[Deck] MonoU OmniTell

[Lejay]

https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-ihqQNBkj7tE/VOxz-FoH-GI/AAAAAAAAAIw/vc5Ve8kv0ss/w2236-h1324-no/OmniTell_MTGSBanner.jpeg
Picture made by Brentane

This thread will gather discussions on the omniscience+cunning wish mono blue decks. The bases will be the Omniclash build I played at GP Strasbourg to a 9-0 record day one (would have finished 9th without a GL for a left out cunning wish target for a game 3 last round) and the Omnimaniac build that won BoMVII, piloted by Nicolas Goldberg.
GP Strasbourg Decklist (http://www.wizards.com/Magic/Magazine/Article.aspx?x=mtg/daily/eventcoverage/gpstr13/day2)
BoM Maniac Decklist (http://www.watchdamatch.com/tournois/coverage/bom-day-4/)
I have no doubt my list is better, especially since Nicolas had a few days of testing where I had months, and that during the tournament it was pretty easy to convince him about most of my choices. It’s far easier for me to justify cards from my perspective and since this primer is an updated version of what I posted on storm boards a month ago it will highly favour the omniclash perspective. But most of the things apply to the BoM winning list anyway and I’ll try to talk about all differences.

The Genesis.

Right after enter the infinite was spoiled (mid October I think) I started working on the best dream halls deck to exploit it with my friend Frédéric Pérez aka Jolalose, the guy with whom I designed the bridgewalkers deck for those who remember that. We knew we wanted pacts of negation so we dismissed the UB griselbrand (discard and dark rituals) version of the deck that was very powerful but couldn’t kill in one turn most of the time and lost on stifle+waste far too easily. Staying mono blue helps a lot in the secondary plan of hardcasting dream halls.
Enter allowed to run about just any kill so we elected to use the most versatile one with cunning wish that doubled as the perfect anti hate card. As soon as December 2012 we had a very close list to what I ran at the GP and decided we would not talk about it nor play it before GP Strasbourg and BoM.
One exception to that rule was talking about it to Brandon Adams aka emidln in January after he designed a list for someone in a scg event. He agreed our list was finely tuned and probably the best at that point. But he was really obsessed with the weakness of cunning wish + dream halls so I talked to him about firemind’s foresight (which Fred and I dismissed for reasons that I will stipulate later). He also seemed to like more the maniac kill he thought about. His latest decklist that I know of :
http://www.mtgthesource.com/forums/showthread.php?24583-Deck-Omniscience&p=718270&viewfull=1#post718270
Unfortunately Frédéric couldn’t make it for both GP and BoM.
Nicolas Goldberg started testing the decklist he ran at BoM VII 3 days before the event thanks to Nicolas Brun aka OrGy from his team who got interested in the concept after my run at GP Strasbourg. We talked a bit with OrGy but he was clearly more influenced by the English articles published about the deck. Nicolas has been running Tempo threshold for months in tournaments but recognized the raw power of the pack. I can only confirm that since as of today my testing only finds 3 bad match-ups for the deck. Reanimator, Tin Fins and UR Omniscience mirror with flusterstorm (Testing against dredge was 50/50 post sb but it’s probably negative overall too).

Links didn’t give you the decklist I consider the best as of now. This is what I ran at BoM VII :
3 City of Traitors
3 Polluted Delta
4 Flooded Strand
10 Island
1 Emrakul, the Aeons Torn
1 Leyline of Sanctity
3 Dream Halls
4 Omniscience
3 Cunning Wish
3 Pact of Negation
4 Brainstorm
4 Force of Will
1 Gitaxian Probe
4 Enter the Infinite
4 Ponder
4 Preordain
4 Show and Tell
SB: 1 Trickbind
SB: 1 Slaughter Pact
SB: 1 Sapphire Charm
SB: 1 Rushing River
SB: 1 Release the Ants
SB: 1 Noxious Revival
SB: 1 Intuition
SB: 1 Eladamri's Call
SB: 3 Defense Grid
SB: 3 Leyline of Sanctity
SB: 1 Pact of Negation

I barely made day 2 after going 7-2 (first defeat round 6 against the undefeated ANT player that will get Dqed for stacking, and another very unlucky defeat to a friend playing Tempo thresh). Starting day 2 with a very very very close defeat versus counterbalance put me in a difficult bracket and I lose to team America and reanimator.
Christoph Alsheimer aka Nemavera also played the same 75 I ran and fell short of one win from the top8 after going 8-1 day 1.

Main game plan of the deck :

Casting enter the infinite either with show and tell/omniscience or with dream halls.
Yeah 1 line is enough

Justifyings the slots :

10 Island : No real reason to open yourself to mana denial with such a powerful deck. Frédéric plays the UB list on MTGO from time to time for fun but it just auto loses to stifle/wasteland. You want to be able to cast dream halls. Maybe the deck could play only 9 islands but we were on the 10 islands side before the GP and I am still today.

4 flooded strand, 3 polluted delta : 6 fetches to reshuffle are the necessary. We hesitated several times between 6 and 7. At BoM the 7th was played instead of the 4th city.
You don’t want to run too much fetchlands as you finish a lot of games very low on life, maybe 6 fetches is the best choice.

3 city of traitors : I was convinced cities would be better than tombs very early and testing proved me right even if I forced myself testing with splits for a very long time. 2 life matters very often if it can give you a turn. Since this deck is monoU, if you land a non basic it will almost never survive. Therefore there is very little drawback at only running cities. The only games where you will prefer some numbers of tombs are some post board games with defense grid. That’s not enough to overweight the rest of the games.
After the GP I allowed myself to start playtesting at a pretty high rate in 2-mens on MTGO. That allowed me to realize that 4th city was inferior to another blue source, in making land drops but moreover on mulligans since a hand with one blue land can be almost always kept whereas 0 blue lands can almost never be kept. I still think 17 blue sources is the way to go.

Omniscience : the number 1 thing to put with S&T.

Dream Halls : Yes it costs 5 mana but this is also show and tell + omniscience in one card if you have enter the infinite. With the deck’s manabase 5 mana isn’t a big deal. Of course you can also show and tell it.
Dream halls can combo with wish->intuition->EtI if you have 3 blue cards to spare.
If you want to run 4 of them then you have to play firemind’s foresight.

4 enter the infinite : At the beginning we had 3 enter and 4 cunning wish. But when we cut the gitaxian probes and added the 3rd dream halls, the dream halls/cunning wish weak interaction occurred a bit more. Since Maverick was disappearing, we reasoned we would less often need wishes for oblivion rings (there are also a bit less miracles lately) and that teeg would rarely be on our way. So we switched.
Don’t forget you can just cast a second EtI with an empty library to avoid decking.

3 cunning wish : generally the best card post sb, so don’t judge it only by making preboard tests. Wish trickbind is, with the monoU shell and the full free hard counters suite, one of the big advantages of the decklist. Noxious revival is also very helpful against discard among other things. But I’ll talk about the wish targets when talking about sideboard.

1 emrakul : Everyone on forums seems to think it’s there to win the clash. I generally put enter the infinite back with another EtI, that’s enough to win against most decks. If I fear extirpate I may put back an emrakul but omniscience would almost always do the same. Emrakul is essentially there because it’s an alternative uncounterable kill if something prevents you from killing with RtA. Main reason being if the opponent plays emrakul. You can just win by attacking then. I don’t consider Emrakul a dead card. It combos with the rest of the deck whether it is with omniscience or just a single show and tell on some rare occasions (only happended once to me at GP Strasbourg). Besides Omniscience-Emrakul is your main plan against Thalia decks and Teeg decks thanks to wish -> eladamri’s call. In these match-ups you side out the pacts of negation and therefore don’t need to kill right away. Also the creature dodges some of their hate. Just untapping through Thalia can also be good enough if you need to deal with a board with rushing riverx2 (kicked and maybe noxious revivaled) before annihilating.

1 gitaxian probe : what I wrote on storm boards a month ago : “Information is very important, and especially game one.. If there was one thing I’d like to put back, it’s some number of gitaxian probes. But we needed so much space for sideboard that it spread over the main deck by one slot.”
One gitaxian probe came back instead f the sensei’s divining top. I feel the gitaxian probe is slightly better, but if the metagame becomes as discard heavy as it was a few months ago the SDT will probably come back.
If you really don’t like playing maindeck leyline considering your metagame, play a 2nd probe instead. But the sb cut will be HARD.

4 Brainstorm : we all play legacy

4 ponders : > to preordain

4 preordain : I just never side out a preordain and wouldn’t cut a single one from this build. That’s absolutely necessary if you want to play a combo deck without tutors. And even if you really want to fit in some intuitions, please try cutting something else.

4 force of wills, 3 pacts of negation : We had 3 fows /4 PoN for a while. But the meta becoming a lot more comboish we decided to switch a few weeks before the GP. Against non combo decks with counters I side in the PoN and side out a fow.
The choice of PoN is of course to play a maximum of free hard counters to hardcast dream halls or play around taxing effects (sometimes both !). The most plausible replacement is flusterstorm, but we think PoN is better against tempo and control decks. There are the discard decks and the combo decks, but that’s when leylines comes into the equation. To summarize it even if you are a bit less good in game ones with pacts in the meta, your deck will always be optimized post board.

4 Show and tell : Makes the deck so dumb.

1 leyline of sanctity : this singleton has probably intrigued most of the readers. The first thing to know is that about two months before the GP, when the meta was even more filled with discard, we even considered playing the 4 leylines main deck to adapt to it completely.
At that time I was already thinking about playing a one-of from my previous experiment with DDFT (1 LLoS sb) since that gives an 11% chance of blanking a lot of the opponent spells without having the drawback of drawing several of them.
Since discard decreased and pact of negation has some value as a blue cards for fow and dream halls, we had this split. That helped us gaining a sb slot (the sapphire charm) very welcomed against hate bear decks.

Sideboard :

3 Defense Grid : the first tests against tempo were very simple. We crushed them preboard, and post board they destroyed us because they increase a lot the number of their hard counters. The defense grid idea came very quickly and proved to be all we need. Thanks to it we can claim a positive tempo thresh match-up all the way and it also helps in all match-ups sideboarding additional situational hard counters including flusterstorm (our worst enemy).
Nicolas (Goldberg) and Nicolas (Brun) (I will say N&N from now on) agree they are very necessary to the sideboard.

3 Leyline of Sanctity : probably the best sideboard card for any show and tell deck. Not only blanking discard, it also is of some help against many combo decks.

1 Trickbind : answers most post sb hate by cunning wishing it under omniscience. The only situation when you prefer stifle would be when you pact with 4 mana up once in the upkeep and the wish in hand. That almost never happens and doesn’t outweight all the situations where split second matters (griselbrand, counterbalance, etc…)

1 Slaughter Pact : answers hate bears for free. You can trickbind the trigger but generally combo when resolving it.

1 Sapphire Charm : With only 3 wishes the “cycle a redundant wish” clause is a bit less useful. That said it answers hate bears beautifully in the end of turn which can be quite useful against Thalia since it is possible every mana will count. It’s also a blue card for fow and dream halls and can cyle when sided in. I would not cut the slaughter pact, but if I wanted more hate bears slots I would increase the number of sapphire charms before the number of pacts.

1 Rushing River : non creatures permanents sometimes matter and this is the most efficient bounce against them. Of course if MUD is everywhere in your metagame you are free to adapt the sb to run hurkyl’s recall, or if there are a lot of empty the warrens run echoing truth. But as it is rushing river does what we need a bounce to do 99% of the time with only one slot.

1 Release the Ants : I talked about its use in the Emrakul explanation. We used to run searing wind in that slot (used in conjunction with noxious revival). After hours and hours of speleology on a yellow magic website I finally found a better kill. This one kills on the spot, bypassing teeg and possibly thalia. It complements very well with the main deck emrakul. Searing wind is only superior to it in the other show and tell match-ups (emrakul in their lib, or when they activate a grisebrand after we show and tell).

1 Noxious Revival : Very useful against discard. It also doubles as grave hate and I side it in against reanimator, dredge, tin fins or oops.

1 Intuition : so that your wishes can be enter the infinite. It is often sided in when emrakul is the main plan and pacts/leylines are unnecessary.

1 Eladamri's Call : Emrakul’s Call. One of the least wished slots but is an important part of the plan against thalia/teeg decks.

1 Pact of Negation : wishable and sideboard card. You often exchange it for a fow against non combo fow match-ups.


Cards we didn’t include or we cut :

Main deck sensei’s divining top : So we got a gitaxian probe back like which I already justified. Here is what I wrote about it when I had it : “I know it’s the same for all decks using SDT, but this is even more true in this one : you really don’t want to see a second SDT. You are a combo deck with essentially only fows to prevent them from killing you so you don’t have much time to exploit and get rid of a second one. You just lose too much time without a shuffler if you draw two. That said in a meta full of discard and as a deck that wants as much library manipulation as possible the first one is a good one. It also offers an instant draw effect post enter the infinite.”
The instant draw effect post EtI has never been useful so far unfortunately.

Main deck intuition : First I was tired of siding out intuitions because of surgical in a deck with so few space to fit everything in. In addition to that intuition kind of asks to play at the very least 5 sol land, and play them early to stay in the tempo. That generally results in them getting promptly wasted and sometimes you still get your intuition countered by a taxing effect. So I replaced the intuitions by 2-3 gitaxian probes to try and the deck ran much more smoothly. The probes are now gone reduced to one but the deck still is dense enough in cantrips to find what it needs in time.
If you run firemind’s foresight you have to run a single intuition. If you go that way and adapt the manabase 1 copy is fine. Before cutting intuition my test conclusions were that the deck wanted either 0 or 1 intuition. I decided to run 0 because the sb intuition sometimes came in and because I wanted a more resilient manabase. Running 2 however seems not good enough to me.

Main deck Impulse : The other condition for running firemind’s foresight is running a 2cc. I was afraid running impulses would start getting a bit slow as it was for intuition but N&N assured me the impulse x1 was awesome. Maybe they are right (that happens sometimes), but I still don’t like the fact that with only 1 impulse the firemind’s foresight plan is screwed if you draw it.

Main deck Trickbind : only clever in decks running firemind’s foresight and no Emrakul main deck as a semi-insurance against CB for maniac. Having to run it seems horrible to me but if someone wants to write a paragraph advising it I’ll copy it here.

Main deck Grim monolith : The list only runs 3 dream halls and it clearly doesn’t accelerate as much as it does in hive mind. I don’t think it’s better than lands or business/protection. It also opens you to abrupt decay. That “I don’t care about decay and drs” was among one of the first things that got us work on the deck. It also opens you to spell snare and if you want to play around daze you’ll need 3 lands on the table already, that is slow.

Flusterstorm : Already talked a bit about it when justifying the counters. N&N agreed after BoM that 4th fow is better main deck than their 1-of flusterstorm.

Sideboard firemind’s foresight : useful to have dream halls + cunning wish + 2 blue cards + 0 mana function. I found that one quite early in my speleology sessions but we quickly dismissed with Frédéric. Ari Lax and Brandon Adams/Emidln and some other American posters seem fond about it so maybe we are wrong (but doubt so). The reason we don’t want to play it is that not only does it costs a sideboard slot, it also forces you to run a non optimal otherwise main deck with at least a 2cc and an intuition main deck. And even if you do make those sacrifices, if you draw one of those, FF becomes useless. The dream halls/wish kill with 2 blue cards isn’t necessary often enough for all these drawbacks in our opinion.
Update : Nicolas G. told me he had 4 games out of 15 rounds where he used it. 2 of them he could have gone off 1-2 turns later. In my opinion that’s less useful than defense grid #3, especially if it gives constraints on the main deck.

Sideboard surgical extraction : No space and noxious does some of the job. N&N agree it is far inferior to noxious.

Sideboard echoing truth : I personnally think echoing truth's only appeal is answering empty the warrens and rarely zombie tokens. But imo cunning wish -> echoing truth is too slow for that so I prefer the rushing river / sapphire charm split. I'm unsure about N&N's current opinion.

Sideboard Stormtide Leviathan : This was our slot against maverick. Definitely worth playing if the deck is popular in your metagame We cut it because maverick really declined and stormtide isn’t as good against other thalia decks.

Sideboard brain freeze : you can kill with brainfreeze with either firemind’s foresight sequences (with weird slots) or with just a second SDT main deck. This kill still doesn’t answers the emrakul’s decks and opens himself to some additional hate. Therefore we prefer Release the Ants which can also steal some games with an instant lucky kill when things go wrong.

Laboratory Maniac + research/development : this kill simply shuffles back maniac thanks to a wished research. Then you cantrip into it, play it, and play cantrips ftw. In case of removal either counter it or play a brainstorm in response. This kill is only vulnerable to very few random things (sudden shock/death/sudden spoiling, weaker against chains of Mephistopheles or counterbalance) so it’s perfectly good if you really don’t want the Emrakul main deck.

To people not used to playing cantrips in combo

I'm not going to write a complete guide on cantrips but my experience watching unexperienced people playing this deck showed me I had to write a minimum about it.
You are a combo deck. If you don't gather a combo you'll lose 100% of the time. That means that when for example you lack a show and tell and your preordain doesn't show it, you put every non cantrip card on the bottom. Even if you are against tempo thresh or miracles you can't afford to keep a counterspell for back-up. You'll find more of these later. There are 7 of them when you only have 4 show and tell.
Same with lands. Just put them on bottom or reshuffle them with ponder. I run 20 lands in my list, which is quite large, so that I don't have to worry about finding more of them. It would have to be an extreme corner case for me to keep a fetch on ponder or an island on preordain if I still didn't gather all the combo pieces. Only exceptions of course is the cantrips if they improve your digging power. That means you'll put them on bottom if you already have too many in hand compared to the opponent's clock.
Finally don't forget in your set up that dream halls and cunning wish is the least attracting combo, especially without firemind's foresight.

I said earlier that I wouldn't cut a single cantrip from the decklist because they are so important. So don't waste them.

Play or draw

People will probably have to play quite a lot the deck to believe me on this one.
At BoM Nemavera and I were letting our opponents play in all unknown game ones.

That started with some odd results I had in testing against TES and death and taxes before the GP, with the deck performing better on the draw than on the play. I was starting to wonder if those were statistical anomalies or a real thing. I could find justifications for both match-ups (your interaction with TES is free whether it is leyline or fow and both combo decks want to see a maximum number of cards. ; against death and taxes you can race thalia/canonist etc… but you’ll still have to face it when they play it off show and tell, and you’ll probably need more cards in your combo whether they are additional lands or cunning wish for trickbind + you don’t want the opponent to see too many hate cards) but I had insufficient stats before the GP to apply that strategy with confidence. After the GP I played 40 games against death and taxes and results were confirming the first series.both presb and post sb. In MTGO 2-mens I started to let my discard decks opponents play first post sb when I sided in leylines. And since it seemed to be working (either no difference or the additional card saved me) I chose to systematically let my opponent start to test out for the GP. I think the fact decks have so few ways to interact with you means you only want to start in pure race match-ups like elfball, dredge or show and tell decks. But even against storm I am now inclined to let my opponent play post sb.
The number of decks where I was satisfied of being the first to draw became so important that me, Frédéric and Nemavera are now convinced letting the opponent start is the right move if you don’t know what he plays.
I’m even considering letting a tempo thresh opponent start if he doesn’t run stifle (was unbelievable for me before the BoM, but now I’m not sure).
This should be funny for you at the beginning since people will either make strange faces or put you on manaless dredge and mulligan aggressively for deathrite shaman.

Last word

I’m not used stating obvious things so if people are lost on something about the combo/choices don’t hesitate asking and I’ll (painfully) edit the primer. You can also take a look at what NesretepNoj wrote before I finished updating this one here :
http://www.mtgthesource.com/forums/showthread.php?26059-Deck-Cunning-Halls

To finish I wrote down some sideboard tables for my latest list the day before leaving for BoM because Pierre Sommen wanted to play it in the trial (he went 7-3 playing the deck for the first time and I went 7-2-1, we should have more let our opponents play) and Nemavera was sold on the deck. Here they are :


Tempo Thresh

-1 Emrakul (they can’t attack your hand with discard so surgical is unlikely to hit cunning wish if they play it. No other reason to keep Emrakul when you rely more on nPoN).
-1 Dream Halls (classic sideout against daze decks).
-1 FoW (Because PoN is better)
-1 LloS

+3 Defense Grid
+1 PoN

Esper stoneblade.

-1 Emrakul (less worst and they run Jaces)
-1 Gitaxian Probe (Classic SB out when you go up to 4 LLoS)
-2 FoW

+3 LloS
+1 PoN (You don’t need to counter sorcery speed spells most of the time)

If your opponent is siding in a lot of hatebears (canonist, meddlin mage…) adapt by playing more fows and siding in at least the sapphire charm, maybe more.
If you’re opponent is really heavy on discard+ surgicals consider keeping the Emrakul (and therefore play less PoN).

Shardless BUG

-1 Emrakul
-1 Gitaxian probe
-2 FoW

+3 LLoS
+1 PoN

This has been tested against my shardless list with lots of planeswalker which has become popular in France. It doesn’t run surgical. If you see several surgicals with discard and less planeswalkers keeping the Emrakul is a good idea.

Elfball

I fully expect cabal therapies and often more discard. Hate bear is possible but uncertain. Therefore
-3 PoN
-1 GP
+3 LLoS
+1 Sapphire charm

is the default sideboarding. Adapt as always.

Tin Fins (considering most lists run discard now and no fows)

-3 PoN
-1 GP
-2 Wish
+3 LLoS
+1 Intuition
+1 Noxious
+1 Trickbind

I guess I would do the same against classic reanimator as you can dodge daze easily. Consider grid against a reanimator with several pierces/flusterstorms.

Sneak Show

You are very likely to kill with Emrakul. So :
-1 PoN
-1 LLoS
-1 Brainstorm
+3 defense grid

Combo quickly thanks to defense grid daze/pierce proof, or get into a long game and kill with dream halls (wishable brainstorm is nice for the long game).

Ichorid

-3 PoN
-1 GP
+3 LLoS
+1 Noxious

BUG Delver

-1 GP
-1 Dream Halls
-1 Emrakul
+3 LLoS

As always adapt to the disruption seen.

Burn

-3 PoN
-1 GP
+3 LLoS
+1 Intuition

Tendrils based decks

-3 PoN
-1 GP
+3 LloS
+1 Intuition
Possibly –1 island +1 trickbind

Maverick and Death and taxes

-3 PoN
-1 LLoS
+1 Sapphire charm
+1 Slaughter pact
+1 Rushing river
+1 Intuition

Remember the game plan against Thalia decks is Emrakul. It also bypasses Teeg. Intuition in means you have 4 spells to trickbind hate permanents on show and tell.

Imperial Painter

-1 LLoS
-1 fetch
-1 FoW
+3 Defense Grid

Jund

-3 PoN
+3 LLoS
If the opponent is heavy on reb blasts cut the probe instead of a PoN.

UW Miracles

-1 LLoS
-1 FoW
-1 Island
+3 Defense Grid

High Tide

Didn’t test. Probably
-1 LLoS
–1 Emrakul
–1 Island
+3 Defense Grid (be careful as it is symmetrical)

Aluren

-1 Emrakul
-1 GP
-1 PoN / FoW / Island ? (still untested)
+ 3 LLoS

Counter if they intuition in response to show and tell as they are very likely to get 3 alurens

[Lemnear]

Jesus, do we really need 3 threads on page 1 discussing the same deck?

[Lejay]

No. But instead of posting this here you should have done so in the thread with less relevant information. You could have also posted in the oldest thread to ask it being renamed UR omniscience instead of just omniscience.

[Lemnear]

I'm sure in all 3 threads the Core of S&T, Halls, Omni, (Intuition, Cunning Wish) is the topic.

This reminds me a bit of the flood of Reanimator threads because of the exact selection of creatures and/or if they run S&T.

[JPA]

Excellent primer; thanks a lot for writing it!

[catmint]

Crushing canadian preboard? Beeing ok postboard because of defense grid?
It looks like you spend a lot of time developing and testing the deck, but this does not seem correct. Compared to sneak attack you are much less hurt by stifle wasteland, but it also takes you a bit longer to resolve all your cantrips and find your 3 card combos.

I assume that you want to believe that you beat aggro-control because you want show & tell banned, but to me that is a classic case of overestimating ones combo deck, but I am happy to be proven wrong by getting my ass kicked. :tongue:

Factors which you should also not underestimate is the surprise, mindfuck liking playing on the draw, people not knowing what's going on in general. Once a deck is established it automatically looses value by people preparing better and knowing how to play against it. Nice deck, but sorry - not breaking the format and getting show banned.

Don't want to turn this thread into a ban or not ban show thing. Enough said about that. I would be more interested in you commenting on my thoughts about the deck:

What I don't get. You mention against death&taxes and maverick:
Remember the game plan against Thalia decks is Emrakul. It also bypasses Teeg. Intuition in means you have 4 spells to trickbind hate permanents on show and tell.

What do you mean? That you cunning wish (or intuition for cunning wish) for trickbind first. Then either cast
show - omni - emrakul with trickbind in hand
show - emrakul with trickind in hand + mana to cast it
show - omni - cunning wish - eladramis find
All this to deal with karakas/oblivion ring while dodging teeg? Besides the difficulty of finding your 1of emrakul or another cunning wish for eladramis call it also looks like a tough plan with Thalia and Pridemage around. Or am I missing something obvious on how you play properly against a thalia with 2 mana cantrips and 4 mana tutors?

What also comes to mind is playing against sneak attack.
If anyone shows and the opponent puts Griselbrand into play you likely loose to them having more counters than you right?. Isn't that a big disadvantage since they have more and faster sneak attacks compared to 3 dream-halls. Not to mention the opponent can also do mean things with dream halls like free pierces/flusters/red-blasts, which he might not have been able to cast before.

Is the sneak attack Matchup really positive in your experience?

Talking about the combo. What about storm: You are not faster and with only 4 FoW you pack way less disruption than them. This matchup seems also bad. Sneak attack is faster than your deck has spell pierces and misdirections for combos discard and hence a way better matchup I think.

So summing up the sneak attack comparison:
You have better mana and probably more consistency due to less clunk, but are a bit slower.
You have an instant win, but rely on some versions of "3 card combo" and are more vulnerable to enchantment hate than sneak-attack..
You have less disruption to interact with the opponents Gameplan, but cheaper protection for your own combo. Pact is much better in protecting yourself whereas 3 Misdirection main are the tits against discard which as you outlined yourself is pretty common.

in matchups to me that looks like:
Delver/Esper/Shardless: Better than sneak
Maverick: Probably equal or slightly better. Less hurt by wasteland & knight into Karakas but more vulnerable to pridemage.
Jund: Probably equal or slightly worse: More consistent, but misdirection >>>> Pact.
Combo (sneak, storm, elves,...): Worse since you are slower and have less protection.

[allek]

Lejay, thanks for writing this primer and congratulations on your results.
Also, interesting take on the "ban SnT!!!" debate.

As for some sour comments: haters gonna hate I guess.

[rancOr_]

Awesome - I really like your list/choices , great work !

[Mackan]

Great stuff.

[Claymore]

Excellent write up!

However, it's the same exact deck (+ Emrakul and Ants, - Maniac and Firemind), and unfortunately you're splitting discussion that would be better geared to discussing the nuances of each win condition to fight different metas.

I like the Rushing River tech, since at times you'll have to fight multiple hate permanents.

