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NesretepNoj
05-15-2013, 09:01 PM
Infinite Cunning

http://i.imgur.com/fjlhgqE.jpg

Overview
01. Disclaimer
02. Intro
03. History
04. The Deck
05. Sample decklist
06. How to start off the combo?
07. How to win once you’ve got your combo off?
08. New tricks
09. Alternate kills
10. Matchups, sideboarding and strategy
11. Stuff to consider
12. Thread log

01. Disclaimer
This primer is work in progress. I’ve written it hastily (exams) to accommodate the problem of discussing two quite different decks in the original Omniscience thread (http://www.mtgthesource.com/forums/showthread.php?24583-Deck-Omniscience). My linguistic skills aren’t great either, but when my exams are over with, I’ll do my best to fix typos and of course add more content. In the meantime, you are welcome to come up with suggestions. I’ll do my best to respond to them and work them into this primer.

02. Intro
So yet another Show and Tell based combo deck? Just what I needed… If this was your initial thought, this probably isn’t the thread for you to be reading. However, if you have been playing Show and Tell for some time and are interested in hearing about how some new and old tech come together to form a new deck, you are in the right place. So what is this deck all about? With the recent printing of Omniscience and Enter the Infinite, this strategy has gotten some new toys, which makes it easier to fight through some of the meta-cards pointed towards Show and Tell. Tired of Karakas, Oblivion Ring, Angel of Despair, Pithing Needle, Humility, Ensnaring Bridge, and so forth? This deck dodges most of them and has clever answers to all of them.

Eager to hear what this deck is all about? Then skip to the card selection part. Otherwise, I’ll start out by giving a short introduction outlining how various card printings have helped shape the development of Show and Tell based decks.

03. History
-- This section will tell the story of how Show and Tell based decks has evolved something in the line of this: Habili Dream Halls (prior to the printing of Emrakul) >Sneak and Show (prior to the printing of Griselbrand) > Hive Mind (Mental Misstep in/out)> Hesslip/Lax Dream Halls > Sneak and Show > Omni Tell > Cunning Halls.

04. The deck
Card selection
I’ll start out at the very core of the deck. Since legacy isn’t a format of efficient tutors, we’ll have to go for the second best thing. This deck runs the following cantrips and usually four of each:

Brainstorm
Ponder
Preordain

Besides finding the combo pieces, and protection when needed, they also serves to cut down on the number of lands. This is last part is especially important in decks with Dream Halls, since they require a great portion of blue cards in hand, when comboing off.

Mana base
Talking of lands leads me to the mana base. I’ve had some discussion with Lelay (the one piloting the deck to a 9-0 day one finish at GP Strasbourg (http://mtgpulse.com/event/12916#181110)) about to construct a proper mana base for this deck. In order for you to choose for you self, I’ll present both views:

I’ve based my original list on Ari Lax’ build (http://www.starcitygames.com/magic/legacy/23757-Welcome-To-The-Dream-World.html). His list is based on constructing storm mana bases: You want as few actual lands as possible and plenty of fetches, so that you’ll always have a shuffle effect available. Ari runs nine fetches which is reasonable, since both storm and this deck can win fast enough to make life total less of a concern. To be able to cast all spells in the deck solely off islands, Ari ran five. This leads me to Lejay’s list: He is running ten islands and six fetches. His reasoning has been that too many fetches leads to losses in tight games and that six should be enough if you play your Brainstorms conservatively. In the sample deck lists you’ll find that Nicolas Goldberg ran seven Islands and eight fethes. This seems to be a balanced approach in between mine and Lejay’s. As of writing this primer, I’ve done some minor testing using Goldberg’s list and it seems good. As I mentioned, you just have to play your Brainstorm/fetch mechanic more conservatively. Another thing both Lejay and Goldberg has done, is shaving the number of Stompy lands:
Since this deck has a high average converted mana cost compared to its actual number of lands, we need some boost. I’ll start out quoting Ari Lax:

“The second is a bit more in-depth but it comes down to the fact that five is significantly less than six. Dream Halls is a much easier card to just hardcast than Hive Mind is. You can easily curve out with three basics into an Ancient Tomb or City of Traitors and win the game on turn 4 without ever exposing yourself to Wasteland. Hive Mind needs five lands and a Sol land to naturally cast the namesake spell forcing it to play extra enablers like Grim Monolith to support what becomes a three-card combo. By cutting this dependency you gain extra slots to use on cantrips or protection.”

