboard option, and I'll maybe try that at the next legacy tournament here. As of now I've been running 4 leylines of sanctity and 4 spell pierce sideboard, and the rest are wish targets. Burn can't win through a leyline in play, although hightide is still a rough matchup. This deck isn't really designed to beat the hightide deck.

Jiaozy

04-12-2011, 10:25 PM

I really think 4 Jace is optimal, as does everyone else.This must be the reason why you only see TWO OR THREE AT BEST in any given list that plays Jace!!
Everyone playing the format must be wrong and 4 Jace are the correct number, because it's awesome to open your first 7 cards with two Jace or drawing another one or two when there's one in play.
Really awesome!

If you'd like to do anything constructive TRY MY LIST then come back and speak before posting without any knowledge nor understanding of how the deck plays.

4 Jace aren't needed as of now, no one plays the full playset outside of STANDARD!
And for good reasons.
That you all seem to NOT understand.

If you try my list (but I think I'm speaking nonsense here, because people on this board criticize BEFORE shuffling the deck even once) you'll see how it does A LOT better against decks packing Natural Order and/or Show and Tell, Goblin, Elves, Landstill/Landeed, Bant and anything else that wins with creatures.

At the same time, with the ETutor package you can afford to play the best anti-combo card in the format (Counterbalance) instead of crap like Leyline, Chalice or other subpar options.

I can't control any aspect of the game MD, but at least I have a shot at it between MD and SB.
The base list with the Wish package can't control a thing, as of now.

I know there will always be a bad MU, but if I can avoid having 80% of the field as bad MUs with minimal changes (maybe 10 cards), why shouldn't I?
Just to stuck with a 5 months old list?
No thanks.

Maybe instead of just spitting senseless things you should try and play the deck, BEFORE saying anything about it.

Hedgy22

04-13-2011, 12:29 AM

I apologize if I have made you upset in any way, as it appears you have become slightly agitated. Please calm down so we can accomplish something. Allow me to provide some constructive criticism. I apologize for how extensive this is.

This must be the reason why you only see TWO OR THREE AT BEST in any given list that plays Jace!!
Everyone playing the format must be wrong and 4 Jace are the correct number, because it's awesome to open your first 7 cards with two Jace or drawing another one or two when there's one in play.
Really awesome!

This list is called CAB JACE for a reason, it is not like every other deck in the format. 4 Jace sucks in countertop, as with team america, or bant, or anything, except this deck. This deck is different. It is irrelevant to compare land count in enchantress with ANT. It is likewise irrelevant to compare the number of Jace between this deck and other blue decks in the format. They are played very differently. The other decks have many means to win, and Jace fulfills a very different role in those decks. It is a supporting card, not a flagship, in those decks. It is the central, most essential figure in this deck. Thus, the need for 4.
Also, opening more than 1 jace is not a problem, as previously mentioned, as it can be pitched to FoW or brainstormed away (8 ways to get rid of it is not problematic). Jace can fulfill so many purposes in this deck, and is so versatile, that it is never redundant.

If you'd like to do anything constructive TRY MY LIST then come back and speak before posting without any knowledge nor understanding of how the deck plays.

4 Jace aren't needed as of now, no one plays the full playset outside of STANDARD!
And for good reasons.
That you all seem to NOT understand.

If you try my list (but I think I'm speaking nonsense here, because people on this board criticize BEFORE shuffling the deck even once) you'll see how it does A LOT better against decks packing Natural Order and/or Show and Tell, Goblin, Elves, Landstill/Landeed, Bant and anything else that wins with creatures.

I have tried your list, and it goldfishes just fine. Unfortunately, in actual playtesting (done this morning from 1:15 to 4:45 with a friend of mine) it suffered from exactly the situations I predicted. It absolutely dies to team america and junk, as both discard (losing a Jace leaves you with 1 win condition. Discarded both one game, leaving no way to win other than punishing fire) and wasteland wreck you. the deck runs just fine when you open with a Jace, but you can't always count on that when you only run 2. The consistency was troubling. I did like the enlightened tutor package, however, and have also been advocating exploration in this direction.
The control matchup is also very lousy. The original list did much better with this, as forbid-lock with punishing fire was very good there. Cunning wish also helped against dead draws, a problem your deck suffers from immensely. It also sucks to have Jace countered, leaving you with only one card remaining that can actually win. This also happens frequently, as your list runs fewer counters than they do.
Admittedly, the combo matchups is unfortunately worse as well (pre and postboard). You do have more postboard responses in counterbalance, however a good combo player will recognize your lack of a threat to establish a clock, take plenty of time, and sculpt the perfect hand before going off. Counterbalance is not a catchall solution, and a more dedicated counterbalance deck succeeds more at this role. My playtesting partner recognized this, and it was very difficult for me to win these games. Counterbalance is by no means bad as a sideboard option, but it does not presume the removal of 2 Jace. Having counterbalance and a clock is what we need (you'll notice all dedicated counterbalance decks with tarmagoyf), and having only 2 cards in the deck that can establish a clock is not good. I still think leyline of sanctity may be better, but I am excited to try counterbalance as well this weekend. It just may be what we need.

At the same time, with the ETutor package you can afford to play the best anti-combo card in the format (Counterbalance) instead of crap like Leyline, Chalice or other subpar options.

I can't control any aspect of the game MD, but at least I have a shot at it between MD and SB.
The base list with the Wish package can't control a thing, as of now.

I know there will always be a bad MU, but if I can avoid having 80% of the field as bad MUs with minimal changes (maybe 10 cards), why shouldn't I?
Just to stuck with a 5 months old list?
No thanks.

The enlightened tutor package seems like it might work, however as I previously mentioned this does not imply you must drop Jace for it. I think the deck can be improved by maybe dropping the spell snares for the additional Jace. I don't think losing 2 spell snare MD will completely screw you over in some matchups. I actually think forbid should be revisited as an option too, as forbid-lock with punishing fire is excellent against many decks.

Maybe instead of just spitting senseless things you should try and play the deck, BEFORE saying anything about it.

Please don't be so upset with me. I am just trying to improve the deck, and I feel 2 Jace is not the direction this deck needs to go. Also, you don't necessarily need to test a deck to know it's bad sometimes (although I did test your deck). You would be able to tell someone, without testing, that scaled wurm is bad in zoo. Sometimes, its obvious.

Hedgy22

04-13-2011, 12:37 AM

Sorry for such a long post earlier. I thought I'd just post what i'm running this weekend.