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

---

3 City of Traitors
3 Polluted Delta
4 Flooded Strand
10 Island
1 Emrakul, the Aeons Torn
1 Leyline of Sanctity
3 Dream Halls
4 Omniscience
3 Cunning Wish
3 Pact of Negation
4 Brainstorm
4 Force of Will
1 Gitaxian Probe
4 Enter the Infinite
4 Ponder
4 Preordain
4 Show and Tell
SB: 1 Trickbind
SB: 1 Slaughter Pact
SB: 1 Sapphire Charm
SB: 1 Rushing River
SB: 1 Release the Ants
SB: 1 Noxious Revival
SB: 1 Intuition
SB: 1 Eladamri's Call
SB: 3 Defense Grid
SB: 3 Leyline of Sanctity
SB: 1 Pact of Negation

[Lejay]

Crushing canadian preboard? Beeing ok postboard because of defense grid?
It looks like you spend a lot of time developing and testing the deck, but this does not seem correct. Compared to sneak attack you are much less hurt by stifle wasteland, but it also takes you a bit longer to resolve all your cantrips and find your 3 card combos.

I assume that you want to believe that you beat aggro-control because you want show & tell banned, but to me that is a classic case of overestimating ones combo deck, but I am happy to be proven wrong by getting my ass kicked. :tongue:

I have 6+ months of testing the deck behind me so I would have liked critics backed-up by some testing results, but I don't mind answering the first ones as it's inevitable and testing results didn't have much time to occur. I confirm you what I wrote. My playtesting was either against myself, or mostly against Tristan polzl who played tempo thresh a lot and top8ed both the GP Ghent and 2012 BoM. Yes the match-up is favourable as you run more hardcounters than them and can play around a ton of cards (taxing effects, wasteland, stifle, snare is dead if played). When not running intuition your opponent can only counter cantrips which is pretty weak considering the number you have.
Sure results againt TT will decrease with people knowing the deck better, but we already took that into account.
I don't know why you seem surprised by the defense grid influence in the match-up. Yes it saves you from the multitude of conditional hardcounters they will bring in and without them the match-up becomes pretty bad post sb.
About the time needed to find the 3 cards combo there are several things to consider. First Tempo thresh absolutely needs turn 1 delver to be faster than what I need to find the 3 card combo. Second even if they do I can still be faster than them. Third this isn't always a 3 cards combo. Show and tell + omniscience + cantrips very often gets there. There are different 3 cards combo in the deck, dream halls+enter while not the main plan is a 2 card+ blue card combo, and against tempo thresh Show Emrakul is valid without using pacts.
I am not overestimating the TT match-up. TT is always the first deck against which I playtest when building. For me it's the thermometer of legacy deckbuilding. If a deck doesn't pass the TT with at least 50% win I just stop working on it.
I didn't say the deck would always win against TT but I can assure you that if the omni player knows what he's doing he'll win about 2/3 of the time. And I realize it's pretty high for a match-up percentage, there are much closer match-ups. Only a TT player tuning his deck specifically to beat show and tell can change that.



Factors which you should also not underestimate is the surprise, mindfuck liking playing on the draw, people not knowing what's going on in general. Once a deck is established it automatically looses value by people preparing better and knowing how to play against it. Nice deck, but sorry - not breaking the format and getting show banned.

I didn't say it will completely dominate the format. There are 2 things to consider :
1) As long as people are running sufficient grave hate, this deck is the best deck in the format (with not enough grave hate it's reanimator)
2) People can adapt to this deck as I said in the format discussion section, but that will still result in an unhealthy metagame with far less diversity because its predator have almost all the same weaknesses and the hate is very limited and manageable.



What I don't get. You mention against death&taxes and maverick:
Remember the game plan against Thalia decks is Emrakul. It also bypasses Teeg. Intuition in means you have 4 spells to trickbind hate permanents on show and tell.

What do you mean?
There is no logical connexion between the 2 sentences.
Against Thalia decks Emrakul is the plan as you just need 1 mana to cast enter and then you can untap and play spells you want. Cunning wish on call also bypasses teeg. You can easily dodge the hate bears thanks to the emrakul main deck.
Siding intuition in against thalia decks means you'll have four ways to answer oblivion ring (3 cunning wish + 1 intuition to tutor them). I wasn't talking about trickbinding through thalia but yes that can happen and in that case you probably wanted to wish for trickbind preventively. 2 different hates put you in a tougher spot and 3 different hate can be really difficult. But that's having 3 different hates. When we tested against a maverick with tons of hate at the beginning we had a negative match-up post sb. But not only it's just post sb and maverick decks shouldn't do so, the deck is also almost not run anymore. So there is no reason to highlight that maverick with 10+ targeted hate will be a negative match-up post sb. Also there is stormtide leviathan as long they don't expect it and side out all stps and you can dodge the Oring hate without wish thanks to dream halls when it was their only hate or because you countered a hate bear(s).



What also comes to mind is playing against sneak attack.
If anyone shows and the opponent puts Griselbrand into play you likely loose to them having more counters than you right?. Isn't that a big disadvantage since they have more and faster sneak attacks compared to 3 dream-halls. Not to mention the opponent can also do mean things with dream halls like free pierces/flusters/red-blasts, which he might not have been able to cast before.

Is the sneak attack Matchup really positive in your experience?
No. We expected it to be negative for the reason you gave. Testing proved it to be 50/50 somehow though. The main reason it's different from the UR omniscience build is that you can side in defense grid and play them pretty safely in the early game or put it on opposing show and tell because sneak show is far less likely to kill you in only one turn.



Talking about the combo. What about storm: You are not faster and with only 4 FoW you pack way less disruption than them. This matchup seems also bad. Sneak attack is faster than your deck has spell pierces and misdirections for combos discard and hence a way better matchup I think.

I didn't claim a better match-up than sneak attack against storm. Although I guess in a storm heavy meta you could play flusterstorm maindeck to improve drastically. That said leyline is really good against non doomsday Tendrils based decks.


About the comparisions you made, I think I answered a bunch of them throughout this post. One last major thing to consider is this deck not only suffers from less hate (humility, ensnaring bridge etc...), but it also can answer the rest of the hate (Oring, Dsphere, angel of despair, venser, even confusion in the ranks with wish->rushing river) with just one sb slot : trickbind.

EdIt : a word on krosan grip which was quoted as hate in the other thread. If you have the card in mind it's very easy to put your opponent on it since he has to keep 3 mana open.In that case he is definitely slower which lets you time to find a second enchantment.

[Stephan/]

Jesus, do we really need 3 threads on page 1 discussing the same deck?

There is already a primer for this deck - no need for new ones or other showmanships .... just merge this one with the older and already existing ones, please.

[Lejay]

The thread cunning halls and this one are getting merged, no need to post about it several times a day.
The omniscience thread should be renamed UR omniscience.

[phazonmutant]

I'm sure in all 3 threads the Core of S&T, Halls, Omni, (Intuition, Cunning Wish) is the topic.

This reminds me a bit of the flood of Reanimator threads because of the exact selection of creatures and/or if they run S&T.

You forgot the Dream Halls thread. They've been discussing it too :tongue:

//

Lejay - thanks for sharing your thoughts. As always, your style is abrasive and dismissive, but you always seem to have lots of data and testing to back it up. I appreciate that you go through the thought process for rejecting the other builds like the Emrakul-less Firemind's Foreskin.

Leyline of Sanctity has always seemed like such an awful high-variance card especially when you have so many cantrips and redundant pieces. You really think it's required though?

Just bought the cards to put this together. Seems like the deck has staying power and it's pretty hard to imagine that both Lejay is wrong and winning BoM is a fluke.

[Lejay]

I am a lot more precautionous when I don't have data about new cards. But I rarely post in these cases.

High variance doesn't mean bad. Yes I think it's necessary because versus discard, games with LLoS and games without it are uncomparable. With mulligans you are between 40% and 50% chances of having the protection, and it isn't only useful against discard.

[dameus]

Does Personal Tutor deserve MD consideration - even as a 1 of? S&T is still the card you want to find the most.

[Lejay]

In addition to all the obvious disadvantages of the card that only limited it to a one-of in the UR omniscience builds (in which a simple show and tell+creature is much more likely), in this one you want to find show and tell about as much as an enabler (DH/omni). I know 2 people to which I talked about the deck before the GP who wanted to include it, but they ended up not running any.

[catmint]

Thanks for the comprehensive answers Lejay. Here my further comments to some topics.


I have 6+ months of testing the deck behind me so I would have liked critics backed-up by some testing results, but I don't mind answering the first ones as it's inevitable and testing results didn't have much time to occur. I confirm you what I wrote. My playtesting was either against myself, or mostly against Tristan polzl who played tempo thresh a lot and top8ed both the GP Ghent and 2012 BoM. Yes the match-up is favourable as you run more hardcounters than them and can play around a ton of cards (taxing effects, wasteland, stifle, snare is dead if played). When not running intuition your opponent can only counter cantrips which is pretty weak considering the number you have.
...
I didn't say the deck would always win against TT but I can assure you that if the omni player knows what he's doing he'll win about 2/3 of the time. And I realize it's pretty high for a match-up percentage, there are much closer match-ups. Only a TT player tuning his deck specifically to beat show and tell can change that.


If you win preboard 66% of the matches against an experienced canadian player that is impressive. It still seems way too high to me but if you want we can make a session an play a couple of games in cockatrice so I can confirm that data. I am still a bit sceptic. Possible explanations might be that he was playing honestly against "unknown" while your playing/mulligan decisions were influenced by you knowledge. Maybe it is also a phenomenon that I can see with 2 very good austrian players and friends of mine. One is playing Storm - the other Canadian and canadian gets his ass kicked all the time like its the worst matchup. In tournments however the canadian player wins a lot against torm and the storm player has a tougher time against canadian. Our explanation is that the better you know each others playstyle the more it favours the combo player. Therefore I would recommend testing against different Canadian players and not only your buddy and yourself to get more reliable results.

On dodging taxing counters. my feeling from both sides (combo and delver) is that countering cantrips can have a very strong effect. Sure you run a lot of but let's say your ponder is dazed you miss with your preordain and than your brainstorm is pierced your hand might easily look very crappy. Academic discussion though - if you have solid test results it is safe to say that your pre-matchup is at least solid. I doubted the "crushing" though.

What I meant with my comments on postboard vs. candian is that surely defense gride has a high impact - I play it myself - but that it does not mean post-board games are not unfavourable. Of course with 66% g1 win a slight game 2 negative is still overall positive. Despite defense grid beeing the best option it also has an impact on your gameplan (a bit slower) and it is not unanswerable. My canadian lists pack 2 ancient grudge which I always bring in.



I didn't say it will completely dominate the format. There are 2 things to consider :
1) As long as people are running sufficient grave hate, this deck is the best deck in the format (with not enough grave hate it's reanimator)
2) People can adapt to this deck as I said in the format discussion section, but that will still result in an unhealthy metagame with far less diversity because its predator have almost all the same weaknesses and the hate is very limited and manageable.


I and I am sure others have different opinions about this and there is no data to support your claims as fact.

Besides beeing a worthless statement to say: "If the hole format would not rely on the GY as a resource and therefore making rest in peace, deathrite shaman, ooze and surgical extraction really good cards - then a certain deck would be the best". I am sure that even if Esper and Canadian would not play surgical/rip their reanimator matchup would be positive. So you evaluating reanimator as the best deck if there is no gravehard hate is a funny statement and in my opinion shows that you overevaluate combo in general. If your evaluation that this is the best deck is true we should soon see sneak attack going down and this deck taking it's place in the DTB top 4. At that state your claim might be worth discussing, but with a negative storm matchup and surely difficulties if hatebears/esper/canadian start to tune I highly doubt that.



EdIt : a word on krosan grip which was quoted as hate in the other thread. If you have the card in mind it's very easy to put your opponent on it since he has to keep 3 mana open.In that case he is definitely slower which lets you time to find a second enchantment.

This seems a bit optimistic to me. You would often "lose" a show as well so you need either show/omni again or have 5 mana and halls. Yes your opponent might be slower but you will have your fair share of not finding the combo twice.

Also your evaluation to deal with come into play effects. Preemtively wishing for trickind is not only turning your 2-3 card combo into a 3-4 card combo and is therefore slow and requires a lot of mana. Yes your mana is great, but people will also have time to find some other form of disruption.

[dameus]

If you win preboard 66% of the matches against an experienced canadian player that is impressive. It still seems way too high to me but if you want we can make a session an play a couple of games in cockatrice so I can confirm that data. I am still a bit skeptic.

What a great idea! I would love to hear that turns out if it could be arranged.

[emidln]

Besides beeing a worthless statement to say: "If the hole format would not rely on the GY as a resource and therefore making rest in peace, deathrite shaman, ooze and surgical extraction really good cards - then a certain deck would be the best". I am sure that even if Esper and Canadian would not play surgical/rip their reanimator matchup would be positive. So you evaluating reanimator as the best deck if there is no gravehard hate is a funny statement and in my opinion shows that you overevaluate combo in general. If your evaluation that this is the best deck is true we should soon see sneak attack going down and this deck taking it's place in the DTB top 4. At that state your claim might be worth discussing, but with a negative storm matchup and surely difficulties if hatebears/esper/canadian start to tune I highly doubt that.


Canadian Threshold has no effective tuning options. Play with Thresh assuming they get 4 REB/Pyroblast and add that to 4 Force and 4 Spell Pierce main. Their clock isn't fast enough and Pact of Negation and Defense Grid hiding behind basics really are just that good. If you had to build a blueprint for a combo deck that beats Threshold, you would ask for all of the things that OmniHalls gives you.

A negative storm matchup is randomly something that can be addressed, although doing so tends to weaken the Thresh matchup enough to not really make it worthwhile until OmniHalls has significant penetration. The reason I was advocating a singleton Underground Sea and sideboard Thoughtseize is that these cards significantly increase your matchups against other combo decks (Storm, Reanimator/TinFins, Sneak Attack, and OmniHalls). Thoughtseize can also deal with cards like Krosan Grip if they begin to see play. Further, the line of play in the R&D->Lab Man build included stacking 2x Thoughtseize so you can always cast Thoughtseize (2x so you can cast off Dream Halls by pitching the other Thoughtseize) pre-Lab Man (so you can even beat the most random hate like Sudden Shock/Death/Spoiling).

Something that will become apparent is that those of us who have had access to these lists for months have done preparations for both the existing metagame and how we envision the metagame to shift once OmniHalls was public. Should an uptick of combo happen, cards like Thoughtseize, Vendilion Clique, and Notion Thief will make appearances in the OmniHalls sideboard.



This seems a bit optimistic to me. You would often "lose" a show as well so you need either show/omni again or have 5 mana and halls. Yes your opponent might be slower but you will have your fair share of not finding the combo twice.


You misunderstand the sequence of events and the way priority works.

Player A resolves SnT, puts Omni/Dream Halls into play.
Player A now has first priority (assuming SnT wasn't cast with Quicken or something similar), and immediately casts another Omni/Dream Halls.
Player B now has priority for the first time and can Krosan Grip. This is...less than useful.

Alternate Scenario:

Player A resolves SnT, puts Omni/Halls into play.
Player A now has first priority (assuming SnT wasn't cast with Quicken or something similar), and immedately casts Enter the Infinite.
Player B now has priority and casts Krosan Grip on the Omni/Dream Halls. This, best case for Player B, yields this situation:

Enter the Infinite resolves. Player A draws their deck. They lack 3 mana for another SnT, so they sculpt a perfect 7 card hand and discard Emrakul reshuffling their deck. You better kill them on your turn with cards on board, since their hand is probably something like this:

Force of Will
Force of Will
Pact of Negation
Pact of Negation/Cunning Wish
Enter the Infinite
Show and Tell
Omniscience

Worst case is that Player A has another 3 mana and just wins that turn.

[phazonmutant]

Maybe it is also a phenomenon that I can see with 2 very good austrian players and friends of mine. One is playing Storm - the other Canadian and canadian gets his ass kicked all the time like its the worst matchup. In tournments however the canadian player wins a lot against torm and the storm player has a tougher time against canadian. Our explanation is that the better you know each others playstyle the more it favours the combo player. Therefore I would recommend testing against different Canadian players and not only your buddy and yourself to get more reliable results.

Sorry, I hope I'm not hijacking the thread too much, but this was a really interesting statement to me. I've played against alphastryk piloting Miracles with a lot with a bunch of different combo decks and I'm very, very positive in tournament matches even if I'm not always so much in playtesting. But on the other hand, my percentages against Miracles played by other people is much worse. I wonder if that's part of what you're describing - I just know his playstyle and I get to make the decision to go for it or not.



A negative storm matchup is randomly something that can be addressed, although doing so tends to weaken the Thresh matchup enough to not really make it worthwhile until OmniHalls has significant penetration. The reason I was advocating a singleton Underground Sea and sideboard Thoughtseize is that these cards significantly increase your matchups against other combo decks (Storm, Reanimator/TinFins, Sneak Attack, and OmniHalls). Thoughtseize can also deal with cards like Krosan Grip if they begin to see play. Further, the line of play in the R&D->Lab Man build included stacking 2x Thoughtseize so you can always cast Thoughtseize (2x so you can cast off Dream Halls by pitching the other Thoughtseize) pre-Lab Man (so you can even beat the most random hate like Sudden Shock/Death/Spoiling).

It seemed like you were also advocating cutting Leylines. So you see them as less necessary than Lejay? Or alternatively do you just see the Thoughtseize package as specifically a way to tune the deck if you don't expect lots of discard decks and do expect lots of combo?

It was suggested in the Omniscience thread, but I could see playing a couple of Lim-Dul's Vaults would help tremendously with assembling a 3-card combo with different card types. It also has the nice benefit that you don't need Impulse or Trickbind in the maindeck for a Firemind's Foreskin pile.

I've done a little bit of testing with LDV, but so far it's been irrelevant - the opponent put up basically no resistance.

[NesretepNoj]

[..] Enter the Infinite resolves. Player A draws their deck. They lack 3 mana for another SnT, so they sculpt a perfect 7 card hand and discard Emrakul reshuffling their deck. You better kill them on your turn with cards on board [..]

I assume this is just a minor brainfart since Enter the Infinite says that you have no maximum hand size (until your next turn). Hence you don't have to discard, which in turns, makes the situation even worse for player B.

[emidln]

I assume this is just a minor brainfart since Enter the Infinite says that you have no maximum hand size (until your next turn). Hence you don't have to discard, which in turns, makes the situation even worse for player B.

Yes. I forgot that line on ETI. So no decisions about discarding, they just counter anything you attempt to play and then go off again.

[Nekrataal]

I've done a little bit of testing with LDV, but so far it's been irrelevant - the opponent put up basically no resistance.

I tested them for a very brief time period and found that their benefit as a 1 or 2 off is marginal compared against the fact that you have to run 2 Underground Seas which makes you far more vulnerable against Wasteland-Decks. It is obvious when you play vs decks like Threshold or D&T that having enough mana is king in this deck. Usually you cannot - and that's what also Lejays explains in his primer - search for everything at the same time (lands, combo, protection). Even more true if you play against taxing, soft counter or denial strategies. Also consider that the BoM list just plays 19 lands. If you ever want to cast these Dream Halls you better run as much basics as possible.

[Adan]

Yes. I forgot that line on ETI. So no decisions about discarding, they just counter anything you attempt to play and then go off again.

Shame on you. ;D It was your very elaborate post about this deck that made me play it today and it happened that I got my Dream Halls bounced in resp to Enter the Infinite. So I just passed the turn and then proceeded to smash him.

I went 4-2-0, my MUs were:

Miracles 2-0
High Tide 2-1
Dredge 1-2 (one mana short during g2, g3 was simply terrible)
Merfolk 2-0
GWR Humans/Werewolves 2-1 (I really had no idea what the hell I was playing against, g2 he had a massive overextend and I was one turn short of winning)
MonoB Pox 1-2 (I did a terrible mistake g2, I let a Smallpox resolve and discarded a redundant SnT, then got hit by Extirpate. If I'd have discarded FoW instead, I could have simply gone off)

So, if I were a more intelligent person, I'd have finished 2nd instead of 6th.

However, this deck is ridiculously powerful. I am just not convinced about the Leylines in the SB. I played Leylines instead of Thoughtseize because I saw like 3 Jund, 3 Pox decks and a mono red burn. On the other hand there was a Springtide, 2 SneakShows, 2 ANTs.
I had no idea, but I have yet to figure out whether it is a good idea to let the opponent play ALWAYS. I should have done it against Pox in order to smoothly mulligan into Leyline. But with Sinkhole and Smallpox being the worst spells... I dunno.

[Kuma]

I tested them for a very brief time period and found that their benefit as a 1 or 2 off is marginal compared against the fact that you have to run 2 Underground Seas which makes you far more vulnerable against Wasteland-Decks. It is obvious when you play vs decks like Threshold or D&T that having enough mana is king in this deck. Usually you cannot - and that's what also Lejays explains in his primer - search for everything at the same time (lands, combo, protection). Even more true if you play against taxing, soft counter or denial strategies. Also consider that the BoM list just plays 19 lands. If you ever want to cast these Dream Halls you better run as much basics as possible.

You have an interesting definition of "far more vulnerable."

I don't think adding two wasteable lands is enough of a downside not to run a card that essentially says "stack your deck." If you're playing against a deck like Death and Taxes, you can side out the Lim-Dul's Vaults and not fetch the Underground Seas. I usually fetch the Underground Sea and cast Lim-Dul's Vault the turn before I'm going to win in their end step. The only way I'm going to get Wastelanded is if they had an untapped one that turn. As for casting Dream Halls, if you resolve a Lim-Dul's Vault you likely won't need to win by casting Dream Halls as you can search a Show and Tell plus whatever other piece you need for about 4-6 life.

I'm really puzzled by The Source's continual rejection of Lim-Dul's Vault. Vampiric Tutor is rightfully banned. Lim-Dul's Vault is effectively double Vampiric Tutor (BB, Search your library for two cards and put them on top, you lose 4 life) only it pitches to Force of Will and is easier to splash.

[OrGy]

First of all, props to Lejay and Jo_la_Loose that elaborated the vast majority of design choices of the list. Props also to emidln for sharing his take on Omnihalls.

While acknowledging to the GP build raw power and stability, I was unconfortable with the 3 DH and CW MD:
- DH acted in the list as a plan B for Omniscience as well as a S&T in disguise, thus limiting its effectiveness.
Firemind's Foresight is indeed a valuable addition to the SB. DH becomes much more of a valid Omniscience backup avoiding unfavorable hand setups effectively.
- CW is what bring the deck its versatility and protection before or after going off. 3 seemed too little in that regard. Given we wanted to run the full DH set and F'sF backup plan, 4 was a obvious adjustment.

During testings before and after GP Strasbourg, we tried to trim the manabase to 19 lands to gain a slot for the Firemind's Foresight plan => While I was quite fond of emidln version, I was strongly unfavorable to a black splash. As seen above, even a lone U.sea can become a nuisance when it comes to ramping to 5 mana dodging Wastelands.
I don't feel the net gain of 4 of all-around disruption SB + LDV MD is a incentive strong enough to open yourself even slightly to land disruption.
My teamate Nicolas encountered plenty of situations during the BOM when a grip containing U.Sea instead of a basic Island would have been a clear mulligan.

The adjustments I'd propose to the BOM list are listed bellow :

19 LANDS
2 Scalding Tarn
7 Island
3 City of Traitors (+1)
1 Ancient Tomb (-1)
4 Flooded Strand
2 Polluted Delta

33 INSTANTS and SORCERIES
4 Show and Tell
4 Preordain
4 Ponder
4 Force of Will (+1)
4 Enter the Infinite
4 Brainstorm
4 Cunning Wish
3 Pact of Negation
1 Impulse
0 Flusterstorm (-1)
1 Intuition

8 OTHER SPELLS
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 Search//Development
1 Laboratory Maniac
1 Firemind’s Foresight
0 Echoing Truth (-1)
1 Sapphire Charm (+1)
0 Surgical Extraction (-1)
0 Force Of Will (-1)
1 Noxious Revival (+1)
1 Defense Grid (+1)

I can't find the room for a second and third Defense Grid in the SB and strongly believing the 3 MD Pacts are a necessary evil.
God, I would love to swap one of those for a MD Defense Grid as they often act on a similar level against countermagic, but Pacts not costing a single mana is enough to convince me to do otherwise.
A Gitaxian Probe or two would be stellar in the MD as well but I don't want to lose any of the cantrips already in the main as they are crucial to the deck consistancy.

A side note to conclude: Nicolas Goldberg's run in this year BOM could have been a whole lot different if people were prepared for the list and knew its vulnerabilities as opposed to Jean-Mary's one. This is the most elegant point: Both lists operate quite the same till they kill you. Never scoop to a resolved EtI because you'd get useful intels on the version you are playing against (MD Emrakul or not ? Maniac kill ?) as the two lists and their variants don't fold to the same situations.

[beebles]

I can't find the room for a second and third Defense Grid in the SB and strongly believing the 3 MD Pacts are a necessary evil.
.

Eh does the deck really need both Slaughter Pact and Sapphire Charm? Both slots seem like they are their for the same thing. I have never played this flavor of show and tell deck but in regular ol sneak and show 3 defense grid are the best sb cards imo. Beating REB/Pyroblast is miserable otherwise.

[Adan]

I don't think adding two wasteable lands is enough of a downside not to run a card that essentially says "stack your deck."

The problem is that there are a few aggressive decks against which you can't afford that amount of lifeloss, especially when you play Ancient Tomb at the same time.


If you're playing against a deck like Death and Taxes, you can side out the Lim-Dul's Vaults and not fetch the Underground Seas. I usually fetch the Underground Sea and cast Lim-Dul's Vault the turn before I'm going to win in their end step.

Nevertheless there is a statistical chance that you will eventually draw them and have to play them. And at that point they will be hit instantly by Wasteland (because the opp finally has a target for his Wasteland he has been sitting on). This also makes mulligan decisions tougher when you draw your initial 7 and U-Sea being your only land. If your 1st Turn cantrips misses a land, you die instantly to Wasteland. However, with a basic Island, I'd still keep it and keep digging for lands and don't have to worry about Wasteland.

LDV is a powerful card, but at the same time it's clunky and thus I don't find it to be splash-worthy.

[Nekrataal]

First of all, props to Lejay and Jo_la_Loose that elaborated the vast majority of design choices of the list. Props also to emidln for sharing his take on Omnihalls.

While acknowledging to the GP build raw power and stability, I was unconfortable with the 3 DH and CW MD:
- DH acted in the list as a plan B for Omniscience as well as a S&T in disguise, thus limiting its effectiveness.
Firemind's Foresight is indeed a valuable addition to the SB. DH becomes much more of a valid Omniscience backup avoiding unfavorable hand setups effectively.
- CW is what bring the deck its versatility and protection before or after going off. 3 seemed too little in that regard. Given we wanted to run the full DH set and F'sF backup plan, 4 was a obvious adjustment.


I was of the same opinion at first, even thinking that the split should be 4/3 in favor of DH because it is the better enabler. But after playing the deck intensifly over the last 2 weeks I see DH really just as a backup plan. There are enough decks that make it hard to reach 5 mana at all and in time, so the backup plan often is not the most attractive. Also DH is symmetrical and sometimes allows the opponent some extra plays. As a result the FF plan is an even rarer necessity. If I would have to give a number I would say it is less than 5% of all games. The FF plan comes with a cost to SB slots and maindeck slots so as much as I like it I currently think it is not needed.



During testings before and after GP Strasbourg, we tried to trim the manabase to 19 lands to gain a slot for the Firemind's Foresight plan => While I was quite fond of emidln version, I was strongly unfavorable to a black splash. As seen above, even a lone U.sea can become a nuisance when it comes to ramping to 5 mana dodging Wastelands.
I don't feel the net gain of 4 of all-around disruption SB + LDV MD is a incentive strong enough to open yourself even slightly to land disruption.
My teamate Nicolas encountered plenty of situations during the BOM when a grip containing U.Sea instead of a basic Island would have been a clear mulligan.


I totally agree with you on the U.Sea matter. However I had several situation on the last tournament I played with finding one land to go off in time, so I will up the landcount to 20 again. I also tried out Flusterstorm main and cannot even remember I played it once.