This lead to three points of discussion: The actual number of lands, how man stompy lands and which ones to use. Most decks, including mine, is running 19. This means, that if we are running five stompy lands, we are down to 14 virtual islands (counting fetches for the purpose of mulliganing). This makes the deck slighty more prone to mulliganing but increases the chances of hitting a stompy land by turn three or four. The last thing in this regard is what stompy lands to use. I’ve almost seen all possible combinations of splits (Ancient Tomb/City of Traitors) like 3/2, 4/1, 3/1, 2/2, and 0/4. We’ve already talked about the number, so the last point is similar to the discussion of fethlands: How much does the extra damage from Ancient Tomb hurts compared to being able to deploy the stompy lands early on? I’ll leave this last point up in the air until further testing has been conducted.

Protection
One of the perks of being a blue Show and Tell based combo deck is that you get to run Force of Will. This deck is no exception in that regard. Some lists run three main deck and one to tutor for in the sideboard. I’m personally running four (and Misdirection in the sideboard) to improve my game one matchups against decks like storm, belcher, and dredge.
The protection suite is actually what makes this particular build special and separates it from the other Omniscience decks: Since we can win on the spot (consistently), we get to run Pact of Negation. Usually people play some mix of Spell Pierce and Flusterstorm in this slot, so what does this mean? Here’s a little comparison:

Spell Pierce/Flusterstorm:
- Great against discard
- Greatly improves combo mirror (especially storm)
- Acceptable against Dredge (countering Study/Looting/Breakthrough/Therapy)

Pact of Negation:
- Dead against a huge part of the field, especially game one (usually gets boarded out)
- Really good against RUG Delver and other blue tempo based strategies, not requiring an extra blue card
- Greater at protecting a hard cast Dream Halls, which is usually only problematic against Delver based decks

So, that might sound like the latter should have the upper hand. Well, since I consider this deck to be the best in the format, and in my testing boasts really great matchup percentages against the entire field except tempo decks (and Reanimator which is straight up horrible), this is a sacrifice I’m willing to make.

Number of “bombs”
Most lists are maxing out on both Dream Halls and Omniscience. I like this approach, since it enables you to naturally draw one of them so that you can use your cantrips to fix mana and find appropriate answers in time. Lastly, running all eight bombs also makes the deck into more of a two card combo.

The “odd” choices
The deck also plays a single Intuition and some number of cards with converted mana cost two like Impulse or Trickbind. What those do will be explained later, so I’ll leave you with a cliff hanger.

Mono blue or splash?
This is legacy right; you can run any mana base you want? Yes and no. Keeping the deck mono blue helps out in a few ways: The obvious one of course is that you don’t have to worry about Wasteland in the same way. Also not having to worry about the sequence in which different fetchlands are used (ie. saving Scalding Tarn to fetch a basic mountain in Sneak and Show) can save some mental fatigue during long tournaments. Lastly, splashing for cards like Thoughtseize and Burning Wish hampers your ability to combo off with Dream Halls. This is also a point to keep in mind, when constructing the sideboard. Boarding in too many non-blue cards devalues Dream Halls.

05. Sample decklist
Nicolas Goldberg, 1st @ Bazaar of MoxenVII
2 Scalding Tarn
7 Island
2 City of Traitors
2 Ancient Tomb
4 Flooded Strand
2 Polluted Delta
4 Show and Tell
4 Preordain
4 Ponder
3 Force of Will
4 Enter the Infinite
4 Brainstorm
4 Cunning Wish
3 Pact of Negation
1 Impulse
1 Flusterstorm
1 Intuition
4 Omniscience
4 Dream Halls

Sideboard
1 Pact of Negation
4 Leyline of Sanctity
1 Slaughter Pact
1 Intuition
1 Trickbind
1 Wipe Away
1 Research // Development
1 Laboratory Maniac
1 Firemind's Foresight
1 Echoing Truth
1 Surgical Extraction
1 Force of Will