Draw
4x Brainstorm
2x Cunning Wish
4x Jace, the Mind Sculptor
1x Sensei's Divining Top
3x Treasure Hunt

Removal
3x Engineered Explosives
4x Maze of Ith
2x Pithing Needle
3x Punishing Fire
4x Swords to Plowshares

Counterspells
2x Forbid
4x Force of Will

Land
1x Academy Ruins
1x Arid Mesa
3x Flooded Strand
4x Grove of the Burnwillows
3x Island
2x Mishra's Factory
1x Mountain
1x Plains
1x Polluted Delta
4x Scalding Tarn
2x Tundra
1x Underground Sea
1x Volcanic Island

Sideboard
1x Dismantling Blow
1x extirpate
4x Leyline of Sanctity
1x Pulse of the Fields
1x Punishing Fire
1x Ravenous Trap
4x Spell Pierce
1x White Sun's Zenith
1x Wing Shards

I have maindeck pithing needles as I am expecting a lot of goblins this weekend. The list in general is very tailored to my metagame, so some numbers may be incorrect for any of your metas. I'm going to be trying out 4 leylings and 4 pierce in an attempt to turn around some matchups. I think spell pierce will be amazing against NO and show and tell decks. Leyline combined with pierce should help immensely against high tide and ANT. I don't think this list is quite optimal yet, but hopefully the tournament will help me get a bit closer. I want to try and find room for an edict in the sideboard as well, but I'm not sure what to cut. Let me know what you guys think about this general configuration?

klaus

04-13-2011, 05:06 AM

ugh. somebody put a muzzle on that softbrained Jiaozy-kiddy..
-
as for CB as a SB option - I still dig it.

Hedgy22

04-13-2011, 07:53 AM

I'm new here. Is there a way to report to a Mod or something?

Just to try and keep this page alive in spite of jiaozy, I'll try posting a tournament report this weeked after trying out the leylines. I really would like to see Mon's opinions again, and hope the previous frustrating posts haven't killed this discussion :-/

Mon,Goblin Chief

04-13-2011, 07:58 AM

@Jiaozy: First, your tone is far from appropriate and while I'm not a mod, this is, in a way, my thread. I'd like to keep it civil and reasonable, people having experience with the deck telling you about problems with yours is no reason to go into "suXX0r read my post" mode - they clearly did, they just disagree with you. Hedgy even tested your list and he seems to have a solid grasp of what the original deck plans to do, judging from his posts. You should probably listen to him instead of doing the equivalent of throwing a hizzy-fit. Keep it down, otherwise I'll have to contact a mod.

As to your suggestions, this seems to be your current list:

1 Engineered Explosives
1 Humility
1 Pithing Needle
1 Crucible of Worlds
4 Brainstorm
4 Force of Will
2 Counterspell
3 Jace, the Mind Sculptor
2 Spell Snare
3 Sensei's Divining Top
3 Punishing Fire
4 Swords to Plowshares
3 Enlightened Tutor

4 Volcanic Island
4 Tundra
4 Grove of the Burnwillows
4 Maze of Ith
3 Scalding Tarn
3 Flooded Strand
1 Glacial Fortress
1 Academy Ruins
1 Island
1 Mountain
1 Plains
1 Seat of the Synod

Sidebord
4 Counterbalance
4 Red Elemental Blast
1 Humility
3 Pithing Needle
1 Aegis of Honor
2 Dispel/Negate

Trying out an Enlightened Tutor toolbox seems reasonable and is definitely a direction worth exploring. When I used Enlightened Tutor, the additional card-disadvantage hurt a lot, though, and you have no way to actually provide card-advantage outside of Jace as you've cut the Treasure Hunts. I guarantee you'll run into trouble with this in a number of matchups (those that aren't cold to Fire-Grove).
Replacing Explosives essentially with a lot of ways to get Humility down or find a single EE also has another problem: Tempo-decks and Fish become very problematic. Especially with Mazes taking up landdrops, 4-cost bombs tend to be late when you need to stabilize the board against them.
Against Counterbalance, having only one EE is going to cost you big time because you'll have trouble breaking out of the lock before they do something that makes it hard for you to get back in. With four EEs, you can hide behind Mazes and wait for the right moment to kill CB. In your version, you need to get very lucky to even find an EE.

Your manabase also seems suboptimal, Fetchlands are excellent with Top and give you better access to your basics. Running more duals and even Glacial Fortress instead seems lackluster to say the least.

Combo: You have two more counters - and Spell Snares at that - but no possibility of actually locking things up game 1. The original list hopes to establish Forbid-Fire against them and ride that to victory. How exactly do you plan to win? Because let me tell you, eight counters and a 6 turn clock for four mana sure doesn't do it. The original list is weak to combo, no question. Yours probably can't win game one if they're mana-screwed for the first five turns.
Now, CB from the board changes that, though you have to be aware that a) setting it up is rather slow, especially with only three Tops and b) they'll get out of the lock at some point because they board for the matchup, too, which in turn means you need a clock. Forbid being essentially unanswerable for them once its online provides you with a weird kind of clock while you have to draw into more countermagic naturally without the help of actual draw-effects. Sure, SDT provides quality, it doesn't allow you to make consistent landdrops while drawing business. Tapping down for Jace before you're at ~8-10 mana doesn't really count because it usually ends with you dieing, even with CB in play.

Having absolutely no GY-hate postboard also seems pretty random, especially considering you already have the Tutors. Why concede Dredge completely if your list is already set up to easily fix that?

Number of Jaces: Landing a Jace is all the deck is about. Having four means you have the best chance to do so and Jaces are never redundant. If you land one, the other gets brainstormed away. If you haven't landed one, you want to have one. If the first gets stopped/killed, you want a new one. I'd run six of the damned things if they'd let me. Jace isn't just your wincondition, it's also your major advantage-engine. An active Jace will beat almost anything and running them out early to soak up a hit and Brainstorm is often better than it sounds. Having to take care that you don't get your Jaces killed, which means you have to slow-roll them, turns him into a random Morphling, which is a waste of card-power.

Some things to think about.

@Treefolk Master: Chalice is something I've contemplated, too. Definitely something worth trying out with the meta moving more and more towards combo.

@Hedgy: The list looks pretty solid, some comments:

Your manabase is the one thing I really dislike:
-It seems light on red mana to support the PFire engine. You should probably have a Volcanic instead of the third basic Island.
- I expect you simply don't have access to a fourth Flooded Strand? Because if you do there is no reason at all to run Delta over it.
- I'd be slightly worried with only three actual white sources MD if I want to support WSZ. A random Wasteland hitting your Tundra cuts you off. This is reasonable as WSZ isn't necessary most of the time, but I thought I'd point it out.
- Finally, I prefer Wastelands to Mishras as mine always end up eating spot-removal game one while Waste kills stuff like opposing Ruins, Manlands, Ports, etc. To each his own, though, Mishras are a suprisingly relevant clock postboard sometimes and pretty sweet defense if the opponent doesn't have the removal.