I can't find the room for a second and third Defense Grid in the SB and strongly believing the 3 MD Pacts are a necessary evil.
God, I would love to swap one of those for a MD Defense Grid as they often act on a similar level against countermagic, but Pacts not costing a single mana is enough to convince me to do otherwise.
A Gitaxian Probe or two would be stellar in the MD as well but I don't want to lose any of the cantrips already in the main as they are crucial to the deck consistancy.


Fitting all this in would be lovely. For sure I haven't had a flash of genius just yet.

[OrGy]

@Nekrataal:

About DH:
DH gives your opponent the opportunity to play for free as well : I do not contest this point but I feel that the effect is not that symetrical as written on the card.
For sure both player can now pitch to cast but, as far as the regular matchups are involved, only one of them can cast ETI or similar monstrosities with it.

For sure, your opponent can now pitch his ponder to Flusterstorm you out, but those are corner case scenario.
Most of the time, the cards you wouldn't want your opponent to play for free will be used in response to your casting of DH, not after.

About the land count:
After long testing sessions, lejay and jo_la_loose concluded 20 lands were mandatory.
Our testing concluded otherwise.

That being said, I think this particuliar perception is entirely linked to the DH matter :
In the 4 DH version, DH being a solid option for taking off, you can devote at least one of your numerous cantrips effect in ensuring you'll be able to land drop every turn till turn 4.
In the 3 DH version, you plan is to get your hand on S&T/DH + Omniscience as soon as possible, thus limiting your ability to cantrip into lands as well as combo components.

In the latest, I firmly believe it is correct to play 20 lands (with 3 Sol Land), as I do believe it is quite reasonable to trim down to 19 (4 Sol Lands mandatory for DH hard cast) in the first one.

About Defense Grid:
Be sure you'll share your stroke of genius as soon as it strikes you. I'd pay for the idea. For real :)

@beebles:
I'll just recycle some of the thoughts of JM Accart in his primer last page and apply them to the Omnimaniac version:

1 Slaughter Pact : answers hate bears for free. You can trickbind the trigger but generally combo when resolving it.
Nothing more to say, officer.


1 Sapphire Charm : With only 3 wishes the “cycle a redundant wish” clause is a bit less useful. That said it answers hate bears beautifully in the end of turn which can be quite useful against Thalia since it is possible every mana will count. It’s also a blue card for fow and dream halls and can cyle when sided in. I would not cut the slaughter pact, but if I wanted more hate bears slots I would increase the number of sapphire charms before the number of pacts.
With 4 wishes, being able to recycle one of them eot can prove really useful. Being able to dodge a Mother protection on blue or black with the opposite answer is quite interesting as the game goes long.

[Lejay]

It's a good thing I couldn't answer for a few days since almost all the things I could say have been brought up by other people.

To Catmint: I don't understand why you have so much trouble understanding the arguments and the logic that makes TT a very good match-up game one. If you still insist on me finding time for a 10 games session on cockatrice I can try for that, but I would rather have you do the testing alone or even just understand the logic of the arguments I gave, or even that I didn't give and are obvious.

To OrGy : we didn't conclude 20 lands are mandatory. We concluded 20 lands was optimum and superior to 19 which is different. Of course the deck can function with 19 lands. However drawing supplementary lands when you have to hardcast dream halls or play around spell pierce isn't a bad thing, and having 17 blue sources (instead of 15 in yours) is very helpful avoiding mulligans.
For the stroke of genius, watch how I arranged my decklist. You can send the check to JM Accart.

One last thing, Frédéric/JoLaLose asked me to make an additional answer to that :

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.
The first week-end after the dream Halls unban, Frédéric Pérez played a deck based on it with both cunning wish and pact of negation. He placed 2nd/40-50 despite the limited testing. So I think we can safely consider that the deck is an evolution from that list, and that he is indeed the creator of this deck.

[U-S-ho]

No need to swing the banhammer. The deck doesn't break the format :smile:

******** UGr

"the first tests against tempo were very simple. We crushed them preboard" ; "positive tempo thresh match-up all the way" ; "win about 2/3 of the time" --> ??!!

- not a fast clock?! Double Delver, or Delver+Goyf or similar are not that slow considering all the Lightning Bolts and Chain Lightnings going straight to your face...
- Wasteland doesn't hurt you as much, but Stifle to a fetchland is still a timewalk at least. If you wanted to use the Fetchland to shuffle away two bad cards from a brainstorm for example, it's even worse. Wasteland can be used to force you to fetch, if they have Stifle in hand.
- They just have more counterspells than you (pre- and postboard). Even if Daze and Spell Pierce are no hard counters, playing around 1 Daze can set you back a turn and playing around Spell Pierce is probably way too slow. Postboard there are even REBs/Pyroblasts and Flusterstorms. Sure, Defense Grid is strong here, but they also have Ancient Grudges against it usually or just counter your Defense Grid. "defense grid idea ... proved to be all we need." I wouldn't be too sure about this.
- The Krosan Grips in their sideboard can kill your plans, especially before EtI.
- A boarded in Vendillion Clique can also be a pain with the right timing. Even, if they just put it into play via your Show and Tell, it can ruin your plan.
- Surgical Extraction see below. (Even Thought Scour could be effective against you to extract something you really need like Omniscience for example)
- Hardcasting a Dream Halls against Daze and Spell Pierce is very hard without enough counter backup.


Maverick

"When we tested against a maverick with tons of hate at the beginning we had a negative match-up post sb. But not only it's just post sb ... the deck is also almost not run anymore."

Doesn't Maverick's maindeck consist of "hate" against you?

- Gaddock Teeg: Your plan is Emrakul, but they run Knight of the Reliquary, so they have Karakas which you have to get rid of as well. So you need a Wish and Rushing River to bounce it, which is not always as easy as it sounds. Also, you have to get Emrakul first.
- Knight of the Reliquary
- Karakas
- Thalia: "Emrakul is your main plan against Thalia decks"
Show and Tell -> Emrakul = 4 mana, but hard to find a singelton Emrakul with your 2 mana cantrips. No extra turn here.
Show and Tell -> Omniscience -> Cunning Wish -> Eladamri's Call -> Emrakul = 7 mana!
Show and Tell -> Omniscience -> Cunning Wish -> Slaughter Pact = 6 mana, but you better have the other cards needed to win that turn also.
Show and Tell -> Omniscience -> Emrakul = 5 mana but you still have to get your singelton Emrakul first.
Cunning Wish -> Slaughter Pact/ Sapphire Charm = 5/6 mana same turn ... okay Wish in one turn and removal next turn are not that expensive, but then it better works, if it get's disrupted in any way...
... there are also some ways that are even more expensive, maybe I'm missing something here?? "Against Thalia decks Emrakul is the plan as you just need 1 mana to cast enter and then you can untap and play spells you want"
- Mother of Runes: protects their Hatebears, so it's not that easy to get rid of them. Same thing with Sylvan Safekeeper and the like
- Surgical Extraction: see below
- Oblivion Ring: see below
- Qasali Pridemage: can be effective if you only have Dream Halls in play
- Choke!
- Ethersworn Canonist: you need a wish and time/mana to get rid of it and combo

Even if GW Maverick is played a bit less, there are also Punishing/Dark Maverick... with heavy Discard, Extirpate, Lilianas, Slaughter Games, Pyroblasts, Krosan Grips and whatever...

Blade Control

- Discard AND Counterspells (and Snapcaster)
- Surgical/Extirpate (and Snapcaster :smile:)
- O-ring/D-sphere
- Meddling Mage
- V.clique
- Venser
- Counterbalance/SDT
everything effective. no need to explain every detail, I think.


I don't want to write about every possible matchup here, just some others that seem questionable to be crushed all the time off the top of my head:

BUG
Sneak Attack
Storm
Dredge
...
and you said yourself:
"3 bad match-ups for the deck. Reanimator, Tin Fins and UR Omniscience mirror with flusterstorm (Testing against dredge was 50/50 post sb but it’s probably negative overall too)"
so this doesn't seem to be true: " the deck has positive match-ups against almost the entire field." "the best deck" "As long as people are running sufficient grave hate, this deck is the best deck in the format (with not enough grave hate it's reanimator)"
Seems like there are quite a few decks, that can beat this one.
"People can adapt to this deck as I said in the format discussion section, but that will still result in an unhealthy metagame" Like we just saw, many decks don't even need to adapt that much. The metagame seems just fine at the moment.

Some other cards, which are good against the deck:

- "flusterstorm (our worst enemy)" as you said
- Chalice @ 1 very hard to find a 3 card (or more) combo without any of the 12 cantrips. Getting rid of it?! Okay, 3 mana Cunning wish + 3 mana rushing river = 6 mana to bounce it until next turn.
- Slaughter Games: on Omniscience kills the deck, right? No casting Emrakul, no infinite Release the Ants... just Show and Tell -> Emrakul directly, okay that would be possible, but even on other targets, Slaughter Games is very strong here, for example on Cunning Wish.
- Surgical Extraction/Extirpate: on Show and Tell it makes the deck a lot slower. On Omniscience see above. On a milled or discarded Cunning wish also very usefull.
- Oblivion Ring/Detention Sphere/Angel of Despair: can be answered with the instant speed RtA kill or Wish -> Trickbind. But EtI is sorcery speed and Wish -> trickbind means another card, that you need in your hand.
- Liliana of the Veil: not answered by Leyline
- Nevermore/Meddling Mage
- Venser
- Confusion in the Ranks
- Thorn of Amethyst, Trinisphere
- Counterbalance, SDT
- Discard and Counterspells in general
- probably quite a few I just forgot right now

Sure, there are answeres to a lot of these things mentioned here in theory, but you don't allways have the right answer in hand. :rolleyes:
"counter cantrips which is pretty weak" -> not true, a well timed countered cantrip hurts a lot!

"1 Trickbind : answers most post sb hate by cunning wishing it under omniscience." but then you need for example: Show and Tell, Omniscience, Enter the Infinite and Cunning Wish (like a 4 card "combo"?) not mentioning counterspells to backup.


some other things:

"This kill still doesn’t answers the emrakul’s decks" meant is Brain Freeze with 2 SDT. But Emrakul could still be extracted (Wish -> Surgical) when it hits the graveyard.
"Dream Halls : Yes it costs 5 mana but this is also show and tell + omniscience in one card if you have enter the infinite" ...and a blue card, and if the opponent doesn't do anything (means you should have some counterspells also)
"deal with a board with rushing riverx2 (kicked and maybe noxious revivaled)" why not, if have a Cunning Wish, 6 mana, 2 life and 2 lands in excess :wink:
" if you draw one of those, FF becomes useless" meant is 2 cc spell or Intuition with Firemind's Foresight. If you draw the maindeck Intuition, there is still 3 cc Cunning Wish -> Intuition.


Show and Tell doesn't need to be banned:
Sure, it's a good card, but it doesn't dominate the format. Show and Tell decks are an important part of the format, that define Legacy and make this format (and it's metagame at the moment) as cool as it is. If it would be banned, Sneak and Show and UR Omniscience would also leave the format (less diversity, crying collectors and players :smile:) and other decks would rise of course. Then, what would be the next thing to ban? LED? Or some staples that every deck plays and which define the format even more (ban brainstorm discussion and the like :rolleyes:). Or ban some storm things? Ban all the nice combos and play Modern2? Seriously, people need to stop crying because they don't like a specific card or decktype. And I think that's the real reason for some of your statements as you give a hint here: "Like many players I don't like show and tell decks because I see very dumb players winning far more than their fair share with it, and the deck is of no interest for someone wanting to play a game of thoughts. At the GP I told most of my opponents that the main reason I worked on it and played it was to get S&T banned." Seems like you want to depict yourself as the great savior of the format, but really only have a personal dislike against S&T. Just play the game. It is fun as it is right now. And fun is in the eye of the beholder.

Some things that people allways forget when hating on Show and Tell is, that even if the S&T-decks are build around it, it's still ´symmetrical´ (opponent can just put answers or bombs into play theirselves - so it just can't be compared to a giant ritual), it is card disadvantage and vulnerable to every kind of hate and it requires a deck totally build around it with tutors and cantrips to find everything needed.
Even if I don't play S&T myself and can understand your hate to some point, it would just be wrong to ban anything right now. Maybe Show and Tell is "dumb" for you; for others it's dumb to just turn creatures sideways or to wait 10min until opponent finally managed his storm count or to reanimate a giant creature in the first turns or to just throw burn spells to your face or whatever. As long as things don't get out of hand and we have top8s full of a specific deck over a specific time period, we should just let people enjoy their game and do it ourselves as well.

To intensify it a little more :tongue: If your deck crushes the format, why couldn't I find you in top 16 decklists? :tongue: ah, I forgot: "I barely made day 2 after going 7-2 (first defeat round 6 against the undefeated ANT player that will get Dqed for stacking, and another very unlucky defeat to a friend playing Tempo thresh). Starting day 2 with a very very very close defeat versus counterbalance put me in a difficult bracket and I lose to team America and reanimator.
Christoph Alsheimer aka Nemavera also played the same 75 I ran and fell short of one win from the top8 after going 8-1 day 1."

I hope you don't feel offended and I don't just feed the trolls :laugh:

Carlos

[Lejay]

Is that another Steve Menendian account ?

[P-E]

- Thalia: "Emrakul is your main plan against Thalia decks"
Show and Tell -> Emrakul = 4 mana, but hard to find a singelton Emrakul with your 2 mana cantrips. No extra turn here.
Show and Tell -> Omniscience -> Cunning Wish -> Eladamri's Call -> Emrakul = 7 mana!
Show and Tell -> Omniscience -> Cunning Wish -> Slaughter Pact = 6 mana, but you better have the other cards needed to win that turn also.
Show and Tell -> Omniscience -> Emrakul = 5 mana

Carlos


i'm sure you're good at math but

Show and Tell -> Omniscience -> Cunning Wish -> Eladamri's Call -> Emrakul = 7 mana! 6 mana emrakul is a creature

Show and Tell -> Omniscience -> Emrakul = 5 mana 4 mana

also omniscience emrakul doesn't care about karakas ^^

[apple713]

I've been playing sneak attack for a while now and I've recently turned to this thread cause it also plays show and tell and wanted some fresh ideas. My issue is the simple math of the it all. Sneak attack/SaT has more counterspells/backup than omni***, it doenst give the opponent advantage by playing dream halls, and it can secure a game just as easily.

I've wanted to test with omni**** but logically i can't see how it could possibly be better. My sideboard for SA/SaT is very simple, and solves all of my problems, diverts for discard (combined with spell pierces and misdirections, and brainstorms main deck) makes discard a joke. Boseiju and through the breach for anything with counter spells. echoing truth for everything else.

so, in short it just seems like omni**** is a slower less effective version of SA/SaT, and that if you were arguing for SaT to be banned it would be because of SA/SaT and not Omni****. Also, Omni*** decks have been around since before your version but have not been making top 8 near as consistently as SA/Sat.

Please convince me to play Omni*** as it seems interesting to test and the artwork is cool. I've also been wanting a reason to pick up a set of foil cunning wish's

[Lejay]

I think all information was available, but I'll summarize for Sneak and Show players since that can be a lot to read :

If you want to play a more brutal deck play Sneak&Show with petals and more sol lands.
If your metagame isn't prepared for show and tell decks, play Sneak&Show.
If you need to beat discard decks game one you'd better play sneak attack with spell pierces than omniscience with pacts.
If you are bad and need a high variance deck to win play Sneak&Show.

If you like consistency play Omniclash.
If you want to reduce the level of possible interaction from the opponent to the maximum play Omniclash (wasteland, karakas, humility etc...)
If you want to fight in a metagame expecting you (SB Oring, venser, confusion in the ranks, revoker etc...) play Omniclash.
If you want to beat tempo threshold play Omniclash.
If you like planifying things and ponder the odds, play Omniclash.
If you want to ruin people's hope by trickbinding their hate before drawing your deck and killing with ants, play Omniclash.

[catmint]

To catmint: I don't understand why you have so much trouble understanding the arguments and the logic that makes TT a very good match-up game one. If you still insist on me finding time for a 10 games session on cockatrice I can try for that, but I would rather have you do the testing alone or even just understand the logic of the arguments I gave, or even that I didn't give and are obvious.


There is a difference of understanding your arguments and coming to the same conclusion. As you said most of them are obvious anyway and there is nothing new or mind blowing. E.g. we have different opinions on some stuff like the value of countering cantrips and how fast canadians clock is. I am also not claiming that I need to be right and with your results it would be just plain stupid to doubt that you have a solid canadian matchup. However I doubt the "crushing". Specifically I have reasonable doubts that:
a) The avg. Omnisclash having 66% MU win vs. avg. Canadian preboard. I even doubt that you have 66% win preoboard versus avg. canadian and I gave you my thoughts on why you might have come to those results (again this is an open question for me - I am not saying it can't be this way).
b) That the post-board result is positive enough (despite defense grid) for an overall positive matchup.

Anyway the preboard candian matchup is not worth discussing anymore. People will test and time will tell.

The other point where also many others have very reasonable doubt is that this is "the best deck" that will get "show banned" and bla bla. To me you did not follow-up on the issue that the negative Sneak and Combo matchup as well as the ability of decks to play discard AND countermagic (can't play leyline and defense grid right?) will stop this deck from taking over the format aka turning it to an unhealthy metagame as you claim.

We agree on the comparison to sneak, but I seem to see the tradeoff of more consistency over raw power "fair" in the sense of it is not strictly better.

As I said before, your conclusions and predictions seem to overestimate combo in general and I think you would become an overall better player if you would try to understand the logic of people contradicting with you in this area. :wink: I suppose you don't have a problem with people disagreeing with you right? If you were just fishing for compliments like provided by some fools in this thread instead of a real discussion on the issue, you would have been better of writing an article.

[beebles]

Boseiju and through the breach for anything with counter spells. echoing truth for everything else.

Ughh Boesiju is really iffy against tempo decks, CIPT is really rough. Roll them dice and hope you don't get wastelanded!

[apple713]

Ughh Boesiju is really iffy against tempo decks, CIPT is really rough. Roll them dice and hope you don't get wastelanded!

canadian thresh is the only thing that might even have wastelands and counterspells. if you are smart you can bait them with an ancient tomb or volcanic island if you really need a boseiju to stick. They wont anticipate you having a boseiju....and if they do then GL cause they are probably a good player. This isnt the worst situation tho.

also, im certain that sneak attack is more consistent.

SA and SaT = 8 enablers or 13.3% of deck
Enabler targets (emrakul & griselbrand) = 8 or 13.3%

SaT and Dream halls = 7 enablers or 11.6%
Enabler targets (Omniscience & emrakul) = 5 or 8.3%

not only do the cards needed for the combo make up a less % of the deck and would be harder to find you also have to find an Enter the infinite... Im not sure why you think omni*** is more consistent. You will find the combo pieces less of the time and since it runs fewer counterspells you will also successfully resolve the combo a smaller % of the time cause you lose more counterwars.

[catmint]

Apple, cunning wish is also a Wincon in this deck.
This deck has more consistency since cunning wish can do also other stuff - not only win and has awesome. The mana is much better and you play more cantrips. The win is less conditional and without passing the turn which adds to consistency as well. You can influence your faith more with this deck compared to sneak. With sneak you have more raw power (a bit faster) and if you have a good run and make optimal decisions you can top8 any given day, but sneak has a tradeoff for that power with a lower consistency. You can find very good comparisons of this deck with sneak throughout this thread.

[Kuma]

As seen above, even a lone U.sea can become a nuisance when it comes to ramping to 5 mana dodging Wastelands.
I don't feel the net gain of 4 of all-around disruption SB + LDV MD is a incentive strong enough to open yourself even slightly to land disruption.
My teamate Nicolas encountered plenty of situations during the BOM when a grip containing U.Sea instead of a basic Island would have been a clear mulligan.

Where to begin? Looking at the DTB section, only about half of the format even runs Wasteland. Given the speed of our deck, they're only about 60-70% likely to even have one in any given game. Even if they do, there's a good chance we only need three mana to win with Show and Tell. [(2 nCr 1)(17 nCr 2)(41 nCr 7)/(60 nCr 10) + (2 nCr 2)(17 nCr 1)(41 nCr 7)/(60 nCr 10)] ~= 8.6% (the rough odds we open ourselves to Wasteland on the Show and Tell plan). If we don't have Show and Tell, we might be able to get to five mana without exposing ourselves. [(2 nCr 1)(17 nCr 4)(41 nCr 7)/(60 nCr 12) + (2 nCr 2)(17 nCr 3)(41 nCr 7)/(60 nCr 12)] ~= 8.8% of the time (the rough odds we open ourselves to Wasteland on the Dream Halls plan). These numbers are a little rough, but they're close to reality.

.5 * .65 * .086 = .02795. In any given game, we have roughly a 2.795% chance of being disrupted by Wasteland if we're on the Show and Tell plan. Assuming we lose 100% of those games this is pretty small.

.5 * .65 * .088 = .0286. In any given game, we have roughly a 2.86% chance of being disrupted by Wasteland if we're on the Dream Halls plan. Assuming we lose 100% of those games this is pretty small.

Let's look at mulligans. You said that if your only land is Underground Sea, the hand is an automatic mulligan, whereas if it's an Island it's a keep. (2 nCr 1)(17 nCr 0)(41 nCr 6)/(60 nCr 7) = 2.3% of seven card hands will have Underground Sea as its only land. A lot of these hands would be mulligans even with the Island because they wouldn't have cantrips. Let's say you need two cantrips to make a single Island hand a keeper. How many extra mulligans will you take assuming Underground Sea + two cantrips is a mulligan? (2 nCr 1)(17 nCr 0)(11 nCr 2)(30 nCr 4)/(60 nCr 7) = .78% of seven card hands. The actual number is slightly higher because I didn't look at three, four , or more cantrip hands, but the point stands. But I argue that Underground Sea plus two cantrips is a fine hand to keep game one against an unknown opponent because we have roughly a 3% chance of getting our only land Wastelanded and that doesn't even account for us topdecking land anyway.

tl;dr: Math clearly shows that getting Wastelanded out of the game from running two Underground Seas is very unlikely.

You still don't think it's worth running a card that effectively lets you stack your deck because you might get Wastelanded and you might lose because of it?


The problem is that there are a few aggressive decks against which you can't afford that amount of lifeloss, especially when you play Ancient Tomb at the same time.

Unless the aggro deck has you down to like four life or less, it doesn't matter because you're going to win the turn after you cast Lim-Dul's Vault. It's not like some cantrip that you run our there early, spending a ton of life on it only to not be able to win the game for a couple of turns. Even if you can't afford a single point of life payment, you're looking at five cards which is more than any cantrip.


Nevertheless there is a statistical chance that you will eventually draw them and have to play them. And at that point they will be hit instantly by Wasteland (because the opp finally has a target for his Wasteland he has been sitting on). This also makes mulligan decisions tougher when you draw your initial 7 and U-Sea being your only land. If your 1st Turn cantrips misses a land, you die instantly to Wasteland. However, with a basic Island, I'd still keep it and keep digging for lands and don't have to worry about Wasteland.

As I demonstrated above, this isn't very likely. After looking at the numbers, do you still think it's not worth running a card you've admitted is powerful?


LDV is a powerful card, but at the same time it's clunky and thus I don't find it to be splash-worthy.

Okay, I'm tired of seeing Lim-Dul's Vault dismissed with vague adjectives like "clunky." I want you to tell me exactly what is "clunky" about Lim-Dul's Vault.

[MGB]

This is by far the best deck in the format. I haven't seen consistency and resiliency from a combo deck like this since Pre-Mystical Tutor Banning Reanimator or even further back, Flash combo.

I love how people like "catmint" are blindly fighting months of playtesting that Lejay has done all because his pet deck that he invested money into (Thresh) has a bad matchup with OmniClash and he's in denial about it.

[Koby]

Lim-dul's Vault in 2 card combo decks (or even 3) is very good at what it does. I recommend it to any deck that needs specific components in order to win.

[phazonmutant]

Currently I've been testing Lejay's list -1 Leyline of Sanctity, -1 Pact of Negation, -1 Gitaxian Probe, -3 Island, +1 LDV, +2 Flusterstorm +1 Swamp, +1 Underground Sea, +1 Fetch, with 3 Thoughtseize in the board and it's been excellent so far.

Flusterstorm is just an amazing card. As good as Pact of Negation is, Flusterstorm is so much better against the discard and combo that make up so much of the meta right now. Thoughtseize is great against the random hate cards people have as well as being valid disruption against control and combo. I've won the matches I've played against discard decks so far, but of course I haven't tested nearly as much or as long as other pilots advocating Leyline have, so time will tell.

Maybe I just hate the feeling of being a dog to fast combo.

[elroy]

I've been playing this deck for 3 - 4 months now, including doing badly at the latest BoM. But here are a few thoughts...

Release the Ants vs Research/Maniac
The choice of kill card/s doesn't have to be linked to playing Emrakul or not. As Lejay said, you can clash with EtI. I've been playing Research/Maniac but RtA seems better as sideboard space is tight. Of course, playing RtA without Emrakul as back-up means you can't kill if they have Emrakul so maybe it's not the best idea.

Firemind's Foresight
The discussion here seems mainly focussed on fixing the weak interaction between Cunning Wish and Dream Halls. While that's probably the main argument I've been playing FF for a while and really like the ability to Trickbind a CIB effect and find a kill card with just 1 CW. (CW -> FF -> CW + Impulse + Brainstorm, then CW -> Trickbind and use Impulse + Brainstorm to find another kill card which nearly always works).
Also, if you play 1 Intuition main due to FF I think the sideboard intuition is less valuable. As CW can get the maindeck Intuition via FF anyway.

[Adan]

I played a small Legacy tournament (12 ppl) today and finished 2nd due to tiebreakers.

MUs:

Enchantress 2-0
Imperial Painter 2-0
MonoB Pox 2-0 (REVENGE for Hassloch's 1-2)
Death & Taxes I.D.

3-0-1

I played with the DnT guy for fun and I must say, I don't think it's a good matchup. Okay, a 1st Turn Vial, 2nd Thalia with Port and then from turn 4 on active Mangara lock exiling my lands. I was pretty surprised, Chris (Nemavera) gave me an overview on the deck and said DnT was pretty easy because they had no pressure (which is true, these hatebears are annoying but not good at racing). But Thalia + Canonist is very bad (and Mangara lock in addition to that... EWWW).

Can someone walk me through that MU? I don't know if I simply messed up the MU by keeping wierd hands, not letting him play first or whatsoever, but my impression on that MU was not good.

[Lejay]

Frédéric also thought it would be a difficult match-up at the beginning, however on the back of 60+ games I can tell you it's positive overall. Of course it depends on the overall hate ran. I tested mostly against the GP Strasbourg winning list with the changes he told he would do, but if they start targeting us it will easily become a negative one.
Let them start when you have the choice whether it is pre or post sb. Tend a bit more to keep lands on cantrips and starting hands with 3+ lands. Emrakul is a good card to draw like against any Thalia deck. Check in the opening post if you had the optimal sideboarding. Force the vial if the pitch isn't an issue, that will hinder their development pretty well and with vial out fow has almost no other use than being pitched to dream halls or reshuffled. If they kept a weak 7 cards hand expect oblivion ring.
When Nemavera asked me if there was a match-up he should practice before the BoM I said it should probably be Death and Taxes as it plays a bit differently than other match-ups (maverick too , but D&T was more expected and is even more particular because of port and mangara) and experience really makes a difference. So test it out until you feel confident.

[catmint]

This is by far the best deck in the format. I haven't seen consistency and resiliency from a combo deck like this since Pre-Mystical Tutor Banning Reanimator or even further back, Flash combo.

I love how people like "catmint" are blindly fighting months of playtesting that Lejay has done all because his pet deck that he invested money into (Thresh) has a bad matchup with OmniClash and he's in denial about it.