Similar lists
Undefeated Day 1 @ GP Strasbourg (Jean-Mary Accart) - http://mtgpulse.com/event/12916#181110 (Cunning Wish based)
2nd GP Trial Aarhus (Jon Petersen ~ me :smile:) - http://mtgpulse.com/event/12689#177961 (Emrakul based)
5th SCG Open Cincinatti (Rob Vaca) - http://mtgpulse.com/event/12220#171264 (Emrakul based)

06. How to start off the combo?
- Credit for this part goes to emidln.

3UU - Dream Halls + Cunning Wish + 2 blue cards
3UU - Dream Halls + Enter the Infinite + 1 blue card
3UU - Dream Halls + Intuition + 2 blue cards
2U - Show and Tell and any of the above
2U - Show and Tell + Omniscience + Cunning Wish
2U - Show and Tell + Omniscience + Enter the Infinite
2U - Show and Tell + Omniscience + Intuition
2U - Show and Tell + Omniscience + cantrips (not 100%, but very high)

This means you're playing either a 2 card or 3 card combo, depending on which enabler you happen to draw and how much mana you can spend on it. You might have noticed that Cunning Wish == Intuition == Enter the Infinite and Dream Halls == Omniscience. This is very much on purpose, as redundancy combined with cantrips is a reliable way to beat hand disruption while guaranteeing that you can kill aggro players in time.
You might have noticed that I'm assuming Cunning Wish is just win the game on the spot, 100%. Why do I do that? The answer is Firemind's Foresight. Look it up if you have to. It's an instant that finds you 3 more instants, at 3cmc, 2cmc, and 1cmc and puts them into your hand. Practically, this means that Dream Halls + Wish + 2 cards plays out like this:

cast Wish pitching the first card, finding Firemind's Foresight (FF)
cast FF pitching the second card, finding Intuition, Trickbind/Impulse, Brainstorm
cast Intuition pitching Trickbind/Impulse, finding 3x Enter the Infinite, getting 1 EtE
cast EtI pitching Brainstorm drawing your deck.

07. How to win once you’ve got your combo off?
Okay, so far you’ve demonstrated, that it is quite capable of drawing the entire library, but how does it actually win? There are quite some options: One could run a couple of Emrakuls. Once Omniscience is on the table you can play out the first one, take the extra turn, attack, play out the second one (time walk trigger), shuffle ‘em both back into the library, redraw them with another Enter the Infinite, play one (second time walk trigger). Take another turn and so on and so forth. Rinse and repeat till you’re out of opponents.

That sounded quite nice, so what’s wrong with that way of winning? For once, it takes up two slots and, secondly drawing Emrakul if often lackluster since it only combos with Omniscience (Show and Tell into Emrakul is not so cool these days; especially not within the time frame that this deck is able to doing to so), and thirdly people might play main deck cards that prevent you from attacking.
So what options do you propose then? The most compact suggested so far is using Release the Ants. Enter the Infinite makes you put one card back after drawing your entire library. Say you put down a second copy of Enter the Infinite and have Omniscience on the board, you can fetch it out using Cunning Wish. Since you have infinite mana and will win the clash, you are now able to dealing all the damage you want. The problem with this kill arises from the fact, that some people play Emrakul. A way around this problem is by playing a single Emrakul ourselves and just attack, but that can prove a bit problematic, since we are running Pact of Negation (and passing the turn to strike twice isn’t cool).

Okay, so is there a slightly less compact kill that foregoes all of the above problems? Glad you asked. If we relegate two sideboard slots to Laboratory Maniac and Research // Development all of the mentioned problem can be avoided. The kill is actually really simple; once you’ve resolved Enter the Infinite you start out fetching up Research using Cunning Wish. Repeat this process by using Research to shuffle Laboratory Maniac into your library, which now consists of two cards. Play out two Preordain or Ponder to draw the those two cards. With an empty library, play Laboratory Maniac and a third Preordain/Ponder. If your opponent does nothing you win. If they try to cast Lightning Bolt use your free Force of Will. If they try to cast Abrupt Decay, respond by playing a Brainstorm. Permanent based cards like Umezawa’s Jitte can be Trickbinded or bounced. This win condition also has the advantage of being able to played solely of off Dream Halls since it is all blue (in case you should lose your Omnisciences).

