[DTB] Sneak Attack

[Zand]

Hey guys, I just started with this deck and its loads of fun! I was just wondering what things people typically boarded out against Reanimator? Assuming I have something like 2x Grafdiggers Cage, 2x Tormod's Crypt and some number of Echoing Truths and Pyroblasts in the board as relevant cards.


Cheers

[Togores]

In my last version with sdt i boarded

In
3 cage
2 echoing
3 reb

Out
1 misdirection
1 show and tell
1 progenitus
1 sdt
2 ponder
2 petal

[bruizar]

http://forums.mtgsalvation.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=126095&stc=1&d=1322024869

Too bad Cascade doesn't trigger with Sneak Attack or Show and Tell

[The]

Any thoughts on the Eureka version posted here: http://www.westcoastlegacy.com/press/2012/bolas-of-steel-an-scg-la-top-16-report/
It's interesting, especially how Eureka enables you to windmill slam multiple permanents, including things like Nicol Bolas to deal with JaceTM.

[JPA]

The Eureka version is definitely more exciting. ;-) I just like Sneak Attack more because the red splash gives you access to a really strong sideboard.

Besides that, I just took Sneak Show to a 4th place finish (4-1) at my local legacy tournament (27 players). I played the following list:

Main Deck:
4 Emrakul, the Aeons Torn
3 Progenitus
2 Woodfall Primus

4 Brainstorm
4 Force of Will
4 Intuition
3 Lotus Petal
3 Misdirection
4 Ponder
4 Show and Tell
4 Sneak Attack
3 Spell Pierce

4 Ancient Tomb
2 City of Traitors
2 Island
1 Mountain
4 Polluted Delta
4 Scalding Tarn
2 Volcanic Island

Sideboard:
3 Blood Moon
4 Leyline of Sanctity
2 Pyroblast
2 Shattering Spree
4 Tormod's Crypt

And I just noticed how overpowered this deck is against the now popular decks. And even though it is now in the DTB-section (which it should have been for so long in my opinion xD) I encountered no hate cards today.
I rediscovered my love for this deck. :-) Might write a little report later.

[useL]

Hey JPAngelescu,

how come you play the deck without any Pyroclasm? And why do you choose Shattering Spree instead of Echoing Truth? Dont you find that it is quitehard to win against delver-decks without removal?

My least favourite start is nowadays from can.thresh-decks. Preboard they have a short clock, postboard they have 4 pyroblast on top of their daze, fow, spell pierce and delverswings

[jace247]

Well I am back to report on how my sneak and show did at my local game store we had a tourney where first and second each got a dual 1st was a tundra and second was a tropical island. I got first! I played against mono red round 1, affinity round 2, ascension round 3, i drew round 4 with esper blade do to me not hitting a fourth land in game 3 :( then in round 5 we just id to get in the top 8. Round one of top 8 i played the guy with affinity again, then i played an out of town guy with esper blade game 3 went to me with turn 2 emrakul! haha and then in the finals the guy i played just looked at me and said i know i cant beat you and you can have first he was playing affinity also just like the guy i played both times earlier. So anyways here is the list i used.


Spells:
4 Show and tell
4 Sneak attack
4 Force of will
3 Daze
3 spell snare
4 intuition
4 Lotus petal
3 Emrakul the aeons torn
3 Progenitus
2 Blightsteel Colossus
4 Brainstorm
3 Ponder
2 Seething Song

Lands:
4 Volcanic Island
2 Ancient Tomb
2 City of Traitors
2 Islands
1 Mountain
2 Misty Rainforest
2 Scalding Tarn
1 Arid Mesa

sideboard:
1 Woodfall Primus
1 Angel of Despair
1 terastadon
4 pyroblast
3 Surgical Extractions
3 Spell Pierce
2 Misdirection

[Ramirez777]

Below is a short report from GP Dallas, that was held on March 11th. If it wasn't obvious due to the top 16 deck placings I didn't make it in. Don't despair, there is much better news to follow.

Here's the deck list that I played at the event:

Attack of the Show
2x Chrome Mox
2x Mox Diamond
1x Sensei's Divining Top
4x Sneak Attack
4x Show and Tell
4x Brainstorm
3x Ponder
4x Force of Will
3x Daze
4x Spell Pierce
2x Intuition
4x Emrakul
3x Progenitus
4x Ancient Tomb
3x City of Traitors
4x Volcanic Island
4x Scalding Tarn
2x Flooded Strand
2x Island
1x Mountain
SB:
2x Shattering Spree
3x Bloodmoon
2x Mind Harness
2x Pyroblast
1x Red Elemental Blast
2x Submerge
3x Tormod's Crypt

Round 1: Nicholas with Mono White Soldiers (2-1)
G1: On the play, 1st turn S&T in to Emrakul. He put the soldier with the ringleader effect in to play. I proceeded to annihilate him. Final life total; 20 to 0.
G2: On the draw, turn 3 Sneak Attack, while he played soldiers. Had a counter war on the Sneak Attack as he proceeded to play out two disenchants, and got it on the second disenchant. Turn four I top deck another Sneak Attack, and he disenchants again. I was crushed by soldier advantage. Final life total; 0 to 20.
G3: On the play, turn 2 S&T Progenitus. I swung away to victory right before he would have had me at lethal the following turn. Final life total; 11 to 0.

Round 2: Shane with RUG (2-0)
G1: On the play, I mulled to 5; him to 6. Third turned S&T Progenitus through a counter war. He beats me down with a Goyf, while I swing for more. Final life total; 9 to 0.
G2: On the draw. Found a S&T by 3rd turn, and 4th turn I S&T Emrakul in to play, with him putting Goyf in to play. I Mind Harness Goyf, and it's all over from there. Final life total; 8 to 0.

Round 3: David with Merfolk (1-2)
G1: On the draw. I play S&T Emrakul on second turn, and I get blown away when he puts Phantasmal Image in to play, and then proceeds to win with lots of Merfolk. Final life total; 0 to 20.
G2: On the play. Third turn S&T Emrakul, and he has no answers. He does beat me up with a lord and a Mutavault in the interim. Final life total; 11 to 0.
G3: On the draw, I mull to 5 with a no lander. Although, I had a Ponder, Brainstorm, Force of Will, and two Spell Pierce in hand. It was a bad idea, I proceeded to draw my first land by turn 4, and it was an Ancient Tomb. I got beat down by Mishra's Factory’s under a Standstill. Final life total; 0 to 20.

Round 4: Joe with Burn (2-0); Featured match
G1: On the play. By turn four I had Sneak Attacked and Emrakul in to play, and then two turns later I swung in with a Progenitus via Sneak Attack. He played out a lot of burn against me, but didn't have enough to finish me through efficient counters. Final life total; 6 to 0.
G2: On the draw. I think this round I took a bunch of burn and Ancient Tomb damage until I assembled S&T Emrakul by turn three or four. He couldn't recover, but it ended close again with him sitting with no Mountains and drawing a Chain Lightning. Final life total; 4 to 0.

Round 5: Matt with Re-animator (0-2); I could have won both games /facepalm
G1: On the play. I first turned S&T Progenitus on the field, while also having Emrakul in hand. At the time I didn't know what he was playing, so it seemed the better play. It wasn't. We flip and he reveals Jin Gatixis, and proceeds to block Progenitus with a continually re-occurring Empyrial Archangel. Final life total; 0 to 10.
G2: On the draw. I turn three S&T Emrakul with a Pyroblast in hand in case he attempts to counter, and he Brainstorms. I allow the Brainstorm, and he find Angel of Despair in his top three to seal the deal against Emrakul. I didn't Pyroblast the Brainstorm in case he put Jin Gatixis in to play, or attempted to counter. Another game I could have won. I also had a Tormod's Crypt in play since turn 2. Final life total; 0 to 18.

Round 6: Kaider with BUG (2-1)
G1: On the play. I play out S&T Emrakul on the third turn, and he puts a Goyf in to play. I proceed to win in two turns. Final life total; 16 to 0.
G2: On the draw. I can't assemble much of an assault through discard, counters, Dark Confidant, & Goyf on the field. I get rolled over by turn 6 or 7. Final life total; 0 to 11.
G3: On the play. He taps out to play out some creature on the board. I follow that up with a Blood Moon, and it seals the deal until I can get Sneak Attack with Progenitus/Emrakul online. Final life total; 14 to 0.

Round 7: Addison with Re-animator (0-2)
G1: On the draw. I try to fight off many reanimation spells, and eventually he lands a Reanimation on Iona, calling Blue after a little hesitation. It was the right call on his part. I proceeded to get Iona stomped with all blue cards in hand. Final life total; 0 to 9.
G2: On the play. I didn't take any notes on this game, not sure why. I think I got blown out with a Buried Alive on Jin Gatixis, and then stomped by card advantage. Final life total; 0 to 17.

Their was a Round 8, but after three losses, I would not be in contention, so I dropped.

Regarding the Sideboard:
I'm taking out one Mind's Harness and a Shattering Spree to put in two Echoing Truths. We need this card, and there are many times I wish I had it; especially against Re-animator
The rest of the sideboard performed well, and I wouldn't change anything else at this point of time.

Pro's:
1. Super nice people all day long at the event, and hung out with a group from Wichita Falls on Sat. & Sun.
2. Crushing RUG with style.
3. Planning ahead and bringing food.
4. Laughing in the face of Spell Snare.

Slops:
1. Getting owned by Re-animator, my worst match up.
2. Having to mulligan more than I thought I would.
3. Not having Echoing Truth in the Sideboard.
4. Arriving at the tournament 5 minutes before it started, due to the time change. Thank you Toyota Corolla for the great gas mileage at 95 to 100 mph all the way there; and no cops.
5. Selling off the rest of my MTG Collection to SCG. The $7k was nice though.

[The Colonel]

@Rameirez, just a few comments. I've been playing this deck for about 2 years now and love it just as I did on day 1. your list:

Lets start with mana

-Chrome Mox? You're creating a lot of card disadvantage here. Not a good idea when you're playing a deck that needs at least 2 critical cards and protection to win.

-Mox Diamond? Unessessary. Your land base looks really weak to begin with. What happens when you draw opening chrome mox and one other land? Again here I would say you're making the deck shakier. You're sacrificing consistancey for cuteness. We all love turn 1 wins but at the end of the day 4 turn 3 wins look better than 1 turn 1 win

-4 Ancient tomb is to much. Forget about the gobs of damage they deal out but you NEED NEED NEED an island

-City of Traitors. I know some people like running 2 but not 3 and certianly not with 4 Tomb your land base is just to sketchy here.

-Volcanic Island I'v found that you only need 3 but I know a lot of people run 4. You don't want to go all in on Volcanic for your colored source only to get it wastelanded. Speaking of which your land base is very susceptible to blood moon and wasteland.

suggestions: -2 Chrome, -2 Diamond, -1 Volcanic, -2 Tomb, -1 City
+2-3 Island, +2-3 Lotus Petal, +1 Boseiju, Who Shelters All, +2 Strand


Diggers

-Top. The problem I found with Top was that it's to mana intensive for the deck. It's nice that it's reusable but you need that mana for other things like Spell Pierce and Flusterstorm

-Brainstorm and Ponder counts are fine, I run 4 Ponder though

-Intuition is a must have but i'd run 3 or 4 if I were you. They are just so important and they allow you to keep hands with one peice of the combo missing and find protection.

Suggestions: -1 Top, +1-2 Intuition


Counters

Let me see... you're running a counter package of... 11 preboard. Good number. I like 12 better. I run 2 of Daze because it's free ability sets us so far behind especially when we are running it mainly to counter discard. 4 FOW is a must. I Run 3 Spell Pierce and 3 Flusterstorm. Flusterstorm is so amazing, trust me. And it's you're only great stop button for ANT TES etc...

I think if you make these moves you'll find that the deck is much more reliable and consistant. Let me know what you think


@ everyone else
Just played this deck at GP Indy and a few thoughts on some issues.

Misdirection-This card was such a let down. I boarded it out almost every game. Came in hand twice all day I think. Everytime I needed to stop them from doing somthing I couldn't because it was a creature or one of their FU to me cards like Lilliana. Most blue players are running Spell Snare right now which we could care less about.

Shattering Spree sucked for me never had enough red to do anythign great with it.

MASSACRE WURM is the shit. I decimated Elves and Affinity with him. He can turn the tables against agro better than emmy can. I was playing against affinity round 5 and he had like 13 perms out so I cast S&T and he didn't care because emmy wouldn't set him back far enough to win me the game so when I show him MASSACRE WURM his jaw hit the table. The two dudes playing to our left stopped their game and they were just yelling in disbeleif lolol. All totalled he lost 12 life and then took leathal from it 2 turns later.

[jace247]

@Rameirez, just a few comments. I've been playing this deck for about 2 years now and love it just as I did on day 1. your list:

Lets start with mana

-Chrome Mox? You're creating a lot of card disadvantage here. Not a good idea when you're playing a deck that needs at least 2 critical cards and protection to win.

-Mox Diamond? Unessessary. Your land base looks really weak to begin with. What happens when you draw opening chrome mox and one other land? Again here I would say you're making the deck shakier. You're sacrificing consistancey for cuteness. We all love turn 1 wins but at the end of the day 4 turn 3 wins look better than 1 turn 1 win

-4 Ancient tomb is to much. Forget about the gobs of damage they deal out but you NEED NEED NEED an island

-City of Traitors. I know some people like running 2 but not 3 and certianly not with 4 Tomb your land base is just to sketchy here.

-Volcanic Island I'v found that you only need 3 but I know a lot of people run 4. You don't want to go all in on Volcanic for your colored source only to get it wastelanded. Speaking of which your land base is very susceptible to blood moon and wasteland.

suggestions: -2 Chrome, -2 Diamond, -1 Volcanic, -2 Tomb, -1 City
+2-3 Island, +2-3 Lotus Petal, +1 Boseiju, Who Shelters All, +2 Strand


Diggers

-Top. The problem I found with Top was that it's to mana intensive for the deck. It's nice that it's reusable but you need that mana for other things like Spell Pierce and Flusterstorm

-Brainstorm and Ponder counts are fine, I run 4 Ponder though

-Intuition is a must have but i'd run 3 or 4 if I were you. They are just so important and they allow you to keep hands with one peice of the combo missing and find protection.

Suggestions: -1 Top, +1-2 Intuition


Counters

Let me see... you're running a counter package of... 11 preboard. Good number. I like 12 better. I run 2 of Daze because it's free ability sets us so far behind especially when we are running it mainly to counter discard. 4 FOW is a must. I Run 3 Spell Pierce and 3 Flusterstorm. Flusterstorm is so amazing, trust me. And it's you're only great stop button for ANT TES etc...

I think if you make these moves you'll find that the deck is much more reliable and consistant. Let me know what you think


@ everyone else
Just played this deck at GP Indy and a few thoughts on some issues.

Misdirection-This card was such a let down. I boarded it out almost every game. Came in hand twice all day I think. Everytime I needed to stop them from doing somthing I couldn't because it was a creature or one of their FU to me cards like Lilliana. Most blue players are running Spell Pierce right now which we could care less about.

Shattering Spree sucked for me never had enough red to do anythign great with it.

MASSACRE WURM is the shit. I decimated Elves and Affinity with him. He can turn the tables against agro better than emmy can. I was playing against affinity round 5 and he had like 13 perms out so I cast S&T and he didn't care because emmy wouldn't set him back far enough to win me the game so when I show him MASSACRE WURM his jaw hit the table. The two dudes playing to our left stopped their game and they were just yelling in disbeleif lolol. All totalled he lost 12 life and then took leathal from it 2 turns later.


hey can you post a list of yours? Also i agree with the stuff on the moxes and some of your other stuff i am really gana have to try out the wurm never thought of it at all really. Also snare is pretty good but if i was going to a gp or something i might switch it out to the peirce, but it all depends .

[The Colonel]

Ummmm.... Yeah I can post my deck, not right now though, just way to tired. I wanted to comment on Spell Snare for our deck before I pass out. Spell Snare Vs. Spell Pierce for our deck. Spell Pierce is far more versitle for us. When I talk about this deck I describe counterable spells as "breaking my tolerance threshold". What do I mean by that? Well, this deck can tolerate a lot of stuff (storm combo exlcuded when a Dark Ritual might be the right thing to counter) that other decks can't. For example: very few decks can tolerate ghiest or SFM... we on the other hand can. We put emmy or proggy into play and more often than not we win. So cards that break our tolerance threshold are things that stop us from putting out fatty into play. If the opponent plays somthing that doesn't mess with us cheating a 15/15 into play let it slide. Emmy and proggy just kill them quicker. What kind of cards break our tolerance most often and wth the greatest degree of success? Instants and Sorceries (counter magic and discard) most of which don't cost 2. So Spell Pierce is just the better option for us. The most heavily played card that breaks our threshold that Spell Pierce can't touch is Knight which Spell Snare can't touch either.

[The Colonel]

Alright, so as promised, and in an attempt to get some discussion going on this thread (come on folks we're DTB now!) here's my deck.


4 Emrakul, the Aeons Torn
3 Progenitus

4 Sneak Attack
4 Show and Tell

4 Brainstorm
4 Ponder
3 Intuition

4 Force of Will
3 Flusterstorm
3 Spell Pierce
2 Daze

2 Lotus Petal

3 Volcanic Island
2 Ancient Tomb
4 Scalding Tarn
4 Polluted Delta
5 Island
1 Mountain
1 Boseiju, Who Shelters All


Sideboard


3 Blood Moon
3 Massacre Wurm
2 Pyroblast
3 Pithing Needle
2 Relic of Progenitus
2 Firespout


I run Firespout because the 3 damage is far more relevant than the 2 damage from Volcanic Fallout or Pyroclasm. I mean, sure it's not counterable and costs 3 but how many super fast agro decks run counterspells? 1 maybe? Bant? Massacre Wurm is so nutty against elves, gobs, Affinity, and it can get quite a few dudes in Maverick and Zoo as well.

When I was at GP Indy I was still running Misdirection and it was so disapointing. Flusterstorm is nutty. I only run 1 Boseiju because you never want more than 1 and we don't really need it for protection. But when you do get it it's great stuff. Needle is key for us now because Jace and Lilliana are everywhere. When I'm going against heavy blue decks I will board out the 2 Petals for Pyroblasts.


Questions? Comments? Complaints? Lets hear em'

[Michael Keller]

I only run 1 Boseiju because you never want more than 1 and we don't really need it for protection.

Running a miser's Boseiju might be kind of awkward is some instances where you would need a land source and it comes into play tapped. I think if you tailor your defense suite tightly you should have no problems getting off a Show and Tell or Sneak Attack without having to worry about needing that extra land to make it happen. The protection is nice, but is it really worth setting yourself back a turn and giving your opponent a golden opportunity to capitalize on the loss of tempo?

Also (and I'm not sure anyone else has considered this), but doesn't Progenitus seem much more viable right now given Maverick is everywhere - including Karakas? I suppose with Sneak Attack it's rather moot, but with Show and Tell it's really a blowout. Your opponent can also accelerate a land off SnT and cast Jace, too; I've seen it happen.

[The Colonel]

@Hollywood

Beseiju isn't really awkward at all. Look, if you can't play an Island first turn you can't keep the hand. So if I draw Boseiju in opening hand and keep it I have an island first turn allowing me to Ponder/BS. Second turn I drop Boseiju tapped. What can we do on the second turn? hard cast Daze? we still have the original Island to ponder/BS again. Then turn 3 comes, untap Boseiju play Island number two cast an uncounterable S&T and win. Don't look at Boseiju as a mana source. Look at it as a free, reusable counterspell.

You can't really compare Progenitus and Emrakul. Apples and oranges. Bottom line is they are both Swords/Path proof. Sometimes Proggy is better and sometimes Emmy is better.

[Michael Keller]

Beseiju isn't really awkward at all. Look, if you can't play an Island first turn you can't keep the hand. So if I draw Boseiju in opening hand and keep it I have an island first turn allowing me to Ponder/BS. Second turn I drop Boseiju tapped. What can we do on the second turn? hard cast Daze? we still have the original Island to ponder/BS again. Then turn 3 comes, untap Boseiju play Island number two cast an uncounterable S&T and win. Don't look at Boseiju as a mana source. Look at it as a free, reusable counterspell.

I see it in a different light.

Boseiju is ultimately only marginally effective if you open hand it or naturally draw into it turn two - when you would want to ideally drop it anyways. It really doesn't do anything more than your counter-magic already does except set you back a turn and expose you to tempo strategies looking to pin down your mana base. You're already dependent on Tomb and City to power out one of your cheat mechanisms, and awkwardly drawing into Boseiju can really change the dynamic of the game - and not necessarily in a good way. I understand its utility, but is it really worth dedicating a slot for it when you can perhaps increase your filter or draw? I'm assuming you're not using this specifically as a land but rather a "virtual spell."


You can't really compare Progenitus and Emrakul. Apples and oranges. Bottom line is they are both Swords/Path proof. Sometimes Proggy is better and sometimes Emmy is better.

Actually, you kind of can and have to compare them. Both cards fill the same role for the slots they've been relegated to, so the question arises whether or not you require four Emrakul/three Progenitus, or vice-versa. Emrakul right now is actually kind of bad when you consider the large amount of Karakas in the format - namely in Maverick (arguably the most popular deck at the moment with EsperBlade, which also runs one next to multiple Jaces).

Additionally, Force of Will is incredibly important in being able to protect your investment and it might be better for you to consider ramping up to four Progenitus as not only can it plow through every defense, it can also be pitched to protect another investment entering the battlefield. Emrakul's application is solely dependent on either Show and Tell or Sneak Attack, but at least Progenitus has an alternative use. It's also probably the more effective choice of the two at the moment because it is generally definitive when it comes to dealing damage.

You're still running Emrakul, obviously. I'm simply insinuating that perhaps four Progenitus is a better number than three. Generally, Progenitus is better off Show and Tell, and Emrakul is better off Sneak Attack. It's more likely you'll resolve a Show and Tell before the latter due to its cost, and you don't want the blowout where your opponent drops Knight into play - you want to win as fast as possible.

[Cyrandir]

So I've been lurking around these forums for a long time now, but since our deck has moved to [DTB] I guess it's time to start contributing. I've been playing Sneak & Tell for about a year, so I'll start by posting my current decklist and then provide a few thoughts about some of the recent topics.

Main

4 Emrakul, the Aeons Torn
4 Progenitus

4 Sneak Attack
4 Show and Tell

4 Brainstorm
4 Ponder
3 Intuition

4 Force of Will
3 Flusterstorm
3 Spell Pierce
2 Daze

3 Lotus Petal

3 Volcanic Island
2 Ancient Tomb
2 City of Traitors
4 Scalding Tarn
2 Flooded Strand
1 Polluted Delta
3 Island
1 Mountain


Sideboard

3 Blood Moon
3 Elesh Norn, Grand Cenobite
3 Tormod's Crypt
3 Red Elemental Blast
1 Pyroblast
2 Echoing Truth


Beater Selection:

Progenitus: I agree with Hollywood that Progenitus is currently worthy of four-of status. Karakas is significant in my meta, and I almost universally find that I'm boarding out tentacle-dude so that I can keep "Protection from EVERYTHING".

Elesh Norn, Grand Cenobite: I've tried Massacre Wurm, and found it useful, but I think Elesh is a better choice in this position. Many of the super-fast weenie decks you mentioned at least think about board wipes and have some plan to deal with them, either through recursion or re-accelerating (Glimpse of Nature for example). The damage from the Wurm is cute, but we're playing with big enough fatties that establishing multi-turn board control through Elesh is more relevant.

Sideboard:

Echoing Truth: I've found this card to be extremely important in the board. Important enough that I've occasionally mained it. Notable cards that it deals with are Humility, Ensnaring Bridge, Ghostly Prison and Propaganda, all of which can pose significant challenges to winning.

Red Elemental Blast: Should be used over Pyroblast as Misdirection can point Pyroblast to a non-blue spell (ex: Sneak Attack) and cause a fizzle. Red Elemental Blast's target must be blue. I run a one-of Pyroblast just in case they remove my REBs (ex: Extirpate)

Other Cards:

Boseiju, Who Shelters All: This card is amazing in the Through the Breach build of this deck, but, as with Daze, I find the one-turn hit for something that is really only useful for Show and Tell too much of a hit to justify.

Pithing Needle: A very strong card that I've run until very recently and am currently trying to find room for again. I agree that it's probably necessary in the current meta.

I'm very open to criticism, so please let me know what you think!

[The Colonel]

Alright, now this is what I'm talking about....constructive discussion.

@Hollywood
As far as Boseiju is concerned... I see it about maybe 1 out of 7 games. So, rarley does it impact the game. When it does get drawn it always impacts the game in a positive way for me. I love going against tempo decks becuase they are so slow and have no answer to us dropping emmy or proggy. They may slow us down for a couple turns but they don't capitalize on it like an aggro deck can. Mono black tempo is the one tempo deck I fear. ie: sac effects, discard

Emmy Vs. Proggy... eh, you have to take risks with combo decks like these. Sure they might drop a knight or a karakas off S&T and be able to bounce Emmy but if that's the beast in your hand you have t take that risk. We can both give each oher a million different senarios where one is better than the other. Thats why I say there's no point in comparing them. And being able to pitch proggy to FOW what if Proggy is the only s&t target in your hand? you still want to pitch him? no. But yes you're right you can pitch him to FOW if necessary.


@Cyrandir
Our decks look nearly identicle with a few minor details in land base. Our board is where we really differentiate. Elish Norn is alright, but Massacre Wurm is strictly better I think. Take your average aggro deck we're using these 2 creatures for. On average we cheat a beater into play on turns 3 and 4. By that time super aggro deck ussually have about 5 creatures in play on average. So say they have 5 creatures in play you put the Wurm into play. They lose 10 life and now they're two attacks from death by wurm. Whats that you say? They put 3 more creatures in play? Well even after wurm comes out they still lose 2 life for every creature they lose. So that's a guaranteed loss of life every turn. Norn is better if you power him out turn 1 or 2 but on average I think the Wurm will get to the finish line quicker. Not to mention is you use sneak attack here the wurm is just stricktly better than Norn. You can get 18 damage with the wurm from on sneak attack activation. You get 4 with Norn. That's why I say Wurm is the better choice. Better synergy with Sneak Attack.

[useL]

@Boseiju: Totally worthless, comes into play tapped, not useful for half of our business spells and limits us to turn 3 action instead of t2. T2 you want either island+fetch or island+brown for intuition. Not island+tapped useless land for non-shuffle and non-intuition.

@Massacre Wurm/Iona: I run Pyroclasm, it can ALWAYS be cast on t2 which is very relevant when up against Elves for instance. It takes care of things faster than finding 2 cards to sweep and can be protected easier from hate than for instance Iona that gets bounced by karakas.

@Lands: I'd say its a metacall, right now I run 19 with 7-8 fetch, 3 island, 1 mountain and 3 volcanics. I would never go to 2 volcanics to increase fetch because I am too afraid of stifle. 6 brown is probably right, but I am not sure that 4 Ancient Tomb is always the solution (for instance against burn)

@I run 7 creatures (4 emra, 3 prog) and I find that sufficient. I have tried Woodfall Primus and other solutioncreatures but always find that a good sideboard handles things better than getting a guy in play that gets sworded and then you are back to square 1.

@Sideboard: I have played this deck in about 30 4-match tournaments weekly. My meta is quite diverse and I have tried everything from full defensive sideboard (pyroblasts, flusterstorm, misdirection, leyline of xxxx) to aggro sideboarding (blood moon, woodfall primus, delver/bolt-transform) and I come back to the same 12 cards: 3 Red Elemental Blast, 3 Pyroclasm, 2 Echoing Truth, 4 Leyline of the Void). Now after this you can go whatever your meta calls for, either you go with Blood Moon or you go with Flusterstorm/more red blasts/combohate such as Trinisphere. Btw, when talking sideboard, a t4 Massacre Wurm is NOT enuf to win against aggro decks if the player you are up against know what they are doing. Elves win t2-3, thresh doesnt let you get enough lands for it, zoo (if played) gets you down with bolts after you clear the board so there its not relevant.

@Intuition/Jace/Cute tricks: I tried 4 Intuition but found it too dependant on land drops and often very slow to fire the trigger. Double JaceTMS was cute with the bounce, good with the brainstorms but in the end it was a Unsummon+Brainstorm that always died the turn after and could easily have been another better 4 cmc spell. At the moment I run Gitaxian Probe x2. So many times I feel the need to KNOW if I have another turn or if I need to pull the trigger. If I should SnT in Progenitus or Emrakul. If my opponent has a Knight of the Reliquary or not. It never gets countered, it draw another card and if you are low on life, you tap a blue and draw a new card which seldom is a disaster. The best thing with it is to see opponents hand plus draw two from the ponder. Which can be very relevant in this deck.

[Cyrandir]

I agree that against super-aggro decks Massacre Wurm may be better, but we need to plan for an entire meta, not just elves/gobos/affinity. Here are a couple more reasons that I think Elesh Norn, Grand Cenobite is better.

1) Elesh clears blockers beyond the first turn. Say Massacre Wurm comes into play and wipes their board. They lose some amount of life, probably between 2 and 10. As there is no continual effect keeping the board clear, it becomes profitable for them to continue to play weenies and block if possible (2 life vs 6 damage). As they are playing weenie, they can play chump blockers each turn and slowly rebuild (or not so slowly, if glimpse is involved). Also relevant, if they're playing Bitterblossom, they get chumpies every turn. Assuming they lost 10 when the Wurm came in and they don't have any lifegain play, they're on a 6 turn clock (1 Wurm, 5 blockers). Alternatively, Elesh comes into play and wipes their board. They are unable to play their chumps and Elesh wipes them out in 5 turns.

2) Non-aggro disruption Because she lays down a continuous effect, Elesh is better at controlling mid-range and other decks. You are much less likely to score a big damage hit with the Wurm against these decks, and keeping relevant dudes like Dark Confidant, Mother of Runes and Stoneforge Mystic off the board past the first drop is also very relevant. If they can get a Mom or a Mystic + SoFaF or SoLaS on-line, your Wurm does you no good whatsoever. Elesh prevents these from ever becoming relevant again. Dead cards in your opponent's hand are good.

3) Vigilance. Vigilance is one of the more broken mechanics out there. Not only can you swing for beats, but you can block the annoyingly large Knight/Tarmogoyf/whatever that they're swinging back with. The 7 toughness means that it can block bigger, as well.

4) Sneak vs Show. This deck is all about getting a few big dudes out way sooner than anyone has a right to do. Given both the curve of the deck and the implied unreliability of drawing a threat, I'd much rather plan for Show and Tell to be my win con with a backup of Sneak Attack than the other way around. I get more mileage out of my dude if I get to keep him for more than one turn. If I do get to keep them for more than one turn, Elesh has a bigger effect on the board state.


I guess in summary I'm arguing that it's important not to get starry-eyed over the potential big hit from the Wurm coming into play. It's cool when it happens, but focusing on fundamentally good play (maintaining board control, creating bad cards in opponent's hands) results in a more consistent deck and in more wins.

[Tenbin]

I just came back from my first tournament with this deck and figured I might as well post my small report here, hopefully to get some criticism and to get even more discussion going in the thread.