Some people believe in Jesus. Some seem to believe in Lejay and the new best deck in the format. BY FAR!!

For the record: Elves is my pet deck, I own many different blue and non blue legacy decks (including this deck) and I would enjoy a lot if Canadian keeps taking hits. My evaluation is not based on card availability. I am simply arguing that this "by far best deck taking over the format" is not true. So far neither lejay, nor some of his brainless groupies provided a reasonable argument to support their belives.

[Lejay]

First of all, and for the 4th time maybe, no one said the deck will take over the format. I think it is objectively the best deck in the format, and as I said in the community section thread I think a metagame adapting heavily to it will become an unhealthy metagame. Because the bad match-ups of the deck are all vulnerable to grave hate or to the same hate targeting it, and because of the fact that there are limited options to hating it and they are for the most part countered with cunning wish.
In addition to all the testing I did, I think the deck had corroborating results with my first paragraph in the large events in Europe compared to the amount of players piloting it. Also people playtesting it are giving good feedback either here, chatting with me on MTGO/Legacy-France, or MPing me on FB. If you don't want to consider these facts "reasonable arguments" I have no problem at all with that, but don't say yours are more reasonable.
I think at one point you said "time will tell". Very well. Don't bring this fight again without testing because someone brought up some ad hominem arguments against you and you took it personnally. Also if you want some proof of this deck bound to takeover the format you can take a look here. (http://i1.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/original/000/263/801/68c.jpg)

[Norm]

I played a small Legacy tournament (12 ppl) today and finished 2nd due to tiebreakers.

MUs:

Enchantress 2-0
Imperial Painter 2-0
MonoB Pox 2-0 (REVENGE for Hassloch's 1-2)
Death & Taxes I.D.

3-0-1

I played with the DnT guy for fun and I must say, I don't think it's a good matchup. Okay, a 1st Turn Vial, 2nd Thalia with Port and then from turn 4 on active Mangara lock exiling my lands. I was pretty surprised, Chris (Nemavera) gave me an overview on the deck and said DnT was pretty easy because they had no pressure (which is true, these hatebears are annoying but not good at racing). But Thalia + Canonist is very bad (and Mangara lock in addition to that... EWWW).

Can someone walk me through that MU? I don't know if I simply messed up the MU by keeping wierd hands, not letting him play first or whatsoever, but my impression on that MU was not good.

You really just need hands that don't rely entirely upon cantripping into something relevant. I typically play Sneak which runs less of them overall but the approach is similar. Keep hands that do things. Your opponent cast their Thalia instead of vialing it in, if you kept a hand without disruption and without early action, you must have kept one that relied on cantripping into all of your business which is the wrong approach.

[Adan]

You really just need hands that don't rely entirely upon cantripping into something relevant. I typically play Sneak which runs less of them overall but the approach is similar. Keep hands that do things. Your opponent cast their Thalia instead of vialing it in, if you kept a hand without disruption and without early action, you must have kept one that relied on cantripping into all of your business which is the wrong approach.

That's what I did, yes. However, my opponent had EVERYTHING, 1st Turn Vial, 2nd Turn Port to lock away a land, 3rd Turn Thalia, 4th Turn Karakas + Mangara. Post-board was exactly the same (just throw a Ethersworn Canonist to the mix).

I kept opening hands that were heavy on cantrips because I thought it was vital to fix your manabase in the first place.
Furthermore it was absolutely necessary to drop an Ancient Tomb at some point against Thalia so I could pull off SnT on the turn afterwards (would have been a guaranteed win), but I got hit by Wasteland which meant gg.

[phazonmutant]

So far neither lejay, nor some of his brainless groupies provided a reasonable argument to support their belives.

Who are these brainless groupies? Could you name names?

[catmint]

First of all, and for the 4th time maybe, no one said the deck will take over the format. I think it is objectively the best deck in the format, and as I said in the community section thread I think a metagame adapting heavily to it will become an unhealthy metagame. Because the bad match-ups of the deck are all vulnerable to grave hate or to the same hate targeting it, and because of the fact that there are limited options to hating it and they are for the most part countered with cunning wish.
In addition to all the testing I did, I think the deck had corroborating results with my first paragraph in the large events in Europe compared to the amount of players piloting it. Also people playtesting it are giving good feedback either here, chatting with me on MTGO/Legacy-France, or MPing me on FB. If you don't want to consider these facts "reasonable arguments" I have no problem at all with that, but don't say yours are more reasonable.
I think at one point you said "time will tell". Very well. Don't bring this fight again without testing because someone brought up some ad hominem arguments against you and you took it personnally. Also if you want some proof of this deck bound to takeover the format you can take a look here. (http://i1.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/original/000/263/801/68c.jpg)
Thanks for the clarification. What you describe as "creating a bad metagame" is what I meant with "taking over the format", so this is just where we have different opinions on how the decks uprising will influence the metagame. I have no problem coming back to this thread one day admitting I was wrong...

With all the disagreeing about some statements, I want to express my respect of making this deck that strong. When I built and tested enter the infinite once it was spoiled I could not come up with something good enough so quickly discarded it. Nice to see it works and in my opinion makes legacy more versatile - so I think that this deck exists is a good thing and not a "broken" thing. Again, I have no doubts that the deck is strong and that it was built and tested by a couple of people and showed good results catching others by surprise speaks for itself. No need to convince me there. Besides the fun of having an argument I am also in this thread because I seriously consider playing it. My future posts will include more questions and suggestions concerning the actual deck, so I hope you'll keep responding with quality content as you did so far.

Also kudos for the pic and "ad hominem". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ad_hominem

:smile:

[phazonmutant]

I've had 5 opponents ragequit after losing game 1 in the span of 2 hours on Cockatrice. Things like this make me wish I had MODO.

Continuing testing with the black splash. So far the 1 dual hasn't been a problem and the extra non-U source (Swamp) hasn't either. I've been able to bring Thoughtseize in a lot more matchups than Leyline and I like that I'm better at disrupting combo.

The deck feels very very consistent. It's been a while since I've played with a stable manabase, feels pretty nice.

[mistercakes]

I've had 5 opponents ragequit after losing game 1 in the span of 2 hours on Cockatrice. Things like this make me wish I had MODO.

Continuing testing with the black splash. So far the 1 dual hasn't been a problem and the extra non-U source (Swamp) hasn't either. I've been able to bring Thoughtseize in a lot more matchups than Leyline and I like that I'm better at disrupting combo.

The deck feels very very consistent. It's been a while since I've played with a stable manabase, feels pretty nice.

deck is very consistent.

played in two daily events with the deck.
3-1, losing to some reanimator deck playing dark ritual in the finals. (mono black)
3-1, losing to landless dredge round 2. (needed to draw any blue card to win during game 3)

first day beat jund, urg cascade, bug
2nd day beat mirror, counter top, counter top

[MGB]

deck is very consistent.

played in two daily events with the deck.
3-1, losing to some reanimator deck playing dark ritual in the finals. (mono black)
3-1, losing to landless dredge round 2. (needed to draw any blue card to win during game 3)

first day beat jund, urg cascade, bug
2nd day beat mirror, counter top, counter top

This deck is like pre-patch Tekken 5.0 Nina, amiright, Rob?

I feel like Show and Tell is u/f+1.

[Norm]

That's what I did, yes. However, my opponent had EVERYTHING, 1st Turn Vial, 2nd Turn Port to lock away a land, 3rd Turn Thalia, 4th Turn Karakas + Mangara. Post-board was exactly the same (just throw a Ethersworn Canonist to the mix).

I kept opening hands that were heavy on cantrips because I thought it was vital to fix your manabase in the first place.
Furthermore it was absolutely necessary to drop an Ancient Tomb at some point against Thalia so I could pull off SnT on the turn afterwards (would have been a guaranteed win), but I got hit by Wasteland which meant gg.

This sort of thing happens in Magic. For every time a DNT player has the perfect series of draws to beat the SNT player, ten SNT players have god hands that make DNT players want to quit life on the spot. Just remember, nut draws apply to fair decks too.

[pocari79]

Mini report. Went to a tournament this past Saturday. Had around 38 people, so six rounds. Played Lejay's exact 75 as I wasn't too sure what to change and it was my first time piloting the deck. I went 4-2 and came in 10th due to bad breakers. Here's what I beat and lost to:

Round 1: Canadian Thresh (0-2)
Round 2: Omniclash (2-1)
Round 3: Shardless BUG (2-0)
Round 4: Omnimaniac (2-1)
Round 5: ANT (1-2)
Round 6: Deadguy (2-0)

The loss to Canadian Thresh felt pretty awful. Game 1, he had a mongoose with only two cards in the graveyard and around six cards in hand and I didn't have any dig spells but I had Dream Halls, Enter the Infinite and some blue cards so I decided to force it even though there was no need to as his hand was probably all counterspells and it was. After that, I just scooped as I had very little cards left in hand and he played several threats a few turns later. Game 2 was another awful game where I actually resolved a turn two Defense Grid and he only played two lands all game. I went through 3 Preordains, 2 Ponders, 2 Brainstorms and still couldn't find a Show
and Tell or a Dream Halls to win the game. That was pretty frustrating.

I had no idea what to expect from the mirror and as a result, my round two match felt very awkward. I learned to not use the Release the Ants win against the mirror as clash allows the opponent to put the clash card on the bottom to get a new card to clash the next time. Because of this, later on, I chose to win off Emrakul in the mirror match.

In game two of my round 4 match, I was on the draw and had to mulligan and I kept a hand with no counterspells and no draw spells but I could turn two Show and Tell into either an Emrakul or a Dream Halls and I had an Enter the Infinite in my hand. I was hoping to draw into another blue card to make my decision easier but on my turn two, I still hadn't drawn a blue spell yet. My opponent didn't do anything on his turn either so all he had was two islands untapped. I ended up deciding that I wanted to try to Show and Tell and put in the Emrakul to try to win next turn and my Show and Tell actually resolved and he ended up not putting anything in play. My opponent really disagreed with my play but my thought was that if I'm going to try to win, I can't just Show and Tell in the Dream Halls and then pass the turn, letting him play whatever for free next turn. I also felt like I couldn't just pass the turn either as he could Show and Tell in something on his turn and then I have no counters to stop it. I guess it worked out this time but I'm not sure if it was the right play or not.

The Deadguy and BUG match wasn't really interesting as I was able to land leyline in both game two and I even got to put my leyline in play on game one against my Deadguy opponent which he really wasn't too pleased about.

I'm not really sure what to think about this deck. I felt like I had really subpar draws as I kept on getting opening hands where I have to combo but no dig or I just have all dig and nothing. Or I'd get hands where all I have are Pacts for counter spells and I'm not able to use them against the combo matchups. I also feel like this is a deck where I would really want something like a Clique so I can interact with my opponent before I combo off. I realize that I probably need to play more games with this deck to see how good the average draws really are but it just seemed like I had a lot of frustrating opening hands.

[Sunday Funday]

In game two of my round 4 match, I was on the draw and had to mulligan and I kept a hand with no counterspells and no draw spells but I could turn two Show and Tell into either an Emrakul or a Dream Halls and I had an Enter the Infinite in my hand. I was hoping to draw into another blue card to make my decision easier but on my turn two, I still hadn't drawn a blue spell yet. My opponent didn't do anything on his turn either so all he had was two islands untapped. I ended up deciding that I wanted to try to Show and Tell and put in the Emrakul to try to win next turn and my Show and Tell actually resolved and he ended up not putting anything in play. My opponent really disagreed with my play but my thought was that if I'm going to try to win, I can't just Show and Tell in the Dream Halls and then pass the turn, letting him play whatever for free next turn. I also felt like I couldn't just pass the turn either as he could Show and Tell in something on his turn and then I have no counters to stop it. I guess it worked out this time but I'm not sure if it was the right play or not.

I would have made the same play you did. Playing the waiting game is good when you have counters. You had to pull the trigger that turn no question since passing the turn means you can die. You can die off your show and tell, sure, but it also gives you a shot at winning. Win the game or die tryin'.


I even got to put my leyline in play on game one against my Deadguy opponent which he really wasn't too pleased about.

Tell him to call a judge. Don't even say a word beyond that. You're not obligated to tell him anything.


I'm not really sure what to think about this deck. I felt like I had really subpar draws as I kept on getting opening hands where I have to combo but no dig or I just have all dig and nothing. Or I'd get hands where all I have are Pacts for counter spells and I'm not able to use them against the combo matchups. I also feel like this is a deck where I would really want something like a Clique so I can interact with my opponent before I combo off. I realize that I probably need to play more games with this deck to see how good the average draws really are but it just seemed like I had a lot of frustrating opening hands.

Show and tell decks that are not Sneak Show do have a lot of dead cards. Omnitell is a three card combo and individual cards amount to nothing on their own. You do need to play more games with the deck, you answered your own question. Your opening keepers are also in question. Read tournaments reports of people who have done well with the deck and evaluate their gameplay decisions.

[teonsw]

Anyone know what the matchups are like against control decks such as esper and bug?

[mistercakes]

they are pretty favorable, their clocks are generally too slow for their disruption to be very effective. they are by no means byes, but it's far easier than rug. the bug delver matchup can be tricky if they turn 1 delver, but otherwise i feel pretty confident with it. careful with the esper decks as some run 1 venser maindeck.

[Lejay]

I don't consider them easier than RUG, but yes unless they start to metagame specifically for your deck they are either slightly favourable for esper or favourable for shardless.

[GoboLord]

Hello Lejay,

lately I have been playtesting with- and against your new deck (the Mono U Omniclash) and was really amazed how powerful it is. And I don't mean "studpidly" powerful in the way that S&T decks are usually described, but "powerful" as being mutli-facetted and hard to effectively lock down with the conventional hatecards. In fact the only weak spot I could find is indeed that it sometimes took me too long to assemble a combo which suited the situation (like when you rip an Emrakul from the top, no Brainstorm in hand, while your opponent has a Karakas). Things get even worse when I'm up against decks with lots of manadenial, or (to give the child a name): Death&Taxes and Goblins. The builds I tested it against both had 4 Ports and 3 Thalias, which were admittedly quite effective. The difference is that D&T can't set up a resonable clock, while Goblins has no problems with that, unless you counter Lackeys and/or Piledriver. To me the best combo against Those decks was S&T -> Emrakul, which didn't happend too often. SOmetimes I was (as already stated) forced to put back Emrakul and to go for DH or Omniscience. However, with Thalia + Rishadan Ports getting 4 mana wasn't as easy as it should be. I had those awkward situation where I had to keep a City of Traitors on my hand for like 3-4 turns to protect it against Ports.

Obviously I don't have enough experience with the deck to make definite statements, that's why I'm asking for your oppinion.
a) is it reasonable to go up to 4-6 Sol-lands (like some Sneak-Show decks do)? I see the issue with the "low" amount of blue sources, but sol-lands seem crucial to me if you sometimes want to hardcast Dreamhalls
b) what's your impression /strategy on the Goblin- and Death&Taxes MU respectively. Also, I didn't test vs. MUD yet, but I can imagine that this deck also stands a chance if it wasn't for it's inconsistency.
Hi,

Increasing the number of sol lands makes you vulnerable to wasteland. I wouldn't do it but 4 sol lands is not that bad.
I consider these rishadan decks favourable for D&T and easy for goblins. Goblins testing is limited to 3-4 matches though. MUD has been 100% win in my experience but I had a teammate having problems with it.

Why are there so many people PMing me ? Why don't you just post in the thread ?

[Lans89]

I need a Leyline to beat Uwb postboard, or Snapcaster recycles too much discard to win through.. Discard + counters + clique + snapcaster is otherwise often too much. Shardless BUG seems fine untill Liliana hits the board. I'm happy with my testing results so far (the manabase and cantrips feel good) but I expected a bit more!

I'm currently playing OmniManiac and use this sideboard:

3 Defense Grid
4 Leyline of Sanctity
1 Labaratory Maniac
1 Research//Development
1 Firemind’s Foresight
1 Wipe Away
1 Echoing Truth
1 Trickbind
1 Slaughter Pact
1 Intuition

(4 FoW, 4 Pacts and 3 Cunning Wish main)

But I rly rly rly rly rly rly want a Noxious Revival in my sideboard! If it's not for hating graveyard tactics, its another tool to fight discard (put Show and Tell back on top). But since I fell in love with Defense Grid I have no room left in my sideboard. What would you cut?

[Stone]

Hey Lejay,
Thanks for all the work you (and others) have put into the deck as well as the great primer on page 1.

I grabbed the list yesterday having not played legacy in a year and went 4-0 in a local game night.
Beat esperblade 2-0 , ANT 2-1, Elves 2-1 and loam/chalice control 2-0.

Made minor changes based on card availability (MD: -1 city of traitors -1 gitax probe +1 tomb +1 personal tutor SB: -1 defense grid +1 misdirection -1 sapphire charm +1 vapor snag)

Got a bit lucky against both ANT and Elves in the respective game 3's with ANT missing on a sided epic experiment post board hitting bounce for leyline but failing to hit a tutor despite x = 8 and (in credit to the deck build) won through 2 mindbreak trap on turn 3 v elves (show & tell, omni, cunning wish (trap), cunning wish (trap), cantrip into enter the infinite - not sure if the elf player holding the first trap for the wish spell intuition would've made a difference here).

I did feel that the single personal tutor gave me an extra show & tell to cantrip into but that could be a function of loose keeps and no prior play testing (I note you address this on page 1). Would be keen to try Elroy's page 2 suggestion of perhaps swapping this slot to a single MD intuition and the side intuition slot (or something else?) for firemind's forsight (FF) to make dream hall more of an instant win. Felt in games where i was waiting to hit 5 mana for dream halls that it was a looooong time to be unable to interact (save with FOW) and would be curious about trying to get a couple flusterstorm into the side to help this and have a versatile answer to both counters and discard (just musings though the list and board looks VERY tight and pact is obv much better for the normal T3 kill scenario).

The obvious line of hate people will bring in is to attack the omni/halls off/emrakul the resolved show & tell with o-ring/woodfall primus. I know in hivemind this was generally just 'play another pact' as a solution.
What's the plan here?

Cunning wish is an instant speed solution to the trigger but only 3 md and required as a win cond means this isn't a common solution (side an extra one?).
Does having the FF enable the single wish to both get bounce and the win cond? (sided into md answer echoing truth/trickbind + intution/c wish). Am sure you've found better solutions? If so please share.
How are people handling this sort of postboard hate? The current board design of leylines, grids, pacts and MD FOW does an AMAZING job of protecting v discard and getting through counterwalls in the current 'normal' meta (rather than a vengeful local meta).

Any links or ideas people have to post sb v hate scenarios, vids, gameplay, etc would be greatly appreciated.

Once again thanks for the awesome primer, boarding notes and testing. A mono U combo deck - i'm in love :tongue:

[Stone]

I'm currently playing OmniManiac and use this sideboard:

3 Defense Grid
4 Leyline of Sanctity
1 Labaratory Maniac
1 Research//Development
1 Firemind’s Foresight
1 Wipe Away
1 Echoing Truth
1 Trickbind
1 Slaughter Pact
1 Intuition

(4 FoW, 4 Pacts and 3 Cunning Wish main)
But I rly rly rly rly rly rly want a Noxious Revival in my sideboard! If it's not for hating graveyard tactics, its another tool to fight discard (put Show and Tell back on top). But since I fell in love with Defense Grid I have no room left in my sideboard. What would you cut?

Unless you're wedded to using 2 slots for the win cond replace maniac + R&D with release the ants... frees up your extra slot ;)

[Terminus]

Unless you're wedded to using 2 slots for the win cond replace maniac + R&D with release the ants... frees up your extra slot ;)

The RtA version also uses up 2 sideboard slots, unless you skip out on Eladamri's call.

Concerning the Counter-Top MU - Because of the inherent reliance on CW for your win in the LabMan version of the deck, how do we deal with Counterbalance on 3? So far, the only solution I'm thinking is siding in Wipe Away + Echoing Truth, resolving EtI, casting Echoing Truth, then casting Wipe Away if they counter the Echoing Truth off of a 2. This, of course, is assuming they keep a 3 on top of their library at all times, but I feel like a good player will be fairly diligent in that regard, particularly as the deck gains popularity.

I've been testing the LabMan version, but I'm inclined to switch to the RtA build to have access to Emrakul mainboard, as Counter-Top is always a player in my local meta.

[emidln]

The RtA version also uses up 2 sideboard slots, unless you skip out on Eladamri's call.

Concerning the Counter-Top MU - Because of the inherent reliance on CW for your win in the LabMan version of the deck, how do we deal with Counterbalance on 3? So far, the only solution I'm thinking is siding in Wipe Away + Echoing Truth, resolving EtI, casting Echoing Truth, then casting Wipe Away if they counter the Echoing Truth off of a 2. This, of course, is assuming they keep a 3 on top of their library at all times, but I feel like a good player will be fairly diligent in that regard, particularly as the deck gains popularity.

I've been testing the LabMan version, but I'm inclined to switch to the RtA build to have access to Emrakul mainboard, as Counter-Top is always a player in my local meta.

There isn't a reason you couldn't play an Emrakul in your maindeck and an Eladamri's Call in the sb if you wanted to in the Lab Man build. The major difference between the two isn't in the kill condition, but in the utility of Dream Halls. Dream Halls is only functional with Enter the Infinite in builds without a 2cmc spell main and Intuition. That's the only real difference worth discussing. Manabase issues are decided by utility slots that you play (playing LDV or sb Thoughtseize requires a Sea or Two, sb REB or Clasm requires a Volc, 5 3cmc instants and 4 dream halls necessitates 4-5 sol lands). The sideboard is dictated by what you're afraid of and what tactics you need open to you. If you're running Emrakul in the maindeck, Call taking a sideboard slot is low cost, high reward as a way to beat Gaddock Teeg. You don't have the space in your sideboard to play Leyline of Sanctity, Defense Grid, and combo hate, so you have to pick your battles there. Your removal can vary (Rushing River, Wipe Away, Echoing Truth, Sapphire Charm, Slaughter Pact, Hurkyl's Recall, Rebuild) as can sideboard protection (Pact of Negation, Flusterstorm, Force of Will, Trickbind) and business (Eladamri's Call, Intuition, Careful Consideration, Firemind's Foresight, Release the Ants, Research//Development, Lab Maniac, Emrakul).

A big drawback to this deck versus most other non-storm decks is that you can't construct a 60 then a 15. You construct the 75. When you play a deck that has 12+ cantrips and wishes, 1-2 card changes can wildly swing matchups. You win and lose before sitting down at the table in some circumstances, simply due to how you picked #74 and #75. This will take some adjustment to if you're not used to it from something like TES, High Tide, ANT, or Doomsday.

[Adan]

... Dream Halls is only functional with Enter the Infinite in builds without a 2cmc spell main and Intuition. That's the only real difference worth discussing. ...

You mean WITH, right? Otherwise you couldn't abuse Firemind's Foresight.

[emidln]

You mean WITH, right? Otherwise you couldn't abuse Firemind's Foresight.

No. (although that was very poorly worded)

Dream Halls can cast Enter the Infinite whether you play Wish->FF->Intuition->Enter or not.

If you don't play FF in your sideboard, your only options for Dream Halls are to cast Enter the Infinite, Wish->Intuition (if you play it in your sideboard at all), or Omniscience (which maybe lets you play cantrips or your Emrakul into a win).

[Adan]

No. (although that was very poorly worded)

Dream Halls can cast Enter the Infinite whether you play Wish->FF->Intuition->Enter or not.

If you don't play FF in your sideboard, your only options for Dream Halls are to cast Enter the Infinite, Wish->Intuition (if you play it in your sideboard at all), or Omniscience (which maybe lets you play cantrips or your Emrakul into a win).

Oh, you meant that Dream Halls' only purpose is to slam EtI! Well... yeah, I misunderstood it then. But I would play a blue CMC2 spell just to be able to pull off FF in order to get maximum flexibility out of Dream Halls. The maindeck Trickbind did steal me games against Enchantess (countered the Aura of Silence which was awesome).

[Lejay]

There isn't a reason you couldn't play an Emrakul in your maindeck and an Eladamri's Call in the sb if you wanted to in the Lab Man build.
No but it would be quite painful in terms of slots needed.

The maindeck Trickbind did steal me games against Enchantess (countered the Aura of Silence which was awesome).
And how many times did it just sit there doing nothing while a cantrip or a land would have give a win ?

[Adan]

And how many times did it just sit there doing nothing while a cantrip or a land would have give a win ?

So far, never. And against Springtide it gave me a Time Walk because I countered his fetch AND messed up his Brainstorm. It can also occasionally safe a sol land from being wrecked by Wasteland which also costed me games back when I was playing UR Omnitell. I don't really find that slot wasted at all.

It also allows me to throw a Pact of Negation at something really annoying. Usually the opponent then say "okay, then go!" and then YOU TRICKBIND THAT SHIT!

[emidln]

So far, never. And against Springtide it gave me a Time Walk because I countered his fetch AND messed up his Brainstorm. It can also occasionally safe a sol land from being wrecked by Wasteland which also costed me games back when I was playing UR Omnitell. I don't really find that slot wasted at all.

It also allows me to throw a Pact of Negation at something really annoying. Usually the opponent then say "okay, then go!" and then YOU TRICKBIND THAT SHIT!

I never really found a situation where I drew Trickbind and it was dead but couldn't be pitched to Force/Dream Halls or be used as fodder for Brainstorm. I've tested LDV, Trickbind, and Impulse pretty extensively and feel that Trickbind is the best in terms of cards I'd like to draw. Nobody ever really taps down Wasteland which means when I go to LDV, I tend to need to fetch Sea and then lose it before I untap. LDV is objectively the most powerful, but there are a ton of situations where Trickbind has saved me from misc hate that seemingly every deck has. I haven't actually tried this yet, but I feel that Think Twice is probably more useful than Impulse against live opponents.

[phazonmutant]

I never really found a situation where I drew Trickbind and it was dead but couldn't be pitched to Force/Dream Halls or be used as fodder for Brainstorm. I've tested LDV, Trickbind, and Impulse pretty extensively and feel that Trickbind is the best in terms of cards I'd like to draw. Nobody ever really taps down Wasteland which means when I go to LDV, I tend to need to fetch Sea and then lose it before I untap. LDV is objectively the most powerful, but there are a ton of situations where Trickbind has saved me from misc hate that seemingly every deck has. I haven't actually tried this yet, but I feel that Think Twice is probably more useful than Impulse against live opponents.

Trickbind does seem like a powerful tool, but I've still been loving Thoughtseize out of the board. Maybe it's just because my local meta tends to have more W and combo decks than discard decks. LDV has been overall good. It's done its job at finding combo pieces, but is definitely not necessary or a 2-of.

If you're concerned about Wasteland, how about just playing a basic Swamp? I've been playing 3 Sol lands and 1 Swamp in 20 lands and it's been fine. As lejay has mentioned, 20 lands helps consistently getting to 5 and I've been screwed more than flooded so far (although those 2 games were on the back of bad keeps).

I top8'd a local yesterday, so I'll post a quick report when I get home from work.

[emidln]

Trickbind does seem like a powerful tool, but I've still been loving Thoughtseize out of the board. Maybe it's just because my local meta tends to have more W and combo decks than discard decks. LDV has been overall good. It's done its job at finding combo pieces, but is definitely not necessary or a 2-of.

If you're concerned about Wasteland, how about just playing a basic Swamp? I've been playing 3 Sol lands and 1 Swamp in 20 lands and it's been fine. As lejay has mentioned, 20 lands helps consistently getting to 5 and I've been screwed more than flooded so far (although those 2 games were on the back of bad keeps).

I top8'd a local yesterday, so I'll post a quick report when I get home from work.