Video example: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RW2glyEuyDA (Bazaar of Moxen VII Finals).

08. New tricks
In my intro I mentioned a host of anti-Show and Tell cards and that this deck is capable of beating all of them. For the sake of simplicity I’ll group them together and go through how to beat them:

Karakas, Ensnaring Bridge, Pithing Needle, Phyrexian Revoker
No answer is needed. None of the cards touch this deck expect for opponents naming fetchlands with Pithing Needle.

Oblivion Ring, Angel of Despair, Vendilion Clique, Venser, Shaper Savant
Main deck: Cunning Wish in response to their trigger getting Firemind's Foresight. FF for a Cunning Wish, Impulse and Brainstorm. Cast the second Cunning Wish for Trickbind. Trickbind the trigger and use Impulse and Brainstorm to hopefully dig up a new win con.
Post board: Board in Trickbind. Cunning Wish in response to their trigger getting Firemind’s Foresight. Still in response, get Intuition, Trickbind, and Brainstorm = win.

Humility, Thalia, Guardian of Thraben, Gaddock Teeg
Cunning Wish for Wipe Away/Echoing Truth/Slaughter Pact.

Counterbalance
To combat Counterbalance, I board in Lab Man and Trickbind. When EtI resolves, I play Cunning Wish. I they don't flip a three cost, I wipe away the CB. If they do, I just play out Lab Man and Trickbind the trigger. I they try to counter my draw spells by flipping top, I just respond by playing Brainstorm (or C. Wish --> Wipe Away).

09. Alternate kills
~ Twincast/False Cure/Beacon of Immortality
~ Eladamri's Call/Emrakul

10. Matchups, sideboarding and strategy
-- Before writing this, I’ll just give up one piece of advise: Board lightly in most non-combo matchups.

11. Stuff to consider
Number of two cmc cards in the main deck
One thing I’d like to point out is that Nicolas is only running one main deck two-cmc card. In my testing this proved to be a bit problematic, since drawing it really hampers your Cunning Wish combo in conjunction with Dream Halls. My solution so far, has been to swap one Preordain for a second Impulse.

Leyline of Sanctity
To quote myself from a previous post: "I don't find leylines necessary. Back in the day, when you only played four Dream Halls and you could pitch extra leylines to Conflux, they where arguably okay, but now that we have so much redundancy, I really find them to be lackluster. We have eight halls/omnis and paired with omni upwards of 19 "go of spells" (4x EtI, 4x Wish, 4x Ponder, 4x Brainstorm, 2x Impulse, 1x Intuition). I've won far more games with omni+ponder, than I've lost. My point is, that even if you get your leyline down, you've still used a card. If they are playing BUG, they still have counterspells you have to fight through and they can brainstorm their discard away. Against non-blue discard, you are still mosty trading one for one, except they are losing tempo and you are not. I know, I know, double hymn hurts and sometimes they go turn one discard, turn two creature, turn three double discard. However, the latter is definitely the exception and with ~13 cantrips, you can usually dig your way out of trouble (and hide cards on top of your deck). Say you mulligan to six in order to hit a leyline, you've pratically double mulliganed, increased your likelihood of bad top decks and decreased the amount of blue cards to pitch to Dream Halls."

12. Thread log
2013-05-15: Posted the initial thread.
2013-05-16: Rearranged the thread, added a discussion on how to construct the deck, and added thread log as well as an overview.

Lejay
05-15-2013, 09:42 PM
I already wrote a primer for the deck on storm boards. Like I said I'll perfect it and then post it on the source.

NesretepNoj
05-16-2013, 02:33 AM
I already wrote a primer for the deck on storm boards. Like I said I'll perfect it and then post it on the source.

