[DTB] UG Survival / Vengevine (formerly UG Madness)

[CorpT]

His list from Event Coverage:

3 Forest
1 Gaea's Cradle
1 Island
4 Misty Rainforest
1 Scalding Tarn
4 Tropical Island
4 Wasteland
2 Windswept Heath
1 Wooded Foothills

4 Aquamoeba
4 Basking Rootwalla
4 Noble Hierarch
3 Trygon Predator
4 Vengevine
4 Wild Mongrel
1 Wonder

2 Daze
4 Force of Will
3 Stifle
4 Survival of the Fittest
2 Umezawa's Jitte

Sideboard
2 Faerie Macabre
3 Krosan Grip
4 Spell Pierce
3 Submerge
3 Wheel of Sun and Moon

My friend and I talked to him after his round 9 GGSLive Feature match and got some good information from him. Very nice guy. The Wheels seemed a little off in the board. I would expect those to be Crypt if I put this together. The deck looked amazing and played very well. I'm not sure about the 3 MD Predators either. Those seemed a little suspect. I would like to get Brainstorms in as well.

You can watch the video of him beating CounterTop here: http://ggslive.blip.tv/file/3950638/

[Shabbaman]

He runs very little cards that you'd actually like to discard: only the 4 vengevines and rootwalla's plus the single wonder. With only 4 madness cards I'm not sure why you'd call this UG madness.

[coolmagics]

I'm ok with all his blue cards - they pitch to FoW after all.

I'm surprised nobody has questioned the Jitte. Is it even good in this deck? Seems a touch slow and doesn't have much synnergy. The only use I can think of for it is to grow the Vengevines bigger than goyf. I mean, maybe it was just a metagame call, as it is pretty good in an aggro environment, but it sucks getting your creature killed when you attempt to equip it, as happened more than a few times in the coverage.

About the wasteland / Stifle plan, they're all right, but I'm not the biggest fan as it's kind of ineffective against vial decks that don't care about their mana (much) anyway, and you take more damage from zoo. Although it does punish greedy keeps from opponents, which is kind of the whole point.

A final note: add a Llawan, Cephalid Empress to sb to beat mrefolk. In general, the sb could use a lot of help, but that's usually the case.

[dar482]

I agree about some of these points.

-It definitely needs more bullets. Llawan makes sense. I don't know what else it would want.
-Wasteland and Stifle, I'm skeptical about. It's not Goblins or Merfolk. They can operate on low mana and have Vial. Survival is a green and mana demanding card.
-I'm also with Sacher about adding Brainstorm. He's running blue, FoW, loads of fetches, and no card draw or manipulation.
-12 discard outlets (Survival, Mongrel, Aquameoba) and only 9 (Wonder, Vengevine, Rootwalla) cards to discard. It seems like there should be more synergy, possibly drop the Jittes and move them to the board.

[Pastorofmuppets]

It takes 3 slots to be able to run Iona in here.
Just sayin'

[CorpT]

It takes 3 slots to be able to run Iona in here.
Just sayin'

After playing with the deck a little, I can say that Iona does not belong. As weird as it sounds, I'm not sure even Squee belongs. The deck is not a normal Survival deck. The deck should have Brainstorms in it IMO though. It made questionable hands much, much better. Right now, we're testing it with -3 Trygon +3 Brainstorm.

[Atwa]

Here is a deck tech with the guy who went top4 yesterday (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-S0QFF_m03k)

[coolmagics]

You know, the more I think about it, the more I actually like stilfe. Even if you add in a few Brainstorm, you don't have many turn 1 plays anyway, so it's a good way to slow down the opponent. This deck isn't exactly lightning fast, so having a relevent turn one play is good.

I'm sort of changing my mind on Jitte as well. You have to have a plan for when you don't draw SotF, and Jitte at least makes it possible to win games when you don't draw that card or it gets countered.

[Vacrix]

Stifle is also protection from QPM on Jitte or more importantly, Survival. Then again, Spell Snare might be a better choice, as it hits CB as well as QPM, Jitte, Goyf, etc.

[Waikiki]

Lets not forget stifle stops

Crypt
Pridemage
Relic
deed
EE

Cards that hurt your gameplan pretty much :(

Also slowwing them down while u give them a swing with some hasty dudes never hurts.

[eq.firemind]

Looks like a really well thought out deck.
The introduction of Wasteland/Stifle + Noble Hierarch + Daze seems to do wonders to the Madness deck.
If you have Noble in your opening 7, you can cast your Wild Mongrel/Aquamoeba/Survival/Jitte (your crucial cards cost 2 mana) and still be able Waste/have mana on Stifle.
Or you can Daze something and still be able to drop your bomb on turn 2.
IMHO this tempo mechanism is the thing that made yer ol' Madness deck so good.
And Vengevine just adds more nutz to the deck 'cause it fits so nice (I guess even one exaled Vengevine can bring a lot of destruction).
To sum it up, I am very impressed with the deck.

[deadlock]

The introduction of Wasteland/Stifle + Noble Hierarch + Daze seems to do wonders to the Madness deck.
If you have Noble in your opening 7, you can cast your Wild Mongrel/Aquamoeba/Survival/Jitte (your crucial cards cost 2 mana) and still be able Waste/have mana on Stifle.
Or you can Daze something and still be able to drop your bomb on turn 2.
IMHO this tempo mechanism is the thing that made yer ol' Madness deck so good.

Indeed, but not only Madness, but Tempo in general. I hope people will realize this and start adding Noble to their New Horizons lists asap - its simply nuts in this kind of deck as it negates both the "mana-disadvantage" effects of Daze and Wasteland. Especially if you plan on dropping one of these cmc 3 creatures (Knight / Vore).

[unicoerner]

Hi here is my List:

// Lands
4 [RAV] Forest (2)
3 [IN] Island (2)
4 [U] Tropical Island
4 [JGC] Windswept Heath
2 [ZEN] Misty Rainforest
4 [TE] Wasteland

// Creatures
4 [OD] Wild Mongrel
4 [FNM] Basking Rootwalla
4 [CFX] Noble Hierarch
4 [ROE] Vengevine
1 [DIS] Trygon Predator
1 [FNM] Wonder
1 [TO] Arrogant Wurm

// Spells
4 [JGC] Stifle
4 [NE] Daze
4 [EX] Survival of the Fittest
4 [AL] Force of Will
4 [5E] Brainstorm

// Sideboard
SB: 1 [TO] Llawan, Cephalid Empress
SB: 1 [9E] Viridian Shaman
SB: 1 [DS] Viridian Zealot
SB: 2 [ALA] Relic of Progenitus
SB: 2 [CH] Tormod's Crypt
SB: 4 [ZEN] Spell Pierce
SB: 3 [BOK] Umezawa's Jitte
SB: 1 [SHM] Faerie Macabre

I tested Spellsputter Sprite + Vendillion Clique, but so far it wasnt that good. Witness are other possibilies...

I normally don`t like the wastes with Survivla, but if we play Stifle+ Daze, whe should include them

[swarm187]

I'm glad to see that this list did well at Grand Prix. Unfortunately I took mine apart to build BANT Survival for Columbus and promptly got crushed. :(

I'm intrigued by the list, especially the maindeck inclusion of Jitte and Predator. Seeing the metagame there, I can completely understand the Trygon Predators being maindecked. This deck has very little chance against Enchantress game 1, and Predators change that dramatically since they are normally slow to get going. It helps in games against CounterTop, and to a smaller degree, anything that runs Aether Vial.
The Jittes are tough for me to understand. I feel like those slots should be used for something like Meddling Mage or Eternal Witness/Vendilion Clique. I always felt the power of this deck is the ability to Survival up some silver bullets.

While Aquameoba struck me as an outdated card for this list, after playtesting it I agree that it gets a nod here. It's very strong as a discard engine, and it can swing in a pinch. I'm not sure if I like it taking slots away from Goyf and Circular Logic, you can't argue with Top 4 at a Grand Prix.

Overall, I'm really glad that this deck surprised some people. For us who have tried to get the thread going again in the past month or so, I think there's a little vindication in the results. I know I will be building and improving on my own decklist for this week's tournament in hopes that it can make the same kind of waves. I still think there are cards out there that can take this build over the top. Cards like Kira, Great Glass-Spinner (more for sideboard or as a one of) and Renegade Doppelganger seem like they would be really strong here.

[kortero]

Oh, finally I get to play with my Vengevines that I bought for Monument Jund, but never actually got to play with them..

About the original decklist:

It seems to awfully low on blue cards to support Force of Wills. I'm not totally sold on MD Jittes, and I don't really see a reason to include Aquamoebas in the deck when there are only 9 cards that you really want to get to graveyard and only four of them are actually 'madness' cards. With Circular Logics, it would be a whole different story, but if they're cut from the deck, I don't really see why the deck would need 8 instant speed discards outlets. The only cute play with Aquamoeba (and Wild Mongrel) involves n amount of attacking Vengevines on turn two if you have Aquamoeba/Wild Mongrel, Basking Rootwalla and those Vengevines in hand, but that's not enough for me to keep Aquamoebas in the deck.

The way I see this deck (so far I've had only minimal goldfishing with it though) is that it would be optimal to resolve Survival of the Fittest on turn two. That's why I wouldn't really want to play the deck without 3/4 Dazes. Brainstorms (great with fetchlands) make it easier to find Survival, 'combo pieces' or Force of Wills/Dazes. They also pitch to FoW and keep the decks 'blue count' high enough if Aquamoebas are removed. Therefore it's an easy four off for me.

The list I'm trying out at the moment looks like this:

4 Misty Rainforest
1 Windswept Heath
1 Verdant Catacombs
1 Wooded Foothills
1 Flooded Strand
4 Tropical Island
4 Wasteland
4 Forest
1 Island

4 Noble Hierarch
4 Basking Rootwalla
4 Wild Mongrel
4 Vengevine
3 Trygon Predator
1 Wonder

4 Survival of the Fittest
4 Force of Will
4 Brainstorm
4 Daze
3 Stifle

My take on the deck might make it rely a little too much on the 'Survival chain', but to be honest, I don't really see Aquamoeba being an actual threat if Survival is countered or removed. I might see myself cutting 1 Trygon Predator and/or 1 Daze if someone is able to convince me to put Umezawa's Jittes or some other cards back to the deck. Other than that, I can't think of many ways to make the maindeck better. The list has 15 blue cards + 4 Force of Wills at the moment so while it's still a little low, the 'blue count' is getting better. With Noble Hierarchs in the deck, the tempo loss of Daze is not that big of a deal and thus one can play up to four of them. I've included only one Island in the deck because when Survival is on the table, you want to have maximum amount of green mana available. One Island is fetchable with 5 fetchlands if it's really needed.

About Squee: I actually thought about adding one Squee to the deck, but after goldfishing for a while, I realised that once Survival is on the table this deck wants to get 2-3 Vengevines and a Wonder to the graveyard on the course of two turns and swing for the win, and not tutor up a Squee like the 'usual' Survival decks have done.

-kortero-

[Mirrislegend]

I'm happy to see this deck posting results again, and I applaud the creativity of including Vengvine and SotF, but I have some major issues with the GP list.

I understand that the deck needs lots of blue cards to support FoW, but Amoeba will always seem weak to me. Also, I know the deck needs lots of discard outlets, but Mongrel also seems bad. You rarely can affort to pitch more than 1 card to him, meaning he usually can't go face to face with Nacatl, Jotun Grunt, or Goyf and win, much less live. And attacking with Mongrel + Vengevine just isn't scary enough for legacy.

I think at least 2 Wild Mongrels can be cut for Goyfs. While both Mongrel and Amoeba are sub par, we need the FoW fodder and we'd be replacing a green beater with another one anyways.

Thoughts?

[jnosrati]

so im thinking of making a build with ugw or ugb. we have both of the discard outlets from dredge to play with. so we have imp vs tireless tribe.
in making the decision we must consider the following
hierarch taps for w not b
imp is probably better, unless someone can make an argument for discarding at end step to save life vs aggro(already a good mu i assume)
b has thoughtseize
also, control is the bad mu( what specific decks, someone) so black removal is good, but so is swords/path
confidant/random tombstalkers in board would be cool. (seems unessesary)
we can play farie macabre out of board with black...just saying
id be shocked if leyline of anticipation has a place here...but let me wish
is brainstorm really nessesary?
chain of vapor can hit your own madness dude
fauna shaman???

deed could be relevant

Capitalization and punctiation are required on these boards. Please use them in the future. -zilla

[mvilla888]

After watching the deck in action over the weekend, I was really impressed. Contrary to typical SotF builds utilizing a toolbox approach to the game, the speed by which this deck can explode and win games is what made it so effective over the weekend. I watched one poor goblin player swing into what seemed like an empty board and a horde of goblins suddenly shuffling for a new game after seeing multiple Rootwallas and Vengevines appear out of nowhere, take out most of his army and then swing for 15 the following turn to win the game. Jitte does seem like the oddest choice in the deck...without watching every game he played, I have no idea on the effectiveness of the card....a personal choice for me might be Living Wish to get a Kira or Aquamoeba or such as needed, maybe bring in Jitte from the SB against goblins or something?????

One can't argue the results though....we can debate his choices for weeks.....but he's the one that saw the power of the deck and is cashing the check....kudos.

[Mordel]

Between Chapin's crazy-assed survival deck and this madness deck(people continue to call threshold threthreshthresh, so why the resistance here?), I was inspired to log back onto this site to see what folks are saying and if Caleb was posting about his deck.

Anyway, I typically tend to side with pilots/creators over pundits. As far as Caleb's card choices go, I don't really see amoeba as being altogether terrible...it is a relatively sturdy blocker and connects for three, it is also an additional discard outlet. Four does seem excessive, but I understand the niche that it fills. Jitte has many uses and for just two slots, it is a card that provides a great deal of utility. If I was going to play a deck like this at an event with a very large number of potential rounds, I would go for broad power over pinpoint hate etc.

I think there are many flexible slots in the deck, but people should really test the original build enough to do its creator's testing justice before they try to change it. Tarmogoyf and spell snare seem like really strong additions to the deck, but just tossing in brainstorms for aquamoebas seems extremely half-assed to me...I mean, jittes got dropped too which leaves you with absolutely no clinchers...really?

Actually test these decks a decent amount first before you dick around with them a bunch. That's just my approach, but I think any changes, even if radical, will probably end up a great deal more solid if a few days are spent playing numerous matches against capable players, rather than a few randoms on mwsplay/games.


Edit- Just for the sake of clarity: I have a serious hard-on for spell snare and goyf, but before putting them in the deck, it is important to figure out what actually needs to be changed; eleven discard outlets with the ability to swing with a shit storm of vines, puppies and lizards could make goyf actually superfluous...as crazy as that may sound. If I was going to give amoeba the axe, I would at least exchange it for a card that guarantees me something, like intuition. I am just talking out of my ass here, but intuition eot for vines, then dropping a discard outlet creature, walla and swinging for twelve seems quite degenerate.

[Hanni]

I tried a version that splashed black for Big Game Hunter, but I think maybe I was hasty (no pun intended) in dismissing the simplicty of the U/G Tempo build. I've decided to revisit it, and this is what I would do:

G/U Vengevine Madness

// Lands
4 [ZEN] Misty Rainforest
3 [ON] Windswept Heath
1 [ON] Flooded Strand
4 [R] Tropical Island
3 [UNH] Forest
1 [UNH] Island
4 [TE] Wasteland

// Creatures
4 [CFX] Noble Hierarch
4 [TO] Basking Rootwalla
4 [OD] Wild Mongrel
3 [TO] Aquamoeba
4 [ROE] Vengevine
1 [JU] Wonder

// Spells
4 [IA] Brainstorm
4 [SC] Stifle
4 [NE] Daze
4 [AL] Force of Will
4 [EX] Survival of the Fittest

// Sideboard
SB: 4 [ZEN] Spell Pierce
SB: 1 [TO] Llawan, Cephalid Empress
SB: 2 [DIS] Trygon Predator
SB: 2 [TSP] Krosan Grip
SB: 2 [SHM] Faerie Macabre
SB: 2 [DK] Tormod's Crypt
SB: 2 [BOK] Umezawa's Jitte

While I agree that Trygon Predators are a great call against CounterTop, I'm not sure it's necessary. This deck is more than capable of getting a Survival online before they get an active CounterTop up, especially since it utilizes a tempo package to give it a superior early game. It's also capable of playing through a Counterbalance if it has any discard outlet (not just Survival) in play, by pitching Vengevines. Vengevine triggers from creatures "cast," not "resolved." Also, hardcasted Vengines sneak past most Counterbalances since they are 4cc.

Now I'm not saying Trygon Predator isn't savage against CounterTop, because of course it is, and you'd definitely want to board into them for that matchup. I'm just not sure that you really need them enough in other matchups to warrant running them in the maindeck.

I also understand that Umezawa's Jitte is probably a really solid plan against aggro decks, since it makes shitty Rootwalla's, Mongrel's, and Aquamoeba's actual threats, but I don't think it's necessary. As someone has said (or maybe I read it in the MTG coverage), he won a game against Goblins by just dropping a bunch of Rootwalla's/Vengines out of nowhere to trade with the Goblin army, and then swung on his (Caleb's) turn for 15. This deck's primary win is through Vengevine beatdown; I think of this deck as more of an aggro/combo deck. Against most decks, and even aggro, that's the winning strategy. Jitte seems like it doesn't do much outside of the aggro matchups, so just like Trygon Predator, it seems better to be in the sideboard.

Cutting those cards frees up space for maindeck Brainstorm's, which this deck absolutely should be running. There's literally no reason whatsoever to not run Brainstorm.

I can completely understand not including Tarmogoyf, since Tarmogoyf doesn't enable the "combo," which is the focal point of the deck. Rootwalla's and Mongrel's may not be the same level of p/t efficiency as Goyf, but they happen to enable Vengevines. Tarmogoyf is just a big hasteless beater, which may be an awesome card to include in the deck if one finds the space for it, but it's not an auto-include.

Brainstorm, on the other hand... there's just no reason to not run it. Brainstorm fixes bad hands early, draws gas mid-late, and increases overall consistency. Even more importantly, Brainstorm digs efficiently... meaning it helps enable more broken openings, like turn 2 Survival. People can argue about this till they turn blue, but there is absolutely no reason to not run Brainstorm in here.

After watching the video of Caleb discussing his deck in a video on the MTG coverage, and reading background information, Caleb basically ported the Survivals and Vengevines into Roland Chang's old Madness list, cut a few things, and added a few things, and went with it. He didn't invest months and months of time into building the deck, so it's not like he explored all avenues and this was the most optimal list possible. The list is great, don't get me wrong, but I think had he spent some more time developing it, he would have concluded that Brainstorm should be in the deck. He's a magic-league regular, so for those who visit magic-league, I'm sure you can PM him directly on there for some insight.

Anyway, that's how I feel about this deck right now, and that list is the list I'll do some playtesting with. I also want to note that the amount of blue spells in my list is currently 20, which feels alot better than what Caleb was running (17, I think). Also, 2 Daze seems dumb since they are good early and bad late (and he runs no Brainstorm to get rid of mid-late Dazes). 4/4/4 Stifle/Wasteland/Daze seems optimal IMO.


Indeed, but not only Madness, but Tempo in general. I hope people will realize this and start adding Noble to their New Horizons lists asap - its simply nuts in this kind of deck as it negates both the "mana-disadvantage" effects of Daze and Wasteland. Especially if you plan on dropping one of these cmc 3 creatures (Knight / Vore).

I've been running Noble Hierarch's in my New Horizon's list for months. I think it's retarded that no one else does (or at least, very few people).

EDIT: To those considering cutting Aquamoeba... I realize that it's a relatively shitty card, especially when you compare it to something like Tarmogoyf, but you have to understand that its role in this deck is not to be an amazing beater. It's meant to be a discard outlet first, which happens to be able to beat for 3, block with an ass of 3, and pitch to FoW. Being a discard outlet is the primary reason its included, and if you playtest the deck long enough, you'll understand that you need to have at least 10 discard outlets including Survival. Caleb ran 12, I'm testing with 11 (in Caleb's video on the MTG coverage page at Wizards, he mentions often siding out 1 Aquamoeba).

Now, people can argue that Tireless Tribe or Putrid Imp are better, and being 1cc does make them potentially more broken by enabling turn 1 Vengevines, but they also push the deck into running a 3rd color, and they don't pitch to FoW.

[Mordel]

I think that my dismissal of brainstorm might have been a bit too prompt in light of what was taken out for them. I think that within the context of what you(Hanni) put them in for, they should probably be in the deck.

Things look really tight, so fitting jittes into the main could prove difficult at best and I certainly couldn't volunteer any ideas on squeezing them in.

Also, thanks for the background info on the deck. It is surprising to me that he was able to achieve such a strong finish with such a seemingly quick and dirty update.

[Hanni]

Also, thanks for the background info on the deck. It is surprising to me that he was able to achieve such a strong finish with such a seemingly quick and dirty update.

After reading the way I worded it, I make it sound like he randomly built the deck right on the spot. I appologize. He did build and do limited playtesting with the deck before Grand Prix Columbus. What I meant was that he didn't extensively test the deck enough in order to build the most optimal version possible. He did well with the deck for several reasons:

A) He's a great player.
B) The deck concept is very strong.
C) Luck*

*Obviously, in order for anyone to Top 8 a 1300 person GP, some amount of luck is involved. Pairings, topdecks, etc.

[kortero]

That's one smooth list Hanni, and I really like it. Do you feel that 20 lands is enough? With 4 Noble Hierarchs, that basically translates into 22 lands iirc., which in turn, should be enough even if the deck is a little 'mana hungry'.

Could you explain me why exactly the deck at least 10 discard outlets? That said, I will test your build as it is and I'm ready to accept that those Aquamoebas might belong to the deck after all. It also feels much better now that the deck has 20 blue cards to pitch to FoW.

About Brainstorm, I agree wholeheartedly with you that there is absolutely no reason not to run a playset. So many times have I found that 'last piece of the puzzle' with Brainstorm and then I've been able to 'explode' on the following turn. :)

[Hanni]

That's one smooth list Hanni, and I really like it. Do you feel that 20 lands is enough? With 4 Noble Hierarchs, that basically translates into 22 lands iirc., which in turn, should be enough even if the deck is a little 'mana hungry'.

You're forgetting the 4 Brainstorm, which translates into 24 lands, which makes 20 real lands plenty. The deck is also 2 colors, which makes the manabase very consistent in producing the colors you want, when you want them. The only issue I've had was Wasteland not producing green for Survival activations.


Could you explain me why exactly the deck at least 10 discard outlets? That said, I will test your build as it is and I'm ready to accept that those Aquamoebas might belong to the deck after all. It also feels much better now that the deck has 20 blue cards to pitch to FoW.

Because you won't always see Survival. Without a discard outlet, this deck sucks. The whole point of the deck is to put Vengevines and Rootwalla's into play for free; you need discard outlets to do that. Turn 1 Brainstorm, Turn 2 Aquamoeba, pitching Vengevine and Rootwalla, swing for 4 is fairly common, and an extremely strong play. On the following turn, you can swing for 10 if you pump both Rootwalla and Aquamoeba.


About Brainstorm, I agree wholeheartedly with you that there is absolutely no reason not to run a playset. So many times have I found that 'last piece of the puzzle' with Brainstorm and then I've been able to 'explode' on the following turn. :)

Exactly. I have no idea why Caleb didn't put Brainstorm's into his list. I start every blue deck that also runs fetchlands with a playset of Brainstorm's, and it seems even more important in this deck than most because of it's combo-ish nature.

[kortero]

I can see clearly the benefits (best plays with) of Wild Mongrel and Aquamoeba. Maybe it's just worth it then to maximize the odds of having a turn two discard outlet if you happen to have n amount of Vengevines and a Basking Rootwalla in hand. At that point, the deck just explodes, and that's exactly what makes the deck so fun to play with.

[CalebD]

After reading the way I worded it, I make it sound like he randomly built the deck right on the spot. I appologize. He did build and do limited playtesting with the deck before Grand Prix Columbus. What I meant was that he didn't extensively test the deck enough in order to build the most optimal version possible. He did well with the deck for several reasons:

A) He's a great player.
B) The deck concept is very strong.
C) Luck*

*Obviously, in order for anyone to Top 8 a 1300 person GP, some amount of luck is involved. Pairings, topdecks, etc.

True that I only had the deck built about a week before the tournament, and my testing was focused on New Horizons, Meandeck Countertop (I wanted to beat infinite paths/swords), Gobbos, Zoo, and Merfolk. New Horizons was the most eye-opening deck to test against, as it was then that I got the full grasp of how important and vulnerable mana really is in legacy. Once I understood those matchups down to the card, I was happy with my list, and if I played in that tournament again my changes would be minimal, but important.

A) False. I played like garbage all weekend, and the deck played catch up. There were numerous times when I didn't even realize I'd won, but just stumbled through the motions.
B) Of course.
C) I suppose. Shooter on ML asked me if I'd won a match without Survival, as I seemed to always have it in the feature coverage. Sure, I had Survival a lot, but I mulled a lot to find it, and watched plenty of Survival players keep loose hands without Survival and then bitch about how unlucky they were to never draw Survival. Rather than keep a garbage hand and hope that Brainstorm fixes things, why not draw six cards and get another chance at the nuts?

As far as pairings go, I got paired against ten+ different archetypes, three members of the CFB crew with different decks, and three different members of the top eight in the swiss. I suppose I could've been paired against dredge, but I didn't expect dredge to be a heavily played deck, and it wasn't. That doesn't seem like luck to me as much as a read on the metagame.

[Mordel]

I dicked around with the deck a bit with a buddy on mws and found that winning a game without survival was surprisingly winnable without a survival as long as a brainstorm showed up in my six...keep in mind that was in a match where the thresh-like disruption package wasn't a massive factor.

I love survival strategies that can get maximum effect out a survival after only one turn with it active.

I think that I might actually pick this deck up as my pet deck for the format instead of survival rock because active/reactive disruption coupled with explosive turns seems like it is quite a bit stronger than the proactive type of disruption and broad spectrum hate that survival rock boasts with what seems to go into recent top eights.

It is a bit off topic, but is there any discussion concerning Chapin's survival deck on this site? I checked around a bit and couldn't find anything. I am mostly interested because it is just a pretty cool concept. I don't think it is something that I would personally opt to play, but it is quite intriguing all the same.

[Hanni]

A) False. I played like garbage all weekend, and the deck played catch up. There were numerous times when I didn't even realize I'd won, but just stumbled through the motions.

Well, you Top 8'd a GP with 1300 players, so I assumed that you were a great player.


C) I suppose. Shooter on ML asked me if I'd won a match without Survival, as I seemed to always have it in the feature coverage. Sure, I had Survival a lot, but I mulled a lot to find it, and watched plenty of Survival players keep loose hands without Survival and then bitch about how unlucky they were to never draw Survival. Rather than keep a garbage hand and hope that Brainstorm fixes things, why not draw six cards and get another chance at the nuts?