I still play a Sea and some Thoughtseizes with Trickbind. I just have to fetch out Sea much less against Wasteland decks than I do when I play LDV. I'm on a mix of Thoughtseize and Defense Grid right now, with them coming in for different matchups.

[MichaelPozsgay]

Lejay, what is your most recent list, and side boarding guide? I am gonna start testing this deck for the SCG Open in Columbus because it seems to be the best positioned combo deck vs an unknown field, and most people will not know what the deck is doing in the states.

[mistercakes]

lejay's done all that stuff. afaik the list is the same.

[MichaelPozsgay]

I didn't know if any more development has been made or not, or if he has made any concession based on the other list.

[Lejay]

No change, no concession, and no more answers to PMs.

[phazonmutant]

I was going to post a report...but I don't feel like the decisions were very interesting on the whole. I guess I'll talk about the one's that were.

As before:

Currently I've been testing Lejay's list -1 Leyline of Sanctity, -1 Pact of Negation, -1 Gitaxian Probe, -3 Island, +1 LDV, +2 Flusterstorm +1 Swamp, +1 Underground Sea, +1 Fetch, with 3 Thoughtseize in the board and it's been excellent so far.

Except I made a mistake, it's only -2 Island, no additional fetch. Obviously Thoughtseize replaces Leyline of Sanctity. Other board changes: -1 Rushing River, -1 Sapphire Charm, -1 Defense Grid, +1 Wipe Away, +1 Echoing Truth, +1 Surgical Extraction

Surgical is a response to my local meta in which I expect disproportionate amount of combo decks, including graveyard-based. The changes to the bounce spells just seem like a reasonable change. Rushing River is pretty cute.

Round 1 - alphastryk with UWr RiP Miracles
The most difficult round as far as decisions. Game 1 I very easily Show and Telled with some backup, and he had nothing. Game 2 I knew that S&T was going to be very bad, but at the same time I get to bring in Thoughtseize and he doesn't have a whole lot of 3s. Boarded +3 TS, +1 PoN, -1 Emrakul, -1 FoW, -2 FS, -1 Show and Tell. Flusterstorm is bad against Top and CB. He beat down with hatebears and won. Game 3 we had a really awkward standoff where I resolved Dream Halls through 2 counterspells and a Counterbalance, but then couldn't find another blue spell while he beat down with Clique. Despite having multiple chances to bounce Clique with Karakas and replay it (to which I was cold because I had 1 Intuition I Wished for while he was tapped out with a 1 on top and the rest lands), he continued to tap low. Eventually I found another blue spell and won. Interestingly, he had a 2 in the top 3 which I completely forgot to consider. I should have used my last Wish to get Wipe Away for Counterbalance, but fortunately he scooped to my Wish for Release the Ants.
1-0

Round 2 - Canadian Thresh
My opponent honestly was not the most experienced. Game one he deployed a couple threats, but wasn't able to counter the Show and Tell I expected to get Dazed or Pierced...or anything really. I board in both Defense Grids and the Pact, boarded out Emrakul, 1 FoW, and LDV (because of Surgical and Scour). Game 2 I had the nuts hand with a few lands and all the combo pieces. I cast Brainstorm a couple times and he Forced the first and Pierced the second. I then untapped and killed him.
2-0

Round 3 - Maverick
Good player, but his build seemed soft to us. Game 1 he had a decision point. I had Island, Island, Sea, and had just Show and Tell'd Omniscience (to his Thalia). He chose to play and sac Canopy to try to find one of his 2 Pridemages, although afterwards we agreed he should have Wasted and dropped Karakas. I untapped and Wished for Eladamri's Call and won. Boarding -2 Flusterstorm, -2 Pact of Negation, +3 Thoughtseize, +1 Wipe Away. Game 2 he mulled to 5. He tapped 2 lands, tanked, untapped, then Zenith'd for 1, so I put him on having Thalia. I Thoughtseized him (he just miscounted and thought he had 3 mana for GSZ for Teeg), revealing a hand of nothing, and won the next turn.
3-0

Round 4 - ID
Round 5 - Green and Taxes Maverick
He was playing the build recently showcased at BoM. Game 1 I had a slower start with only 1 Island, a City of Traitors, Enter, Omniscience, and a couple more blue cards, but no Show and no cantrips. In retrospect I should have mulliganed for sure. He dropped Thalia into Teeg and I lost. Game 2 he dropped Safekeeper into double Ethersworn Canonist (and then Teeg), so I was pretty out of the game from the start.

Retrospectives:
Infinite Cunning is way easier and more forgiving than TES. It also seems to be more consistent. The deck is very, very strong.
I didn't want Leyline at all and Thoughtseize was good. I never got a Sea Wasted.
I still need to mulligan bad hands. Being tired is not an excuse.

[MichaelPozsgay]

Would Lotus Petal be good in this deck? Has anyone tested it at all; I assume yes, but I have read all the forums on this deck, and have seen no mention of it. Why is it not good enough?

[Larzdk]

Would Lotus Petal be good in this deck? Has anyone tested it at all; I assume yes, but I have read all the forums on this deck, and have seen no mention of it. Why is it not good enough?

We're not that crazy about speed.

[teonsw]

Would Lotus Petal be good in this deck? Has anyone tested it at all; I assume yes, but I have read all the forums on this deck, and have seen no mention of it. Why is it not good enough?

I personally feel that it doesn't need them its usually a turn 3 win anyway with 12 cantrips and 7 shuffle effects you barely find yourself mana screwed or brainstorm locked. I personally feel there is no reason to lower consistency to increase speed. Just my thoughts although I've only been testing this deck for 4 days.

[iostream]

I didn't want Leyline at all and Thoughtseize was good. I never got a Sea Wasted.
It seems like you never played any decks where Leyline would have been part of the sideboard plan? Also, how was LDV?

[phazonmutant]

It seems like you never played any decks where Leyline would have been part of the sideboard plan? Also, how was LDV?

You're right, and to me that's a lot of the appeal of Thoughtseize. It's much more versatile and is fine to draw into.

LDV is fine. I didn't use it this tournament, but I've used it before in testing to find the appropriate piece. It's at a nice spot in the curve, we're already a bit glutted at 3s, so an Intuition might not be as easily castable.

[Lejay]

Thoughtseize is pretty poor against decks running discard and that's what you should fear the most given the current metagame. But if there are no discard decks in your local tournaments like your report suggests, then there are far less reasons to run them.

[Darksteel]

So for a bigger tournament (such as a StarCityGames Open), you'd stick with the Leylines? I wonder how popular the new Esper Deathblade decks, or even discard in general, will be in the next few weeks.

[Lejay]

I'd stick with leylines in any metagame I know.

[Kuma]

How much discard do your opponents have to be running before Leyline of Sanctity is worth boarding in? I always struggle with the decision when my opponent is running like 6-7 discard spells/Vendilion Cliques.

[Lejay]

6-7 discard spells/Vendilion Cliques.
"/" or "+" ?
Easy side in if it's "+". I'd say 6 discards and nothing else is the turning point in which I would start siding in leylines unless I have more reasons to side in something else. That is only based on rough experience though.

[MichaelPozsgay]

What do you all think of the lists from the SCG Open this past weekend?

[Dziga Murnau]

Got amused by deck (previously played High Tide, quit because tired of opponents' hatred) and have some questions.

1. Why not to put a single wincon maindeck and free sideboard space? All the shenanigans with silly cards I always dreamed to play (ResearchDevelopment and alike) are fun, but they mean too much garbadge and too little versatility in the wishboard. We do not have to search for a wincon at all - if it's in the maindeck, we always draw it while achieving our main goal - resolving EtI. So why not to play Laboratory Maniac in the MD? I am aware of all the downsides of playing wincon which is a blank card before combo (used to play a single Blue Sun's Zenith in SB those High Tide days).

[Larzdk]

Got amused by deck (previously played High Tide, quit because tired of opponents' hatred) and have some questions.

1. Why not to put a single wincon maindeck and free sideboard space? All the shenanigans with silly cards I always dreamed to play (ResearchDevelopment and alike) are fun, but they mean too much garbadge and too little versatility in the wishboard. We do not have to search for a wincon at all - if it's in the maindeck, we always draw it while achieving our main goal - resolving EtI. So why not to play Laboratory Maniac in the MD? I am aware of all the downsides of playing wincon which is a blank card before combo (used to play a single Blue Sun's Zenith in SB those High Tide days).

Mostly because removing a Cunning Wish with Force is a lot less hurtful than removing LabMan. And it's undiscardable in the sideboard.

[Dziga Murnau]

Mostly because removing a Cunning Wish with Force is a lot less hurtful than removing LabMan. And it's undiscardable in the sideboard.
Yes, it can't be pitched to Force and to Dream Halls (just like Emrakul, though Emrakul is a bit more powerful when enters the battlefield through SnT), but discard itslef does not matter as long as we can play a Noxious Revival from SB (in response to any grave hate, or just when he is needed t win). We can even play him as a champ blocker and later return to the librariry with Revival. And this interaction is good, because Revival is our grave hate tool and anti-greve hate tool in the same slot.

Discarded and Extirpated Wish is as painful as Discarded and Extirpated LabMan (and three times more frequent). That's one of reasons, why Lejay plays Emrakul - it lets you win without Wishes. But Emrakul has even worse interaction with Pacts, than DH has with Wishes. Sometimes you win counter war, but can't let yourself take another turn.

[n0mad]

So i made 10th place and lost to Todd Anderson on camera like a baddie after going 7-1 before my win-and-in yesterday. My list is the same one that won the BoM Legacy event but I cut the Ancient Tomb's for 1 Island and 1 City of Traitors. I will post a brief tournament report later but I found the deck to be ridiculously good.

http://sales.starcitygames.com/deckdatabase/deckshow.php?&t[C1]=3&start_date=2013-05-26&end_date=2013-06-02&start=1&finish=16&city=Baltimore

[deadgone]

I also played this deck to 7th place ( my breakers were better and I was able to draw into the top 8). I played lejay's list with a couple changes. Mainly I was worried about spending the whole day having people dropping venser and Orings into play against me. I played a main deck impulse, which was so good I'd consider playing another. My only losses were to the deck not wanting to work and could have gone either way. G3 of the semi finals, If I had drawn any draw spell, I'd have won. Instead I drew another omniscience. I'll write more later, gotta go to work now.

[n0mad]

I also played this deck to 7th place ( my breakers were better and I was able to draw into the top 8). I played lejay's list with a couple changes. Mainly I was worried about spending the whole day having people dropping venser and Orings into play against me. I played a main deck impulse, which was so good I'd consider playing another. My only losses were to the deck not wanting to work and could have gone either way. G3 of the semi finals, If I had drawn any draw spell, I'd have won. Instead I drew another omniscience. I'll write more later, gotta go to work now.

^ FYI - This fucking guy has the nicest OmniShow deck ive ever seen, mad props!
also, also, the way you play cards makes my OCD go insane! :P

[Deviruchi]

Triple representation in top16. Nice. Revolution is now.

[catmint]

Given that there are also 2 Sneak&Show players in the top8 I am not sure how big the revolution will be. It seems sneak & show can prepare well for omniclash by playing red-blasts, pierces, through the breach in their 75 (not a real stretch - many lists do that already), so many sneak players will stick to their choice. What can omniclash do to improve the sneak matchup and also prepare for the mirror now that the deck will become more popular?

For sure the meta will prepare even more for show&tell.

[Koby]

Given that there are also 2 Sneak&Show players in the top8 I am not sure how big the revolution will be. It seems sneak & show can prepare well for omniclash by playing red-blasts, pierces, through the breach in their 75 (not a real stretch - many lists do that already), so many sneak players will stick to their choice. What can omniclash do to improve the sneak matchup and also prepare for the mirror now that the deck will become more popular?

For sure the meta will prepare even more for show&tell.

REB, Pierces, and TTB are standard in the Sneak Show sideboards a this point; Leyline is too but unimportant in this matchup pairing. There are also some decks playing with Flusterstorm for added protection in place of Pierce.

---

Since this deck is starting to get picked up by more players, I have a question coming from the other side of the table:

What are some good ways to beat this deck?
Are there particular cards that are effective in stopping Omni-deck from getting its combo off?
Suppose Meddling Mage is in play, what's the most effective card to name to not-lose?

[Tammit67]

Lejay's list in primer at SCG Baltimore:
Started 4-0 then the wheels fell off to go 5-4 on the day. Beat Rw goblins, jund, oops all spells, TES, then lost to the deathblade sans stoneforge for goyf, then elves, then reanimator. Then rallied back to beat Sneak and Show, then lost the $50 to MUD. Lots of playmistakes on my part.

Deck is really dumb and strong. Not yet convinced starting on the draw blind is good, there are a ton of decks that have the speed to get there if you give them that turn, but there are certainly matchups that is fine and worth the card. Maindeck leyline won me a game and was stuck in my hand twice. Had I opened on a leyline in my games against deathblade ever it would have been easy.

Congrats to those who did significantly better than I did!

[emidln]

REB, Pierces, and TTB are standard in the Sneak Show sideboards a this point; Leyline is too but unimportant in this matchup pairing. There are also some decks playing with Flusterstorm for added protection in place of Pierce.

---

Since this deck is starting to get picked up by more players, I have a question coming from the other side of the table:

What are some good ways to beat this deck?
Are there particular cards that are effective in stopping Omni-deck from getting its combo off?
Suppose Meddling Mage is in play, what's the most effective card to name to not-lose?

Enter the Infinite or Cunning Wish, followed by the one you didn't name. Wish is played slightly less than Enter the Infinite. It's better to name vs the version with no other win condition maindeck (even in g2) since Wish functions as both utility to remove Wish, their win condition, and half of their business. They typically bring in Wipe Away so them getting off Enter the Infinite is still game over, but it might slow them down more. Naming Wish is slightly worse vs the Release the Ants/Emrakul version as they don't always need to cat Wish and they tend to play one fewer copy. That said, they still use Wish as both win condition (via Call->Emrakul or Release the Ants) and utility removal so it has merit. Naming Enter the Infinite makes the build with Intuition/Impulse and sb FF actually remove the Mage to kill you. Unfortunately for you, it just means they need to find a Wish or bounce spell, but it's as good as you're going to get. All of this is complicaited by the fact that some builds with no Emrakul maindeck will sideboard in Emrakul then Wish->Call->Emrakul you when you think you are safe. Some builds without Intuition main will side it in. Everyone sides in bounce and removal for g2.

Naming Omniscience is never really a thing.
Naming Dream Halls might be a thing, but probably only after you have named Show and Tell.
Naming Show and Tell is a gambit that you can keep the deck with 6-10 basic islands off 5 Mana with either LD or a Clock or you can find a 2nd Mage for Dream Halls.

Flusterstorm is the best card against the deck. It makes Pacts dangerous and will force us to play Duress/Thoughtseize/Flusterstorms of our own.

Also for what it's worth, I've been experimenting with Talrand and Notion Thief as cards to bring in against blue or the mirror. Both are sick, although their strengths are slightly different. Something to keep in mind as a low-cost (in terms of slots) way of increasing percentage by attacking in new directions.

[Tammit67]

Enter the Infinite or Cunning Wish, followed by the one you didn't name. Wish is played slightly less than Enter the Infinite. It's better to name vs the version with no other win condition maindeck (even in g2) since Wish functions as both utility to remove Wish, their win condition, and half of their business. They typically bring in Wipe Away so them getting off Enter the Infinite is still game over, but it might slow them down more. Naming Wish is slightly worse vs the Release the Ants/Emrakul version as they don't always need to cat Wish and they tend to play one fewer copy. That said, they still use Wish as both win condition (via Call->Emrakul or Release the Ants) and utility removal so it has merit. Naming Enter the Infinite makes the build with Intuition/Impulse and sb FF actually remove the Mage to kill you. Unfortunately for you, it just means they need to find a Wish or bounce spell, but it's as good as you're going to get. All of this is complicaited by the fact that some builds with no Emrakul maindeck will sideboard in Emrakul then Wish->Call->Emrakul you when you think you are safe. Some builds without Intuition main will side it in. Everyone sides in bounce and removal for g2.

Naming Omniscience is never really a thing.
Naming Dream Halls might be a thing, but probably only after you have named Show and Tell.
Naming Show and Tell is a gambit that you can keep the deck with 6-10 basic islands off 5 Mana with either LD or a Clock or you can find a 2nd Mage for Dream Halls.

Flusterstorm is the best card against the deck. It makes Pacts dangerous and will force us to play Duress/Thoughtseize/Flusterstorms of our own.

Also for what it's worth, I've been experimenting with Talrand and Notion Thief as cards to bring in against blue or the mirror. Both are sick, although their strengths are slightly different. Something to keep in mind as a low-cost (in terms of slots) way of increasing percentage by attacking in new directions.

I agree with pretty much all of this. I'd like to add- things that are also dropped off show and tell are annoying but certainly not impossible to beat (just requires another cunning wish in hand). REBs are also really good, but flusterstorm is still your best bet IMO.

[deadgone]

^ FYI - This fucking guy has the nicest OmniShow deck ive ever seen, mad props!
also, also, the way you play cards makes my OCD go insane! :P

Ha. What's wrong with how I play cards? Pre-disclaimer : I had a cold and hadn't slept the night before.

[teonsw]

I was looking back through the SCGLive archive and could not find any footage of you guys on feature matches. :frown: Does anyone have a link to it or did they just cut out a bunch of feature matches?

[Koby]

I was looking back through the SCGLive archive and could not find any footage of you guys on feature matches. :frown: Does anyone have a link to it or did they just cut out a bunch of feature matches?

Archives are not put up until Thursday on blip.tv

[n0mad]

I was looking back through the SCGLive archive and could not find any footage of you guys on feature matches. :frown: Does anyone have a link to it or did they just cut out a bunch of feature matches?

If you goto twitch.tv/scglive and go to past broadcasts I play at round 9 vs Todd Anderson and punt pretty hard in game 3 lol

[Adan]

Since this deck is starting to get picked up by more players, I have a question coming from the other side of the table:

What are some good ways to beat this deck?
Are there particular cards that are effective in stopping Omni-deck from getting its combo off?
Suppose Meddling Mage is in play, what's the most effective card to name to not-lose?

As for emidln's list which I enjoy playing:

- Sudden Shock on LabMan would be devastating (or Sudden Death).
- Preboard Meddling Mage on Cunning Wish would instantly win (if no Emrakul MD)
- Playing Death & Taxes can help if you can do: 1st Turn Vial, 2nd Turn Port an Island, 3rd Turn Thalia, 4th Turn Mangara-Karakas-Fcukery. There is no way to get out of that mess.

But other than that, discard-strategies and landdestruction is quite good (lost to Pox due to too many Sinkholes and Smallpoxes).

[Sedris]

For guys which want to hate this deck down, because they want to beat it (or think its bad, like me, so that we are ensured, that it doesn't win anything anymore):

-Blue Decks can run Flusterstorms (+ Pierces for Halls).

-A big amount of Blasts/Flusters paired with Removal/Counters for Defense Grid (especially as I do in RUG Delver, boarding Snares and Grudges in against this Deck, so that Grid is irrelevant and Flusters + Blasts make it a highly favourable Matchup).

-Jund could run Nature's Claim (like 3-4) for getting rid of Leyline + discard/Blasts and some extraction effects. At best you have Chains of Mephistopheles, which has to be bounced with an extra Wish post Show and Tell into Omni, or kills this deck precombo.

-As some guys said before, DnT with many Thorns, Thalias, Canonists, and some O-Ringish effects (even if there is Wish as protection it should be a horror for them to answer Relic Warder or things like that through 1 or 2 Sphere effects).

-Run cards which win if Omni resolves a Show and Tell (e.g. Griselbrand).

-Green decks could play some cards which are good if they are put on the battlefield with an opponents show&tell, as a little backup (so that Omni has to have a Trickbind/search for them) for the plan ramping into turn 2 Choke.

-As I mentioned at the Jund-point: Black decks should just find a way to get rid of Leyline, then they will tear this deck in halves.

Btw I love this deck, because It's a good matchup for all my decks now. :) thx lejay

(this is not meaned to provoke anyone, I already played mono U Omni and liked it, but there are better decks in the format atm imho)

[deadgone]

For guys which want to hate this deck down, because they want to beat it (or think its bad, like me, so that we are ensured, that it doesn't win anything anymore):

-Blue Decks can run Flusterstorms (+ Pierces for Halls).

-A big amount of Blasts/Flusters paired with Removal/Counters for Defense Grid (especially as I do in RUG Delver, boarding Snares and Grudges in against this Deck, so that Grid is irrelevant and Flusters + Blasts make it a highly favourable Matchup).

-Jund could run Nature's Claim (like 3-4) for getting rid of Leyline + discard/Blasts and some extraction effects. At best you have Chains of Mephistopheles, which has to be bounced with an extra Wish post Show and Tell into Omni, or kills this deck precombo.

-As some guys said before, DnT with many Thorns, Thalias, Canonists, and some O-Ringish effects (even if there is Wish as protection it should be a horror for them to answer Relic Warder or things like that through 1 or 2 Sphere effects).

-Run cards which win if Omni resolves a Show and Tell (e.g. Griselbrand).

-Green decks could play some cards which are good if they are put on the battlefield with an opponents show&tell, as a little backup (so that Omni has to have a Trickbind/search for them) for the plan ramping into turn 2 Choke.

-As I mentioned at the Jund-point: Black decks should just find a way to get rid of Leyline, then they will tear this deck in halves.

Btw I love this deck, because It's a good matchup for all my decks now. :) thx lejay

(this is not meaned to provoke anyone, I always played mono U Omni and liked it, but there are better decks in the format atm imho)

I agree, here. This deck is very powerful and pretty fun to play. Playing it over the course of a tournament was also more interesting that I thought it was going to be. And, the mirror is tons of fun. So, if the this deck did take over the meta for a bit, I wouldn't mind. That said, this deck is SO slow and is benefitting from people not being prepared for it. Generally, over the course of 10 rounds I maybe had 1 turn 2 kill and 3-4 turn 3 kills. Overall, I probably averaged winning on turn 5. The deck has almost no defensive capabilities outside of hiding behind leyline, which is fine in a format where everyone is playing mid-rangy discard decks and are still sideboarding guilded drakes and humility as S&T hate with have no enchantment removal outside of abrupt decay.

However, this deck is basically a bye for faster combo decks and it will not do nearly as well if people sideboard heavily for it / understand it well. I'd guess that at least half of my opponents at SCG Balt weren't sure how exactly my deck worked, including the scg folks at the top tables. Now that I know the deck as well as I do, I'm pretty close to undefeated playing miracles against it on modo. Playing this deck against Lejay and Jolalose on modo, I'd imagine that they do pretty well against it, also.

RUG will be able to beat this deck if it can concentrate its sideboard on doing so. And since this deck's best match ups are RUG's bad ones, I'd Imagine that any increase in this deck's popularity will be very good for RUG as it will decrease all these annoying abrupt decay decks. (note: this makes me happy as I love playing RUG).

[Natedogg]

Just to be clear, the arguments we're getting against this deck so far are that if you make it discard it's hand or counter every spell it casts, that it can lose?

Or that if you play multiple meddling mages chanting multiple combo pieces, it can lose?

Of that if you get a nut draw on the play with a fast combo deck, it can lose?

Or that if you're a discard deck and you find a way to remove it's leylines while also making them discard their hand and also applying enough pressure to kill them before they rebuild, it can lose?

And the fact that many sneak and show players didn't immediately drop the deck they spent thousands of dollars on to switch to this one means that this is an inferior deck.

Got it. Thanks for the balanced critiques everyone.

[Sedris]

Just to be clear, the arguments we're getting against this deck so far are that if you make it discard it's hand or counter every spell it casts, that it can lose?

Or that if you play multiple meddling mages chanting multiple combo pieces, it can lose?

Of that if you get a nut draw on the play with a fast combo deck, it can lose?

Or that if you're a discard deck and you find a way to remove it's leylines while also making them discard their hand and also applying enough pressure to kill them before they rebuild, it can lose?

And the fact that many sneak and show players didn't immediately drop the deck they spent thousands of dollars on to switch to this one means that this is an inferior deck.

Got it. Thanks for the balanced critiques everyone.

Im sure the most players are not aware of this tbh. I just wanted to tell everyone which specific cards they should include in their sideboard plans against omni (e.g. claim, chains, things which are not totally obvious or in common for folks).

And no, you don't need a nutsdraw. If you are playing Jund for example against lejays list, and he has a 7-card hand with Leyline, if you have a claim + 1 hymn, I think it provides time, to draw into the next lili, hymn, duress, seize, iok, pyro, confidant, bb11 for instance, to seal the game. This is because omni has only force (and many lists dont run fluster or side out fow here) to protect leyline. It is similar with Rug which only needs creature + anti grid/or opp has no grid + some counters, because pacts are incredible risky and force is incredible bad. And if they want to protect a Dream Halls kill, they won't be able to kill after a counterwar.

Omni plays 4 EtI 4 Omni (8 cards which are infinitely dead precombo and without Show and Tell) and 3-4 Dream Halls and 3-4 Cunning Wish, which are infinitely clunky. Its like playing a deck which acts like a overweight kid sometimes: You can't handle many things outside of your comboturn (which decks like ant/tes can do with discard and decks like sneak/ur omni can by playing more than 4 fow in their protection suite slots, and no pacts) and sometimes you don't have enough turns to cast all your cards (e.g. you have EtI, Wish, Wish, and want tutor 1 pact eot for not having a dead card in your comboturn, but you cant, because you were sculpting your hand and your board ((4-5 damn lands)) all day long and could not do anything else so that your wish is just a blue card (ok if you have brainstorm + fetch here, the whole thing changes, but even in this case you may draw another omni, eti or cards you dont want in pairs). and you die on 1-2 taxing counters because they will otherwhise race you.)

We can also reverse the whole thing and say, that yes, IF omni has 5-6 cards in his opener PLUS Leyline (=except), it could win against hymn, duress. Sometimes you just die on clock without disruption, sometimes 2 Tarmogoyfs are enough. I think its incredible bad to play a protection against discard, which turns into a dead card if you draw it regularly so that your 1-2 Leylines trade with their 1-3 discard. If decks like jund stop to play discard against combodecks in sb and use other angles to win against it, leyline gets worse and the whole deck + sb concept is rubbish.

My motion to write this, was to help "not so explored"-players, by tuning their sb against omni a bit and by saying, that omni can be hated down easier than other combodecks, because it becomes more inconsistent postboard than other combodecks do.

The thing is, that you dont have to discard EACH card, you just need to discard 1-2, then this deck has so much dead cards, that it breaks down already. Even countering EACH spell is bad, you just let omni do what it wants until it is going to kill you, then you counter their 2 spells, and they have to weigh if they can use their pact because they maybe die on it, or some other funny situations will happen.

And yeah, its obvious that each deck dies on any kind of nutsdraw later...

[Koby]

Just to be clear, the arguments we're getting against this deck so far are that if you make it discard it's hand or counter every spell it casts, that it can lose?

Or that if you play multiple meddling mages chanting multiple combo pieces, it can lose?

Of that if you get a nut draw on the play with a fast combo deck, it can lose?

Or that if you're a discard deck and you find a way to remove it's leylines while also making them discard their hand and also applying enough pressure to kill them before they rebuild, it can lose?

And the fact that many sneak and show players didn't immediately drop the deck they spent thousands of dollars on to switch to this one means that this is an inferior deck.

Got it. Thanks for the balanced critiques everyone.

Not sure what level/amount of sarcasm is included here.
Are you contending that this deck is good and has very narrow ways to answer it?
Are you contending that those answers are wide enough to keep this deck in check?

For the most part, arguments made to not play this "the deck they spent thousands of dollars on to switch" is moot. Players will find a way to build the deck and shouldn't be considered a limitation.