I know. It's just that people kept repeating the same questions in the original Omniscience thread; questions which I've now mostly covered and actually didn't belong in a thread covering the Burning Wish + Creatures version. When you have finished your primer, we can just replace this one (or merge them, if you can use anything I've written).

So, by any means, keep on writing :smile:.

blindspotxxx
05-16-2013, 04:10 AM
Good Job! Although now this means we aren't under the radar anymore lol

The BOM7 deck design is absolutely awesome!

Karhumies
05-16-2013, 04:35 AM
I especially like the manabase with Islands + :2: lands. Omni-Tell is practically a goldfish for the opponent until the combo turn. With the "more traditional" Ur builds and Urb builds, Wastelands could effectively give extra turns to the opponent AND screw our mana. (e.g. T2 Fetch for Volcanic Island to B.Wish->SnT, opponent wastes the Volcanic, no T3 combo = d'oh!) This made mulligan decisions sometimes very difficult if the hand was otherwise good but a single Wasteland could destroy it. Cantripping/digging for lands when we should be cantripping/digging for key cards is not very beneficial, either.

In regards to the second 2cc instant slot: how about Boomerang? It can also target a land, so it's not as dead as most other MD bounce slots.

(nameless one)
05-16-2013, 06:28 AM
That banner.

Where did you get that? I know it's enter the infinite but that black and white. It's gonna be my new playmat.

NesretepNoj
05-16-2013, 06:43 AM
I just googled "enter the infinite" and ended up in Terese Nielsen's blog.

Link (http://teresenielsen.typepad.com/the_world_of_terese_niels/2013/01/enter-the-infinite.html)

Julian23
05-16-2013, 06:43 AM
Interesting thing to note: all of the good pilots of this deck actually chose to draw first at the BoM, except for against Fast Combo.

r3dd09
05-16-2013, 06:52 AM
Happy to see this deck take the Legacy event. When Emidln shipped me the list months ago, I knew it was going to be good.

Nekrataal
05-16-2013, 11:18 AM
NesretepNoj thx for writing a primer and creating this spearate thread. I have several question / statements to various chapters of the primer.

Manabase: I found that Ancient Tombs early game are usually better in case you need to go all the way for a hardcast Dreamhalls. I had a number of testgames where I played S&T via City and then had to start collecting lands all over to combo out via Dream Halls if I didn't succeed. This might be still a play error but sometimes I run out S&T as a counter bait just to clear the way for next turn combo with Dream Halls. So my split is 3:2 in favor of Ancient Tombs.

Protection: Your quote on usage of Leyline is actually as true for running the proction suite of PoN in favor of Spell Pierce at least when looking at the discard point. Due to higher redundancy than former S&T / Dream Halls builds PoN becomes a stronger choice compared to Spell Pierce.

Number of Bombs: If there is any priority in maxing out slots I would put Dream Halls before Omniscience because Dream Halls is an enabler in itself AND with S&T. So if at one point I would have to decide to gain a slot by reducing either Omniscience or Dream Halls it would be Omniscience. I was wondering when I saw the list of Jean-Mary Accart why he played it differently. But maybe I am wrong and leave out aspects I don't see? Any ideas?

Available Comboes: You mentioned Release the Ants and the issues with having to play Emrakul main. One important aspect from mpov is that it is an instant kill and still works without Emrakul and more important without Enter the Infinite and just an Omniscience or EtI on top of your library (however you place it there). There are scenarios when this would be a viable option against most decks out there. However I am not sure if that warrants running RtA as additional Kill in the SB which is already crowded?

NesretepNoj
05-16-2013, 01:31 PM
NesretepNoj thx for writing a primer and creating this spearate thread. I have several question / statements to various chapters of the primer.
Thank you.


Manabase: I found that Ancient Tombs early game are usually better in case you need to go all the way for a hardcast Dreamhalls. I had a number of testgames where I played S&T via City and then had to start collecting lands all over to combo out via Dream Halls if I didn't succeed. This might be still a play error but sometimes I run out S&T as a counter bait just to clear the way for next turn combo with Dream Halls. So my split is 3:2 in favor of Ancient Tombs.
The way you describe it, is how games against blue non-wasteland plays out. I'm currently playing a 3/1 split. This has been quite okay in my very limited testing, and the extra Islands makes the deck mulligan slightly better.