As far as pairings go, I got paired against ten+ different archetypes, three members of the CFB crew with different decks, and three different members of the top eight in the swiss. I suppose I could've been paired against dredge, but I didn't expect dredge to be a heavily played deck, and it wasn't. That doesn't seem like luck to me as much as a read on the metagame.

I didn't mean that you got unusually lucky, and that's the only reason for your performance. What I meant was, it takes alot of luck to Top 8 an event of 1300 players. Every single person who made Top 8 had an amount of luck on his or her side, whether that be pairings, topdecks, opponent misplays, or whatever. I'm sure if Tomaharu Saito played against nothing but Goblins and Zoo all day long, he wouldn't have even made it to Day 2.

As far as Survival goes... you can mulligan as hard as you want for Survival, but sometimes you're just not going to find it. Brainstorm helps smooth draws early, and draw gas mid-late. I've done a little playtesting with the deck with Brainstorm and without, and I'm 100% certain that it's an auto-include into this deck. The fact that Brainstorm not only helps to dig for Survival, but still allows your deck to be explosive without it, should be testament to why it should be in the deck.

[CalebD]

Never assume! I had a deck I knew inside and out that was well tuned for a metagame that I also knew inside and out playing against players who'd never played legacy before in their lives. This doesn't mean I didn't throw a game every other match.

@C: if we're not talking about unusually lucky, but average amount of lucky, then what's the point of mentioning it at all? Yes, all players who top eight a grand prix didn't have to mulligan to oblivion every game. Nor were they hit by a bus on the way to their hotel. There is some luck involved. I'd like to add "D: Caleb continued to keep breathing." as the 4th reason I top eighted that you missed.

And I think Saito could have day 2'd after playing zoo nonstop day one.

And again, if you're relying on Brainstorm to find you Survival, you're going to lose games to it. One mana is a lot in this deck, especially since every single other bit of mana goes to impacting the board. I could understand splashing white for a couple of Enlightened Tutors simply because it actually does find the Survival, but Brainstorm does not. If your hand needs a Survival to be effective, Brainstorm is rarely going to get you there. While mulling aggressively doesn't always get you survival, it'll get it roughly 70+% of the time, and then there's the 5%-10% chance you'll get the non-Survival nut draw with every mulligan. Hands that need Brainstorm need to be shipped.

That said, Brainstorm is a fine card, and I ran it a while before deciding it wasn't doing enough. Still, I guarantee I have tested more with this deck, and I am 100% sure it is not an auto-include. ;)

[Hanni]

And I think Saito could have day 2'd after playing zoo nonstop day one.


I don't agree, but I won't pursue the issue because its impossible to prove and unecessary to argue over.


And again, if you're relying on Brainstorm to find you Survival, you're going to lose games to it. One mana is a lot in this deck, especially since every single other bit of mana goes to impacting the board. I could understand splashing white for a couple of Enlightened Tutors simply because it actually does find the Survival, but Brainstorm does not. If your hand needs a Survival to be effective, Brainstorm is rarely going to get you there. While mulling aggressively doesn't always get you survival, it'll get it roughly 70+% of the time, and then there's the 5%-10% chance you'll get the non-Survival nut draw with every mulligan. Hands that need Brainstorm need to be shipped.

That said, Brainstorm is a fine card, and I ran it a while before deciding it wasn't doing enough. Still, I guarantee I have tested more with this deck, and I am 100% sure it is not an auto-include. ;)

Well, you're the one who Top 8'd with the deck, not me, and I'm sure you do have more testing done with the deck than myself. If you are certain that Brainstorm does not belong in the deck, I have no credibility to argue with you. However, I have done significant amounts of playtesting with blue-based aggro/control decks in this format for the last 4 years, and I'd never play one without a playset of Brainstorm's (the only exception being Merfolk).

My limited testing with your deck has shown me that Brainstorm is extremely strong in this deck, and even moreso than most other blue-based aggro/control decks that I've played because it wants to assemble a specific mix of spells. Maybe my playtesting is skewed because I don't aggressively mulligan for Survival like you do, but I've been successful in playtesting without aggressively mulliganing for Survival, so who knows.

[dar482]

Caleb, how about the Wasteland package? If Brainstorm isn't a consideration, is cutting Wasteland a possiblity?

[Mordel]

Taking out wastelands...really?

I guess that I could see brainstorm as being a crutch with this deck, but I see brainstorm as more of a means of compensating for not getting a survival than a means of finding a survival, personally.

[Zamussels]

I'm playing with this deck also and the cards I'm wondering about is how many Aquamoebas, how many Trygon Predators, how many Jittes and Dazes. I saw the deck tech with Caleb and he mentioned he didn't know if he should cut one Predator and one Aquamoeba. What would you add in their place if Brainstorm is not a choice? More Daze? Is Jitte worth it?

[dar482]

I personally cut 2 Predators, the Cradle, and both Jittes. Even in a few games, I couldn't imagine playing blue without Brainstorm, it would just feel so wrong. Even the original Legacy UG Madness had it over Careful Study.
I'm wary of cutting the Wastelands and Stifles because I want something against combo. The deck has little protection otherwise.

I'm also questionable about 4 Meobas. They're weak in general and there's no much to discard in the deck with Mongrels and Surivals already.

[Hanni]

I can't understate how frequently Brainstorm enables turn 2 Mongrel/Aquamoeba + Rootwalla + X (usually 1) Vengevine(s). The ability to put 3 creatures into play on turn 2, one of them haste and swinging for 4 is just nuts. When you untap, you have the potential to swing for alot more if you pump the Rootwalla and Mongrel/Aquamoeba.

Even with 4 Brainstorm in the deck, I still run into major consistency issues sometimes. Caleb, I love your idea and this deck is insanely good, but I don't understand the logic behind not running Brainstorm. At any rate, the list I posted a page back has been amazing for me, and I think the maindeck is solid.

[Zilla]

Caleb, how about the Wasteland package? If Brainstorm isn't a consideration, is cutting Wasteland a possiblity?
He didn't say it isn't a consideration; he said it's not an auto-include. That's a very important distinction.

He also mentioned that his testing against New Horizons really opened his eyes to how easily exploited Legacy manabases are, so it's a safe bet he'll tell you the Wasteland package shouldn't be cut.

[IsThisACatInAHat?]

@Hanni, I've been playing your version on MWS with pretty predictable results. One thing I've noticed though is that the full Stifle/Waste/Daze package keeps me on critically low mana during the early game. Usually (hand permitting) I'll play the first few turns like Tempo Thresh, then drop a discard outlet and bin some Vengevines while they're recovering. The problem I found is that the mana-intensity of the Survival engine conflicts badly with an active mana denial plan. Have you found the same issues, or do you usually try to get Vengevines up asap and then use your resource denial?

@Caleb, I agree with your statement that 1 mana is a lot for this deck. There's always lots to do and not enough to do it with. If that's the case and is your reason for not running Brainstorm, could you explain why you think Jitte deserves a slot in the main? It's much more mana-intensive than BS and does less immediately. Against aggro matchups (the ones where you want it to begin with), the time it takes to cast and equip can be critical. I saw at least one game against Saito (G1 in the swiss) where you landed it and then just died to a massive attack because Saito was busy landing business. I know Merfolk is a special case with islandwalk, but Zoo can just bolt the creature it's equipped to and Goblins can just cycle Incinerator. If efficient mana use is your objective, does Jitte really merit a maindeck (or sideboard) slot, especially over Brainstorm? How do you typically deal with consistency issues? Even aggressive mulling doesn't necessarily net a Survival, so (supposing you knew before hand that no hand you draw will have one), what are you looking for to keep? I'm really curious to hear your thoughts considering your list?

[Hanni]

@Hanni, I've been playing your version on MWS with pretty predictable results. One thing I've noticed though is that the full Stifle/Waste/Daze package keeps me on critically low mana during the early game. Usually (hand permitting) I'll play the first few turns like Tempo Thresh, then drop a discard outlet and bin some Vengevines while they're recovering. The problem I found is that the mana-intensity of the Survival engine conflicts badly with an active mana denial plan. Have you found the same issues, or do you usually try to get Vengevines up asap and then use your resource denial?

It all depends on what your hand has, and what the situation is like.

Survival may be somewhat mana intensive, but denying your opponent resources is like a timewalk. So the correct line of play is impossible to explain without specific examples. Sometimes, it is correct to forego the mana denial plan and speed out Survival/Vengevines. Sometimes, you will want to hit the opponent with some mana denial before going for the gold.

So yes, there is a small conflict between Survival wanting you to spend alot of mana, and the mana denial plan subtracting from your mana. However, the strength of the mana denial plan + the explosiveness of the Survival plan makes running both very well worth it, and a big reason why I feel this deck is so successful.

---

My record so far today on MWS:

2-0 vs UBg Landeed
2-1 vs RW Landfall Sligh
0-2 vs Zoo
2-0 vs Zoo
2-1 vs UWb CounterTop Thopter
2-0 vs BW Deadguy
2-1 vs 4c Cephalid Breakfast
2-1 vs Dredge
2-0 vs NL Dredge
2-0 vs TES
1-2 vs Rb Goblins
1-2 vs BWG Deadguy Rock
2-0 vs GW Survival
2-0 vs UB Reanimator
2-1 vs Pox
1-2 vs Elves
2-0 vs White Weenie
2-0 vs Naya Sligh
1-2 vs URg Dreadstill
2-1 vs UGr Tempo Threshold
2-1 vs DDFT
2-0 vs DD Shelldrazi
2-0 vs Affinity

(I am only counting finished games. I've played alot more games, but they result in Player Lost at 1-0, 1-1, 0-1, etc.)

All of my losses so far have involved play mistakes. This deck is pretty tricky, I can see why you had difficulties piloting it at times, Caleb.

[CalebD]

@Hanni: thanks for rephrasing. I have absolutely no problem with you tinkering with the list or questioning my choices, especially since most of your observations are spot on or close to it. You're an intelligent player and I like that you've taken an interest in the deck. I just didn't think you were in a place to be arrogant, so I appreciate your adjustment of tone. =)

Edit: And glad to see you're tearing up MWS. I <3 how, in legacy, you can play ten rounds against ten completely different decks. What a great format.


If that's the case and is your reason for not running Brainstorm, could you explain why you think Jitte deserves a slot in the main? It's much more mana-intensive than BS and does less immediately. Against aggro matchups (the ones where you want it to begin with), the time it takes to cast and equip can be critical. I saw at least one game against Saito (G1 in the swiss) where you landed it and then just died to a massive attack because Saito was busy landing business. I know Merfolk is a special case with islandwalk, but Zoo can just bolt the creature it's equipped to and Goblins can just cycle Incinerator. If efficient mana use is your objective, does Jitte really merit a maindeck (or sideboard) slot, especially over Brainstorm? How do you typically deal with consistency issues? Even aggressive mulling doesn't necessarily net a Survival, so (supposing you knew before hand that no hand you draw will have one), what are you looking for to keep? I'm really curious to hear your thoughts considering your list?

Jitte and Brainstorm do vastly different things. When are you looking to cast Brainstorm? Turn one to filter into a hand with a turn two vengevine? This competes with Stifle, Wasteland, and Noble Hierarch for one drops, all of which focus on the mana plan and immediately impact the board. After the first several turns against zoo, assuming I didn't get Survival or he Qasali'd it on the play, I'm hoping to have traded off some dorks to keep out of burn range. If he had bolt or path, he probably already used it. Fortunately, the deck is running 24 creatures, and will typically have something to equip the jitte to on turn 3/4. At this point, if I still have a brainstorm in hand, the card I most want to dig for is Jitte, so replacing the Jittes with Brainstorms makes no sense in this scenerio.

As for Survival-less hands I like to keep, a turn two Vengevine is decent against most decks. Basically, I keep any hand that can get there. Typically this includes some amount of pressure as well as multiple instances of disruption: Trygon Predator/Stifle+Waste/Force+Pitch/Daze/Umezawa's Jitte. For example: Hierarch, Predator, Jitte, Daze, and three lands is pretty sweet, and the same hand without Daze is probably still good enough. If I were running Brainstorm instead of Jitte, however, that hand becomes a whole lot less keepable, yet it still looks like a keepable hand because people assume they'll draw something besides crappy madness creatures off of B-Storm, forgetting that the deck is stuffed with crappy madness creatures.

I have an article going up on CFB sometime next week, and I should be busy this weekend, so if you have any more questions feel free to ask me in the article discussion when it goes up.

[Mordel]

I prefer to figure out how a deck works on my own and I end up with a deeper understanding of it, which means sometimes I can get stuff wrong, but during my tinkerings with the deck, I have been finding myself using survival somewhat conservatively in many situations since I don't have as great of a grasp of the machinations of the legacy decks that have come around in the last few months.

I can't help, but think to myself that some folks aren't actually bothering to play the deck or understand how the format works in light of some of the questions that are being asked concerning the disruption route that the new school madness deck can take in addition to shitting out in excess of twelve damage worth of beef eot.

In many ways, I feel from the matches that I have played that it fits a similar niche as TA or stiflenaught as far as the ability to alternate between disruption or an explosive sort of win, however I have also won a few games in a very fish-like fashion, which is something that stiflenaught and TA aren't able to do with nearly as well. I won a few games against my friend playing his weird control homebrew BGw(but still decent at winning games) control deck by actually beating him down like a madness deck would because he was disrupting the survival plan so handily.

I have had a few drinks and am playing this deck a bunch and totally falling in love with it, so hopefully this isn't too glaringly obvious to everyone, but with a format that is as diverse as legacy, you can often find yourself with a sickly beast that rapes a number of top eight decks, but can just lose out of nowhere to some sort of rogue, but fairly tuned homebrew. I know that I have ended up getting my ass handed to me by random stuff, but have overwhelmingly great matchups against decks to beat.
I have been finding that this deck can rape tuned, but still janky rogue decks with fiersome vigor, which is is totally awesome for the places that I end up playing legcay irl.

Kudos.

[kortero]

A lot can be said about Brainstorm. At worst it makes people keep sketchy hands that should be mulliganed. At some point of my 'magic career' I undestood the importance of taking mulligans aggressively enough, and playing with Brainstorm doesn't really change that. I won't keep a hand 'that might just get there' anymore, had it a Brainstorm or not.

Since Caleb has been pretty clear with his opinion on Brainstorm, and as I have enough respect for the original decklist, I will try out proper games today with it. Nevertheless, my intuition tells me that Brainstorm might be really good in the deck and goldfishing with a list with Brainstorms (close to Hanni's list) has felt exceptionally good as well. Only time and testing will tell which 'direction' feels better.. :)

[igri_is_a_bk]

4 Misty Rainforest
4 Windswept Heath
3 Forest
1 Island
4 Tropical Island
4 Wasteland

4 Noble Hierarch
4 Wild Mongrel
3 Aquamoeba
4 Vengevine
4 Tarmogoyf
4 Basking Rootwalla
1 Wonder

4 Force of Will
4 Daze
4 Stifle
4 Survival of the Fittest

Basically I wanted Tarmo in there, and if the guy who top 8s with the deck says "No" to Brainstorm, then I'd agree with him. It also increases the threat density of the deck, but kind of overloads it in 2cc cards.

Trygon, Kira, and Llawan would all be 1-ofs in the sideboard and then the good spells he played like Spell Pierce, Grip, and Submerge.

Do you guys think Goyf is worth it here?

[Whit3 Ghost]

Although this is a rather minor question compared to the discussions about Brainstorm and Goyf, do you think that a 1/1 Emrakul/Macabre split would be better than the two Macabre? Emmy means that Survival, the card that you're aggressively mulling into anyway, is GG against graveyard based strategies and he can also serve as protection from grave-hate that isn't Extirpate/Leyline.

[Rigero]

Why is it gg against gravyard based strategies? you only shuffle your own graveyard into your libary...

[Jak]

Why is it gg against gravyard based strategies? you only shuffle your own graveyard into your libary...

You keep shuffling Faerie Macabre back into your deck so you can keep tutoring for it.

[ChrisElrod]

Well, without squee he would be having to repeatedly draw into creatures to keep it up (and with squee it'd cost GGG for squee->emrakul, emrakul->squee, squee->macabre).
He would also lose any vengevines in his yard, although I don't think this is likely to be particularly significant against most of the decks macabre is crucial against.
This deck being creature heavy may mean that it is fine to have to constantly burn up creatures. As I'm not sure what the probability of him needing a 3rd macabre in any given game is, I can't judge whether it would be worth those downsides to run an emrakul + macabre over double fae macabre.

[kortero]

4 Misty Rainforest
4 Windswept Heath
3 Forest
1 Island
4 Tropical Island
4 Wasteland

4 Noble Hierarch
4 Wild Mongrel
3 Aquamoeba
4 Vengevine
4 Tarmogoyf
4 Basking Rootwalla
1 Wonder

4 Force of Will
4 Daze
4 Stifle
4 Survival of the Fittest

Basically I wanted Tarmo in there, and if the guy who top 8s with the deck says "No" to Brainstorm, then I'd agree with him. It also increases the threat density of the deck, but kind of overloads it in 2cc cards.

Trygon, Kira, and Llawan would all be 1-ofs in the sideboard and then the good spells he played like Spell Pierce, Grip, and Submerge.

Do you guys think Goyf is worth it here?

Short answer, no. Another BIG problem with your list is that you have 16 blue cards in it which is a ridiculously low amount to support Force of Wills.

I tried quite a few games with Calebs list and too many times was I left no blue card to pitch to FoW, and he plays 17 blue cards. In my opinion, this is too low as well.

A friend of mine asked then if the mana denial plan is really worth it and I couldn't give him a clear answer. I couldn't also find a reason not to play with Brainstorms despite what others might say. This lead to the following list:

4 Tropical Island
4 Forest
1 Island
9 Fetchlands (4 Misty Rainforest and 5 green fetches)
3 Wasteland

4 Noble Hierarch
4 Basking Rootwalla
4 Vengevine
3 Wild Mongrel
3 Aquamoeba
2 Trygon Predator
1 Wonder

4 Brainstorm
4 Daze
4 Survival of the Fittest
4 Force of Will
1 Intuition
1 Umezawa's Jitte

This deck is obviously a little more 'combo oriented' now. Intuition has been pure gold. End of turn Intuition for 3 Vengevines is the obvious play, but Intuition can fetch SotF, FoW or most of the cards in the deck depending on situation. I have only 3 Wastelands since the deck is not that focused on mana denial anymore, but a timely Wasteland can still make life hard for the opponent and Wastelands are also awesome with Noble Hierarchs in the deck. With 4 Noble Hierarchs, Dazes become also even better since you can Daze on the first turn and still drop a 'two drop' on the next turn. I like to have few Trygon Predators in the deck and a 'misers' Umeszawa's Jitte might turn aggro matchups upside down when it turns up. The deck has only 4 nongreen mana sources for the purpose of SotF and 9 fetchlands to go well with Brainstorms. I'm not totally sold on the manabase though, but it's close. Finally, 3/3 split with Wild Mongrel and Aquamoeba is mostly because of the 'blue count' and the deck has 19 blue cards to support Force of Wills at the moment which feel a lot better than 17.

[czeluff]

Hanni,

If the Brainstorms are so important, can you explain how you'd SB against different matchups? Playing with Caleb's deck, it's easy to figure out what to pull out: Jitte's come out sometimes, a single Predator, a single Aquamoeba, etc. With yours, I have 0 idea.

[ramanujan]

Hanni,

I see the advantage of the brainstorms here, but would careful study be worth considering? The deck feels so tempo oriented that the potential boost offered by study might be better. I guess what I am trying to get at is Careful Study and Madness and Vengevines in graveyards and the certainty of digging through the deck seem worth the card disadvantage. What do you think? This deck already has several "Bad" cards in it, why not add 4 more instead of brainstorms.

-Peace

[kortero]

Hanni,

I see the advantage of the brainstorms here, but would careful study be worth considering? The deck feels so tempo oriented that the potential boost offered by study might be better. I guess what I am trying to get at is Careful Study and Madness and Vengevines in graveyards and the certainty of digging through the deck seem worth the card disadvantage. What do you think? This deck already has several "Bad" cards in it, why not add 4 more instead of brainstorms.

-Peace

I don't see Careful Study being that useful since pretty much the only card you want to get to the graveyard is Vengevine. At least I prefer to keep those Basking Rootwallas in hand so that I can 'rebuy' those Vengevines by playing Wild Mongrel/Aquamoeba and that free Rootwalla on the same turn.

The way I see Brainstorm is that most of all, it adds consistency to the deck. It also enables some broken plays at times if you need a certain 'combo' piece. At worst, it is a fine card to pitch to that lone Force of Will that has been in your hand since the beginning of the game. :)

[Vacrix]

Careful Study won't work unless you can discard Vengevines. You need to save your Rootwallas for Vengevine tricks. With Survival, though, I'm surprised that this list doesn't run a post-board toolbox of some kind for decks that give it trouble. I could see post-board Predator's being pretty good for the CB matchup. If you don't expect heavy CB in your metagame though, I'd think that maindeck Goyfs looks stronger if you expect aggro.

Either way, I'm very impressed with this deck. It could shape up to be one of the stronger decks in the post-MT format.

[Hanni]

Hanni,

If the Brainstorms are so important, can you explain how you'd SB against different matchups? Playing with Caleb's deck, it's easy to figure out what to pull out: Jitte's come out sometimes, a single Predator, a single Aquamoeba, etc. With yours, I have 0 idea.

What I have been doing so far is determing whether I am on the play or on the draw for game 2. If I'm on the draw, often times I'm cutting Daze for Spell Pierce. Against decks where Stifle's aren't that great, I can drop those. What I board out, if anything, has been dependant on whether I'm on the play or draw; alot of times when I'm on the play, I don't board in anything at all; matchup depending of course.


I see the advantage of the brainstorms here, but would careful study be worth considering? The deck feels so tempo oriented that the potential boost offered by study might be better. I guess what I am trying to get at is Careful Study and Madness and Vengevines in graveyards and the certainty of digging through the deck seem worth the card disadvantage. What do you think? This deck already has several "Bad" cards in it, why not add 4 more instead of brainstorms.

I tried Careful Study initially, thinking it would be good, and it wasn't. Complete crap. The only good thing it does is discard Vengevines; discarding Rootwalla's is irrelevant. I'd sooner run Deep Analysis over Careful Study.

[Article] Pondering Brainstorm (http://www.mtgthesource.com/forums/showthread.php?18384-)

The above link is about an article that AJ Sacher wrote about using Brainstorm in Legacy. One of the more important aspects that relates to this deck is the idea that people think they have to cast Brainstorm on turn 1, when they don't need to. Considering one of the arguments against Brainstorm in this deck is that it competes for the "1st turn play" spot, I think the article would be a good read for those who haven't read it.

In this deck, the only time I Brainstorm on turn 1 is either when I have to, or when I have no other relevant play for turn 1. Brainstorm on turn 1 is strong at setting up a turn 2 Mongrel/Aquamoeba + Rootwalla + X Vengevine(s), but if I have other relevant early game plays, I sandbag my Brainstorm's instead.

Here's an example:

It's turn 4. My opponent and I have been battling back and forth, and the board is relatively even. I have nothing but junk and excess lands in my hand (I don't play excess land), and I topdeck a Brainstorm. Cast Brainstorm, dig 3 deep, put 2 excess lands on top, shuffle them away with a fetch.

This sort of thing happens frequently. Sometimes, the 3 cards Brainstorm digs for are mediocre, and you only marginally fix your hand (although in those cases, you'd be drawing dead for the next several turns if you didn't cast Brainstorm). Other times, you flop the nuts, cast Survival (with a creature to pitch) for the turn, and then river 4 Vengevines at the opponent's face.

These sort of plays happen all the time, and this is the sort of overall consistency increase that Brainstorm creates. It's not always about the turn 1 Brainstorm. Don't get me wrong though; turn 1 Brainstorm, turn 2 nuts, is damn good too. My point is that Brainstorm is good at all points during the game, and should not be dismissed because of the deck having too many competing 1 drops.

[Rigero]

I've posted this in the GW-Survival Thread but i think it maybe also fits in here, even when i'm building the deck away from the combo into the direction of beatdown.


Hi,

After seeing Caleb going Top8 in Columbus i was thinking about adding Blue to the list and combining both decks, cause when i testet the Ug- madness survival i found out for me that winning without survival or vengevine in hand was very difficult.

Today i played in a tournament with 24 players with this list. it was 4-1; 2.place for me only losing to my very crappy draw and the opponent drawing what ever he needed to win.

List:

// Lands
4 [REW] Wasteland
3 [B] Tropical Island
4 [ZEN] Misty Rainforest
2 [US] Forest (3)
2 [ON] Windswept Heath
1 [U] Plains (2)
3 [U] Savannah
1 [8E] Island (1)

// Creatures
4 [OD] Wild Mongrel
4 [TO] Basking Rootwalla
4 [ROE] Vengevine
4 [CFX] Noble Hierarch
1 [JU] Wonder
3 [REB] Qasali Pridemage
4 [FUT] Tarmogoyf
2 [CFX] Knight of the Reliquary

// Spells
4 [EX] Survival of the Fittest
4 [CST] Swords to Plowshares
3 [DD2] Daze
4 [SC] Stifle

// Sideboard
SB: 2 [CH] Tormod's Crypt
SB: 1 [TO] Llawan, Cephalid Empress
SB: 2 [SHM] Faerie Macabre
SB: 3 [LRW] Gaddock Teeg
SB: 3 [ZEN] Spell Pierce
SB: 3 [NE] Submerge
SB: 1 [BOK] Kira, Great Glass-spinner


Matchups:

2-1 Merfolk
2-1 Uw-Fish
2-0 Gwr - Survival
0-2 Ugr Faeries
2-0 Ur Dreadstill


Well i don't even know if it's fits in here cause it's not only Gw-anymore but at least maybe you find it interessting and can discuss about this list ;)


From the UG-Madness point of view i added white because of Spotremovel and some beater to have a good chance winning without survival or the three comboparts in hand. As you see the blue count is way to low for force of will so i can't play it. Testing with Brainstorm was just like Calab wrotes, trhats why i cutted it again. After the tournament today i#m thinking of cutting stifle down to 3 to get the deck to 60 cards, but most of the time stifle is just to powerful in prodecting the deckplans from engineered exlosives, deeds, mazes, loyal retainer and so on...

thoughts?

[czeluff]

I've posted this in the GW-Survival Thread but i think it maybe also fits in here, even when i'm building the deck away from the combo into the direction of beatdown.




From the UG-Madness point of view i added white because of Spotremovel and some beater to have a good chance winning without survival or the three comboparts in hand. As you see the blue count is way to low for force of will so i can't play it. Testing with Brainstorm was just like Calab wrotes, trhats why i cutted it again. After the tournament today i#m thinking of cutting stifle down to 3 to get the deck to 60 cards, but most of the time stifle is just to powerful in prodecting the deckplans from engineered exlosives, deeds, mazes, loyal retainer and so on...

thoughts?