Other stuff:
- Leyline is actually useless against High Tide because it doesn't stop them from going off. They only target you once you're already dead and at that point they can easily Wish for something to deal with it first. It's a card I probably wouldn't even bring in if you didn't have that many dead cards MD.
- Spell Pierce similarly is sweet against Tide early but as you're going to allow them to get to infi lands in play, Pierce isn't going to cut it lategame.
The Leyline plus Pierce plan should put the hurt on ANT/TES though.
- I guess you don't expect Dredge/are ready to concede the matchup considering your GYhate?

If you don't expect to see burn (where Leyline shines), it might be reasonable to replace the Leylines with a mix of Negates, Vendilion Cliques and Extirpates. Having three CB and a Top in those slots is another option that should also work fine against Burn. Oh yeah, REB is actually the sweetest Counterspell ever against High Tide, btw ;).

Good luck at the tournament!

/edit: @hedgy: the little triangle-shaped button in the lower righthand corner of each post should work to report it.

/edit-edit: I guess the CB plan won't work for you as you only have one Top MD. You could try to make room for the third either MD or in the SB if you felt like it. Or you could heed TreefolkMasters suggestion and give a set of Chalices a try. They seem reasonable for what you want to do, though they don't fit with the Pierces at all.

/@hedgy-ninja-edit: Here you go ;) I've been a little busy with other stuff lately, so less posting. I sure hope threads don't die because of a single poster making a mess of things! Waiting for your tournament-report detailing how you kicked everybody's ass :D

perm

04-13-2011, 08:27 AM

I think 4x Jace and forbid is a good idea. You can pitch dead jaces to FoW and forbid at very worse, and you can absolutely expect mangaras/vindicates/creatures attacking/burn to go right for your cornerstone card, jace. My experience with Jace TMS vs aggro is that sometimes when on the defensive in the red zone, jace is used to bounce heavy beaters and runs out of steam, and replacing him is completely sensible. Use -1 ability to send him to GY, then cast a new jace with a fresh ability ready. Just from looking at it, I think 3-4 forbid is the right number with all the powerful draw effects. Dead card multiples should not be an issue with the prevalent pitch costs. What does testing show? Also this seems like it might belong in established deck forums now

Mon,Goblin Chief

04-13-2011, 08:59 AM

Yep, I think the deck is definitely ready for Established, the only problem being the primer you need in the first post exists already but is in one of my SCG-articles. No idea how that is handled, but I doubt SCG would want me to copy-paste it and I really don't feel like writing the same things again in different words.
As for running more Forbids, I can see the value in that but the card is rather clunky. I'd probably rather run regular countermagic in addition to the two Forbids, library-manipulation and carddraw can usually find it when you're ready to lock things up and cheaper countermagic is better until you get to Forbid-lock. Note that earlier versions had a Forbid in the board to establish the lock with Wish if necessary but most people, me included, decided to just use more cheap countermagic even there. With the growing combo-component of the meta, this is probably something that should be reconsidered, though.

perm

04-13-2011, 09:26 AM

I think 3 forbid is definitely the correct number for this deck. As for cheaper countermagic, why do you say? Being blue and having hefty draw power, FoW will be a readily available tool for when expecting combo, and easily allowing you to tap out to establish you gameplan and forces. Spell Pierce makes you lose possible tempo with keeping the U open anyway. Have you tested with three forbid? This is really the deck where it would shine.

Mon,Goblin Chief

04-13-2011, 10:47 AM

Admittedly, I never tested with three Forbid. I have however experienced enough situations were Forbid was markedly worse than Counterspell would have been that I'm reasonably sure you don't want the third. Forbid's buyback becomes relevant mainly in the mid- to lategame and before you want to buyback it, it is significantly worse than Counterspell. As you said, the deck has a solid amount of manipulation and carddraw, which means the difference between having two and three Forbid is relatively minor in the lategame but drawing Counterspells instead of additional Forbids early can be a big advantage. If you want easier access to the Forbid-lock, I think the correct place for the additional Forbid is in the SB where it can be Wished for game one if necessary without being another clunky card to draw early while coming in against combo instead of random removal postboard (or even stay in the board to keep maximum access to the Forbid-lock).

Zilla

04-13-2011, 01:28 PM

Moved to Established. Carsten, can you please edit the opening post to add a link to your SCG primer, for those with accounts? Thanks.

Mon,Goblin Chief

04-14-2011, 02:20 PM

Sweet! :D

Links, introductory paragraph and up to date decklist added. Btw, the articles are free, no need to have an account.

Hedgy22

04-14-2011, 06:15 PM

Thanks for all the advice Mon!

Except one question... Would you recommend a second volc in addition to the one already in there, or did you miss the first one? Just curious, because it didn't sound the most clear to me.

Also, what would you recommend for a more anti combo sideboard. I know this deck certainly isnt designed to beat combo, but for those stray combo decks running around my metagame (mostly ANT and Hightide), what would be enough to turn those matchups remotely winnable? I now realize leyline isnt enough ( forgot about wipe away :-/ )... Perhaps canonist?

The Treefolk Master

04-16-2011, 10:19 PM

I'm trying to make an Intuition based list, since it seems really powerful and versatile, albeit a bit slow.

Here is were I'm at right now:

3 Volcanic Island
3 Tundra
4 Flooded Strand
4 Scalding Tarn
1 Island
1 Plains
1 Mountain
4 Grove of the Burnwillows
4 Maze of Ith
1 Academy Ruins
4 Brainstorm
4 Force of Will
4 Swords to Plowshares
2 Punishing Fire
4 Jace, the Mind Sculptor
2 Sensei's Divining Top
1 Engineered Explosives
3 Counterspell
2 Tropical Island
1 Dust Bowl
3 Intuition
1 Life from the Loam
3 Spell Snare
1 Ensnaring Bridge

The deck is utterly unbeatable in the late game, and a resolved intuition (when your not going for 3 x Swords just to kill something) is GG 99% of the time. The deck is much more confortable on the blue count, and has more permission than the old lists. The bridge is THE NUTS against many aggro strategies. The one thing I'm not sold is the Dust Bowl and only having one EE (this makes me feel a bit insecure).

Thoughts?

Mon,Goblin Chief

04-17-2011, 09:58 AM

Hedgy: I meant in addition. You want a red land in play for every grove you have and you very definitely always want to have triple red available once you have five mana (to Fire 3-4 toughness guys).
As for combo-hate, there are a few routes you could try out:

Vendilion Clique + extra countermagic. Clique gives you another angle of attack (hand-disruption) and, most importantly, provides you with the semblance of a clock. In your sideboard you could turn Leylines into two Clique and two Negate, which would leave you with twelve counters plus Cliques, pretty solid. I'd probably turn one Pierce into an REB simply because it a) let's you wish to kill Jace and b) is much better against High Tide. Mindbreak Trap would probably work fine with that plan, too.