Additionally, some of the reactions to Leyline apply to the Legacy strategy holistically instead of focusing on a specific deck with a generic anti-discard package. Should Jund be prepared to board into Krosan Grip/Nature's Claim to keep up its disruption against Leyline? This is a discussion outside the scope of the Omniclash thread.

As far as my testing against this deck has shown:
Discard is good disruption against the deck, but due to the high number of cantrips it may be fruitless.
Sometimes, the deck fails to chain together the spells and pieces it needs to win.
Clock + disruption (discard/counters) can beat this deck most of the time.

My experience with other S&T strategies have also shown me that these decks tend to need every single card in their hand to be useful. Liliana's +1 can sometimes be enough to buy a turn or two.

The deck is still new for most opponents, and that often plays a role in being able to beat the metagame. If no one can prepare for a deck doing powerful things, then it tends to run the tables.

[monovfox]

I would like to point out this deck has been a deck for about a month now. it also has 3 top 16s at SCGOpens. That has to be some sort of record or something. Look how long it took for DnT to make it to top 16!

[Natedogg]

Not sure what level/amount of sarcasm is included here.
Are you contending that this deck is good and has very narrow ways to answer it?
Are you contending that those answers are wide enough to keep this deck in check?

For the most part, arguments made to not play this "the deck they spent thousands of dollars on to switch" is moot. Players will find a way to build the deck and shouldn't be considered a limitation.


What I'm saying is that all of these points are incredibly obvious and should not be used as a basis for evaluating the deck's long term viability. All of these situations can be inverted or applied to numerous other decks that have and continue to do well due to the fact that this is magic, not chess.

I made the comment on players switching because it was brought up earlier in the forum citing two Sneak and Show players in the t8 this past weekend as evidence that sneak and show will continue to be more popular.

[Koby]

What I'm saying is that all of these points are incredibly obvious and should not be used as a basis for evaluating the deck's long term viability. All of these situations can be inverted or applied to numerous other decks that have and continue to do well due to the fact that this is magic, not chess.

I made the comment on players switching because it was brought up earlier in the forum citing two Sneak and Show players in the t8 this past weekend as evidence that sneak and show will continue to be more popular.

No doubt, there is a high noise-to-signal ratio on most of the threads on this site. The better ideas float to the top. Try to contribute meaningfully and ignore the obvious/aside comments.

[Natedogg]

No doubt, there is a high noise-to-signal ratio on most of the threads on this site. The better ideas float to the top. Try to contribute meaningfully and ignore the obvious/aside comments.

I hear you. Just got a little frustrated!

[sauce]

so is the clash version better because it's harder to stop than lab maniac?

[teonsw]

so is the clash version better because it's harder to stop than lab maniac?

It just seems like a more direct way to kill them. In addition Lab Maniac doesn't run a main deck emrakul. Due to this if your cunning wish gets surgical'd you lose your win con if you did not board it in.

[catmint]

And the fact that many sneak and show players didn't immediately drop the deck they spent thousands of dollars on to switch to this one means that this is an inferior deck.

Got it. Thanks for the balanced critiques everyone.


I would like to point out this deck has been a deck for about a month now. it also has 3 top 16s at SCGOpens. That has to be some sort of record or something. Look how long it took for DnT to make it to top 16!

The thread is really not balanced but more into the direction that people think they have the new hulk flash or think it is the best deck in the format or whatever. People making "negative" statements is not "criticism" - it is a more realistic evaluation. Nobody (or not many) say the deck is crap or not viable which would be inbalanced in the other direction.

Concerning switching to omniclash:
1) It is not expensive for any show player to switch so that is surely not a reason.
2) After Omniscience was released it immediately replaced sneak attack in a hype and after a while it got more balanced until it fell out of favour for sneak again. So this comparison is much more fitting that comparing it to D&T.

The argument that it has not taken over sneaks place must therefore have others reasons. In my opinion there might be 2 factors:

1) It was invented and successful in europe first. It takes a while for europeans and SCG to pick up european innovations but if there is something happening in SCG everyone seems to hype it up really fast (even if its total crap like cutting stifle or replacing mongoose with snapcaster in Canadian). We can see what happens now that the deck showed up in SCG.

2) Sneak has a good Omniclash matchup and a significantly better combo matchup so many sneak players might think: "come on people switch to clash and kick out my bad RUG matchup - see you at the top tables". If you compare that to the time when omnishow came out: Omnishow had to resolve show&tell as well, but they could then cast a emrakul and have a significant advantage no matter if sneak shows in emmy or Grisel so with the last "show switch" the dynamic was very different.

[n0mad]

It just seems like a more direct way to kill them. In addition Lab Maniac doesn't run a main deck emrakul. Due to this if your cunning wish gets surgical'd you lose your win con if you did not board it in.

I am going to try the list I top 16 with on Wednesday with -1 dream halls and +1 emrakul and see how it plays.

[apple713]

2) Sneak has a good Omniclash matchup and a significantly better combo matchup so many sneak players might think: "come on people switch to clash and kick out my bad RUG matchup - see you at the top tables". If you compare that to the time when omnishow came out: Omnishow had to resolve show&tell as well, but they could then cast a emrakul and have a significant advantage no matter if sneak shows in emmy or Grisel so with the last "show switch" the dynamic was very different.

+1



First off i want to say that im not trolling here, i really want to like the deck. It wins as soon as it goes off, but doesnt get there nearly as often as I would like.

What i've found is that it gets there against discard decks and would still ge there against them without maindeck leyline. It has enough digging spells to find the missing piece even if they get 1 or two of them. What it lacks severly is its control matchup. It pretty much folds to any control deck with more counters. Spell pierces forces and + anything else really cause problems for this deck.

Lejay, Please test your sneak and show matchup, i tested 10 games last night and omni tell lost 9 out of 10 games all for the same 2 reasons. The 1 game it did win was because sneak and tell kept a 1 land hand just to see if omnitell had a chance. It doesnt have enough counterspells to beat sneak and show or it can resolve omniscience but doesnt have a way to get enter the infinite. Dream halls is only good if you have a omniscience.

What i like about the deck is that it has cunning wish to get answers to things it might need via cunning wish. I'm not sure if cunning wish is necessary because there are fewer ways to disrupt it if it resolves. It's mono blue and I like how blue foils look. HOWEVER...

What it needs

way to improve consistency / more control comparably to Sneak and show



The answer to that might be through red. Red opens up possibilities of Burning wish burning wish finds not only show and tell but also, enter the infinite. those are the most important pieces of the deck. In addition to this it could run REB in sideboard to improve control matchups which are difficult for this deck.

Have you explored the red option? Maybe there is something better than a win through release the ants.... hell release the ants seemed kinda like an anti climatic way to win anyways especially when you can cast any spell in magic for free :)

[Corto]

2) Sneak has a good Omniclash matchup



Could you explain this a bit please ?
The way I see it is that the SneakShow player has to win through Sneak attack, because every Show and tell is a liability ( you'll get killed next turn, or quite likely, as the opponent can drop Omniscience or Dream Halls or Emrakul ) , while the Omni player can cantrip every turn to sculpt his hand and combo you in one turn with roughly has much hardcounters.
I don't really see how you can write with such authority that the match-up is definitely in favor of SneakShow.

To be fair, after thinking a bit about what I said, I admit that Show and tell into griselbrand can hope to ward of shenanigans like "omniscience/dream halls into enter the infinite", but you have to draw a great deal of good stuff, because on his turn the Omniplayer can really put pressures with wish, cantrips into disruption and or other kills.

[Lans89]

I did win a lot vs Sneak Attack, but that was all behind a Defense Grid! But Sneaky Show is certainly not a good matchup..

[apple713]

Could you explain this a bit please ?

To be fair, after thinking a bit about what I said, I admit that Show and tell into griselbrand can hope to ward of shenanigans like "omniscience/dream halls into enter the infinite", but you have to draw a great deal of good stuff, because on his turn the Omniplayer can really put pressures with wish, cantrips into disruption and or other kills.

+1

griselbrand is better to have in play than omniscience. if they play a S&T i'll let it resolve to drop a griselbrand cause i know i'll win. I'll draw counters to live through their turn and then i'll cast a sneak attack with emrakul on my next turn cause i just drew 15 cards, 14 from griselbrand and 1 for turn. the only way they could have the advantage is if i end up with an emrakul, but if thats the case i'll wait till i get the sneak attack with the emrakul and kill them that way. they cant recover after losing all their lands.


@Lans89

defense grid really hurts Seank attack. in fact, it hurts sneak attack so badly i took it out of my sideboard and went with other options that are better against control. Unfortunatly those options arnt available to omnitell. Boseiju and through the breach.

maybe omnitell is what Sneak attack needs to board to against D&T and some of Sneak attacks other bad matchups. Sneak attacks weaknesses are cards like humility, ensnaring bridge, karakas....pretty much things that deal with sneak attacks creatures. Omnitell doesnt have those problems, so after opponent boards all those cards in you could simply switch your deck to eliminate their boarding choices....

i was just ramblin but after some thought this might not be a bad idea.

[catmint]

Could you explain this a bit please ?
The way I see it is that the SneakShow player has to win through Sneak attack, because every Show and tell is a liability ( you'll get killed next turn, or quite likely, as the opponent can drop Omniscience or Dream Halls or Emrakul ) , while the Omni player can cantrip every turn to sculpt his hand and combo you in one turn with roughly has much hardcounters.
I don't really see how you can write with such authority that the match-up is definitely in favor of SneakShow.

To be fair, after thinking a bit about what I said, I admit that Show and tell into griselbrand can hope to ward of shenanigans like "omniscience/dream halls into enter the infinite", but you have to draw a great deal of good stuff, because on his turn the Omniplayer can really put pressures with wish, cantrips into disruption and or other kills.

As sneak you never show into emrakul. If you show (which is a big if) then into griselbrand with the possibility to draw 14. I would still never show because they can have their random Emrakul or multiple winconditions and/or counters 3+ in the deck. On the other hand omniclash can only show if they expect to beat all the counters that Griselbrand might draw them. If sneak did not combo first they likely have mana open and counters in hand + what Griselbrand can draw them. So unless sneak is outtapped and omniclash has the absolute nuts like (show, omni, enter, double counter - but anyway both decks can have nut draws) casting show is pretty risky so mainly it comes down to the enchanments.

Sneak runs 4 sneaks, 4-5 sol lands and 4 petals casting and activating regularly turn 3-4 only disruptable by opposing force of wills (5 mana can also be split to 2 turns 4+1 while dreamhalls needs 5 mana in one turn).

Omniclash runs only 3 dream halls and only 3 sol lands so it will be very often a turn 5 play since they need either a land drop every turn or if they miss a land drop one of their 3 sol lands. If they arrive at that point all spell pierces that sneak runs are live and if they don't run spell pierces they usually run flusterstorm - also not the best for omniclash as we know.

Post board there is defense grid which omniclash can bring to protect and probably some bounce effects and the intuition to find dream halls siding out show & tell. Maybe it is also correct to plan to go off with show & tell behind a defense grid - interested what lejay has to say about the post board plan. Sneak attack sides out show and brings in additional disruption like red-blasts/flusters/surgical and 2 through the breach to have 6 enablers. If Sneak runs intuition they can keep them safely for more consistency without fear of surgical extraction.

The only way I can see it work out post board for omniclash is if a defense grid resolves against a Sneak player keeping a slow combo / all protection hand which is suboptimal anyway.

Concerning consistency vs. speed.
In this matchup speed is way more important for obvious reasons.
Consistency: Omniclash runs 2-4 more cantrips (not counting gitaxian probe) since some number of preordains are also pretty common in sneak, but therefore requires more combo pieces. Omniclash is more consistent in scultping/killing versus a deck like RUG - where sneak can easily fall apart, but in terms of faster goldfish omniclash does not match up with sneak - not even close.

[apple713]

As sneak you never show into emrakul. If you show (which is a big if) then into griselbrand with the possibility to draw 14. I would still never show because they can have their random Emrakul or multiple winconditions and/or counters 3+ in the deck. On the other hand omniclash can only show if they expect to beat all the counters that Griselbrand might draw them. If sneak did not combo first they likely have mana open and counters in hand + what Griselbrand can draw them. So unless sneak is outtapped and omniclash has the absolute nuts like (show, omni, enter, double counter - but anyway both decks can have nut draws) casting show is pretty risky so mainly it comes down to the enchanments.

Sneak runs 4 sneaks, 4-5 sol lands and 4 petals casting and activating regularly turn 3-4 only disruptable by opposing force of wills (5 mana can also be split to 2 turns 4+1 while dreamhalls needs 5 mana in one turn).

Omniclash runs only 3 dream halls and only 3 sol lands so it will be very often a turn 5 play since they need either a land drop every turn or if they miss a land drop one of their 3 sol lands. If they arrive at that point all spell pierces that sneak runs are live and if they don't run spell pierces they usually run flusterstorm - also not the best for omniclash as we know.

Post board there is defense grid which omniclash can bring to protect and probably some bounce effects and the intuition to find dream halls siding out show & tell. Maybe it is also correct to plan to go off with show & tell behind a defense grid - interested what lejay has to say about the post board plan. Sneak attack sides out show and brings in additional disruption like red-blasts/flusters/surgical and 2 through the breach to have 6 enablers. If Sneak runs intuition they can keep them safely for more consistency without fear of surgical extraction.

The only way I can see it work out post board for omniclash is if a defense grid resolves against a Sneak player keeping a slow combo / all protection hand which is suboptimal anyway.

Concerning consistency vs. speed.
In this matchup speed is way more important for obvious reasons.
Consistency: Omniclash runs 2-4 more cantrips (not counting gitaxian probe) since some number of preordains are also pretty common in sneak, but therefore requires more combo pieces. Omniclash is more consistent in scultping/killing versus a deck like RUG - where sneak can easily fall apart, but in terms of faster goldfish omniclash does not match up with sneak - not even close.

@ speed vs consistency, omnitell is a very consistent turn 3-4 win if it doesnt run into counters or discard. unfortunatly every deck now a days has one or the other.

@ defense grid if omnitell plays t2 defense grid, sneak attack has an opening to win on their turn... defense grid seems terrible here. especially if sneak attack has a spell pierce cause the omni tell player wont have 6 mana. to cast 2 counterspells.

@ boarding out S&T vs omnitell, probably wouldnt do it cause we normally win this show and tell.

[catmint]

@ speed vs consistency, omnitell is a very consistent turn 3-4 win if it doesnt run into counters or discard. unfortunatly every deck now a days has one or the other.

@ defense grid if omnitell plays t2 defense grid, sneak attack has an opening to win on their turn... defense grid seems terrible here. especially if sneak attack has a spell pierce cause the omni tell player wont have 6 mana. to cast 2 counterspells.

@ boarding out S&T vs omnitell, probably wouldnt do it cause we normally win this show and tell.

I am talking about omniclash which is quite different from omnitell. Everything you say is correct for omnitell but does not apply here at all. :smile:

[apple713]

I am talking about omniclash which is quite different from omnitell. Everything you say is correct for omnitell but does not apply here at all. :smile:

whats the diff? the deck im referring to is the one posted on the original post.

[Koby]

whats the diff? the deck im referring to is the one posted on the original post.

In this pairing, there is hardly a difference -- OmniTell typically is UR Burning Wish based; OmniClash is mon-blue and Cunning Wish based. In this pairing, they play identically.

The UR BW Omni deck still has a line of play that includes Griselbrand to draw a bunch of cards, or Emrakul to attack. I believe that the UR/BW version of Omni is much harder for Sneak Attack versions to beat because of the extra warm bodies - making a proactive Show & Tell a blank at best, and lethal at worst. The Cunning Wish builds only have one line of play: Omniscience.

The difference is small however, since any resolved Show & Tell will favor the player who has Omniscience. Such a deck is designed to win on the turn they resolve Show & Tell. Sneak Attack is not.

[catmint]

You are not aware of the difference between omnitell and omniclash?
Omnitell: With burning wish and omniscience into BW instant kill or emmy/grisel.
Omniclash: Monoblue with dream halls, cunning wish and enter the infinite. Emmy as a one off for an alternative kill.

What you say does not apply because


@ speed vs consistency, omnitell is a very consistent turn 3-4 win if it doesnt run into counters or discard. unfortunatly every deck now a days has one or the other.

omniclash is more turn 4 than turn 3 - the speed loss compared to omnitell and even more sneak is a fact. But it does not even matter here, because I talk about dream halls as the only viable wincon (except the supernuts).



@ defense grid if omnitell plays t2 defense grid, sneak attack has an opening to win on their turn... defense grid seems terrible here. especially if sneak attack has a spell pierce cause the omni tell player wont have 6 mana. to cast 2 counterspells.

Why would'nt you not tap out with omniclash versus sneak. You don't run pierce/fluster anyways (current lejay list at least) so open in sneaks turn does not help omniclash.
Defense grid helps omniclash because sneaks cards to disrupt post board are ~10-14 and omniclash has like ~6



@ boarding out S&T vs omnitell, probably wouldnt do it cause we normally win this show and tell.

You will try to avoid show & tell and win with dream halls.

[Tammit67]

What i've found is that it gets there against discard decks and would still get there against them without maindeck leyline. It has enough digging spells to find the missing piece even if they get 1 or two of them. What it lacks severly is its control matchup. It pretty much folds to any control deck with more counters. Spell pierces forces and + anything else really cause problems for this deck.

Lejay, Please test your sneak and show matchup, i tested 10 games last night and omni tell lost 9 out of 10 games all for the same 2 reasons. The 1 game it did win was because sneak and tell kept a 1 land hand just to see if omnitell had a chance. It doesnt have enough counterspells to beat sneak and show or it can resolve omniscience but doesnt have a way to get enter the infinite. Dream halls is only good if you have a omniscience.


Omni can beat one discard with decent regularity, as can any combo deck. The issue with discard is when they can curve it into a second discard spell and or liliana. I think these are the hardest matchups for us preboard: any deck that can curve discard into something that seals the deal whether it be ad nauseum, reanimate, liliana or dread return. Postboard leyline makes things much nicer.

I completely disagree with the "folds to control decks with more counters". I'm a little confused how you think spell pierce out of control is a problem- simply keep playing lands until you beat 2 pierce and then drop the win? Sometimes out of RUG it is an issue simply because they have the clock to force your hand, but control does not have this. If you are talking about some weird landstill build with 4x counterspell and 4x force of will, well that deck isn't really viable for one, has a terrible clock letting you sculpt your hand for two, and between 4 pact 4 force and 3 defense grid you should be fine.

The sneak and show matchup is a strange one for sure. The maindeck flusterstorms some versions play do a number on our protection suite. Consider though that they have significantly worse topdecks going forward game 1: their show and tells are dead (unless they plan to show and tell sneak attack), additional petals aren't amazing, emrakyl and griselbrand beyond the first are likewise weak draws. The depth of our cantrips combined with their inconsistent draws once the game hits turn 5 means we slowly gain ground over them I think (I will just start hard casting omniscience and dreamhalls until something sticks). If they don't know what you are on you can get lucky and they will cast the show and tell for you.

Postboard they get REBs usually, but defense grid is a fine countermeasure. Ideally you drop grid turn 2 and force them to either have the sneak attack + mana to activate + emrakyl or you combo off in relative safety when you untap. They have the same issues going long, although through the breach can really hurt. Late game dropping of defense grid with mana open to combo cannot be ignored: you'll have much more mana to work with in my experience and the tools to find pieces/disruption faster.

Sneak has a rather large window of opportunity pre and postboard when it can resolve sneak attack when it has spell pierce/flusterstorm/force/misdirection backup (depending on version) and we do not yet have 5 mana in order to hardcast force/pay for pact the following turn. If they cantrip to take advantage of that, they might not have the mana available to pierce/flusterstorm our responses.

[apple713]

Omni can beat one discard with decent regularity, as can any combo deck. The issue with discard is when they can curve it into a second discard spell and or liliana. I think these are the hardest matchups for us preboard: any deck that can curve discard into something that seals the deal whether it be ad nauseum, reanimate, liliana or dread return. Postboard leyline makes things much nicer.

I completely disagree with the "folds to control decks with more counters". I'm a little confused how you think spell pierce out of control is a problem- simply keep playing lands until you beat 2 pierce and then drop the win? Sometimes out of RUG it is an issue simply because they have the clock to force your hand, but control does not have this. If you are talking about some weird landstill build with 4x counterspell and 4x force of will, well that deck isn't really viable for one, has a terrible clock letting you sculpt your hand for two, and between 4 pact 4 force and 3 defense grid you should be fine.

The sneak and show matchup is a strange one for sure. The maindeck flusterstorms some versions play do a number on our protection suite. Consider though that they have significantly worse topdecks going forward game 1: their show and tells are dead (unless they plan to show and tell sneak attack), additional petals aren't amazing, emrakyl and griselbrand beyond the first are likewise weak draws. The depth of our cantrips combined with their inconsistent draws once the game hits turn 5 means we slowly gain ground over them I think (I will just start hard casting omniscience and dreamhalls until something sticks). If they don't know what you are on you can get lucky and they will cast the show and tell for you.

Postboard they get REBs usually, but defense grid is a fine countermeasure. Ideally you drop grid turn 2 and force them to either have the sneak attack + mana to activate + emrakyl or you combo off in relative safety when you untap. They have the same issues going long, although through the breach can really hurt. Late game dropping of defense grid with mana open to combo cannot be ignored: you'll have much more mana to work with in my experience and the tools to find pieces/disruption faster.

Sneak has a rather large window of opportunity pre and postboard when it can resolve sneak attack when it has spell pierce/flusterstorm/force/misdirection backup (depending on version) and we do not yet have 5 mana in order to hardcast force/pay for pact the following turn. If they cantrip to take advantage of that, they might not have the mana available to pierce/flusterstorm our responses.

sneak and show games dont make it past turn 5 unless they have been disrupted. you dont have time to play extra lands in omni cause sneak atatck puts you on a clock of winning 1-2 turns faster. and i'll cast show and tell all day against omni as long as i have a griselbrand. I guarantee in the 14 cards i draw i'll counter whatever you have.


in light of all the controversy towards these two decks there might be a solution. Porting omnitell/omniclash to the sneak attack shell. that way you dont have to give up consistency or control. Hear me out

Basic sneak and show list

2x island
1x mountain
4x scalding tarn
4x misty rainforest
3x ancient tomb
2x city of traitors
3x volcanic island

4x lotus petal

4x griselbrand
4x emrakul, aeons torn

4x force of will
4x spell pierce
4x sneak attack
4x show and tell
4x brainstorm
4x ponder

2x misdirection
2x intuition
1x preordain



Modified for omni****

3x island (added 1 land to = the current omni*** lists)
1x mountain
4x scalding tarn
4x misty rainforest
3x ancient tomb
2x city of traitors
3x volcanic island


4x omniscience
3x enter the infinite
4x Burning wish (instead of being just sneak attack it can get show and tell or enter the infinite)
3x show and tell (cut 1 for 1 in sideboard, personal tutor gets this)
2x personal tutor (gets enter the infinite or burning wish or show and tell)
2x dream halls (these are extra slots...they seemd appropriate)
1x cunning wish (to get your win, shouldnt need more than 1 cause if you draw your whole deck you'll have counters to make sure it sticks)

4x force of will
4x spell pierce
4x brainstorm
4x ponder

2x pact of negation (since this deck will win the same turn it goes off it gets the benefit pact over misdirection)
2x intuition
1x sensei's divining top


Sideboard

research // development
laboratory maniac (i prefer this because even tough its not instant speed you dont have to target your opponent. you can still run ants if you want and stick an enter the infinite on top...they probably wont be able to beat that, emrakul is kinda overkill)
13x whatever you want cards



let me know what yall think.

[Admiral_Arzar]

If Sneak casts Show and Tell against you, just drop in Defense Grid, untap, and win the game. Easy way to punish them postboard if they get greedy - I don't care how many cards you draw off Griselbrand if you are tapped out and I have a Defense Grid.

[n0mad]

If Sneak casts Show and Tell against you, just drop in Defense Grid, untap, and win the game. Easy way to punish them postboard if they get greedy - I don't care how many cards you draw off Griselbrand if you are tapped out and I have a Defense Grid.

maybe im not following this correctly... if they show and tell in sneak attack and you put in defense grid... can't they just activate sneak attack and murder you with emrakul? :confused:

[Koby]

maybe im not following this correctly... if they show and tell in sneak attack and you put in defense grid... can't they just activate sneak attack and murder you with emrakul? :confused:

Correct, that would be the only reason to ever cast Show & Tell from the Sneak/Show player. Doing so just to cheat 1 mana and then not activate it is throwing the game away.

So at this point, we've reasoned that casting Show & Tell in mirror matches is only beneficial to the player who can convert it to a win on the same turn. Both Omni builds are favored to cast S&T thus, but Sneak Show has more disruption (Flusterstorm & Misdirection). We can't possibly cover all permutations of cards in hand/kill cons from both sides, so let's just leave it at this: only cast Show & Tell if you're reasonable sure you can win the same turn.

[alphastryk]

maybe im not following this correctly... if they show and tell in sneak attack and you put in defense grid... can't they just activate sneak attack and murder you with emrakul? :confused:

Pretty sure SnT -> Griselbrand was what was being discussed, not SnT -> Sneak. I don't think many peol,e would be willing to SnT -> Griselbrand in this matchup however.

[Dark Ritual]

The funny side about this sneak and show v. omniclash debate? Let's say the metagame devolves into omniclash v. sneak and show. It's only making a VERY good case for banning show and tell if the meta revolves around a show and tell deck vs. a show and tell deck.

Also of note, defense grid is amazing against sneak and show when they resolve their show and tell and let you put in grid for free. It's the reason grid is there. If you want omniclash to be positive against sneak and show, splash black for thoughtseize. Suddenly when you grab their lone griselbrand and resolve your own show and tell you instantly win because they can't draw countermagic with their binned griselbrand instead they put in a derpy emrakul, sneak attack, or other meaningless permanent when you win the same turn.

[Tammit67]

sneak and show games dont make it past turn 5 unless they have been disrupted. you dont have time to play extra lands in omni cause sneak attack puts you on a clock of winning 1-2 turns faster. and i'll cast show and tell all day against omni as long as i have a griselbrand. I guarantee in the 14 cards i draw i'll counter whatever you have.


That sounds extremely risky. You'd have to have a counter for every enter the infinite/pact/force/cunning wish I have (and most likely the cantrips will find something else too if I put in omni) and even then you'd have to hope I didn't have the emrakyl in hand.

I don't believe it is as cut and dry as you make it sound.

Sneak attack is easily the best card for them in the matchup even if they show and tell it. But letting the cunning wish deck get omniscience into play for free sounds terrible too.

[Adan]

For guys which want to hate this deck down, because they want to beat it (or think its bad, like me, so that we are ensured, that it doesn't win anything anymore):

-Blue Decks can run Flusterstorms (+ Pierces for Halls).

So what? OmniHalls basically plays 8 Show and Tell effects (4 Show and Tell and 4 Dream Halls). Combined with 3 Force and 3 Pacts PLUS access to additional Forces and Pacts from the SB, this gives OmniHall a massive threat density. A few counters more or less are not going to help.


-A big amount of Blasts/Flusters paired with Removal/Counters for Defense Grid (especially as I do in RUG Delver, boarding Snares and Grudges in against this Deck, so that Grid is irrelevant and Flusters + Blasts make it a highly favourable Matchup).

This is STUPID, sorry, but there is no other spell or card other than Defense Grid in this matchup that Spell Snares and Ancient Grudges can ever hit. But go on to dilute your deck with useless junk, it will certainly help you to win. NOT.


-Jund could run Nature's Claim (like 3-4) for getting rid of Leyline + discard/Blasts and some extraction effects. At best you have Chains of Mephistopheles, which has to be bounced with an extra Wish post Show and Tell into Omni, or kills this deck precombo.

Again, you are diluting your deck. That tactic might work IF you can maintain a decent clock at the same time. And thanks to Firemind's Foresight, Chains are not a big deal.