Protection: Your quote on usage of Leyline is actually as true for running the proction suite of PoN in favor of Spell Pierce at least when looking at the discard point. Due to higher redundancy than former S&T / Dream Halls builds PoN becomes a stronger choice compared to Spell Pierce.
I agree.


Number of Bombs: If there is any priority in maxing out slots I would put Dream Halls before Omniscience because Dream Halls is an enabler in itself AND with S&T. So if at one point I would have to decide to gain a slot by reducing either Omniscience or Dream Halls it would be Omniscience. I was wondering when I saw the list of Jean-Mary Accart why he played it differently. But maybe I am wrong and leave out aspects I don't see? Any ideas?
Well, I can't speak for Jean-Mary/Lejay, but my guess is, that since Omniscience is the best thing to do with Show and Tell and is far greater with Cunning Wish, he has maxed out on those and considers hardcasting a late game plan, hence the lesser need of playing four.


Available Comboes: You mentioned Release the Ants and the issues with having to play Emrakul main. One important aspect from mpov is that it is an instant kill and still works without Emrakul and more important without Enter the Infinite and just an Omniscience or EtI on top of your library (however you place it there). There are scenarios when this would be a viable option against most decks out there. However I am not sure if that warrants running RtA as additional Kill in the SB which is already crowded?

I wouldn't run both, but you could have both in your bag before the first round of the tournament. For most players around the world, legacy is an intimate format of 10-30 dedicated local players, who usually play the same one or two decks week after week. On weeks where the Sneak and Show guy is not attending, you could run RtA. At larger events with unknown metas, I would definitely run Lab. Man. as long as SnS remains a popular deck.

venice
05-17-2013, 03:11 AM
Has Merchant Scroll ever been considered as the deck's cc2 spell? At first glance it seems far more valuable than Impulse, finding protection as well as Combo pieces.

Lejay
05-17-2013, 03:13 AM
Merchant scroll can't be fetched by firemind's foresight.

I updated the storm boards primer. this thread can be locked.
http://www.mtgthesource.com/forums/showthread.php?26071-Omniclash-and-Omnimaniac

Water_Wizard
05-17-2013, 04:33 AM
Leyline of Sanctity
To quote myself from a previous post: "I don't find leylines necessary. Back in the day, when you only played four Dream Halls and you could pitch extra leylines to Conflux, they where arguably okay, but now that we have so much redundancy, I really find them to be lackluster. We have eight halls/omnis and paired with omni upwards of 19 "go of spells" (4x EtI, 4x Wish, 4x Ponder, 4x Brainstorm, 2x Impulse, 1x Intuition). I've won far more games with omni+ponder, than I've lost. My point is, that even if you get your leyline down, you've still used a card. If they are playing BUG, they still have counterspells you have to fight through and they can brainstorm their discard away. Against non-blue discard, you are still mosty trading one for one, except they are losing tempo and you are not. I know, I know, double hymn hurts and sometimes they go turn one discard, turn two creature, turn three double discard. However, the latter is definitely the exception and with ~13 cantrips, you can usually dig your way out of trouble (and hide cards on top of your deck). Say you mulligan to six in order to hit a leyline, you've pratically double mulliganed, increased your likelihood of bad top decks and decreased the amount of blue cards to pitch to Dream Halls."


If you don't like Leyline, what do you suggest in its place?

I understand the argument that Leyline makes you keep bad hands, mulligan good hands, and is a dead draw. Personally, I've been running without it. I'm curious on your thoughts.

Larzdk
05-17-2013, 06:24 AM
Has Merchant Scroll ever been considered as the deck's cc2 spell? At first glance it seems far more valuable than Impulse, finding protection as well as Combo pieces.

You mean, it's a fifth Cunning Wish once we have an enabler in play? Seems pretty poor. If it doubled as Show and Tell, I think we would already be all over it (ie. Scroll -> SnT costs the same as a hardcast Dream Halls)

Nekrataal
05-17-2013, 07:07 AM
Thank you.