Chalice of the Void + additional countermagic: Chalice will help lock out both burn and combo without you needing to have extra-tops and set up the full CB-lock. Storm is usually just dead to Chalice @ 1 plus FoW in hand, which is nice, and High Tide has to go through quite some trouble to win if High Tide and all the Cantrips are locked out. You can even drop a second Chalice on 0 to lock out their additional countermagic (Pact). At that point you obviously don't want to run a set of pierces, probably something like 1 Pierce, 1 REB, 2 Negate. I haven't tested this, but it looks quite powerful.

CB/Top: You could replace the Leylines with a Top and three CBs as long as you find room for a second SDT MD. This is actually somewhat lackluster against combo because you need to set up a two-card combo before they can kill you. If you do though, you're probably looking good. At that point you could even add something like an Enlightened Tutor to your board (meaning you also get more GY-hate by running a single Spellbomb/Crypt) and round it out with a Canonist. This is probably the best option against burn, two.

Canonist: This is obviously at its worst against burn, but you could use a mix of Canonists and Enlightened Tutors two have solid hate against storm/Tide and a bullet or two for GY hate and other things you feel you need help with.

@Treefolk Master:
This evolves the deck very far from its original foundations (it's basically a Loam-deck now) but that isn't necessarily a bad thing. I think the idea shows definite promise for the current American metagame. Your matchup against combo becomes much better I guess and Loam should be quite good against regular mana-denial and medium-speed decks, too. The only thing that is going to suffer significantly is the CB matchup, which becomes a lot worse if you don't have the full set of EEs but considering the way the SCG meta looks, that shouldn't (yet) be a problem there. This is definitely something worth trying out and I'd be very interested in any testing-results you have.
Things I'd change:
Cut a Tundra: You don't have Wish any more, no need for so many white sources.
Go back to two Wasteland instead of the Dust Bowl: Dustbowl is really slow and usually not worth it. Randomly Wastelocking people can be quite good, though, but you don't want to be Dredging every turn so you want two Wastelands to recur every two turns.
Turn one of the Counterspells into a Forbid: you have two easy ways to turn on the lock (Fire and Loam) plus Jace for the safe endgame. I think you should have access to the hardlock at least lategame, which is why I'd want a Forbid.
I might want a singleton Needle in this MD, not sure what to cut. Needle is insane to make sure your bridge stays alive against decks with Pridemage (at least game 1) which gives you a sweet nearly full-lock against the midrange decks. And it's isn't like Needle is a bad card for this deck anyway between locking out Wasteland and Vial, among other things. It providing a way to stop Wasteland recursion is icing on the cake because even with Loam you don't want them to lock you on three to four mana while forcing you to dredge regularly.

One final suggestion: make sure your SB has a lot of 3-offs to Intuition up.

I hope you're going to test that list and let me know how it goes. It's a very different deck in how it plays out but you might be on to something sweet there.

The Treefolk Master

04-17-2011, 03:08 PM

Point taken on the tundra, I was favouring Dust Bowl because you'd have to dredge 3 times a Wasteland to break 3 lands, while 1 dredge would break 3 lands using Dust Bowl. 2 Wastelands is probably better though.

The EE makes the match up a bit worse than before, but,as you said, it isn't a big presence of the metagame right now, and, if you manage to force an Intuition through, you should win.

CotV and Countertop seem to be the best alternatives against Burn and Combo, although I've yet to test to see which one is better.

Hedgy22

04-17-2011, 09:15 PM

I really Like the suggestions for the combo matchup. I did go to a tournament yesterday, but was obviously not informed yet on what to do with the combo matchup, and as such just ran the leylines. I ran the same deck I posted with a few minor changes (additional volc, etc.). I went to a store I've never been to for the tournament, as some of my friends thought it may be a bit more competitive than where we usually go. The metagame was very different than where we usually played, and most of the matchups were rather awkward.

Tournament Report

Round one: Elves

Game 1: Open a hand with grove and fires. I was pretty excited to see turn 1 llanowar elves. Turns out grove-fires really wrecks elves.

Game 2: Nothing sided in, as this matchup is pretty solid. Very similar opener to game 1. He sided in Thorn of Amethyst to try and slow down the punishing fire engine, but it still got there for me.

1-0 (2-0)

Round two: Dredge

Game 1: Not a good matchup for me. I lose the Die roll again too. Turn two he ends up milling 35 cards from his library, gets 2 narcomoeba, 3 bridge, but doesn't find a dread return. He just cabal therapy's me three times, and puts me at 1 the next turn. I most definitely lose.

Game 2: Side in 4 spell pierce, tormod's crypt, and ravenous trap. Sided out all 4 mazes, and both cunning wish. Not really much going for me here. I get pretty lucky, however, as I counter 3 draw spells in a row, leaving him with 6 cards in graveyard (no dredgers) and 2 coliseums in play. I land a Jace and am able to mana flood him. I also had swords for any creatures he was able to land, keeping him off threshold still. I never drew graveyard hate, but my luck there was able to push me through.

Game 3: I open an incredibly lucky opener with both tormod's crypt and ravenous trap, as well as brainstorm and Jace. He play's turn 1 pithing needle naming Jace. Bummer. He doesn't have a second land and no other turn 1 plays though until a breakthrough for 0 turn 3. I ravenous trap it and leave him in topdeck mode. I draw the academy ruins and am able to keep his graveyard clear, and we end up playing draw for for quite some time while I dig for an explosives. I eventually draw it after accumulating a hand of 4 force of wills and 3 spell pierce. Not sure he can win past that. I'm pretty sure I could use a few more hate cards for this matchup, as both my wins were very very lucky.

2-0 (4-1)

Round three: ANT

Game 1: I honestly wasn't expecting to play this much combo, otherwise I would have just played a countertop deck. Oh well :-/ I should be alright pasteboard. He handily defeats me game 1 though.

Game 2: I side in the 4 leylines and 4 spell pierce. I side out 4 maze of ith and 4 swords to plowshares. I open a hand with leyline and start with it in play. He grabs it and reads it real quick, and frowns a bit. He tries to combo off with ad nauseam, but I had 2 force of wills for backup.

Game 3: He sides in some additional cards before the game. Probably leyline hate. I start with a leyline in play again (got so lucky today!). After a few turns he tries to go off again with ad nauseam, but again I have the counterspell (2 spell pierce this time).