I play in a well developed meta where many if not most archetypes are present, from enchantress to U/W Stoneblade and so on. We also get some beginners who bring very casual decks to the tournament, that rarely happens twice though, even if we encourage them to come back and maybe borrow a deck from someone.

Anyway, first tournament with Sneak & Show. My Decklist was as follows

4 Show and Tell
4 Sneak Attack
4 Force of Will
3 Intuition
4 Brainstorm
3 Ponder
3 Daze
3 Misdirection
3 Spell Pierce
4 Emrakul, the Aeons Torn
4 Progenitus
4 Lotus Petal
4 Ancient Tomb
4 Volcanic Island
4 Scalding Tarn
2 Island
1 Mountain
2 City of Traitors

SB: 3 Blood Moon
SB: 3 Pyroblast
SB: 3 Tormod's Crypt
SB: 3 Pyroclasm
SB: 1 Wipe Away
SB: 1 Echoing Truth
SB: 1 Chain of Vapor

Should've played 2-3 Volcanics but I sleeved it up a few minutes into the first match and I didn't want to be a bother.

Round 1 - W/B Clerics

Game 1: What I said about well developed meta doesn't go for this deck, faced a new magic player on his second tournament ever (and first legacy). I kept a hand of 1 Show and Tell, 1 Emrakul, Ancient Tomb, fetch, Force of Will and some blue draw. I lost the die roll (didn't win one for the whole night), he played plains into Benevolent Bodyguard, I played island and passed the turn, he played swamp and the next turn I Show and Tell'd into Emrakul and promptly won. He was quite distraught when he realized what Emrakul did.

Game 2: Much the same as game 1: Show and Tell into Emrakul round 2, nothing relevant from his end. Didn't sideboard anything as it was a pretty easy game 1

1-0

Round 2 - Zoo

Game 1: Lost the die roll, he played fetch and passed the turn. I had kept a hand with 1 sol land, 1 fetch, S&T and Emrakul and a counter. I played the fetch on my turn and fetched in response to his fetch as I suspected he could be RUG tempo and didn't wanna get stifled. He fetches a Taiga and plays a Plateau on his turn and plays a Tarmogoyf. I Show and Tell Emrakul on my turn and he puts in another Goyf; 2 rounds later it's over.

Game 2: I boarded in the bounce in case he brought some random hate, didn't know what Zoo might have against me; boarded out 3 Spell Pierce. Had a slower start, no sol lands, and he played a Steppe Lynx and hit me once before I Show and Tell'd another Spaghetti Monster to finish him. He had apparently brought chokes, but as I only need to resolve 1 spell that requires blue that wouldn't have been too effective.

2-0

Round 3 - Pox

Game 1: Rolled 16 and felt pretty confident in starting until he rolled 19 =(. I knew he played pox so I kept a very land heavy hand and 1 FoW and 1 S&T (in retroperspective it was a bit too ballsy). After some digging for a creature for my S&T to no avail he played a Hymn and snagged my S&T. At this point I felt pretty desperate as he started beating on me with a Mishra's Factory and I essentially had jack shit. I drew a Sneak attack which I managed to get out before he destroyed my only red source with his Dust Bowl. with 1 sandbagged land in my hand and 4 life left I topdecked a brainstorm that drew me a red source, Emrakul and something random (yay :D), I promtly snuck Emrakul into play and slammed him to 1 life and 0 permanents; a few rounds later I intuition'd after another Emrakul and killed him. Close one!

Game 2: I managed to get out a Progenitus through S&T with 1 FoW to protect it, sadly he had 2 Smallpox. After it died I was out of wincons for quite some time, and had to dig for both combo pieces. Luckily I misdirected a Hymn from him which robbed him from some wincons and I also forced a Liliana. I eventually found a Show and Tell and Intuition which found me Emrakul whom I rode to victory. Pox proved to be the hardest match-up this night, having several ways to make me sacrifice my win cons and could simultaneously destroy my lands and wreck my hand. Misdirection proved effective against discard (which is also 1 of the two reasons I brought them) I didn't sideboard anything since I didn't feel I had anything in my board that was benefitial to the match-up.

3-0

Round 4 - U/W Stoneblade

Game 1: I watched the end of the game between this deck and the reanimator he faced, hoping for the Stoneblade to win as I hate facing Reanimator. I was lucky. I kept a strong hand with S&T and Emrakul, FoW, Fetch, Island, Ponder and some other card. He played a Flooded Strand and passed the turn, I drew a Lotus Petal but decided to not play it as he though I was playing U/R Delver or U/W Stoneblade myself. I played my Fetch and got my second basic Island, figuring I might as well go mono-blue as I didn't have a Sneak Attack and keep him in the dark about colors and deck. He Spell Pierced my Ponder and after I passed the turn he played a wasteland and Brainstormed before passing the turn. On my second turn I drew an Ancient Tomb but decided to play the island and slow roll into more counters to protect my S&T. Luckily he didn't have another land and even played a Snapcaster, in an attempt to be the beatdown, thinking I also had problems with mana. After a few rounds of preparation I played my Show & Tell and we had a small counter-war over it before it resolved and I got my Emrakul and he got his Sword of Feast and Famine. He promptly scooped.

Game 2: I sideboarded in 3 Pyroblast and removed 1 S&T, 1 Ponder and 1 Intuition. I kept a somewhat iffy hand of island, fetch, 2 emrakul, progenitus, fow and Sneak Attack. I drew into a third emrakul and some lands and counters. He managed to resolve 2 Stoneforge Mystics (I didn't bother countering them, I only needed to resolve my Sneak Attack to win anyway) fetching SoFaF and Batterskull. After saving up the mana to protect my Sneak Attack (round 5 or something) I played it, won the counter war and passed the turn. He didn't manage to find an answer and Emrakul snuck in the next turn, beating for a bunch. Game, Set and Match.

4-0

I know I kept hands I probably shouldn't have kept and did some bad sideboarding and that it was a small field (and I only really faced 3 real decks) but the deck feels quite powerful in the meta. It has a whole bunch of counters and Intuition is also massively useful. Misdirection was very useful in the U/W match-up and against pox, so I'm quite happy about bringing them.

[The Colonel]

@Tenbin

congrats on the finish man... isn't fun to make cheating legal? lol

I guess the first place I'll go is Misdirection. I used to run the card, and about 4 months ago it was really good. Problem now is Jace, Lilliana, Zoo is comming back big, Maverick is the biggest deck right now, Bant Aggro is really comming back strong and Elves combo is out there in decent numbers too. Misdirection really doesn't help against these decks very much. I played GP Indy with this deck 2 weeks ago and on day 1 alone I saw Bant Aggro, Elves, Zoo, Maverick Twice, Nic Fit. Each one of these games Misdirection was worthless. I boarded it out every time becuase there problem spells for us can't be touched by misdirection.

4 Petal is too much man, I used to run 4 back in the day and late game it's such a disspointment to draw into. I now run only 2. If you cut 2 Petals and 1 Progenitus then BOOM you just freed up 3 slots for Flusterstorm.

Your mana base is where I have the biggest concern. 17? Brother we need 20, 19 at least. 4 Tomb is just to much and 4 fetch is not enough. My Suggestions:
-2 Tomb, -1 Volcanic, +2 Island, +2 Blue Fetch
I think you'll find the deck to be more stable then.

Hit me back with any questions you might have.

[useL]

My suggestion is to not listen to the colonel about mana base and to take quite lightly on his other suggestions. I simply do not agree going less than 6 brown lands if you are playing a deck with Intuition and Show and Tell.

[The Colonel]

What the hell is a brown land? a Non-basic? I'm telling him to run at least 6 "BROWN" lands. 4 U/R fetch and if I were him I'd run 4 other U/x fetches. Thats 8 "BROWN" lands right there. In my deck I also run 3 Ancient Tomb, 1 Boseiju and 3 Volcanic Island. That puts my "BROWN" land count at 15. I also run 4 Island and 1 mountain.


You always want to fetch out the basic land with this deck. We're already playing a deck that bottle necks itself with one maybe two key spells. Don't bottle neck yourself further with all kinds of "BROWN" lands that produce colorless.

[randomly.anonymous]

What the hell is a brown land?

I think he means "brown land" as in "sol land". Brown is a refernce to MUD (or Mono-Brown Aggro), an archetype in which sol lands form the foundation.

[menace13]

Sneak Attack is pretty customizable.

Aside the FoWs, 8 Cantrips and the 15-16 "core" cards, you can pretty much play whatever you feel like dependant on what decks you're aiming at. That leaves 12-14 cards to tinker with.

I have won events with or seen other decks win with: SSG over Lotus Petal, 20 lands to 18 lands, Intuition as a 2 of or full playset, 4 Sol Lands or 6, Seething Songs or no single accel what-so-ever. Maindecked REBs, varying Daze counts, No Pierce No Misdirection, Different creature packages, etc, etc.

There is no one single correct list.

Recently I wanted to test boarding into a Hive Mind package, but not quite sure how to approach building it or sideboarding. 11 cards in the package; 4 Hive Mind, 4 Pact of Negation, 3 Pact of Titan and 4 gy hate. Sneak Attack, Progenitus and Daze/Pierce go out. There is a Decreased ability to answer permanents traded for a "So, what, I win Now" button. The main deck should probably play 6 Sol Lands and 4 Petals with 4 Intuition to support the shift into, not sure on land count.

[Einherjer]

What would be the main advantage of the Hive-Mind-Package from the board? I mean if you ask me HiveMind is the stronger deck in any way but why would you want to play with SneakShow and then board in HiveMind? Just to avoid Ensnaring Bridge and Edicts? Then you should just end up playing HiveMind itself cause theres not so much good hate against it.

---No1 plays Angel's Grace anymore---

Greetings

[menace13]

What would be the main advantage of the Hive-Mind-Package from the board? I mean if you ask me HiveMind is the stronger deck in any way but why would you want to play with SneakShow and then board in HiveMind? Just to avoid Ensnaring Bridge and Edicts? Then you should just end up playing HiveMind itself cause theres not so much good hate against it.

---No1 plays Angel's Grace anymore---

Greetings

Against Stifle and Dazes, I take Sneak Attack over Hive Mind. Hive Mind is Stronger in a meta without those, sure. But there might be some merit to blank certain scenarios where SnT/Sneak Attack would not be game winning. Most cases those would be Vess, Pox decks, Jace, KotR->Karakas, Humility/Bridge and Thopter tokens. Also, I am pretty sure you just asked me the same question I asked everyone else and made me answer you.

[Tenbin]

@the Colonel

The comment about the misdirections is all fine and dandy, and I might change them, however; from what I've seen and from what I know about the current meta I feel that they really help me in the hard match-ups in a few ways. It allows me to go off one turn earlier as I get another free 'counter' to protect my spells, and it also does a mean reversal against discard, which is really rather helpful. It might not be useful against elves or zoo, but against elves I can sideboard them out for pyroclasms and zoo wasn't a hard match-up in last night's tournament anyway.

I lowered the petal count to 3 and added another fetch, gonna playtest a bit and see if I still feel that I should lower the count I'll go down to three.

regarding sol lands I really feel than 6 is the right count, seeing at least one is always a huge tempo boost, it allows me to power out Sneak Attack, Intuition and S&T the 2nd & 3rd turn, which is one of the big boons this deck has in my opinion. But again, when I've played the deck longer I might change my mind.

I've been considering a creature-base of 4 Emrakul, 3 Rune-Scarred Demon and a small creature toolbox in the main; the demon might be slightly lackluster off S&T but I've found that I almost always have either 2 creatures and 1 enabler or 2 enablers and 1 creature, so the demon would allow me to find the missing piece for a second creature

[jace247]

@the Colonel

The comment about the misdirections is all fine and dandy, and I might change them, however; from what I've seen and from what I know about the current meta I feel that they really help me in the hard match-ups in a few ways. It allows me to go off one turn earlier as I get another free 'counter' to protect my spells, and it also does a mean reversal against discard, which is really rather helpful. It might not be useful against elves or zoo, but against elves I can sideboard them out for pyroclasms and zoo wasn't a hard match-up in last night's tournament anyway.

I lowered the petal count to 3 and added another fetch, gonna playtest a bit and see if I still feel that I should lower the count I'll go down to three.

regarding sol lands I really feel than 6 is the right count, seeing at least one is always a huge tempo boost, it allows me to power out Sneak Attack, Intuition and S&T the 2nd & 3rd turn, which is one of the big boons this deck has in my opinion. But again, when I've played the deck longer I might change my mind.

I've been considering a creature-base of 4 Emrakul, 3 Rune-Scarred Demon and a small creature toolbox in the main; the demon might be slightly lackluster off S&T but I've found that I almost always have either 2 creatures and 1 enabler or 2 enablers and 1 creature, so the demon would allow me to find the missing piece for a second creature


i only play 4 sol lands total and it works for me i also play 7 fetches 2 islands 1 mountain and 4 volcanic islands so thats 18 lands it works for me but i think that everybody has there favs for creatures but seriously have y'all tried the blightsteel colossus because it is an auto win if you have the counter back up for there swords.
Also i only have misdirection in my board for FOW 5 and 6 but in my area my deck is very feared and is called the douchest deck around and the one week i didn't play this deck i actually got beat by it and was like so this what it feels like to see that thrown in my face.But i am just wondering about the petals also i do think 4 is a bit much but i do play 2 seething songs in my deck and they have helped also i usually side them out though for something else. My thought is also is you arent going to some major high dollar tourney then just build your deck that for your meta and just see what works for you. I am going to a big legacy tourney in my area this weekend and am going to play this but i am going to tweek some things thats for sure like i never really thought about the massacure wurm and that does seem pretty good in my area because there is a few esper blade, maverick, zoo, ascension, so just looking for some thoughts on what people creature base is i am at 3 emmy, 3 pro, and 2 blight in the main deck, with 1 terrastadon, 1 woodfall primus, and 1 angel of despair in my board.

[JPA]

I didn't read every single post, but I want to give my opinion about Misdirection, Creatures like Massacre Wurm and the Mana-base (Lotus Petal, Sol-Lands).

1. Misdirection
Is definitely bad vs the now popular decks like Maverick. On the other hand, Maverick, and all aggro decks in general are perfect matchups for us (thats also why I think Massacre Wurm is very unnecessary), so we don't have to make our 70-30 matchups 80-20 but rather make our 40-60 into 50-50. And for that, Misdirection is perfect. It beats Discard and is a 2nd Force against Control decks. And it can also misdirect lethal damage in the Burn-Matchup (Burn is pretty popular at the moment as well).

2. Massacre Wurm, Elesh Norn
I would never play any of them in my sideboard or main, because - like I said above - I don't see any need to play any aggro-hate except maybe Echoing Truth or Firespout. And boarding out Emrakul or Progenitus for another creature seems bad to me, since Elesh Norn won't kill your opponent. Massacre Wurm is a bit better, especially against Elves and Dredge, but still I won't play him, because I don't want to let my opponent get far enough to have a Zombie or Elves army. And if it comes to that point, I will win the 2 other games or will have boarded Echoing Truth, while still having my 7-8 legendary finishers.

3. Manabase
That brings me to my next point. We want to be as quick as possible with Show and Tell into Fattie (or Sneaking something in). And we definitely want a Lotus Petal and/or a Sol-Land in our starting 7. Thats why I suggest playing at least 3 Lotus Petal and in the current meta 6 Sol-Lands (4 Ancient Tomb, 2 City of Traitors).

And I found out that Daze is really bad for our deck, because we need our speed. I wouldn't play it again. Counterwise, 4 FoW, 3 Misdirection, 3 Spell Pierce main deck and 2-3 Red Blasts in the SB seem perfect to me.

About Blightsteel Colossus: Right now, he is pretty bad, because of all the Aggro-decks, that will often have blockers or Swords to Plowshares. In the Mental Misstep - meta he was pretty awesome.

[Tenbin]

I didn't read every single post, but I want to give my opinion about Misdirection, Creatures like Massacre Wurm and the Mana-base (Lotus Petal, Sol-Lands).

1. Misdirection
Is definitely bad vs the now popular decks like Maverick. On the other hand, Maverick, and all aggro decks in general are perfect matchups for us (thats also why I think Massacre Wurm is very unnecessary), so we don't have to make our 70-30 matchups 80-20 but rather make our 40-60 into 50-50. And for that, Misdirection is perfect. It beats Discard and is a 2nd Force against Control decks. And it can also misdirect lethal damage in the Burn-Matchup (Burn is pretty popular at the moment as well).

2. Massacre Wurm, Elesh Norn
I would never play any of them in my sideboard or main, because - like I said above - I don't see any need to play any aggro-hate except maybe Echoing Truth or Firespout. And boarding out Emrakul or Progenitus for another creature seems bad to me, since Elesh Norn won't kill your opponent. Massacre Wurm is a bit better, especially against Elves and Dredge, but still I won't play him, because I don't want to let my opponent get far enough to have a Zombie or Elves army. And if it comes to that point, I will win the 2 other games or will have boarded Echoing Truth, while still having my 7-8 legendary finishers.

3. Manabase
That brings me to my next point. We want to be as quick as possible with Show and Tell into Fattie (or Sneaking something in). And we definitely want a Lotus Petal and/or a Sol-Land in our starting 7. Thats why I suggest playing at least 3 Lotus Petal and in the current meta 6 Sol-Lands (4 Ancient Tomb, 2 City of Traitors).

And I found out that Daze is really bad for our deck, because we need our speed. I wouldn't play it again. Counterwise, 4 FoW, 3 Misdirection, 3 Spell Pierce main deck and 2-3 Red Blasts in the SB seem perfect to me.

About Blightsteel Colossus: Right now, he is pretty bad, because of all the Aggro-decks, that will often have blockers or Swords to Plowshares. In the Mental Misstep - meta he was pretty awesome.

How many lands do you play? 19? I share your sentiments regarding the deck, even with daze that I play myself. It is often underwhelming, pushing me a turn back if used. sad to say I mostly use it to pitch it to MD or FoW. However it did work wonders against the Pox deck as he often tapped out, but that can hardly be counted on.

I don't really want to cut dazes without adding another counter though, is Spell Pierce and Flusterstorm together superfluous? REB or Pyroblast main?

[JPA]

How many lands do you play? 19? I share your sentiments regarding the deck, even with daze that I play myself. It is often underwhelming, pushing me a turn back if used. sad to say I mostly use it to pitch it to MD or FoW. However it did work wonders against the Pox deck as he often tapped out, but that can hardly be counted on.

I don't really want to cut dazes without adding another counter though, is Spell Pierce and Flusterstorm together superfluous? REB or Pyroblast main?

I play 19 lands:

2 Volcanic Island
4 Ancient Tomb
2 City of Traitors
4 Scalding Tarn
4 Polluted Delta
2 Island
1 Mountain

Your 17 is pretty risky in my opinion. ;)
If you really want 13 counters main - I think 10 is enough in the current meta - you should definitely go for Flusterstorm.
But I would cut the 3 Dazes, go up to 19 lands and add 1 Ponder. Tell me what you think about that.

[The Colonel]

See the way I look at Misdirection or any card that is "easy to board out" means it shouldn't be in the main. That goes for Seething Song as well.

I run Massacre Wurm becuase we can't count on having a turn 2 or 3 victory all the time. I board out Progenitus or Spell Pierce when I board in Massacre Wurm. He's just the tits against really fast aggro.

Lands:
3 Volcanic Island
3 Ancient Tomb
4 Scalding Tarn
4 Polluted Delta
5 Island
1 Mountain
2 Lotus Petal

I board the lotus petals out for Pyroblast if I'm going against slower blue decks

@Tenbin
I'm telling you man you're running two many sol lands. I beleive you said you only recently started playing the deck? Sol lands might seem cool right now cuz you got lucky with them and dodged wasteland or had draws with blue mana in them as well. But in the long run and speaking as someone with 2 years of XP running the deck you're going to want to cut back to 3 or 4.

Oh and the Hive mind sideboard idea is just terrible. Please delete that suggestion so this thread doesn't lose credibility. Blood Moon is our board win condition. Another reason why I say run more basic islands.

[menace13]

See the way I look at Misdirection or any card that is "easy to board out" means it shouldn't be in the main. That goes for Seething Song as well.

I run Massacre Wurm becuase we can't count on having a turn 2 or 3 victory all the time. I board out Progenitus or Spell Pierce when I board in Massacre Wurm. He's just the tits against really fast aggro.

Lands:
3 Volcanic Island
3 Ancient Tomb
4 Scalding Tarn
4 Polluted Delta
5 Island
1 Mountain
2 Lotus Petal

I board the lotus petals out for Pyroblast if I'm going against slower blue decks

@Tenbin
I'm telling you man you're running two many sol lands. I beleive you said you only recently started playing the deck? Sol lands might seem cool right now cuz you got lucky with them and dodged wasteland or had draws with blue mana in them as well. But in the long run and speaking as someone with 2 years of XP running the deck you're going to want to cut back to 3 or 4.

Oh and the Hive mind sideboard idea is just terrible. Please delete that suggestion so this thread doesn't lose credibility. Blood Moon is our board win condition. Another reason why I say run more basic islands.

You're an idiot and also your suggestions are fukin dumb. I don't care if you were playing the deck for decades, that amounts to exactly a sum total of shit. Credibilty?? From you?? Oh, no, What will this site do without your approval?

Wurm isn't much value from the game winning spells. Sneak Attack for 6 permanents and 15 is your best option at that point in the game where you're dream crushing 4 2/2's, Infest and 6/5 isn't going to beat much. Sol Lands are amazing turn 2 if I have a Petal, I'll Keep it as long as either 1 part of the combo is there. Around 14 blue sources, and 4 Petals getting double red is the only hard part and That's because Sneak costs 5 on the same turn to execute. Wurm either loses to or trades for; Bolt+Blocker or double Bolt, Goyf at 5/6, Bop with SoLaS, Jace if off of SnT, StP, KotR, Ravager, Tombstalker, Why trade that to use the spells in the deck?

Land counts are 18-20 for the most part and Sol Counts vary. I like 2 Tomb and 2 City with 4 Petals at 18-20 total, 3-4 basics. All depending on what I am going to expect in the event.

[The]

You're an idiot and also your suggestions are fukin dumb. I don't care if you were playing the deck for decades, that amounts to exactly a sum total of shit. Credibilty?? From you?? Oh, no, What will this site do without your approval

Way to constructive criticism bro.

Anyways, I'm not sure how much I like lotus petals in this deck. I much prefer to wait until turn 3,4 or even 5 to consistently produce a fatty with the backing of a couple counters. I guess it depends on your meta, but a t4 Emrakul is still plenty to race most things that aren't burn.

[kingsey]

In a heavy blue meta, has anyone main decked pyroblast ?

[CorpT]

Way to constructive criticism bro.

He's running Massacre Wurm. menace kind of has a point.

[menace13]

He's running Massacre Wurm. menace kind of has a point.
I may have slightly overreacted, but every last post of his is telling someone that they are wrong if their land count/Accel count/Creature package/Counter suite/Sleeves doesn't match his.

There are so many ways to build and play the deck. MAny different lists have preformed really well at events for other people. There is a long list of cards that can be played in the deck; SSG, Seething Song, Kozilek, Primus, Cliques, REBS, etc. I don't think Wurm is better than Firespout, Fallout, or Pyroclasm.

[The]

Wurm is cute, I'll give it that much. If we had some kind of wishboard/tutor package that we could use to fetch it in those relevant match-ups (See, elves, certain moments vs Maverick or merfolk?) but we don't. We have 3-4 Emrakul and 3-4 Progenitus to win it. The thing about Elesh is she tears the balls out of those MU's and keeps doing it, where Massacre Wurm is a one-shot kinda deal.

[useL]

I may have slightly overreacted, but every last post of his is telling someone that they are wrong if their land count/Accel count/Creature package/Counter suite/Sleeves doesn't match his.

No overreaction noted. The Colonel should maybe listen to others aswell. Enough of the Massacre Wurm, its terrible. Pyroclasm/Firespout is the way to go.

Land composition is something else, but I do agree that you want atleast a 25% chance of finding one in your game with ponders/Brainstorm before you go off. Especially after sideboard when opponents often have Spell Pierce.

[Tenbin]

Wurm is cute, I'll give it that much. If we had some kind of wishboard/tutor package that we could use to fetch it in those relevant match-ups (See, elves, certain moments vs Maverick or merfolk?) but we don't. We have 3-4 Emrakul and 3-4 Progenitus to win it. The thing about Elesh is she tears the balls out of those MU's and keeps doing it, where Massacre Wurm is a one-shot kinda deal.

To be fair, we COULD have a tutor package, we could play 3 Rune-Scarred Demon instead of Progenitus and add a 3-4 card creature package of creatures like Elesh Norn, Angel of Despair and similarly. I'm not sure it's the right way to take the deck, but it's a cute idea at any rate - not new - but cute.

I've changed around my mana-base a bit; playing 18 lands and 3 petals; I really like playing 3 petals, fetching 3 petals with intuition has won a fair few games, giving me both a land and a petal the next turn.

4 Scalding Tarn
2 Misty Rainforest
2 Volcanic Island
3 Island
1 Mountain
4 Ancient Tomb
2 City of Traitors
3 Lotus Petal

I'm not comfortable going up to 20 lands as Colonel suggested, very rarely have I found myself lacking mana and fairly often has a petal helped be go off, either a turn earlier or with an extra mana for a spell pierce or pyroblast. But again, I've only played a hundred or so games.

Has anyone tried the Rune-Scarred Demon idea?

[JPA]

Especially the Japanese like to run Rune-scarred demon, with 4-3-3 Emmy, Demon, Proggy/Jin Gitaxias (they love him, too) main and other creature 1-ofs in the board. I think it's cute, but not necessary; just like the White splash for Enlightened Tutor into Sneak Attack or Blightsteel Colossus/Sphinx of the Steel Wind.
Both give us versatility / consistency, but make us lose speed. And we need that speed in the current aggro meta.

[Tenbin]

Especially the Japanese like to run Rune-scarred demon, with 4-3-3 Emmy, Demon, Proggy/Jin Gitaxias (they love him, too) main and other creature 1-ofs in the board. I think it's cute, but not necessary; just like the White splash for Enlightened Tutor into Sneak Attack or Blightsteel Colossus/Sphinx of the Steel Wind.
Both give us versatility / consistency, but make us lose speed. And we need that speed in the current aggro meta.

So if the pendulum were to swing away from aggro running Rune-Scarred Demon might be legit? I see the point about the aggro heavy meta not really being optimal for him as the set-up takes 1 more turn (unless you happen to have sneak attack and 2 red mana)

[JPA]

So if the pendulum were to swing away from aggro running Rune-Scarred Demon might be legit? I see the point about the aggro heavy meta not really being optimal for him as the set-up takes 1 more turn (unless you happen to have sneak attack and 2 red mana)

Exactly. Right now, the meta is aggro-heavy and therefore we don't need to run anything special against Aggro, because it's the perfect matchup for us anyways.
And yes, Rune-Scarred Demon needs 1 extra turn, and some meddling. Decks like Maverick can race us (especially Progenitus) pretty well though, so this 1 turn can make the difference between winning and losing.

And by the way, Sneak & Show in the Top 8 of SCG Open Baltimore just won the quarterfinals against Pat Cox' Maverick. The list has Magus of the Moon in it, and I think that makes total sense. If our opponent can board something against us, it will definitely be enchantment removal, plus, he will definitely board out his creature removal, so Magus will do the same as Blood Moon, while being a)harder to get rid of and b)able to block something that could race us.
I hope Josh Adams wins that Open (it's a pretty big one) and shows everyone that we deserve the "Deck to beat" - spot. :tongue:

[menace13]

Especially the Japanese like to run Rune-scarred demon, with 4-3-3 Emmy, Demon, Proggy/Jin Gitaxias (they love him, too) main and other creature 1-ofs in the board. I think it's cute, but not necessary; just like the White splash for Enlightened Tutor into Sneak Attack or Blightsteel Colossus/Sphinx of the Steel Wind.
Both give us versatility / consistency, but make us lose speed. And we need that speed in the current aggro meta.

I haven't seen many. Could you please link me to some of the Japanese lists?

[jace247]

I played in a money tourney this weekend where first was $250. I won with my sneak and show deck and there was 30 people and lots of out of town people the other funny note about me is i was the only undefeated all day and when the top 8 sat down they all wanted to split but i said nope i can win LOL . But here is what i played against at the tourney.

round 1 was against burn
round 2 was against goblins
round 3 was against reanimater
round 4 against maverick
round 5 we id to the top 8 cause we went to get food

The quarter-round of top 8 i played the reanimater girl again and i won
semi-finals of the top 8 i played against esper blade the same guy from last Saturday
the finals was against dredge the funny thing about that game was the turn 1 show and tell into blight steel colossus to his stink weed imp! and in game 2 i just had the nuts draw against him of daze, 2 spell pierce and 2 surgicals plus 2 land and an intuition.

Here is the new list that i took with me to the tourney i did some slight changes because i thought i would play against more esper blade there was 6 there, 4 goblins, 1 show and tell natural order deck, 2 dredge, zoo , ascension, 2 maverick, reanimater, a past in flames deck, 2 delver rug, blue red delver, 3 burn decks,a BUG deck, and then some other random stuff i wasn't watching.

18 lands :
4 volcanic islands
2 ancient tombs
2 city of traitors
4 scalding tarn
2 misty rainforest
1 arid mesa
2 islands
1 mountain

the rest of the deck :
3 emrakuls
3 progenitus
2 blight steel colossus
1 massacre wurm
1 blood moon
1 preordain
3 ponder
4 brainstorm
4 intuition
4 force of will
3 daze
3 spell snare
4 show and tell
4 sneak attack
3 lotus petals

side board:
1 elesh norn grand cenobite
1 terrastadon
1 woodfall primus
1 blood moon
2 misdirection
3 spell pierce
3 red elemental blast
3 surgical extractions

Well that's my list that i played Saturday and i will admit that some of the regular that i play with at my local game store don't like the deck lol and would rather play against a different combo deck than mine ha ha!

[JPA]

I haven't seen many. Could you please link me to some of the Japanese lists?

http://amclegacy.sakura.ne.jp/AMC_96th_E.html

http://amclegacy.sakura.ne.jp/ Here you can browse through (on the right where the numbers are), you will find some lists with the demon, especially the ones from 6 months ago or more.

[The Colonel]

@Jace247

Congrats on the finish man. Just a few questions:


Do the "one of" creatures on the board and in the main ever feel awkward? You can't really search for them and get them reliably with Intuition. Just have to draw into them.

Do you ever get frustrated about Blightsteel meeting swords? I want to run him but I don't want to go all in on a hand with him only to have him meet swords. The nice thing about Proggy and Emmy and the deck in general is any U/W decks are ussually running swords/path and spellsnare that's potentially 8 dead cards against us. Blightseel makes swords relevant.

Again, congrats on the finish, you have a fairly unique version of the deck.

[JustPAT4]

I) 4-6 Sol lands seems correct. 3 is okay, but only in a slower meta. In an open field I'd pack 5-6. Being one of the slowest combo decks in the format puts a burden on it to increase its speed whenever possible.

I'm not a big fan of Massacre Wurm, but if your meta has a ton of aggro and you're getting outraced by it Colonel, I could see it being fine. Personally I'd pack more Sol lands and petals to compensate for the speed and rely on Firespout to take care of those matchups out of the board.