Well, I can't speak for Jean-Mary/Lejay, but my guess is, that since Omniscience is the best thing to do with Show and Tell and is far greater with Cunning Wish, he has maxed out on those and considers hardcasting a late game plan, hence the lesser need of playing four.


Thanks for your detailed answers. Now that Lejays primer is online http://www.mtgthesource.com/forums/showthread.php?26071-Omniclash-and-Omnimaniac he explains the differences quite well. Unfornunately my impression ist that this primer still has big relevance as a lot of important stuff is not mentioned in Lejays primer but is here. Also it is pretty obvious that his primer focusses on the Ants Kill with all specifics in side and mainboard and this thread focusses the Lab Maniac Kill.

NesretepNoj
05-17-2013, 09:04 AM
Thanks for your detailed answers. Now that Lejays primer is online http://www.mtgthesource.com/forums/showthread.php?26071-Omniclash-and-Omnimaniac he explains the differences quite well. Unfornunately my impression ist that this primer still has big relevance as a lot of important stuff is not mentioned in Lejays primer but is here. Also it is pretty obvious that his primer focusses on the Ants Kill with all specifics in side and mainboard and this thread focusses the Lab Maniac Kill.

Yeah, this primer is only half way finished, but I'm inclined not to finish it, if mods decide to lock it up. I'm not sure which primer is the best. Lejay is very focused on his own list whereas mine is written more generically and I don't feel like he is bringing up much new, which hasn't already been said in this thread (except his sideboarding plans, which I was slowly finalizing with strategic guidance to every matchup (and thoughts on playing/drawing first)). I also think mine is more structured and not too over confidant in its claims. Since it's counterproductive to have two primers discussing the same deck, I'll seize working on this one until it is decided, which one to keep.

@Leylines: Right now I'm running two Flusterstorm and one Misdirection in my board. Against non-blue discard heavy decks, I'm boarding -3 Pact of Negation, +2 Flusterstorm, +1 Misdirection. As I said in my "rant": My overall strategic plan is to win on deck superiority/consistency rather than unreliable tricks.

Cave
05-17-2013, 10:46 AM
Interesting thing to note: all of the good pilots of this deck actually chose to draw first at the BoM, except for against Fast Combo.
Probably because having 8 cards maximizes your chances to go off on turn 2 when you have Dream Halls. You'll need a pitch card or two.

Nekrataal
05-17-2013, 02:28 PM
@Leylines: Right now I'm running two Flusterstorm and one Misdirection in my board. Against non-blue discard heavy decks, I'm boarding -3 Pact of Negation, +2 Flusterstorm, +1 Misdirection. As I said in my "rant": My overall strategic plan is to win on deck superiority/consistency rather than unreliable tricks.

Interesting that you mention it because I did the same. Actually Lejay's explanations helped me a lot to deduct that because he said that basically he would side out PoN against Discard, leave them in against U-Decks and otherwise board in same "stuff" for PoN. Further I read the rant post about how to lose against Fast Combo with this deck and actually found it quite true on paper. So as counters are good against Combo AND Discard my idea was that exchanging Leylines with Counters would have a positiv effect: You are still set against Discard and are better off against Combo. Leylines are maybe better on the long or when facing Hymn but considering what has been said about mulligan into them, well, I think some additional counters are well enough. In addition I save 1 Slot So I can finally run the 3 Defense Grid, because they are simply awesome against Tempo. Currently I run 2 Flusterstorm, 1 FoW. As a plus all the spells can be pitched into DH. Potentially you could even run 1 Daze to max out your 2 CC spells

Lejay
05-17-2013, 03:09 PM
I have a lot of trouble taking time to write things that seem obvious to me, but I realize that could be a bad thing since not everyone has played the deck for months. Maybe you could tell me what you think will be lacking for a beginner in my primer. Maybe by changing the color of parts of your primer before the thread is locked.

NesretepNoj
05-17-2013, 08:10 PM
I have a lot of trouble taking time to write things that seem obvious to me, but I realize that could be a bad thing since not everyone has played the deck for months. Maybe you could tell me what you think will be lacking for a beginner in my primer. Maybe by changing the color of parts of your primer before the thread is locked.