-As some guys said before, DnT with many Thorns, Thalias, Canonists, and some O-Ringish effects (even if there is Wish as protection it should be a horror for them to answer Relic Warder or things like that through 1 or 2 Sphere effects).

O-Ring effects are not the problem, it's the mana denial/the taxing effects in general.


-Run cards which win if Omni resolves a Show and Tell (e.g. Griselbrand).

This boils down to SneakShow. Still, you would need to have all your mana untapped and enough life. Griselbrand is also stone dead to Trickbind.


-Green decks could play some cards which are good if they are put on the battlefield with an opponents show&tell, as a little backup (so that Omni has to have a Trickbind/search for them) for the plan ramping into turn 2 Choke.

I played against Enchantress with OmniHalls and got locked away by Choke for 15 turns or something. I eventually had 3 Mana to resolve Show and Tell and he put Emrakul into play. Guess what happened? I won nevertheless.


-As I mentioned at the Jund-point: Black decks should just find a way to get rid of Leyline, then they will tear this deck in halves.

And as I mentioned before, you are again diluting your deck.


Btw I love this deck, because It's a good matchup for all my decks now. :) thx lejay

(this is not meaned to provoke anyone, I already played mono U Omni and liked it, but there are better decks in the format atm imho)

This proves that you have never seen OmniHalls in action, have done ANY playtesting at all or have any experience with or against OmniHalls.

[catmint]

OMG Adan. This is really embarrassing. Your post does not tell us anything about the initial question of what card is good vs. omniclash. It tells us only that you are desperately fighting for your believe that "omniclash is invincible and nothing can stop it" by shutting down your ability to think straight and falling back to insults and "dissing" due to a lack of actual argument.



So what? OmniHalls basically plays 8 Show and Tell effects (4 Show and Tell and 4 Dream Halls). Combined with 3 Force and 3 Pacts PLUS access to additional Forces and Pacts from the SB, this gives OmniHall a massive threat density. A few counters more or less are not going to help.

What can you say against such a bullshit statement. Sneak attack also has 8 enablers and 6+ counterspells and is eaten alive by RUG. Sure omniclash has a better RUG matchup for OTHER reasons. Still, if you don't think flusters and REB's from the sideboard matter you are fooling yourself.



This is STUPID, sorry, but there is no other spell or card other than Defense Grid in this matchup that Spell Snares and Ancient Grudges can ever hit. But go on to dilute your deck with useless junk, it will certainly help you to win. NOT.

So little understanding of magic but so loud and rude. Everyone is talking about how important defense grid is for the matchup. You know that even if a card is narrow if it is an answer for THE critical card it is worth playing it. Or would you rather have a lightning bolt against omniclash? Grudge is also very good against esper and shardless BUG. Classic Canadian sideobard staple that got a lot better with defense grid becoming more important.




O-Ring effects are not the problem, it's the mana denial/the taxing effects in general.

Here we go again. "O-ring is not a problem". Please give me a break. Just because you can preemtively spend 3 mana and a card for a 2 mana answer does not mean that it is not a problem. On top of the taxing that is built in O-ring is the next best thing right? If not suggest something for f***ks sake.



This boils down to SneakShow. Still, you would need to have all your mana untapped and enough life. Griselbrand is also stone dead to Trickbind.

"stone dead" - lol Don't know what to say as except that you are delusional. Or maybe you should think twice before flame so much. Enough life is relatively easy as you activate your ancient tombs only if you are casting sneak which usually means winning. Untapped blue mana is also common since you only tap out if you try to win plus there are petals. In the rare situation that you have omni+enter and a spare wish you COULD stop 7 of the 14 cards, but you still have to wish into trickbind and wish does not have split second my friend.



I played against Enchantress with OmniHalls and got locked away by Choke for 15 turns or something. I eventually had 3 Mana to resolve Show and Tell and he put Emrakul into play. Guess what happened? I won nevertheless.

Speaking of rare situations. This statement is not worth the bytes in thesource's database.



This proves that you have never seen OmniHalls in action, have done ANY playtesting at all or have any experience with or against OmniHalls.
The simple ignorance and stupidy of your post does not need further statement defending Sedris' credability, but I'll do it anyway since he unlike me probably does not bother arguing with fools. He plays more legacy in a month than I play in a year which includes testing every deck I can think of. A significant edge in the local meta and a top16 in a GP are the result.

[HoneyT]

So what? OmniHalls basically plays 8 Show and Tell effects (4 Show and Tell and 4 Dream Halls). Combined with 3 Force and 3 Pacts PLUS access to additional Forces and Pacts from the SB, this gives OmniHall a massive threat density. A few counters more or less are not going to help.



This is STUPID, sorry, but there is no other spell or card other than Defense Grid in this matchup that Spell Snares and Ancient Grudges can ever hit. But go on to dilute your deck with useless junk, it will certainly help you to win. NOT.



Again, you are diluting your deck. That tactic might work IF you can maintain a decent clock at the same time. And thanks to Firemind's Foresight, Chains are not a big deal.



O-Ring effects are not the problem, it's the mana denial/the taxing effects in general.



This boils down to SneakShow. Still, you would need to have all your mana untapped and enough life. Griselbrand is also stone dead to Trickbind.



I played against Enchantress with OmniHalls and got locked away by Choke for 15 turns or something. I eventually had 3 Mana to resolve Show and Tell and he put Emrakul into play. Guess what happened? I won nevertheless.



And as I mentioned before, you are again diluting your deck.



This proves that you have never seen OmniHalls in action, have done ANY playtesting at all or have any experience with or against OmniHalls.


Blah, blah, blah.

You fanboys are not helping the discussion at all. This deck is not the be all and end all of combo decks. I've been playing it for quite sometime myself and have excellent results with it. I've taken 1st at 4 local tourneys and 3rd at another. The deck is very powerful; no argument there. That being said, it's still just a combo deck and like any combo deck, will be beaten if people want to beat it. It will not get Show and Tell banned as much as I hate the card.

Decks boarding in answers to beat answers is not diluting their decks. RUG can't beat a Defense Grid. Ancient Grudge is certainly helping the deck win in that case more than their Chain Lightnings. Sideboarding so you aren't stone dead to your opponents' sideboarding is intelligent, not diluting your deck. Nature's Claim is a perfectly reasonable card for Jund to bring in against this deck. Mull to Leyline? Blow it up, shred your hand. Blowing up an Omniscence in response to and Enter the Infinite can certainly win a game as well in a racing situation.

Please think before you make assinine statements.

[Lejay]

Just coming back to give a link to jjflipped's primer on the list he ended up building with emidln :
https://mtgshops.com/posts/omnimaniac/121

I don't agree with it but that may help maintain diversity in kills and punish sometimes people siding blindly in targeted cards (thoughtseize you, not discarding ancient grudge).

Have fun guys.

[Sedris]

So what? OmniHalls basically plays 8 Show and Tell effects (4 Show and Tell and 4 Dream Halls). Combined with 3 Force and 3 Pacts PLUS access to additional Forces and Pacts from the SB, this gives OmniHall a massive threat density. A few counters more or less are not going to help.

Actually you have do see the difference: OmniHalls plays 4 good Show and Tells and 4 very very bad Dream Halls. You have 4 broken combopieces and 4 bad ones, which need at least 2 other cards to win + extra lands for being pierceproof or without them + extra protection, for being not. Against an opponent with just 2 Spell Pierces, you will need at a min 1 Dream Halls 1 Enter the Infinite 1 random blue card 3 Islands 2 Sol Lands + 1 Counterprotection (which could be force so 1 card more), or more business like a second Halls, which is giving your opponent an extra turn, so that he could draw a third disruption. He just needs 2 Pierces + 2 Lands and the rest of his board/deck could be bullshit like stoneforge mystic or such slow clocks, it would be enough if he has an additional disruption and is experienced enough to use it correctly. Yes, this is only an argument against the Dream Halls kill, which is I think the point which makes this deck so weak. Your "Sneak Attack" is just clunkier and needs more cards in hand than each other combo in the whole format, the universe or at the dark side of the moon would need.

Combined with 3 Force and 3 Pacts PLUS access to additional Forces and Pacts from the SB, this gives OmniHall a massive threat density.

No it does not, Force is a bad but flexible protection spell, which needs another card in hand and Pact has to be placed carefully, which probably could give your opponents some extraturns if you do the safer play, most times thats the correct one. If you don't use it carefully, you will die too often on it. I have to critisize Pact of Negation at this point: It increases the "clunkiness" of this deck totally. As a protection spell, in the comboturn, its the best and cheapest one you will find, but outside your comboturn, it gets worse and is strictly worse than protection spells like Duress, Thoughtseize, Force of Will and Flusterstorm for example. You have no chance to react on disruption before your comboturn with PoN, its very good against Tempodecks and its awesome in the combo turn, but it is at all not a good protection spell. Also, its dead against nonblue decks, where FoW isn't. Pact is just infinitely bad like Dream Halls.

So If your combopieces were stolen before you had the time to combo out, pact/force are not increasing the thread density of this deck, they are just making it worse because they somteimes have to either decrease your cards in hand terrible if they want to do anything or just are dead.

A few counters more or less are not going to help.

Omnihalls needs like an average of 3-4 cards in hand +3-5 lands to go off WITHOUT protection against taxing counters/discard or hardcounters. You need so many cards in your hand, that you will just die on a normal clock + 2-3 counters/disruption spells/hatepieces. I mean, you die if your opponent is prepared at least a bit, thats awful.

This is STUPID, sorry, but there is no other spell or card other than Defense Grid in this matchup that Spell Snares and Ancient Grudges can ever hit. But go on to dilute your deck with useless junk, it will certainly help you to win. NOT.

Oh yeah, I better play my 2 Dismembers and Forked bolt instead of the Spell Snares, they won't be useless junk. If you have the slots for situative but game breaking spells (because defense grid is the ONLY thing a good rug pilot cares about against this deck, sometimes omnis hand is partly dead the wohle game, because they have not the time to sculpt a good one against a turn 2 delver + a turn 3 mongoose which gets threshold on turn 4 for example) then just bring them in. Spell Snare is not as useless as Dismember. I'm also sure lejay didn't test against a good rug pilot, because even the guys I know which are playing a bit better (e.g. a guy nicknamed pokpok) are just not that good at legacy too. I don't want to sound in an arrogant wise, but yes maybe I do. I think i playtest more than they do or ever will do and just am a bit more experienced with the format so that I just immediately see if things are getting wrong ;) .



Again, you are diluting your deck. That tactic might work IF you can maintain a decent clock at the same time. And thanks to Firemind's Foresight, Chains are not a big deal.

It may be not diluting if you play multifunctional cards like Golgari Charm for example, which are very good in a bunch of other matchups too. And no, you dont need a decent clock at the same time, this deck just loses against itself (and thats sad, because it plays 12 cantrips and show and tell) because it is playing so many dead cards precombo. As I said, its enough to just disrupt it punctually and then draw into a clock or another punctual disruption to get more time. Without a protected turn 2 Show kill, this deck is sometimes really helpless deceasing on a stupid clock of 1-2 creatures without any disruption (because it has inconsistent ways of protecting like leyline of sanctitiy). Also a turn 2 resolved Chains (which will happen more often than you think, because there are no pierces, just crappy 3-4 fow) tears OmniHalls a bit in halves, if they don't already have th whole combo in their hand.


O-Ring effects are not the problem, it's the mana denial/the taxing effects in general.

Yes, if you would have read my sentence carefully, it would be obvious, that you don't have to quote captain obvious here. The combination is important: If they get 1 Sphere-Permanent online, even Show on omni, + WIsh on Trickbind on Ring + EtI costs like 7 mana altogether. It's obvious, that O-Ring effects are not the main plan against this deck, it was against the other omni variants, I know that this one is like shrouded against this kind of hate but in combination with taxing effects, an Ring-effect effectively costs 2 mana, which could kill you.


This boils down to SneakShow. Still, you would need to have all your mana untapped and enough life. Griselbrand is also stone dead to Trickbind.

Oh yeah, 1 Wish = 7 cards, thats right, but is that enough? Your opponent most likely will have more than 16 life so that in another draw 7 + the cards he already had in his hand, he will be able to counter your Enter and then go crazy. No, Griselbrand is not stone dead to trickbind, one trickbind trades 7, which is great, but won't win you the game against two untapped islands and 2 flusterstorms. Also, your opponent has to be totally retarded, if he is tapping out in this mirror for things like Show and Tell, or if he is cantripping that risky, that he has NOT all his mana untapped. Only Sneak Attack is it worth to start a counter war for, or Show into Sneak, and even this should only have been started if the Sneakshow player surely wins this (which is going to happen often, because the faster combodeck will combo out earlier, and if you have dead cards like pacts in this situation, you just die because of your clunkiness).



I played against Enchantress with OmniHalls and got locked away by Choke for 15 turns or something. I eventually had 3 Mana to resolve Show and Tell and he put Emrakul into play. Guess what happened? I won nevertheless.

Enchantress is totally irrelevant, totally dead caused from bgx decks (deathrite can ping through sol. confinement ant decay is like a swiss army knife against this deck). It is also not a good example for what good Chokedeck is. A good Chokedeck makes turn 1 Thoughtseize, turn 3 Choke or turn 1 Deathrite turn 2 Choke, or plays turn 2 Thalia, it gets forced, and then plays Choke on turn 3. Omnitell sometimes has its nutsdraws to win on turn 3, but most time it has to answer a turn 3 Choke (because it doesnt run Spell Pierces, ONLY 3 FoW and crappy pacts) or has to be that careful with its blue mana, that it will lose some turns on choke. Again, Enchantress is the worst possible example you could bring up for arguing against a choke "lock" because it is a totally dead/bad deck and has neither a fast clock. A deathrite deck will kill you on like turn 5-7 after resolving the choke. If your empirical values against choke are restricted to this, I would not be that insolent and generalising in evaluating my competence, if I were you.



And as I mentioned before, you are again diluting your deck.

As I mentioned before, there are so many dead cards against omnitell, that you will find a way (if you have a well thought out sb and sb plan, where all slots are fitting like a puzzle) to board these cards without having too many dead cards if your opponent has no leyline. Diluting is sometimes the same thing we call "tuning" our decks for defferent metas.


This proves that you have never seen OmniHalls in action, have done ANY playtesting at all or have any experience with or against OmniHalls.

This proves me, that you are just a bit angry, that i critisize this deck so hard, because you think its a good deck (and yeah its really ok) and could not believe that it has many disadvantages against other combo/legacydecks. I also saw Jean-Mary Accart playing this deck in strasbourg (where i went 11th better than him so :P ) where he won some crazy games with this deck and defeated one of the few players about I think who is really good in round 8 or 9 d1 and yeah, this deck does some broken things, and its comboturn is not that hateable as of any other combodeck (where pact is now getting good, because its the best protection spell if you are in your own turn) I already played it at some tournaments and I felt broken with it, but the clunkiness, and not having the ability to commercialize all your spells precombo too (like eti, omni, halls on turn 3, wish on turn 2 most times, and pacts withou the combo) really illuminated me and told me that this is probably NOT THE NEW HULK FLASH and NOT AT LEAST SKRATCHING the strength and the domination of it.

@Adan:

If you have any kind of questions on my thoughts please pm me (because I speak german too) and don't post backgroundless comments. (also my english is so bad, that I better can explain some things in german :P ).

Also Jon Jonsons cantrips rulings are good for everyone who is new to the format or the usage of its cantrips. These rulings are not 100% correct, but good guidelines.

sincerely

stefan

[NesretepNoj]

Played the deck in a small local tournament yesterday. There's not much to tell about the tournament as a whole, except for two situations that came up during round one against White Stax.

On my fourth turn in game one, I go for the Show the Tell. I put in Omniscience and my opponent start smiling, since he puts in main deck Oblivion Ring. In response to the trigger, I play Cunning Wish for Firemind's Foresight. I the use FF to find a Cunning Wish, Impulse, and Brainstorm. Again still in response, I play Impulse and find an EtI. Now, having a win con in hand, I use the second Cunning Wish to find my Trickbind in the board.

Game two he had Trinisphere, Leyline of Sanctity (which was actually good, since I had boarded in my second Intuition and I managed to draw both) and Oblivion ring on my Show and Tell. I didn't recover in time.

In game three, I went for Show and Tell + Omniscience again. For the third time in a row my opponent had Oblivion Ring. However, it wasn't a problem since I had an Intuition in hand. I won by this line: Intuition -> 3x Cunning Wish, Cunning Wish -> Firemind's Foresight, FF -> Second Intuition, Trickbind, and Brainstorm, Intuition -> 3x EtI. Trickbind the trigger. EtI for the win. Note: I play four Cunning Wish so I still had one left in my deck.

So why am I mentioning this; only to put some diversity into the debate about whether to play FF or not. I'm not saying that you absolutely have to, but I really think it gives the deck and edge (especially paired with one or two Impulse).

For reference, here's my latest list:
2 Ancient Tomb
2 City of Traitors
4 Flooded Strand
7 Island
4 Misty Rainforest
3 Pact of Negation
4 Brainstorm
4 Ponder
4 Preordain
1 Impulse
4 Cunning Wish
1 Intuition
4 Show and Tell
4 Dream Halls
4 Force of Will
4 Omniscience
4 Enter the Infinite

Sideboard:
1 Pact of Negation
1 Slaughter Pact
2 Flusterstorm
1 Noxious Revival
2 Sapphire Charm
1 Trickbind
1 Intuition
1 Laboratory Maniac
1 Wipe Away
2 Misdirection
1 Research // Development
1 Firemind's Foresight

I wouldn't call this list optimal for a large tournament, but as long as my local meta hasn't adapted, I continue running the Maniac kill. As soon as they do I'll switch over to the Ants, Eladamri's Call, Emrakul plan.

[emidln]

I've been testing this:

4 Show and Tell
4 Dream Halls
4 Omniscience
4 Enter the Infinite
4 Cunning Wish
1 Intuition

4 Brainstorm
4 Ponder
4 Preordain

1 Flusterstorm
1 Trickbind
3 Force of Will
3 Pact of Negation

4 Polluted Delta
2 Scalding Tarn
2 Misty Rainforest
1 Flooded Strand
1 Underground Sea
5 Island
2 City of Traitors
2 Ancient Tomb

SB: 2 Duress
SB: 1 Thoughtseize
SB: 1 Swamp
SB: 1 Wipe Away
SB: 1 Slaughter Pact
SB: 1 Firemind's Foresight
SB: 1 Intuition
SB: 1 Flusterstorm
SB: 1 Pact of Negation
SB: 1 Research // Development
SB: 1 Laboratory Maniac
SB: 1 Emrakul, the Aeons Torn
SB: 1 Eladamri's Call
SB: 1 Trickbind

I'm playing a mix of Duress/Thoughtseize and a Swamp so I can use my combo hate in other blue matchups (specifically RUG) to pick off REB, Force, and Flusterstorm. I've had better success with 3-4 Duress than 3-4 Defense Grid against RUG (even with Defense Grid resolved, I've had opponents stop me with Flusterstorm + lands since they typically have nothing to Wasteland when I'm mono blue) and Duress/Thoughtseize is far better in the SnT mirror and versus Storm/Belcher. Swamp comes in vs RUG to let me continue to Duress without exposing myself to Wasteland.

I'm playing Emrakul/Call in my sideboard in place of extra bounce spells against Thalia/Teeg. They serve mostly the same purpose, but siding in Emrakul and then having Wish->Call turns out to be slightly easier to assemble (normal combo + spare mana versus normal combo + bounce spell) for me. It has extra uses obviously, but they're fringe enough that without an upswing in Maverick and D&T, I wouldn't consider Emrakul.

Trickbind continues to be a card that you want to draw a lot postboard. Having access to 5 instead of 4 (or 3) is a big deal against certain very common decks.

I cut the 4th Force of Will entirely in order to extend my sideboard with a 2nd Flusterstorm. I'd rather have Flusterstorm in every matchup that I need to counter stuff in that isn't the SnT mirror or Elves. Flusterstorm still even has value in those matchups, just not as much as Force. I'd especially rather have access to a Fluster via cantrips against blue decks packing REB and Flusterstorm postboard versus only finding it via Cunning Wish. Having two in my 75 lets me have 5 when I need to. You likely will want to bring in the 2nd Fluster (it has more value if you draw it) against fast combo along with your Duress effects.

I'm on the fence about the sideboarded Intuition. It's been a long time since I cast it, and I could use the space for other cards.

I'm pretty sure that the people dissing the Maniac kill have never actually lost due to Maniac. The theoretical vulnerabilities require your opponent to have 4 split second spells in hand, and with my list, would still require that the opponent can answer an Emrakul attacking 2+ times after being Duressed and Thoughtseized.

[Adan]

OMG Adan. This is really embarrassing. Your post does not tell us anything about the initial question of what card is good vs. omniclash. It tells us only that you are desperately fighting for your believe that "omniclash is invincible and nothing can stop it" by shutting down your ability to think straight and falling back to insults and "dissing" due to a lack of actual argument.

Alright...


What can you say against such a bullshit statement. Sneak attack also has 8 enablers and 6+ counterspells and is eaten alive by RUG. Sure omniclash has a better RUG matchup for OTHER reasons. Still, if you don't think flusters and REB's from the sideboard matter you are fooling yourself.

...

So little understanding of magic but so loud and rude. Everyone is talking about how important defense grid is for the matchup. You know that even if a card is narrow if it is an answer for THE critical card it is worth playing it. Or would you rather have a lightning bolt against omniclash? Grudge is also very good against esper and shardless BUG. Classic Canadian sideobard staple that got a lot better with defense grid becoming more important.

The thing is, Canadian Thresh has only a few cards to axe from the maindeck to bring in REBs and Flusterstorms. The most recent list I played was the one of Tomoharu Saito. In that list, I'd most likely side out Goyfs and the Forked Bolts as you cannot afford to tap down 2 mana for a 3/4 vanilla in this matchup where a single spell ends the game.

Postboard you somehow want the cards in the Forked Bolt/Dismember slots gone (which should free up 2 spells), the Goyfs (maybe keep 1?) which gives you 3-4 slots. I am uncertain about the Lightning Bolts as cutting these will slow you clock against the deck, yet 3 damage to the dome is not the most productive thing, I agree.

Postboard you probably want 3-4 Pierces, 2 REBs, 1-2 Flusterstorms and you might want to have Surgical Extractions to mess with Personal Tutor or Intuition. These are the cards that actually mess with the acutal gameplan of the deck. Ancient Grudge is versatile but just handles Defense Grid. And it's poor at that as you have the same problem as the Goyf: you tap 2 lands during your own turn. This reduces the amount of 1-mana counters that you can cast during the following turn, making it hard to fend off Show and Tell.

But if your opening hand does not involve a 1st Turn creature with Daze-backup and more counters, you will be having a hard time. This is the main problem with CanThresh at the moment, there are quite a bunch of matchups where you need the ideal ratio of beatsticks/disruption.


Here we go again. "O-ring is not a problem". Please give me a break. Just because you can preemtively spend 3 mana and a card for a 2 mana answer does not mean that it is not a problem. On top of the taxing that is built in O-ring is the next best thing right? If not suggest something for f***ks sake.

What are you talking about? If you cast Show and Tell into Omniscience and the opponent drops an O-Ring to it, you Cunning Wish for FF in response and get CWish/Intuition, Trickbind & BS/Fluster with it. Maybe this is just an communication issue, but I fail to see which taxing effect you mean. As long as there is no Thorn of Amethyst/Thalia or whatever, a single Oblivion Ring does not save you.


"stone dead" - lol Don't know what to say as except that you are delusional. Or maybe you should think twice before flame so much. Enough life is relatively easy as you activate your ancient tombs only if you are casting sneak which usually means winning. Untapped blue mana is also common since you only tap out if you try to win plus there are petals. In the rare situation that you have omni+enter and a spare wish you COULD stop 7 of the 14 cards, but you still have to wish into trickbind and wish does not have split second my friend.

Yeah sure, you don't have to tap your blue mana when playing SneakShow because your hands are always perfect and you don't need to cast Ponders and Preordains to find Griselbrand, spells that win the game or save you. I call bullshit on that.

Furthermore there is - even though it's rarely going to happen - the possibility of having the Trickbind in your hand already. In this case, you would have to spend 14 right away without passing priority as you get it (because Trickbind permits you to activate Griselbrand a 2nd time after the first 7 cards are countered). Wipe Away can be even more devastating if it's the first spell cast after both players have put in their permanents with SnT (Omni vs. Grisel). And I highly doubt that your hand always consists of a minimum of 3 counters.


The simple ignorance and stupidy of your post does not need further statement defending Sedris' credability, but I'll do it anyway since he unlike me probably does not bother arguing with fools. He plays more legacy in a month than I play in a year which includes testing every deck I can think of. A significant edge in the local meta and a top16 in a GP are the result.

So? Testing every deck doesn't mean anything. I have been playing a huge variety of decks as well. And there are decks that I absolutely suck with. Even though you know the matchup inside-out and no matter how good a matchup is for you, you still have statistical outliers (which in reality means you either lose games to insane nutdraws on the other side of the table OR your deck bricks and you fail to find a 3rd manasource in the next 14 cards despite cantripping like a god).

The only reason why I sympathize with emidln's OmniHalls build is that it seems to be the most resilient Show and Tell-based deck against all kinds of hate. It does not lose to the random 1-of Detention Sphere the Miracle-player might have in his hand, it is almost immune to Wasteland, it's not hurt by a cleverly placed Phyrexian Revoker and/or Pithing Needle and it can ignore Ensnaring Bridge for example. These things can cost you games.

My post has nothing to do with being a fanboy, but you cannot deny that it is way more difficult to hate OmniHalls efficiently. And some wierd SB strategies are not going to change this fact. I have played 2 tournaments now with OmniHalls and after every game, my opponents usually wanted to evaluate their Sb choices against OmniHalls with me. And so far there was no card that can really break OmniHalls neck.

The worst cards I've seen so far were Chains of Mephistopheles (however, with 4 CWish and 2 bounce sided in, you have 6 outs). Preordain and Ponder still work as you can basically convert dead cards (lands, redundant Omnis or Halls) to hopefully more useful stuff (one of the 6 outs) and Nether Void. In that case you most likely have to pass the turn, but the controller of Nether Void is probably not able to do anything himself in that situation whereas any spell you want to cast costs 3 mana. This still makes it possible to simply resolve EtI and win.

Flusterstorm certainly is the best card, but efficient counterspells are - in my opinion - still not perfect against a deck that only needs to resolve a single card to end the game if you have no way of generating cardadvantage.
When I played RUG I lost to insane topdecks from the SneakShow player (I played Surgical Extraction on his Show and Tells, he topdecks Sneak Attack, g3 exactly the other way around for example). This is still evidence that decks like SneakShow and OmniHalls have a high threat density.

A hand with 3 gamewinners (permutate any combination of Halls/SnT and/or Sneak/SnT as you wish) is - in some matchups - easily as good as gamewinner plus double-backup. This opens up way more combinations that a deck such as Miracles or CanThresh cannot efficiently deal with.

[zulander]

I may be an idiot or something, but let's say you go off and with the Lab Maniac in play and you draw a card, how do you win if an opponent plays Abrupt Decay targeting your Lab Maniac?

[apple713]

Has anyone discovered an instant speed win once omniscience hits play? ETI seems to be required or a cunning wish for RTA and without stacking your deck you cant ensure you will win the clashes.

[Koby]

I may be an idiot or something, but let's say you go off and with the Lab Maniac in play and you draw a card, how do you win if an opponent plays Abrupt Decay targeting your Lab Maniac?

You could respond again with another Brainstorm; this assumes you already have your deck in your hands and access to ~10 cantrips.

[zulander]

You could respond again with another Brainstorm; this assumes you already have your deck in your hands and access to ~10 cantrips.