II) I know he doesn't get a lot of love from most, but Jin-Gitaxias is bonkers. If I'm going to board any guy, it's not going to be more aggro hate, it's gonna be something that devastates the faster combo decks. Against TES/ANT/DDNT/High Tide/Belcher, he's simply the best. BETTER than Emrakul (at least via S&T).

He's perhaps poorly positioned with all the swords around (like always), but nutty nonetheless. If you like a 3rd creature, I like him. He's blue, he draws cards like crazy, and timed right, almost always wins the game by the next turn.

III) Where do people come down on Flusterstorm vs. Spell Pierce as the 3rd maindeck counter option (after FOW and MISD.). Flusterstorm seems to be objectively better in almost every situation that we'd want Spell Pierce. Better in back-up situations, better against discard (because it can't be dazed), at the very least just as good as Spell Pierce against everything that it hits and often WAY WAY better. It looks like it hones in on the cards that hate against us most. HOWEVER, it doesn't hit Liliana, Jace, Ensnaring Bridge or Humility (though I don't see much of the latter two). Is the threat of Liliana in an open field enough to make Spell Pierce the safer call even with the advantages Flusterstorm offers?

[Einherjer]

What about updating the MUs as I hardly run in any Landstill/Zoo/Merfolk/New Horizons nowadays :) I switched to HiveMind just before the emerge of CanadianTreshold - so it might be right to get back to SneakShow again... What about the MUs vs Tempo?

Greetings

[menace13]

http://amclegacy.sakura.ne.jp/AMC_96th_E.html

http://amclegacy.sakura.ne.jp/ Here you can browse through (on the right where the numbers are), you will find some lists with the demon, especially the ones from 6 months ago or more.

TYVM. Interesting lists. Solemn Simulacrum and Chaos Warp stand out as new to me aside Jin and Rune Demon. I can see Solemn for Lilianna and Chaos answers both of the planeswalkers and Karakas.

[JustPAT4]

What about updating the MUs as I hardly run in any Landstill/Zoo/Merfolk/New Horizons nowadays :) I switched to HiveMind just before the emerge of CanadianTreshold - so it might be right to get back to SneakShow again... What about the MUs vs Tempo?

Greetings

The OP needs to be updated desperately. It's been a a year and a half since the match-up analysis was written.

I don't have comprehensive data on matchups these days. :frown:

If anyone has the time/inclination/data to update the section with relevant matchups PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE PM me and I will be glad to update the section

[The Colonel]

@PAT

I run fewer Sol lands because I fear wasteland. Yes I FEAR wasteland. It's just screwed me so many times. To compensate for this I run 20 lands when everyone else is running 17-19. My extra land comes in the form of +2-3 blue fetches. Does it make the deck slower? yes. But I like the 1 maybe 2 turns of slower land to improve consistancey and safety. I'm paranoid lol.


The reason I don't like Jin is because he's swords bate. I don't really worry about "faster" combo decks. I run 4 FOW, 3 Spell Pierce, 3 Flusterstorm and 2 Daze. That's ussually enough when you time it right. My eta is full of really fast aggro. I worry about them putting so many perms down on the battlefield that Even Emmy can't deal. But that's prolly because I don't run a lot of Sol lands.


As far as Spell Pierce Vs. Fluserstorm goes I run both lol. When I was at GP Indy Lilliana was EVERYWHERE that's why I like Pierce, not to mention Jace. Flusterstorm is better against combo and decks running counterspells plus discard. That's why I run both. I was so dissapointed with Misdirection at GP that I took it out the next day. It used to be a lot better when aggro wasn't dominating the format. My other deck is the most popular deck in the format... Maverick. Misdirection + FOW created a lot of card disadvantage.

[JustPAT4]

@PAT

I run fewer Sol lands because I fear wasteland. Yes I FEAR wasteland. It's just screwed me so many times. To compensate for this I run 20 lands when everyone else is running 17-19. My extra land comes in the form of +2-3 blue fetches. Does it make the deck slower? yes. But I like the 1 maybe 2 turns of slower land to improve consistancey and safety. I'm paranoid lol.

Everyone running this deck needs to play around wasteland effectively. Yet if your Sol lands are consistently being targeted, it may be symptomatic of a play style error. In the overwhelming majority of scenarios, if you play a sol land, you are going off that turn at which point Wasteland becomes negligible.



The reason I don't like Jin is because he's swords bate. I don't really worry about "faster" combo decks. I run 4 FOW, 3 Spell Pierce, 3 Flusterstorm and 2 Daze. That's ussually enough when you time it right. My eta is full of really fast aggro. I worry about them putting so many perms down on the battlefield that Even Emmy can't deal. But that's prolly because I don't run a lot of Sol lands.

With that kind of counter suite I can imagine combo is a consistently decent matchup. Still, I have NEVER had Jin meet swords. Most players side out swords against this strategy. If they don't? Great. They're largely dead. Meanwhile, the Maverick decks packing swords don't have many spells worth countering anyhow so saving a counter for swords is much easier. Timing is also important. Anytime the opponent is tapped out Jin DRAWS 7, making it extremely likely that you'll have an answer to a swords if the opponent happens to have one. AND, if you've drawn 7, even if you don't have a swords counter, it's unlikely to matter. With Sneak Attack on board, drawing 7 is absurd.



As far as Spell Pierce Vs. Fluserstorm goes I run both lol. When I was at GP Indy Lilliana was EVERYWHERE that's why I like Pierce, not to mention Jace. Flusterstorm is better against combo and decks running counterspells plus discard. That's why I run both. I was so dissapointed with Misdirection at GP that I took it out the next day. It used to be a lot better when aggro wasn't dominating the format. My other deck is the most popular deck in the format... Maverick. Misdirection + FOW created a lot of card disadvantage.

Sure. Misd + FOW creates lots of card disadvatage. The payoff of that disadvantage tends to be worth it for this strategy, though. I don't care if I have 1 card, 2 cards, or 0 cards in hand if I have Emrakul turn 3. I've already won or lost regardless of the cards that were spent to make it happen. Misdirection shores up the bad matchups like no other card, while still having solid utility against any blue strategy. The fact that it's easy to side out against already favorable matchups is gravy in my opinion.

I'm still interested to hear, assuming 3 slots for Spell Pierce/Flusterstorm, what people think makes the most sense for Sneak and Show in an open field.

[jace247]

@Jace247

Congrats on the finish man. Just a few questions:


Do the "one of" creatures on the board and in the main ever feel awkward? You can't really search for them and get them reliably with Intuition. Just have to draw into them.

Do you ever get frustrated about Blightsteel meeting swords? I want to run him but I don't want to go all in on a hand with him only to have him meet swords. The nice thing about Proggy and Emmy and the deck in general is any U/W decks are usually running swords/path and spell snare that's potentially 8 dead cards against us. Blightseel makes swords relevant.

Again, congrats on the finish, you have a fairly unique version of the deck.


they really worked for me and i know when to use the blight i never just wam bam him out unless i know that i have counter back up or they are tapped out. i have been playing this deck for a very long time and i enjoy it. i almost didn't put in the elesh it was an angel of despair right before the tourney until i saw how many aggro decks where around. to be honest i think my take on the deck is pretty solid because i have played in a lot and its also very hard to just play smart sometimes going into an unknown meta but the only deck that i had trouble with this weekend was reanimater because i turn one show and telled and she put in blazing archon and i just stared at it for like a few minutes and said lets go to game 2 lol.

[Cyrandir]

Everyone running this deck needs to play around wasteland effectively.
This. S&T is one of the most straightforward decks you could play in legacy right now. The only real skill maneuvers in this deck is effective brainstorming and playing around the wasteland.


I'm still interested to hear, assuming 3 slots for Spell Pierce/Flusterstorm, what people think makes the most sense for Sneak and Show in an open field.
I run 3 of each. In my experience Daze isn't worth the extra turn it often costs, and with 4 FoW and 2 Misdirections there is room for both. I play in a control-heavy meta (in an average field of 12 there will be between 4 and 7 sets of FoW in the room, not counting mine), so winning the counter war is important. And as previously stated, the counters help out with the combo MU. Digging for the win-con and the protecting the win-con is about all this deck needs to do.


drawing 7 is absurd
I've actually never tried Jin, I'll have to give it some thought. I can see how it could be huge. Reloading your hand is never a bad thing.


Misd + FOW creates lots of card disadvatage
Maybe this is a good reason to play Jin if you're playing both Misd+FoW

[rxavage]

I've been playing reanimator but it's been inconsistent, so I've been considering picking up the set of sneak attack necessary to complete SneakShow and I would like to know a few things. Would including the hive-mind combo make this another deck? Can I get away with 4 Ancient Tomb or is City of Traitors a must? Any tricks or interaction that aren't overtly obvious i should be aware of?

[Cyrandir]

Would including the hive-mind combo make this another deck?
Adding the hive-mind package has been discussed and people are mostly against it, though it does have its supporters. Generally speaking, this deck is all about the Sneaks and Shows and protecting them.


Can I get away with 4 Ancient Tomb or is City of Traitors a must?
Another hotly debated point, with most people coming down on the side of 5-6 2-mana lands. Ancient tomb can get painful if you lose the counter war or the game drags on for some other reason. While not strictly required, the extra speed of having more than 4 of these types of lands is often important.


Any tricks or interaction that aren't overtly obvious i should be aware of?
Nope. As stated earlier, this deck is very straightforward. Having some knowledge of what to play around in the other guy's hand will alter your play somewhat, but other than that this deck is just trying to do dirty things with big dudes.

[Tenbin]

I've been playing reanimator but it's been inconsistent, so I've been considering picking up the set of sneak attack necessary to complete SneakShow and I would like to know a few things. Would including the hive-mind combo make this another deck? Can I get away with 4 Ancient Tomb or is City of Traitors a must? Any tricks or interaction that aren't overtly obvious i should be aware of?

When playing the deck I've found the only 'tricks' per se that you have come from intuition; fetching 3 lotus petals in your opponent's end phase to be able to put down a land and a petal next turn for more colored mana, otherwise I'd have to agree with Cyrandir, it's a pretty elegant deck in its execution, intuition mostly fetches a creature or an enabler (or counters) and the next turn you win.

[JustPAT4]

Can I get away with 4 Ancient Tomb or is City of Traitors a must?

City of Traitors isn't a must, but most players seem to be very comfortable with it. It depends how many Sol lands you want in total. If 4 is your number, I'd advocate for a 2/2 split. The extra damage from the tombs can very occasionally be relevant.



Any tricks or interaction that aren't overtly obvious i should be aware of?

Not many. As has been stated many times, it's a fairly straightforward strategy.

You have to be aware of your brainstorm stacks in response to discard because of your creatures that cause library shuffling.

There are some cute things that you can do with Misdirection, if you're of that persuasion. Against an opponent packing stifle, if you can afford the time, it may be worth it to wait to fetch in response to his fetch and if they stifle yours, you can misdirect it to his.

With Sneak Attack it's important to realize that the oracle text reads "sacrifice the creature at the beginning of the next end step," meaning that you can sneak in critters during your opponents end step. This is important on occasions when you have only a single red source and your opponent has a Karakas up. It also allows you to Sneak Jin-Gitaxias in during your opponents end step, have them discard to 0, take your turn, swing, then draw 7. Only rarely is this the right call, but it's a synergy to be aware of.

If your opponent has Karakas and you have Sneak Attack with 2 red sources, when they bounce your guy, you can simply sneak him in again during combat and swing.

It's also good to realize that once Sneak Attack resolves you have priority and should immediately activate it if you're worried that your opponent boarded in Krosan Grip. In the same vein, if you're worried (by some miracle) that your opponent is packing trickbind, activate Sneak Attack twice while you have priority to avoid being silenced.

[Kl'rt]

Has anyone tested against the GP winning Esper Blade Control list?

I spent a lot of time jamming this list:
http://www.thecouncil.es/tcdecks/deck.php?id=7875&iddeck=57350
(except -1 Misdirection, +1 Progenitus)

against the Esper Blade list and noticed two things:
- Pre-board is very favourable for us. The counter-magic and discard in their main deck is usually not enough to stop us.
- Post-board is a different story. They bring in more counter-magic and discard and even worse, Surgical Extraction. Has anyone else noticed that Surgical plus Snapcaster is a real pain to deal with? I found that post-board, the match-up becomes about even, 50-50. Sometimes I can go off quickly without running into too much disruption. Other times they manage to Surgical either Show and Tell or Sneak Attack or even both!

Anyone have ideas for making post-board favourable for us? Maybe boarding in a third spell to reduce vulnerability to Surgical Extraction? Something like Through the Breach? Oh yeah, this is probably obvious, but post-board, it might be best to leave out Intuition if they're bringing in Surgical Extraction, haha.

[jace247]

Has anyone tested against the GP winning Esper Blade Control list?

I spent a lot of time jamming this list:
http://www.thecouncil.es/tcdecks/deck.php?id=7875&iddeck=57350
(except -1 Misdirection, +1 Progenitus)

against the Esper Blade list and noticed two things:
- Pre-board is very favourable for us. The counter-magic and discard in their main deck is usually not enough to stop us.
- Post-board is a different story. They bring in more counter-magic and discard and even worse, Surgical Extraction. Has anyone else noticed that Surgical plus Snapcaster is a real pain to deal with? I found that post-board, the match-up becomes about even, 50-50. Sometimes I can go off quickly without running into too much disruption. Other times they manage to Surgical either Show and Tell or Sneak Attack or even both!

Anyone have ideas for making post-board favourable for us? Maybe boarding in a third spell to reduce vulnerability to Surgical Extraction? Something like Through the Breach? Oh yeah, this is probably obvious, but post-board, it might be best to leave out Intuition if they're bringing in Surgical Extraction, haha.

yes i have played up against that deck in the last two tournaments i have won and game 1 usually goes to me and then i have sided in spell pierce, red elemental blast, and maybe 2 or 3 surgical extractions oh and 1 blood moon. i usually take out my lotus petals, 1 sneak attack, 1 intuition, 1 massacre wurm, 1 blight steel, but thats only if i dont do the extractions but i rarely put them in against that i did at first and then i was like i am losing to much of my speed. because i play spell snare in my main deck instead of spell pierce because it works for me.

[CookedChestnuts]

Against Stoneforge where you know they play Surgicals, I would board out 2 Intuitions, and don't cast something unless you KNOW it's going to resolve. If that takes waiting until Turn 5 to cast the Show and Tell for Progenitus with double REB/Daze/Fow backup, so be it. Also, I like to board out a single Emrakul (still keeping 3), because of Jace.

[JustPAT4]

I agree with the above post. The Stoneblade matchup tends to give us more than enough time to assemble a hand and go off by turn 4-5 safely.(Although, if the stoneblade player is on the play and attacking w/ Batterskull by turn 4, you will often lose a race w/ Progenitus.)

Surgical Extraction is clearly a blowout vs. Intuition. If you're sure they're bringing it in against you, reducing your intuition count is advisable (probably in any case), and waiting as long as you can in a given situation to ensure resolution of your action spells will be right in many, but not all, circumstances.

There's always some degree of guesswork involved with Sneak Show. Playing the percentages should be best in the long run, unless you have a read on your opponent and what he/she is holding.

I bring in Blood Moon and REB/Pyroblast against Stoneblade decks, but it might be time to include Grafdigger's Cage in the board for the utility it provides against a wide array of strategies. It's decent here against Snapcaster (recurring multiple spell pierce/counterspell and especially Extraction can be brutal) and Lingering Souls... I tend to think that other options are stronger... but, having such a broad utility might give it the edge over other grave-hate options in the board.

[Zand]

I bring in Blood Moon and REB/Pyroblast against Stoneblade decks, but it might be time to include Grafdigger's Cage in the board for the utility it provides against a wide array of strategies. It's decent here against Snapcaster (recurring multiple spell pierce/counterspell and especially Extraction can be brutal) and Lingering Souls... I tend to think that other options are stronger... but, having such a broad utility might give it the edge over other grave-hate options in the board.

I've been running a split of Grafdigger's Cage and Crpyt in my board and while I havn't yet been able to decide the exact numbers, I've found it to be pretty useful.

[menace13]

If Sneak Attack can't get online then Progenitus off SnT works best against Stoneblade to blank Karakas and Jaces. Progenitus is going to get there often Under those circumstances when he will need 3 swings for 30 before they gain OVER 10 life in their 2 swings.

Mostly 7 to 8 damage is pretty much the MAX Stoneblade can do on average in a single swing with Tokens/Snapcaster/Clique/ and Mystic+Skull in play. That can still be raced If at around 17 Life which gives Prog the 3 attack phases needed. Progenitus beats them when he swings and they are at 20 life or less and are gaining no more than 5 life per turn.

Skull attached to Clique or Snapcaster shakes things up and gives THEM the 3 attack phases unless they are at below 14 life then the 7 point lifegain is irrel, but they need to have 5 lands to attach it.

Post board REB is the best card to have in this MU since it stops Jace from bouncing Emmy and allows Prog to race, hitting Clique and Snapcaster. Some type of bounce and/or artifact removal will also help, I would go for bounce since it helps with both Emmy off Sneak and Prog off SnT routes(Wipe Away can target Karakas).

[Tenbin]

I realize this is probably old tech, but I have some cards I've been considering.

Trinisphere - It stops combos in its tracks (except for us), removes Reanimator's speed advantage and storm combo's rituals and LEDs and Dredge is also hampered by it. The cons obviously include making our deck slower by making our cantrips a tad useless and it also removes the advantage gained through playing FoW, Misdirection and Daze, which makes it more dangerous to play Show & Tell or Sneak Attack as it becomes harder to protect them.

Chalice of the Void - A chalice on X=2 stops a lot of dangerous spells the opponent plays but only stops our Daze and we can usually get 4 mana by turn 2-3. Sadly a Chalice on X=1 isn't so powerful in this deck since we play a bunch of cantrips and Spell Pierce, Flusterstorm works through it though, which is pretty neat.

Fling - I personally think fling is the card with the least amount of validity in the deck and something that will quite seldom be useful; but it's at least interesting to think about. It interacts nicely with Sneak Attack as we had to sac it anyway. Most of the time the opponent will have exhausted his/her counterspells on Sneak Attack or the Show & Tell anyway. It's cute, but probably not good enough.

Chaos Warp - Removes any permanent for a mana cost that is fair and a secondary cost that is usually a land for them or a nothing. It works as a (usually) permanent way to remove Karakas and can even be used on a creature we snuck in for a small chance of getting a permanent one.

Thoughts? Shit ideas?

[JustPAT4]

@Tenbin

Sure, this is old tech, but that doesn't mean it's not worth at least re-analyzing when the meta shifts.

As I first began developing Sneak Show lists after the spoiling of Emrakul, yours were some of the ideas I began with. Fling never made it to the table for me because, theoretically, it's too frequently a dead card and more often than that it's simply unnecessary.

I even top 8ed a Jupiter Games event with such a list in June 2010 with a list that maindecked Trinisphere, Chalice, and Blood moon alongside an 8 sol land package and mox diamonds w/ intuition and Thirst for Knowledge for card draw.

It works. It was about 6/10 of a turn faster, but MUCH more daring. It worked especially well in the storm and control dominated meta it was designed for, but ultimately, testing proved it to be less consistent than the additional cantrip with free/cheep counter package lists that have become the mainstay.

In the right meta, or should such an environment develop again on a larger scale, it still may be the right call, but in the current situation, where the deck is perhaps better situated than ever before, it just doesn't feel necessary or correct.

Chalice at 2 is a luxury, the card is best utilized when it can prey on 1cc spells.

It's certainly a direction that you can build the deck, but you have to be aware of the reduction in consistency.

I fully support Chaos Warp as an answer in the board or even 1-2 of main deck. It serves the multiple functions you've outlined: an effective, versatile, catch-all.

[Tenbin]

I am always hesitant to use less than 3 of a card in this deck as I feel that being able to intuition for any one card in the deck is part of what makes it so very powerful, but I also feel that 3 chaos warp main is probably too much; what do you think of 1-2 main and the remainder in the board? it allows you to draw and dig for it game 1 and if any problematic permanents were seen you can bring in the second/third one for game 2-3, letting you intuition for it at will.

Regarding playing 3 of a card; why is it that so many play 2 Echoing Truth and 1 Wipe Away? Meddling Mage and Nevermore aren't exactly massively played cards and when finding them with intuition the opponent will obviously just choose the one most beneficial to him. Surgical Extraction/Cabal Therapy shouldn't be very threatening either, since you rarely need to bounce something twice in a game, and if you're afraid of Surgicals when using Intuition after the bounce you should be using something like 1 Echoing, 1 Chain of Vapor and 1 Wipe away. It's just been bugging me for a while :P.

Also, regarding the choice of bounce, I feel that Chain of Vapor is often a better fit in this deck than Echoing Truth. It costs 1 less which is a pretty big deal as at least I often find myself tapping out or leaving 1 mana open. It also does not cost 2, which dodges Spell Snare which has no other targets in the deck. Furthermore, the opponent will very rarely have anything to bounce on our side of the board, our creatures are untouchable and if we have Sneak Attack on the board we have probably already used it and can always use it in response as well. Not to mention that we often roll out on round 2-4, meaning that the opponent will only have 1-3 lands if we're on the play and 2-4 if on the draw; thus, may not be able to afford bouncing our Sneak Attack (if we even have one).

Thoughts?

[JPA]

Echoing Truth is the perfect bounce for Sneak Show, in my opinion. It destroys dredge, which is one of our worse matchups and stops the aggressive decks we see a lot right now in general.

I am not a big fan of chain of vapor in the deck, I think 2 or 3 Echoing Truth SB are pretty optimal as bounce.

Edit about Chaos Warp: It's pretty cute as a 2-of in the sideboard, I wouldn't know what to cut in the main deck though; if we play it, then not in the main deck, if you ask me.

[Tenbin]

Echoing Truth is the perfect bounce for Sneak Show, in my opinion. It destroys dredge, which is one of our worse matchups and stops the aggressive decks we see a lot right now in general.

I am not a big fan of chain of vapor in the deck, I think 2 or 3 Echoing Truth SB are pretty optimal as bounce.

Edit about Chaos Warp: It's pretty cute as a 2-of in the sideboard, I wouldn't know what to cut in the main deck though; if we play it, then not in the main deck, if you ask me.

Would you mind expanding on why you do not like Chain of Vapor? Echoing Truth will bounce the zombie tokens, that is true; what it doesn't do is attack the heart of the problem which is the bridges. In the case where the opponent has an aggro strategy we do not need to worry so much about counterspells (bar U/R Delver and derivatives) which often means we can go off turn 2-3, meaning bounce shouldn't really be necessary, nor would the opponent have two permanents with the same name in that timeframe.

I am not adamant on the value of Chain of Vapor over Echoing Truth, I just think the benefits of the 1-mana cost is more relevant than sometimes being able to bounce several permanents. Please explain your reasoning though, I am very open to reasoned arguments.

I am not sure about Chaos Warps myself, they'd replace bounce rather than supplement them I think. I think I will try them as a 2-off main deck, replacing a Progenitus and a Daze perhaps. That'd reduce my counter suite to 12 assisted by 2 pseudo-vindicates and my creature count to 7.

[JDK]

Chain of Vapor has a significant drawback if you have a Sneak Attack on board and Echoing Truth can bounce multiple threats (e.g. Dredge Zombie Tokens). The +1CMC normally doesn't hurt you that much.

[ivanpei]

Has anyone tested griselbrand? It is the nut high IMO. It replaces Proggy and stuff like intuition. Can be cut. Also you can now run 1-2 copies of through the breach because you get 8 monsters that you can fling. Griselbrand is also a monster with snt. It's pretty much a sphinx of steel wind with jin's draw attached.

I advocate a turbo fast version without intuitions and with seething songs and through the breach. I believe it now has reanimator level consistency without being soft to gravehate. It's insane. Edit: I can see this deck evolving 2 ways, would you go belcher style with through the breach/seething song or would you prefer the slow roll version with intuition and more sol lands. The format is pretty fast right now so I'm leaning towards an explosive list which boards into a more consistent version.

Also intuition sucks balls against the tons of surgicals out there in most boards. If we are always boarding it out, is it worth running in the first place?

[JPA]

Griselbrand is pretty awesome, yeah. If they are trying to sword him, we can still draw 7-14 cards to find the counter or the parts of our combo to go off again.

Still, I don't think he replaces Progenitus. Just like Jin, I think it isn't better to have a creature that gives more consistency and lets you draw cards than one that definitely ends the game in 2 turns. Especially in the fast meta.

So I am pretty happy with how the deck is configured right now (with Intuition, Lotus Petal, Proggy, Emmy, about 10 countermagic, 8-10 cantrips, 5-6 sol lands), even though I also went pretty enthusiastic when I saw Griselbrand; he will definitely find his way into Reanimator, still not sure about him in here though - as you said, it needs testing.

About elaborating on Echoing Truth advantage: Just what Hellspawn said. :wink:

[catmint]

I do not know a lot about this Archetype but the new cards make everything more interesting now. :)

Show&Tell for Progenitus is a "sure win" in a lot of situations (i.e: doing it early). However where is drawing 7-14 in legacy usually not a win? :)

But isn't sneak attack for Progenitus awkward? "10 life... ok". wheras drawing 7-14 with sneak attack on board sounds like the win. Maybe even the same turn: all you need is Lotus Petal and Emmy.

I am not that interested in a "belcher like approach" but more the lists where you also get to play the combo along with Jace. It also makes running ~2 of the new timewalks a lot stronger if you play Jace along all the other cantrips. You have to pack some combo hate since you are slower, but there is space in the SB and you should be more "stable" well prepared against the control/aggro control matchup.

Edit:
Concerning Intuition ivanpei: Isn't it awesome that the card is very good in G1 and then you board it out and they board surgicals in which are then "dead" or at least pretty bad.

[JPA]

But isn't sneak attack for Progenitus awkward? "10 life... ok". wheras drawing 7-14 with sneak attack on board sounds like the win. Maybe even the same turn: all you need is Lotus Petal and Emmy.


True. ;-) It will need some testing, but I can definitely imagine running like 4 Emrakul, 3 Progenitus, 3 Griselbrand.

About Jace in the deck: I think right now it's too slow. He is nice for bouncing Emrakul after 1 Sneak Attack activation, but most of the time he is just a 4 mana brainstorm. So I'd rather use the space for cantrips like Preordain or countermagic.

[Final Fortune]

Considering how bad Progenitus is paired with Sneak Attack, I think Griselbrand is a clear replacement. Through the Breach is a terrible card compared to Show and Tell, I don't think you want 5cc cards in your deck regardless of Seething Song because you're never resolving that thru' Spell Pierce.

[catmint]

Played some games on MWS with the new toys and it was a lot of fun.

Side story:
Lost 2:0 against a non competitive white weeny deck though drawing 14 cards in each game. I made so many mistakes in both games that cost me easy wins..:laugh: the opponent having a tap-creature is also something not typical for legacy, but actually deals with Emrakul. Anyway point of the story is: KEEP YOUR CONCENTRATION AFTER GETTING TOO EXCITED ABOUT ALL THE CARDS IN YOUR HAND... :laugh: I am sure there will be some avoidable losses because people are too sure of winning and/or loosing focus.

The timewalk was awsome. Played 2 in the build along 4 Brainstorm, 2 Ponder and 2 Jace. I topdecked it twice where it was very strong. Once I EOT brainstorm before my turn 3. Giving me 2 more land drops for my sneak attack while the opponent was outtaped.

Edit: I think Sneak Attack got by far the biggest boost so far. It profits from the timewalk and the Demon.
The deck can play jace and do a lot more with an extra turn than most other combo decks. But most importan the demon has a much much bigger impact than in reanimator. In Reanimator the biggest issue is still to get the animal on the board fighting against GY hate and counterspells. Sneak attacking a Progenitus or the demon is a different ball game.


Since I am new to the deck I am thinking most about the maverick matchup. Without Progenitus main, should he go in the side to come in instead of Emmy?

Is blood moon or magus of the moon better to deal with karakas? They have quite some entchantment hate, but blood moon is better in all other matchups where you side him.

How is the matchup in general and what is to consider or a generic SB plan?

[Vacrix]

Griselbrand is pretty awesome, yeah. If they are trying to sword him, we can still draw 7-14 cards to find the counter or the parts of our combo to go off again.

Still, I don't think he replaces Progenitus. Just like Jin, I think it isn't better to have a creature that gives more consistency and lets you draw cards than one that definitely ends the game in 2 turns. Especially in the fast meta.

So I am pretty happy with how the deck is configured right now (with Intuition, Lotus Petal, Proggy, Emmy, about 10 countermagic, 8-10 cantrips, 5-6 sol lands), even though I also went pretty enthusiastic when I saw Griselbrand; he will definitely find his way into Reanimator, still not sure about him in here though - as you said, it needs testing.

About elaborating on Echoing Truth advantage: Just what Hellspawn said. :wink:
Griselband is fucking nuts. Even if they have Liliana or Innocent Blood when played of SnT, he still draws you back into protection and combo pieces, potentially 14 cards worth if they don't have a threatening board state.

He can draw way more than 14 cards. Imagine, Sneak Attack, R for Griselband, draw 14, drop Emrakul for R, swing. Can't find Emrakul. Thats chilln. Haste means I gain 7, draw 7 more cards. So Griselband off Sneak Attack can mean you swing for 22 flying and they lose 6 permanents.. or you draw 21 cards and they take 7..

I'm pre-ordering mine.

[Blitzbold]

Is blood moon or magus of the moon better to deal with karakas? They have quite some entchantment hate, but blood moon is better in all other matchups where you side him.

How is the matchup in general and what is to consider or a generic SB plan?

Di wrote an article about the deck this week. You can find it here (http://magic.tcgplayer.com/db/article.asp?ID=10403).

His arguments against Blood Moon are reasonable: Since opponents are likely to bring some enchantment hate post board anyway, Magus of the Moon seems to be better in this deck. This is one of the reasons I like the deck: the ability to run Moon effects besides a lot of protection and a fast win on top.

[The Colonel]

**BEWARE THE TEMPTATION OF COOL THINGS**


I'm not sold on Grislebrand over Proggy. I def admit that he is better than Proggy off Sneak Attack. However, I'm not sure about everyone else but 80% of my wins come off Show and Tell. I'd rather show and Tell Proggy than Grislebrand, especially when you need to win w/in 2 turns. You can spend a ton of life drawing the cards and then have no beater on the table to clock the opp. And after he gets a swords It's going to take 1-3 turns to get started again. Meanwhile the cards you drew from him put you at less than 10 life.

I could see him being better off the board for game 2 after the opp. boards out targeted removal.

I do aknowledge his awesomness (as I preordered them and will def try them out) in the right circumstances but Proggy is just more reliable I think and reliability is what makes this deck so good.

[Einherjer]

I sold all SneakAttack stuff a few months ago and switched over to HiveMind as it was clearly the better deck. I rebought all this stuff today as I tested out a bit with Grislebrand and he is pretty good vs everything that doesnt play Karakas.

But more testing will be needed for sure.

[catmint]

I tested today against my buddy with Stoneblade and won a couple of games. Griselbrand is the nuts...trust me!