3-0 (6-2)

Round four: Team America

Game 1: I'm not really sure if this is considered a good matchup or not. I don't have very much experience with this deck. This game was certainly not very good for me, as multiple stifles, hymns, and tarmogoyfs proved to be too much for my deck to handle. He played many many cantrips during the game as well (ponders and brainstorms and even a preordain?!). The game lasted awhile, but I was unable to stabilize.

Game 2: Sided in the spell pierces, and took out 2 cunning wish and 2 explosives. Not sure if this is right or not, but last game I certainly wanted spell pierce. I took out all but one explosive as the only real target for it is tarmogoyf (maybe ace, but punishing fire is better at this). I don't know if I really want any of the cunning wish targets here either. They helped a little in the early game, but I wasn't able to get there again. The closest I got was landing a Jace when he had only a tombstalker, and bouncing tombstalker is very satisfying. He followed it up with a revoker naming Jace, which really sucked.

3-1 (6-4)

Round five: Junk

Game 1: He won the die roll, and proceeded to turn 1 thoughseize, followed by turn 2 thought seize and inquisition, then turn 3 knight of the reliquary. I managed to draw 3 maze of iths in a row, which were no match for the stream of wastelands that came.

Game 2: I side out 2 cunning with and 2 explosives like last time, only this time I decided to try the leylines instead. Seeing thoughtseize, inquisition, and hymn made me think he may be running more discard than the Team America player. I'm not familiar with either of these decks, so I am not sure if this is correct at all. I draw a hand with only leyline and maze, while the rest is land. I keep… Is this a decent hand against this deck? I'm not sure. Anyways, I was able to win this won, getting a pithing needle on wasteland and assembling the forbid-lock later on. Leylines definitely helped, as he showed me, in his frustration, a hand of 5 discard spells at the end. He had duress too!

Game 3: Mulled to 6, found leyline again. Not much time on the clock at this point and it winds up being a draw.

3-1-1 (7-5-1)

Overall not super great, although I did not play any of the decks I was expecting to. I realize I may need more dredge hate... Although the tormod's crypt + academy ruins combo was incredibly powerful. Perhaps another academy or even the black spellbomb. Definitely gonna change some things up before playing there again lol.

The Treefolk Master

04-18-2011, 07:57 AM

I've also drawn a lot vs. Junk, more than against ANY deck (3 times as of now). Is it just a coincidence, or something we should try to solve?

The Treefolk Master

04-29-2011, 08:34 PM

Has anyone tried the sideboard ideas (Chalice, Countertop) against combo or burn? Any new ideas or results?

mchainmail

04-29-2011, 10:26 PM

I've also drawn a lot vs. Junk, more than against ANY deck (3 times as of now). Is it just a coincidence, or something we should try to solve?

Despite playing big creatures, Junk *is* a slow midrange deck, and slow decks *will* have trouble finishing 3 games against it.

The Treefolk Master

05-10-2011, 07:12 PM

Sooo, do you think the printing of Mental Misstep affects this deck? I don't think we should play it, but what are your thoughts about it's presence in the format, does it affects this decks card choices/viability in any way?

Also, I REALLY wan't to fit 1 Crucible into the MD, it just seems bonkers in this deck, where you can get enough Mazes down to make little children cry... Any thoughts on this? Ideas for what to take out (it probably has to be something non blue, so the biggest targets are either 1 EE, or a Land)?

Also, as Mon said in his article, Beast Within goes straight into the Wishboard. EOT kill your Jace, untap, drop my own Jace, maze your elephant, kill you (Note: for maximum effectiveness at Jace killing, get some Ape tokens to replace the dead planeswalker).

Thoughts?

Hedgy22

05-26-2011, 01:27 PM

Sorry I haven't been able to check this for awhile. I've been fairly busy lately, and haven't even been able to play in a tournament for some time. I have been trying to fit a crucible into the deck lately, as well as mental misstep. I really think mental misstep has a place in this deck, as it's somewhat comparable to swords to plowshares in this format. Sure they are both only a one for one trade, but the tempo makes the card what it is.

4x Jace, the Mind Sculptor
4x Brainstorm
3x Treasure Hunt
1x Sensei's Divining Top
1x Crucible of Worlds

1x Forbid
4x Force of Will
4x Mental Misstep

4x Swords to Plowshares
4x Maze of Ith
3x Engineered Explosives
3x Punishing Fire

4x Grove of the Burnwillows
1x Dust Bowl
1x Academy Ruins
1x Horizon Canopy
4x Scalding Tarn
3x Flooded Strand
1x Polluted Delta
1x Arid Mesa
2x Island
1x Mountain
1x Plains
2x Tundra
1x Underground Sea
2x Volcanic Island

Sideboard:
2x enlightened tutor
2x Pithing Needle
1x ethersworn canonist
1x Ensnaring Bridge
1x Tormod's Crypt
4x Leyline of Sanctity
1x Forbid
1x Punishing Fire
1x Misdirection
1x Surgical Extraction

To be honest, there wasn't a great deal of testing involved with this build at all. This is merely what I wrote down earlier. I will be going to a tournament with this 76 tonight, and will be posting later this week on it's performance.

Hedgy22

05-30-2011, 05:23 PM

I ended up making the top 8 of the tournament, and I discovered a lot of ideas along the way. First, the matches.

Round one I was paired against the guy I drove with, a very close friend of mine. We ended up taking an intentional draw for the match, but played it out anyways. Game 1 isn't even close for the deck, and I was burned out efficiently. I took game 2 due to an abundance of counterspells (mental misstep and spell pierce were awesome this match), and actually ended up winning on the back of mishra's factories and punishing fires (he took a lot from flame rifts). Game 3 was also very close. I got him to 3 off of punishing fires and factories, but he ended up topdecking the price of progress for the win. Overall, I was mostly able to avoid the Price of Progress by fetching basics, but I only have so many.

Round two was against another burn deck! However, he was running a more creature heavy version. It was more of a sligh deck. His only burn spells were bolts, chain lightning, PoP, and flame blast. The rest of the deck was a mix of ball lightnings, goblin guides, hellsparks, marauders, and even jackal pups. Game 1 was won easily by punishing fires and mental missteps. I lost game 2 due to a misplay. I was at 11 life with many dual lands, jace on the field and active punishing fires. He has nothing in hand or in play. I fateseal putting jace up to 7 seeing a chain lightning, and I put it to the bottom, since I couldnt counter it. I dunno why I was afraid of chain lightning there, as I had ample life. He drew a price of progress and took that game. Game 3 was more similar to the first, and punishing fires took care of his board yet again.

Round three was against a stoneforge mystic bant deck with tarmogoyfs, knights, green sun's zenith, etc... I feel the stoneforge mystic decks are very good matchups, and both games were not very close.