Knight of the Reliquary isn't doing very much for me in the build (I dropped one Swords to Plowshares to make it 60). The only thing that youre adding white for without him is Qasali and Swords. Force of Will can effectively act as the counter form of both of these cards, and is more pro-active than reactive.

Without Aquamoeba, I rarely find myself "going off" with Survival. I only seem to get the nutz Survival attacks with U/G.

Without question, Submerge is the best card in the sideboard. Caleb says in the deck-tech that he chose Wheel of Sun n Moon over Tormod's Crypt because people named Tormod's on Pithing Needle. Though personally I would really like to run Tormod's, I am seeing the same thing on MWS.

It seems like running Trygon/Jitte main versus Brainstorm is coming up as a 50/50 wash. Sometimes I wish the Brainstorm was a Trygon, and sometimes I wish the Jitte was a Brainstorm. I think it really could go either way.

[czeluff]

// Lands
4 [ZEN] Misty Rainforest
3 [ON] Windswept Heath
1 [ON] Flooded Strand
4 [R] Tropical Island
3 [UNH] Forest
1 [UNH] Island
4 [TE] Wasteland

// Creatures
4 [CFX] Noble Hierarch
4 [TO] Basking Rootwalla
4 [OD] Wild Mongrel
3 [TO] Aquamoeba
4 [ROE] Vengevine
1 [JU] Wonder
1 [DIS] Trygon Predator

// Spells
4 [IA] Brainstorm
4 [SC] Stifle
3 [NE] Daze
4 [AL] Force of Will
4 [EX] Survival of the Fittest

// Sideboard
SB: 1 [DIS] Trygon Predator
SB: 4 [ZEN] Spell Pierce
SB: 3 [TSP] Krosan Grip
SB: 2 [SHM] Faerie Macabre
SB: 3 [NE] Submerge
SB: 2 [SHM] Wheel of Sun and Moon


This is the build that has been giving me the most success on MWS. I'm still on the fence about Brainstorm, because I understand Caleb's logic, but I also brainstorm/break fetch alot, and it really does smooth things out.

Basically I'm not running Jitte, a little lax on the Predator count, as well as on Aquamoeba count. It feels pretty good though! One Predator in the main is nice Hanni; I'd try adding ONE. Game 1's go a little better if you A - SotF for it or B - play it turn 2 off of a Hierarch. Sometimes I wish I had 4 Daze's, but usually 3 seems right, and Caleb did well with only 2.

Again, for what it's worth, I think all of the builds we're juggling around are about the same in quality. I haven't played a single person with Merfolk, and if I did, maybe i'd find Jitte more useful (if for no other reason than to use it to kill opposing Jitte's). I think Caleb made a really good metagame call. Thus far the metagame @ Columbus doesn't match MWS all that closely.

[Hanni]

From the UG-Madness point of view i added white because of Spotremovel and some beater to have a good chance winning without survival or the three comboparts in hand. As you see the blue count is way to low for force of will so i can't play it. Testing with Brainstorm was just like Calab wrotes, trhats why i cutted it again. After the tournament today i#m thinking of cutting stifle down to 3 to get the deck to 60 cards, but most of the time stifle is just to powerful in prodecting the deckplans from engineered exlosives, deeds, mazes, loyal retainer and so on...

thoughts?

The reason I think this deck is so successful is because of the blue tempo package. I haven't found myself wanting better beaters or spot removal in playtesting. Blue is extremely important in successfully resolving a Survival, as well as protecting threats early. I realize you still run Daze and Stifle, but FoW is very important. You also completely punt your combo matchups without FoW.


Basically I'm not running Jitte, a little lax on the Predator count, as well as on Aquamoeba count. It feels pretty good though! One Predator in the main is nice Hanni; I'd try adding ONE. Game 1's go a little better if you A - SotF for it or B - play it turn 2 off of a Hierarch. Sometimes I wish I had 4 Daze's, but usually 3 seems right, and Caleb did well with only 2.

I was running 1 Trygon Predator in the maindeck originally, but never needed to grab it. Once I had a Survival online, I was always going for Vengevines.

In thinking about it further, very rarely would I ever tutor for Trygon Predator; it literally has to be a gamebreaking artifact/enchantment like Ensaring Bridge or something. I don't care about Counterbalance if I already have Survival going, I don't care about Moat because I have Wonder, etc.

It's not that I couldn't easily cut a Daze or Stifle or something for it, it's just that I didn't ever need to tutor for it during playtesting.

---

I just want to say, after several days of playtesting with this deck on MWS, I think this deck has the potential to become a DTB. It's much stronger than New Horizons as far as the new tempo deck on the block goes, and it's a very dominating deck. On MWS, there has been plenty of times when I've played against Jank, but I've also logged in alot of games so far against competitive Tier 1 and 2 decks, and my win/loss record with this deck has been extremely high against all sorts of various strategies, from control to aggro/control to aggro to combo to etc.

[samurai_socks]

While the essence of Calebs deck was great it was a little too aggro for me. So i have slowly tinkered it into a more controlling shell.

Creatures
3 Aquamoeba
4 Basking Rootwalla
4 Noble Hierarch
2 Trygon Predator
4 Vengevine
4 Wild Mongrel
1 Wonder
1 Fauna Shaman
1 Squee, Goblin Nabob
1 Waterfront Bouncer

Enchantments
4 Survival of the Fittest

Instants
2 Daze
4 Force of Will
3 Stifle

Legendary Artifacts
1 Umezawa's Jitte

Basic Lands
3 Forest
1 Island

Lands
4 Misty Rainforest
4 Tropical Island
4 Wasteland
2 Windswept Heath
2 Wooded Foothills

Legendary Lands
1 Gaea's Cradle

Sideboard:
1 Faerie Macabre
1 Emrakul, the Aeons Torn
3 Wheel of Sun and Moon
3 Krosan Grip
4 Spell Pierce
3 Submerge

Everyone may not like this list but i definately think the addition of waterfront bouncer is an awesome upgrade over one Aquamoeba. Fauna Shaman also lets you quasi keep your engine if survival is going to be destroyed or needled. Squee needs no explanation.

-Cheers-

[median]

this may have been addressed, but has anyone considered bloodghast ? it seems like a better Basking Rootwalla if you can make a land drop.

[danyul]

Bloodghast is definitely not a better Rootwalla in this deck because it does not interact with Vengevine in the same way. Vengevine counts creatures *cast* that turn, not creatures that you snuck into play. You can put a billion Bloodghasts into play from your GY but Vengevine wont care. If anything, Bloodghast would be used in addition to Basking Rootwalla and not instead of Basking Rootwalla.

[Hanni]

While the essence of Calebs deck was great it was a little too aggro for me. So i have slowly tinkered it into a more controlling shell.

I know 2 was the number of Daze that Caleb ran, but trust me, 2 Daze is the wrong number.

[czeluff]

I modified the build I had before, and I've come up with this one, including the Emrakul trick with Loyal Retainers. I added in 2 white sources to make it possible. Basic plains is pointless, because the turn you search up the land is the turn youre going to be playing Retainers, and therefore, Wasteland isn't a worry.


// Lands
1 [R] Tundra
3 [10E] Forest (4)
4 [ZEN] Misty Rainforest
4 [U] Tropical Island
4 [TE] Wasteland
1 [M10] Island (2)
3 [ON] Windswept Heath
1 [A] Savannah

// Creatures
1 [DIS] Trygon Predator
1 [PRE] Emrakul, the Aeons Torn
4 [ROE] Vengevine
4 [CFX] Noble Hierarch
1 [P3] Loyal Retainers
4 [TO] Aquamoeba
4 [DDD] Basking Rootwalla
4 [OD] Wild Mongrel
1 [FNM] Wonder

// Spells
4 [JGC] Stifle
4 [JGC] Survival of the Fittest
4 [AL] Force of Will
3 [NE] Daze

// Sideboard
SB: 1 [DIS] Trygon Predator
SB: 3 [NE] Submerge
SB: 3 [TSP] Krosan Grip
SB: 2 [DDD] Faerie Macabre
SB: 2 [SHM] Wheel of Sun and Moon
SB: 4 [ZEN] Spell Pierce

I still like the Trygon maindecked. Mono-black aggro games with Bitterblossom and Phyrexian Arena have made this guy super useful. I feel like I really can't win game 1 unless he's there. 4 Daze's has proven to be too much sometimes. The flood of them really hurts.

I will continue to playtest this version and see how it feels. Thus far, Emrakul is a great tool. If you use him in the first game, they board in stuff to prepare for him. At that point, i'll take the combo out for more relevant pieces. However, if they haven't seen it in G2 or G3, he's a complete surprise that usually gets the concession. The only thing that can steal him is a Sarkhan Vol due to being pro-colors.

[Hanni]

I still like the Trygon maindecked. Mono-black aggro games with Bitterblossom and Phyrexian Arena have made this guy super useful. I feel like I really can't win game 1 unless he's there. 4 Daze's has proven to be too much sometimes. The flood of them really hurts.

How often are these cards relevant? Bitterblossom can only make one 1/1 token a turn, so if you crank out a bunch of Vengevines and Basking Rootwalla's, they can only chump block so many before you overrun them. Phyrexian Arena is only a problem before you get Survival active. That's my point with Trygon Predator as a 1 of; the only time you won't just win out with Vengevine beats and would instead need to grab Trygon Predator, is very rare. I mean, they literally have to have something like an Ensaring Bridge with 1 or no cards in hand for Trygon Predator to be necessary once Survival is online. Without Squee, you can't go about tutoring for toolbox creatures profitably... not that you'd need to tutor for toolbox creautures with this deck anyway.

Postboard, I can see sideboarding in Trygon Predator, especially if you expect Pithing Needle.


If Emrakul gets added, Brainstorms is needed, DEFINITELY. Not sure if Caleb's build is benefitting from them, but now we've made them important.

...but you're not running Brainstorm in that list.


I will continue to playtest this version and see how it feels. Thus far, Emrakul is a great tool. If you use him in the first game, they board in stuff to prepare for him. At that point, i'll take the combo out for more relevant pieces. However, if they haven't seen it in G2 or G3, he's a complete surprise that usually gets the concession. The only thing that can steal him is a Sarkhan Vol due to being pro-colors.

Loyal Retainer's into Emrakul requires that you have 2 seperate creatures to pitch. Even if you do have 2 creatures in hand to pitch, you have to pay a total of 2GGW (not counting the 1G for Survival), and you need 2GW on a single turn. This plan is extremely slow.

When are you ever finding yourself wanting to go for Emrakul instead of just flooding the board with Vengevines?

Usually, when I drop 2 Basking Rootwalla's and 4 Vengevines into play on the same turn, I get a concession too...

I'm not saying Loyal Retainers/Emrakul isn't a really good combo for other Survival decks, I just don't think this deck is built to use it properly. Vengevine beats are more efficient.

[czeluff]

My bad about the Brainstorms. I should've clarified: "I would like to make space for them now that Emrakul is in".

That was just a list to throw out as an idea. It is neat when it goes off, and is bad when it doesn't. I think i'll go right back to U/G. Let me try building something with 2 Trygons in the SB instead of 1 in the main....

p.s. I'm thinking a singleton Wall of Roots would be good instead of the Trygon. That way you can drop it for one creature, then activate it's ability to make SotF go off again.

[Hanni]

For reference, I'm still playing with the exact same maindeck that I posted several pages back, with almost flawless results. I did change my sideboard a little bit, adding in Submerge because that card is just frickin nuts in this deck.

[czeluff]

Hanni,

The only difference we're running in the mainboard now:

Mainboard:

-1 Daze, +1 Wall of Roots

Sideboard is as follows:

3 Spell Pierce
3 Krosan Grip
2 Faerie Macabre
2 Trygon Predator
3 Submerge
2 Wheel of Sun & Moon

Can you discuss your logic in your current SB choices? Now that Predator is in SB only, I don't even like using Jitte. 3 Krosan Grips seems like a good number to have, but maybe I could drop to 2. Do I need 4 Spell Pierces? If so, would +1 Spell Pierce -1 Krosan Grip be the best? Wheel of Sun n Moon has been much better for me thus far against Reanimator and Dredge. They throw down Pithing Needles naming Tormod's much more often, or they simply Stifle it. They can also recover from a Tormod's, but never a Wheel. Submerge is insane. I feel like I'm playing Yu-Gi-Oh when I play that spell for free (like everything is in that game :p)

[Hanni]

My current sideboard:

4 Spell Pierce
3 Submerge
2 Krosan Grip
1 Trygon Predator
1 Faerie Macabre
2 Tormod's Crypt
2 Umezawa's Jitte

I think the Spell Pierces are very important against combo, and I like boarding into them when I'm on the draw in matchups where noncreature spells are relevant. Also, they are great against control decks that try to play expensive spells like Jace, the Mind Sculptor.

I've played against Dredge 3 times now, and 1 Reanimator.

I've smashed Dredge, preboard and postboard. Maybe it's been pilot error or something, but FoW/Daze keeps them off their turn 1 discard outlet, and Wasteland wrecks them. After that, I race them. I've lost one of the three game 1's against Dredge. Postboard, I find Tormod's Crypt is much better because it's free, and slows them down significantly while I race them. The point of graveyard hate is not meant to be a hardlock, but simply a huge tempo boost, and there's a big difference between Crypt costing 0 mana and Wheel costing 2. Even if they play a Needle, it's only shutting down 2 of my sideboarded spells, and its costing them tempo by spending mana on Needle rather than Breakthrough, etc. Regardless, its mostly irrelevant anyway, cause I'm pretty sure Dredge is a very positive matchup.

Reanimator is not a deck I'm scared of without Mystical Tutor. Reanimator is easy to disrupt, between attacking both their manabase and countering their spells. Don't forget that Spell Pierce is just as savage against them as graveyard hate, and this deck is very capable of racing too.

Yes, Submerge is insane against any decks that plays forests and creatures. It buys you so much tempo, which is pure gold in a deck that is as tempo driven as this deck is.

[CalebD]

The above link is about an article that AJ Sacher wrote about using Brainstorm in Legacy. One of the more important aspects that relates to this deck is the idea that people think they have to cast Brainstorm on turn 1, when they don't need to. Considering one of the arguments against Brainstorm in this deck is that it competes for the "1st turn play" spot, I think the article would be a good read for those who haven't read it.

Let's break Brainstorm into two sections. On turn one, and after turn one:

On turn one, digging for the nuts, the card is very comparible to preordain. Natural draw shows one, while brainstorm shows two more than that, sort of a scrye for two as far as turn two is concerned. At this point, whether you have a fetch or not shouldn't matter, as you have the nuts, and if you don't have the nuts then you'd probably be better off if the brainstorm was a threat, or something that impacted the board, or maybe you're just wishing you hadn't kept the hand at all. Regardless, we can all agree that a Preordain does not make the cut in this deck, correct?

After turn one: When are you casting this spell? It isn't turn two, as the two drop is clogged like no other. That means your ideal time for casting is turns 3-4, which are the ideal times for winning the game. Mana is at a premium in these turns. Meanwhile, the ideal draw wins on turn 4-5, and doesn't involve a Brainstorm at all. This means that Brainstorm is going to be an inherently weaker card in this deck than it will be for pretty much every other blue deck in legacy. As with Merfolk, the slots just aren't there. I know of a couple of guys that run Brainstorm in Merfolk. They might win against randoms with it, but it isn't the standard for a reason. Synergy counts.

The creature count in a Survival deck is incredibly important. Note that Chapin's deck had more of a combo-y feel to it, yet it still ran 23 creatures, and Billy Moreno's list ran 23 as well. I had 24, and I don't think you can go too far fewer than that without harming the consistency of both vengevines and survival.

As for "in those cases, you'd be drawing dead anyway," not if the brainstorm was a relevant spell! If I need a second creature to trigger Vengevines for the win, and Brainstorm shows me two land and a Stifle, it isn't that I would've drawn dead anyway, it's that the Brainstorm should've been a creature!

Edit:

As for Trygon as a one of, this seems bad. Like, Llawan as a one-of bad. I tutored for Trygon once over eighteen rounds, and only because my opponent dropped a Tormod's Crypt against me with no pressure on the board, so I could burn some tempo. If I have an active Survival, the only thing I really want to be fetching are Vengevines. Hence the complete lack of tutor targets, with the exception of Wonder and Faerie Macabre. Most just make the deck worse. However, naturally drawing a Trygon Predator or LLawan in the correct matchup is fantastic. Thus, running one is pretty bad, two is fine, but zero or three should be ideal.

Glad people are playing Submerge. That card and Spell Pierce were the MVPs of my sb. Absolutely insane all weekend long.

"Thus far the metagame @ Columbus doesn't match MWS all that closely." Understandable. I've mentioned on other threads that I was expecting to face infinite rounds of zoo, gobblins, merfolk, counterbalance, and randomness, and that's basically what ended up happening. Against a different meta, dropping Trygons and/or Jittes, 4th Aquamoeba, etc is fine, so long as the creature/blue spell count stays up.

As for the dredge matchup: Don't let inferior MWS players give you the wrong impression. At best this matchup is 50-50 against a strong player. MWS randoms are useful for getting the feel for a deck, or maybe even identifying the key cards in certain matchups, but it isn't going to prepare you to wade through a field of CFB pros and longtime legacy competitors. My testing was showing most games being within 2-3 life, so I felt the fifth anti dredge card was necessary. An idea brought up in the mtgsalvation forums is having an Emrakul to recur Faerie Macabre, but this seems a bit gimmicky.

Oh, and as for Daze: "I know 2 was the number of Daze that Caleb ran, but trust me, 2 Daze is the wrong number." I already mentioned this once earlier, but turn down the arrogance, dude. You have no legs to stand on here. There are two UGMadness lists that have done well in legacy in pretty much ever, and both lists ran two Daze. You almost never want more than one, so the correct number is 2-3. If the slots are tight, running two is good. If there's a slot open, running three is good too, but there are a lot of things to balance with a deck like this and talking in absolutes defeats the purpose of discussion entirely. Your role is to question things, which I'm glad you're doing, but you need something. Claiming that you're right and the guy that won Legacy Championships and the guy that T4'd a 1300 person tournament are wrong with nothing more to back it up besides a "trust me" is beyond useless. Make your case, and if you're convincing people will try it, and if they think it's good they'll change it, which is ideal for me. I want this deck to get better, and thus I want people like you to be effective. Get there.

[Hanni]

On turn one, digging for the nuts, the card is very comparible to preordain. Natural draw shows one, while brainstorm shows two more than that, sort of a scrye for two as far as turn two is concerned. At this point, whether you have a fetch or not shouldn't matter, as you have the nuts, and if you don't have the nuts then you'd probably be better off if the brainstorm was a threat, or something that impacted the board, or maybe you're just wishing you hadn't kept the hand at all. Regardless, we can all agree that a Preordain does not make the cut in this deck, correct?


No. Brainstorm is in no way comparable to Preordain.

If you don't feel like the Legacy legal version of Ancestral Recall is worth it in this deck because there's no point during a game that you want/can pay a single U for its effect, I won't argue with you.


After turn one: When are you casting this spell? It isn't turn two, as the two drop is clogged like no other. That means your ideal time for casting is turns 3-4, which are the ideal times for winning the game. Mana is at a premium in these turns. Meanwhile, the ideal draw wins on turn 4-5, and doesn't involve a Brainstorm at all. This means that Brainstorm is going to be an inherently weaker card in this deck than it will be for pretty much every other blue deck in legacy. As with Merfolk, the slots just aren't there. I know of a couple of guys that run Brainstorm in Merfolk. They might win against randoms with it, but it isn't the standard for a reason. Synergy counts.


I cast the spell at all sorts of times, depending on when I need to. This isn't a straight answer of "turn 3 every game," or some other preplanned time.


The creature count in a Survival deck is incredibly important. Note that Chapin's deck had more of a combo-y feel to it, yet it still ran 23 creatures, and Billy Moreno's list ran 23 as well. I had 24, and I don't think you can go too far fewer than that without harming the consistency of both vengevines and survival.


Yes, and Brainstorm increases the chance that you hit creatures, so running a creature count of 20 is similar to running a creature count of around 22 (with 4 Brainstorms).


As for "in those cases, you'd be drawing dead anyway," not if the brainstorm was a relevant spell! If I need a second creature to trigger Vengevines for the win, and Brainstorm shows me two land and a Stifle, it isn't that I would've drawn dead anyway, it's that the Brainstorm should've been a creature!

What is "relevant spell?" Replace the Brainstorm with a Trygon Predator then, how is that triggering Vengevine? 3 costed creatures are horrible at triggering Vengevine, and if you're that late in the game where you can cast 2 creatures, one of them being a Trygon Predator...


As for the dredge matchup: Don't let inferior MWS players give you the wrong impression. At best this matchup is 50-50 against a strong player. MWS randoms are useful for getting the feel for a deck, or maybe even identifying the key cards in certain matchups, but it isn't going to prepare you to wade through a field of CFB pros and longtime legacy competitors. My testing was showing most games being within 2-3 life, so I felt the fifth anti dredge card was necessary. An idea brought up in the mtgsalvation forums is having an Emrakul to recur Faerie Macabre, but this seems a bit gimmicky.


Pilot skill could have affected my matchups, I won't deny this.


Oh, and as for Daze: "I know 2 was the number of Daze that Caleb ran, but trust me, 2 Daze is the wrong number." I already mentioned this once earlier, but turn down the arrogance, dude. You have no legs to stand on here. There are two UGMadness lists that have done well in legacy in pretty much ever, and both lists ran two Daze. You almost never want more than one, so the correct number is 2-3. If the slots are tight, running two is good. If there's a slot open, running three is good too, but there are a lot of things to balance with a deck like this and talking in absolutes defeats the purpose of discussion entirely. Your role is to question things, which I'm glad you're doing, but you need something. Claiming that you're right and the guy that won Legacy Championships and the guy that T4'd a 1300 person tournament are wrong with nothing more to back it up besides a "trust me" is beyond useless. Make your case, and if you're convincing people will try it, and if they think it's good they'll change it, which is ideal for me. I want this deck to get better, and thus I want people like you to be effective. Get there.

This isn't me being arrogant. This is me sharing years of common knowledge with you. It's like playing 2 Mox Diamond's, or 2 Aether Vial's. The only time you want to see the card is early game, meaning its best on turn 1, and gets progressively worse. Especially without running Brainstorm's, Daze is either a 4-of, or a none-of. This isn't some new concept I'm making up on the spot; this is something that has extensive testing. Ask the Hatfield brother's who spent years developing Threshold (since 2004), or any of the guys (Pinder/Volt/etc) that developed CounterSlivers (in 2006).

I have plenty of legs to stand on here. I've been playing blue-based aggro/control decks in Legacy since 2005. In fact, I designed a deck called UWb Fish, and my exact decklist of UWb Fish did Top 8 the last GP Columbus. So as far as being a deckbuilder/innovator goes, that should be a good starting point for credibility.

You may never want more than 1 Daze in a game, but you run no Brainstorm's or other similar effects to increase your chances of seeing it when you want to see it (turn 1). That means that, on average, by the time you do see it, it's going to be dead. Why would you even run it at all if you're only going to run it as a 2-of? I just don't get it.

This has nothing to do with "trust me." Blue-based aggro/control is fundamentally universal; just because this deck is running some different aggro components, doesn't change years of commonly accepted principles. Whether you're running Werebear, Tarmogoyf, or Wild Mongrel, doesn't change the effect of Brainstorm and Daze. I'm not trying to be arrogant here, but I'm talking in absolutes because you are trying to re-invent the wheel.

I'm not trying to be insulting, and if you've taken the things I've said that way, I appologize. All I'm trying to do is translate my years of experience with blue-based aggro/control decks in order to optimize your decklist, and all I'm getting is resistance.

EDIT: I've made my position on both Brainstorm being ran, and Daze being at least a 3-of (preferrably 4-of), pretty clear. I'm gonna cool the jets and refrain from posting in this thread for a little while.

[largebrandon]

I would like to reiterate that Brainstorm doesn't belong in this deck! It's an aggro deck and thus brainstorm doesn't belong here. Look at Saito's deck: it doesn't play brainstorm. Why? Because it's not needed and it loses tempo. What IS needed? Disruption and creatures. FoW, Stifle and Dazes are really good disruption for our critters to go though. Every time that I have had a brainstorm in hand, most of the time I wished I had a stifle. Rarely have I had a stifle in hand in which I'd rather have a brainstorm.

[CorpT]

I would like to reiterate that Brainstorm doesn't belong in this deck! It's an aggro deck and thus brainstorm doesn't belong here. Look at Saito's deck: it doesn't play brainstorm. Why? Because it's not needed and it loses tempo. What IS needed? Disruption and creatures. FoW, Stifle and Dazes are really good disruption for our critters to go though. Every time that I have had a brainstorm in hand, most of the time I wished I had a stifle. Rarely have I had a stifle in hand in which I'd rather have a brainstorm.

It is possible to play both Stifle and Brainstorm...

IMO, Merfolk plays Standstill, and this plays Brainstorm. Obviously Brainstorm is no Standstill, but because we can't play Vials, we need something and Brainstorm is about as close as we can get.

[czeluff]

Hi Caleb,

thanks again for your responses. As a sideline guy in the debate of Brainstorm between you and Hanni, I'm finding the information very important. I was just watching your match with Saito, and Kibler (commentary) agrees with you about not having Brainstorms. With that said, I will try returning to your original list and test it some more. Two pros can't be completely wrong. I wasn't happy with drawing Jitte when I was already behind though....I am a scrub Magic player though, and maybe that shouldn't be happening to me.

EDIT: THe Jittes you played against Saito weren't doing a lot, because there were no creatures in play. Isn't that a case that Hanni is talking about, where Brainstorm would've been better? I know you kept the Jitte's in against Merfolk, but in Game 1 and Game 3 when you were behind, they never helped catch up...

Can you speak on behalf of Tormod's versus Wheel of Sun & Moon?

Also, just because I'm really trying to learn to play Magic better, could you explain the SB decisions against 3 major matchups (perhaps Merfolk, Goblins, & some other)? I feel like I'm pulling the Jitte out all the time, and it's probably not the right move.

Thanks again for making this U/G Madness deck gain some popularity! It has single-handidly brought me back into Legacy.

[kortero]

Brainstorm seems to divide people in two camps. I can't see myself playing without them, but I've also dropped Stifles and cut Wastelands to three. I love my current list and I really want to play few tournaments with it before making any changes.

When I've got some real data, I can decide if the mana denial plan featured in Calebs original build feels stronger, but I just don't like Stifle that much because it's so situational card. When it's good, it's really good, but it can also be really bad depending on matchups. Basically it's too situational for my liking.

I hope I'll have some 'real tournament data' next time when I'm posting on this thread. I'm also eagerly waiting for Calebs article on channelfireball even though I've taken a little different approach on the deck.

Keep up the discussion. :)

[Vacrix]

I recall Shrieking Drake being particularly good at getting Vengevine into play. Although it would be much better with Vial where it could actually save your creatures, it can still function as a single creature that gets your Vengevines into play. Play it, trigger bounces itself, repeat, then hold it in your hand in case you need it again. Is it worth a slot?