After a Force War I had the choice to put the Griselbrand or Emrakul into play after a show and tell. He had 2 lands in play before SnT resolved. So it would be easy for him to play a land and then another one in his turn for Jace, so I took the demon and drawed 7 in his turn to win the counter war over Jace/swords (cant remeber but did not matter).

With Sneak attack + Griselbrand you can also easily beat a Karakas. Just get 2 Emmys

[Einherjer]

My Counter-Config. is something I am really proud of. I was like lets try this card out and it was pretty good all day. It is: 4 Force of Will, 1 Misdirection, 4 Daze, 2 Flusterstorm!

Whats your thoughts on Flusterstorm? I love it for being a U:Win target Counter-War. And it's fine vs Stormcombo aswell.
Greetings

[DrHealex]

I tested today against my buddy with Stoneblade and won a couple of games. Griselbrand is the nuts...trust me!

After a Force War I had the choice to put the Griselbrand or Emrakul into play after a show and tell. He had 2 lands in play before SnT resolved. So it would be easy for him to play a land and then another one in his turn for Jace, so I took the demon and drawed 7 in his turn to win the counter war over Jace/swords (cant remeber but did not matter).

With Sneak attack + Griselbrand you can also easily beat a Karakas. Just get 2 Emmys
You would only need 1 emmy with sneak since they will bounce it before declaration of attacks and you would just play it again and attack.

[ivanpei]

Gristlebrand is the stonecold nuts. I would even say more than emmy. He is better against combo and control off show and tell. He can draw straight away into a bunch of counters and just bury them. Also against Aggro, they cannot alpha strike into griselbrand because of lifelink. They need to deal 7 + your current life total to you in order to kill which is a stretch. If they pass the turn back to you in order to build up the board, you can use griselbrand to draw a nut hand and go sneak attack next turn into emrakul FTW.

Test griselbrand, he is gg when he hits the board. Even against stuff like karakas. Bounce griselbrand? Sure, I'll draw 14 into the perfect hand and get sneak attack down next turn into lotus petal back up for the bounce.

[Final Ritual]

I don't understand why you would be upset if your Gristlebrand was plowed after you show and tell him. You can always respond and draw 7 and gain 7 life back from the swords. You're still up an incredible amount of cards.

[catmint]

True ivanpei: With all the counterspells maindeck we do not need combo hate in the board. Griselbrand as a 4 of draws in all the counterspells you need.

Can you post your currect approach? Do you still prefer the super fast version or the more grinding one?

[ivanpei]

I'm leaning more towards the traditional intuition lists because you don't want to risk flooding with either component G1. Cutting Proggy also reduces your blue count. Playing less intuitions is not that great an idea.

However post board, extra through the breach and monsters is the way to go. Cut intuition to play around surgical extraction. Seething song has been pretty hit or miss for me. It's terrible with show and tell, so I'm not sold on it. Through the breach has been good in the board for me, especially against decks like reanimator/show and tell mirror. 4 sneaks is just not enough.

[JPA]

**BEWARE THE TEMPTATION OF COOL THINGS**


I'm not sold on Grislebrand over Proggy. I def admit that he is better than Proggy off Sneak Attack. However, I'm not sure about everyone else but 80% of my wins come off Show and Tell. I'd rather show and Tell Proggy than Grislebrand, especially when you need to win w/in 2 turns. You can spend a ton of life drawing the cards and then have no beater on the table to clock the opp. And after he gets a swords It's going to take 1-3 turns to get started again. Meanwhile the cards you drew from him put you at less than 10 life.

I could see him being better off the board for game 2 after the opp. boards out targeted removal.

I do aknowledge his awesomness (as I preordered them and will def try them out) in the right circumstances but Proggy is just more reliable I think and reliability is what makes this deck so good.

I agree 100 %! :)

What do you guys think about the timewalk reprint? Could we play it as a 2-of replacing 2 Ponder? And of course only in a build with at least 2 Jaces.

[ivanpei]

I'm not sure what the attraction is about jace, at least not md. Out of the board against control, it seems like a fair plan. I seem to see the MD jace as a very expensive brainstorm that soaks some damage. Can someone explain why some builds run jace again?

I don't think the new walk helps this deck much, you can't abuse the extra turn as much as other decks. Also, combo decks tend to have a lot of chaff. You want to be using brainstorm to send the chaff into ur deck instead of setting up an explore.

[JPA]

I'm not sure what the attraction is about jace, at least not md. Out of the board against control, it seems like a fair plan. I seem to see the MD jace as a very expensive brainstorm that soaks some damage. Can someone explain why some builds run jace again?

I don't think the new walk helps this deck much, you can't abuse the extra turn as much as other decks. Also, combo decks tend to have a lot of chaff. You want to be using brainstorm to send the chaff into ur deck instead of setting up an explore.

Jace improves, pretty much like Misdirection, our bad matchups - and gets rid of Jaces that resolved. And he can bounce a sneaked in Emrakul in main phase 2 to be used again in the next turn or bounce creatures like Peacekeeper.

The new Timewalk is strong in my opinion, because we just need 5 mana for Show and Tell and Timewalk which gives us a "hasted" permanent Emrakul (or Progenitus) which is pretty relevant in today's meta, where some decks can race us easily.

[Einherjer]

Ill post the list I run at the moment in order to give this discussion some material to pin down on.


4 Ancient Tomb
1 City of Traitors
4 Scalding Tarn
2 Misty Rainforest
1 Wooded Foothills
2 Volcanic Island
3 Island
2 Mountain

4 Show and Tell
4 Sneak Attack

4 Emrakul, the Aeons Torn
4 Grislebrand

4 Force of Will
1 Misdirection
3 Daze
2 Flusterstorm

4 Lotus Petal

4 Brainstorm
4 Ponder

3 Intuition

Tell me what you think - its just a raw list.

EDIT AFTER TESTING:

-1 Intuition
-1 Mountain
-1 Wooded Foothills

+1 City of Traitors
+1 Island
+1 Volcanic Island


It just some manabase-changes as the first one didnt work too well.

[CookedChestnuts]

Does anyone have a solid Griselbrand list?

I'm stumped. Even shit you're just testing, I don't care. I want a shell to test.

[catmint]

I think you are right ivanpei. There are some situation where timewalk is awesome, but its probably better to just run a full set of Ponders for it which are important for the "regular game flow".

You would have to ask experienced sneak attack players what the idea behind maindeck jace is or how good it is. I guess it brings the win against control decks which are busy to fight our combo enables in the early turns. However 8 enabler, 8 monsters along with 8 cantrips and 2 intuition brings enough consistency and redundancy, so it's probably better to run more counterspells instead of Jace.

Questions are:
Is it better to run more acceleration: 2 mana lands/lotus petal/Spirit Guide/seething song or more counterspells. You can argue that one can make up the card disadvantage with Griselbrand, but I lean towards more protection.

Sideboard is also really interesting too. Besides the fact that we have no clue how the new meta looks like, Griselbrand changes a lot. He is much better than Progenitus against combo and might open up SB spot. Along the 4-5 GY spots & Pyroblast there is a lot of space for:

Jace: Against Control
Progenitus: Against Control/Maverick
Leyline of Sancity – Against discard + storm hate
Trinisphere: Against combo and control
Pyroclasm or Firespout: Necessary versus sligh/hatebears?
Echoing Truth: Bounce hate/Lingering Souls
Magus of the Moon: Hate for RUG/BUG/Karakas
Pithing needle: Pridemage/Karakas/SD.top
Shattering Spree/Hurkyl’s Recall: Versus … I don’t know what could be so bad.
Boseiju, Who Shlelters all: Versus RUG/Blade Control

[menace13]

I Have been playing with 3 Jace lately. It's good almost all the time and certain plays with it nullify any chance opponent had with Emrakul. Namely an opponents Jace( relevant thing vs Stoneblade) and bouncing KotR post SnT or to Force/Daze. Jace is Jace against everything not only control. With Sol Lands and Petals casting Jace early is frequently possible. Giving the deck an alternate route against Ensnaring Bridge/ various effects isn't too horrible either.

Magus is weaker against RUG/BUG or anything with instant removal/Dismember, Jace/Liliana. Magus has advantages over Spell Pierce and Disenchant.

Boseiju is interesting and gets better with Through The Breach.

Not sure what Sweeper would be best suited. Fallout has the most value against Delver.Clasm is faster against Maverick and Spell Snare hits it. I would stay away from Firespout currently because it will not hit Delver,Clique,Souls and for the 3 cost Fallout is instant speed.

[Cyrandir]

I've been looking at the new cards, and here's what I'm currently testing:

Land (18)
3x Ancient Tomb
2x City of Traitors
1x Flooded Strand
2x Island
1x Misty Rainforest
1x Mountain
1x Polluted Delta
4x Scalding Tarn
3x Volcanic Island

Instant (16)
4x Brainstorm
3x Flusterstorm
4x Force of Will
2x Misdirection
3x Spell Pierce

Sorcery (8)
4x Ponder
4x Show and Tell

Creature (8)
2x Emrakul, the Aeons Torn
3x Griselbrand
3x Progenitus

Enchantment (7)
3x Ancestral Knowledge
4x Sneak Attack

Artifact (3)
3x Lotus Petal

It's pretty much the established list with a few changes; I've swapped Ancestral Knowledge for Intuition and thinned the monsters for Grislebrand. I'm working on the idea that Grislebrand can grab a nut draw much easier with Ancestral Knowledge setting it up. I know Ancestral Knowledge turns on spell snare, but taking Intuition out turns off Surgical/Extirpate, which does hurt us more.

Any thoughts would be appreciated.

[catmint]

dont you feel 18 lands is risky?
Since the combo is not too hard to find but costs 3 or 4(5) mana and we might want to have flusterstorm/pierce up making land drops seems important. I've seen lists from 19-21.

[Final Fortune]

I'm leaning more towards the traditional intuition lists because you don't want to risk flooding with either component G1. Cutting Proggy also reduces your blue count. Playing less intuitions is not that great an idea.

However post board, extra through the breach and monsters is the way to go. Cut intuition to play around surgical extraction. Seething song has been pretty hit or miss for me. It's terrible with show and tell, so I'm not sold on it. Through the breach has been good in the board for me, especially against decks like reanimator/show and tell mirror. 4 sneaks is just not enough.

I'm unimpressed with Through the Breach, besides being a more expensive, less effective Sneak Attack the problem is that it doesn't leave you with a combo piece on the board for Griselbrand to chain into Emakrul.

I'm also not convinced Intuition is worth it, now that we have Griselbrand instead of Progenitus I find myself Intuitioning for Emakrul or Show&Tell a lot less because either creature is good off of either enabler. I think we can probably just play Pre-Ordain and cantrip thru' our whole deck. It also makes land drops and mulliganing much less of an issue where Intuition just kind of sucks balls.

[catmint]

Good point on Through the Breach. Not an option anymore for Griselbrand into Emrakul.

I feel 2 intuition is still good enough to helpf finding the combo pieces, but also to find 3of hate effects as early as turn 2 if we need them (surgical, FoW, Pithing Needle, Magus of the moon).


I have currently 20 lands (4 basics) 8 cantrips. I prefer it over 19 lands and 9 cantrips.

[Tenbin]

I played a 4 round tournament this Wednesday, going 3-1; winning against some kind of The Rack deck, Burn and some weird Thopter combo and losing against Dragon Stompy. The loss was partly the deck simply shitting on me but mostly because of play mistakes in mulliganing.

I changed my deck from the deck I posted earlier in the thread:

Mana:

3 Ancient Tomb
2 City of Traitors
4 Scalding Tarn
2 Misty Rainforest
3 Volcanic Island
3 Island
1 Mountain
3 Lotus Petal


Total: 21

Draw:

4 Brainstorm
3 Ponder
3 Intuition

Total: 10

Counter-suite:

4 Force of Will
3 Misdirection
3 Spell Pierce
2 Daze

Total: 12

Catch-all:

2 Chaos Warp


Combo:

4 Emrakul, the Aeons Torn
3 Progenitus
4 Show and Tell
4 Sneak Attack


Sideboard:

3 Blood Moon
3 Pyroblast
3 Tormod's Crypt
2 Pyroclasm
1 Chaos Warp
1 Chain of Vapor
1 Wipe Away
1 Echoing Truth


I have the third Chaos Warp in the board as 2 is sufficient in the main but I like having the third for Intuition purposes. I might actually just get rid of the bounce in the board as Chaos Warp has served me quite well so far. The ones in the maindeck went in right before the tournament, replacing 1 Progenitus and 1 Daze. If I keep them in the main - which I think I will - I'll probably reconsider the cards they replaced, the dazes will also be exchanged for Flusterstorms, the few times daze has been beneficial where Flusterstorm would not does not warrant their inclusion in the deck in my opinion.

Regarding some people talking about cutting Intuition from the deck, I strongly disagree. I feel that Intuition gives the deck both versitility and a consistency that I'd be hard pressed to give up. The benefits of not running Intuition would be that - I personally - might not feel as forced to run cards in threes or fours. I am however, quite willing to do that in return for the power the card has. The ability to find ANY card in the deck is pretty amazing in my eyes.

About Griselbrand. If he hits the field you're essentially always guaranteed 7-14 cards whether he came in through Sneak Attack or S&T. 14 new cards is pretty amazing, guaranteeing protection, a new creature and often both. However, he is also the only (mainstream) creature in the deck that requires much in the ways of protection, and when landing a Progenitus or an Emrakul, do you really need another creature?

I haven't tested him yet, just asking some questions I feel need to be thoroughly answered. The deck list I saw earlier in the thread with all three creatures is probably the direction I'd take, probably 4 Emrakul, 3 Progenitus and 2 Griselbrand or something. Emrakul simply wins you so many games, just him hitting the table often tilts the opponent, sapping his morale.

[Vacrix]

Gristlebrand is the stonecold nuts. I would even say more than emmy. He is better against combo and control off show and tell. He can draw straight away into a bunch of counters and just bury them. Also against Aggro, they cannot alpha strike into griselbrand because of lifelink. They need to deal 7 + your current life total to you in order to kill which is a stretch. If they pass the turn back to you in order to build up the board, you can use griselbrand to draw a nut hand and go sneak attack next turn into emrakul FTW.

Test griselbrand, he is gg when he hits the board. Even against stuff like karakas. Bounce griselbrand? Sure, I'll draw 14 into the perfect hand and get sneak attack down next turn into lotus petal back up for the bounce.
This.

Grizzlybang scares the fuck out of me. I won't want to get matched up against this deck playing despite what I'm playing once Avacyn is legal.

[Marke]

Griselbrand is much much better then progenitus and will vastly improve this deck.
The draw engine + tons of free counters make griselbrand an awesome drop against combo and control and it's lifelink plus the fact swords is the most common removal make this solid against aggro too.
Off show and tell it will usually do to provide a clear advantage, 1 activation will probably find a combo again. Off sneak attack this is just insane as 1 or 2 activations give you a huge chance to find emrakul + petal for the instant kill. If you're low on life it will just get 7 cards to probably kill next turn.

Only problem I see with him is higher vulnerability to karakas but with the card drawing and some answer in your deck that really shouldn't be much of a problem.

[Einherjer]

Karakas is no problem. Make sure you have SneakAttack, Emrakul in Hand, a hand full of everything due to Griselbrand and do it like this:
Sneak Emrakul, may I attack. He will bounce, Sneak Emrakul again and go for the win.

And yes, we can take this scenario as Grisel will let us draw 7-14 cards..

Greetings

[guslandt]

Karakas is no problem. Make sure you have SneakAttack, Emrakul in Hand, a hand full of everything due to Griselbrand and do it like this:
Sneak Emrakul, may I attack. He will bounce, Sneak Emrakul again and go for the win.
That only works if your opponent is terrible and uses Karakas during your Declare Attack step instead of waiting for your Declare Attackers step...

[Justin]

Except that if the opponent waits until Emrakul is a declared attacker, the annihilator mechanic still triggers, forcing the opponent to sac six permanents. Even with Karakas, it's a bad place to be when your opponent has a Sneak Attack with Emrakul in hand and at least two red mana available.

[menace13]

Except that if the opponent waits until Emrakul is a declared attacker, the annihilator mechanic still triggers, forcing the opponent to sac six permanents. Even with Karakas, it's a bad place to be when your opponent has a Sneak Attack with Emrakul in hand and at least two red mana available.
There isn't anyhting that Karakas could have done once 2 red mana is open with Sneak on board and Emmy in hand.

[JPA]

Just another disadvantage of Griselbrand: He is vulnerable to Stifle. And the decks that play Stifle are general rather bad matchups for us.

Still, he will make this deck even more unfair. =)

[Koby]

Just another disadvantage of Griselbrand: He is vulnerable to Stifle. And the decks that play Stifle are general rather bad matchups for us.

Still, he will make this deck even more unfair. =)

I do'nt think RUG tempo can afford to let Sneak Attack activations resolve if they have Stifle. A surprise Emrakul is far worse than Stifling a Grieselbrand's 7spot.

[catmint]

A surprise Emrakul coming in for 15 but with the anihilator trigger stifled is usually better than taxing us for R (or a turn), so I can see them saving stifle for the Trigger of Emrakul/Griselbrand.

In this situation you can only hope that you have the option to draw another 7.

Anyway we are comparing a sneaked in Progenitus versus a sneaked in Griselbrand versus RUG and there is no discussion that Griselbrand is much better... Even if they have an answer sometimes.

If Griselbrand comes in via Show&Tell you dont have to worry about Stifle, since decks running Stifle are not able to beat a black 7/7 flying lifelink. So you have all the time in the world to gain life and activate the ability again. :)

[Trentemoller]

RUG Delver is a good matchup, what are you talking about? Unless they go full blown aggro with delvers and have a FoW backup it's very hard to lose against them. I have not lost a single match against them in around 15 sanctioned matches I have played. I like Griselbrand, I don't know if he's good enough but he seems fine. I dislike that he is not blue because that is certainly a big upside for Progenitus. If I were to play this again I would probably start testing a list like this:

4 Ancient Tomb
3 Island
1 Mountain
9 Fetch
2 Volcanic
4 Lotus Petal

4 Emrakul
3 Griselbrand

4 Show and Tell
4 Sneak Attack

4 Intuition
3 Misdirection
4 Force of Will
4 Brainstorm
4 Ponder
3 Spell Pierce

SB: 2 Vendilion Clique
SB: 3 Surgical Extraction
SB: 4 Leyline of Sanctity
SB: 3 Echoing Truth
SB: 1 Tundra
SB: 2 Firespout

I haven't played a single game with the deck since my top 16 finish at the GP since the deck is too linear for my taste. I've been playing a lot of TES and I'm pretty sure this deck is just better but it's a lot less fun to play. Perhaps Griselbrand turns out good enough and I might enjoy drawing 14 cards enough to pick it up again :p

[koba]

Could you guys give some advice how to sideboard, especially against maverick, UW stoneforge and RUG tempo?
I find it easy enough to decide what cards should go in, but not what to side out. I often want to side out something like a petal, a sneak attack and an extraction or some dazes on the draw, but I am not sure that is correct.

For example, do you always take out some intuitions because of extraction?

[Einherjer]

Ye but I prefer to take out Intuitions just because of the Extractions. I only play 2 of them so its not too hard.

[Togores]

Why the sb tundra? To cast leyline? But you will then always need a petal to do it. No?

I like the fallout over firespout. Kills delver vendilion and goblins with haste. And against control kills medling, pacekeper and other bad stuff without counter chance.

I will try a deck with 3-3-3 emmy prog grise. Lets see how it works.

[Einherjer]

I would not play 9 creatures. 8 are enough. And Proggy is simply bad. Once you got an Grizzly online you will be winning the game most of the time due to the immense card-draw - especially when you have an SneakAttack on board. Then you just draw into Emmy+Petal and gogoogogog.

Progenitus in SneakAttack is like Tarmogoyf in CanadianThreshold. Simply bad but we do not have anything better. Wait? Grislebrand just got announced right? So we got something better and can cut Progenitus with ease.

Greetings

[Togores]

I would not play 9 creatures. 8 are enough. And Proggy is simply bad. Once you got an Grizzly online you will be winning the game most of the time due to the immense card-draw - especially when you have an SneakAttack on board. Then you just draw into Emmy+Petal and gogoogogog.

Progenitus in SneakAttack is like Tarmogoyf in CanadianThreshold. Simply bad but we do not have anything better. Wait? Grislebrand just got announced right? So we got something better and can cut Progenitus with ease.

Greetings


I think its broken but in the long run when ur comboing in the late game. And ur low of life. Gresband is bad where proggy is good but time will say.
I. Happy that finaly the deck got a change wind ^^

[Einherjer]

Yes I enjoy it too to play with my Show and Tell again :) Hopefully this Stoneblade/RUG/Maverick-players wont cry for a ban once we started to slash Grislebrand for the win :)

You may be right that Grizzley is bad in the late game, or not as strong. But we are a Show and Tell Deck - we play our "combo" T1-3 so there shouldnt be a lategame for us right? And even if it there was one - other decks got lifegain aswell so Proggy is pretty irrelevant.

Greetings

[JDK]

I haven't played a single game with the deck since my top 16 finish at the GP since the deck is too linear for my taste. I've been playing a lot of TES and I'm pretty sure this deck is just better but it's a lot less fun to play. Perhaps Griselbrand turns out good enough and I might enjoy drawing 14 cards enough to pick it up again :p

I've just read your comment on Colin's article. ^^
Will you attend to GP Gent?

[catmint]

is it really necessary to side in sweepers? I mean against RUG I want to bring in Red-blast & maybe 1 Boseiju. Problem is what to take out for sweepers. The deck consists of cantrips, combo, protection. All is good against aggro/control & control decks.

I am looking at 4 pithing needle in the SB. Never bad in multiples against Maverick (Karakas, Maze, Pridemage, KoR) and has some other applications as a 1 or 2 of (i.e.: storm, metalworker, SD.top decks when you expect it to go long,...)

[Togores]

is it really necessary to side in sweepers? I mean against RUG I want to bring in Red-blast & maybe 1 Boseiju. Problem is what to take out for sweepers. The deck consists of cantrips, combo, protection. All is good against aggro/control & control decks.

I am looking at 4 pithing needle in the SB. Never bad in multiples against Maverick (Karakas, Maze, Pridemage, KoR) and has some other applications as a 1 or 2 of (i.e.: storm, metalworker, SD.top decks when you expect it to go long,...)

Pithing is not realy good vs metalworker due its a mana ability.

I usualy side out depending on the matchup cards from this list:

Intuition against everything escept burn or combo.
Misdirection against agro that dosnt play black.
2 ponder or 2 sdt depending who starts. Against control sdt is better. Against agro ponder is better md.
Spell pierce creature decks.
Lotus petals. Control.

[catmint]

I mean that you can shut off the Forgemaster combo for 1 colorless mana to make sure they are not faster than you. You can easily side out Misdirection & for 2 pithing needles.

Anyway my point of discussion was that 4 ptihing needle is the best we can do against maverick, which alone justifies 4 spots. Other applications would be a bonus.

[Einherjer]

I am not sure if we actually need to board in a lot of things vs Maverick:
Id prefer 3 Blood Moon. The moon doesnt only shut down Karakas+Maze it even slows down the whole Maverick-Gameplan if we lay it T1-2. 3 Color Mavericks dont play more than 2-3 basics max. I board out 2 Inituion ( i play 2) at every game where the opponent COULD play Extraction because it really hurts. Blood Moon is very good vs so many decks especially RUG. Still I need to do even more testing because I dont think boarding is really necessary at all (Excluding the 8 Leylines which are crucial)

My Side would be:
8 Leylines
3 Blood Moon
2 Pyroclasm
2 Echoing Truth

or something like this.

Greetings

[Togores]

I am not sure if we actually need to board in a lot of things vs Maverick:
Id prefer 3 Blood Moon. The moon doesnt only shut down Karakas+Maze it even slows down the whole Maverick-Gameplan if we lay it T1-2. 3 Color Mavericks dont play more than 2-3 basics max. I board out 2 Inituion ( i play 2) at every game where the opponent COULD play Extraction because it really hurts. Blood Moon is very good vs so many decks especially RUG. Still I need to do even more testing because I dont think boarding is really necessary at all (Excluding the 8 Leylines which are crucial)

My Side would be:
8 Leylines
3 Blood Moon
2 Pyroclasm
2 Echoing Truth

or something like this.

Greetings

I also board volcanic fallout vs maverik. It gains you lot of time.

Thats my actual version before griesbrand.

4 Ancient Tomb
3 Island
1 Mountain
8 Fetch
4 Volcanic
3 Lotus Petal

4 Emrakul
3 Progenitus

4 Show and Tell
4 Sneak Attack

2 Intuition
2 Sensei divining top
3 Misdirection
4 Force of Will
4 Brainstorm
4 Ponder
3 Spell Pierce

SB: 2 Vendilion Clique
SB: 3 Volcanic fallout
SB: 3 Red elemental blast
SB: 3 Blood moon
SB: 4 Grafiggers cage

[catmint]

I disagree on Leyline of the Void.
I much rather have 4 Surgical, since you can easily tutor them up with intuition if you have to and play them for free. I play currently 3 surgicals and 2 Grafdiggers cage.

Leyline of sancity: Not that sure. If there would be a ton of Hymn to tourach decks out there. Against Storm i feel ok and I surely would not bring it against against esper because of their 4 discard spells. Also even if we face Pox/Deadguy Ale there are spell pierces, dazes and misdirections maindeck + jace from the board. No experience with that MU's yet, but I feel it can't be that horrible...

To evaluate Blood moon versus Pithin Needle against Maverick:

Upfront: I think blood moon is better than Magus since STP likely stays in (Griselbrand) and Magus is MUCH weaker versus RUG.

1) Blood moon has a potential bigger impact than only shutting down problematic lands.

2) Both die to pridemage, but pithing needle can shut off pridemage and is therefore very good in multiples or at protecting Sneak Attack.

3) Needle is cheaper which easier enables hate&combo in the same turn.

Not sure what deserves the spot. Probably also depends on how useful the cards are in other matchups. Blood moon looks also very good against the RUG matchup, but Trentemoller claims to beat it easily without it. :smile:

Trentmoller: can you comment on your SB decisions and our discussion?

[Einherjer]

One of the beautiful things about SneakShow is, that there is so many variety concerning how you actually build this deck. The way your manabase is designed, the amound and kind of your counters. Let me clarifiy my personal decklist with explanations in order to gain a good feedback from you guys.

First of all, the manabase. Ive been playing Show and Tell for quite a time and I think 20 lands are the optimum. Id simply build it like this:

4 Ancient Tomb
2 City of Traitors

6 SOL-lands should enable a fast start into the combo in order to achieve fast wins versus non-blue decks.

4 Scalding Tarn
2 Misty Rainforest
3 Volcanic Island
1 Mountain
3 Island

This is what I consider a healthy and stable manabase, opted for a fast line of play as well as for the BloodMoon sideboard-plan which shouldnt screw us as much as the enemy :P

In order to speed up our deck as a whole I used to play the playset of Petals in SneakShow since ages. So:

4 Lotus Petal

Now we're coming to the core which I wouldnt change in any way:

4 Show and Tell
4 Sneak Attack

4 Emrakul, the Aeons Thorn
4 Grislebrand

There is no way that I would play less than the playset of these.

This makes 40 cards. So weve got 20 cards left for the mainboard. 8 of them are set in stone aswell:

4 Brainstorm
4 Ponder

So we have got 12 cards to go. This should include our Counter-back-up aswell as our additional tutor-box.

In Hive Mind I used to play 4 Intuition, I do not think it really is necessary in this deck at all. Intuition is nice but we do not need the 4of. Id say 2 Intuition are fine.

2 Intuition

This makes 10 slots for our protection-suite. This is the only part of the deck which I am not sure about yet. At the moment I am playing this:

4 Force of Will
1 Misdirection
3 Daze
2 Flusterstorm

Hmm time for the Daze-debate again? I think Daze is a good card, but it isn't as gamebreaking as more hard-counters are. One of the strongest "hardcounter" at the moment is Flusterstorm. It counters everything relevant for U. 5 Force (with 1 Misdirection) should be fine aswell.
Another possibility would be:

4 Force of Will
2 Misdirection
3 Flusterstorm

+1 Intuition

I am not sure about this part of the deck and I would like to get as much good feedback as possible about this part.

Greetings

[catmint]

I like your explanation Philipp, but I dont understand why the countersuit is giving you headaches. Your numbers look nice.. Flusterstorm vs. Pierce & the number of daze or misdirection might be a discussion point but you can easily try out a new configuration...

I think the question of sideboarding is a much bigger one, since Griselbrand does change a lot.

[JPA]

Hey Phillip,

I really like your main deck. The only thing I would change is your counters. I have found 4 FoW, 2-3 Misdirection, 3 Spell Pierce/Flusterstorm (whatever you prefer) to be optimal. Daze really slows us down too much and the only thing it is really good for is countering a turn 2 or 3 Knight of the Reliquary if we don't have the Force of Will. And most of the time we don't even want to counter that, when we have Show and tell Progenitus ready for the next turn.

Furthermore I would cut 1 Griselbrand for 1 more Intuition. It is so versatile, can get either part of the combo, get acceleration in form of Lotus Petal or Sol land or even a counter if needed.

About your sideboard: Leyline of the Void is crap, sorry for the harsh words. ;-) I strongly recommend to play a 1/3 or 2/2 Split of Grafdigger's Cage and Surgical Extraction. Our graveyard hate is important, since Dredge and Reanimator are some our worst matchups game 1.

Here, for reference my list, after Avacyn Restored:

4 Emrakul, the Aeons Torn
3 Griselbrand
3 Progenitus

4 Force of Will
2 Misdirection
3 Spell Pierce

4 Brainstorm
4 Ponder
3 Intuition
4 Sneak Attack
4 Show and Tell
3 Lotus Petal

3 Ancient Tomb
3 City of Traitors
2 Volcanic Island
4 Scalding Tarn
3 Flooded Strand
3 Island
1 Mountain

Sideboard:

4 Leyline of Sanctity
3 Grafdigger's Cage
1 Surgical Extraction
2 Magus of the Moon
3 Echoing Truth
2 Red Elemental Blast

1 City replaces 1 Tomb, because the life-loss might become relevant with Griselbrand. I won't cut Progenitus because he wins too many games that neither Emrakul nor Griselbrand could win; for example if our opponent has Jace, Karakas or Angel of Despair.

I play Magus of the Moon, because they will be unlikely to have any creature removal in their deck (even for Griselbrand, it doesn't really help them), but might have enchantment removal if they expect Sneak Show at the tournament.

[Einherjer]

I will try:

4 Force of Will
2 Misdirection
2 Flusterstorm
2 Spell Pierce

But I cannot see myself running Proggy anymore. As stated earlier, he is like Tarmogoyf in Thresh. The best we got (before AVR) and 100% the first one to be dropped if there is something better --> Grislebrand.

In which MU is Proggy the real king? Tell me^^

[koba]

I am not sure why everyone thinks there is much variety in deck choices. All sneaky show decks look very much alike to me, but whatever.

8 or even 7 creatures are enough, I think. I would straight up replace prog with griselbrand and not play both. I like daze by the way: another free way to force down your one card you have to resolve to win the game.


I usualy side out depending on the matchup cards from this list:

Intuition against everything escept burn or combo.
Misdirection against agro that dosnt play black.
2 ponder or 2 sdt depending who starts. Against control sdt is better. Against agro ponder is better md.
Spell pierce creature decks.
Lotus petals. Control.