Well, I'm not sure, this is the thread to be locked ;). Mine is written in the style of a generic primer whereas yours is written as an rhetoric argument for the oddities of your own particular list. I'm rather sure, that your placements ins't a result of your list, but rather a sign of the overall strength of the archetype and your skills as a player. Your one-of main deck Leyline should almost speak for itself. If you'd adapt your list to be more capable of hardcasting Dream Halls, they aren't really necessary to begin with.

Also claiming to be the creator of the deck seems kinda misplaced. The Dream Halls archetype which this deck is an evolution from stems from Jonas Harbili and in later years James Hesslip/Ari Lax. Not much has changed from that list if you swap Progenitus/Conflux for Omniscience/Enter the Infinite.

I know this is a discussion we have had before, but I'm still not convinced your mana base is optimal. I even believe remembering seeing you losing a game under the camera during GP Strasbourg brainstorm locking yourself twice fumbling with two or three basics in hand (this could certainly be wrong).

That being said, except for the wasted work writing this primer, it doesn't really matter to me which primer is chosen since my goal of writing it in the first place, was to make a distinct thread for this deck to be discussed in and that goal is now fulfilled. It would also save me a lot of trouble finalizing this primer, when my exams are over with ;).

PS. You don't need to defend your card choices once again since you've already made your opinion pretty clear ("I have no doubt my list is better"). So, let's just agree to disagree on the points I've just brought up :).

PPS. I hope you don't get offended or regard this as a personal attack since you actually seems like a cool guy. I'm a huge fan of odd lists and cool/innovative card choices, but just not claiming them to be set in stone. I also do acknowledge, that you've put a great deal of work into the list. Huge props for that!

Lejay
05-17-2013, 09:33 PM
I also hope you're not the kind of people getting offended very easily, because I like being frank. That doesn't mean I'm angry or anything.

I can avoid answering on cards slots if you want, except for one. No the leyline main deck doesn't speak for itself. It's as simple as it's good in the current meta and I absolutely want the 3rd defense grid. If I were reasoning like you (authorative arguments incoming) I wouldn't have had a ton of success playing daze or karakas main deck in doomsday, 4xliliana, 4 wasteland and 3-4 whipflares sb in shardless, cabal therapy + stingscourger, sparsmith and SB skirk prospector+earwig squad in goblins. The deck almost should play all the leylines main instead of the pacts, just look at the sideboard tables I gave.^^

There aren't just swaps compared to conflux builds. Defining that the monoU shell is optimal, running 0 intuition main, pact as the best back-up and buidling around with wishes wasn't as obvious as you think considering all the stupid things I read on forums after enter the infinite got spoiled.

My manabase had only 6 fetches at Strasbourg (and I already knew it was 6 or 7). If I remember correctly that game was lost anyway. I also remember a lot of games I won at 1 or 2 life with fow back-up.

I personnally prefer primers that avoid the same questions coming in over and over by justifying slots right from the beginning, rather than primers that are general and used just as an intro. If the source has a different politic be it, mine is accessible on storm boards anyway. But by the way since you had acess to what I posted on storm boards a month ago and since you said you knew I would post something complete here soon, why did you start this one ?
EDIT : reread your answer from page 1, so no need to answer.

phazonmutant
05-18-2013, 03:42 AM
Also claiming to be the creator of the deck seems kinda misplaced. The Dream Halls archetype which this deck is an evolution from stems from Jonas Harbili and in later years James Hesslip/Ari Lax. Not much has changed from that list if you swap Progenitus/Conflux for Omniscience/Enter the Infinite.

Just want to point out that I was within like 5 cards maindeck of Ari's "breakthrough" Dream Halls list 2 weeks before he posted that here: http://www.mtgthesource.com/forums/showthread.php?16112-Deck-Dream-Halls-Combo&p=622426&viewfull=1#post622426
My sideboard was not as good as his though. Obviously I have no way of knowing if Ari was influenced by that, but I like to think to myself that I may have had a hand in its development :cool:

If only I had played Dream Halls instead of ANT at Indy... I still regret that. I was so bad at ANT.