[mvrk]

I played UG Madness in a small (34 people) legacy tournament in Enschede (Netherlands) today, went 4-1 in swiss and then split the finals after a t4. The T4 was: Dreadstifle/darkdepts hexmage combo/control, TES, Eva green, Madness. My list:

4 x Noble Hierarch
4 x Basking Rootwalla

4 x Wild Mongrel
3 x Aquamoeba

2 x Trygon Predator

4 x Vengevine
1 x Wonder

4 x Force of Will
4 x Survival of the Fittest
4 x Daze
4 x Brainstorm
2 x Umezawa's Jitte

4 x Tropical island
4 x Misty Rainforest
3 x Windswept Heath
1 x Flooded Strand
4 x Wasteland
3 x Forest
1 x Island

SB:
3 x Submerge
3 x Tormod's Crypt
2 x Faerie Macabre
2 x Krosan Grip
1 x Trygon Predator
4 x Spell Pierce

The sideboard could be improved, the spell pierces were the MVP of the day.

So compared to Caleb's list the following changes were made:
- 3 stifle
- 1 Predator
- 1 Forest
-1 Aquamoeba
+ 4 Brainstorm
+ 2 Daze

During testing I felt the stifles were just not worth it. Most of the time it hits a fetchland, but here so many people play enough basics that the wasteland/stifle approach just isn't good enough, as they can continue to build their mana base. Brainstorm on the other hand is broken. It helps set up survival, and when you have survival in play it pitches to FoW. It also helps in getting the wild mongrel/aquamoeba + vengevine + basking rootwalla play, which seems to be good enough against a number of decks.

2 Predators also seemed enough in the main (1 in the side is nice though)

With regard to the moeba, with 4 brainstorms I think cutting 1 moeba is okay.

I also completely agree with Hanni, either run 4 dazes or run none.

So I really like the deck, I'll be testing it more in the coming time. Thanks Caleb for bringing us this little gem :)

Edit: lol, forgot to write 4 x tropical island in the list

[Blitzbold]

I recall Shrieking Drake being particularly good at getting Vengevine into play. Although it would be much better with Vial where it could actually save your creatures, it can still function as a single creature that gets your Vengevines into play. Play it, trigger bounces itself, repeat, then hold it in your hand in case you need it again. Is it worth a slot?

I was discussing Shrieking Drake with a friend of mine yesterday. It basically reads: "UU: return all Vengevines from your Graveyard to the battlefield" and doesn't need a second creature to restart the beatings if disrupted somehow. Obviously I am not the only one with a memory for old niche cards. :D

I was looking for a creature which had to meet 3 criteria:
- cmc = 1
- blue
- engine enabler

Shrieking Drake fits all requirements handily, but is a lousy creature on it's own. It would get more interesting if there where some strong ETB effects in the deck, but this would push the deck into a different direction (more like a classic toolbox approach). Nevertheless I am going to test a list continaing it as soon as my Vengevines are in the mail.

[Vacrix]

Agreed it really is lousy on its own... unless you want to run Vial too and then you have the option of using it to save your own creatures. Thats quite a few cards slots though so its probably not worth running Vial. I wonder though if with access to Brainstorm and even Survival it would be worth running a singleton. Especially if the opponent plays something like Deed, having access to Drake would allow you to come back from that situation particularly quickly. The other option would be to use it to take advantage of CIP's. Unfortunately, the deck doesn't currently play any.

[czeluff]

Shrieking Drake only seems good if they used something like Pernicious Deed. Wrath of God would leave your SotF in play, and rebuilding requires minimal effort (provided you have a creature in hand).

Having 3-4x Stifle maindecked for the Deed is great. :)

[kortero]

I played UG Madness in a small (34 people) legacy tournament in Enschede (Netherlands) today, went 4-1 in swiss and then split the finals after a t4. The T4 was: Dreadstifle/darkdepts hexmage combo/control, TES, Eva green, Madness. My list:

4 x Noble Hierarch
4 x Basking Rootwalla

4 x Wild Mongrel
3 x Aquamoeba

2 x Trygon Predator

4 x Vengevine
1 x Wonder

4 x Force of Will
4 x Survival of the Fittest
4 x Daze
4 x Brainstorm
2 x Umezawa's Jitte

4 x Misty Rainforest
3 x Windswept Heath
1 x Flooded Strand
4 x Wasteland
3 x Forest
1 x Island

SB:
3 x Submerge
3 x Tormod's Crypt
2 x Faerie Macabre
2 x Krosan Grip
1 x Trygon Predator
4 x Spell Pierce

The sideboard could be improved, the spell pierces were the MVP of the day.

So compared to Caleb's list the following changes were made:
- 3 stifle
- 1 Predator
- 1 Forest
-1 Aquamoeba
+ 4 Brainstorm
+ 2 Daze

During testing I felt the stifles were just not worth it. Most of the time it hits a fetchland, but here so many people play enough basics that the wasteland/stifle approach just isn't good enough, as they can continue to build their mana base. Brainstorm on the other hand is broken. It helps set up survival, and when you have survival in play it pitches to FoW. It also helps in getting the wild mongrel/aquamoeba + vengevine + basking rootwalla play, which seems to be good enough against a number of decks.

2 Predators also seemed enough in the main (1 in the side is nice though)

With regard to the moeba, with 4 brainstorms I think cutting 1 moeba is okay.

I also completely agree with Hanni, either run 4 dazes or run none.

So I really like the deck, I'll be testing it more in the coming time. Thanks Caleb for bringing us this little gem :)

Nicely done. Even more so I'm happy to see that your list is so close to mine and it did well. I play 21 lands and only 3 Wastelands to 'make green mana better' and still I find myself with not enough mana at times. 22 lands might be too much though, and as I don't shuffle as well when goldfishing as when I'm playing real games, I think 21 lands might really be the sweet spot.

Other differences in our lists are that I play only 1 Jitte maindeck and 3/3 split on Wild Mongrel/Aquamoeba. I've felt that 10 discard outlets is enough and with cutting 1 Wild Mongrel I've been able to keep my blue card count at 19 which is one more than you have. The only card that I have in the deck that you don't is 1 Intuition. It's pure gold! I really recommend you to try it. For example, 1st turn Land + Hierarch. 2nd turn Land. End of turn Intuition for 3 Vengevines. 3rd turn Mongrel/Aquamoeba, discard Vengevine from hand and then play Hierarch or Basking Rootwalla or Land + another 2 drop. Not far from reality and most of times you have ways to rebuy those Vengevines after casting Intuition. Intuition can of course also grab a Force of Will if you have a dominant board position or anything else depending on the situation. Honestly, try the Intuition instead of 4th the Wild Mongrel!

Just ordered 3 german fbb Tropical Islands.. I should get the deck ready for tournament action in a weeks time. Can't really wait.. :)

[keys]

I was discussing Shrieking Drake with a friend of mine yesterday. It basically reads: "UU: return all Vengevines from your Graveyard to the battlefield" and doesn't need a second creature to restart the beatings if disrupted somehow. Obviously I am not the only one with a memory for old niche cards. :D

I was looking for a creature which had to meet 3 criteria:
- cmc = 1
- blue
- engine enabler

Shrieking Drake fits all requirements handily, but is a lousy creature on it's own. It would get more interesting if there where some strong ETB effects in the deck, but this would push the deck into a different direction (more like a classic toolbox approach). Nevertheless I am going to test a list continaing it as soon as my Vengevines are in the mail.

The Drake is good in decks that play Intuition instead of Wild Mongrel/Aquamoeba.

[neji21]

I just won first place in a 30 player tournament at Extra innings sports. I went 4-1 and won 2x underground sea.

Game1: No elf 2-0
Game2: Zoo 2-0
Game3: Evagreen 1-2
Game4: Vengevine Survival 2-1
Game5: Goblin 2-0


Deck list:

creature:
1x wonder
2x trygon predator
4x Vengevine
4x basking rootwalla
4x noble hierarch
4x shrieking drake

enchantment:
4x survival of the fittest

instants:
4x stifle
4x daze
4x force of will
4x intuition

Lands:
1x gaea's cradle
2x island
3x forest
2x windswepth heath
1x wooded foothills
4x misty rainforest
4x tropical island
4x wasteland

Sb:
3x mindbreak trap
2x submerge
1x krosan grip
1x chill
2x spell pierce
2x pithing needle
2x ground seal
2x tormod's crypt

The key to winning in this tournament was intuition with shrieking drake. Once I intuition out 3 vengevine and got shrieking drake I was able to overwhelm of my opponent with the vengevine and keep bringing them back if they die.

[Volrath]

I played UG Madness in a small (34 people) legacy tournament in Enschede (Netherlands) today, went 4-1 in swiss and then split the finals after a t4. The T4 was: Dreadstifle/darkdepts hexmage combo/control, TES, Eva green, Madness. My list:



Ik was your opponent in the second round, with faeystalker.

I really like this deck, but i often have the idea that you don't have to mana to really make jitte shine.
Also i don't like the predators main.

The drake has proven to be okay in my testing, it's great in recurren vines, if only it had flash to :(.

[czeluff]

I'm very interested in testing out Intuition now. However Gaea's Cradle seems like it'd be better spent as a Fetchland. The only creatures to make use of Cradle are Rootwallas and Hierarchs. If you already have the Vengevines out, Cradle is pointless. It already runs the risk of being a dead land too. I like it in Caleb's, when Aquas and Mongrels were helping to power it.

I'd recommend a Scalding Tarn since it searches up the basic Islands.

[PanderAlexander]

I saw nejix21 playing in the tournament and he walked through everyone even against the vengvine mirror (the opponent was playing the columbus list) and intuition was huge against those opponents, he didn't rely on survival with it.

[TheSleeper]

Anyone else dislike deck names that are simply colour+mechanic? Perhaps its a time for a re-branding.

How about Shutter Island? Its all about surviving madness..

[danyul]

I don't like that name. It's a misnomer.

*Spoiler Alert*












The protagonist didn't survive the madness of Shutter Island.

[Volrath]

Also, i find typical that when an U/G aggro-control deck doesn't play tarmogoyf, people call it madness...

[CalebD]

http://strategy.channelfireball.com/featured-articles/this-is-madness-no-this-is-survival-a-gp-columbus-report-top-4/

Eh?

As for the name, I'm partial to UG Madness, but a fine bloke on MTGSally suggested GUM (Green Blue Madness) or MUG. I like GUM better between the two.

oh, and danyul, he does escape. He pretends to be insane at the end so that they have to put him down: a sane, intentional act.

[danyul]

Well, then we're getting into semantics. He may have survived in the sense that he went down as a good man instead of living out the rest of his life in able-bodied shame, but he was still lobotomized and likely lived out the rest of his life as a vegetable. His victory was known only to himself and to the audience, which, ironically enough, is much of the reason why the ending was so beautiful, in its own way. But enough of these semantic, pedantic gymnastics. Let's keep this thread on track.

Caleb, I was wondering what you thought of the list that neji21 posted a few posts up. He essentially replaced the Aquamoebas and Wild Mongrels from your list with Intuitions and Shrieking Drake. It makes the deck less reliant on sticking a Survival but felt a little creature-light to me. But I only goldfished like ten games so what do I know?

edit - I'm reading your article and you answer some of my questions there. Mah badd.

[Vacrix]

I just won first place in a 30 player tournament at Extra innings sports. I went 4-1 and won 2x underground sea.

Game1: No elf 2-0
Game2: Zoo 2-0
Game3: Evagreen 1-2
Game4: Vengevine Survival 2-1
Game5: Goblin 2-0


Deck list:

creature:
1x wonder
2x trygon predator
4x Vengevine
4x basking rootwalla
4x noble hierarch
4x shrieking drake

enchantment:
4x survival of the fittest

instants:
4x stifle
4x daze
4x force of will
4x intuition

Lands:
1x gaea's cradle
2x island
3x forest
2x windswepth heath
1x wooded foothills
4x misty rainforest
4x tropical island
4x wasteland

Sb:
3x mindbreak trap
2x submerge
1x krosan grip
1x chill
2x spell pierce
2x pithing needle
2x ground seal
2x tormod's crypt

The key to winning in this tournament was intuition with shrieking drake. Once I intuition out 3 vengevine and got shrieking drake I was able to overwhelm of my opponent with the vengevine and keep bringing them back if they die.
Wow... it looks stronger than I thought then. I think 4 Drake is one too many though. You ought to cut the count to 3, that way you can still make an Intuition pile.

Also, how useful were the Rootwallas? With such a low number of Discard outlets I'd think that they would be wasted slots.

[Volrath]

Wow... it looks stronger than I thought then. I think 4 Drake is one too many though. You ought to cut the count to 3, that way you can still make an Intuition pile.

Also, how useful were the Rootwallas? With such a low number of Discard outlets I'd think that they would be wasted slots.

Rootwalla's can be cast @ instant speed, drakes can not.
That seems to be very important.

When your vines are removed, by plows/extirpates/crypts etc, how do you plan on winning?, drake beatz?.

[Vacrix]

Sure you can cast them at Instant speed. That would certainly be a valuable combat trick... if there were more than 4 discard outlets. You NEED Survival out for them to be useful, and mana to sink to make them 3/3's. I really dislike Basking Rootwalla without Wild Mongrel. In such a list, maybe Careful Study would be playable. Its another outlet, and cycles you into Vengevines/Wonder in the yard.

[Oiolosse]

Rootwalla's can be cast @ instant speed, drakes can not.
That seems to be very important.

When your vines are removed, by plows/extirpates/crypts etc, how do you plan on winning?, drake beatz?.

oh yeah, exalted trigger times four!

[Volrath]

oh yeah, exalted trigger times four!

Strange thing is... in this deck you could pull it of to.

I once swung with a 7/7 rootwalla..

[anonymos]

Probably playing this at a weekly tournament this week. Any suggestions/play tips?

Oh, and is there a solid answer for this deck for the merfolk matchup?

[Rigero]

The merfolk Matchup shpould be positiv. So your answer is just the deck itself ^^

[Volrath]

Probably playing this at a weekly tournament this week. Any suggestions/play tips?

Oh, and is there a solid answer for this deck for the merfolk matchup?

A t2 survival is key against merfolk if you don't play jitte.
If you have a t2 mongrel,vengevine, rootwalla hand, go for it.

Try to find as many basic forests as you can, islandwalk is a pain in the ass.

Also, Shrieking Drake has been working like a charm for me as a 1 off.

[Zork]

If merfolk are a concern, Llawan, Cephalid Empress would be a fine 1 of to the board.

[dar482]

A t2 survival is key against merfolk if you don't play jitte.
Like against any deck... Though I would be wary of Daze in this matchup.


If you have a t2 mongrel,vengevine, rootwalla hand, go for it.
There isn't a matchup where do you don't...


If merfolk are a concern, Llawan, Cephalid Empress would be a fine 1 of to the board.
Caleb addressed this. Once you have Survival, you should be winning, instead of waiting until turn four to play Llawan. If you want Llawan, play 3 to hardcast without Survival.

[anonymos]

I'm torn on this deck. I came in top 4 (we split) with it last night in a 32 man tourney.

My issue is that ANY time I didn't have survival, the deck felt really weak. I'm going to work with this a little to see if I can fix it for myself. Maybe I'll try the U/G/W list next time.

[Fossil4182]

I'm torn on Llawan, Cephalid Empress and the Merfolk matchup in general. I've played it several times and its been very difficult each time; 1-3 record against. Even with three Llawan, Cephalid Empress in the board, I never felt as though I was ever competing in the games (at best, I felt as though I was treading water). I'm going to get in some more testing to get some raw data about this deck vs Merfolk and I'll post it later.

If anyone has any insights on that matchup and would like to share it, please post them.

[PanderAlexander]

I'm torn on Llawan, Cephalid Empress and the Merfolk matchup in general. I've played it several times and its been very difficult each time; 1-3 record against. Even with three Llawan, Cephalid Empress in the board, I never felt as though I was ever competing in the games (at best, I felt as though I was treading water). I'm going to get in some more testing to get some raw data about this deck vs Merfolk and I'll post it later.

If anyone has any insights on that matchup and would like to share it, please post them.

I've tested a couple dozen games and once survival is dropped it's basically game, it was a matter of vengvines and wonder. One important factor is to get basic forest and avoid a island (noble hiearch for blue but if not, just one island so it can be bounced back with daze). Even with post board GY hate we can play around it. It seemed weird but you want rootawalla out first or second turn as without a aether vial, standstill wasn't a problem since rootawalla will race a mutavault no problem. One game the rootawalla was exalted and even with two Mutavaults the Merfolk player broke standstill.

[Volrath]

Someone on Salvation mentioned 3 Scryb Ranger as a potential merfolk tech.

Think about it, they attack, you cast ranger, return your only island, untap vengevine, block up to 2 critters and live to swing again!.

[Horto]

Hello fellow Madness players,

I'm long time reader, first time poster. Zendikar block has been quite a thing for whole UG Madness, giving us much needed fetch as well as new recurring beast Vengevine. VV really pushed this archtype a giant leap forward.

Why Intuition isn't discussed? I think that it does pretty much same thing that we want with Survival; Vengies to the grave. Intuition only does it faster. Or am I missing something here? I Admit, haven't been able to test Survival build properly yet. Intuition is also pinchable to FoW and it also ables desperate 3x FoW fetch if needed.

Another thing I've been pondering with is addition of 1-2 Dreadnought. Most builds are already using Stifle. Vengies are also nice food for 'Nought and can be brought back with, let's say, manadork or Rootwalla after Dreadnoughts ability resolves. There isn't much tempo loss here, right?

[sco0ter]

Yes I also thought about Intuition instead of Survival, since Survival's only purpose seems to be getting Vengevines into the yard. No toolbox purpose, no card advantage purpose (except maybe Rootwalla synergy for +1 card advantage).

Intuition really seems appealing here, since it should be a lot faster and more flexible (you could also get things like Deep Analaysis, Ancient Grudge, Loam or Roar of the Wurm). The only downside maybe, that you need to pay 2GG for the one VV left in hand.

Dreadnought may work, but shouldn't be necessary, I think.

[Fuzzy]

@Name: It should be named UG Survivine for sure.

[TOGITwill]

Yes I also thought about Intuition instead of Survival, since Survival's only purpose seems to be getting Vengevines into the yard. No toolbox purpose, no card advantage purpose (except maybe Rootwalla synergy for +1 card advantage).

Intuition really seems appealing here, since it should be a lot faster and more flexible (you could also get things like Deep Analaysis, Ancient Grudge, Loam or Roar of the Wurm). The only downside maybe, that you need to pay 2GG for the one VV left in hand.

Dreadnought may work, but shouldn't be necessary, I think.

Survival finds the Wonder that sends your Vengevines up top and breaks the game open.

[sco0ter]

Survival finds the Wonder that sends your Vengevines up top and breaks the game open.

Intuition finds it, too. And if you don't have a discard outlet, you are in a bad shape anyways.

[Rigero]

Hm survival is discard and searching in one and it stays on the battelfield. Intuition is a good card and maybe in some lists its nice to include them, but i would never cut survival for them. Survival unanswered is always gg. Playing one Intuition EOT is simply not.

[Volrath]

Even of you intuition for 3 vengevines, you still need to play 2 critters in 1 turn. Survival solves this problem on it's own.

Also, t1 hierarch, t2 Survival with 1 mana op to pay for daze/survival is to good.

[neji21]

I played in a 46 player knightware tournament yesterday and got 5th place. I went 4-1-2.

Game 1. ugw counterbalance won against it 2-0.
Game 2. Merfolk won 2-0.
Game 3. Faestalker 2-1.
Game 4. New Horizons 2-0.
Game 5. Eva Green ID.
Game 6. Aggro Loam ID.
Game 7. Zoo 0-2 He got really lucky game 1 and 2.... First game I got him down to 2 and lost steam and got overwhelmed. Second game I got a decent hand but kept getting bad draws. I drawed 3 force of will in a row and no creature to stop zoo and lost.

My deck list:

Creature:
1x Waterfront bouncer <---Thinking of changing this for Jitte.
4x Aquamoeba
4x Vengevine
1x wonder
2x Merfolk looter
4x Noble hierarch
2x Trygon preadator
4x Basking Rootwalla
1x Shrieking Drake <--- Thinking of changing this for Jitte.

Spells:
4x Force of will
4x Daze
2x Stifle
2x Spell Pierce
4x Survival of the Fittest

Lands:
4x Wastelands
4x Tropical Island
4x Misty Rainforest
2x Wndswept heath
1x Wooded Foothills
1x Gaea's Cradle
3x Forest
2x Island

SB:
1x Stifle
2x Faerie Macabre
2x Wheel of sun and Moon
2x Krosan Grip
2x Spell Pierce
2x Submerge
3x Natural Order
1x Progenitus

The transformation sb was awesome I won 2 games with NO. First was against uwg Counterblance and second was against Faestalker. No one suspected that I took out Survival and everyone else I played against second game had dead cards in their hand because they missed sb against me ^^.

[PanderAlexander]

I played in a 46 player knightware tournament yesterday and got 5th place. I went 4-1-2.

Game 1. ugw counterbalance won against it 2-0.
Game 2. Merfolk won 2-0.
Game 3. Faestalker 2-1.
Game 4. New Horizons 2-0.
Game 5. Eva Green ID.
Game 6. Aggro Loam ID.
Game 7. Zoo 0-2 He got really lucky game 1 and 2.... First game I got him down to 2 and lost steam and got overwhelmed. Second game I got a decent hand but kept getting bad draws. I drawed 3 force of will in a row and no creature to stop zoo and lost.

My deck list:

Creature:
1x Waterfront bouncer <---Thinking of changing this for Jitte.
4x Aquamoeba
4x Vengevine
1x wonder
2x Merfolk looter
4x Noble hierarch
2x Trygon preadator
4x Basking Rootwalla
1x Shrieking Drake <--- Thinking of changing this for Jitte.

Spells:
4x Force of will
4x Daze
2x Stifle
2x Spell Pierce
4x Survival of the Fittest

Lands:
4x Wastelands
4x Tropical Island
4x Misty Rainforest
2x Wndswept heath
1x Wooded Foothills
1x Gaea's Cradle
3x Forest
2x Island

SB:
1x Stifle
2x Faerie Macabre
2x Wheel of sun and Moon
2x Krosan Grip
2x Spell Pierce
2x Submerge
3x Natural Order
1x Progenitus

The transformation sb was awesome I won 2 games with NO. First was against uwg Counterblance and second was against Faestalker. No one suspected that I took out Survival and everyone else I played against second game had dead cards in their hand because they missed sb against me ^^.

http://www.mtgthesource.com/forums/showthread.php?8090-Top-8-Decklists&p=485120&viewfull=1#post485120

[Zamussels]

The transformation sb was awesome I won 2 games with NO. First was against uwg Counterblance and second was against Faestalker. No one suspected that I took out Survival and everyone else I played against second game had dead cards in their hand because they missed sb against me ^^.

I noticed the 8th place at the last SCG open also had transformational sideboard with Natural Order. I was wondering what matchups you would bring that against and why side out the Survivals precisely and not some lesser threats. Which matchups do you think that particular sideboard helps? Or do you just do it against everyone to surprise them? Help me out here :)

[bornman]

why Wheel of sun and Moon

[keys]

I played in a 46 player knightware tournament yesterday and got 5th place. I went 4-1-2.

My deck list:

<snip>

How come you ditched the Intuition/Shrieking Drake tech? I'm interested in your logic because I thought it was a pretty solid plan B, and you did well with it at the last tourney.

[worsel]

What games is Submerge brought in for?
Is there another card that would be as good/almost as good?
The reason I ask is because I play online only (MTGO) because there are no Legacy events in my area, and Submerge is not out yet on MTGO.
I see lists not running Waterfront Bouncer, which is good, because he is also not available on MTGO yet.

Thanks.

[igri_is_a_bk]

This deck has made me interested in Magic again so although I'm a bit late I'd like to congratulate and thank CalebD for putting up a great result with it. I wish he would post more about it, but I think Hanni's arrogant posts discouraged him from commenting more.

@ worsel - Submerge comes in against any deck packing Forests and creatures, so NH, Bant Aggro, Zoo, and such. I wouldn't bring them in against other Survival variants though, because you want K. Grip and Spell Pierce (if there's room) more in those match-ups.

So despite this deck playing a tempo role, I'm wondering if Daze is worth it here at all. We aren't as mana hungry as other Survival variants, I understand that, but it is still a detriment to what we want to do. Does anyone else think S. Pierce or S. Snare could be main boarded over Daze?

And I think people are cutting the wrong cards from Caleb's original list, namely Wild Mongrel and Aquamoeba. This deck is strong because it can enable Vv as early as turn 2, and dropping either of those cards makes us a much less explosive deck. If you want to play with things like Looter and Bouncer, then you need to cut something like the Predators.

The skeleton of this deck, IMO, should always start with:

4 Wild Mongrel
4 Aquamoeba
4 Noble Hierarch
4 Basking Rootwalla
4 Vengevine
1 Wonder

4 Survival
4 FoW

8 Green Fetch
4 Trop
4 Forest (or 5)
4 Wasteland
1 Island (or 0)

Plus some more blue cards to support FoW, but those are the slots that are flexible.

And I'm really curious why people are including additional Islands in their lists. Islands don't do a whole lot for us - just play it deck and you'll come to the same conclusion. Caleb actually proposed cutting all basic Islands from the list, and I don't disagree.

[Jak]

So despite this deck playing a tempo role, I'm wondering if Daze is worth it here at all. We aren't as mana hungry as other Survival variants, I understand that, but it is still a detriment to what we want to do. Does anyone else think S. Pierce or S. Snare could be main boarded over Daze?

Daze is worth it. Mana denial and Daze have always gone best together and with this being an aggressive deck, you can not afford to leave mana open. Postboard, once you know what you are up against, Pierce can shine since you will know what to expect and have more information of when to leave that U open.


And I think people are cutting the wrong cards from Caleb's original list, namely Wild Mongrel and Aquamoeba. This deck is strong because it can enable Vv as early as turn 2, and dropping either of those cards makes us a much less explosive deck. If you want to play with things like Looter and Bouncer, then you need to cut something like the Predators.

I guess I agree. I think Wild Mongrel has to stay at a 4 of but I trimmed Aquamoeba down. Not by a lot mind you, I just felt I was getting hands and draws with too many Mongrels/Moebas and not enough business.


The skeleton of this deck, IMO, should always start with:

4 Wild Mongrel
4 Aquamoeba
4 Noble Hierarch
4 Basking Rootwalla
4 Vengevine
1 Wonder

4 Survival
4 FoW

8 Green Fetch
4 Trop
4 Forest (or 5)
4 Wasteland
1 Island (or 0)

Plus some more blue cards to support FoW, but those are the slots that are flexible.

Seems right except maybe the Moeba count. I also have been getting by with 20 lands. I run Brainstorm though.


And I'm really curious why people are including additional Islands in their lists. Islands don't do a whole lot for us - just play it deck and you'll come to the same conclusion. Caleb actually proposed cutting all basic Islands from the list, and I don't disagree.