Thank you for this general guide, it is helpful. I also like your sideboard, especially the lack of echoing truth. I would rather lose to narrowly used cards like peacekeeper they might have (or, most likely do not or do not draw it) than replace cards like ponder and decrease the chance you can combo out in time. It is not like storm or high tide combo where you can expect stuff like teeg and thalia after side and need the bounce. People just do not much good hate against this deck imo.

One thing: If you cut two ponders and two intuition, do you not find it difficult to find your combo? I often feel that ponder is just better than anything you can side in.

I also see that this guy often sides out a few combo peaces like 1 emrakul and a sneak attack. It is hard to argue given the results, but do the people here do the same? http://www.teamadhd.nl/wp/?p=145

[catmint]

Proggy is king after show&tell versus Maverick & Stoneblade.

[Einherjer]

@Proggy is king vs Stoneblade:
Stoneblade is a weak deck compared to ours. Once we assembled our combo every single creature we put down is king. And even then, Proggy is the weakest as it can be raced by an Batterskull or an Clique with Jitte or so.

@Proggy is king vs Maverick:
Progenitus cannot be Mazed or Karkased by the Maverickman. True. But it can be raced with ease. Any creature with any equipment they play (Jitte + SoLaS+Batterskull (sometimes) ) will outrace our hydra without any problem. The only time when Proggy is king in this MU is when he comes T1/2 ..oh wait? Wouldnt any other creature would win then too?

Greetings

[JPA]

The only time when Proggy is king in this MU is when he comes T1/2 ..oh wait? Wouldnt any other creature would win then too?


Actually, you said it yourself. Emrakul can be mazed/karakased. So if they put down the Knight when we Snt Emmy into play, he goes straight back to our hand. Same with Griselbrand, even though he can draw us 7 cards before going back to the hand.

Edit: And to say they can race Progenitus with ease is a bit over the top in my opinion. ;-) It still kills in 2 swings, so they need to have a real aggro hand.

[TheXile]

Actually, you said it yourself. Emrakul can be mazed/karakased. So if they put down the Knight when we Snt Emmy into play, he goes straight back to our hand. Same with Griselbrand, even though he can draw us 7 cards before going back to the hand.

Edit: And to say they can race Progenitus with ease is a bit over the top in my opinion. ;-) It still kills in 2 swings, so they need to have a real aggro hand.

No..it kills in 2 swings if they have no lifegain..which most maverick decks do (Jitte, SoLaS, some still run Batterskull). I have raced a turn 2 Progenitus (off Show and Tell) by bringing in my Stoneforge Mystic..which got my Batterskull..which can beat Progenitus in a race (esp. when equipped to KoTR or even Thalia). I really like the new Sneak and Show decks, but do feel Griselbrand is better.

[The]

Glad to see this deck survive the mass deportation of other Decks to Beat.
I've got a few questions in general regarding the deck:
1) Is it generally better to try and power out a fatty as fast as possible? (IE, Turn one Sol land+Lotus Petal into Show and Tell with nothing but FOW/Misdirection as back up or similar Magical Christmas Land scenarios) or to grind out a couple turns and drop something with a guaranteed counter-war victory? (FOW/Misdirection plus Spell Pierce/Flusterstorm/Daze/Whatever you run as countermagic)
2) When dropping a creature with Show and Tell, given no knowledge of an opponent's hand, should Emmy or Proggy be prioritized? I know that in certain matchups, the opponent can fetch things like Maze of Ith or Karakas to stop the Spaghetti monster, but despite these, a swing for 15 with six opposing permanents dealt with is a bit more convincing than just 10 damage in a format where, as TheXile just said, lifegain is abound and an unblockable 10/10 is something that can be raced.
3) Given the opportunity to drop either Sneak or Show with counters open, should one be prioritized over the other? Again, probably matchup dependent, but is it better to try and stick a creature with Show, or to get a swing in right away and dig for/topdeck another fatty to finish.

Sorry for the sort of ambiguous questions, answers would still be appreciated!

[Einherjer]

If you are on the play an can drop a Show and Tell T1 off a SOL-Land and a petal with one Force of Will in Hand I would friggenly GO FOR IT! Vs MUs you dont know - Emrakul for fast win. If you know they play Karakas or somethng I would go for either Sneak Attack or Griselbrand (Progenitus now).
But in general a T1 Show and Tell is often just a win.

[Justin]

One time I had a turn one Show and Tell on the play against an unknown deck, but I only had Progenitus. My opponent flips over Emrakul and I scoop on my opponent's turn zero. Even worse, I find out later that the opponent is actually playing Elves and was running Emrakul as a one-of.

[Final Fortune]

Post-Griselbrand I don't think Intuition has anything to contrbute to this deck, because while previously you were concerned with Intuitioning for Show and Tell where Progentius was terrible with Sneak Attack, now you can play your secondary threat with either Show and Tell or Sneak Attack.

I've just replaced Intuition with Pre-Ordains and the entire deck is more consistent fwiw, as far as the disruption base is concerned I think you guys should considering Red Elemental Blast instead of Misdirection. I know it's really debatable, but you have such an edge vs Maverick and aggro in general that it think you can afford to play a couple of dead cards main as long as they make up the loss vs U.dec. and give you more SB space for Pyroblasts etc. and having MD removal vs Delver is ridiculously good.

[Tenbin]

Post-Griselbrand I don't think Intuition has anything to contrbute to this deck, because while previously you were concerned with Intuitioning for Show and Tell where Progentius was terrible with Sneak Attack, now you can play your secondary threat with either Show and Tell or Sneak Attack.

I've just replaced Intuition with Pre-Ordains and the entire deck is more consistent fwiw, as far as the disruption base is concerned I think you guys should considering Red Elemental Blast instead of Misdirection. I know it's really debatable, but you have such an edge vs Maverick and aggro in general that it think you can afford to play a couple of dead cards main as long as they make up the loss vs U.dec. and give you more SB space for Pyroblasts etc. and having MD removal vs Delver is ridiculously good.

Personally I disagree. Intuition has a lot more to offer the deck than just fetching S&T (although that is a big part of it); it fetches ANY card you need from turn 2 onwards. Digging with Preordain is - in my opinion - not going to be a good substitute.

We generally need both combo pieces by turn 3-4; digging with 2 cantrips isn't going to guarantee that, whereas Intuition will. Intuition is also instant speed which lets you tutor for a FoW/Misdirection in a counter-war (saved me a fair few times)

[JPA]

Post-Griselbrand I don't think Intuition has anything to contrbute to this deck, because while previously you were concerned with Intuitioning for Show and Tell where Progentius was terrible with Sneak Attack, now you can play your secondary threat with either Show and Tell or Sneak Attack.


This does make some sense, but still I would play at least 2 Intuitions. They are primarily good for getting the 2nd combo piece if we have one already. We never use them to get a Show and Tell when we have the Sneak Attack and Progenitus already, in that case we just use them to get the 2nd bomb to finish the opponent off.
And why should Preordain be better there? It is completely dead if we have Griselbrand in play anyways, while Intuition could search a specific hate card that we need and that Griselbrand can't find us with 7-14 life.



as far as the disruption base is concerned I think you guys should considering Red Elemental Blast instead of Misdirection. I know it's really debatable, but you have such an edge vs Maverick and aggro in general that it think you can afford to play a couple of dead cards main as long as they make up the loss vs U.dec. and give you more SB space for Pyroblasts etc. and having MD removal vs Delver is ridiculously good.


I partially disagree with that. Misdirection fills just that role: Improving our bad matchups, it IS totally dead vs Maverick. And if I were to play REB main, it would be ONLY to improve the counter-matchup, not to stop a freaking delver. xDD

[menace13]

I partially disagree with that. Misdirection fills just that role: Improving our bad matchups, it IS totally dead vs Maverick. And if I were to play REB main, it would be ONLY to improve the counter-matchup, not to stop a freaking delver. xDD
REB is at a premium for targets in the current meta despite being blank against Maverick. It covers the other decks very well.
Jace, Cantrips, Clique, Snappy, Delver, Fow, Hi Tide are just some of the targets. Although I wouldn't totally get rid of Misdirection even if as only a 1 of due to what it does for resolving Sneak/Show. In many respects acting as a 5th FoW.

[Einherjer]

I agree on Intuition being best with the number 2.
Misdirection improves a lot of our bad - MUs. As mentioned it is a FoW 5-6 PLUS it is very good against Discard. There are 2 real decks that play Discard nowadays. First we have Esperblade and Misdirecting a Discard-Spell is pretty mightey. The second one is TES for example. You can Misdirect their IoK or Chants which is pretty strong aswell.

What I was gonna ask: How many lands are you guys playing? I am playing 20 at the moment with the Mana-Base looking:

4 Ancient Tomb
2 City of Traitors

3 Volcanic Island
4 Scalding Tarn
2 Misty Rainforest

1 Mountain
4 Island

[JPA]

What I was gonna ask: How many lands are you guys playing? I am playing 20 at the moment with the Mana-Base looking:

4 Ancient Tomb
2 City of Traitors

3 Volcanic Island
4 Scalding Tarn
2 Misty Rainforest

1 Mountain
4 Island

Depends on how many petals you play. 19 lands and 3 Petals has been working perfectly fine for me.
I will probably play a 3/3 split of city and tomb when Griselbrand comes out, since the life-loss becomes more relevant.
So my manabase will look like that:

3 Lotus Petal

2 Volcanic Island
4 Scalding Tarn
4 Flooded Strand
2 Island
1 Mountain
3 Ancient Tomb
3 City of Traitors

[Einherjer]

I would never never never ever play less than 4 Lotus Petal after Griselbrand came out. You always wish to Griselbrand into Petal+Emrakul...so Id play 4.

Your Manabase seems to rely heavily on fetchlands, as you only play UR I would cut at least 2 of them to make your manabase more stable.

[JPA]

About the fetchlands... You think 6 is enough? I think Fetchlands are pretty important in that deck, since you want to have the variability to decide whether to get a Volc, an Island or a Mountain. I'd rather have a fetchland in my starting hand than a Volcanic Island - even though one has to be careful against Stifle, only crack it when you know your opponent doesn't play Stifle or he doesn't have the mana open.

And why does cutting Fetchlands makes your manabase more stable? Not being vulnerable to Wasteland is pretty stable in my opinion. :)

[JPA]

I played this deck yesterday in a 130-man-tournament (5 year anniversary of magiccardmarket.eu) in Berlin, Germany. Here is a little report (didn't make ANY notes though):

My list:

4 Emmy
3 Proggy
4 Sneaky
4 Telly
4 Brainstorm
4 Ponder
2 Daze
3 Misdirection
3 Spell Pierce
3 Intuition
3 Lotus Petal
4 Force of Will

4 Ancient Tomb
2 City of Traitors
4 Scalding Tarn
4 Misty Rainforest
2 Volcanic Island
1 Mountain
2 Island

Sideboard:

4 Grafdigger's Cage
1 Surgical Extraction
4 Leyline of Sanctity
2 Echoing Truth
2 Red Elemental Blast
2 Magus of the Moon

I thought it was in the usual location where the local 2-monthly legacy tourneys take place in Berlin. Unfortunately, it wasn't - it was on the other side of the city,in fact - and I sadly I missed round 1.

0-1

Round 2 vs UB Torpor Orb

Game 1: He wins the roll. After a counterwar over Torpor Orb in Turn 2 that he wins the way is open for Show and Tell Emrakul in my Turn 2. His dreadnought gets annihilated.

I haven't seen any discard and no black source so I don't board the Leylines.

Game 2:

+ 2 Echoing Truth, + 2 Magus of the Moon, + 2 Red Elemental Blast
- 2 Daze, - 3 Intuition, - 1 Ponder

He gets an early Bob online and has too many counters.

Game 3:

-2 Echoing Truth, - 1 Lotus Petal, - 1 Emrakul
+4 Leyline of Sanctity

I don't have the Leyline in my starting hand but keep a strong hand with sol land, fetch, Sneak Attack, Emrakul and counters. He doesn't draw his edicts, none of his discard spells and so it's gg after turn 3.

1-1

Round 3 vs Bant

Game 1:

Turn 2 Show and Tell Progenitus seals the deal.

Game 2:

+ 2 Magus of the Moon, +1 Echoing Truth
- 3 Misdirection, - 1 Daze

He has nothing but a hierarch for the first 4 Turns and I keep a slow hand with intuition, cantrips, lands, but no part of the combo. Bad mistake and he starts beating me down with a Knight soon and counters my other stuff.

Game 3:

I get an Emrakul online in Turn 4, but he has to face 2 Knights, 1 Thrun, 2 Hierarchs and 3 lands. I don't have the echoing truth for his Knights and so another loss to Bant (they are somehow perfectly equipped to fight us: Karakas, Vendilion Clique, Spell Pierce, Force, Daze...).

1-2

Round 4 vs Burn

Finally a bye matchup. =)

Game 1

I win the roll and go for the turn 1 Show and Tell into Progenitus. He is new to Legacy and totally excited by that play.

The funny thing is, next to us there were Hive Mind vs Burn and Sneak Show vs Burn going on. :D Both of my fellow Show and Tell players made top 8 by the way. Both very unexperienced in Legacy - that shows how powerful this deck can be even in the hands of a nouveau pilot; you don't even need to know what your opponent is playing as long as you can resolve your combo as early as possible.

Game 2:

- 2 Daze, - 2 Force of Will
+4 Leyline of Sanctity

When I lay the Leyline he reads it and gets very excited, maybe a little desperate though, again. xD
My Turn 3 Emrakul seals the deal, even though he had a Goblin Guide to get around the Leyline.

2-2

Round 5 vs GW Maverick

I still don't know how, but I somehow managed to lose with Sneak Show against FREAKING Maverick. :( Too sad to write more about that. Short story: I keep a 1-lander without cantrip game 1, win game 2 easily and get raced in game 3...

2-3

I am out of price contention now, so let's do this for the honor!!!

Round 6 vs UW Stoneblade

Game 1: My 2nd Turn 1 Progenitus that day. He scoops it up immediately so I didnt get to see anything except his Turn 1 Tundra.

Game 2:

+2 Red Elemental Blast, +2 Magus of the Moon, +1 Surgical Extraction
-2 Daze, -3 Misdirection

I play a Turn 2 Magus after he fetched up 2 Tundras. =) He plays Snapcaster in response without any target. Well, at least that gave him a blocker/attacker. We play draw land go for several turns until he trys the hardcast Batterskull which I hardcast force. I win over Sneak Attack the next turn.

3-3

Round 7 and Round 8 vs Goblins :wink:

In both of these matches, I get raced hard game 1, counter the turn 1 vial/lacky game 2 and 3 and win shortly thereafter by Sneaking or Showing an Emrakul or Progenitus

5-3

I finish 30th of 130. Could have been soo much better if I hadn't missed round 1. :laugh:

I get a random 10 Euro coupon for magiccardmarket, so that was something nice at least. :smile:

The Top 8 after 8 rounds of Swiss turned out to be consisting of Burn, Hive Mind, Sneak Show, RUG Tempo, Maverick, Esper Blade, Thresh, and another Tempo deck. Sneak Show lost in the quarterfinals vs Rug Tempo, Hive Mind made it to the semis where it lost against the same RUG Tempo deck. I was very tired after 9 hours of Magic so we left after my Hive Mind buddy had lost in the Semifinals. The Finals was Esper Blade vs. RUG Tempo.

The event was very nice overall, I hope they host something like that in Berlin in the next year(s) again.

Even though it didn't go perfectly well, I feel that with a little bit of luck, Sneak Show stomps everything in the current meta, since there is still no hate being packed against us (like Wing Shards in Maverick against Progenitus for example) and we don't need too much effort to just win against everything in Turn 3. This will get even better with our all favorite demon Grizzlybrand. :wink: After some testing, I am now very sure that he will replace Progenitus in my list.

[Einherjer]

Gratz very much! What a pitty you didnt come early enough!

I think that with playing 2 Fetchlands less we minimize the possibility of getting Stifled out of the game.

Would you only change Progenitus post AVR? What I would suggest is adding a 4th petal, as mentioned above, as you really want to Grizzlybeard into Emmy + Petal!

By the way, do you have an account on Mtg-Forum.de?

How did the Grafediggers Cage work for you in general ( as you didnt run in any Dredge/Reanimator). Are they better than Leyline? If yes, why?

Greetings

[JPA]

I think that with playing 2 Fetchlands less we minimize the possibility of getting Stifled out of the game.


I rather play around Stifle than running into Wasteland, since Wasteland is in more of the popular decks right now than Stifle. Some Sneak Show builds even run some Stifles in the sideboard to improve our "wasteland-matchup".


Would you only change Progenitus post AVR? What I would suggest is adding a 4th petal, as mentioned above, as you really want to Grizzlybeard into Emmy + Petal!


4th Petal makes sense to me, I guess I would cut 1 Spell Pierce in my list above for that 4th Petal. Other than that, I would only replace Proggy with Grizzly. I'd cut the Spell Pierce over the Misdirection, because Misdirection might become relevant to misdirect a Swords to Plowshares they want to use to Griselbrand (even though it doesn't really matter if they sword him, since we get 7 life and can instadraw 7 from that).

Still, I might just play with 3 Petals, they worked perfectly for me. And I am also quite happy with my counter-suite. I would like to test Flusterstorm, but they are so hard to get right now. xD


By the way, do you have an account on Mtg-Forum.de?



No, not yet. ;-)


How did the Grafediggers Cage work for you in general ( as you didnt run in any Dredge/Reanimator). Are they better than Leyline? If yes, why?

They didn't work for me at all at that tournament, since, as you said, I didnt run into any graveyard based stuff and no Natural Order either. The cage is just the most consistent hate card and destroys both Dredge and Reanimator for sure, both rather bad matchups for us. And we can intuition for it if our opponent just entombed a dangerous creature.

[Deez_Naughts]

Hi guys,

played my list at a 40 man event Saturday, and went 4-1-1, making top 8. I lost in the Quarters to a B/G Junk deck, running massive discard.

Lands:

4 Polluted Delta
4 Scalding Tarn
3 Ancient Tomb
3 Volcanic Island
2 Island
2 City of Traitors
1 Mountain

Creatures:

4 Emrakul, the Aeons Torn
3 Progenitus

Spells:

4 Brainstorm
4 Sneak Attack
4 Show and Tell
4 Ponder
4 Lotus Petal
4 Force of Will
3 Misdirection
3 Daze
2 Spell Pierce
2 Intuition

Sideboard:

3 Blood Moon
3 Red Elemental Blast
3 Firespout
3 Relic of Progenitus
3 Trinisphere


Round 1 vs Esper Stoneblade - Win 2/0

Game 1: Win off turn 1 Show/Prog
Game 2: Win off turn 2 Show/Emrakul

Round 2 vs B/G/w - Win 2/1

Game 1: Win off turn 5 Sneak/Prog/Emrakul
Game 2: Lost to massive discard, Liliana, Goyf beats.
Game 3: Win off soild turn 2 Blood Moon lock.

Round 3 vs Maverick - Lost 2/1

Game 1: Lost to turn one Karakas for my Show/Emrakul hand.
Game 2: Win off turn 2 Show/Prog
Game 3: Lost. I turn 4 Spout his 2x exalted mana guy, Thalia, and Teeg. Proceed to blank on 3x Ponder, and 2x Brainstorm, failing to find Show/Sneak. Very mad at this game.

Round 4 vs Affinity - Win 2/0

Game 1: Win off turn 3 Show/Prog
Game 2: Win off turn 2 Show/Prog

Round 5 vs B/G Ramp - Win 2/1

Game 1: Win off turn 8 Sneak/Emrakul
Game 2: Lost to 3x Inquisition & 3x Cabal Therapy........
Game 3: Win a top decking war while facing a Liliana, while having Blood Moon and Sneak. Hit a Prog and win.

Round 6 vs Loam - Draw to Top 8

Top8 Quarter Final vs B/G Junk - 0-2

Game 1: Lost. Discard. Discard. Discard.
Game 2: Lost to discard, and Nath of the Gilt Leaf.....I also made an embarrassing mistake by Intuition'ing for a dude, when I needed Show.....not my finest moment. Should have easily Top 4'd....


Conclusion:

I like this deck for its consistency and strength in the format, but man is this the most linear, boring deck I have ever played.

When I take this out again, I would go with 4x Leyline of Sanctity in the sideboard FOR SURE. The only cards, or decks I cared about were those that played Therapy & Thoughtseize.

I like Relic over Cage etc; as you can remove your own cards in response to an extraction.....

Regarding Griselbrand, I'm not sold on him. In preliminary testing he seems like overkill, or, simply not as good as Prog/Emrakul. Protection trumps. I will save formal conclusions about him until I can try him in a event.

[JPA]

I like this deck for its consistency and strength in the format, but man is this the most linear, boring deck I have ever played.

When I take this out again, I would go with 4x Leyline of Sanctity in the sideboard FOR SURE. The only cards, or decks I cared about were those that played Therapy & Thoughtseize.

I like Relic over Cage etc; as you can remove your own cards in response to an extraction.....

Regarding Griselbrand, I'm not sold on him. In preliminary testing he seems like overkill, or, simply not as good as Prog/Emrakul. Protection trumps. I will save formal conclusions about him until I can try him in a event.

Congratz on your finish! The deck IS very linear and doesn't interact with the opponent, but it is possible to draw some enjoyment out of that in my opinion. :wink:

Edit @ Pat: I think I will try to write a suggestion for an updated primer on the deck very soon, with current sample decklists, how to board, how to build the deck and MU's. If you like it, I would be glad to see it edited into the first post. ;-)

4 White Leylines are a must! :) They seal the deal against burn and protect us from annoying discard.

Relic is not playable anymore in my opinion, now that we have Cage and Extraction. To have it as protection against Extraction is by far not enough.

The more I think about Griselbrand, the more sure I am that he will probably make this deck even more overpowered.

Edit: Just fyI, I might post an updated suggestion for a primer soon. ;-)

[JPA]

So guys, here is my primer. I might have forgotten some stuff; will be added later, if I did. Please let me know your opinion and excuse my modest English; except my last 3 years, I only had dead languages and German as school subjects. :wink:

Sneak Show Primer

Introduction

Sneak Show is a U/R/x combo control deck. Its gameplan is to resolve either a Show and Tell or Sneak Attack as soon as possible while protecting this combo with a strong countersuit. With one of these spells it cheats in an unfair creature like Emrakul, the Aeons Torn or Progenitus that usually ends the game by itself.

The deck exists since mid-2010, when the release of Emrakul, the Aeons Torn made cards like Show and Tell, Eureka and Sneak Attack rise drastically in price.
At GP Columbus, Korey Age piloted a list with 4 Emrakul, the Aeons Torn and 4 Woodfall Primus to a Top 8 finish which made the deck more popular.

The next halfyear Sneak Show was quite present in the Survival-metagame. At that time, lists with Black and White splashes for Extirpate vs. Survival of the fittest and Enlightened Tutor for consistency were the ones with the greatest success.

With Mental Misstep joining the Legacy metagame, its position even increased since it was almost unaffected by the little counterspell.

Two very similar lists played by Rodrigo Togores and Johannes Gutbrod made Top 16 at the Bazaar of Moxen that year. While Mental Misstep kept reigning the format and after Grand Prix Providence, Hive Mind became extremely popular, maybe THE Deck to beat in Legacy, for about 2 months and Sneak Show had to hide in its spotlight, since the Sneak Show - Hive Mind matchup was 40-60 for Sneaky Tell - due to Hive Mind + Pact winning on the spot, while an Emrakul or Progenitus needed 2 attack steps.

With Mental Misstep banned, Decks like Goblins and Zoo returned and so did Sneak Show. Maybe because it's a faster version of Hive Mind, maybe because it's fun to see a Wild Nacatl fight an Eldrazi tearing the Aeons.
And while only 1 Hive Mind appeared in the Top 16 of Grand Prix Amsterdam, the double amount of Sneak Show decks did. They were piloted by Dutch natives Jan van der Vegt (15th) and Erwin "Sneak" Sneek (16th) who played the exact same maindeck and had worked on the deck together. Their creature configuration of 4 Emrakul 3 Progenitus is being used until today.

Sneak Show's position in the metagame became the better the more popular decks like Maverick became, an almost-bye matchup for the brutal combo deck. In early 2012, there was almost always a Sneak Show deck in the Top 16 of the SCG Open or any other big tournament.

In the last weeks, Hive Mind and Dream Halls have regained some popularity, but with Griselbrand on the near horizon, Sneak Show might even become Tier 1 soon, along with Maverick, Stoneblade and RUG Delver.

Decklists

Korey Age's GP Columbus Top 8 list 2010


4 Sneak Attack
4 Show and Tell

4 Brainstorm
4 Ponder

4 Daze
4 Force of Will
2 Spell Pierce

1 Wipe Away
1 Echoing Truth

4 Emrakul, the Aeons Torn
4 Woodfall Primus

3 Lotus Petal
3 Seething Song

2 Island
1 Mountain
3 Ancient Tomb
4 Misty Rainforest
4 Scalding Tarn
4 Volcanic Island

Sideboard:

1 Relic of Progenitus
1 Tormod's Crypt
3 Blood Moon
4 Pyroblast
2 Ravenous Trap
2 Spell Pierce
2 Firespout


Yuuki Ookubo's Top 4 Japan Eternal Festival 4c Sneak Show 2010


4 Emrakul, the Aeons Torn
3 Progenitus
1 Sphinx of the Steel Wind

4 Brainstorm
2 Ponder
1 Personal Tutor
2 Enlightened Tutor
4 Intuition

1 Red Elemental Blast
1 Pyroblast
2 Daze
4 Force of Will

1 Echoing Truth

4 Show and Tell
4 Sneak Attack

2 Lotus Petal

3 Island
1 Mountain
4 Volcanic Island
2 Tundra
1 Underground Sea
4 Scalding Tarn
1 Flooded Strand
1 Misty Rainforest
2 Ancient Tomb
2 City of Traitors


Sideboard

3 Meddling Mage
2 Spell Pierce
2 Pyroblast
1 Red Elemental Blast
1 Pyroclasm
1 Pithing Needle
3 Extirpate
2 Perish


7th Place Bazaar of Moxen May 2011 by Rodrigo Togores


3 Lotus Petal
4 Emrakul, the Aeons Torn
4 Progenitus
4 Sneak Attack
4 Brainstorm
2 Echoing Truth
4 Force of Will
3 Intuition
3 Misdirection
2 Seething Song
4 Ponder
4 Show and Tell

4 Ancient Tomb
3 Island
1 Misty Rainforest
1 Mountain
2 Polluted Delta
4 Scalding Tarn
4 Volcanic Island


Sideboard

3 Trinisphere
3 Blood Moon
2 Pyroblast
2 Red Elemental Blast
3 Volcanic Fallout
2 Wipe Away


Chris Cornwell-Shiel's 5th place SCG Open August 2011


4 Emrakul, the Aeons Torn
3 Jace, the Mind Sculptor
3 Progenitus
3 Woodfall Primus

4 Brainstorm
4 Force of Will
3 Intuition
4 Lotus Petal
4 Ponder
2 Seething Song
4 Show and Tell
4 Sneak Attack

4 Ancient Tomb
3 Flooded Strand
2 Island
1 Mountain
4 Scalding Tarn
4 Volcanic Island


Sideboard

4 Leyline of Sanctity
3 Massacre Wurm
2 Propaganda
3 Red Elemental Blast
3 Stifle


Erwin Sneek GP Amsterdam 16th October 2011


4 Emrakul, the Aeons Torn
3 Progenitus

4 Brainstorm
3 Daze
4 Force of Will
4 Intuition
4 Lotus Petal
3 Misdirection
4 Ponder
4 Show and Tell
4 Sneak Attack

4 Ancient Tomb
1 Flooded Strand
3 Island
2 Misty Rainforest
1 Mountain
2 Polluted Delta
4 Scalding Tarn
2 Volcanic Island


Sideboard


3 Echoing Truth
3 Magus of the Moon
3 Spell Pierce
3 Surgical Extraction
3 Trinisphere


Fujimoto Tumoya Worlds Decembre 2011 Winner


4 Emrakul, the Aeons Torn
3 Jace, the Mind Sculptor
3 Progenitus

4 Brainstorm
3 Daze
4 Force of Will
2 Intuition
2 Lotus Petal
4 Ponder
4 Show and Tell
4 Sneak Attack
3 Spell Pierce

3 Ancient Tomb
2 City of Traitors
2 Island
4 Misty Rainforest
1 Mountain
4 Scalding Tarn
4 Volcanic Island


Sideboard


3 Blood Moon
4 Leyline of Sanctity
2 Pyroblast
2 Red Elemental Blast
2 Surgical Extraction
2 Vendilion Clique


David McDarby Top 4 SCG Open February 2012


4 Emrakul, the Aeons Torn
3 Progenitus

4 Brainstorm
3 Daze
4 Force of Will
4 Intuition
3 Lotus Petal
2 Misdirection
4 Ponder
1 Preordain
4 Show and Tell
4 Sneak Attack
2 Spell Pierce

4 Ancient Tomb
2 City of Traitors
2 Island
1 Mountain
4 Polluted Delta
4 Scalding Tarn
2 Volcanic Island


Sideboard


3 Blood Moon
4 Grafdigger's Cage
4 Leyline of Sanctity
2 Pyroblast
2 Shattering Spree


My own list


4 Emrakul, the Aeons Torn
3 Progenitus

4 Brainstorm
4 Force of Will
4 Intuition
3 Lotus Petal
3 Misdirection
4 Ponder
4 Show and Tell
4 Sneak Attack
3 Spell Pierce
2 Daze

4 Ancient Tomb
2 City of Traitors
2 Island
4 Misty Rainforest
1 Mountain
4 Scalding Tarn
2 Volcanic Island


Sideboard


2 Echoing Truth
4 Grafdigger's Cage
4 Leyline of Sanctity
2 Magus of the Moon
2 Red Elemental Blast
1 Surgical Extraction


Ways to build the deck

The deck consists of different parts that make its build:

1. The Cheaters!!!

4 Sneak Attack and 4 Show and Tell are mandatory in my opinion. Some lists play a singleton Through the Breach though, which is a good idea if you want to beat stuff like Pithing Needle and Meddling Mage.

2. The Cheater Creatures

These days, I wouldn't play anything else than Emrakul or Progenitus, in a 4/3 split. They work very well together, Emrakul being more vulnerable but autowin if he sticks and being able to fly over things Moat, Progenitus being immune to Emrakul-haters like Jace, the Mind Sculptor, Karakas, Sower of Temptation, Angel of despair, etc.

Other creatures that CAN be played are:

Woodfall Primus: He works very well with Sneak Attack, but just too vulnerable to Removal and can seldomly finish the game by himself.

Jin-Gitaxias, Core Augur: Same as Woodfall Primus; he is cute for hindering the opponent and loading our hand up to combo off again but can't finish the game by himself like Emmy and Proggy.

Rune-Scarred Demon: If you play him with Sneak Attack it enables you to play a Tutor-package of creatures that can fit each situation. If you just Show and Tell him into play and don't have another combo part or an Intuition in your hand, he is just VERY bad.