Round four was against a mono black deck with nantuko shades, tombstalkers, phyrexian arena, and a ton of discard. He lost several shades due to not playing around punishing fire. Jace bouncing tombstalkers is fun. Nothing too special this match either.

Top 8 match was against a bant countertop thopters deck. Game 1 was an easy matchup, but for games 2 and 3 he brought in krosan grips. Even with all the hate I have for this deck (graveyard hate, pithing needle, REB, EE) Krosan grip proved to trump them all. I lost games 2 and 3.

Thopter tokens were difficult to handle, and sometimes I felt like a pernicious deed would just be better than engineered explosives. Sure it can't be brought back with academy ruins, but has anyone tried a UBRg version of this deck? Here's a rough draft of what I was thinking.

2x Island
1x Mountain
1x Swamp
1x Misty Rainforest
4x Polluted Delta
4x Scalding Tarn
4x Grove of the Burnwillows
1x Tropical Island
2x Underground Sea
3x Volcanic Island
2x Mishra's Factory

1x Forbid
4x Force of Will
4x Mental Misstep

4x Maze of Ith
4x Innocent Blood
4x Punishing Fire
4x Pernicious Deed

4x Brainstorm
3x Treasure Hunt
4x Jace, the Mind Sculptor

Sideboard//
3x Extirpate
2x Krosan Grip
3x Pithing Needle
2x Misdirection
1x Forbid
3x Red Elemental Blast
1x Lord of Extinction

I dont know if this is any good or not, but I thought I'd give it a shot. There's an incredible amount of synergy in our removal suite. Maze of ith prompts overcommitment into a deed, while punishing fire can remove all the smaller creatures for innocent blood to be very effective in taking out the very large creatures. We could even revisit adding the stronghold-shriekmaw package if needed, although I'm not sure how necessary that is with punishing fires. Our combo matchup is worse with the removal of white, as is the burn matchup, but I think it really hits the newly popular stoneforge mystic decks hard. What do you guys think?

The Treefolk Master

06-05-2011, 04:34 PM

I like the original version better, Pernicious Deed is highly effective, but EE can be cheaper, and recurring EE beats control (which is on the rise lately).

Maybe I was wrong about MM here, it seems more appealing now.

I'm finding Cunnin Wish slow, clunky, and mostly underwhelming lately, what are your thoughts on it? Maybe replace it and Forbid with 4 MM? Whenever Wish is useful, I'm already in a winning position.

If we remove the Wishboard, E. Tutor out of the sideboard could be useful vs. Burn and Combo. Bring in 2 Tutors, + Canonist/Aegis of Honour/CoP: Red/Rule of Law/etc.

Thoguhts?

Mon,Goblin Chief

06-05-2011, 06:39 PM

Sorry I haven't been keeping up with the thread too much lately, ever since countermagic control has become viable in the metagame I've been playing that (to be exact Caw Cartel, if you're interested check the bonus section on Thursday) due to the better combo-matchup with similar matchups to Jace against most of the aggressive and control decks. I don't see me beating CAB Jace preboard though ;). Don't get me wrong, I still love this deck but I believe Caw Cartel has better matchups if you consider the whole meta. Against aggro, though, there's nothing outside of combo that's better than CAB Jace.

@ Hedgy22: Congratz, way to innovate and thanks for the report! I'm not sure how necessary Misstep is here but it certainly feels good to have some more countermagic.

Concerning the use of Deed, I'm simply not ready to give up StP so I wouldn't do that. If I was going to play the deck right now with the slower meta and the mass of Equipments running around, I would definitly try to get a Nevinyrral's Disk or two in there. Allows you to deal with clogged boards, deals with Prog and Ruins-Disk is also the ultimate lock with Jace on the table.

Spigore

06-06-2011, 12:04 PM

Heya Carsten,

Grats on the 1st place finish with Cartel. I find the entire deck philosophy quite intersting.
Are you able to write up some of the tournament match-ups etc.?
For a couple of months, I had a blast playing CAB-Jace and just by now, reading the Cartel article on SCG, I'm very interested to read about your match-ups.

And also, which moves are you going to make to fit that third Clique in. Also, Back to Basics might be worth a maindeck slot or two?

Hope to read more from you soon.

Mon,Goblin Chief

06-09-2011, 06:41 AM

Happy you enjoy what I have to offer :) As for a tournament report, check out the bonus section of today's article, that should also answer the question how I'm gonna fit in the third Clique for now:

http://www.starcitygames.com/magic/legacy/22060_Eternal_Europe_Stop_Whining_Already_Or_How_To_Beat_The_New_Blue.html

I'd be happy if we could keep any in-depth discussion of that deck to PM (or if there's enough interest in a thread on Caw Cartel), though, this thread is for CAB Jace.

deadlock

06-10-2011, 06:00 AM

Hello, I am new to this deck and really like your design.
Similiar to Treefolk I immediatly thought about Intuition, but unlike him I wouldt rework the deck completly to fit in. I am thinking about 2-4 Inution and a single Loam.
There two possibilties how to fit in in:
- Remove the Wishes / Wishboard
- Reduce the number of cards, which can profit from Intuition.
Here are some selling points:
- A single Loam let us recur Maze of Ith.
- Academy Ruins can be tutored up, for example your Intu for Ruins, Loam and EE / whatever artifact you need.
- Tutor up punishing Fires / Groove. Hell, this would allow us to run a singleton of both of them and still get the engine online if we need it.
- A single Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth could be included to allow our Mazes to produce mana.
- Adding a Witness and a Volraths Stronghold is an option too, but maybe too cute. This would allow us to reccur any card we want!
-Basically we can free up a lot of slots with Intuition, which would allow the inclusion of Mental Misstep, which I regard as very important.
- Moving into a more green and possibly black direction would require to restructure the deck, but would allow us to run Deed. Think of this as an option which is not bound to run Intuition or not. Its just fine in the current version, with an additional small green splash for Loam.

Finally if we keep the Wishboard I suggest Surgical Extraction instead of Extirpate.

nayon

06-15-2011, 02:02 PM

Do you guys think this deck is viable in the current meta? Let me say what I think.

BUGStill: They're really slow, and you can probably outlast them if you get the punishing fire combo going. Key to winning this seems to be fighting over lands, crucible and jace.

Hive mind: Seems like a very difficult matchup, the longer the game goes the more time they have to assemble a perfect hand and just win. Or they can win very early on. Doesn't seem like we can answer an Emrakul easily.

Merfolk: Seems too aggressive for this list, but not sure. Explosives and burn is good, but can we get them out fast enough and dodge counters at the same time?