Wasteland, Blood Moon, Back to Basics, etc still exist. It doesn't hurt the deck much at all to reliably be able to cast your Aquamoeabs, Stfiles, Daze, Force and most of your sideboard.

4 Wasteland
4 Misty Rainforest
3 Windswept Heath
1 Flooded Strand
4 Tropical Island
3 Forest
1 Island

4 Noble Hierarch
4 Basking Rootwalla
4 Wild Mongrel
3 Aquameba
1 Trygon Predator
4 Vengevine
1 Wonder

4 Survival of the Fittest
4 Brainstorm
4 Force of Will
4 Daze
4 Stifle

SB
3 Spell Pierce
3 Submerge
2 Krosan Grip
2 Tormod's Crypt
2 Umezawa's Jitte
1 Faerie Macabre
1 Trygon Predator
1 Llawan

[worsel]

Does anyone have a good suggestion for a card I can use instead of Submerge? (because Submerge is not yet out on MTGO).

[neji21]

I noticed the 8th place at the last SCG open also had transformational sideboard with Natural Order. I was wondering what matchups you would bring that against and why side out the Survivals precisely and not some lesser threats. Which matchups do you think that particular sideboard helps? Or do you just do it against everyone to surprise them? Help me out here :)

I did the transformation sb on everyone I played.

[neji21]

How come you ditched the Intuition/Shrieking Drake tech? I'm interested in your logic because I thought it was a pretty solid plan B, and you did well with it at the last tourney.

Intuition/shrieking drake was a cool tech but was too slow. by the time I got 3 mana I allway's got daze so I had to wait for 4th mana to use it and waiting for 4th mana led to gg for me so I rather use something like merfolk looter to speed up the deck.

[igri_is_a_bk]

Intuition/shrieking drake was a cool tech but was too slow. by the time I got 3 mana I allway's got daze so I had to wait for 4th mana to use it and waiting for 4th mana led to gg for me so I rather use something like merfolk looter to speed up the deck.

I don't understand your logic at all. How is adding Merfolk Looter going to speed up the deck? Looter doesn't work with Rootwalla and Vv on turn 2, like Aquamoeba or Mongrel. Plus, Looter can't pitch a mised Wonder and swing or really attack ever for that matter.

[Horto]

Is black splash considered dead? It was brainstormed around, but when UG list made top8, black wasn't discussed anymore. I see that Caleb's list is quite solid but black splash would give us some seriously broken t1 plays with Putrid Imp.

[Oiolosse]

Please tell the arguments against circular logic. I mean, if you are running plenty of outlets it's amazing. Is that a reason, the fact that you have to run and have the outlet in play for it to be playable?

Thanks!

[Hopo]

Please tell the arguments against circular logic. I mean, if you are running plenty of outlets it's amazing. Is that a reason, the fact that you have to run and have the outlet in play for it to be playable?

Thanks!

You can pretty much come to a conclusion yourself, if you try hard enough. Survival doesn't count as an outlet and it's basically worthless without one. How is that a good card? Why are you asking arguments against it when you clearly should be experimenting and presenting the opposite evidence yourself instead?

[neji21]

I don't understand your logic at all. How is adding Merfolk Looter going to speed up the deck? Looter doesn't work with Rootwalla and Vv on turn 2, like Aquamoeba or Mongrel. Plus, Looter can't pitch a mised Wonder and swing or really attack ever for that matter.

Sorry I didn't mean to say it speed up deck but it makes the deck more consistence. Having merfolk looter makes it better by being able to draw an extra card to find what you need and ditch any dead or worthless cards in your hand.

[PanderAlexander]

Nejix21 has a hardtime explaining what he means. For intuition, we tested many many games with many decks and also in tournaments and in theory it sounds cool but in practiice it didn't work out. He put in the Merfolk looter like the SCG article was suggesting and it helped mid-late games where topdecking was key.

I told him to use the transformational sideboard which I had used from my days with Bant survival. The idea for that is your opponent brings in their krosan grips and GY hate and you take out the survivals so their hate becomes dead cards, since you run hiearchs and a bunch of cheap green creatures the natural order plan works and your opponents aren't prepared for it.

[median]

What games is Submerge brought in for?
Is there another card that would be as good/almost as good?
The reason I ask is because I play online only (MTGO) because there are no Legacy events in my area, and Submerge is not out yet on MTGO.
I see lists not running Waterfront Bouncer, which is good, because he is also not available on MTGO yet.

Thanks.

You could try snap or SnapBack, or unsummon, these are worse than submerge but would have a similar effect. If you wanted to build the deck for mtg online, you could splash white for tireless tribe (instead of aquamoeba), and swords/path.

[igri_is_a_bk]

@ worsel - If you can't get Submerge, then I would just try some other card in the board. Those bounce spells median suggested don't really do what you want Submerge to do at all. You want to deny them a draw step because we play the tempo roll or shuffle that creature away entirely because you don't have Counterbalance to stop it after it has been returned to their hand. You could try Hydroblast because burn can hit every single one of our creatures for lethal.

White definitely has some good cards to offer if you decide to splash it. I don't think you need Swords/Path because you use Wonder as your evasion and pseudo-removal. What I mean is that you just ignore their board so for you it's the same as if their board was clear. Anyways, you get Enlightened Tutor which is probably the best reason to splash. But now your deck will be really greedy with its blue card count, so you'll have to consider that and compensate.

I've been trying 3 Aquamoeba and 1 Looter and have been really happy to draw that Looter a little later in the game if my opponent has dealt with Survival. I still don't like the Bouncer though because I hate spending a mana each time to activate him, but I see how he could be useful. And I forgot that Aquamoeba isn't a 3/3 anymore so he's a bit weaker than I thought, although still better turn 2 than Looter or Bouncer.

My current list is CalebD's with these changes: -1 Cradle, -1 blue fetch, -1 Aquamoeba, +1 Forest, +1 green fetch, +1 Looter, so not a huge difference.

And my sideboard is 4 Pierce, 3 Grip, 3 Submerge, 2 Faerie Macabre, and 3 open slots. The meta is changing so much after GP Columbus and I'm really debating what I'll need in those last slots, but looking at recent tourney results more should help.

[sillysam71]

I was the 8th place finisher at the SCG in Minneapolis. Here's my list and I'm gonna give a little tournament report, also.

Maindeck:

Creatures
4 Aquamoeba
4 Basking Rootwalla
4 Noble Hierarch
2 Trygon Predator
4 Vengevine
4 Wild Mongrel
1 Wonder

Enchantments
4 Survival of the Fittest

Instants
3 Daze
4 Force of Will
2 Spell Pierce
3 Stifle

Basic Lands
5 Forest

Lands
2 Misty Rainforest
4 Tropical Island
2 Verdant Catacombs
4 Wasteland
2 Windswept Heath
2 Wooded Foothills

Sideboard:
2 Faerie Macabre
3 Krosan Grip
1 Spell Pierce
2 Umezawa's Jitte
1 Llawan, Cephalid Empress
1 Progenitus
4 Natural Order
1 Dryad Arbor

I'll be honest, I put this together at 1 am the night before and did little testing prior to that, so some of my choices may be suboptimal, but I did get 8th, so I must've done something right. I also talked with Caleb about the deck while we traded during the Standard tournament and learned a little. Thanks, Caleb. My memory from the earlier rounds in the tournament might be a little sketchy, but here's my report.

Round 1: Bant Survival
I'm playing against a guy that I go to school with, so I've played against him numerous times.
G1 & G2: I'm pretty sure that I just went Vengevine beatdown on him like this deck is supposed to do. Bant Survival sets up way too slow to really compete with this deck, especially when you can disrupt them.
1-0, 2-0

Round 2: LEDless Ichorid
As you can tell from my SB, I didn't expect to play this matchup.
G1: He wins the roll and plays 5c land, Pimp. I Force the Pimp. My turn, Waste his land. He has no play for the next few turns and slowly builds up his hand so he can discard. I eventually draw Survival and win.
G2: He goes on the draw so he can discard right away. He gets shitty dredges and I get there with Survival before he can do anything relevant.
2-0, 4-0

Round 3: Aggroloam
This is the Aggroloam player that got 2nd in the tournament.
G1: He got his loam engine going fairly quickly and I didn't have much business. I think he won with a Goyf and a Terravore.
G2: This is the only game that I sided in the NO Prog package. He starts the game with 2 Leyline of the Void's in play. Fuck. I was trying to set up the NO package, but wasn't drawing it. My opener was a Survival hand. He played a Countryside Crusher and on its first reveal, he hit 7 LANDS!! It was pretty ridiculous. He also had a Bob out and eventually got seismic and just cleared my board and won. He was at 2 life from Bob. So close!
2-1, 4-2

Round 4: MonoW Stax
G1: He got out Trini and Challice and Suppression Field right away, but I hard casted a Vengevine and beat before he could draw his lock piece.
G2: Sided in KGrips. He got out Ghostly Prison and Ensnaring Bridge and soon after Smokestack while I had Survival, Mongrel, Mongoose, and Vengevine. I got him to 4 life before he dropped the Bridge. I top-decked KGrip with the fifth mana in my hand to get there for the win. Played the land, KGripped the Bridge to clear the way and then he reallized that I hadn't sacked anything to the Stax, judge was called, if I would've sacked a land, I couldn't've won, but I'm pretty sure I wouldn't have sacked a land. Either way, we each got a warning and i proceeded to win.
3-1, 6-2

Round 5: Merfolk
G1: He got a vial, Coralhelm, and Lord while I got Survival right away. He won the race...barely.
G2: Brought in my Jittes and maybe something else. He has Leyline. I went Mongrel/Jitte beatdown and kept his board clear for the win.
G3: He plays Waste, Vial. I waste his waste. He starts missing landdrops. I get out a few dudes while he gets dudes with vial. It's kinda close. I draw the one Llawan that I boarded in. Hold it til I get the land, and then play it. It resolves and his vial is at 3. He can't get a land and I eventually get there.
4-1, 8-3

Round 6: Reanimator
G1: I waste his first dual, he gets a second, and then I Stifle his next two fetches so he's stuck on 1 land. I eventually get there.
G2: He Thoughtseizes me and sees Macabre, Force, and a blue card. Takes the Macabre. I topdeck another Force. I got in some beats before he can resolve an exhume. I get Macabre while he gets Inkwell. He chain of vapors Macabre. He can't attack cuz I have damage on board and I can't attack either. We keep topdecking until I topdeck my one Llawan and win.
5-1, 10-3

Round 7: Goblins
I met him in Green Bay a week earlier and we played this matchup. lol
G1: He mulls to 4 and I have a fast survival draw.
G2: I bring in Jittes. I open a hand with it and Mongrel and a counter for his vial. Jittes controls the board. He hangs on for a while, but just can't get ahead.
6-1, 12-3

Round 8: Merfolk
I'm paired against Mike Poszgay and we draw, even though one of us could get knocked out of top 8. I ended up in 8th and him in 9th.

Top 8
Quarterfinals: UG Madness
I've never actually tested the mirror. Overall, I played like shit in this match. I kept some pretty bad hands.
G1: He gets Mongrel, Venge, Mongoose. Beats and I draw Survival before him. I get it going to keep me alive. He drops one of his own with a card in hand. If he has a creature, he can get his Vengevines and win, if it's not, I can alpha strike for the win since he's at 16 and all his creatures are tapped. I go for it. I get all 4 Vengevines and swing. He has a creature in hand and gets his guys to block and get the game.
G2: I for some reason kept a god-awful hand and didn't stand much of a chance. I guess his opener had 2 Forces, so I wasn't really ever in the game.

8th place finish.

I decided to run the Jittes in the side since they made for some some pretty bad/slow openers. As for the NO/Prog package, I threw it in because I thought it would be really cool and it dodges grave hate and a lot of removal in the format. If I would have drawn it in the matchup that I brought it in, it would've been insane, but I didn't. I kinda wish I would've sided in Submerge, though. That card is good. Macabre is probably the best Grave Hate card for this deck, though.

Feel free to ask questions.

Sam

[Tacosnape]

Does anyone have a good suggestion for a card I can use instead of Submerge? (because Submerge is not yet out on MTGO).

Try Man-O-War. It's silly and fun in this deck. Because not only can you bounce pretty much anything (Including anything bigger than a Vengevine), you can bounce your own Basking Rootwalla, re-pitch it, and refresh all your Vengevines. It's also kind of tech against Show and Tell.

[DomoKun]

Hi all,

When I saw Caleb 's original list, it is a fantastic one which has some rooms for improvement for tweaking.

The problem which I think is often faced is the blue counts for FOW but once you have tackled it, it seems that the threat level will go down.

As this is a UG deck, I feel that tarmogoyf should be included as a 4 of in the deck. It is a threat of itself, able to stall for the game.

I cut the aquameoba completely for the goyf and still able to maintain 18 blue mana counts to at least fow once.

In my build, I agree with Hanni for brainstorm which helps to dig in for solution, but this may subject to personal preference and playstyle.

3 daze and 2 spell pierce work perfectly well for me.

I took my list to a recently tourney of 30 people and I got 5 place. The only matchup that I lost was to enchantress which played 4 oblivion ring and 4 journey to nowhere.

Do try out the goyf in the deck which will increase the threat level of the deck tremendously.

[median]

So after some testing I have abandoned the plan to add white. Swords wasn't helping enough with tempo, and the mana base hurt.
I've also added tarmogoyf, goyf just makes more hands explosive and plays to the tempo plan that this deck likes. The other card I like is ornithopter as a one of, just for the survival engine.
What I'm testing looks like callebs gp list, however I've gone with these changes,
-4 lands
-1 rootwalla
+4 goyf
+1 ornithopter

[Blitzbold]

According to my experience with this deck so far you won't get away with 18 lands + 4 Noble Hierarch without using some kind of filtering, namely Brainstorm. I tried a 20-landish version with 4 Brainstorms, and that one worked quite well. No tournament experience with that list so far, though.

[Oiolosse]

You can pretty much come to a conclusion yourself, if you try hard enough. Survival doesn't count as an outlet and it's basically worthless without one. How is that a good card? Why are you asking arguments against it when you clearly should be experimenting and presenting the opposite evidence yourself instead?

Well, I pretty much can. But like you said, just pretty much. There are lists that run 4 Mongrel and 4 Aquamoaba, yet no Circular Logic. It's even pretty hot with Waterfront Bouncer, "yes I have a response, counter that spell then return that dude to your hand"--that's pretty good for UU. So, given sufficient non Survival discard outlets why aren't they run?

[sco0ter]

I was thinking about building Übermadness, since I have spare LED's lying around, and my Survival and FoW are in other decks already.

I was thinking about a deck similar to this one (http://www.deckcheck.net/deck.php?id=6848).

But with Vengevines, Noble Hierarch, and without W (Aquamoeba instead of Brushhopper):


// 21 lands
4 Tropical Island
2 Lonely Sandbar
3 Tranquil Thicket
3 Wasteland
1 Island
1 Forest
1 Windswept Heath
4 Misty Rainforest
2 Cephalid Coliseum

// 23 creatures
4 Basking Rootwalla
4 Wild Mongrel
2 Aquamoeba
3 Arrogant Wurm
4 Vengevine
4 Noble Hierarch
2 Wonder

// 16
3 Brainstorm
4 Lion's Eye Diamond
3 Life from the Loam
3 Roar of the Wurm
3 Mox Diamond


Has someone experience with the variant of Madness?

I just like the idea of a first turn 6/6 wurm or a opening turn like Land, Noble Hierarch, LED, discard hand (including Vengevine and Arrogant Wurm), play Wurm, bring Vengevine back.

[Fuzzy]

I've played this deck yesterday in a ~50 person tournament for the invitation for the Legacy Brazilian Nationals. I ended 4-2, but one of my loses was a scoop for a team mate (I already had the invite).

My list:

4 Tropical Island
4 Misty Rainforest
2 Windswepth Heath
1 Verdant Catacombs
1 Scalding Tarn
1 Breeding Pool (Yeah, really)
2 Horizon Canopy
4 Forest
1 Island

4 Wild Mongrel
4 BasKING Rootwalla
4 Vengevine
4 Noble Hierarch
3 Aquamoeba
2 Trygon Predator
1 Wonder

4 Force of Will
4 Brainstorm
4 Survival of the Fittest
3 Intuition
3 Dazes

SB:
3 Spell Pierces
3 Natural Order
1 Progenitus
2 Vendillion Clique (Hate for Extirpate) (MVP)
2 Faerie Macabre
2 Krosan Grips
2 Umezawa's Jitte

A bunch of cents:

1 - Intuition is SICK. If you aren't playing this, you're out of my Internetz.
2 - I never played Rootwalla in my first turn. It means i had only 8 1st turn drops, so I'm fine fetching the Pool (Except when I HAD to play the Dazes)
3 - Jitte MD in my tests was meh, the same for the Tempo Package.
4 - I had no love for Trygons.

Quick and Dirty Report: (SPOILER: MY ENGLISH SUX)

1st Round - Zoo
First game I had nothing until EOT Intuition for Vengevines, whle he had Loam Lion, Reliquary (4/4) Jitte and Top (!!!). I played Dog and Lizard and he Paths one Evil Plant, goiing to 10. He swings, I chump. He burns the Vines on his main phase, I play 2 Amoebas and had to chump again. I can't remember exactly, but the final move was me playing Intuition trying avoid one Helix on my last Vine, but I had no more Dazes. I present Vine/Wonder/Mongrel and he gives me the Vine. So, next turn, he had no cards in hand and I had lethal on board. Of course he flips that Top and Fireblast one of My guys. KoTR goes for distance.

SB: -4 FoW, -3 Daze. +3 NO, +1 Progenitals; +2 Jitte, +1 Clique.

Secong game was another close one, but he fears the Elemental and let my Aquamoeba and Mongrel seal the deal.

In the last, I missplay not trading my Aquamoeba with one KoTR. I Intuition for NO, put the Hydra in play, but he "chump attacks" and burn me out. =/

0-1

Second Round - Ivan - UWb Thopters

Great guy, nice to meet.

In the first game he counters/StoPs everything. I even play Survival, but he Needles. I manage to play Trygon, but he plays Tezz earlier and blue robots won.

SB: -3 Aquamoeba, -2 Survival, -1 Vine -1 Daze (?). +3 Pierces, +2 Clique, +2 KGrip.

He mulls to five, clears my board with Explosives and bring it back with Academy Ruins. I Vendillion him and swing twice to finish him.

In the final game he is stuck on 3 lands. I play Vendillion EOT, he counters. I Intuition in the next Eot, he Counterpslles, I Pierce, with one basKING in hand, but only 4 lands. I draw blank, so I play Vengevine, dazes it, make the land drop and swing with the Carnivorous Plants. He draws and scoops.

1-1

Third Round - Luis - Mirror

We are testing in the night before pré-SB games and it was a coin flip. But he restarted playing now, so he makes a few mistakes. I still think the guy is awesome and plays very well. 3 more months and I'll be outclassed.

He won the first roll (¬¬), but I FoW his Survival, the mine sticks, so I win.

I cant remember how I boarded, but came in NOs, Cliques and Jittes (wich I boarded out in the last game)

I beatdown him until he plays Survival on 3. then I Cliqued him taking his last creature (A Vengevine). I was goiing to kill him next turn with my Clique with Jitte and 2 Hierarchs, but he Grips, draws a dude, Survival for Wonder, 2 more HOTwallas and that's it.

In the last, I go nutz with 2 Noble, 1 Vine, 1 Amoeba, 1 NO and lands. I swing for 6 on 2, Cliques his NO away, plays mine and he concedes.

2-1 (He was paired down, so he makes 5-1 and Top8s)

4th Round - João - BGW Bizarro (It's a "pet official deck", half our team plays something like this - Only me and ScatmanX plays things with Red)

I scoop to him, but we played 6+ games and I eat him with french fries. NOs and Vines are much for him (Trygon is Out. I hate that flying fish).

2-2

5th Round - Zoo

I can't remember with details, but I lost the first, the second i won after Intuition for NO in the Burn range, but he fails drawing then. In the last, I keep attacking with my Vengevine triple Exalted and he keeps chump blocking. He plays Reliquary with 5 Lands and one Figure, I face lethal so I attacked with everything. After the blocks I see I can kill him with my Mongrel and Aquamoeba and pumped Rootwallas.

The SB plan is the same of Round 1.

3-2

6th Round - Galli - Dredge

He's a great Standard player and even more great friend, but knows nothing about Legacy the Gathering Trading Card Game. He steals my Japanese LEDs, I steal his Vengevines, so I offer the ID, so we can go buy some food, but he wants to play.

In the first he dredges some Narcotic Amoebas for chump blocks, but only one bridge and NOTHING to Dredge Return. I beat him down with fair dudes.

SB: -1 Amoeba, -2 Trygons (HATE), -3 Intuition, -1 Brainstorm, -1 Vine, -1 Wonder. +2 Jitte, +2 Faerie Macabre, +2 Cliques, +3 Pierces.

I keep a fair hand. He Therapys himself on Troll, I land Noble. He plays dredges Amoeba and blanks and Needles Survival. I play Mongrel and dazes twices his Breakthought, killing his Gemstone Mine and letting him with just one Coliseum. I beatdown him to death with Dogs, Lizards and Elementals.

4-2

I loved this deck, but Zoo looks like a bad matchup and I can't see any solution. Any ideas?

Also, i would like to drop the Trygons from MD. Ideas on this too?

[chinEsE girl]

Yesterday I played this deck at Jupiter Games in one of Eli's North American Legacy tourney series events, even though I wasn't planning on playing the deck. I wanted to play my next level thresh list, but seeing as how I left my deck on my bed when I left for the tourney, I needed another deck on the spot, so I just made this list up on the fly since I couldn't really make anything else. The link for the list is here, played by Eric English;

https://spreadsheets.google.com/pub?key=0AuenvJTIl3wtdHFFV2w1TVBUMmMzd3VCMU5WOEJFeEE&hl=en&gid=1

I actually ended up going 5-0-2 in the swiss, beating in order merfolk, zoo, new horizons, 4c countertop, and then enchantress. Unfortunately I lost in the quarters to Dave Price playing new horizons obv, but since I hadn't played the deck before in my life I can't complain about the result. The biggest issue that I think needs to be addressed with the deck is consistency. Sure, the deck has a ton of raw power, and the fact that survival is almost always gg when it resolves is so much better than other survival decks that want to grind out the win instead. So the changes I'm trying for next time are -2 trygon predator -2 jitte -1 aquamoeba -1 forest +4 brainstorm +1 intuition +1 gaea's cradle. The predator's just did nothing for me, all he ever did was attack in the air for 2, maybe more if I had some heirarchs out. Jitte was only good 40% of the time, so it's going to move to the sideboard. I feel like intuition would be strong, it can get survival's easily, helps get awesome stuff like natural order after you board, and even gets a bunch of vengivines when you just have a bunch of creatures to cast. All I have to say is that the deck has a ton of raw power, but was just unfocused when I played it yesterday. Once the consistency issue is addressed I think this could be one of the best deck's in the format.

[Zamussels]

I notice most of the last few people posting about the deck are running NO + Progenitus in the SB. Fuzzy was siding them in against Zoo that I can see. What other matchups would that be good to side against? Is it getting too cute in general?

[chinEsE girl]

When I played the deck this weekend, I used the natural order sideboard against both zoo and new horizons. I also might have boarded it in against my counterbalance opponents as well, although I can't quite remember if I did or not. It actually won me a game each time i sideboarded it. The greatest thing about it is that I could play around graveyard removal and any other plan trying to stop survival. It just gives you another way to win pretty much on the spot against decks without an answer to progenitus.

[Fuzzy]

When I played the deck this weekend, I used the natural order sideboard against both zoo and new horizons. I also might have boarded it in against my counterbalance opponents as well, although I can't quite remember if I did or not. It actually won me a game each time i sideboarded it. The greatest thing about it is that I could play around graveyard removal and any other plan trying to stop survival. It just gives you another way to win pretty much on the spot against decks without an answer to progenitus.

I couldn't agree more.

[kinda]

If you want consistency...and since survival is the strongest card in the deck (and can win by itself)...how about splashing white for enlightened tutor? Intuition pitches to force but 3 mana seems seems too slow. Oh and natural order in the sb seems good to me.

[median]

I tried enlightened tutor when I was playing with the white splash and really disliked it. It felt my opponent had time walks while i did nothing for a turn waiting to draw survival, and I felt every time I had one almost anything would have been better, which has led to me adding goyf.
I agree on natural order being awesome, but will be quick to point out you'll need close to 22 lands minimum even with brainstorm.

[chinEsE girl]

Yeah enlightened tutor just doesn't seem like it would be that great. In the end all it can do is fetch just survival or jitte is you have that main/sideboard. On the other hand, intuition has a ton more utility, being able to pitch to force of will, tutor up ANY three of or more that you have in the deck (hello natural order), as well as doing things like getting trips vengevines when your survivals won't do the trick. For example, if you play against an opponent who thinks that you're just going to intuition for survivals and thinks that his 3 counterspells in hand will stop you, intuition could resolve with you having a vengevine in hand, two in the yard, and only in need of a few creatures to punish your opponent for letting intuition resolve. Enlightened tutor can only telegraph what your getting, at the cost of a card (since it doesn't quite replace itself).

[cuthbertthecat]

Are there any lists of this deck that splash white for removal to deal with threats, or has the brute force of the u/g lists proven to be ideal?

[Volrath]

I tok 8th place at the Amsterdam pro-tour day 2 with this deck.

My list.

// Lands
3 [R] Tropical Island
4 [TE] Wasteland
2 [ON] Windswept Heath
4 [ZEN] Misty Rainforest
1 [MI] Island (1)
4 [MI] Forest (1)
1 [ON] Wooded Foothills
1 [ZEN] Scalding Tarn

// Creatures
1 [JU] Wonder
4 [TO] Basking Rootwalla
4 [ROE] Vengevine
1 [VI] Shrieking Drake
3 [OD] Wild Mongrel
4 [TO] Aquamoeba
4 [CFX] Noble Hierarch

// Spells
4 [AL] Force of Will
3 [SC] Stifle
4 [MM] Brainstorm
4 [EX] Survival of the Fittest
4 [NE] Daze

// Sideboard
SB: 4 [ZEN] Spell Pierce
SB: 1 [DIS] Trygon Predator
SB: 2 [TSP] Krosan Grip
SB: 2 [NE] Submerge
SB: 1 [VI] Man-o'-War
SB: 1 [TO] Llawan, Cephalid Empress
SB: 2 [SHM] Kitchen Finks
SB: 2 [SHM] Faerie Macabre


G1: 2-1 vs Merfolk

G2: 2-1 vs Merfolk

G3: 2-0 vs Belcher (Cedric Phillips didn't show up)

G4: 0-2 vs Zoo (damn that t2 cannonist! and not drawing finks/submerges!)

G5: 2-1 vs Merfolk

In my testing i found that stifle has been so-so, i have been thinking about cutting them intirely, since i board them out almost evry game, for the pierces in the side.