Blightsteel Colossus: Also vulnerable to Swords to Plowshares and pretty bad if he can get 1 attack through with Sneak Attack and gets blocked by a Stoneforge Mystic and you don't have another Infect-creature to finish the job, but only Emrakul or Progenitus, who will need 2 more attacks.

3. The Search Engine

Most lists play 4 Brainstorm and 4 Ponder - and sometimes a 1- or 2-of Preordain or Sensei's Divining Top - as cantrips to assemble the combo as fast as possible and 3-4 Intuition on top of that. That's also what I would recommend. Things like Meditate or Impulse are nice, but less safe and turning on the otherwise dead Spell snares in our opponent's decks.

4. Protection

To be able to protect the combo against control decks and to counter opposing cards that would stop the creatures from attacking like Peacekeeper, Moat, Humility, Blazing Archon, etc. Sneak Show has a pretty strong counter-suite that consists of:

4 Force of Will - Nothing to argue about here; we play a blue deck that needs protection - so we play a playset Forces.

0-3 Misdirection - It makes our bad matchups better, while being dead against things like Maverick (where it can only be a Force pitch). But the fact that it is so strong against discard, which hurts us a lot, and that it acts as a free counter for a counter (being Force 5-7), makes it deserve some testing at least.

0-3 Daze - Is seen controversial in Sneak Show. While it is nice for countering a turn 2 Knight of the Reliquary, it does set us one turn back. Especially when it has to counter an opposing Careful Study or an Aether Vial Spell Pierce would be 100 times better. Daze is very strong in game 1 though, many lists play 3 Daze main and 3 Spell pierce to replace them post-board if needed.

0-3 Spell Pierce See sideboard section.
0-3 Flusterstorm


Jace, the Mind Sculptor is also some kind of protection and has found his way into some lists. I personally strongly dislike him in Sneak Show, because he is too often just a 4 mana brainstorm or a 4 mana echoing truth. Especially in a non-control meta I think he is pretty useless and takes slots that should be used for more counters or acceleration.

5. Acceleration and lands

What differentiates Sneak Show from Hive Mind and Dream Halls, is - among other things (see below for these other things), the ability to combo off on turn 1. A hand with Lotus Petal, sol-land, creature, force, blue pitch is pretty much always an autowin.
That's why almost every succesful list these days plays 3-4 Petals, and 4-6 sol-lands. I recommend 3 Petals and 6 Sol-Lands.
Simian Spirit Guide has also seen a little bit of play, but since he is only interacting with Sneak Attack, the Petal is just the better accelerant.
Seething Song has seen some play in the past and has been part of Sneak Show as a 2-of until people realized that they board it out way too often, since this deck wants to play as little dead cards as possible - and that's what Seething Song is without Sneak Attack.

The land configuration looks like this:

4 Scalding Tarn
2-4 Volcanic Island
4-6 Sol-lands (Ancient Tomb and City of Traitors)
3-6 other blue fetchlands
0-3 red fetchlands
1 Mountain
2-3 Island

The trend of not playing the full playset of Volcanic Islands has started with Van der Vegt's and Sneek's succes at the GP last year. Due to our vulnerability to Wasteland, we only want to fetch up a Volcanic Island in certain situations and much rather want an Island or Fetchland in our starting 7.
To (almost) only fetch for basic islands is also important post-board when the deck has access to Blood Moon / Magus of the Moon.
The exact amount of lands varies with the amount of Petals you want to play. 18 is the minimum (with 4 petals), 19 with 3 Petals, 20 with 3 petals or with 3 petals and Jace the Mind Sculptor.

6. The Sideboard

I will just list the possible sideboard cards and the ones I find the most useful.

4 Leyline of Sanctity - It is just PERFECT against the decks Sneak Show has problems with; heavy discard ones, heavy control decks with only Jace ultimate as win condition. And it's also not bad that it turns the Burn-matchup from 60-40 in game 1 to 70-30 games 2 and 3.

2-3 Blood Moon or 2-3 Magus of the Moon - Turns a negative matchup like BUG Control or something similar with a greedy manabase into a very positive one and can win games by itself. I recommend playing Magus, because they will board out any creature removal they have and will board enchantment removal, if they have it.

1-4 Red Elemental Blast - Strong in protecting our combo and getting rid of things like Jace, the Mind Sculptor

0-3 Spell Pierce or 0-3 Flusterstorm[/card]s - Spell Pierce or Flusterstorm HAS to appear in the 75 of Sneak Show these days.

4 [cards]Grafdigger's Cage or Surgical Extraction or Tormod's Crypt - Reanimator and Dredge are bad matchups for Sneak Show. To use 4 sideboard slots to improve these is totally worth it.

2-3 Echoing Truth and 0-1 Wipe Away - Playing some bounce is mandatory to get around things like Blazing Archon, Karakas, Jace, the Mind Sculptor, Peacekeeper, Moat and Humility.

0-2 Chaos Warp - It's a cute alternative for Echoing Truth and can even give us a fattie by casting it on something like an non-basic that would otherwise be wastelanded. It's also strong against things like Karakas, if you don't play Wipe Away already.

0-3 Trinisphere - If you expect storm combo or a lot of burn at your tournament and are insane enough not to play the Leyline, Trinisphere is also possible.

0-3 Firespout, 0-3 Volcanic Fallout, 0-3 Pyroclasm - Even though I don't play it anymore, it never hurts to be able to timewalk creature decks like Goblins and Merfolk. I cutted all creature removal from my list, because I think these matchups are pretty great for us already (Merfolk doesn't see play anymore) and I rather want more options to improve my bad matchups than increasing the good ones.

0- 2 Shattering Spree - If you fear stuff like Ensnaring Bridge or want to improve your affinity matchup, Shattering Spree will do a perfect job!

Why play Sneak Show over Hive Mind or Dream Halls?

All Show and Tell decks play out pretty similar. Your main plan is to resolve a Show and Tell and win from there. Every good Show and Tell deck has a 2nd or 3rd winning plan, even though I have seen Mono Blue lists (wouldn't recommend them).
Let's start by comparing the backup plans of the 3 big Show and Tell tactics:

Hive Mind: Hardcasting Hive Mind + Pact(s), Show and Tell into Emrakul(Progenitus)

Dream Halls: Hardcasting Dream Halls, Show and Tell into Progenitus

Sneak Show: Sneak Attack into Creature(s), Show and Tell into Sneak Attack into Creature(s)

So, here you have the first strength of Sneak Show over Hive and Halls. All of his combo plans can work together: You can Show and Tell an Emrakul, but you can also Sneak Attack it into play.
On the other hand, you can't do anything with an Emrakul and a Hive Mind in your hand, or Dream Halls + Progenitus, if you can't hardcast the Dream Halls and can find a colored spell.

Another advantage Sneak Show has is its speed. Like I said further above, it can combo off as early as Turn 1, and Turn 2 happens in 60 % of the cases, since you play 6 Sol-lands and 3-4 Petals in addition to that.
Moreover, Sneak Show plays more counters than Hive Mind and far more than Dream Halls. That is because it has less dead cards like Pacts or Conflux and therefore more room for counter spells.

Its disadvantage is mainly the smaller chance of actually winning the game after you resolved a Show and Tell. While a Hive Mind on the table is 99 % win and Dream Halls about 95 %, an Emrakul is about 90 %, Progenitus maybe 80 % (please feel free to correct me with these numbers, I am only sure about the order, not the numbers) due to the fact that there are some answers that I mentioned before for Emrakul and Progenitus and ways to stop someone from attacking.

Thus, Sneak Show does a better job at comboing off and a worse job at actually winning from there.

In the end, it is a matter of personal choice. I also think that Sneak Show is generally much easier to play than Hive Mind and Dream Halls, which is advantage and disadvantage at the same time. It does get boring for some after a time, while Hive Mind/Dream Halls have more different scenarios and sometimes require more thinking out of the box.

Matchups

[Tenbin]

I think it looks pretty great, personally I think a card-by-card analysis could be useful; a short explanation to what that card does for the deck, boons of the different counters for example. You've done a bit of that but those sections are - to me - generally the most helpful sections of a primer.

I'd also like a small comparison with the other show and tell combos (Hive Mind and Dream Halls), perhaps explaining is what metas sneak work the best.

In a match-up section I'd suggest a list of MVP's in that match-up.

I think it's great though; just trying to add some constructive criticism :)

[DragoFireheart]

I think this deck could benefit from testing:

http://static.starcitygames.com/sales/cardscans/MAG_AVR/TemporalMastery.jpg

For these reasons:

A- We have the mana to hard cast it if need be, nullifying part of it's disadvantage of not setting it up to be on top.

B- We run blue. We have Brainstorm to put it on top and FoW to discard it if need be.

C- The extra turn can be devastating. Being able to Show and Tell a monster and then take another turn can end games.

Thoughts?

[JPA]

Thank you Tenbin, glad that you like it. It is all pretty "work in progress", if I get some more "yes, do that"s I will expand and finish it.

About Temporal Mastery: Nah, I wouldn't even test. The effort we have to put into setting it up is not worth it, our efforts should be used to punch our combo through.
And no, we don't have the mana (or the time) to hardcast it. xD This is no Jace-control meta, thank god.
When I first saw Temporal Mastery, I wanted to try to replace 2 Ponder with 2 Temporal Mastery but that's just really bad. The extra turn isn't as devastating and game-ending as you say; Show and Tell into Emrakul is game-ending enough in 98 % of the cases.

[Tenbin]

I'd be very willing to help, but I don't think I have quite the same ideas as other pilots :P I'm a pretty big fan of 2 Chaos Warp maindeck, I like the utility, being able to have outs to bad stuff game 1. That is something I feel will get even stronger with Griselbrand since being able to draw 14 cards to find an out is pretty beast.

[Jeff Kruchkow]

I would never never never ever play less than 4 Lotus Petal after Griselbrand came out. You always wish to Griselbrand into Petal+Emrakul...so Id play 4.

Your Manabase seems to rely heavily on fetchlands, as you only play UR I would cut at least 2 of them to make your manabase more stable.

Much more relevant than Petal+Emrakul is Petal+Pierce/Fluster as additional protection

As for how Big Gris will be in the deck, all my testing has shown him to be far far better than Progenitus. Unfortunately, the meta right now is full of decks that can race Prog off of Show and Tell, and Prog off Sneak Attack has always been underwhelming

[JPA]

I'd be very willing to help, but I don't think I have quite the same ideas as other pilots :P I'm a pretty big fan of 2 Chaos Warp maindeck, I like the utility, being able to have outs to bad stuff game 1. That is something I feel will get even stronger with Griselbrand since being able to draw 14 cards to find an out is pretty beast.

Of course, any help is welcome! I will edit my original post where I started the primer and will always make a new post where I say what I added. We can discuss every point and if I am convinced by a certain opinion I will add it. I will try to add all points of views into the primer, clearly distincting them from my own opinion though.

@ Pat: I would be very glad if you could include the finished primer in your own at the first page, or at least the sections that changed since you wrote yours.

About having an out game 1: If you want to have an out for stuff like Ensnaring Bridge or Peacekeeper game 1, why not Echoing Truth? It's a blue card, and it can even be defensive to save us from a lethal Zombie token attack for example.
The reason I have no outs main is that my maindeck is really tight and I couldn't imagine to cut anything right now, so my 2 Echoing Truth stay in the sideboard.

[JPA]

Added decklists, enhanced "proection" section and other parts of "ways to build the deck", added "Why play this over Hive Mind/Dream halls", linked important card names to their picture.

[Justin]

In a deck such as this that runs Intuition, I think it makes sense to run three of cards for which you might want to tutor. For example, sometimes this deck will need an Echoing Truth in order to bounce a permanent that is keeping you from winning (i.e. Ensnaring Bridge, Humility, Blazing Archon). I find it odd that people only want to run two Echoing Truth when they are also playing Intution. Why not go for three, so that you can guarantee that you grab one from a resolved Intution? This gives you more outs against hate cards.

[capitacom]

Like the primer, I only have one point: Saying that sneak attack is faster than hive mind is not really true; although you can show and tell emrakul into play on turn one, hive mind can play hive mind on turn two also generating a turn two win.

[JPA]

Like the primer, I only have one point: Saying that sneak attack is faster than hive mind is not really true; although you can show and tell emrakul into play on turn one, hive mind can play hive mind on turn two also generating a turn two win.

Turn 1 is faster than Turn 2 (even though Sneak Show doesnt ACTUALLY win when Emrakul enters the battlefield turn 1, most opponents scoop it up anyway). :DD And the chances of the Turn 2 win are quite small since you need Sol-land, Island, Show and Tell, Hive Mind, Pact(s), protection if against counterdeck or Sol-land, Island, Grim Monolith, Hive Mind, Pact(s) protection if needed.
In Sneak Show you need 1 component less (the pacts).

[Tenbin]

Of course, any help is welcome! I will edit my original post where I started the primer and will always make a new post where I say what I added. We can discuss every point and if I am convinced by a certain opinion I will add it. I will try to add all points of views into the primer, clearly distincting them from my own opinion though.

@ Pat: I would be very glad if you could include the finished primer in your own at the first page, or at least the sections that changed since you wrote yours.

About having an out game 1: If you want to have an out for stuff like Ensnaring Bridge or Peacekeeper game 1, why not Echoing Truth? It's a blue card, and it can even be defensive to save us from a lethal Zombie token attack for example.
The reason I have no outs main is that my maindeck is really tight and I couldn't imagine to cut anything right now, so my 2 Echoing Truth stay in the sideboard.

I like Chaos Warp partly due to the surprise factor, Iona on Blue is very strong against us as we'll have to topdeck a Sneak Attack to combo. If I have Chaos Warp I can dodge Iona on Blue as well as well as get rid of Karakas, something that Echoing Truth cannot and that Wipe Away can only do for a turn.

I do not share your feelings that Chaos Warp should not be used competitively: it's an out to ANY non-shroud/pro-red permanent, and it won't just come back the next round. Sure, the drawback CAN come back and bite you, but lets look at some stats

UW Stoneblade:
4 Snapcasters
4 Stoneforge
2 Vendilion Clique
1 Batterskull
1 Other Equipment
3 Jace 2.0

Those are generally the only non-land permanents that they play. A Chaos Warp on a Jace is a fair play, batterskull as well. We do not want to flip a Jace, Stoneforge, Batterskull or a Vendilion Clique (as I'd often bounce before comboing). Worst case scenario - if none of the cards were played preciously - is 10 potential dangercards left in the deck, leaving a 10/48 or so chance of flipping a danger card. Jace is the biggest problem though; leaving 3 cards.

Maverick

4 Knight of the Reliquary
1 Karakas
4 Qasali Pridemage
3 Thalia

Those are - in my opinion - the problem cards in Maverick, Thalia only being a problem before we slam a Show and Tell or a Sneak Attack and Qasali only if we're planning on slamming a Sneak or have one. Knight, Karakas or Qasali are the eligible targets, Knight and Karakas would always suck to flip and Qasali if we're going for the Sneak which means around 5-9 bad flips, so between ~1/10-~1/5.

RUG Tempo

4 Tarmogoyf
4 Delver of Secrets

Not really much worth warping here unless we're in big trouble from a Goyf, Goyf is also really the only dangerous thing to flip since flipping a delver is pretty okay. so that's 4/48=1/12

So against the big 3 the odds of flipping something that'd be bad is 10-25% where 25% is on the negative side.

we also have a 8/48 chance of flipping one of our creatures in a pinch and a 11/48 chance of flipping a sneak attack if we have a creature on our hand.

I chose out of 48 as it's unlikely we'll do it on the first round and with some cantrips and stuff 48 felt quite reasonable.

So.. that's a small assesment of Chaos Warp, it has inherent danger built into it, but more often than not, you're only warping something that would REALLY mess with you, meaning that whatever you flip from it, will be better than what went down.

[JPA]

Nice argumentation, I find it very reasonable and will add your thoughts to the sideboard section soon.

So if you even want to go as far as to play it in your maindeck, what would you cut (in my list for example)?

[menace13]

Like the primer, I only have one point: Saying that sneak attack is faster than hive mind is not really true; although you can show and tell emrakul into play on turn one, hive mind can play hive mind on turn two also generating a turn two win.
Hive Mind is faster and also more powerful, but since it is a very tight list it's not as customizable as Sneak Show and cannot play pseudo-control.

[Tenbin]

Nice argumentation, I find it very reasonable and will add your thoughts to the sideboard section soon.

So if you even want to go as far as to play it in your maindeck, what would you cut (in my list for example)?

My list:

//Mana:
3 Ancient Tomb
2 City of Traitors
4 Scalding Tarn
2 Misty Rainforest
3 Volcanic Island
3 Island
1 Mountain
3 Lotus Petal
//Total: 21

//Draw:
4 Brainstorm
3 Ponder
3 Intuition
//Total: 10

//Counter-suite:
4 Force of Will
3 Misdirection
3 Spell Pierce
2 Daze
//Total: 12

//Catch-all:
2 Chaos Warp
//Total 2

//Combo:
4 Emrakul, the Aeons Torn
3 Progenitus
4 Show and Tell
4 Sneak Attack
//Total: 15


So in your list I'd drop a Ponder and go down one Ancient Tomb, I think it's a stable deck anyway so I haven't missed them much. I just like living crazy like that.

[Justin]

Like I asked earlier, if you are going to run "catch all" cards like Chaos Warp (or Echoing Truth), why would you only run two? It makes more sense to play three so that you can reliably "tutor" for one with Intuition. If you just run two, you only have those two outs when you need to find it. If you add a third one, you increase your outs from two to six by only adding one card to your deck.

[catmint]

Buy Griselbrands Tenbin.

Also with only 18 lands a pretty high curve you might run into troubles against RUG.

I am not a fan of running maindeck answers. How often do you want this chaos warp to be Ponder #4...

[koba]

Buy Griselbrands Tenbin.

Also with only 18 lands a pretty high curve you might run into troubles against RUG.

I am not a fan of running maindeck answers. How often do you want this chaos warp to be Ponder #4...

Agree.

Regarding your primer: I am looking forward to the matchup analysis.

I do not even think it is mandatory to sideboard echoing truth. You already have blood moon to fight karakas, pyroblast against jace and all the other cards see very little play (and moat is a non-issue, especially if you play griselbrand).

One more thing: hive mind probably has more trouble with cards like cursecatcher, stifle and daze than sneak show. Maybe the expected metagame is more important in deciding which show and tell deck to play than personal taste?

[JPA]

Regarding your primer: I am looking forward to the matchup analysis.

I do not even think it is mandatory to sideboard echoing truth. You already have blood moon to fight karakas, pyroblast against jace and all the other cards see very little play (and moat is a non-issue, especially if you play griselbrand).


Working on the MU's right now. ;-) Do you want me to include decks like Counterbalance or Dark Thresh that don't see any play right now?

Right now I have those on my list:

Tempo RUG, Dredge, Storm, Esper Control, Maverick, Burn, Zoo, U/W Stoneblade, Reanimator, Hive Mind, The Gate, BUG Control, Goblins, Combo Elves, High Tide, U/R Delver, Nic Fit.

Any specific decks you guys would like to see analyzed?

[catmint]

Tbh I would suggest to wait until the new meta shapes up and analyze how the new sneak attack with Griselbrand matches up against it.

[Tenbin]

Buy Griselbrands Tenbin.

Also with only 18 lands a pretty high curve you might run into troubles against RUG.

I am not a fan of running maindeck answers. How often do you want this chaos warp to be Ponder #4...

I'm gonna buy Griselbrands as soon as I can, but for now the list looks like that.

A difference of 1 land (18 vs 19) matters very little. with 19 lands, my odds of getting 2-3 lands in my starting 7 is 33% and 25% respectively, whereas 18 lands would give me a 34% to 24% chance. Running 3 Lotus Petal also effectively has me running 21 lands.

The Ponder angle is more interesting though, that is something that might be a problem occasionally, it hasn't really happened yet as I very rarely find myself in need of more cantrips and even more rarely do I in those times hold a Chaos Warp. The percentage difference by removing one is a 1.67% lesser chance of finding a cantrip.

About having only 2. I agree with you, I don't like not being able to intuition for it, all my other cards are in threes and I actually have the third one in the board if I feel it might be needed. As I'm running 12 counters I could and perhaps should probably cut some counters for Chaos Warps before I cut a Ponder, but I like the high counter density as it allows me to play a control-ish game before I combo.

And in general about having outs in the maindeck: I would rather have 2-3 slots maindeck that are semi-dead than having a solid dead 15 cards because someone maindecks ensnaring bridge, humility, karakas (not a complete blowout but a fair speedbumb), peacekeeper, mangara, etc. Sure, in some match-ups they might not be the most useful cards in your deck, but neither are misdirections, spell pierces or flusterstorms.

I'm not dead-set on changing everyone's view on the card or having everyone agree with me on maindeck answers. However, what I am trying to do is to thoroughly explain why I have chosen to dedicate a few slots to that, and why I feel that 18 lands isn't horrible. Anecdotal evidence that people landfizzled more often with 18 than 19 isn't really interesting or true; you'd need to play around 100 games to fizzle 1 more time with 18 than 19. The difference is 1 card, 1.67% of your deck, if the first land you play and crack is a fetch and you only have 1 more land in your hand, you're effectively playing with a 2-land in your 7, 18 land deck. The difference in amount (to a reasonable degree) matters much less than the setup within that amount.

@JPAnghelescu
About Match-Ups: thought about Nic Fit and U/R Delver? Or do you feel that the delver is similar enough to RUG Tempo and that Nic Fit shouldn't be an issue? Affinity perhaps, D&T? Just namedropping some decks I feel are fairly prominent and that may warrant an inclusion, your list looks fine though :)

EDIT: I also agree with catmint, doing all the work for match-ups now might be wasted for a possibly very changed meta in a few weeks

[JPA]

@ Tenbin: I added Nic Fit and U/R Delver before you finished your post, totally forgot about them. xD

Alright, I will rather wait until Griselbrand comes out and then 1 or 2 SCG Opens until I do the matchup analysis then.

[catmint]

cool! as a newcomer to the deck (attracted by drawing 7 :laugh: ) I look forward to your insight... especially concerning SB choices including boarding plans.

[Marke]

I chose out of 48 as it's unlikely we'll do it on the first round and with some cantrips and stuff 48 felt quite reasonable.

So.. that's a small assesment of Chaos Warp, it has inherent danger built into it, but more often than not, you're only warping something that would REALLY mess with you, meaning that whatever you flip from it, will be better than what went down.

Probability theory remains difficult for many I see... You should take out of 60 not out of 48... The cards someone has drawn has no influence on the ratio of problematic to non-problematic permanents left in the deck as the drawing effect is random. Thus taking out of 60 is the correct way to calculate this. Consider in poker for example when the top card of the deck is burned, does this change the chances for certain cards showing up? No, because you don't know what is burned and it's a random process. Same in MTG, the cards drawn by the opponent is a random process (excluding effects of cards for a second here). Thus it doesn't matter what point in the game it is, chance for a card being on top of deck is still 4/60 for a 4-of.

Only fetchlands change this thought a little bit as they remove cards from the deck in a non-random way as they always remove a land. Thus fetchlands slightly up the threats in the deck but that still makes it only 4/58 at most.

Overall chaos warp is rarely problematic, but i'm not completely sold on it being better then bounce yet. Bounce being blue starts to matter more again with griselbrand replacing proggy, though the higher versatility of chaos warp is good too.

[Tenbin]

Probability theory remains difficult for many I see... You should take out of 60 not out of 48... The cards someone has drawn has no influence on the ratio of problematic to non-problematic permanents left in the deck as the drawing effect is random. Thus taking out of 60 is the correct way to calculate this. Consider in poker for example when the top card of the deck is burned, does this change the chances for certain cards showing up? No, because you don't know what is burned and it's a random process. Same in MTG, the cards drawn by the opponent is a random process (excluding effects of cards for a second here). Thus it doesn't matter what point in the game it is, chance for a card being on top of deck is still 4/60 for a 4-of.

Only fetchlands change this thought a little bit as they remove cards from the deck in a non-random way as they always remove a land. Thus fetchlands slightly up the threats in the deck but that still makes it only 4/58 at most.

Overall chaos warp is rarely problematic, but i'm not completely sold on it being better then bounce yet. Bounce being blue starts to matter more again with griselbrand replacing proggy, though the higher versatility of chaos warp is good too.

That's a mighty high horse you're on. the maximum of problematic cards left in the deck - i.e. what I talked about in that post - should be weighed against the current amount of cards in the deck. Whether he has one in the hand matters not, I cannot flip it, that's hidden information. So, to the best of my knowledge, given that he has drawn 12 cards, he could AT THE MOST have say 12 problematic cards out of a given 48. By doing a calculation against 60 cards you fool yourself to a better ratio.

When playing a Chaos Warp the odds of flipping a problematic card against a full deck is wholly irrelevant. However, the odds of flipping a problematic cards against his current deck size is very relevant, and should be done with the estimated amount of problematic cards in the deck minus the ones in play or in the grave or known in his hand obviously. Drawing an Emrakul if it's the only card left in your library won't be 4/60, it's gonna be 1/1, please explain how you argue that the draw is random and it will be 4/60, that'd mean that most of the time I WOULDN'T draw an Emrakul if it's the last card in my Library, and frankly, I guess I'm just REALLY lucky with the odds then.

I did my 'calculations' against a deck a few turns into the game when we would likely be using the Warp. Your math is wrong and doesn't hold up. If there is 1 card left in his library when you Warp, the danger of flipping a problematic card is not x/60 something, it's x/2. In the case where is holds all the cards of his library in his hand and none are in known zones my estimation does not hold either, I'll give you that, but it will - in general - give you a more accurate assessment of the dangers involved in Warping something than a ratio of problematic cards against the total deck size.

This will sometimes lead to a ratio that is higher than it actually is as the opponent may hold one of the problematic cards in his hand, but when assessing the danger, I'd rather be on the pessimistic side than the overly optimistic.

Explain why bounce being blue matters more with Griselbrand, FoW-food? Misdirection food? Or do you mean because we'll want to Sneak him in, draw 14 and sneak something else in for the win? The last argument is a reasonable one, I do find myself with a bunch of blue mana more than a bunch of red. I'll be playtesting different setups with Griselbrand, on one hand I feel that having a few outs in the deck is pretty okay when I'm able to just draw 14 to find one, conversely, at a point where you draw 14, you might be able to play around most things available to the opponent game 1 anyway.

[JustPAT4]

The OP has been updated. Thanks JPAnghelescu and others for all the assistance in making this thread a comprehensive resource to players!

I definitely agree that we might as well wait to see how Avacyn Restored and Griselbrand affect the meta and the deck before delving too deeply into match-up analysis. When we've got some concrete examples, I'll update the section with help from you guys.

(And hurray to Tenbin for understanding how to properly determine ratios!)

Thanks again!

[Suneloon]

I've been testing Griselbrand on mws (for what its worth), and I have to say: HE IS THE BOMB in this deck. Between him and old spagetti-o's, the deck just has two equally awesome lines of play.
I've been drawing 7-14 to find counterspells to protect him from removal FTW, so many times.
And (unlike prog) Griselbrand loves Sneak Attack.

Yay for demons!

[Marke]

That's a mighty high horse you're on. the maximum of problematic cards left in the deck - i.e. what I talked about in that post - should be weighed against the current amount of cards in the deck. Whether he has one in the hand matters not, I cannot flip it, that's hidden information. So, to the best of my knowledge, given that he has drawn 12 cards, he could AT THE MOST have say 12 problematic cards out of a given 48. By doing a calculation against 60 cards you fool yourself to a better ratio.

When playing a Chaos Warp the odds of flipping a problematic card against a full deck is wholly irrelevant. However, the odds of flipping a problematic cards against his current deck size is very relevant, and should be done with the estimated amount of problematic cards in the deck minus the ones in play or in the grave or known in his hand obviously. Drawing an Emrakul if it's the only card left in your library won't be 4/60, it's gonna be 1/1, please explain how you argue that the draw is random and it will be 4/60, that'd mean that most of the time I WOULDN'T draw an Emrakul if it's the last card in my Library, and frankly, I guess I'm just REALLY lucky with the odds then.

I did my 'calculations' against a deck a few turns into the game when we would likely be using the Warp. Your math is wrong and doesn't hold up. If there is 1 card left in his library when you Warp, the danger of flipping a problematic card is not x/60 something, it's x/2. In the case where is holds all the cards of his library in his hand and none are in known zones my estimation does not hold either, I'll give you that, but it will - in general - give you a more accurate assessment of the dangers involved in Warping something than a ratio of problematic cards against the total deck size.

This will sometimes lead to a ratio that is higher than it actually is as the opponent may hold one of the problematic cards in his hand, but when assessing the danger, I'd rather be on the pessimistic side than the overly optimistic.

Explain why bounce being blue matters more with Griselbrand, FoW-food? Misdirection food? Or do you mean because we'll want to Sneak him in, draw 14 and sneak something else in for the win? The last argument is a reasonable one, I do find myself with a bunch of blue mana more than a bunch of red. I'll be playtesting different setups with Griselbrand, on one hand I feel that having a few outs in the deck is pretty okay when I'm able to just draw 14 to find one, conversely, at a point where you draw 14, you might be able to play around most things available to the opponent game 1 anyway.

Ok you don't know math apparently.
For a certain probability you calculate it with all the known information you have, information often changes probabilities and thus you need to update your beliefs then. When you generalize over all games you don't know any additional information though so every card a player has drawn is irrelevant for the expected ratio of problematic cards in the deck.
For example let's say someone has 20 probelematic cards in his deck, thus one third. Now before the game starts you remove the top 30 cards of his shuffled deck. You don't know anything about these cards but problematic and non-problematic cards are just as likely to be removed. Result: the remaining 30 cards of his deck will on average have the same ratio of problematic cards to non-problematic cards...

Now playing a game of magic is similar. Your opponent draws a bunch of cards and plays a few. If we're generalizing over many games we don't know these cards. Your opponent thus draws on average problematic cards and non-problematic cards in the ratio as he in his full 60. The remainder of the deck will ALSO have that same ratio.. Thus for calculating chances (not that chance is by definition an average over many games) you have to assume the ratio of problematic cards to non-problematic cards in his deck stays equal..

The counterexamples you give somewhat give the notion you don't know probability theory properly. If there is just 1 card left in the deck and you have no other information then that card has 4/60 chance to be emrakul if played as a 4-of. If you know what the card is then of course the chance is either 1 or 0.. In any case when you know the outcome of an event you know the probability for something is 1 or 0 as you know what will happen, probability theory is developed to assess probabilities when you don't know what happens..

For one particular game with a given board state the calculation would change as you have additional information then. For example if you play against a deck and they just played one land nothing else then you know they have 59 unseen cards of which x are problematic thus x/59 is the chance for the top card being problematic. Note that it doesn't matter where those unseen cards are, hand or library is the same in these situations as all that matters is you don't know what they are..

Anyway you will probably disagree anyway, probability theory can be an extremely confusing subject to many people and it's near impossible to convince people they are wrong. There are millions who even disagree with Monty Hall for example even though it's been explained to them a couple times.

[Norm]

If you guys had to construct a sideboard for this weekend's SCG event (hint: I do) what would it look like?