UW Stoneforge: Batterskull is really annoying. They have enough CA to fight us for it, but if they don't get a decent creature then we can easily burn them out it seems.

Zoo/Goblins: Very fast decks. not sure if a few engineereds will be enough.

Breakfast: Seems like a dangerous matchup. They're really explosive and have counter backup.

Reanimator: Similarly. We don't auto lose to a Jin Gitaxias, but they are in a great position after that.

Junk decks: We seem to destroy this matchup if we can stabilize.

NO RUG: no idea.

The Treefolk Master

07-06-2011, 07:16 PM

Sooo, in order to get this deck some attention, I'll post my updated Intuition list:

4 Jace, the Mind Sculptor
4 Brainstorm
1 Forbid
4 Force of Will
4 Mental Misstep
4 Swords to Plowshares
4 Maze of Ith
3 Engineered Explosives
3 Punishing Fire
4 Grove of the Burnwillows
1 Academy Ruins
4 Scalding Tarn
4 Flooded Strand
1 Island
1 Mountain
1 Plains
3 Tundra
3 Volcanic Island
1 Life from the Loam
3 Intuition
2 Tropical Island
1 Dust Bowl
1 Open Slot

The Sideboard is still in the making, it's obvioulsy composed by 5 3-offs, I'm thinking V. Clique, Canonist, Some Sort of Graveyard Hate, something against Burn (Kitchen Finks? CoP: Red?)

There's an open-slot in the mainboard currently, my thoughts on it are:

1- Cutting it to go down to 60 cards.
2- Sensei's Divining Top (solid) or Scroll Rack (less solid, bonkers with Loam, although it might fall into The Danger of Cool Things Territory).
3- Crucible of Worlds.
4- A sweeper, because Needle on EE can be extremely irritating. Disk or Oblivion Stone probably. Or maybe just plain ol' Wrath.
5- ???

Thoughts?

I am the brainwasher

07-22-2011, 11:13 AM

I wanted to build a deck with intuition and EE/Ruins/Loam + PFire/Grove/Loam badly in the last time, thats where it all started with. At the beginning it was just a neat idea, but turned out to be a very effective/efficient stratetegy that fits just awesome in a controllish shell.
I didnt built this with CAB in mind, but recognized that the decks have a lot of similarities later on.
I worked on the manabase for the longest time and think that I got the optimum right now, but I could be told better. Maindeck could be tweaked a bit here and there, but right now I am pretty confident with it and wouldnt replace a card besides a single counterspell (maybe cutting both for a single Forbid and another Slot). Firespout wanders out quite often (though of playing more EE's for it) but I really enjoy it in a whole lot of MU's, thats the other thing I am not quite sure about. Well, as said earlier on, I am doing fine with it as far as I played it, but some things could be changed.

Normally I h8 to just post lists, but I smell a whole lot potential in the idea itself and this build and want to share it in terms of inspiring others and giving back credit to the designers of classical CAB and you guys who worked on it for quite a time.

6 Island
1 Mountain
1 Volcanic Island
1 Tropical Island
2 Tundra
1 Plateau
3 Grove of the Burnwillows
1 Wasteland
1 Academy Ruins
1 Oboro, Palacen in the Clouds
4 Scalding Tarn
2 Flooded Strand

4 Jace TMS

3 Mental Misstep
3 Spell Snare
2 Counterspell
4 Force of Will

4 Brainstorm
3 Ancestral Vision

1 Intuition
1 Life from the Loam
1 Engineered Explosives
1 Vedalken Shackles

3 Punishing Fire
4 Swords to Plowshares
2 Firespout

Sb:
2 Ancient Grudge
1 Ray of Revealation
1 Pithing Needle
1 Tormods Crypt
1 Bojuka Bog
2 Spell Pierce
3 REB/PyroB
1 Tower of the Magistrate
1 Ethersworn Cannonist
1 Forbid
+ free Slot

Played Call the Skybreaker as tutorable Win Con at first, but cutted it since I recognized that winning without Jace is awkward, but pretty doable (plus it was way too conditional, still like it though). Dont feel pissed if you think this doesnt belong in here, but I can just recommend to understand and play the deck before judging things unworthy that could whoop a whole lot of asses in the actual Meta.
Greetings, hope you guys can use all that Jazz for your personal thoughts and Ideas!

HokusSchmokus

07-22-2011, 11:46 AM

I don't really understand what Oboro is doing in your list. Can you explain your choice here?

I am the brainwasher

07-22-2011, 12:06 PM

Choke is a real card and the upside might be marginal but its there. U can also get it back to have more powerful Brainstorms in the lategame and produce double blue mana with just it in play. I really dont want to play more Duals in the list (and I see no reason right now) and I think its better than an additional Island, the whole deck is just a big Invitation to Wasteland, so I am not very sad having another vulnerable land when it comes down to this. It might be that its a bit too cute, but I really like the things that it does for the deck, even if they are conditional. Not a must, thats 4 sure.

Philipp2293

07-30-2011, 06:27 AM

So, has anybody seen this list?

http://www.thecouncil.es/tcdecks/deck.php?id=6561&iddeck=47550

I know that there are a lot of differences between CAB Jace and this, but I tested it a bit yesterday, and the feeling was pretty much the same. Main problem was a lack of StP, cause so far, earlies pressure was a little problematic. But once the deck stabilizes, it has a sick game.

nayon

07-30-2011, 10:36 PM

Hedgy22

08-19-2011, 03:56 PM

Just thought I'd run by what I've been piloting the last few weeks. I know the reception of this angle was not well received, as it is very different from the original versions (although I still believe the style of the deck is fundamentally unchanged). The amount of synergy in this deck is rivaled by very few decks.

4x Jace, the Mind Sculptor

4x Maze of Ith
3x Innocent Blood
3x Punishing Fire
1x Gilded Drake
4x Pernicious Deed

4x Brainstorm
4x Mental Misstep
1x Life from the Loam
3x Forbid
2x Intuition
3x Force of Will

1x Forest
1x Island
1x Mountain
4x Grove of the Burnwillows
4x Misty Rainforest
1x Polluted Delta
4x Scalding Tarn
1x Tropical Island
2x Underground Sea
3x Volcanic Island
1x Volrath's Stronghold
2x Wasteland

--------------------------
1x Force of Will
3x Trickbind
4x Leyline of the Void
1x Divert
2x Misdirection
1x krosan grip
1x intuition
1x Raven's Crime
1x Lord of Extinction

The two mainboard intuition packages are loam-grove-fires (obvs) and loam-stronghold-drake. Drake has amazing synergy with jace and fires+stronghold, and really sets this deck up with a much needed alternate win-condition. Sideboard intuition packages include raven's crime for the control matchups. Another tool this deck has is being able to fuel forbid's with a loam, rather than relying solely on fires (or treasure hunts, albeit temporary) for this. Also, as previously described, the removal suite has a synergy of it's own I believe is worth repeating. Maze forces overcommitted boards into deed, while punishing fires can clear the way for a more precise innocent blood. Everything in this deck works like clockwork, and I believe it's an angle for this archetype at least worthy of consideration.