This gives me extra protection against counters g1 and 3/4 extra SB slots against stuff like zoo (wich is a pain in teh ass!)

What do you guys/galls think?

[Garobidou]

Long time reader, first time poster. I know we are in the UG Madness thread but I would like to share a G/B list I’ve been testing for a few weeks.
Here are the reasons why I picked Black over Blue :

1) To be less survival dependent

It implies having more “T2 Mongrel + Rootwalla + Vengevine” plan which means :
- Optimizing the 16 slots devoted to Mongrel – Rootwalla – Vengevine (the requirements for a T2 Vengevine). The most optimized distributions are the homogeneous ones (quite intuitive) i.e 6 Mongrels - 5 Rootwalla - 5 Vengevines, 5-6-5 and 5-5-6
- Devoting more cards to the “combo”

In both cases you have to increase the Vengevine count. This is the main reason why I switched Blue to Black : Entomb acts as Vengevine #5 to 8.

Let’s look closer what Entomb enables :
- T1 Entomb; T2 discard outlet – Rootwalla : optimization of what blue allows
- T1 Entomb; T2 1cc creaturex2 : no need for discard outlet
- (Out of T2 Vengevine context) : T1 Entomb; T2 Survival => Entomb isn’t a dead card in an opening hand with survival

Black also gives access to Putrid Imp which is way better than Aquamoeba :
- Allows T1 Vengevine
- Is a 1cc creature (T1 entomb, T2 Putrid Imp x2)

2) To stop running suboptimal cards to keep the blue amount reasonably high (17+ cards)

Counterspells are better than discard, I know. But running blue leads to picking suboptimal blue cards (Aquamoeba for instance). Black solves this problem.
By the way, discard (Cabal Therapy) also enables some retarded plays :
- Abuse cheap creatures sacrifying them to flashback Cabal Therapy
- Cabal therapy yourself to discard your vengevine(s) if you don’t have any creature discard outlet

So here is the list :

Lands (21)
4 Verdant Catacombs
4 Misty rainforest
1 Windswept heath
4 Bayou
1 Tropical island
2 Forest
1 Swamp
4 Wasteland

Creatures (24)
4 Wild Mongrel
4 Putrid Imp
4 Vengevine
4 Birds of paradise
4 Basking rootwalla
3 Noble hierarch
1 Wonder

Instants (4)
4 Entomb

Sorceries (7)
4 Cabal therapy
3 Thoughtseize

Enchantments (4)
4 Survival of the fittest

(Sideboard in construction)

Cards that might find room in the main :
- Jitte
- Tarmogoyf (as a 2 of)

Has anyone tried such a variant?
Critics are welcome.

[Vacrix]

I was thinking about building Übermadness, since I have spare LED's lying around, and my Survival and FoW are in other decks already.

I was thinking about a deck similar to this one (http://www.deckcheck.net/deck.php?id=6848).

But with Vengevines, Noble Hierarch, and without W (Aquamoeba instead of Brushhopper):


// 21 lands
4 Tropical Island
2 Lonely Sandbar
3 Tranquil Thicket
3 Wasteland
1 Island
1 Forest
1 Windswept Heath
4 Misty Rainforest
2 Cephalid Coliseum

// 23 creatures
4 Basking Rootwalla
4 Wild Mongrel
2 Aquamoeba
3 Arrogant Wurm
4 Vengevine
4 Noble Hierarch
2 Wonder

// 16
3 Brainstorm
4 Lion's Eye Diamond
3 Life from the Loam
3 Roar of the Wurm
3 Mox Diamond


Has someone experience with the variant of Madness?

I just like the idea of a first turn 6/6 wurm or a opening turn like Land, Noble Hierarch, LED, discard hand (including Vengevine and Arrogant Wurm), play Wurm, bring Vengevine back.
I've tried to make LED work in Madness so many times.. It's rarely a good play and when it is, you are just going all in on a hand that has a slower clock than EtW in Belcher. Also, LED is usually a horrible topdeck.

[Lejay]

Has anyone tried such a variant?
I did. We (with a teammate) were playing 3 fauna shaman+1 quirion ranger instead of entombs. Fauna shaman with ranger is pretty nice, and ranger is good on his own. But summonning sickness is becoming more and more an issue.
I suggested entombs not long ago as a replacement but it has not been tested yet. More comments on your experience with it ?
Daze is playable and pretty nice in the deck.
Wall of roots has been awesome as a 2-of.

[dar482]

Have you guys thought about cutting the Wastelands? It seems that having them opens you up to getting blown out by bad matchups, Merfolk and Goblins. Even with Noble Hierarch, you must say, this deck is a land light, while quite color intensive because of your Survival turns.
I play with Brainstorm, so having lots of fetches is important. Playing basics, fetches, and a Pendelhaven instead of Wastelands seems like a fair trade.

[igri_is_a_bk]

This isn't your traditional Survival list. We don't build slow advantage like Survival builds of old; we just win now. So that's why Wasteland is strong here because a whole turn for us is potentially game over. We play tempo, and Wasteland is a tempo card.

About Entomb - I don't think it's worth it. If you think about it, playing an Entomb is the same as half of one Survival activation and it uses a whole card. Do you understand my parallels here? That doesn't seem too strong. Again, GW Survival is an established deck, so if we're going to splash a color, I think it should be W. And that's for E. Tutor.

Our whole game plan is mulligan to Survival or the Mongrel/moeba, walla, Vv hand. And you do improve that second combo with B, but you don't improve Survival, so I think you need to readdress what primary win con you're trying to support with your splash color. Plus, you said it yourself, counters > discard.

[sco0ter]

I've tried to make LED work in Madness so many times.. It's rarely a good play and when it is, you are just going all in on a hand that has a slower clock than EtW in Belcher. Also, LED is usually a horrible topdeck.

Can you tell us, what did you test so many times? Did you test it with Vengevine, too? Did you test with LftL (It seems crucial to the LED plan to refill your hand with cycle lands).

Did you test Anurid Brushhopper vs Aquamoeba?

Appearently the deck behind the link I posted had some success 3 years ago.

I don't think you are going all in with LED, since you can rebuild your hand with Loam and Colisseum, replay Vengevine and play the rest with madness or flashback.

Unfortunately I haven't had time to build and playtest a LED variant yet.

[Volrath]

Can you tell us, what did you test so many times? Did you test it with Vengevine, too? Did you test with LftL (It seems crucial to the LED plan to refill your hand with cycle lands).

Did you test Anurid Brushhopper vs Aquamoeba?

Appearently the deck behind the link I posted had some success 3 years ago.

I don't think you are going all in with LED, since you can rebuild your hand with Loam and Colisseum, replay Vengevine and play the rest with madness or flashback.

Unfortunately I haven't had time to build and playtest a LED variant yet.

Moeba is blue
Moeba costs 2
Moeba can discard 1 card

Ergo, Brushhopper sucks hairy balls.

[sco0ter]

Moeba is blue
Moeba costs 2
Moeba can discard 1 card

Ergo, Brushhopper sucks hairy balls.

So what?
Blue doesn't matter, since no FoW in the LED version.
3/4 is better than 1/3, which justifies the additional mana.
Discarding 2 cards may be bad, but on the other hand its ability is basically shroud and vigilance in one and with Loam you should have enough extra cards to discard.

[Volrath]

So what?
Blue doesn't matter, since no FoW in the LED version.
3/4 is better than 1/3, which justifies the additional mana.
Discarding 2 cards may be bad, but on the other hand its ability is basically shroud and vigilance in one and with Loam you should have enough extra cards to discard.


Make seperate thread then and discuss your little pet deck there.

[MrShine]

Hey all,

I played UG madness for the first time a couple days ago, going 3-1 in a small local tournament. Unfortunately, I got a bye (no testing there...), then beat UW Enlightnened Tutor/Stax/Control 2-1, lost two VERY tight games against merfolk 0-2, and beat CounterTop easily 2-0.

After doing some initial testing with Jak's list, I felt that the Stifles weren't necessary at all: anytime I kept blue/fetch up, my opponent (admittedly, knowing the list I was playing) easily played around Stifle, leaving it mostly as Fodder for FoW. That prompted me to move 3 Spell Pierce to the Maindeck, which were Awesome. Definitely very synergistic w/ the Waste/Daze plan.

Total changes (after preliminary testing, ofc) were:

-4 Stifle, -1 Daze (for some reason the list kept coming out to 61 cards), -1 Trygon Predator
+3 Spell Pierce, +2 Vendillion Clique

After playing, I definitely wanted the Trygon main, so I'd switch back 1 Clique for T Pred. The cliques were good against merfolk, letting me drop an EoT flyer that punches the last bit of damage through once he has established blockers/reegeries, which is also especially deadly when combined with 2 or more hierarchs.

Packed the NO transformation in the sideboard... It rarely came up but when I did have NO in hand I would have won if not for needing a 4th land drop... It could just be bad luck but I'm not sure if its entirely necessary. At a bigger tournament with more omipresent graveyard hate, I'd be more inclined to run it. What was great, on the other hand, was a single Venser in the SB for the control matchup; it's not unlikely to get to 4 in the countertop/landstill match and timewalking your opponent on a Firespout or Jace (if they leave him in) FTW is just so spicy. For now, no one will see it coming. Give it a try.

That's all for now, I'm going to keep testing this beast ;)

[Garobidou]

I suggested entombs not long ago as a replacement but it has not been tested yet. More comments on your experience with it ?
Still testing it but I am really happy with it. You'll find below some numbers. These are probabilities of opening 7 on the play :

First some definition :
- Survival hand : 1 Survival + 1 Land (excluding Wastelands) + 1 Land/1cc mana creature/1 Wasteland
- T2 Vengevine : every non "Survival" hands that allow a T2 vengevine (this includes T1 vengevine)


Caleb's list

No mulligan
- Survival hand : 31,7%
- T2 Vengevine : 4,0%

Mulligan to 6
- Survival hand : 24,2%
- T2 Vengevine : 2,1%

Mulligan to 5 :
- Survival hand : 16,5%
- T2 Vengevine : 0,6%

Odds for having one of these 2 hands as opening 7 : 35,7%
Reward for mulliganing up to 6 if you don't have any of these 2 hands : 52,6%
Reward for mulliganing up to 5 if you don't have any of these 2 hands : 60,7%


Caleb's list switching 2 non "Land-Waste-Vengevine-Survival-Rootwalla-Discard outlet-1cc mana creature" cards (ex : Jitte) for 2 E. Tutor

No mulligan
- Survival hand : 43,4%
- T2 Vengevine : 3,5%

Mulligan to 6
- Survival hand : 33,9%
- T2 Vengevine : 1,9%

Mulligan to 5 :
- Survival hand : 23,6%
- T2 Vengevine : 0,6%

Odds for having one of these 2 hands as opening 7 : 46,9%
Reward for mulliganing up to 6 if you don't have any of these 2 hands : 65,9%
Reward for mulliganing up to 5 if you don't have any of these 2 hands : 74,2%

Sidenote : this one was done quite rapidly without differenciating W-Land from the others Lands. So the real odds should be a little lower.


G/B list posted above

No mulligan
- Survival hand : 33,2%
- T2 Vengevine : 16,3%

Mulligan to 6
- Survival hand : 26,0%
- T2 Vengevine : 9,2%

Mulligan to 5 :
- Survival hand : 18,2%
- T2 Vengevine : 3,3%

Odds for having one of these 2 hands as opening 7 : 50,0%
Reward for mulliganing up to 6 if you don't have any of these 2 hands : 67,3%
Reward for mulliganing up to 5 if you don't have any of these 2 hands : 74,3%



Wall of roots has been awesome as a 2-of.
Thanks for the idea, that looks really great. It fills both the wall (Tarmogoyf I wanted to include) and mana creature (2cc but no summoning sickness) I'm looking for. I'm goona try it and do the maths to see if it improves the odds.

On a sidenote, I will also try Buried alive : with 7 mana creatures, the odds of a Vengevine x3 on turn 3 should be fine (I'll do the maths).
As a 2 of this could act as Survival #5 and 6.



About Entomb - I don't think it's worth it. If you think about it, playing an Entomb is the same as half of one Survival activation and it uses a whole card.

Actually, except if you already have a Vengevine (or a Rootwalla in hand and you are in your big turn), it is 1 and a half survival activation as the Vengevine will be put directly in the graveyard. This is why it's so rarely a dead card.


Again, GW Survival is an established deck, so if we're going to splash a color, I think it should be W. And that's for E. Tutor.
Our whole game plan is mulligan to Survival or the Mongrel/moeba, walla, Vv hand. And you do improve that second combo with B, but you don't improve Survival, so I think you need to readdress what primary win con you're trying to support with your splash color. Plus, you said it yourself, counters > discard.

I began splashing white adding E. Tutor because :
- Survival is plan A
- Odds of having a survival hand are way bigger than Vengevine T2 hands

But I didn't like it as :
- You become even more Survival dependant
- You weaken the manabase (then Wasteland should be removed but it is not a good thing)

[Fuzzy]

On a sidenote, I will also try Buried alive : with 7 mana creatures, the odds of a Vengevine x3 on turn 3 should be fine (I'll do the maths).
As a 2 of this could act as Survival #5 and 6.

As I said, not playing Intuition is dumb. It acts like the Survival #5-#8, searchs for Survival and NO on SB, is blue and, with 7+ discard outlets (Mongrel and Aquamoeba), it "buries alive" your Vines.

I can see myself not running FoW, but i'll never play less than 3 Intuitions.

@Waste/Stifle discussion: My list is more tunned to combo out and play some hasted elementals. Wasteland makes my opening hands much less combo oriented and don't play well with Survival, so I replaced then with 2 Canopys and 2 other lands I can't remember. If I'm not playing with Wastes, Stifles looks even worse, so i'm not playing then either.

Don't know yet if it's the best move, but now they're working very well for me.

[Volrath]

Stifle has been so-so in my testing, i only use it as fow fodder.

Replacing it with Spell pierce opens up 4 SB slots.

Thing is, waste becomes less impressive but it can still generate massive ammounts of tempo.

Clique is the beesknees as an extra kill con for when your elementals finnaly bites the dust.

[Nazdakka]

From Scars:

Memnite
0
Artifact Creature - Construct
1/1

These are an awesome way of getting extra 'Basking Rootwallas' without using crap like Ornithopter. Add one of these to the deck, and we can regrow an extra Vengevine when playing out our Survival plan A. Add more, and we significantly increase the number of ways we have of getting the infamous turn 2 Vengevine draw. I'd start out by testing 4 just to see what happens (IMO it's probably not worth it, but you have to test it just to be sure), then cut down to 1 if that's too many.

Without Memnite:

T1: Land, Noble Hierarch
T2: Land, Survival, eot Survival random dude into Vengevine.
T3: Land, Survival Vengevine -> Vengevine -> Basking Rootwalla -> Basking Rootwalla -> Vengevine, regrow 2 Vengevines, swing for 8.

With Memnite:

T1: Land, Noble Hierarch
T2: Land, Survival, eot Survival random dude into Vengevine.
T3: Land, Survival Vengevine -> Vengevine -> Vengevine -> Basking Rootwalla -> Memnite, play Memnite, regrow 3 Vengevines, swing for 12.

Just one Memnite in the deck gets us 4 extra points of damage on the deck's standard line of play.

[GGoober]

That's if you draw the Memnite, and Rootwalla actually nets you 'card advantage' when using Survival whereas tutoring for Memnite would not do this and would waste activations/mana/turns

[Nazdakka]

That's if you draw the Memnite, and Rootwalla actually nets you 'card advantage' when using Survival whereas tutoring for Memnite would not do this and would waste activations/mana/turns

I'm not following you.

The constraint when Survivalling is often mana, green mana specifically. To regrow Vengevines, you need to cast two creature spells, and the fact that Rootwalla needs to be discarded to something in order to cast it via madness frequently means that you end up with one less Vengevine in play than you would if you could Survival for a 0 mana creature, because Survival is typically your only discard outlet in play when you have a fast start. Adding a 0 mana creature to Survival for lets you get around the fact that you have to pay G to discard a Rootwalla to Survival.

Yes, the Memnite line of play misses out on one search with Survival, and that's a reason why you might not want to go for this plan, especially if you would be left with 0 creatures in hand after casting Memnite. On the other hand, you get an extra 4/3 hasty creature into play, which is pretty damn good. Remember, this is an aggressive deck. Sometimes you might want to go for the more conservative play where you get one less Vengevine and end with an extra creature in hand... but sometimes you might simply want to smash with as many Vengevines as possible as quickly as possible. Do you think the fact that you miss out on one search when going for the Memnite line of play kills the idea entirely?

This is certainly worth a try, in my book. It's an option that only needs to take up 1 slot and can easily accelerate our kill.

[ChrisElrod]

For what its worth, memnite makes ethersworn cannonist useless against you.

[Blitzbold]

The same is true for cards like Phyrexian Walker or Ornithopter, which were already tried in this deck. I saw some lists containing Orni as a 1-of some weeks ago.

[rayaj]

The issue with memnite is that it can be another attacker on a subsequent turn and its 1/1 status makes it less likely to be blocked and lets it push that extra point of damage through when lethal can be attained. Neither walker nor thopter allows for that. Maybe I'm just being the devil's advocate but I can see a reason for memnite, but not really over rootwalla necessarily even though the casting is much easier.

[Volrath]

a 1of Memnite might not be that bad, actualy.

You can now return all your vines voor only one G.
And since zoo runs Ethersworn, and will board it in against us, it helps us negate that hatebear and trample over them.

I suspect that D&T wil rise in popularity with the printing of that Leonin Arbiter, and they play Ethersworn as well.

[Fuzzy]

Leonin Arbiter 1W

Creature - Cat Cleric
Players can't search libraries. Any player may pay 2 for that player to ignore this effect until end of turn.
"Our people are torn by infighting. Until the two sides reconcile, our laws can carry no meaning."
Illus. Shelly Wan #14/249 2/2

How we can solve this problem? GW Survival can StP it, but for us, what to do if it resolves?

Also, any help for the Zoo matchup?

[Volrath]

Leonin Arbiter 1W

Creature - Cat Cleric
Players can't search libraries. Any player may pay 2 for that player to ignore this effect until end of turn.
"Our people are torn by infighting. Until the two sides reconcile, our laws can carry no meaning."
Illus. Shelly Wan #14/249 2/2

How we can solve this problem? GW Survival can StP it, but for us, what to do if it resolves?

Also, any help for the Zoo matchup?

I don't think it will show up that much.
It's abbility, while powerfull, also puts to many constraints on your own deck.
Only D&T will play this thingy.

But then again, i might be wrong, if so Spell snare might be worth while to look at, since it also takes care of Cannonist and Pride mage against zoo.

[Fuzzy]

I don't think it will show up that much.
It's abbility, while powerfull, also puts to many constraints on your own deck.
Only D&T will play this thingy.

But then again, i might be wrong, if so Spell snare might be worth while to look at, since it also takes care of Cannonist and Pride mage against zoo.

My problem isn't finding a reactive answer, with Blue it's easy. My problem is finding any reactive way to take care him.

D&T and Stax will play it FOR SURE, but we don't know what else can appear.

[Nazdakka]

Sure, it's annoying, but...

1) We can play through it. This card doesn't defeat us single-handed, because paying 2 mana lets us search for an entire turn. So just use any basic islands to pay for the ability and use the remaining green to Survival our heart out. This is annoying to see in play, but it's certainly not terminal. Yes, it makes our fetchlands a bit worse, but that's a problem every deck is going to have to deal with.

2) How many people will actually play this card? AFAIK, nobody plays Aven Mindcensor, which is far more problematic. White decks have a crazy number of disruptive 2-drops to fit in anyway, and even if this the one they choose, how many decks do you actually see at a tournament that can easily use this? Remember, the ability is symmetrical, so you want to minimise the number of fetchlands, and hence colours, you put in a deck with it.

This is a card that we don't want to see on the other side of the table, but it's not the end of the world either.

[chinEsE girl]

Whew, at first I thought arbiter worked like suppression field, making every search basically come with a cost of +2 mana. But then I read it again, noticed it said you ignore the effect until end of turn, and stopped worrying about the little bro so much. All it does is slow you down, while not really being too much of a threat on its own. All your creatures hold him off, and all you need to do is wait a few turns to get the engine set up and killing your opponent. I'd be much more concerned about canonist seeing more play, but that's a different story, possibly requiring memenite in order to solve it. Dunno yet.

On the other hand, after playing the deck for the second tournament in a row (with the first being the first time I ever played this monster), I top 8'd another tournament (~55 people), beating zoo, landstill, next level thresh, and then trainwreck before I double drew into top 8. Unfortunately lost to goblins in the top 8 when I drew like crap game 1 and screwed up a tight game 2 that would be been won with perfect play, but then again I ain't perfect (yet). So that means I've gone X-0 during the swiss portion of both legacy tournaments, and only have lost matches to bad draws and one game of mistakes. Suffice it to say I never thought this deck would do so well, but the results speak for themselves. This deck has some serious power, and players just boarding in crypt isn't going to stop it. The one thing I want to say is that after playing without and then with brainstorm, there is no way I could not play this deck again without that savage little 1 mana blue instant. There was plenty of chaff in the initial lists that were being played, and replacing them with brainstorm makes the deck much more efficient and deadly. There were several games I played where brainstorm made my draw much much better, and other instances where a topdecked brainstorm allowed me to go from zero to 60 in no time at all. On a slightly different note, intuition proved to be very strong, but not something I would want more than 1 or 2 of. It was great at being able to do whatever the situation called for (usually either 3 vv's for quick beats, or 3 survivals to kill them a turn slower), but I wouldn't of ever wanted to draw more than 1 in any particular situation. It's something I'll have to keep testing out to see what the right number is.

[Volrath]

I'm not a great fan of one-ofs that you can't find with Survival, but Intuition can win games on the spot.

I've cut the stifles from the main and replaced them with pierces, wich help me protect my critters/survival better and can also counter a nasty t1 vial, opposing survivals and opens SB slots.

[TheShaun]

I've been strongly considering lately going down to 3 VV's. If you can get to 4, it's almost always just overkill. That extra card could be a Spell Snare, Stifle, or even a more utility creature like Kitchen Finks. Also, is it finally considered that Waterfront Bouncer and Merfolk Looter are just too slow?

[chinEsE girl]

Anything less than 4 vv's would make the deck even more survival dependent, which I don't think is a good idea. The ability to get a turn 2 vv is what pushes the deck over the top, instead of just another deck that is only stellar when you have survival.

[Zamussels]

The one thing I want to say is that after playing without and then with brainstorm, there is no way I could not play this deck again without that savage little 1 mana blue instant.

I've been through some of the same process, except I've never played any tournaments with it though this will change soon. At first I was running 3 Trygon Predator, 1 Jitte and 3 Stifles, then cut all those for Brainstorms and Intuitions. I noticed that in your first list that was linked a few pages back you were running those too, are they what you cut for the 'Storms?

Here's what I'm thinking of running:
4 Vengevine
4 Survival of the Fittest
4 Wild Mongrel
4 Basking Rootwalla
4 Noble Hierarch
4 Aquamoeba
4 Force of Will
4 Daze
4 Brainstorm
3 Intuition
1 Wonder
4 Tropical Island
4 Misty Rainforest
4 Green fetch
3 Forest
1 Island
4 Wasteland

SB:
3 Natural Order
1 Progenitus
Mix of: Spell Pierce, Krosan Grip, Faerie Macabre, Submerge
Not sure about: Jitte, Llawan

So specific questions: If you cut Jitte and Trygon, did you move them to the SB or cut them entirely? If you kept them, why? Any advice on the above list would be really appreciated. For what it's worth, I'm expecting a lot of blue decks and not much combo. Thanks!

[chinEsE girl]

I moved the jittes to the board and just didn't play trygon predator. The first time I played predators the card just did nothing whatsoever. Jitte at least had some good value in creature matchups, so it went in the board. When the tourney organizer puts up the top 8 decklists from the event last weekend, I'll be sure to post a link to it.

[BantFTW]

4 Vengevine
4 Survival of the Fittest
4 Wild Mongrel
4 Basking Rootwalla
4 Noble Hierarch
4 Aquamoeba
4 Force of Will
4 Daze
4 Brainstorm
3 Intuition
1 Wonder
4 Tropical Island
4 Misty Rainforest
4 Green fetch
3 Forest
1 Island
4 Wasteland

@this list, why would you play aquemoeba, I really don't like it lol, but maybe that's just me...
Also, I think 3 dazes are enough^^ And is intuition really needed, okay, it's good but not needed either I think.
But i'll test it, made the deck yesterday and want to see it so...

Also, what do you guys think of the white variant with goyfs, kotr, mother of ruines,stp?
It seems some better on paper I think?

[TheShaun]

Also, what do you guys think of the white variant with goyfs, kotr, mother of ruines,stp?
It seems some better on paper I think?

It is a bit more aggressive, playing threats and then using StP and Mother of Runes to ensure they go all the way. I've played both decks a fair amount now, and the only matchup that GW seems better for is zoo, but by a pretty small amount. Any form of combo however, the GU version is miles ahead. Pretty much the only hope GW has against combo is a race, with a few nice white sideboard tricks thrown in.

[Volrath]

4 Vengevine
4 Survival of the Fittest
4 Wild Mongrel
4 Basking Rootwalla
4 Noble Hierarch
4 Aquamoeba
4 Force of Will
4 Daze
4 Brainstorm
3 Intuition
1 Wonder
4 Tropical Island
4 Misty Rainforest
4 Green fetch
3 Forest
1 Island
4 Wasteland

@this list, why would you play aquemoeba, I really don't like it lol, but maybe that's just me...
Also, I think 3 dazes are enough^^ And is intuition really needed, okay, it's good but not needed either I think.
But i'll test it, made the deck yesterday and want to see it so...

Also, what do you guys think of the white variant with goyfs, kotr, mother of ruines,stp?
It seems some better on paper I think?


Aquamoeba is necesary for t2 vengevine plays and acts as an aditional discard outlet, it's also blue for fow.

Playing white for MoR, KotR, goyfs yust makes this deck a really unfocused Bant survival deck.

Am i the only one who has cut stifls for pierces in the main?

[TheShaun]

Am i the only one who has cut stifls for pierces in the main?

I've done the same, however I sometimes miss the stifles against zoo. Overall though spell pierce has been way more useful.

[Volrath]

I've done the same, however I sometimes miss the stifles against zoo. Overall though spell pierce has been way more useful.

True, but the Kitchen Finks from the board seems to help against zoo.

I have also switched the drake to birds of paradise, wich helps with mana issues and increases the t2 drop survival/mongrel with spell pierce backup.

But perhaps a lone Memnite/shield sphere would help vs zoo since Etehrsworn Cannonist is such a pain in the ass and they'll be boarding that sucker in like there's no tommorow.

[MrShine]

I'm playing Pierces main over Stifle, and not going back. Stifle doesn't do anything outside of the first couple turns of the game (when you most likely want to be dropping NH/Mongoose), relegating it to FOW fodder. Pierce at least stays relevant up to (and possibly after) T4 when it protects vs Jace, Firespout, etc. It also has added value if you are still running wasteland as you can keep them off 4-5 mana after the first couple turns should you draw the pair.