I'm fairly set on 4 Leyline of Sanctity as they're quite good vs one of our biggest weaknesses (discard) and they're very relevant against UR delver and Burn. I would also like to up my graveyard hate from 3 surgical to 4 Leyline of the Void because dredge is a real threat in these events. That said, my board is currently:

4 Leyline of Sanctity
3 Surgical Extraction
3 Blood Moon
2 Echoing Truth
1 Wipe Away
2 Firespout

But I'm considering:

4 Leyline of Sanctity
4 Leyline of The Void
3 Blood Moon
2 Echoing Truth
1 Wipe Away
1 Firespout


I've considered cutting the Firespout entirely as one copy isn't consistent and the aggro decks aren't typically poor matchups anyway. If I were to do so, I'd likely replace it with a Red Elemental Blast or a third Echoing Truth.

Keep in mind that with Cavern of Souls becoming legal this weekend, I expect aggressive decks (while not incredible) to be very well represented.

Any thoughts?

[Suneloon]

I like what you are considering. And defenetly -1 Firesprout + 1 Echoing Truth. Also: I've been loving Magus of the moon over Blood Moon.

[Norm]

I like what you are considering. And defenetly -1 Firesprout + 1 Echoing Truth. Also: I've been loving Magus of the moon over Blood Moon.

I can see the benefits of each, I've just always liked Blood Moon's in-susceptibility to creature removal. Enchantment removal, while relevant, isn't amazing against this deck if played around. Even Krosan Grip can't stop double activations on Sneak Attack in one turn.

[JPA]

Decks you will definitely have to beat:

Maverick
RUG Delver
Reanimator
Dredge
Burn
Esper Stoneblade / UW Stoneblade
UR Delver

Reanimator and Dredge are pretty tough matchups for Sneak Show, so I would definitely recommend to play 4 Grafdigger's Cage and maybe 1 or 2 Surgical Extraction on top of that.
The 4 Leyline of Sanctity definitely have to go in as well, against Burn especially.
I would play 3 Echoing Truth, against hatecards like Ensnaring Bridge (even though I doubt you will see them), but also to further improve your matchups against Reanimator and Dredge. It also helps you to buy time against the aggro decks like Maverick.
Blood Moon/ Magus of the Moon is generally strong and wins matchups like the Esper one singlehandedly. So I would play 2-3 of that as well.

Since Maverick is a pretty awesome matchup anyway, I wouldn't play the Firespouts. No one is playing Merfolk anymore, Goblins sees very little play, too - and is a good matchups.

So that's the sideboard I would play if I could attend the next SCG Open (would love to, but the ocean is wide!):

4 Leyline of Sanctity
3 Magus of the Moon
3 Echoing Truth
4 Grafdigger's Cage
1 Surgical Extraction

You could also play 2 echoing truth and 1 Wipe Away, but Echoing Truth is much better in my opinion (no double blue, 2 mana).

So basically, my thoughts are similar to yours. Firespout can be cutted, because it only improves our good matchups and pure Aggro isn't that popular right now. And against Tempo, the Moon effects and Echoing Truths can do the same job, while improving our bad matchups as well.

Anyway, good luck at the open and tell us how it went!

[JPA]

I can see the benefits of each, I've just always liked Blood Moon's in-susceptibility to creature removal. Enchantment removal, while relevant, isn't amazing against this deck if played around. Even Krosan Grip can't stop double activations on Sneak Attack in one turn.

They won't leave their creature removal in for us, that's why the Magus is so much better. Plus, he can be sacced instead of Emmy, proggy, grizzy, if the opponent has an Edict or liliana.

[Norm]

They won't leave their creature removal in for us, that's why the Magus is so much better. Plus, he can be sacced instead of Emmy, proggy, grizzy, if the opponent has an Edict or liliana.

While Griselbrand is very resilient to spot removal, I still feel as though decks will keep some of those spells in. This becomes increasingly awkward when playing against decks that overload on removal spells in the main deck. The added benefit of having addition sacrificial targets is relevant, but wouldn't a Blood Moon typically shut those decks down? If it wouldn't, likely due to their manabase consisting primarily of basics, then would you really board the moon effect in?

[Deez_Naughts]

If you guys had to construct a sideboard for this weekend's SCG event (hint: I do) what would it look like?

I'm fairly set on 4 Leyline of Sanctity as they're quite good vs one of our biggest weaknesses (discard) and they're very relevant against UR delver and Burn. I would also like to up my graveyard hate from 3 surgical to 4 Leyline of the Void because dredge is a real threat in these events. That said, my board is currently:

4 Leyline of Sanctity
3 Surgical Extraction
3 Blood Moon
2 Echoing Truth
1 Wipe Away
2 Firespout

But I'm considering:

4 Leyline of Sanctity
4 Leyline of The Void
3 Blood Moon
2 Echoing Truth
1 Wipe Away
1 Firespout


I've considered cutting the Firespout entirely as one copy isn't consistent and the aggro decks aren't typically poor matchups anyway. If I were to do so, I'd likely replace it with a Red Elemental Blast or a third Echoing Truth.

Keep in mind that with Cavern of Souls becoming legal this weekend, I expect aggressive decks (while not incredible) to be very well represented.

Any thoughts?

Here is my board for an event this Saturday;

4x Leyline of Sanctity
3x Grafdiggers Cage
3x Echoing Truth
3x Blood Moon
2x Red Elemental Blast

It addresses all the top tier decks, and gives soild post board relevance in being able to Intuition for a hate card if needed, save for REB, which you should not be tutoring for anyway.

Echoing Truth is really good against Dredge and Reanimator, coupled with Cage you have good post board game.

[Einherjer]

They won't leave their creature removal in for us, that's why the Magus is so much better. Plus, he can be sacced instead of Emmy, proggy, grizzy, if the opponent has an Edict or liliana.

Canadian Threshold will leave Bolts in ( I know it because I play it very frequently ) and they will be able to play a Bolt at any time - even if we have a Magus out. So I definitely prefer Blood Moon here!

My Side is:
8 Leylines
3 Blood Moon
1 Pyroblast
3 Metaslot (Trinisphere, Pyroclasm...)

[Norm]

Canadian Threshold will leave Bolts in ( I know it because I play it very frequently ) and they will be able to play a Bolt at any time - even if we have a Magus out. So I definitely prefer Blood Moon here!

My Side is:
8 Leylines
3 Blood Moon
1 Pyroblast
3 Metaslot (Trinisphere, Pyroclasm...)

How long have you been playing the deck? Have you ever faced problematic permanents like:
Blazing Archon
Ensnaring Bridge
Humility etc?

[Einherjer]

Ive played SneakAttack quite alot before HiveMind got THE DECK TO BEAT! Then I switched to HiveMind and came back to SneakAttack when I heard of Griselbrand. And if you would READ my post you would recognise that there are 3 free slots which can be filled with this cards IF the meta asks for it. A high developed DtB+HighEstablished-Meta isnt requesting you to play Bounce at the moment. I hardly see any UW Hard-Control-Decks around here and Reanimator isnt that frequently played aswell...so if you face alot of them play 3 Bounce in my flex. slots - if not let it be!

Greetings

[Norm]

Decks you will definitely have to beat:

Maverick
RUG Delver
Reanimator
Dredge
Burn
Esper Stoneblade / UW Stoneblade
UR Delver

Reanimator and Dredge are pretty tough matchups for Sneak Show, so I would definitely recommend to play 4 Grafdigger's Cage and maybe 1 or 2 Surgical Extraction on top of that.
The 4 Leyline of Sanctity definitely have to go in as well, against Burn especially.
I would play 3 Echoing Truth, against hatecards like Ensnaring Bridge (even though I doubt you will see them), but also to further improve your matchups against Reanimator and Dredge. It also helps you to buy time against the aggro decks like Maverick.
Blood Moon/ Magus of the Moon is generally strong and wins matchups like the Esper one singlehandedly. So I would play 2-3 of that as well.

Since Maverick is a pretty awesome matchup anyway, I wouldn't play the Firespouts. No one is playing Merfolk anymore, Goblins sees very little play, too - and is a good matchups.

So that's the sideboard I would play if I could attend the next SCG Open (would love to, but the ocean is wide!):

4 Leyline of Sanctity
3 Magus of the Moon
3 Echoing Truth
4 Grafdigger's Cage
1 Surgical Extraction

You could also play 2 echoing truth and 1 Wipe Away, but Echoing Truth is much better in my opinion (no double blue, 2 mana).

So basically, my thoughts are similar to yours. Firespout can be cutted, because it only improves our good matchups and pure Aggro isn't that popular right now. And against Tempo, the Moon effects and Echoing Truths can do the same job, while improving our bad matchups as well.

Anyway, good luck at the open and tell us how it went!

I appreciate the feedback and thank you for the kind words. I would like to discuss a few points you've made.

First, the split between Echoing Truth and Wipe Away is very rarely negative and almost always positive now that we're able to draw seven to fourteen cards at instant speed without investing mana. Intuitioning for them typically results in the same outcome. I'd also like to note that having access to double blue is rarely an issue in the situations that you're looking for uncounterable bounce for hate permanents as their clock is usually slow.

Second, the fact that you would run four Grafdigger's Cage confuses me when Leyline of the Void does a better job at answering the decks you want cage against. Both decks are very fast and have discard and/or countermagic (plus bounce in Reanimator) which could throw a wrench in your 1 CMC artifact plan. I don't particularly enjoy mulliganing into Leylines, but they seem to handle these decks very well.

This brings me to my next question, why a singleton Surgical Extraction? If the graveyard decks are the issue, shouldn't that make a better case for Leyline of the Void?

[Norm]

Ive played SneakAttack quite alot before HiveMind got THE DECK TO BEAT! Then I switched to HiveMind and came back to SneakAttack when I heard of Griselbrand. And if you would READ my post you would recognise that there are 3 free slots which can be filled with this cards IF the meta asks for it. A high developed DtB+HighEstablished-Meta isnt requesting you to play Bounce at the moment. I hardly see any UW Hard-Control-Decks around here and Reanimator isnt that frequently played aswell...so if you face alot of them play 3 Bounce in my flex. slots - if not let it be!

Greetings

My post wasn't made in an aggressive manor, but if you choose to over-react then so be it. Back on topic, you noted meta slots and cited a few examples that didn't include bounce of any kind. If you've been paying attention lately, you would know that players intend to get cute with their Counterbalance decks designed to abuse miracles and/or Meekstone and Ensnaring Bridge thanks to suggestions by Drew Levin.

That, coupled with the (correct) assumption that Griselbrand pushes this deck into the top tier, should warrant the inclusion of bounce spells in a sideboard designed for this coming weekend's SCG event (as my initial post outlined).

Greetings

[tsabo_tavoc]

Could anyone please share about sideboarding in white Leylines, in which matchups and what to cut for them? I would guess white Leylines come in against Burn (how about UR Delver?), Discard heavy decks, and Combo decks. Would not Flusterstorm help against these decks as well?

[JPA]

I appreciate the feedback and thank you for the kind words. I would like to discuss a few points you've made.

First, the split between Echoing Truth and Wipe Away is very rarely negative and almost always positive now that we're able to draw seven to fourteen cards at instant speed without investing mana. Intuitioning for them typically results in the same outcome. I'd also like to note that having access to double blue is rarely an issue in the situations that you're looking for uncounterable bounce for hate permanents as their clock is usually slow.

Second, the fact that you would run four Grafdigger's Cage confuses me when Leyline of the Void does a better job at answering the decks you want cage against. Both decks are very fast and have discard and/or countermagic (plus bounce in Reanimator) which could throw a wrench in your 1 CMC artifact plan. I don't particularly enjoy mulliganing into Leylines, but they seem to handle these decks very well.

This brings me to my next question, why a singleton Surgical Extraction? If the graveyard decks are the issue, shouldn't that make a better case for Leyline of the Void?

About double U being a problem: I see myself very often in the situation where I have sol-land + blue mana source, which is perfect for Show and Tell, and less often with 3 blue mana sources. And I think the uncounterable is only really relevant if we have to bounce something against control, because Reanimator plays less counters than we do and Dredge can't interact on the stack at all when we decide to bounce their tokens.

Grafdigger's Cage: Maybe the Mulliganing is worth it, but if we don't have the Leyline in our opener, it's just dead.
With Leyline of sanctity it is ok, because we have no alternative to protect us from burn, discard, jace, clique, etc. at once.
You can still Intuition for the Cage if you need it, when your opponent already has creatures in his graveyard to stop him from reanimating them. The connection with Intuition might make you want to play 3 only, but it's even better when it's in your starting hand, so you can bait an opposing counter and play your combo afterwards without any resistance on the opponent's side.
Plus, it's cute that the Cage stops Descendant's Path, and we might see some people trying out funny stuff with that in the future. :)

The singleton Surgical Extraction is for versatility. I just board it against any deck that plays FoW, Brainstorm or Snapcaster Mage (and vs Dredge, Reanimator, ofc). It's nice to draw it from the top when you know that your opponent has more Fow's after you lost 1 counterwar already, for instance.

But after thinking it over again, I would probably cut 1 Magus, 1 Surgical for 2 Red Elemental Blast.

What I board out for Leyline of Sanctity: I board it against Burn, any deck with discard, any deck with Jace + Clique or a deck that has Jace as main win condition. I usually board out countermagic or Lotus petals and 1 Ponder or something. We don't really need the FoW's against Burn or The Gate when we have the Leyline. I never board out a part of the combo, maybe sometimes 1 Emrakul or 1 Show and Tell along 3 of my counterspells (daze, spell pierce, misdirection), when I have to bring in a 4-of like Grafdigger's Cage or sometimes for the Leyline as well.

[JDK]

Reanimator isnt that frequently played aswell...so if you face alot of them play 3 Bounce in my flex. slots - if not let it be!
http://www.thecouncil.es/tcdecks/metagame.php?format=Legacy

Go eat your words.

[DragoFireheart]

http://www.thecouncil.es/tcdecks/metagame.php?format=Legacy

Go eat your words.

It's seeing a lot less play than 4 months ago or so.

[Einherjer]

+1

@Norm: Sorry, I didnt want to be so harsh. I am not well informed how well supplied(with AVR cards) the players are at this first weekend - and how many, well teched UW Control-Lists will be running around. If these would see more play I would play 3 Bounce. But my particular Meta is alot of Stormcombo so it warrants these Trinispheres.

Greetings

[JPA]

With Avacyn restored and Griselbrand, Reanimator will see more play again, I think. Which also leads to us to having to be more cautious with playing Show and Tell against them; if they drop a Griselbrand and can exhume/reanimate a Blazing Archon, we are pretty screwed.

[JDK]

It's seeing a lot less play than 4 months ago or so.
He said something different. Come again.

It's still a top 10 deck, so you should keep it in mind.

[Tenbin]

Ok you don't know math apparently.
For a certain probability you calculate it with all the known information you have, information often changes probabilities and thus you need to update your beliefs then. When you generalize over all games you don't know any additional information though so every card a player has drawn is irrelevant for the expected ratio of problematic cards in the deck.
For example let's say someone has 20 probelematic cards in his deck, thus one third. Now before the game starts you remove the top 30 cards of his shuffled deck. You don't know anything about these cards but problematic and non-problematic cards are just as likely to be removed. Result: the remaining 30 cards of his deck will on average have the same ratio of problematic cards to non-problematic cards...

Now playing a game of magic is similar. Your opponent draws a bunch of cards and plays a few. If we're generalizing over many games we don't know these cards. Your opponent thus draws on average problematic cards and non-problematic cards in the ratio as he in his full 60. The remainder of the deck will ALSO have that same ratio.. Thus for calculating chances (not that chance is by definition an average over many games) you have to assume the ratio of problematic cards to non-problematic cards in his deck stays equal..

The counterexamples you give somewhat give the notion you don't know probability theory properly. If there is just 1 card left in the deck and you have no other information then that card has 4/60 chance to be emrakul if played as a 4-of. If you know what the card is then of course the chance is either 1 or 0.. In any case when you know the outcome of an event you know the probability for something is 1 or 0 as you know what will happen, probability theory is developed to assess probabilities when you don't know what happens..

For one particular game with a given board state the calculation would change as you have additional information then. For example if you play against a deck and they just played one land nothing else then you know they have 59 unseen cards of which x are problematic thus x/59 is the chance for the top card being problematic. Note that it doesn't matter where those unseen cards are, hand or library is the same in these situations as all that matters is you don't know what they are..

Anyway you will probably disagree anyway, probability theory can be an extremely confusing subject to many people and it's near impossible to convince people they are wrong. There are millions who even disagree with Monty Hall for example even though it's been explained to them a couple times.

Now, I've been talking about the MAXIMUM possibility of the opponent flipping something. That - I feel - is the most relevant factor when evaluating a card and a situation. In that case I'm correct, but in the generic case, you are. However, I stated initially that it's the MAXIMUM possibility, setting up a few IF statements doesn't falsify my analysis.

I even went over this problem with a few of my course mates (engineering physics) and they agreed with me, as I had stated that the odds I were calculating were the maximum odds.

[KevinTrudeau]

Could anyone please share about sideboarding in white Leylines, in which matchups and what to cut for them? I would guess white Leylines come in against Burn (how about UR Delver?), Discard heavy decks, and Combo decks. Would not Flusterstorm help against these decks as well?

After a short testing session last night in which I coincidentally focused on that quandary, I eventually sided with the Leylines. It feels wrong playing them in an archetype with ample deck manipulation, but leaving up U disrupted the curve a bit too much for my liking; certainly not 100% on that decision, though. Unfortunately can't recommend any proper board configs at the moment.

Also, three Lotus Petal was tha bomb. Intuitioning for it to set up Sneak Attack+activate the subsequent turn was not an uncommon play.

The new demon's name is GrisElton Brand, or possibly Grisel-Elton Brand. As per NBA rules, this decision is final, and cannot be changed.

[Marke]

Now, I've been talking about the MAXIMUM possibility of the opponent flipping something. That - I feel - is the most relevant factor when evaluating a card and a situation. In that case I'm correct, but in the generic case, you are. However, I stated initially that it's the MAXIMUM possibility, setting up a few IF statements doesn't falsify my analysis.

I even went over this problem with a few of my course mates (engineering physics) and they agreed with me, as I had stated that the odds I were calculating were the maximum odds.

Maximum probability like you talk about it is a completely useless concept.. How good a card is on average and perhaps what variance there is are the only relevant concepts, maximum probability as you say it is a very loosely defined thing and completely useless. You might as well say that 'maximum probablity' you're talking about is always 1 as a problematic card could be on top of the deck... It is some post hoc concept which is completely useless as should only be interested in how good a card is in general..
How you look at the problem is fundamentally wrong. Probability is by definition something that refers to an average when something is repeated ad infinitum, the way you warp the concept it's useless.

[The Colonel]

Okay that's enough talk about the probability issues and job titles. This deck is supposed to be simple to play. You guys are really killing my buzz about finally being on decks to beat. I'm an accountant and I get enough of crunching numbers all day. I play this deck because it's easy on the brain. Play storm if you want to debate that garbage. Bottom line is: This game is like any other card game. LUCK, no one can control it and no one can manipluate it. You either have it or you don't.

In the emortal words of Kenny Rogers "Cuz every hands a losser and every hands a winner. The best that you can hope for is to die in your sleep."

So have a cigar, drink some beers and play the deck. Enjoy it.

[ivanpei]

Cage is bad. IMO when it comes to gravehate hate. It's either leyline or surgical. Surgical in snapcaster based decks and leyline in combo decks. Why? Because of opponents discard/countermagic. Leyline dodges both discard and Force of Will which makes it such a powerful card. It sucks to draw into it late, but it's just so much better than grafdiggers cage. If the dredge player goes crazy on the play and flips a bunch of therapies, grafdiggers cannot help you.

I'd play:
4 leyline of the void
4 leyline of sanctity
3 blood moon
3 echoing truth
1 reb

Oh and blood moon is simply better because it hoses rug Delver. Bolt/fire/ice can still deal with magus, and they regularly keep them in from my experience.

[Einherjer]

Cage is bad. IMO when it comes to gravehate hate. It's either leyline or surgical. Surgical in snapcaster based decks and leyline in combo decks. Why? Because of opponents discard/countermagic. Leyline dodges both discard and Force of Will which makes it such a powerful card. It sucks to draw into it late, but it's just so much better than grafdiggers cage. If the dredge player goes crazy on the play and flips a bunch of therapies, grafdiggers cannot help you.

I'd play:
4 leyline of the void
4 leyline of sanctity
3 blood moon
3 echoing truth
1 reb

Oh and blood moon is simply better because it hoses rug Delver. Bolt/fire/ice can still deal with magus, and they regularly keep them in from my experience.

I like your sideboard, maybe because its 1-1 mine. And I agree on your argumentation on Blood Moon, well because I stated the same on last page :)

I have to admin I am a little worried about a new deck, which seems to be evolving right now. Its this UW Terminator Controldeck featuring Terminus, Jace TMS, Ensnaring Birdge and so on.

This decks seem to be a tough fight - atleast harder than Stoneblade. But in this MU Grislebrand seems to shine as he can draw us the bounce + counter we need. What do you gus think of this MU? Ill start testing during the end of the week.

[CookedChestnuts]

I like your sideboard, maybe because its 1-1 mine. And I agree on your argumentation on Blood Moon, well because I stated the same on last page :)

I have to admin I am a little worried about a new deck, which seems to be evolving right now. Its this UW Terminator Controldeck featuring Terminus, Jace TMS, Ensnaring Birdge and so on.

This decks seem to be a tough fight - atleast harder than Stoneblade. But in this MU Grislebrand seems to shine as he can draw us the bounce + counter we need. What do you gus think of this MU? Ill start testing during the end of the week.

I play 1-2 Chaos Warp maindeck, and 3 Echoing Truth in the board. Combined with Griselbrand's draw 7, and the 8 cantrips + Intuitions main, I think I'll be able to find it bounce for Ensnaring Bridge/Jace.

[JPA]

I tested Griselbrand extensively today. He is...

FKIN AWESOME!!!

That's all I have to say, I think you know the reasons.

Let's see how this SCG Open goes, I will probably post the updated Matchup analysis after that.

[Tenbin]

I tested Griselbrand extensively today. He is...

FKIN AWESOME!!!

That's all I have to say, I think you know the reasons.

Let's see how this SCG Open goes, I will probably post the updated Matchup analysis after that.

I concur! I won a 4 round tournament with a top 4 afterwards with 6-0 in matches with this deck today, the Griselbrands really went the extra mile compared to Progenitus. I also went with 2 Jace in the main rather than 2 Chaos Warp, not because I mislike the Warp but really because I wanted to try out Jace in the deck. I really did felt he pulled his weight as well, not only when he hit the board but also to suck up counterspells from S&T and Sneak Attack.

S&T into Sneak Attack was also a popular play.

The decks I faced were:

Swiss:
UW Stoneblade 2-1
BUG Control 2-1
UB Merfolk 2-1
BUG Control 2-1
Top 4:
RUG Tempo 2-0
BUG Control 2-0

[ivanpei]

Yeah, the deck is really awesome. I've cut the intuitions. They're just not pulling their weight. It's very easy to assemble the combo now since emrakul/griselbrand are interchangeable. I cast intuitions once for every 3 times I see it. Usually its force food or sits awkwardly in hand. I've since gone -3 intuition for + 1 pierce and + 2 preordain. Having 10 cantrip rocks. The deck is hyper consistent, reasonably fast and can pack 10 md counters! I've been testing against Stoneblade alot and I have a positive matchup against it.

At the moment, this feels like the best combo deck in the format, and I'm a storm/reanimator/dredge player as well. Dredge and reanimator gets hated out easily by gravehate. And storm can't even beat mav's md thalias/gsz-teeq. Rip storm.

Anyone tested against temporal RUG? That decks seems like the DTB right now so just wanna know if we can beat it. Seems like a hard mu. Blood moon shines here though.

[CookedChestnuts]

Yeah, the deck is really awesome. I've cut the intuitions. They're just not pulling their weight. It's very easy to assemble the combo now since emrakul/griselbrand are interchangeable. I cast intuitions once for every 3 times I see it. Usually its force food or sits awkwardly in hand. I've since gone -3 intuition for + 1 pierce and + 2 preordain. Having 10 cantrip rocks. The deck is hyper consistent, reasonably fast and can pack 10 md counters! I've been testing against Stoneblade alot and I have a positive matchup against it.

At the moment, this feels like the best combo deck in the format, and I'm a storm/reanimator/dredge player as well. Dredge and reanimator gets hated out easily by gravehate. And storm can't even beat mav's md thalias/gsz-teeq. Rip storm.

Anyone tested against temporal RUG? That decks seems like the DTB right now so just wanna know if we can beat it. Seems like a hard mu. Blood moon shines here though.

Can I get an updated list from you Ivan?

[ivanpei]

Here's my list, smooth and simple:

4 Brainstorm
4 Ponder
2 Preordain
4 Force
3 Daze
3 Spell Pierce
4 Sneak
4 Show
4 Emmy
4 Griselbrand
4 Lotus Petal

4 Scalding
4 Blue Fetch
3 Island
1 Mountain
3 Volc
3 Tomb
2 City

SB as above.

[catmint]

I played A LOT against my buddy with his counter-top thopter + ensnaring bridge/humility MD.

My findings:
Preboard the matchups is even to slightly favourable for us. We combo off very consistently with counterbackup and they can rarely counter twice. What helps them is that Show&Tell can be a blowout if they have the hate piece already in hand.

Postboard I tested 2 different routes:
1) Boarding out the show&tell and 3 Monsters adding 2-3 Chaos Warp, 3-4 Red-blast and 2 Jace and becoming sort of a "combo-control" deck myself.
This was slightly unfavourable but ok until he added a pithing needle to the board.

2) Just boarding out 1 Show & tell and 1 Emrakul and the usual daze/lotus petal versus Jace and Chaos Warp (or echoing truth)
Slightly favourable for him, but Griselbrand gave him haedache. Drawing into bounce/counters,... was awesome,

Overall the matchup is acceptable and certainly better than for reanimator or storm combo since they are hurt much more by counter top and have less [effective] protection.

Does nobody of you miss red-blasts in the board? I mean its one of the good things about beeing a UR combo deck right?

[koba]

I don’t understand the obsession with ensnaring bridge, humility and all the likes. I hardly ever see these cards in a real tournament. In the top 32 of starcitygames, for example, I cannot find a single ensnaring bridge (or peacekeeper or whatever obscure card that hoses sneak show). The same thing holds true for the decks to beat at the source.

If that UW terminus deck turns out to be good or if people adapt to sneak show, then maybe I want to water down the combo with cards like chaos orb or jace, but for the moment it just seems bad to me.

I also kind of like cards like grafdiggers cage and extraction instead of leyline. You have something like 10 cantrips, so I want to not be too dependant on my opening hand to fight graveyard decks.

Anyway, I wrote a tournament report for this site.

[catmint]

Agree on Leyline CERTAINLY NOT beeing the best GY hate option.

1) you don't want to mull a good combo/counter hand including 1-2 cantrips/intuition to find the hate.

2) If you run Intuition you can run 3 surgical extraction for 3 mana & 2 life instant speed hate.

3) You can run 1-2 extractions in some matchups as additional combo hate i.e: painter/DDFT

Gravediggers cage is pretty strong! I run 2 Cage and 3 Surgical Extraction.
Surgical is surely better in snapcaster decks, but since we are also a combo deck hating once should be enough

[JPA]

So.... Norm made 20th out of 250 at the SCG Open Providence with 4 Griselbrand 4 Emrakul - Congratulations!

http://sales.starcitygames.com//deckdatabase/displaydeck.php?DeckID=45977

The only Show and Tell deck in the Top 32.

It would be great to get a tournament report :wink:

[Final Fortune]

Yeah, the deck is really awesome. I've cut the intuitions. They're just not pulling their weight. It's very easy to assemble the combo now since emrakul/griselbrand are interchangeable. I cast intuitions once for every 3 times I see it. Usually its force food or sits awkwardly in hand. I've since gone -3 intuition for + 1 pierce and + 2 preordain. Having 10 cantrip rocks. The deck is hyper consistent, reasonably fast and can pack 10 md counters! I've been testing against Stoneblade alot and I have a positive matchup against it.

At the moment, this feels like the best combo deck in the format, and I'm a storm/reanimator/dredge player as well. Dredge and reanimator gets hated out easily by gravehate. And storm can't even beat mav's md thalias/gsz-teeq. Rip storm.

Anyone tested against temporal RUG? That decks seems like the DTB right now so just wanna know if we can beat it. Seems like a hard mu. Blood moon shines here though.

+1, I cut the Intuitions as soon as Griselbrand was printed for Pre-Ordains, and I feel 4xPre-Ordains is correct because the deck really doesn't mind casting 2 cantrips on your second turn unless you've already assembled the combo. I'm not a fan of Daze and Spell Pierce, the deck doesn't need to stop the opponent's threats as much as protect its own - which is why I just play Force of Will, Flusterstorm and REB/Pyro in the SB.

[Einherjer]

Thank you for all the input concerning the UW Terminus-MU!

There is another point I would like to discuss, or more like 2:

1) Counter-Suite

We´ve been using a lot of different set-ups, and even though Ive been testing both I cannot understand what people find on Daze? Yeah the point I am referring to is, to be honest, a pro/con Daze! Why would we like to play Daze? Dazing a Thoughtseize is no great play, dazing a GSZ isnt that cool either... Dazing a Force in our Combo-Turn is pretty strong on the other hand.

This is what I consider the best protection-suite:

4 Force of Will
2 Misdirection
2 Spell Pierce
2 Flusterstorm

We have 6 FoW for the Comboturn, 2 of them can lead to blow-outs when playing vs a Discard.dec. Misdirecting a Hymn is still one of the strongest and most humiliating plays we can do. In Addition to my 6 FoW ( I was used to play 8 --> HiveMind 4 Pact 4 Force ) I play 4 CC1-Counterspells, split apart in two parts. Spell Pierce hits all the relevant proactive spells we do not like: Liliana, Jace, Ensnaring Bridge, Hymn and so on and so on. Flusterstorm on the other hand is great in winning counterwars, and leading to occasional blowouts versus some decks - Stormcombo. Plus Flusterstorm also counters Discard spells quite well. Whats your opinion on this Counter-Suite or the perfect suite at all?

2) The second point I would like to discuss has already been mentioned above. Its the cantrip-Intuition-debate. At the moment I am playing 4 Brainstorm 4 Ponder and 2 Intuition but I am rather disappointed by the Intuitions. If you want to play them early with Petal they result in a tempo-loss, and if you play them later on it might already be too late... I like the idea of cutting both of them in order to squeeze in 2 Preordain, to be honest. What do you others think of this topic?

And Gratz to Norman for bringing our first win home! This will be the first, and many others shall follow, until we reign Legacy! Every player and every deck shall be afraid of the name of Griselbrand and Emrakul combined --> SneakAttack! Hey just a thought, how about a cool name for this deck? SneakAttack sounds so... cardlike...just like Sneak Attack...oh well

Greetings

[Deez_Naughts]

Hey guys,

I played this Saturday at Untouchables Sports Cards and Games*"Legacy for a Mox" event, here in Ontario, and took down the event winning a Mox Ruby. This is only my second event with this archetype, and both have been great showings with a top 8, and a win.