The sideboard is obviously more of a meta call, however I will explain my choices for my environment. The age of force of will is not nearly over, however force of will now has a friend, and thus I do not believe it NEEDS to be a 4 of in every blue deck (this has drawn much criticism...). If your meta is heavily combo, you could add the fourth if you want, but in a heavy combo meta you may not want to be playing this deck in the first place. Trickbind is for hivemind, but can also come in against storm. Divert and Misdirection are for hand disruption decks like junk or BW. In testing, I've noticed this deck to be a bit soft to hymn. Intuition usually comes in with the ravens crime against control decks (better than two crimes, as fires is great against control as well). Lord of extinction is something Adrian Sullivan has suggested in BUGstill type control decks, and it seems to work here. Side it in against slower nonwhite decks. It looks silly, however don't judge that one in particular before testing. It's surprisingly good.

Hopefully I have helped to contribute something with this angle of the archetype. It has been amazing in my testing, and is a blast to play if you enjoy this style of control deck. It requires a lot of in-game thinking, great knowledge of the deck, and lots of practice, as most legacy decks do.

The Treefolk Master

08-19-2011, 04:45 PM

I certainly looks good, though I would drop 1 Forbid for 1 Intuition or 1 Force of Will.

However, I'm not convinced by Gilded Drake. It seems a bit narrow, and running 1 Stronghold just for the Drake simply doesn't seem worth it.

I will, however, test the deck exactly as you posted it before I do any changes.

The Treefolk Master

09-20-2011, 08:10 AM

I feel the need to bump this thread, as the banning of Misstep could breath new life into it (Goblins is back, our StP are easier to resolve, etc).

Do you guys think the UWR list is better, or the UBGr list posted by Hedgy above?

The Treefolk Master

11-11-2011, 06:20 PM

I've been testing the deck, stock list, with 3 Explosives and 1 Crucible of Worlds (really powerful, we also have E. Tutor in the board) and -1 U. Sea +1 Tropical, as we now have Beast Within and Surgical Extraction in the Board. SB is:

3 Negate (not sure yet, maybe building a Countertop package could prove useful, Negate is a nice Catchall for know)
1 Tormod's Crypt (stock grave hate)
1 Pithing Needle
1 Circle of Pro: Red (Aegis of Honor?)
1 Ethersworn Canonist
1 Enlightened Tutor
1 Beast Within (Awesome)
1 Wing Shard
1 Punishing Fire
1 Pyroblast
1 Red Elemental Blast
1 Surgical Extraction
1 White Sun's Zenith

The loss of Pulse of the Fields makes me a little nervous, but it didn't pull it's weight. I'm however contemplating dropping a REB/Pyroblast for a Pulse though.

Chalice seems nice with all the RUG, Burn, and combo running around.

E. Tutor has been the nuts, and I even won a game vs. Spiral Tide with that board. Overload on Counterspells, find Stick Jace or Canonist to keep the cards flowing, if they fizzle we can Wish into Surgical Extraction.

I really think Crucible is the way to go with building the deck. It just does too much. After our opponents/our resources are exhausted, we drop Crucible, recur Mazes, and easily pull ahead.

Maëlig

12-03-2011, 10:39 AM

I'm not sure we need the white OR black splash, actually. Isn't maze + PF + EE + possibly shackles (with 13 islands including fetchlands I think it's worth a try) and SB firespout enough? In the current metagame infestated with wasteland I'd rather stick to 3 colors, and I don't think we can cut the green, loam is just too huge (and with grove already in it's easy on the manabase).

Here's what I'm testing atm :

MD :
1 Academy Ruins
1 Cephalid Coliseum
3 Grove of the Burnwillows
2 Island
3 Lonely Sandbar
3 Misty Rainforest
1 Mountain
4 Scalding Tarn
1 Tropical Island
3 Volcanic Island
2 Wasteland
4 Mox Diamond

4 Maze of Ith
3 Punishing Fire
3 Engineered Explosives
1 Vedalken Shackles

4 Brainstorm
1 Sensei's Divining Top
1 Life from the Loam
3 Treasure Hunt
2 Forbid
2 Intuition
4 Jace, the Mind Sculptor
4 Force of Will

SB :
1 Tormod's Crypt
4 Pyroblast
1 Ancient Grudge
1 Ensnaring Bridge
3 Firespout
2 Krosan Grip
3 Vendilion Clique

I think the deck really needs the mana-acceleration given by mox to have a chance against tempo decks, and it fits nicely with loam, too. I replaced my 4th cyle land with a cephalid coliseum, which is better with loam if you can afford the land drops. It also acts as a pseudo-BS if your hand is clogged up with lands (even without loam), and it's a (bad) alternative kill if you can't find / protect a jace.

In the SB, I think clique is indispensable if we want a chance vs combo. The rest is pretty standard, with crypt, bridge and ancient grudge as intuition targets.

salvor

03-24-2012, 03:09 PM

Is this deck viable in dredgeless metagame of maverick, U/W,B/Wstoneblade and delver? There are also some storm lists.
Going to try next list

4 Engineered explosives
2 Scroll rack

4 Force of will
3 Cunning Wish
2 Counterspell
2 Spell snare
4 Swords to plowshares
3 Punishing fire
3 Treasure Hunt
4 Brainstorm

4 Jace, the Mind Sculptor

4 Maze of Ith
2 Wasteland
4 Grove of Burnwillows
3 Tundra
2 Volcanic Island
3 Scalding Tarn
4 Flooded Strand
1 Academy Ruins
1 Island
1 Plains
1 Mountain

SB:
1 Wing Shards
1 Starstorm
1 Firespout
2 Surgical extraction
2 Negate
1 Flusterstorm
1 White sun's zenith
1 Tormod's crypt
1 Dismantling blow
1 red elemental blast
1 pyroblast
1 punishing fire
1 forbid

Thoughts?

KevinTrudeau

09-18-2013, 09:48 PM

The new dang card Swan Song seems to aid in this deck's philosophy and mesh with its idiosyncrasies grandly. I'll be aimlessly testing a list in due time; should it prove efficable, I'll share with you a prototype to be tumbled. Shall I not post in this thread evermore, it is to be because the dang deck stank.

"Explore that which proves to be fruitful; the apples that bear the most resemblance to fruitfulness are those that bear the most virility."

-Arthur Schopenhauer