I've also been thinking of adding a Birds... I really like having a T1 accelerator in this deck, although I could just be biased b/c NH is ridiculous w/ exalted.

Memnite seems interesting... it may be my playstyle but I keep finding that having to grab 2x Rootwalla is a pain, especially when I just want to spam VV as fast as possible. I'm going to try it out.

EDIT: BoP seems even better if one is playing NO out of the sideboard... getting to 4 mana can be tricky in this deck and if you are playing that combo then you probably want it on turn 3 ;)

[chinEsE girl]

When the tourney organizer puts up the top 8 decklists from the event last weekend, I'll be sure to post a link to it.

Here's the link I promised

http://www.mtgthesource.com/forums/showthread.php?18351-North-American-Legacy-Championship-Qualifier-RIT-2-Moxes-2-Moats-Guaranteed&p=488737#post488737

[sillysam71]

Memnite: I personally would play a 1 of Memnite once it comes out. Too many times I've found myself trying to survival and having to waste mana to play the second creature instead of getting another vine. Memnite>other 0 drop artifacts because it actually has a power value. This is a big deal if you're running Jitte. I don't know how many people are playing Jitte, but it won me multiple games against Folk and Gobs. It's good.

Spell Pierce: I ran two of these in my main at the SCG in Minneapolis along with the Stifles and I loved them. They were game winners in a few situations. I would recommend them. I don't know if I would cut the Stifles, though. I really liked them and they performed well for me.

[Uly Van Hammer]

This deck has taken 1st in the past couple "larger" tournaments in the seattle area, here are some links to discussion/decklists.

Most recent, last weekend (http://www.northwestmagic.com/forums/showthread.php?t=3486)

August 22 (http://www.northwestmagic.com/forums/showthread.php?t=3413)

Ps, I played the B/w deck.

[pcccp]

I took UG Madness to our local 41 man tournament and made 2. place. I would have went 6 -0 but i ID´ed in the last round (5-0-1). The deck is an absolut blast to play. I played the established list with 3 predators. The next thing i will test out is -2 Predator +1 Vendillion Clique -3 stifle +3 Spell Pierce.

[dar482]

Right now, I have 1 Ornithopter (without Memnite out). You have to think of this deck as a combo deck with an aggro backup. With Survival on board, the only restriction you have is green mana. Sometimes, you just need to get 1-2 Vengevines out as fast as possible. Searching up a Vengevine, G, discarding it, G, getting the Walla and Madness it, G, do it again, G.
Sometimes short cutting that with an Ornithopter is the difference between winning a race against an aggro deck or not.

[pcccp]

I cut one rootwalla for a shield sphere and its awsome. I will stay with this over memnite. Sphere can block all day and buys the time you need to finish your opponent.

[Volrath]

I cut one rootwalla for a shield sphere and its awsome. I will stay with this over memnite. Sphere can block all day and buys the time you need to finish your opponent.

+ it saves yo ass vs Ethersworn Cannonist.

Don't know about cutting a rootwalla though.., gotta test it.

[TheShaun]

If you are going this route, Rootwalla seems like the best option to cut. It allows you to do the combo twice, once with 1 Rootwalla and 1 0cc dude to bring back Vengevines, the other with the remaining 2 Rootwallas. I don't see a need to have 4 Rootwallas if you decide to go with a 0cc creature, as that just gives you 5 free creatures. An even number makes more sense to me.

[Volrath]

True about the 5 free critters, but Rootwalla can serve as a beater in a pinch.

Still, Shield Sphere does have a big butt the help you ''combo'' out.
However, rootwalal does give you a free beasty when you survival him..

Gotta test it, i like that it thwarts Cannonists though and spares you a mana when you combo though..

[pcccp]

In most games you have mana to pump 1 or maybe 2 rootwallas but not 3 or 4. I often have 1 - 2 rootwalla attacking and 1 - 2 rootwalla staying home for chump blocking. And because shield sphere is a much better blocker its obvious to cut 1 rootwalla for it.

[Muradin]

So I've grown interest in this deck lately and done a ton of playtesting with it so far. For now I've finally settled on a list I am comfortable with:

4 Forest
4 Misty Rainforest
4 Wooded Foothills
4 Verdant Catacombs
4 Tropical Island

4 Noble Hierarch
4 Wild Mongrel
4 Basking Rootwalla
4 Vengevine
3 Aquamoeba
1 Wonder

4 Brainstorm
3 Daze
4 Survival of the fittest
3 Intuition
4 Force of Will
2 Umezawa's Jitte

SB:

3 Natural Order
1 Progenitus
1 Dryad Arbor
2 Faerie Macabre
2 Lawan Cephalid Empress
4 Spell Pierce
2 Vendilion Clique


This deck dropped all of the tempo package as I felt that I was disrupting myself nearly as much as my opponent by playing Wasteland in a deck that wants a fuck ton of green mana. Stifle felt weak in general as most of the time you are busy playing guys or using Survival and I didn't feel comfortable trying to keep up mana.

Jitte has been absolutely amazing in testing so far, making all of our actually bad creatures real threats and being a great card against the current meta consisting out of Goblins, Merfolk and Zoo in general. In fact it has been so good, that I'll probably add another one in the board to improve my postboard game and make me less graveyard dependant against aggro decks.

The board is pretty self explanatory and has been working very well so far. I feel this deck is one of the strongest in the current metagame and I've been very pleased with how consistet it has become with this mana base and the inclusion of Brainstorm.

[Knoll]

Testing the deck since it made t8 in columbus and tbh i wouldn't cut the stifles since they are pretty useful vs a good number of MU on the 1st game and postboard they stops tormod/relic/faerie macabre.

Atm i'm testing with the following list:

DarkVines - Madness UGb

4 Misty Rainforest
4 Verdant Catacombs
3 Forest
4 Tropical Island
1 Bayou
1 Underground Sea
3 Wasteland

4 Noble Hierarch
4 Wild Mongrel
4 Basking Rootwalla
4 Vengevine
4 Aquamoeba
1 Vendillon Clique
1 Trygon predator
1 Big game hunter (<-- a real bomb tbh)
1 Wonder

4 Force of Will
3 Stifle
3 Daze
4 Survival of the fittest
2 Umezawa's Jitte

SB:
3 Spell Pierce
3 Krosan Grip
3 Submerge
3 Extirpate
2 Faerie Macabre
1 Lawan Cephalid Empress

Black splash is due to the overgrown of survivals.deck here in my zone and during tests it perfoms very well.
MD changes (From Caleb List) :
+1Bayou +1UG Sea -1 wasteland -1 island -1 craddle: we need to support the 3C manabase so this was pretty much the 1st land bein cut, also we rarely use it before turn 3 since we want to get fast survival or mongrel/moeba down and without hierarch down it wouldn't be possible to do that if we shoot at opponents land on T1/2.

+1 BgH + 1 Vendillon Clique -2 trygon : not many CBtop decks running around atm so trygons just got dumped, in the mirror they are anyway too slow so... BgH instead is great vs zoo/merfolks/bant/mirrors (goyf/knights/coralhelm anyone?) since it removes a blocker during the race and also works actually as a rotwalla n°5.
Vendillon well... it's just too strong to not play atleast a 1of, i would play 2 but the doubleU can be an issue since we arent running basic islands and also i want to mantain atleast 1 trygon md so 1 problably it's the right number... it checks opponent hand/cycles our craps, removes problematic spells(random counters/extirpates postboard/other bombs), increase race dmg and in the worst cases acts as lightning bolt on creatures...

The SB: well not much to say about it, it's tuned for mirrors.
Extirpate it's like a roundhouse kick in the balls for this deck and w/o a preventive vendillon played by the opponent it just says "YES, your best creature is now a wild mongrel, have fun."

[wwwwins]

hey guys! I just wrote a report for this deck which I played in Eternal Festival Tokyo. 250+ people showed up, and I got 13th place with it. Here is the link:

http://www.mtgthesource.com/forums/showthread.php?18904-[Report]-Eternal-Festival-Tokyo-13th-place-with-U-G-Madness&p=490732

[Whippoorwill]

I've been playing this the past few weeks based off Caleb's list with a couple changes. The version I ran as of last night is:

4x Tropical Island
3x Forest
1x Island
1x Gaea's Cradle
4x Misty Rainforest
4x Windswept Heath
4x Wasteland

4x Noble Hierarch
4x Basking Rootwalla
4x Wild Mongrel
4x Aquamoeba
2x Trygon Predator
4x Vengevine
1x Wonder
1x Emrakul the Aeons Torn

2x Umezawa's Jitte
1x Powder Keg

4x Force of Will
2x Daze
2x Echoing Truth

4x Survival of the Fittest

Sideboard:
3x Spell Pierce
3x Natural Order
1x Progenitus
2x Krosan Grip
2x Powder Keg
2x Llawan, Cephalid Empress
2x Faerie Macabre

I took out the Stifles since I haven't really needed them for my metagame. I originally replaced them with 3x Echoing Truth since Peacekeeper and Humility are the biggest threats to me and main deck I had no outs should those resolve. So far I've been happy with the change. At worst its gave me an extra turn since I'll bounce something early to make them replay it again on their turn.

Emrakul was a last minute change to help avoid graveyard hate, but I really don't think I need it since Extirpate isn't too common right now and I can generally play around everything else. Plus I have NO-Prog in the SB now.

Powder Keg was added for the same reason as Echoing Truth plus it helps against other matches.

The past few weeks I've went 3-0-1 (ID), 4-0, and 3-0-1 (ID) last night.

I'm curious about what others think about Gaea's Cradle. I've liked it so far since it usually wins me the game once I play it (I hold it til I'm ready to go off just to avoid Wasteland) but others I've talked to about it don't seem to like it cause it can't be tutored for and is more of a "win more" card.

Another card I've been considering as a rogue addition is Chalice of the Void. Setting it to 1 seems like it would hurt my opponents more than it would hurt me. I would lose Hierarch, Rootwalla and Spell Pierce from the board, but it would also shut down things more important to my opponents like Thoughtseize, Extirpate, Aether Vial, StP, Path, most of Zoo, Top, and Spell Snare to name a few. One key thing about it is that it doesn't stop you from casting Rootwalla (or Hierarch), it only counters them and Vengevine doesn't care if the creature resolves or not.

[ChrisElrod]

Emrakul does not answer extirpate, because extirpate has split second.

[Whippoorwill]

Didn't realize I wrote it that way, but yeah, you're correct. I meant it for other graveyard hate though (Crypt, Relic). Thanks for the correction.

[TheShaun]

Just a basic question I had, I think I know the answer but would like confirmation. Vengevine triggers upon the 2nd creature spell played regardless of either of them resolving? If so, this should allow us to get through an active counter top right?

[Heresy]

If so, this should allow us to get through an active counter top right?

Yes.

[Muradin]

So many people have been trying out Intuition in this deck, as a tutor for Survival, Vengevine and Natural Order postboard. However after having played a lot with the card I am unhappy with the results it gives. Basically it is too expensive unless I get the good Noble Hierarch opener. It doesn't help you to set up a nice T2 play, which is crucial for success when playing this deck. Thus I have increased my cantrip count and added 4 Ponder alongside my 4 Brainstorm.

This cobination has proven to be strong in other aggro control strategies, such as Canadian Threshold and New Horizons. It also is considered stadard for most combo decks in the format, actually every deck that searches for specific cards and wants to aquire them early on. So far this has been very good for me, increasing my blue count to a very healthy amount and being far cheaper and in general less clunky than Intuition.

I also think that dropping Stifle + Wasteland is the right move, because it is very situational in the current metagame due to Merfolk and Goblins being heavily played (mostly mono colored) and this deck not being the right place for it.

Every deck running the Waste + Stifle package successfully operates mostly of blue mana. This deck however needs prevalent green mana, I don't see it as a blue deck splashing green (that's what all the other aggro control strategies in Legacy are), but much rather a green deck with a heavy blue splash for increased consistency via Brainstorm + cantrips and FoW + Daze to fight combo, resolve Survival and make some crucial tempo plays.

We are only playing so many blue cards, because they are simply required to make FoW work. If I could pitch Basking Rootwalla to FoW all blue cards I'd be playing were 4 Brainstorm and 4 FoW while replacing the rest with Goyfs and other strong beaters.

[Volrath]

@ Muradin.

What is your list atm?.

Also, i agree pm dropping stifles, i replaved them with Pierces and won't change back.

BTW, why isn't this deck in the proven competitive section?.
I mean yust look at the amount of t8's this decks pulls of.

[Rune]

Ponder will make Goyf 3/4, though, meaning it can actually trade with Vengevine and Mongrel early on. Don't know if that's an issue.

[Secretly.A.Bee]

Ponder isn't an issue because anything running goyf is going to already be playing as many card types as possible anyway. Also, Wonder is your way around trading with goyf. Even if you do happen to have to trade a vine to a goyf, Vengevine will be back, Goyf will not, and if you need the Mongrel, don't run it into the goyf. Lets not blow things out of proportion.

--ABC

[TheShaun]

Been having some issues with Dredge lately. I know it isn't a widely played deck lately, but it still sees some action. I ran into 2 of them today at a small local tournament and got my world rocked. I'm not fast enough to race them, and didn't have enough counters to prevent them from getting rolling. I run 2 Faerie Macabre, but only running 2 means I usually need to have Survival going to even see them. This pretty much requires at least turn 3, at which point they're already going to have more than 2 things in their graveyard that I need to hit. How have you guys dealt with this matchup, and if I find myself in a Dredge heavy environment, how would you recommend adjusting the SB?

[Muradin]

Well, those 3 Faerie Macabre in the board sure won't beat dredge most of the time. If Dredge is a concern in your meta either go back to what Caleb Durward did and run 3 Wheel of Sun and Moon in your board or take some Tormod's Crypts with you. Those Faeries won't very often be enough to be Dredge, they are much better against Loam or Reanimator / other Survival Strategies (Iona + Retainers).

What's the general consens about Jitte in this deck for you? Sometimes it seems amazing, but often it just doesn't do anything or is win-more. By dropping Jitte the blue count could also be put to a very healthy level (19-20) for this deck. I am yet not sure and trying out different configurations at the moment in those 2 slots, such as Trygon Predator (sucks without Jitte), Jitte, Clique, Spell Pierce (exchanging 2 SB Pierce for 2 MD Jitte).

[TheShaun]

I just started running Jitte in mine and was happy anytime I saw it. Works wonders against any kind of creature deck that happens to get a faster start than you, which inevitably happens. The life gain was also amazing against burn, which is just a big race anyways. I'd say worth it against zoo, gobs, merfolk, and other survival variants. I board it out otherwise.

[wwwwins]

@TheShaun: there's one more thing I would like to add to the match-up vs dredge. In your first game, always counter their discard outlet and spells that would let them go off (ex. breakthrough, deep analysis, or even careful study!). Besides that, dredge do need mana, and all their lands are non-basic mostly. So daze and wasteland works perfect here.

On post-board, side out the stifles cuz they are not very useful vs dredge. Don't be afraid to mull down to 5 cards cuz you need solid opening to race dredge. If you got a turn one Noble Hierarch follow by turn two Survival, you should be able to race them with Vengevine and Wonder to fly over chump blockers. Faerie Macabre helps to slow them down, and it will buy you a lot of time while they are busy to find another dredger. Crypt or Wheel of Sun and Moon is personal preference I think. I use crypt because if I got it on my opening-7, I can just slap down the first turn, slowing them down while I go off with my own combo.

[TheShaun]

I definitely agree about countering their discard outlet but sometimes they just draw to 8, and plenty of the time I don't have the FoW. I dint think we can win a straight race, some sort of slowing down is needed some of the time. Wasteland didn't do much since they usually just use 1 mana and tend to have a land in their hand. I think that if we can keep them from dredging the first 2 turns we're ok, but that won't be a common luxury.
I like faerie macabre better for other matchups because of the ability to survival for it in response, but it's only good here in the opening hand. I'll try out a crypt, it's probably worth breaking on the first or second turn so the free-ness is nice.

[ScatmanX]

So, I play goblins (RBg now), and was wondering how the best way to beat this deck would be. The MU seems like a coinflip g1, and game 2 depends a lot on the SB.
Whats the card you guys most do not want to see coming from a goblin player SB?
Pithing Needle? Tormod's Crypt? Extirpate? Perish? Pyrokinesis? Nature's Claim? Earwig Squad?
Thanks.

[TheShaun]

So, I play goblins (RBg now), and was wondering how the best way to beat this deck would be. The MU seems like a coinflip g1, and game 2 depends a lot on the SB.
Whats the card you guys most do not want to see coming from a goblin player SB?
Pithing Needle? Tormod's Crypt? Extirpate? Perish? Pyrokinesis? Nature's Claim? Earwig Squad?
Thanks.

Removing Vengevines hurts far more than removing survival. Many of my games I don't see survival but am still plenty explosive. Killing a survival will slow us down enough that gobs can race it, but is definitely not a game ender. I see opponents play Pithing needle turn one on survival many games when i never see survival anyways.

Perish and pyro are just basically going to hold us off a turn, which is really only awesome if you can alpha strike for the kill afterwards.

So attacking vengevine is stronger IMO. Crypt slows us down 1 turn. If we see a crypt and we aren't holding stifle, we'll only put 2 vines in the gy. Extirpate wrecks since we can't counter it. Just be careful with your timing on it as the vengevine triggers can get messy. Earwig squad is ok but slow at turn 3 earliest, and still leaving us with one vengevine minimum, more if one is already in our hand. I'd say extirpate is the only crippling one, as it completely relegates us to flying mongrel beatdown at best. Leyline of the void is also disgusting, we'll just be trying to abuse survival/rootwalla and hen hard cast vengevines, not necessarily in that order.

[Ratavagnimalf]

I've been playing a pretty standard version of this deck on MTGO to some decent finishes. Here is a 4-0 finish from 9/21/2010 (http://www.wizards.com/Magic/Digital/MagicOnlineTourn.aspx?x=mtg/digital/magiconline/tourn/1604080) where I pushed an extra Jitte into the maindeck right after Blake Patraw finished 2nd doing so at a SCG legacy event.

Decklist:

Main Deck - 60 cards
3 Forest
1 Gaea's Cradle
1 Island
4 Misty Rainforest
1 Scalding Tarn
4 Tropical Island
4 Wasteland
3 Windswept Heath
21 lands

4 Aquamoeba
4 Basking Rootwalla
4 Noble Hierarch
3 Trygon Predator
4 Vengevine
3 Wild Mongrel
1 Wonder

2 Daze
4 Force of Will
3 Stifle
4 Survival of the Fittest
3 Umezawa's Jitte

Sideboard - 15 Cards
3 Faerie Macabre
2 Krosan Grip
3 Mind Harness
3 Scryb Ranger
4 Spell Pierce

I also thought I'd try Blake's Scryb Ranger sideboard plan, but I don't think I used them this time around. I like to run 4 Aquamoeba and 3 Mongrel rather than the other way around. There are situations where I do wish each was the other, but there is a lot of Show and Tell --> Emrakul on MTGO and I hate not having that blue card.

I put recordings of the first three matches on Youtube to go along with this post. I don't know if others find watching the games to be interesting, but I like watching them before a big tournament to remind myself of some of the mistakes I've made in previous games. Feel free to criticize! Side note: Apologies for the lack of audio, I'm having some mic issues. If I post another round of videos I'll be sure to narrate!

Match 1 v Death & Taxes 2-0

Game 1:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DbTmRG9CFnk

Game 2:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DGlk-IfCRls


Match 2 v Zoo 2-1

Game 1:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GSsJElcTEUE

Game 2:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E47Zy7ldL4I

Game 3:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wk3nF85yd5E


Match 3 v Aggro Loam 2-0

Game 1:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6LV6iZZTeQ0

Game 2:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PZSm3nh40Lw


Match 4 v UGw Tempo 1-0
I don't have videos for this one. I think he might have conceded after the first game for some reason or other.



I really enjoy playing the deck a lot. I snatched up Survivals and Vengevines on MTGO the moment I saw that Caleb made the top 8 of the GP with the deck. Now they've both jumped in price at least 10 to 15 tickets each, so I'm pretty happy I made that move. I feel like the price of the cards is one of the reasons the deck isn't more prevalent online. Survival is a really tough card to find due to the very low volume of Exodus packs that were opened. I'm hoping that means this deck won't get hated out and I can keep making money with it :smile:

[Muradin]

It's pretty nice to watch some videos here, this was a truely substantial post. In general going up to 3 Jittes in the maindeck might be a good move for some very aggro heavy metagames. However you seem to be worried about your blue count very much and thus you play 4 Aquamoeba.

Aquamoeba in general sucks, she is only playable in the context of this deck, thus she makes Jitte absolutely necessary. Since I've quit playing my own Dreadstill variants with a lot of success, since it has lost some of its power in the current metagame I've come to this deck.

I came to a very consistent build, that doesn include neither Aquamoeba nor the tempo package any more, has 19 blue cards and has reached a level of consistency I've not seen before for this kind of deck. When it is refined, I'll post it here. After the conclusion that Aquamoeba is too bad, Jitte simply has no more room in the maindeck (while it definitely is the best SB card for tribal matchups for an UG deck).

This is because:
a) there are not that many bad creatures here any longer and thus Jitte is not that important to compensate the low card quality.
b) we need a healthy level of blue cards and with Jitte this is impossible without weakening the core of the deck.

[delcameron]

Great vids, I could have watched 20 more! Me too, I have been running 4 Moebas and 3 Mongrels for the blue count -- I'll see in the long run if I prefer it.

[wwwwins]

Nice Report!! However, for me I still run 4 mongrels and 4 Moebas. 17 blue count is good enough to protect yourself for this deck to go off.

[TheShaun]

So I've been tossing around a crazy idea for this. A large number of these decks are running NO Prog in the SB lately. It's wonderful for matchups that you'll stay alive long enough to use and is typically game over. I'm considering moving these to the MD. It should surprise many, and isn't a dead combo ever. I can't think of many situations where having a 10/10 is not good. The negative to my plan is that I have to cut down on blue, and right now I can't get above 14 blue cards without cutting something vital. So I just have to decide if it's worth the extra power to not always have FoW fodder. My initial thinking is that I need to cut this and stick with the blue cards, but it is tempting. Have any of you tried this, and what do you think about it?

[jazzykat]

Do you guys have any unfavorable or down right bad matchups. I justed watch my Sunday legacy tournament put 3 Vengevival decks (2UG and 1WG) into the top 4. I haven't had much success in handling them myself.

[Muradin]

The matchup against storm combo is slightly negative, but heavily dependant on their build. Builds with Wasteland + Stifle (standard variation I guess) are slightly better here. Postboard Xantid Swarm is a beating quite often, but Spell Pierce is also nice if they don't get one early on.

Besides I think that Ub Merfolk is also definitely slightly negative. Still its very manageable and depends on the build, playskill and the opening hands. Forests are good here.

I have done some testing against Merfolk and found Llawan to be underwhelming here. She costs 4 mana and is weak if they have an Aether Vial in play. For me additional Umezawa's Jitte from the board have been way more effective in being a bomb here, useful in other matchups and much less clunky and more versatile. They also tend to rock Goblins and make your otherwise subpar creatures much better. They do especially shine against Goblins and Merfolk splashing black (most common and successful versions of those 2 decks at the moment), because they help you to doge Perish with Mongrel (pretty relevant actually) while keeping a real threat on the board.

[Mana Drain]

Hey All! I stopped playing merfolk about a month ago and picked this up to see what is was like, and I instantly fell in love with it. The deck is nothing short of absurd. I lose to my own bad draws about 2 or 3 times more often than I do to the opponents deck, and it doesn't lose very often.
Here's my list.

4 Trop
4 Misty Forest
3 Windswept Heath
1 Scalding Tarn
4 Waste
3 Forest
1 Island


4 Rootwalla
4 Vines
4 Hierarch
4 Aquameoba
3 Mongrel
3 Predator
1 Wonder

4 Survival
4 Force
4 Spell Pierce
3 Daze
2 Jitte

SB:
1 Jitte
2 Llawan
3 Ratchet Bomb
1 Grip
2 Hydroblast
2 Crypt
1 Faeire Macabre
2 Constantly in flux slots

I've found this version to be the most resilient that I have played with. Spell Pierce is solid gold against any non-aggro, and is still valuable against everything but goblins and sometimes Raffinity. I constantly go back and forth with the mongrel/aquameoba count, and neither is superior in my opinion. I just like the extra blue count. I see people cutting Predator from their list and can't understand that. He'll single-handedly win you the game against random stuff and is a flyer/blocker who picks-off opposing jittes/vials/survivals/CBs/other random shit.

Everything else is pretty standard. Ratchet bomb has been so-so to amazing. I put it in against CB, Folk(excellent here), anything that might have peacekeeper, permanent based decks like Staxx and Enchantress, landstill. Against gobs, zoo, and other survivals it's a little slow.
I'm still looking for something that can increase the matchup against other madness decks and green-based aggro. I've tried Mind Harness but I'm not impressed. Random Affinity jank also can give us headaches but I don't know if I want to dedicate slots for it.

[keys]

If I were to play Meddling Mage against this deck, what would the best card to name be: Survival or Rootwalla?

[Tacosnape]

If I were to play Meddling Mage against this deck, what would the best card to name be: Survival or Rootwalla?

Depends on your hand and the board. If you can counter/stop a Survival or if it's already in play, obviously you go with Rootwalla. If the Survival would destroy you and you think you can handle the Rootwallage, go with that.

[Mana Drain]

If I were to play Meddling Mage against this deck, what would the best card to name be: Survival or Rootwalla?

Survival. Without survival, Rootwalla just enables the Discard-outlet+Vengevine+Rootwalla play, which is amazing, but doesn't happen every game. An unanswered survival and a dude in hand will let the Madness player shit out 2-3 Vengevines in a turn or so. Even without rootwallal, with 2 dudes in hand you can still get 1 Vengevine and 2 hierarchs in a turn for a 6/5 hasty beater. Plus, survival lets us get any answer cards from the board we may have like trygon, waterfront bouncer, sower of temptation, or wonder to fly over your meddling mage.

Rootwalla is just an enabler. A damn good enabler, but requires a sequence of cards to really have an impact on the game. Survival will easily let us put the game out of reach for you in 2 turns if we have a guy in hand to dump.

[Gui]

I don't see that much, but isn't it worth the addition of 1x Memnite, so that you can get 1 more Vengevine with SotF?

[Tacosnape]

I don't see that much, but isn't it worth the addition of 1x Memnite, so that you can get 1 more Vengevine with SotF?

You can actually do the same thing with Rootwalla if you have either a Wild Mongrel or an Aquamoeba.

Memnite's useful from time to time, but pretty situationally so.

[Volrath]

The 1 power rarely matters, your better of running shield sphere.

The extra vengevine can be nifty though..

[Gui]

The 1 power rarely matters, your better of running shield sphere.