I ran my revised list as follows;

Artifacts
4 Lotus Petal

Enchantments
4 Sneak Attack

Instants
4 Brainstorm
4 Force of Will
3 Daze
3 Misdirection
2 Spell Pierce
2 Intuition

Creatures
4 Emrakul, the Aeons Torn
3 Griselbrand

Sorceries
4 Ponder
4 Show and Tell

Basic Lands
2 Island
1 Mountain

Lands
4 Polluted Delta
4 Scalding Tarn
3 Volcanic Island
3 Ancient Tomb
2 City of Traitors

Sideboard:
4 Leyline of Sanctity
3 Blood Moon
3 Grafdiggers Cage
3 Red Elemental Blast
2 Echoing Truth


Here is a very condescended report from my notes;

Round 1 vs Goblins:

Game 1: My opponent sticks a Lackey on the play, cheats in a Wachief turn 2, and goes for double Piledriver, I FoW one. He drops two more Piledrivers and a Prospector turn 3 and beats me down for the win.

Game 2: I turn 2 Show/Emrakul, and have the FoW for his Warren Weirding.

SB: Nothing.

Game 3: I stick a turn 3 Sneak Attack, untap, Griselbrand in off Sneak, draw 7 into Petal/Emrakul

SB: Nothing

1-0

Round 2 vs RUG Delver:

Game 1: My opponent opens on a Delver, followed by*turn 2 Delver and Mongoose.*He then*Wasteland's my Ancient Tomb to keep me off mana I need to resolve*my combo. Beats ensue, and he wins.

Game 2: I turn 2 Show/Emrakul, and he scoops.

SB: -3 Daze, -2 Petal, -1 Misdirection, +3 REB, +3 Blood Moon

Game 3: He wins the counter war as I go*all in on a turn 2 Show/Emrakul, and we play draw go for awhile. Eventually it comes down to him swinging with two delvers, I respond by trying to REB both, he FoW one of the REB's, and brings me to six life. I untap and go for a Sneak Attack*with Emrakul in hand, he Brainstorms, and double Bolt's me...

SB: -3 Daze, -2 Petal, -1 Misdirection, +3 REB, +3 Blood Moon

1-1

Round 3 vs Re-animator:

Game 1: He goes all in on a turn 2 Animate Dead off his Turn 1 Entomb for Iona, I have FoW for his spell, and a Misdirection for his FoW. I draw for two turns and win off a Sneak/Emrakul

Game 2: Turn 1 I open on double Cage off a Tomb, and FoW his animation attempts the following turns. Eventually I turn 5 Sneak, turn 6 Griselbrand into Emrakul.

SB: -3 Daze, +3 Grafdiggers Cage,

2-1

Round 4 vs Esper Stone Blade

Game 1: I play an uncontested turn three Show/Emrakul, and win.

Game 2: I turn 1 Show/Emrakul, with counter back up, and he scoops.

SB: -3 Daze, -2 Misdirection, -1 Petal, +3 REB, +3 Blood Moon

3-1

Round 5 vs RUG Delver:

Game 1: I mulligan to 4 on the draw, and actually hit a*good hand all things considered; City of Traitors, Lotus Petal, Show and Tell, Griselbrand. I*go all in turn one, but he has FoW.*I lose to his Goyf/Geese beat down.

Game 2: I keep a very counter heavy hand*with a*BS and Ponder.*I ponder turn 1, and setup for a turn 2 Blood Moon. I go for the Blood Moon, and he defends with*double FoW and wrecks*his hand. Over the next three turns I BS and setup my hand for a Show/Emrakul and get there.

SB: -3 Daze, -1 Misdirection, -2 Petal, +3 REB, +3 Blood Moon

Game 3: He mulligan's to 5, and cant win the counter war over a Sneak Attack/Griselbrand on turn 4.

SB: -3 Daze, -1 Misdirection, -2 Petal, +3 REB, +3 Blood Moon

4-1


Top 8 vs B/W

Game 1: He opens with Thoughtseize taking my Sneak Attack. I draw for turn*and hit Brainstorm and pass. He goes for another Thoughtseize, I BS in response seeing 2x Griselbrand and a Show, I hide the combo.*I untap and ride a Show/Griselbrand to victory, not before drawing 14 cards....sick.

Game 2: I have a crazy hand, with petal and a*fetch, but need to draw one mana source. I miss*my second land drop and he*immediately starts attacking my Petal with Disenchant and Vindicate, I hold him off with counters, and draw*another petal to get a Show/Emrakul online, and get there.

SB: -1 Misdirection, -3 Daze, +4 Leyine of Sanctity

5-1

Top 4 vs RUG Delver

Game 1: Turn 2 Emrakul with FoW back up...ya.

Game 2: Turn 2 Emrakul with FoW back up.....ya. Fun match :/

SB: -3 Daze, -1 Misdirection, -2 Petal, +3 REB, +3 Blood Moon

6-1

Finals vs U/R Landstill

Game 1: Not only do I hate this match up, but its against a friend, the creator of the archetype, and Eternal master Rich M. I keep an insanely greedy counter heavy hand with one land and a Ponder. I pay for this greed, and never really get anything going. I lose to manland beat down.

Game 2: This game was great, best of the day. I went for early Sneak/Show, but lost the counter wars. We play draw go for a good 5-6 turns as I re-sculpt my hand. I go for a EOT Intuition which draws a counter from his hand, I then untap and go*for Show and Tell, which*meets counter, I then go for Blood Moon which sticks and wrecks him leaving him with a sole island. The next turn I'm able to dig into a Show and get Emrakul online.

SB: -3 Daze, -3 Petal, +3 Blood Moon, +3 REB

Game 3: He keeps a mana light hand, missing two land drops, but I cant find a creature to combo off with. Eventually the board state is such that I can hard cast a FoW, play Sneak Attack and have a live FoW, REB and Spell Pierce in hand. I go for Sneak Attack, and a flurry of counters ensue. When the dust settles I have a Sneak Attack. The following turn I sneak a Griselbrand, and find Emrakul after drawing 7, and he joins the party to end the match.

SB: -3 Daze, -3 Petal, +3 Blood Moon, +3 REB

7-1


The next event I play, I may make the following changes; Main -1 Misdirection, +1 Spell Pierce, or, -3 Daze, +1 Spell Pierce, +1 Griselbrand, +1 Intuition. Side -3 Cage, +3 Surgical Extraction.


Thoughts regarding this archetype post AVR;

For the main, people cutting Intuition are playing a strictly worse, less solid version of this archetype. I'm at two currently, but want that number at three, I think 4 is to much.*Intuition is a great tutor and a really strong play, simply cutting it, and stuffing in more counters and bad cantrip's is terrible, IMO.

The whole GY hate debate; Cage is linear, I wish they were Extractions all day long for the flexibility. Leyline of the Void is so bad as an option, utter dead weight.

Griselbrand..........wow, wow, wow, <3 *That's all I can say.

[Norm]

So.... Norm made 20th out of 250 at the SCG Open Providence with 4 Griselbrand 4 Emrakul - Congratulations!

http://sales.starcitygames.com//deckdatabase/displaydeck.php?DeckID=45977

The only Show and Tell deck in the Top 32.

It would be great to get a tournament report :wink:

Thanks, I'll be writing my report today. I had a lot of interesting matches, it was a blast.

[Final Fortune]

Intuition is terrible, it only made sense when Progentius and Sneak Attack were a weak pairing, but now that all of the creatures and enablers are interchangeable you don't need to waste your time and mana on finding Show&Tell specifically.

Pre-Ordain is on par with Ponder, and if you're playing ~3 Pre-Ordain your entire deck becomes much more consistent in terms of keepable hands and the speed at which you can dig for an Ancient Tomb in order to ramp into an enabler.

You really don't want to have to have an Ancient Tomb on the board in order to cast your set up spells, think about how much having to play Ancient Tomb in order to cast Intuition exposes you to Wasteland.

[catmint]

Feels like the Intutition is pretty polarising. I don't think it's on the "terrible" vs. "nuts" kind of spectrum, but more in the middle.

My personal opinion is that 8 cantrips are enough and the extra consistency for the combo after a counter war and/or tutoring up 3of hate + bating counterspells is good enough to be a 2 of. Having 10+ cantrips to make the mana development a safer game also has some merit. But since I play a conservative 20 land, 4 basics configuration it is not as important as the upside of intuition.

[Norm]

Intuition is terrible, it only made sense when Progentius and Sneak Attack were a weak pairing, but now that all of the creatures and enablers are interchangeable you don't need to waste your time and mana on finding Show&Tell specifically.

Pre-Ordain is on par with Ponder, and if you're playing ~3 Pre-Ordain your entire deck becomes much more consistent in terms of keepable hands and the speed at which you can dig for an Ancient Tomb in order to ramp into an enabler.

You really don't want to have to have an Ancient Tomb on the board in order to cast your set up spells, think about how much having to play Ancient Tomb in order to cast Intuition exposes you to Wasteland.

I couldn't disagree more, part of the reason this deck is so incredible is it's ability to win games out of nowhere when it had no business doing so. I've had Griselbrand(Sneaked) activations draw me into Intuition to find Emrakul, The Aeons Torn and win on the spot where I wasn't actually able to activate twice.

Intuition makes more hands keepable than Preordain, it turns an otherwise clunky deck into a much more streamlined monster, improves your sideboard cards, and creates winning situations that cantrips couldn't. I've literally used Intuition to find Force of Will, Misdirection, Sneak Attack, Show and Tell, both creatures, even Lotus Petals to win next turn.

[Deez_Naughts]

I couldn't disagree more, part of the reason this deck is so incredible is it's ability to win games out of nowhere when it had no business doing so. I've had Griselbrand(Sneaked) activations draw me into Intuition to find Emrakul, The Aeons Torn and win on the spot where I wasn't actually able to activate twice.

Intuition makes more hands keepable than Preordain, it turns an otherwise clunky deck into a much more streamlined monster, improves your sideboard cards, and creates winning situations that cantrips couldn't. I've literally used Intuition to find Force of Will, Misdirection, Sneak Attack, Show and Tell, both creatures, even Lotus Petals to win next turn.

I concur, and as I said its a strong play, otherwise your outright winning.

[JPA]

I couldn't disagree more, part of the reason this deck is so incredible is it's ability to win games out of nowhere when it had no business doing so. I've had Griselbrand(Sneaked) activations draw me into Intuition to find Emrakul, The Aeons Torn and win on the spot where I wasn't actually able to activate twice.

Intuition makes more hands keepable than Preordain, it turns an otherwise clunky deck into a much more streamlined monster, improves your sideboard cards, and creates winning situations that cantrips couldn't. I've literally used Intuition to find Force of Will, Misdirection, Sneak Attack, Show and Tell, both creatures, even Lotus Petals to win next turn.

+1

Looking foward to your report. :-)

[JPA]

We´ve been using a lot of different set-ups, and even though Ive been testing both I cannot understand what people find on Daze? Yeah the point I am referring to is, to be honest, a pro/con Daze! Why would we like to play Daze? Dazing a Thoughtseize is no great play, dazing a GSZ isnt that cool either... Dazing a Force in our Combo-Turn is pretty strong on the other hand.


I don't like Daze that much either, but it's advantages are pretty big: It can counter a Knight of the Reliquary, a Peacekeeper or a Qasali Pridemage if we don't have the Force of Will and only the combo in hand that is vulnerable to one of the creatures mentioned above. So for that it is quite nice.

[Tenbin]

I don't like Daze that much either, but it's advantages are pretty big: It can counter a Knight of the Reliquary, a Peacekeeper or a Qasali Pridemage if we don't have the Force of Will and only the combo in hand that is vulnerable to one of the creatures mentioned above. So for that it is quite nice.

I actually went away from Daze completely previously, playing Spell Pierce and Flusterstorm instead but sometimes found myself wanting to counter a creature or similarly when I was tapped out. So I'm back to using 2 Daze now.

My current Counter-package:


4 Force of Will
3 Misdirection
3 Flusterstorm
2 Daze


This package has served me very well, winning several games off the back of Flusterstorms

[Einherjer]

As you run 12 counters ( thats 2 more than I do ) I would love to see your list - did you cut the 2 intuitions for it?

[Deez_Naughts]

Flusterstorm is much less relevant than Spell Pierce, it is to linear to play main deck.

Daze, while not being "great", affords us a free catch all counter, and in conjunction with FoW, Pierce, and MisD, creates a cheap and effective counter tool box. Flusterstorm simply makes your tool box much more situational.

Honestly, Pierce is one of the best blue cards right now...

[Final Fortune]

Spell Pierce doesn't counter that much more than Flusterstorm does and it's more important to win the counter wars than anything else. Spell Pierce goes dead in the mid to late game a lot more often than Flusterstorm does as well, it's normal for Flusterstorm to counter for between 3 and 4 additional mana depending on Lotus Petal.

I think Fluststorm is more of a SB card where you're more concerned about stopping Pithing Needle from resolving, similar to Reaniamtor and Tormod's Crypt etc.

[Deez_Naughts]

Spell Pierce doesn't counter that much more than Flusterstorm does and it's more important to win the counter wars than anything else. Spell Pierce goes dead in the mid to late game a lot more often than Flusterstorm does as well, it's normal for Flusterstorm to counter for between 3 and 4 additional mana depending on Lotus Petal.

I think Fluststorm is more of a SB card where you're more concerned about stopping Pithing Needle from resolving, similar to Reaniamtor and Tormod's Crypt etc.

On one hand you defend Flusterstorm in direct comparison to Pierce, then on the other hand you belive it is a side board card. I do not understand this logic, as we are discussing main deck counter packages.

There is good reason why Pierce is run main over cards like Flusterstorm, Dispel, etc; it is relevant against all spells that we care about, and it's cost/effect ratio is above the curve for this archetype.

[catmint]

Is the Leyline of Sanctity really as strong as some claim it to be?

I guess it helps against storm, but against the rest of the field you can only bring it in against heavy discard decks like BW, Pox and Nic Fit right? Since I run 2 misdirection & 3 pierce MD I feel not completely naked against those decks.

I am thinking about playing 2 red-blast and 2 Jace instead, along my 5 GY spots and 3 bounce, 3 blood moon.

[Final Fortune]

On one hand you defend Flusterstorm in direct comparison to Pierce, then on the other hand you belive it is a side board card. I do not understand this logic, as we are discussing main deck counter packages.

There is good reason why Pierce is run main over cards like Flusterstorm, Dispel, etc; it is relevant against all spells that we care about, and it's cost/effect ratio is above the curve for this archetype.

Sorry, second line should be Spell Pierce is more of a SB card, hence the argument for countering Pithing Needle.

Yes, Spell Pierce counters more cards than Flusterstorm, but Spell Pierce doesn't counter any more significant cards than Flusterstorm does game 1. You want the better, linear counter game 1 and the more flexible counter game 2 when the ability to counter Artifacts, Enchantments and Planeswalkers etc. becomes necessary.

[Norm]

I've been content with 3 Spell Pierce, 3 Misdirection, 4 Force of Will as counters. I don't particularly like Daze in situations that aren't protecting my combo as it sets me back a turn, but I'm not entirely against running it.

As a side note, I'm currently testing Chalice of The Void in my board after a friend suggested it over Leyline. I like what it does for our UR Delver matchup and the fact that you don't need to mulligan into it as aggressively.

Additionally, here's my tournament report from SCG Providence: http://www.mtgthesource.com/forums/showthread.php?23768-Where-The-Wild-Things-Are-20th-at-SCG-Providence-with-Sneak-Attack&p=641555#post641555

[Deez_Naughts]

I've been content with 3 Spell Pierce, 3 Misdirection, 4 Force of Will as counters. I don't particularly like Daze in situations that aren't protecting my combo as it sets me back a turn, but I'm not entirely against running it.

As a side note, I'm currently testing Chalice of The Void in my board after a friend suggested it over Leyline. I like what it does for our UR Delver matchup and the fact that you don't need to mulligan into it as aggressively.

Additionally, here's my tournament report from SCG Providence: http://www.mtgthesource.com/forums/showthread.php?23768-Where-The-Wild-Things-Are-20th-at-SCG-Providence-with-Sneak-Attack&p=641555#post641555

Chalice? Ugh.

Why on earth would you shut off 8 cantrips, Pierce, and REB in your own deck?

[Norm]

Chalice? Ugh.

Why on earth would you shut off 8 cantrips, Pierce, and REB in your own deck?

Because an early Chalice on one against UR Delver is literally game over, it's also very effective against discard as most of them are CMC 1 and Burn has a hard time fighting through it. I'm alright with siding out a few Ponders against those decks and the rest may be pitched into Force or used to hold you over until you land a Chalice if needed.

This card is also fantastic against reanimator, storm, elves, rug delver, etc. It's versatile and doesn't influence you mulligan decisions as heavily as Sanctity. I haven't settled on it, but the pros appear to outweigh the cons at this point.

[JPA]

Chalice is definitely powerful. Pretty much like Blood Moon it turns some of our cards into dead ones, but shuts down some decks completely in return.

But I probably wouldn't play it over Leyline of Sanctity. It just autowins too many games. I once Show and Told it into play against U/B Control (with Liliana, Jace, Edicts and stuff) when I didn't have it in my starting hand and used another Show and Tell two turns later to seal the deal with Emrakul, while being protected from Edicts, Liliana and Jace.

[Einherjer]

Even though Leyline doesnt protect your Emrakul from Jace as he targets the creature and not the player, I agree with Leyline being better than Chalice as far as my testing has shown.

[CookedChestnuts]

Chalice? Ugh.

Why on earth would you shut off 8 cantrips, Pierce, and REB in your own deck?

Who are you?

[JPA]

Even though Leyline doesnt protect your Emrakul from Jace as he targets the creature and not the player, I agree with Leyline being better than Chalice as far as my testing has shown.

But it protects me from Jace ultimate, so it's also good against decks with Jace as main win option (although these aren't played much right now).

[Deez_Naughts]

Although not a fan of Leylines in general, I realize Sanctity does provide a sweeping array of hoses when entering a large or unknown meta.

My problem with Chalice is that this archetype is so narrow, that boarding out and shutting off our Ponders, Brainstorms, and to a lesser extent Spell Pierces, REB's, etc; negates the streamlined simplicity of the combo.

[Justin]

Interesting conversation about Chalice vs. Leyline. One more advantage of Chalice@1 is that it shuts down Chain of Vapor in the storm matchup, while Leyline does not.

[ivanpei]

If it's not high tide, you want to be chalicing for zero against storm. It shuts down their artifact mana and slows them alot. You can't Adnauseun with zero floating or iggy loop with led. Also most importantly it does not affect your own cantrips. Of course chalice is also good against high tide @1 while Leyline is useless because once they reach infinite mana they can just find a bounce and get rid of leyline. However surgical and the slow speed of high tide give us the edge IMO against high tide.

[GexxX]

If it's not high tide, you want to be chalicing for zero against storm. It shuts down their artifact mana and slows them alot. You can't Adnauseun with zero floating or iggy loop with led. Also most importantly it does not affect your own cantrips. Of course chalice is also good against high tide @1 while Leyline is useless because once they reach infinite mana they can just find a bounce and get rid of leyline. However surgical and the slow speed of high tide give us the edge IMO against high tide.

As a stormplayer who's played the matchup a lot I must say I disagree. Chalice at zero is okay, turning off a lot of the options storm has to explode in turn one or two.
Let's take a look at the cards ANT plays which are untouched by CotV@0. TES is much more affected, because it relies on an early Ad Nauseam and plays Crome Moxen to achieve this more consistent with little or no mana floating after AN.

Dark Ritual
Cabal Ritual / Rite of Flame
Ponder
Brainstorm
Preordain / Gitaxian Probe
Burning Wish / Grim Tutor
Infernal Tutor
Duress
Thoughtseize / Cabal Therapy
(postboard) CoV, Echoing Truth

Seems enough to combo out.


I assume you play Chalice early (turn 1 or 2) to be able to land it before Storm goes Berserk. The problem in the scenario is that you actually give them time to find a solution (postboard) or ignore it by finding enough rituals to fuel up the combo. I personally think that setting up is the point where SneakShow has to stop or interrupt combo. This means: Dazing Cantrips when possible, because any good storm pilot will try to get discard for your counters as soon as he sees the first island. Collecting all the Combo parts plus Disruption usually takes all your mana and cantrips for the first two turns. Shutting this off is propably the best way to buy time and land your own combo. I admitt that I might be wrong since we've not been testing CotV, but from a few dozen of testgames that's the basic issue I believe.

[Tenbin]

As you run 12 counters ( thats 2 more than I do ) I would love to see your list - did you cut the 2 intuitions for it?

My current list is as follows:

4 Show and Tell
4 Sneak Attack
4 Emrakul, the Aeons Torn
3 Griselbrand

4 Brainstorm
3 Ponder
3 Intuition

4 Force of Will
3 Misdirection
3 Flusterstorm
2 Daze

2 Jace, the Mind Sculptor

3 Lotus Petal
3 Volcanic Island
3 Island
1 Mountain
3 Ancient Tomb
2 City of Traitors
4 Scalding Tarn
2 Misty Rainforest


18 Lands, 7 Cantrips, 2 'out'-spots and Flusterstorms maindeck are usually the points of criticism people have for my build.

18 Lands have served me very well so far, once in a blue moon will I find myself in need of a land, but as of yet, not often enough to warrant a 19th land.

As for the cantrips, I cut one of them and one creature for my two 'out'-spots, currently Jace 2.0. While I certainly appreciate the need for cantrips to assemble the combo, I also see a need for outs main and with Griselbrand our likelyhood of finding said outs increases greatly.

I am currently running 2 Jace as I went to a tournament where I did not think there were any reanimator or other show & tell decks, thus Ensnaring Bridge and Humility were not deemed to be very likely cards on the opponent's side of the board. In that tournament (which I won 6-0) Jace really proved himself to me; he was not only exellent counter-bait (which wouldn't really warrant a place in the deck) but in the cases where he was allowed to hit the board he also greatly improved my own board position. Against control he let me brainstorm and fateseal my way to an exellent hand while keeping the opponent's hand worse for wear and against aggro he bought a turn or two by bouncing and then taking a turn's worth of punishment. In another meta I would probably play Chaos Warp instead so that I'm able to draw 14 with Griselbrand to remove a bridge or similarly.

My input for Flusterstorms main:

I don't really find them too narrow, the spells I really care about are the opponent's counterspells (which it hits with great grace) and the opponent's discard spells (which is also hits quite well). While other spells CAN be dangerous - looking at you Knight - I still have 4 Force of Wills and 2 Daze for them, while having 6 more counters for the spells I really find threatening. I've very rarely come across a situation with this deck where I held a Flusterstorm and truly wished it was a Spell Pierce, maybe against a vial or a planeswalker when I Show'd a creature. However, in that scenario I'd most likely have either 1, exhausted my counters for the Show & Tell anyway or 2, been able to save a relevant counter for the opponent's hail mary pass (as I'd be more likely to try to save a FoW than a Flusterstorm if the Storm count was sufficient)

Chalice has a bit of an awkward relationship with this deck I think, a chalice on 2 would be lovely, sadly that usually drops a bit too late. Chalice at one slows us down to a crawl as we can no longer dig efficiently (it does make Flusterstorm better than Spell Pierce though). Chalice at 0 just feels pretty bad against most decks.. I'd rather just play Blood Moon really =)

Those are my 2 cents anyway.

[catmint]

Thanks for the insight Tenbin. Here my update from the tests from the last weeks

My input concerning the countersuite:
I did not give Philipps initial posts a lot of thought, but recent testing shows flusterstorm is a lot stronger than spell pierce in this deck. The main job is to win counter wars and I had a lot of situations were flusterstorm was the nuts and pierce was not good enough. The downside of not hitting some artifact/planeswalkers sometimes is much smaller than the upside in counterwars. I also think having 3 Flusterstorm MD justifies not running Red-Blast in the SB, which looks awkward in an UR combo deck, but makes a lot of sense if you look at the large MD-countersuite and the other more relevant SB slots.

Additionally Daze was really not amazing in the last couple of weeks. I went down to 2 and cut them completely now. Misdirection on the other hand is pretty good! If I want to keep the number of counters up how about: 4 FoW, 3 Misdirection, 4 Flusterstorm?

Alternatively there could be an argument for -1 Misdirection and/or -1 Flusterstorm and upping some flex slots like Jace/intuition/cantrips. Also running the 4th Petal makes a lot more sense if you run 4 Flusterstorm.

Concerning land count and cantrips
Congratulations winning 6-0 with 18 lands + 7 cantrips. The main reason I run a more conservative 20 land/8+ cantrip configuration is that I believe one of the key aspects to run this deck successful is to mulligan "a lot" and the deck mulligans better with 20 lands.

Experience with the RUG matchup
Played 5 games against a decent RUG player.
I won 4 out of 5; 2 of them 2:0.
The one match I did loose he had 2 red-blasts & 2 FoW in the deciding turn in G3.
SB plan: -2 Intuition, -1 Sneak Attack + 3 Blood Moon.

[Einherjer]

18 lands? 7 cantrips? Oh my gawd! That' even less than I play in my Thresh.dec...Wow you must be lucky :) Ill stay witih 20/8 here aswell! ! !

Counters:
You know my Counter-Suite:
4 Force of Will
2 Misdirection
2 Spell Pierce
2 Flusterstorm

Yes Flusterstorm is great in many Situations, but Spell isn't bad aswell, that is why I still stay with the split. Spell Pierce's paying 2 is enough most of the time, because we do not give the opponent enough time to build up a decent land-count. I think that this counter-suite is pretty much the optimum as it covers all areas!

4 Hardcounter
2 Spellhardcounter/Discard-into-blowout-turner
2 Noncreature-Spellcounter
2 Counterwar-winner

I think it covers everything we need to. Misdirection can creature occasional blowouts, wheres Pierce is still a good card vs some things, Flusterstorm cannot handle. I havnt heard an argument that would make me change this suite - considering playing 10 counter.

I will probably stay with 2 Intuitions, which disallows me to have more open slots-mainboard. So no Chaos Warp for me! As my written exams stopped now I will put up alot of testing into this deck and will report it here, in all detail!

Greetings

[Tenbin]

Hmm, @Catmint, your point about more powerful mulligans is a valid one, when mulliganing I find that cantrips are more useful than just about any other card in the deck and a turn 1 ponder I often find is essential to smoothing out draws for a turn 2-3 combo.

I am really hesitant about dropping my utility spots, something I feel I would probably have to do to if I upped both my land and cantrip count...

Regarding Spell Pierce vs. Daze: I used to play Spell Pierce when I now have Daze but I switched them around so that I'd have more counters against creatures, I mainly think it's a meta choice though, as in some metas you really need counters for creatures I believe.

@Philipp802: I'm sure you could find room for 2 utility spots if you really wanted to, what's your current list?

[Einherjer]

@Philipp802: I'm sure you could find room for 2 utility spots if you really wanted to, what's your current list?

//Lands
4 Ancient Tomb
2 City of Traitors
4 Scalding Tarn
2 Misty Rainforest
3 Volcanic Island
4 Island
1 Mountain

//Enabeler
4 Show and Tell
4 Sneak Attack

//Fatties
4 Emrakul, the Aeons Torn
4 Griselbrand


//Counterspells
4 Force of Will
2 Misdirection
2 Spell Pierce
2 Flusterstorm

//Acceleration
4 Lotus Petal

//Cantrips
4 Brainstorm
4 Ponder

//Tutor
2 Intuition

[jace247]

so i played sneak show at my LGS and took first! my list is always the on i play except i took out progenitus for griselbrand and he was freaking amazing he won me 2 rounds by himself. I played against NO RUG, esper blade, U/W stone blade, and then hive mind round 4. The hardest match up for the day had to be hive mind for me i have never had to play against it and neither had my opponent. i won game one with me casting sneak and throwing emrakul out, and then in game two i won on a technicality. so here is my list for the tourney and i know some of y'all are going to not like it but its what works for me and my meta. oh and btw i won a game just due to magus against blue white blade lol cause he fetched up all his tundras when we got in a counter war over magus and i won it lol !!!!

Creatures:
3 Emrakul
3 Griselbrand
2 Blighsteel colossus

Spells:
4 force
3 daze
3 spell snare
4 show and tell
4 intuition
4 brainstorm
4 ponder
4 sneak attack
3 lotus petal

Lands:
4 scalding tarn
3 polluted delta
2 island
1 mountain
2 city of traitors
2 ancient tomb
4 volcanic island
1 bosiju, who shelters all

side board:
3 spell pierce
2 hydroblats
2 red elemental blast
3 surgical extractions
1 elesh norn
2 magus of the moon
2 misdirection

[Michael Keller]

For anyone watching, Eli Kassis is now in the Finals after defeating Bryant Cook at the NELC (http://www.ustream.tv/channel/jupiter-games-legacy-series) in Binghamton, New York.

Eli is running Sneak and Show, and won a tightly contested Game Two on the heels of drawing fourteen (14) cards with a last-second Griselbrand to find a Force and counter a key spell, thus giving him the win.

[Tenbin]

//Lands
4 Ancient Tomb
2 City of Traitors
4 Scalding Tarn
2 Misty Rainforest
3 Volcanic Island
4 Island
1 Mountain

//Enabeler
4 Show and Tell
4 Sneak Attack

//Fatties
4 Emrakul, the Aeons Torn
4 Griselbrand


//Counterspells
4 Force of Will
2 Misdirection
2 Spell Pierce
2 Flusterstorm

//Acceleration
4 Lotus Petal

//Cantrips
4 Brainstorm
4 Ponder

//Tutor
2 Intuition

As I personally find 3 Petals to be sufficient as well as 7 creatures - given that you even want to try utility spots - those would be the things I'd cut.

I think having a few utility spots is a good direction to take the deck now that we have Griselbrand and also gives the deck room for some growth.

[JPA]

Hey guys,

I made it to the finals of a local Legacy tournament yesterday, losing there to Storm (2-1, games 1 and 3 I had the Sneak Attack on the table and didn't draw a 2nd creature or a cantrip that hit something in 10 turns or something....

I went 3-0-2 in the Swiss Rounds, I.D.ing after winning the 3rd round to secure my Top 8 spot. I won all 3 rounds 2-0, vs Mono B Aggro, Deadguy Ale with Blue Splash and Hive Mind.
In the semifinals I beat The Rock 2-0, in the semifinals 2-1 vs Maverick, with Turn 1 Show and Tell in games 2 and 3 (in game 2 he had the Knight :P).

I didn't have Griselbrand OR Progenitus with me and played with Ulamog. :D I think I didn't use him once. xD Maybe I will write some more of my insights later.
I won a Revised Taiga, better than nothing. :laugh:

[S1N1STER]

Didn't do so hot at my local event on Thursday, only going 2-2. First round I played against Doug McKay who was running 4x Dungeon Geists in his deck :frown:. I think it was game 2 I had a 1st turn lotus petal which I used for a brainstorm which left me with ancient tomb, 2 more petals, show and tell, Emrakul, spell pierce in my hand. Put down the 2 petals and the tomb, cast show and tell, he force'd, so I cast spell pierce and popped emrakul onto the table while he plopped down dungeon geists. Game 3 the dungeon geists reared its ugly head again locking down my show and tell'd Griselbrand, a few turns later, one revoker on sneak attack and one on lotus petal preventing me from being able to cast firespout to kill the geists and a glen elendra archmage preventing me from being able to try to cast a echoing truth was game over.