The extra vengevine can be nifty though..
Hmmm... thought about memnite because he can hold Jitte...




You can actually do the same thing with Rootwalla if you have either a Wild Mongrel or an Aquamoeba.

Memnite's useful from time to time, but pretty situationally so.

Well, if you only got a survival, then he's useful...If not, how much would a 1-of 1/1 vanilla hurt the deck consistancy?

[Volrath]

Hmmm... thought about memnite because he can hold Jitte...



Well, if you only got a survival, then he's useful...If not, how much would a 1-of 1/1 vanilla hurt the deck consistancy?

Well, thing is.
Most people don't run Brainstorm, so the canches of finding a jitte in such a situation is rather rare.
Also, when you drop the memnite, you'l be getting 2/3 vengivines and you won't be able to equip the memnite since you would have dumped more vengivies in tha yard if you could.

In the situation a 0/6 wall gives you betters odds of surviving a counter atttack and thus give you more time to finsih the oponent.

[Mana Drain]

The core creature setup of the deck is really optimal as it is. The Trygons can be swapped for different cards, but everything else is all thats necessary. That one Memnite/Shield Sphere may help you occasionally when you have Survival, but what about when you don't? Then you have a 1/1 for 0 or an 0/6 for 0 when you could have an additional counter/stifle/jitte/whatever. I've tried a host of random 1-of dudes in the deck and I keep coming back to the core list. Most everything else you could run is simply situational or inefficient. Besides that, why take away ANOTHER blue card from the deck? Force is unreliable enough with 17-18 blue spells as it is. If you're going to add a 1-of dude to the deck, at least make sure it's a blue guy like Sower, Bouncer, Clique, etc.

[Blitzbold]

One very strong argument in favor of one or another 0cmc artifact creature is the possibility to chain 2 creatures into recurring Vengevines even if a smart opponent got Ethersworn Cannonist into play. Though not very widely played, that guy can be quiete a beating against lists without removal at all.

[Gui]

The core creature setup of the deck is really optimal as it is. The Trygons can be swapped for different cards, but everything else is all thats necessary. That one Memnite/Shield Sphere may help you occasionally when you have Survival, but what about when you don't? Then you have a 1/1 for 0 or an 0/6 for 0 when you could have an additional counter/stifle/jitte/whatever. I've tried a host of random 1-of dudes in the deck and I keep coming back to the core list. Most everything else you could run is simply situational or inefficient. Besides that, why take away ANOTHER blue card from the deck? Force is unreliable enough with 17-18 blue spells as it is. If you're going to add a 1-of dude to the deck, at least make sure it's a blue guy like Sower, Bouncer, Clique, etc.

I know this makes sense, although I'm not suggesting you to add a bunch of 1-ofs to the deck and reduce the blue count from 17-18 to 12-13... I'm suggesting the addition of 1x creature (Shield or Memnite, Volrath's argument on shield is strong) and reducing the count from 17-18 to 16-17.. That's not even a precise number, since lists vary and I run 17 blues + Memnite.

Also, I have simply cutted a Mongrel from a cookie-cutter list I got, and don't really miss it that much, tbh.

Considering that a hand with 3 mana + a random creature (no basking/vengevine) can now result into a vengevine + creature while without the 0cc, I'd have to wait for the 4th mana, or a basking/vengevine. And with basking/vengevine on hand, 3 mana result into 2 vengevine + basking + memnite instead of 1x venge + 2x basking.

[median]

I have an ornithopter in my list that usually gets equipped with a jitte when I don't have survival. I think the evasion makes it a little better than memnite/shield sphere.

[kicks_422]

A Jitte with no counters on it is kind of useless on an Ornithopter, is it not?

[HedleyKow]

A Jitte with no counters on it is kind of useless on an Ornithopter, is it not?

Yes, unless you have a creature with exalted.

[Volrath]

Or a Jitte with a single counter on it.

Thing is, when you drop a 0 CC artifact dude, this means you'll be getting 2/3 vengivines or something went horribly wrong already. a simple 1/1 or a 0/2 flying wouldn't make any difference what so ever.

you swing with 3 vines, one kicks the bucket, other 2 connect. 8 dmg
They swing with some guys, you can now take the hurting, or block. i usually block, since you yust don't know what the oppo has in store. in this case the memnite/thopter bites the dust.

You swing again for 8 (16 total)

They swing again, and this is where it can get painfull, zoo can now simply burn you out etc.

But if you had a sphere, you could block a goyf orso and net you 4/5 life, making your next swing lethal.

A simple 1/1 won't do any thing + equiping him costs you to much time and mane you could have used on winning.
Ornithopter is a 0/2, since it's in play and you want it there means you have an active survival (wonder in the yard?) and equiping this thing is again a waste of time and mana you could have used by winning.

Don't even start with the ''you don't always have a survival in play'', since most decks don't run brainstorm chances are slim that you have a 1-of and a 2-of in play when it matters.. at least Shield Sphere buys you loads of time to actually finish the opponent.

[Gui]

Also, Shield Sphere is not useless while you setup your board in the case you drew it before survival, or drew no survival and will have to go for alternative play... It can buy you time against pretty much any aggro creature.

[Whippoorwill]

Went to a Lotus tournament yesterday with the following decklist:

Lands - 21
3x Forest
1x Island
4x Tropical Island
1x Taiga
4x Misty Rainforest
3x Windswept Heath
1x Gaea's Cradle
4x Wasteland

Creatures - 23
4x Noble Hierarch
4x Basking Rootwalla
4x Aquamoeba
3x Wild Mongrel
2x Trygon Predator
1x Llawan, Cephalid Empress
4x Vengevine
1x Ulamog, the Infinite Gyre

Instants - 9
3x Spell Pierce
2x Daze
4x Force of Will

Artifacts - 2
2x Umezawa's Jitte

Enchantments - 4
4x Survival of the Fittest

Sideboard
3x Krosan Grip
3x Natural Order
1x Progenitus
2x Engineered Explosives
1x Magus of the Moon
1x Llawan, Cephalid Empress
2x Faerie Macabre
2x Wheel of Sun and Moon


We ended up with a decent turnout of 37 players which called for 6 rounds.

Round 1 vs. Richard with Mono Black
Before we started he mentioned that this was his first time doing this (I assumed first big tournament)

Game 1: He wins the roll and decides to draw first which made me wonder. I lead with a Hierarch, he plays a Swamp and passes. I play Trygon on my turn, he plays Swamp and passes. At this point I have no idea what's going on. I swing for 3 in the air. On his turn it plays Severed Legion and I now realize what he meant by this being his first time. I eventually get there with just normal attacks (no Vine madness) but he put up a decent fight with the Legion after he got Undead Warchief out. I also saw a Pestilence Rats and another Rat during that game.

Game 2: I resolve Survival

1-0; 2-0

We play a couple fun* games after and talk. I ask him if he has any removal and he says no. Really wish I had played him at the weekly Sunday tourney instead of this since this won't be a fun day for him due to the competitiveness level of the event . :(

Round 2 vs. Warren with New Horizons

Game 1: I don't recall anything special about this game, I think I just flew over his creatures with Wonder.

-1 Llawan
-2 Daze
-2 Trygon

+3 Natural Order
+1 Progenitus
+1 Magus

Game 2: I mulligan to 5 and keep. He starts out kinda slow (for NH at least) and I draw into a Survival which resolves. He has a Knight and Goyf out but I quickly put him on the defensive. Vines and friends eventually get there. 2 of the turns he blocked with Knight then Crop Rotationed for a Canopy in hopes of drawing a StP/Path, he got it once.

I had the chance to play the Magus but never did since I didn't see the need to with the board position I had. I would rather not play it in case future opponents were near.

2-0; 4-0

Round 3. vs Cedric with Goblins
Going into the round I was kinda nervous since I know he's a real good player and knows his deck well.

Game 1: Turn 1 I lead with Hierarch. I don't think he dropped anything on his turn. Turn 2 I play land, Aquamoeba/Wild Mongrel, pitch Vengevine, play Hierarch, swing for 6. I hit for 6 again next turn and it was over the turn after.

-2 Daze
-1 Spell Pierce
-1 Trygon
-1 Llawan
-1 Ulamog

+3 Natural Order
+1 Progenitus
+2 Explosives

Game 2: I didn't get an explosive start like the last game, but I got an early Jitte active which proved extremely useful by killing a Piledriver and keeping the board clear after. If it wasn't for Jitte I would have lost since he had 2 active Vials that he played on turn 2 or 3. Aside from that, Forcing Perish and Wastelanding his Duals helped slow him down and keep me afloat til I could pull out the win.

3-0; 6-0

Round 4 vs. Lance with G/w/b Survival
He was playing next to me the last round, so we knew what each other was playing.

Game 1: I keep the following hand:

Land, Wild Mongrel/Aquamoeba, Vengevine, Vengevine, Rootwalla, Force, Force.

Turn 1: We both play lands and pass.
Turn 2: I draw the land, play Wild Moeba (Just gonna say that from here out) and pitch my creatures and beat for 8. He plays Survival which resolves.
Turn 3: Swing for the win.

-2 Daze
-2 Jitte
-1 Llawan
-2 Trygon

+3 Natural Order
+1 Progenitus
+1 Faerie Macabre
+2 Wheel

Game 2: We both get Survivals out and I put him on the defensive. I get him down to 7 and he gets out Dawnstrider. I can't deal with it and he eventually gets out Iona through Loyal Retainers. Overall a quite good game.

-2 Spell Pierce
+2 Explosives

Game 3: I get out Wheel early and he gets out Gaddock Teeg. His Goyf stayed fairly small, but Wheel hurt me much more than it helped since he was able to easily recur Shriekmaw and such. Despite that it was still a fun game.

2-1; 7-2

After game 3 I realized I boarded horribly there. I should have took the Pierces out from the beginning, kept the Trygons in (if nothing more than to have a flier without Wonder), brought in the other Macabre, & left out the Wheels. Even though I lost, it was my favourite round of the event.

Round 4 vs. Robert with Bant Enchantress

Game 1: He slowed me down enough with Elephant Grasses and Solitary Confinements til he could make enough Angels to kill me. The game took about 30-35minutes.

-2 Daze
-2 Jitte
-1 Llawan
-1 Ulamog

+3 Grip
+2 EE
+1 Magus

Game 2: I had a fast enough start that I was able to outrace his protection/stall cards.

Game 3: Early game consisted of me beating with Rootwalla (pumped) with Hierarch after the first attack. Vine comes to play a few turns later. I eventually got Magus out which hurt his mana base enough for me to pull out the win.

4-1; 9-2

Round 6 vs. Joe with ANT

Intentional Draw

4-1-1; 9-2-1

We play EDH with 2 others during the round.

Top 8 - Round 1 vs Robert
The Rematch!

Game 1: I keep a risky hand with Aquamoeba, 3x Vengevine, 2 other cards. On turn 4 I draw a Mongrel. I play the Mongrel, pitch the Vines and play Aquamoeba then swing for 12. He plays 2x Grass on his turn so I can only attack with 1 Vine. I get there the following turn.


-2 Daze
-2 Jitte
-1 Llawan

+3 Grip
+2 EE

Game 2: He gets a good start and beats me down with Angels fairly quickly.

Game 3: He started with Leyline of the Void and I started with Rootwalla. He gets out a turn 2 Sterling Grove which was a pain since I had Grip in my hand for Leyline. He stalls me out and it looks like he's going to deck himself as he's down to about 10 cards or so in his library. Then he hardcasts Emrakul and that was the end of my top 8.

4-2-1; 10-4-1

He earned the win here though after all he had to work through against me.

I ended up in 5th-8th (not sure of my actual standing) winning $40 store credit. Lance ended up winning the Lotus which was cool.

Some changes I would make for next time:
Main:
-2 Daze
+2 Explosives

Side:
-2 Explosives
-2 Wheel
+1 Faerie Macabre
+2 Reverent Silence

I would keep the main deck Llawan again for a big tournament like this because of Fish. It was there in numbers, I just never played against it.

[Mana Drain]

Has anybody found an out to a resolved Peacekeeper yet? Just about the only solutions I've found requires splashing a color or running sub-optimal stuff like Ratchet Bomb or Waterfront Bouncer. She might as well be "2W: Win target game against Madness". And it's getting popular in my meta with Landstill, Counterbalance, and Thopter Decks.

[Whippoorwill]

I'm running Engineered Explosives and Ulamog as outs to it. I was going to run Emrakul for anti graveyard hate (Crypt, Relic) but decided on Ulamog instead since I can eventually cast it through Hierarchs/Lands/Cradle eventually.

Echoing Truth is also useful in general.

[Volrath]

Back in they day(and now still) Man'o-war can bounce almost any nasty beasty..

[4eak]

Peacekeeper has been very good for me against this deck. If I'm playing Peacekeeper, I'm using my permission to force it through and protect it. Even when you do have an answer, the odds of it resolving aren't good enough, in my view. If you frequently face Peacekeeper, then I highly suggest an answer with some inevitability.

[Genesis + a single creature-based solution] or [Squee + multiple creature-based solutions] seems good, but frankly, the GY hate I'm also bringing in against this deck can make it subpar. Ulamog, likewise, is also subject to GY hate.

Cards like Wipe Away are awkward and sometimes overly specific, but they usually guarantee you some inevitability.

[Vexing Shusher + a single solution of any sort] seems acceptable. Unfortunately, you really want to cast Shusher and then your solution back to back, as you can't afford to have Shusher removed before you have the chance to cast your solution. Combined with Shusher activations, this can be fairly mana intensive. This is mana-cheap compared to Ulamog, and depending on the solution, it can be much easier to tutor up than Wipe away.

Splashing for any other color opens up your options a bit (:w: from NHierarch might be problematic if you opponent knows your answer requires white mana, as they'll drop removal on hierarch before summoning sickness is gone). Obviously, there are costs to consistency of the mana-base when splashing.



peace,
4eak

[delcameron]

*edited*

I've found the Memnite better than Shield Sphere, but I could change my tune if more Zoo and Gobs were in Montreal.

I would love to hear if anyone has had consistent success with either a build with Shrieking Drake and Intuition, or a Bant Iona Retainers.

[Mark Sun]

<Stuff about Peacekeeper>

I tend to agree here. I'm not sure what the UG build could do in that situation. It is for this reason I'm leaning more towards a UGw Version rather than just plaing UG. All aside, I played UG Vengevine Survival at a very underpopulated Meandeck Open today, just four rounds, getting my ass kicked pretty badly. I tried not to post a bunch of stuff the week before a tournament on a deck that I've never played in a full tournament, as I wanted to surprise the competition today (literally, there have been no Vengevine decks in Columbus, Ohio since the GP). I've been using wwwins' Tournament Report and just boarding intution as a way to get through the rounds.

Now that I have a 2-2 record (0-2 start) with this deck, I think it's time to hit the help button. I think the best way to get the most/optimal amount of critique is just to post a short tournament report here. Please let me know what seems out of place. Metagame breakdown here (http://tinyurl.com/275v5kj), but first of all, the list that I played:

// Lands
4 [ZEN] Misty Rainforest
1 [ZEN] Scalding Tarn
2 [ZEN] Verdant Catacombs
1 [ON] Windswept Heath
4 [TE] Wasteland
4 [R] Tropical Island
3 [ZEN] Forest (1)
1 [ZEN] Island (1)

// Creatures
3 [TO] Aquamoeba
4 [OD] Wild Mongrel
4 [TO] Basking Rootwalla
4 [CFX] Noble Hierarch
2 [DIS] Trygon Predator
1 [SOM] Memnite
4 [ROE] Vengevine
1 [MM] Waterfront Bouncer
1 [JU] Wonder

// Spells
3 [MM] Brainstorm
2 [NE] Daze
4 [AL] Force of Will
2 [ZEN] Spell Pierce
4 [EX] Survival of the Fittest
2 [BOK] Umezawa's Jitte

// Sideboard
SB: 3 [SHM] Faerie Macabre
SB: 3 [PT] Natural Order
SB: 1 [CFX] Progenitus
SB: 2 [TO] Llawan, Cephalid Empress
SB: 2 [TSP] Krosan Grip
SB: 3 [NE] Submerge
SB: 1 [SHM] Wheel of Sun and Moon


Some things right away about the list, obviously I had been a little concerned about Peacekeeper (or Preacher, as I am familiar with UWb Landstill) shenanigans, so Waterfront Bouncer was a logical choice to keep those two at bay while my Vengevines did their work. I was a huge advocate of the X mana ==> (X-1) Vengevine + Basking Rootwalla + 0cc guy plan, so I opted to play Memnite, and take no chances with an Ornithopter, who is quite worthless without a Noble Hierarch in play or an already active Jitte (which in that case, why the hell are you swing with an equipped Ornithopter?). I was instantly attracted to the Natural Order package, bearing a resemblance to the Show and Tell plan that Reanimator often uses to dodge GY hate. I originally wanted to do something quite elaborate, like 4 Natural Order / 1 Progenitus / 1 Empyrial Angel / 1 Dryad Arbor, but found that it was too much constraint on the rest of the SB. Yes, cards like Llawan/Krosan Grip/Submerge are quite important as well.


A breakdown of what I faced / did:

R1) RG Land Desctruction/Beats Outdated 2002 Homebrew: I keep an excellent hand of Hierarch / Spell Pierce / SotF / creature to start off, and eventually a horde of Vengevines takes the game easily. He did not get a chance to do a whole lot in the first game. And that's where it goes to hell...

SB: +Natural Order package, +3 Submerge, -2 Daze, -2 Spell Pierce, 2 Trygon Predator, -1 Waterfront Bouncer

I basically board as I feel I should with a Tempo type build, taking out the Daze/Spell Pierces on the draw, FoW's on the play. I had to mull to 6 this game, literally getting nothing, but starting with a Tropical Island, Wasteland, Rootwalla, and 3 Wild Mongrel/Aquamoeba mix. I felt like I had to take it, going to 5 is pretty dangerous, as I could get into the game with even just a few beats. I watch my Tropical Island get Stone Rain'ed (yes, you aren't misreading), and my Wasteland get Wrecking Ball'ed (yes, again, you aren't misreading) with no legal targets before drawing nothing. Game ends quickly. I switch the FoW's out for the 2 Daze/2 SP. I get a repeat of g2 pretty much, eventually getting Wasteland'ed, Eternal Witness for Wasteland, replay Wasteland. Miserable time. He also had Sudden Shock, which kills nothing in this format except for the madness enablers. Fml.

1-2 games, 0-1 matches.


R2) Zoo: The only matchup I tested, but not the version with Goblin Guide, which sped up the clock incredibly. I whiffed on about 3-4 triggers before I die to burn. Nice 20 land deck.

SB: +Natural Order Package, +3 Submerge, -2 Daze, -2 Spell Pierce, 2 Trygon Predator, -1 Waterfront Bouncer

I mulled to 5 this game. Heh.

1-4 games, 0-2 matches.


R3) BitterStill (UWb Bitterblossom/Standstill Control): I play the pilot almost every other week at my locals, and of couse there are Propagandas in the MD, which is quite annoying with this deck, and possible Peacekeepers in the SB. But whatever. Playing for fun at this point, as I'm clearly out of contention for any prize. I manage to resolve a Survival t2 after his t2 Bitterblossom, and on t3 I combo out with only 3 mana available, so 1 mana from the turn before + 3 mana this turn = 3 Vengevines, Rootwalla, and a Memnite. I bash for 12, but next turn he makes a token and plays Propaganda, which is highly annoying. I go to my turn, which I survival for Hierach, then Trygon Predator, and pass. He plays a Maze of Ith and delves for a Tombstalker. I almost manage to ambush him with Wonder and kills his Tombstalker, but Maze of Iths it. I finally draw Brainstorm, cast it, find a Wasteland and a Jitte on top, waste his Maze, make a Jitte, and threaten to at least get counters on the guy. So, in order, Memnite trades with a Bitterblossom token, Rootwalla trades with Tombstalker, and I make a Trygon Predator to deal with Propaganda. He makes an EE @ 4 and blows it, but eventually I clear the Propaganda, cast a 2cc discard guy, and Madness a Rootwalla into play.

SB: +Natural Order Package, +2 Krosan Grip, -4 Force of Will, -2 Vengevine.

He's a huge fan of Extirpate so I think about going the alternate route and board out 2 Vengevine. Right play? I open with 2 Survivals in hand, which I bait with one, draw out his Force, and then play one immediately the next turn. I don't have NO, so I decide that it's time to try a 2 Vengevine combo. I get there, and he doesn't have an Extirpate.

3-4 games, 1-2 matches.


R4) NO-CounterTop: It's the last round and although we're both out of contention, we decide to play it out for the purposes of experience and a little fun. I FoW a t2 Qasali Pridemage to make a Survival on my t2, which sees no Daze. He eventually Natural Orders away a Tarmogoyf for a Progenitus when I'm at 15 life. I combo out the next turn with Wonder for a 4 Flying Vengevine salute.

SB: +3 Submerge, +2 Krosan Grip, +2 Llawan, -2 Daze, -2 Spell Pierce, -2 Trygon Predator, -1 Waterfront Bouncer.

No Survival needed on this one, some bad draws (Progenitus) for my opponent led to no answers for the 3/3 Wild Mongrel that was being fed every turn and the 3/3 Basking Rootwalla.

5-4 games, 2-2 matches.



So some comments on the deck: Incredibly fun deck, and definitely has a lot of shock value for your opponent. A little tougher to play around GY hate, in my opinion, if you want to go a way other than NO. I might explore the possibility of Hurkyl's Recalls or something of the like in here. I don't like how the deck mulligans, sometimes you just have an incredibly poor hand (no Survivals, no discard outlets, etc). The 3 Brainstorm were designed to increase consistency but it may have to be 4 at some point. Basking Rootwalla is a house, and I really think there are benefits to the 0cc guy plan.

If I were playing this again soon, however, I would definitely play with StP and white in the deck. Not sure if I wanna go all in for Iona/Retainers though. But analysis or advice would be highly appreciated. I would like to play this deck for a while, and the more information I gain, the quicker my development.

[Fuzzy]

Call me crazy, but one Masticore (The real one) on SB wouldn't be good right now?

It kills Peacekeepers, Yxlid Jailer (Or whatever is his weird name), Fishs, Goblins, Elves and had an AWESOME picture.

[Media314r8]

He's playing Sudden Shock, which kills nothing in this format except for the madness enablers. Fml.

LOL'd SO Hard!

List referanced (my homebrew for slower goldfishing, greater consistancy):

// Deck file for Magic Workstation (http://www.magicworkstation.com)

// Lands
3 [10E] Forest (3)
4 [ON] Windswept Heath
2 [R] Savannah
1 [ZEN] Verdant Catacombs
4 [ZEN] Misty Rainforest
4 [R] Tropical Island

// Creatures
1 [MM] Squee, Goblin Nabob
1 [FNM] Quirion Ranger
3 [LRW] Gaddock Teeg
4 [ROE] Vengevine
1 [JU] Wonder
4 [DDD] Basking Rootwalla
4 [M11] Fauna Shaman
4 [FUT] Magus of the Vineyard
4 [FUT] Tarmogoyf
2 [WWK] Stoneforge Mystic

// Spells
4 [EX] Survival of the Fittest
4 [NE] Daze
4 [MM] Brainstorm
1 [BOK] Umezawa's Jitte
1 [DS] Sword of Fire and Ice

// Sideboard
SB: 1 [PS] Meddling Mage
SB: 1 [JU] Genesis
SB: 1 [DS] Viridian Zealot
SB: 1 [DIS] Trygon Predator
SB: 3 [ZEN] Spell Pierce
SB: 3 [SHM] Faerie Macabre
SB: 1 [TO] Llawan, Cephalid Empress
SB: 4 [SHM] Kitchen Finks

[Gui]

Is someone trying splash white to use Elightned Tutor to fetch SotF? It could also be used to fetch some solution against peacekeeper, like a EE.

On another topic,"Land -> Noble" hands are often great openings; Anyone trying to add BoP for extra speed?

[DragoFireheart]

I have a suggestion for UG builds that need to kill Peacekeeper.


Pongify


It's blue so it can be pitched to force as well.

[TheShaun]

I have a suggestion for UG builds that need to kill Peacekeeper.


Pongify


It's blue so it can be pitched to force as well.

It does do the job, but i think waterfront bouncer or man o war do as well as being fetchable. Though I'm really tempted to try out that masticore idea. Anybody tested it yet?

[Dark Ritual]

I'm tempted to just bounce the peacekeeper then swing in for the win. Anyone have that idea? Really peacekeeper is easily solved if you have survival out you get manowar and bounce it the turn you swing in with 4 vines + other random dudes all of which have flying because of wonder. GG's? Pongify? Not needed when you have manowar. Hell, even that stupid waterfront bouncer answers it. Peacekeeper is just a stall tactic so you have all game to answer it as well so whether it's turn 30 or turn 10 you can bounce it and win because landstill is the slowest deck ever made.

[Mana Drain]

R3) BitterStill (UWb Bitterblossom/Standstill Control)... SB: +Natural Order Package, +2 Krosan Grip, -4 Force of Will, -2 Vengevine.



Not bagging on the deck, but why would you side in NO+Prog AND side out your forces against a deck that very well might play Perish in the board?

The NO plan seems cool, but every deck with green hate is going to be siding it in against you anyway. Prog doesn't help against Perish/Nature's Ruin, Hibernate, Peacekeeper, Preacher, etc. It is a non-grave dependent win condition, but you need a dude to sac, 4 mana (easier said than done), NO, and it to not get countered. It's a great combo in Pro-Bant, because they run more permission and disruption. You're also decreasing the creature count for Vengevine (I know you sided out 2 vines, but vines are the soul of the entire deck) and the power of Survival. Also, decks like Zoo, Fish, and Goblins can just race Prog and laugh at your loss of tempo.


On a side note, Waterfront Bouncer has been terribad for me. It's a subpar card all the time, but can remove a peacekeeper. The problem is he doesn't have haste, and may not even resolve. He's also terrible in just about every aggro-match, seeing how he just sucks up our tempo and again, dies to everything. I'm going to try the one-of Ulamog posted above me. Using it to blast a peacekeeper in a drawn-out game with uncouterability is neato-cool. The synergy it has in response to a Crypt/Relic with a discard outlet is also relevant.

[conboy31]

I have a suggestion for UG builds that need to kill Peacekeeper.


Pongify


It's blue so it can be pitched to force as well.

You might as well rock piracy charm if you are going to go that route. Kills all x/1s, utility of islandwalk, and instant discard which is very rare. Blue for FOW too.

[Mark Sun]

<Stuff>

I PM'ed you a little more detail on why, for that deck specifically I knew I would not run into those problems and such. About the NO strategy, against Zoo I really wanted to have Empyrial Archangel as an NO target on Saturday, and originally had that. Is a 1-of Dryad Arbor necessary? I thought I should ask. It would help in increasing the creature count.

About Ulamog, I haven't played this deck long enough, can it get to 11 mana + still have Ulamog be relevant? I definitely like it for saving the GY, though.