Okay, that's what I was missing. Thanks.

[Koby]

Has anyone discovered an instant speed win once omniscience hits play? ETI seems to be required or a cunning wish for RTA and without stacking your deck you cant ensure you will win the clashes.

Show & Tell -> Omniscience
Cunning Wish -> Firemind's Foresight
FF -> Brainstorm, Twincast, Cunning Wish
Cunning Wish, Twincast Cunning Wish
CW #1 -> False Cure
CW #2 -> Beacon of Immortality

Cannot beat Leyline of Sanctity.

[apple713]

Show & Tell -> Omniscience
Cunning Wish -> Firemind's Foresight
FF -> Brainstorm, Twincast, Cunning Wish
Cunning Wish, Twincast Cunning Wish
CW #1 -> False Cure
CW #2 -> Beacon of Immortality

Cannot beat Leyline of Sanctity.

Neither does release the ants... I like that idea tho. Any others?


Also, this display of chain of spells is really really helpful when describing how to get out of situations and I wish we had a collection of them somewhere. It really helps me because I'm fairly new to the deck.

[Koby]

I mean sure, Searing Wind + Twincast, or anything that could be used to deal lethal but they all generally eat valuable sideboard slots and required Firemind's Foresight to begin with.

[Tammit67]

Has anyone discovered an instant speed win once omniscience hits play? ETI seems to be required or a cunning wish for RTA and without stacking your deck you cant ensure you will win the clashes.

If you have cunning wish + brainstorm you can probably stack your deck just fine, putting back the EtI you were going to cast.


Also, this display of chain of spells is really really helpful when describing how to get out of situations and I wish we had a collection of them somewhere. It really helps me because I'm fairly new to the deck.

Does it have a trigger? Add a cunning wish for trickbind.

Did they blow up your Omni in response to EtI? You go off the next turn with your deck as your hand. You can cast EtI again to put the card necessary for clash back on top or go about business as usual with the FF kill.

Extipate on EtI when trying to clash? You should board the emrakyl back in and put it on top instead for next game.

Managed to resolve omni but can't pay for pact? Trickbind saves you in your upkeep.

I don't know what else you could have, just imagine what they can do and what needs to be done in response. It's not like doomsday piles or anything but thinking about requirements shouldn't be that hard :)

[KobeBryan]

i was just playtesting this deck on cockatrice

the opponent was playing affinity with like 6 creatures and 3 lands. he had over 20 life. I had 1 life. I blocked with my laboratory maniac and it is in the graveyard.

I show and tell a omniscience. bring in Enter the infinite. bring in Emrukhal.

I hit him to 5 he sac'ed 3 lands and 3 creatures. I still lost.

Is there another way to win from the wish board. I am using a list similar to the OP's without Ants.

[menace13]

i was just playtesting this deck on cockatrice

the opponent was playing affinity with like 6 creatures and 3 lands. he had over 20 life. I had 1 life. I blocked with my laboratory maniac and it is in the graveyard.

I show and tell a omniscience. bring in Enter the infinite. bring in Emrukhal.

I hit him to 5 he sac'ed 3 lands and 3 creatures. I still lost.

Is there another way to win from the wish board. I am using a list similar to the OP's without Ants.
Depending on your board, Wish gets Bounce, Removal, and 3rd Bounce/Removal, or Noxious Revival.

[KobeBryan]

Call helps me get Emrukhal. Is there a way to get a creature into the library or hand from outside the game.

Sometimes I feel that having the laboratory as a second win con is necessary.

[Koby]

Is there another way to win from the wish board. I am using a list similar to the OP's without Ants.


Show & Tell -> Omniscience
Cunning Wish -> Firemind's Foresight
FF -> Brainstorm, Twincast, Cunning Wish
Cunning Wish, Twincast Cunning Wish
CW #1 -> False Cure
CW #2 -> Beacon of Immortality

Cannot beat Leyline of Sanctity.

[KobeBryan]

thats a lot of steps.

That means u gotta run twincast in your MD.

[apple713]

Call helps me get Emrukhal. Is there a way to get a creature into the library or hand from outside the game.

Sometimes I feel that having the laboratory as a second win con is necessary.

research // development is the card you are looking for

also, noxious revival is the card that would have helped the person who had their lab maniac killed. it goes on top, you draw it with ponder, you brainstorm ftw GG

[KobeBryan]

research // development is the card you are looking for

also, noxious revival is the card that would have helped the person who had their lab maniac killed. it goes on top, you draw it with ponder, you brainstorm ftw GG

Thanks

My next question, in the primer, the OP says to board out Emrukal against RUG.

What is the win condition?

[Tammit67]

Thanks

My next question, in the primer, the OP says to board out Emrukal against RUG.

What is the win condition?

Release the ants. What did you think?

[KobeBryan]

Release the ants. What did you think?

That card is easy to blank though with lands and cantrips

[phazonmutant]

That card is easy to blank though with lands and cantrips

Go on...

[Koby]

I'm enjoying the last 20 posts immensely. It's like a flood gate opened up somewhere.

[KobeBryan]

I'm enjoying the last 20 posts immensely. It's like a flood gate opened up somewhere.

oh give me a break...trying to learn from this deck.

[Koby]

oh give me a break...trying to learn from this deck.

Reading is tech. 98% of the strategy you're looking for is in the opening post. The remaining 2% is an understanding of Instants on the Stack.

[menace13]

Reading is tech. 98% of the strategy you're looking for is in the opening post. The remaining 2% is an understanding of Instants on the Stack.
Koby vs Kobe?

[KobeBryan]

Reading is tech. 98% of the strategy you're looking for is in the opening post. The remaining 2% is an understanding of Instants on the Stack.

Its not like i'm asking about the show and tell omniscience.

Knowing how to deal with the sideboard choices is hard as hell.

[menace13]

Its not like i'm asking about the show and tell omniscience.

Knowing how to deal with the sideboard choices is hard as hell.
@Kobe- sorry wasnt clear in my writing. Earier in your affinty match when he had 3 creatures left after emmy swung in. You use your Wishes to bounce and remove the remaining creatures. I you had 3 Wishes you could use the 3rd one to grab Revival and use one of the 2 earlier bounce/removal spells again. Or ez way to Revival into lab man win on spot w cantrips. You had deck in hand= they really can't win.

Cantrips and Lands will not blank your Ants Clash if you put back a card- 10/12cc>anything in most Legacy decks- after you Enter Infinite. If you're not Entering then stack w Brainstorm or Revival if there is a target. FoW on top is often enough against most non-fow decks even.

Winning from the board needs Research for Lab Man, or Wish for Ants. Lab Man doesn't need Omni, but you could play it anyway since youre using Enter Infinite. Wish for Ants doesn't require Entering with some manipulation. Easily played into by keeping high CC buried on top with cantrips and sandbagging Brainstorms.

Emidln writes good stuff here http://www.mtgthesource.com/forums/showthread.php?24583-Deck-Omniscience&p=718270&viewfull=1#post718270

[Tammit67]

That card is easy to blank though with lands and cantrips

In what way? You have omni out. Cast inter the infinite, putting back another copy of enter the infinite. Cast ants. You win the clash, repeat. They dont have a 12 drop in their deck, right?

I'm not trying to patronize you, but you gotta at least read what Lejay posted and understand it :)

[KobeBryan]

In what way? You have omni out. Cast inter the infinite, putting back another copy of enter the infinite. Cast ants. You win the clash, repeat. They dont have a 12 drop in their deck, right?

I'm not trying to patronize you, but you gotta at least read what Lejay posted and understand it :)

OH DUH...i forgot your decked. i never really used Ant yet with the testing

[catmint]

Adan, first of all thanks for coming back to a subject oriented discussion after my very emotional post. :smile
Just 2 comments.



...Ancient Grudge is versatile but just handles Defense Grid. And it's poor at that as you have the same problem as the Goyf: you tap 2 lands during your own turn. This reduces the amount of 1-mana counters that you can cast during the following turn, making it hard to fend off Show and Tell.

Well if you don't tap 2 for Ancient Grudge you might not be able to cast any counters in your opponents turn right? Defense Grid is the key card and the ability to handle it outside spell pierce/snare/force is very good. The boarding space in RUG is not an issue since you can potentially board out 6-7 removal and the 1-2 worst creatures.



What are you talking about? If you cast Show and Tell into Omniscience and the opponent drops an O-Ring to it, you Cunning Wish for FF in response and get CWish/Intuition, Trickbind & BS/Fluster with it. Maybe this is just an communication issue, but I fail to see which taxing effect you mean. As long as there is no Thorn of Amethyst/Thalia or whatever, a single Oblivion Ring does not save you.

Yes, I did not play the FF version so far. Anyway what I meant is that additionally to those taxing effects (Thalia) o-ring might be the best disruption for those wheeny decks, but not so sure anymore: canonist can also be very annoying.

[Adan]

Adan, first of all thanks for coming back to a subject oriented discussion after my very emotional post. :smile
Just 2 comments.

I never left. ;-P


Well if you don't tap 2 for Ancient Grudge you might not be able to cast any counters in your opponents turn right? Defense Grid is the key card and the ability to handle it outside spell pierce/snare/force is very good. The boarding space in RUG is not an issue since you can potentially board out 6-7 removal and the 1-2 worst creatures.

Yes, but I would never board in Ancient Grudge in the dark against OmniHalls as it's never guaranteed that Defense Grid is played in the 75 (and since I am currently doing fine with emidln's build which doesn't run Grid I also don't even think it's necessary).

If I were on CanThresh, I would try do prevent Defense Grid hitting the table with Force/Pierce/whatever instead of boarding in Grudges that can be dead. In a perfect world you can still Brainstorm-Fetch or Brainstorm-Thought Scour to convert it into real cards, but that's also not guaranteed.


Yes, I did not play the FF version so far. Anyway what I meant is that additionally to those taxing effects (Thalia) o-ring might be the best disruption for those wheeny decks, but not so sure anymore: canonist can also be very annoying.

I absolutely agree on that, that's basically why I did not understand your outburst on that in the first place, a few pages back I reported that I got slain by DnT because of taxing effects and everything (1st Turn Vial with Port, 2nd Turn Port my land, 3rd Turn Thalia and Karakas, Port my Land again, 4th Turn vial in Mangara to have the Karakas-fuckery going and exiling an Island every turn in addition to tapping one over and over again). It was PERFECT for him and I had not a chance.

I only has the impression that during the last pages a few people still believe that single cards can be gamebreaking against OmniHalls. That's not true. As I described, having the random 1of Detention Sphere when playing Miracles was pretty good against the UR OmniTell build. And it was also good against SneakShow if the pilot did not drop a Sneak Attack and spawns a big guy in resp to the CiP-trigger.

When I played UR OmniTell, I had people mulligan for O.Rings for example. Sometimes they needed a long time to get into the game, but for the whole period I was not able to win. This wouldn't work against OmniHalls.

[LOurs]

I'm also sure lejay didn't test against a good rug pilot, because even the guys I know which are playing a bit better (e.g. a guy nicknamed pokpok) are just not that good at legacy too. I don't want to sound in an arrogant wise, but yes maybe I do. I think i playtest more than they do or ever will do and just am a bit more experienced with the format so that I just immediately see if things are getting wrong ;) .

Please let us know you recent results in 300+ players tournament please. Then we could evaluate better what brillant player you are and how precious your personnal feeling are.
I'm not telling that you are or not a good player, but I loled a lot when I read that because you're telling about players who actualy placed their deck in top 4 of the biggest European Legacy Event, 2 years in a row, respectively with Doomsday & Omni. So please, who are you ?
Because when you say "I playtest more than they do or ever will do and just am a bit more experienced with the format".
You could to not be agree with them, but if you're impliying the skill level, then you need at least results to make your entire argumentary a little bit more legit.

[Darksteel]

Went 2-1 in a really small local Legacy tournament this week, beating Shardless BUG and U/R Delver.

I lost to Enchantress that was playing maindeck Choke. (Is that common?) I countered it game 1, but he also had the Oblivion Ring for the Show and Tell I played. Game 2, he was clearly sandbagging more Oblivion Rings, so I had to dig for either Cunning Wish or Dream Halls and couldn't find either. Any tips on fighting Enchantress with this deck, Lejay?

Also, how do you play the mirror? I'm guessing Show and Tell is risky, so it's go for Dream Halls?

[sauce]

It seems like vs decks w/ annoying permanents to put in off S&T post board you are just on the Dream Halls plan. Then you also need to beat FOW & REB/Pyroblast from Miracles.
It could be a tough matchup if you don't draw permission or cunning wish into trickbind...

[apple713]

It seems like vs decks w/ annoying permanents to put in off S&T post board you are just on the Dream Halls plan. Then you also need to beat FOW & REB/Pyroblast from Miracles.
It could be a tough matchup if you don't draw permission or cunning wish into trickbind...

the deck has the potential to win at instant speed via cunning wish, so playing around an o ring trigger or a vensur trigger isnt terrible. The problem is resolving S&T in that match. This deck offers little against that except Defense grid which has been mentioned to be effective but idk if its effective enough.

[sauce]

the deck has the potential to win at instant speed via cunning wish, so playing around an o ring trigger or a vensur trigger isnt terrible. The problem is resolving S&T in that match. This deck offers little against that except Defense grid which has been mentioned to be effective but idk if its effective enough.

It seems like maybe Forcing the SDT/CB is correct in that matchup, because they can cack a lot of your cantrips. I let both resolve but I regretted it down the line.

[apple713]

It seems like maybe Forcing the SDT/CB is correct in that matchup, because they can cack a lot of your cantrips. I let both resolve but I regretted it down the line.

CB seems like the better choice if you hve to choose 1, since they still have a lot of 1 drops in their deck to randomly flip without top.

[sauce]

CB seems like the better choice if you hve to choose 1, since they still have a lot of 1 drops in their deck to randomly flip without top.

Top is pretty bad too though since it offers them a lot of card selection and the games usually go long unless you have the nuts.

[KobeBryan]

Am i doing something wrong? I can't beat an esper stoneblade or a deathblade deck.

The discard and the counters become overwhelming.

[Koby]

Am i doing something wrong? I can't beat an esper stoneblade or a deathblade deck.

The discard and the counters become overwhelming.

Try slowing down or speeding up. Try using Brainstorm more defensively.

[KobeBryan]

Try slowing down or speeding up. Try using Brainstorm more defensively.

Ya tried that too...even going as far as their turn BS just to hide a show and tell and ETI.

But the problem gets worse game 2.

The opponent, i swear, kept casting discard spells 3 turns in a row. At one point, I finally got an omniscience on board, but I had to keep drawing from topdeck for the win con. That was my only victory.

[Koby]

Ya tried that too...even going as far as their turn BS just to hide a show and tell and ETI.

But the problem gets worse game 2.

The opponent, i swear, kept casting discard spells 3 turns in a row. At one point, I finally got an omniscience on board, but I had to keep drawing from topdeck for the win con. That was my only victory.

I assume you're already boarding into Leyline of Sanctity; in which case, you should mulligan more aggressively to find it.
If you're going all that, and still not coming up with a victory; not sure how we can help. Practice until you're blue in the face.

[phazonmutant]

I assume you're already boarding into Leyline of Sanctity; in which case, you should mulligan more aggressively to find it.
If you're going all that, and still not coming up with a victory; not sure how we can help. Practice until you're blue in the face.

Or blue in the hair. It seems to help AJ Sacher win.

[KobeBryan]

I assume you're already boarding into Leyline of Sanctity; in which case, you should mulligan more aggressively to find it.
If you're going all that, and still not coming up with a victory; not sure how we can help. Practice until you're blue in the face.

against UB would you suggest going Defense grid or discard.

I mean you can't dilute your deck so much where you are boarding in 6-7 cards.

[Koby]

against UB would you suggest going Defense grid or discard.

I mean you can't dilute your deck so much where you are boarding in 6-7 cards.

Not enough info. Does not parse. Try being more detailed in your scenarios if you want focused advice.

[KobeBryan]

Not enough info. Does not parse. Try being more detailed in your scenarios if you want focused advice.

I'm using the stock list from the OP.

The opponent, was playing esperblade, the non-deathblade version. So that player has 4-5 discard spells and 4 FOW and I believe another 3 spell pierces and a counterspell.

The next opponent plays the deathblade version with 5 discard and 3 FOW MD.. 1 FOW from the side, 1 more discard from the side, and 1-2 flusterstorms.

How would you go about handling these decks.

[Koby]

Esper stoneblade.

-1 Emrakul (less worst and they run Jaces)
-1 Gitaxian Probe (Classic SB out when you go up to 4 LLoS)
-2 FoW

+3 LloS
+1 PoN (You don’t need to counter sorcery speed spells most of the time)

If your opponent is siding in a lot of hatebears (canonist, meddlin mage…) adapt by playing more fows and siding in at least the sapphire charm, maybe more.
If you’re opponent is really heavy on discard+ surgicals consider keeping the Emrakul (and therefore play less PoN).



And I'm done. If you can't bother to read, then we can't help you.

[KobeBryan]

And I'm done. If you can't bother to read, then we can't help you.

Tried that...still getting my ass whooped by these decks.

[Lejay]

Reading your posts from last page, I would advise you to play another deck. That is probably the only way to solve the problem.

[Anusien]

Time will allow you beat both their discard spells (if you don't find Leyline) and their taxing counters. You have more hard counters than they do. They're not a particularly fast clock.

[Adan]

It seems like vs decks w/ annoying permanents to put in off S&T post board you are just on the Dream Halls plan. Then you also need to beat FOW & REB/Pyroblast from Miracles.
It could be a tough matchup if you don't draw permission or cunning wish into trickbind...

Which annoying permanents could Miracles bring in except for Detention Sphere?

Miracles is probably the easiest matchup out there. It has no clock and has to deal with a high threat density. You need to resolve 1 spell to win (SnT into Omni/Halls or Dream Halls itself into EtI). Hence, they have to counter everything.

Without a clock you can basically do whatever you want and sculpt your hand to a perfect winning hand. Except for Jace and CBalance, Miracles is also not able to generate CA. And even Jace doesn't really hinder you from winning, CBalance does (at least it blocks your cantrips which is annoying).

Against Miracles, I was basically slamming my SnTs right away, baiting counters. Then the DreamHalls with double-backup was too much. Both g1 and g2 went this way.

However, discard strategies, Death and Taxes and Reanimator-strategies (Animator & Dredge) are good against OmniHalls. Since these decks are prominent, DreamHalls probably won't dominate the format, but it's still probably the most resilient SnT deck one can play.

[phazonmutant]

Which annoying permanents could Miracles bring in except for Detention Sphere?

Miracles is probably the easiest matchup out there. It has no clock and has to deal with a high threat density. You need to resolve 1 spell to win (SnT into Omni/Halls or Dream Halls itself into EtI). Hence, they have to counter everything.

Without a clock you can basically do whatever you want and sculpt your hand to a perfect winning hand. Except for Jace and CBalance, Miracles is also not able to generate CA. And even Jace doesn't really hinder you from winning, CBalance does (at least it blocks your cantrips which is annoying).

Against Miracles, I was basically slamming my SnTs right away, baiting counters. Then the DreamHalls with double-backup was too much. Both g1 and g2 went this way.

However, discard strategies, Death and Taxes and Reanimator-strategies (Animator & Dredge) are good against OmniHalls. Since these decks are prominent, DreamHalls probably won't dominate the format, but it's still probably the most resilient SnT deck one can play.

It sounds like either the Miracles players you played against were bad or had bad lists. What hate permanents do we care about? Only the deadly trifecta of Counterbalance, Ethersworn Canonist, and Meddling Mage (with a light seasoning of Oblivion Ring). Even the bad lists have some Geists for a quick clock.

I've tested a lot against Miracles and I feel like it's unfavorable (although not unwinnable). Sometimes they just don't have the right numbers on top, and hopefully you can keep the bears off the table. With all the hate permanents they can bring to bear off Show and Tell, I think the correct plan is to focus on resolving Dream Halls.

[sauce]

Which annoying permanents could Miracles bring in except for Detention Sphere?

Miracles is probably the easiest matchup out there. It has no clock and has to deal with a high threat density. You need to resolve 1 spell to win (SnT into Omni/Halls or Dream Halls itself into EtI). Hence, they have to counter everything.

Without a clock you can basically do whatever you want and sculpt your hand to a perfect winning hand. Except for Jace and CBalance, Miracles is also not able to generate CA. And even Jace doesn't really hinder you from winning, CBalance does (at least it blocks your cantrips which is annoying).

Against Miracles, I was basically slamming my SnTs right away, baiting counters. Then the DreamHalls with double-backup was too much. Both g1 and g2 went this way.

However, discard strategies, Death and Taxes and Reanimator-strategies (Animator & Dredge) are good against OmniHalls. Since these decks are prominent, DreamHalls probably won't dominate the format, but it's still probably the most resilient SnT deck one can play.

d.sphere and venser are annoying, post board oring and white leylines.
i basically was not sure if i should counter cb and i let it stick because i was pretty certain w/ only a few 3 drops they are not going to get there but the problem is also our cantrips being dead and them having red blasts. it's hard to get all the pacts/fows when your cantrips dont resolve i guess.
they can also put FoW on top for dream halls.
g1 is easy but it gets worse g2 and g3. I should have countered cb or top, I am leaning towards cb.

[catmint]

I would not call Miracle the easiest matchup, but of course the only clock that they really have is the CB lock. Counterbalance is more than annoying though in my experience. Not cantripping can be gamebreaking and they can counter cmc3 & cmc5, but much easier is cmc0, so defense grid does not always help you if they can counter once and then use counterbalance to counter your counters. Also don't forget the popular maindeck vendilion cliques and venser.

But coming back to the question of Leyline versus Esper. It is a really easy decision against them KobeBryan. Their thoughtseize with snapcaster for thoughtseize and vendilion clique is the best way for them to win so the Leyline gets the nod over defense Grid. They still have at least 4 FoW, 3 Spell Pierce and many people (including me) 2 Flusterstorm so some time has to be dedicated to sculpt a good hand including significant backup but this is easier than beating the discard. The newest deathblade builds do have the mana ramp for a turn 2 vindicate on leyline to use their discard in turn 3 or make other strong proactive plays like a confidant to put significant pressure on us in terms of drawing too much hate and having a much faster clock than the old builds. As I said before what makes decks like esper so strong is their ability to adapt and their consistency. So if I would play esper expecting omniclash I would have a plan to win through a Leyline and surely a positive matchup. What omniclash can do very good is punish people for coming not prepared but if an experienced pilot comes prepared and you are not a master of omniclash yourself KobeBryan don’t be surprised to get your ass kicked. What you can do is practice more and make the appropriate deck choice. I never play any show variant (and optimally any deck) which people prepare for. If a fast Delver deck packs counters and discard life gets really hard for any combo deck – even despite leyline. Golgari charm is pretty good right now and as well.



However, discard strategies, Death and Taxes and Reanimator-strategies (Animator & Dredge) are good against OmniHalls. Since these decks are prominent, DreamHalls probably won't dominate the format, but it's still probably the most resilient SnT deck one can play.
According to the Mai DTB matchup Reanimator, dredge and death and taxes (on ranks 12 - 14) are not really popular. Discard is very popular with Esper, Jund and Team America raking 2, 4 and 6. In terms of beeing most resilient to manadenial and taxing counters I agree with omniclash beeing better than sneak and show. But sneak and show packing 2-3 misdirections and 2-3 pierces maindeck plus the 4 leylines does have way more resilience against discard. It can also just slam down a sneak attack and cantrip and does not need to assemble a 3 card combo in the hand.

[mith]

Played omnimaniac at a small local tournament. Went 3-1.

Match 1 vs UR Delver (2-0): Pushed through the counterspells and won both games. Never felt like I was in a tight spot, despite the constant heat.

Match 2 vs. mono-W hatebears (1-2): Games 1 and 3 I could not fight my way past double Port and double hatebear (Canonist and Thalia). I found myself able to set up a way to deal with one (Canonist) but couldn't work my way past Thalia's taxing effects with two Ports locking me down.

Match 3 vs. UR Stasis (2-0): Game 1 was pretty standard, Game 2 I lost a blowout counterbattle with 5 counterspells ending up on the stack. Followed with a S&T a couple turns later (after paying off Pact) and won.

Overall, solid and redundant combo with a great manabase. I ran LoS in the Board and plan to keep it, but will find three spaces for Defense Grid.

Does anyone know of a way that this deck can deal with two hatebears at once? Besides moving Sapphire Charm maindeck and hoping to draw it while wishing for slaughterpact...

[alphastryk]

...
Does anyone know of a way that this deck can deal with two hatebears at once? Besides moving Sapphire Charm maindeck and hoping to draw it while wishing for slaughterpact...

Rushing River

[KobeBryan]

Played omnimaniac at a small local tournament. Went 3-1.

Match 1 vs UR Delver (2-0): Pushed through the counterspells and won both games. Never felt like I was in a tight spot, despite the constant heat.

Match 2 vs. mono-W hatebears (1-2): Games 1 and 3 I could not fight my way past double Port and double hatebear (Canonist and Thalia). I found myself able to set up a way to deal with one (Canonist) but couldn't work my way past Thalia's taxing effects with two Ports locking me down.

Match 3 vs. UR Stasis (2-0): Game 1 was pretty standard, Game 2 I lost a blowout counterbattle with 5 counterspells ending up on the stack. Followed with a S&T a couple turns later (after paying off Pact) and won.

Overall, solid and redundant combo with a great manabase. I ran LoS in the Board and plan to keep it, but will find three spaces for Defense Grid.

Does anyone know of a way that this deck can deal with two hatebears at once? Besides moving Sapphire Charm maindeck and hoping to draw it while wishing for slaughterpact...


You don't really need to move anything to md if you have cunning wish.

Wipeaway and noxious revival are the key cards to deal with bears

[NesretepNoj]

Does anyone know of a way that this deck can deal with two hatebears at once? Besides moving Sapphire Charm maindeck and hoping to draw it while wishing for slaughterpact...

A friend of mine suggested Teferi's Realm. I haven't tested it, and it seems a bit clunky, but should be really flexible since it can answer all kinds of permanent based hate; even in multiples and those protected by Mother of Runes.

[phazonmutant]

A friend of mine suggested Teferi's Realm. I haven't tested it, and it seems a bit clunky, but should be really flexible since it can answer all kinds of permanent based hate; even in multiples and those protected by Mother of Runes.

Oh wow. Yes. Finally, a deck that can really abuse the 3x Teferi's Reich I have. That's pretty sweet.

[mith]

Rushing River is an ineresting option...expensive, but it does the job

Yes, I could try to setup two wishes for Wipe Away and then a Revival, and time it to go off...but that's going to require drawing two Wishes plus my combo pieces...no the easiest proposition.

Teferi's Realm is a great choice...but the deck would need to bring in 3x copies, and there's not enough room in the board to support that unless we cut DGrid. On the other hand, running Realm means that you can basically negate any counter besides FoW and Daze, so perhaps that works...

[teonsw]

You don't really need to move anything to md if you have cunning wish.

Wipeaway and noxious revival are the key cards to deal with bears


I am a little perplexed with this. Noxious revival only effects the graveyard, so why would you bring it in against hate bears?

[sauce]

i could see it to maybe rebuy the rushing river?

[HoneyT]

I am a little perplexed with this. Noxious revival only effects the graveyard, so why would you bring it in against hate bears?

It's already been established that he should probably be on a different deck.

On another note, I took another 1st place at the LGS last night with the following list:

// Lands
3 Ancient Tomb
2 City of Traitors
7 Island
3 Misty Rainforest
1 Polluted Delta
4 Scalding Tarn

// Creatures
1 Emrakul, the Aeons Torn

// Spells
4 Brainstorm
3 Cunning Wish
4 Dream Halls
4 Enter the Infinite
4 Force of Will
1 Intuition
4 Omniscience
2 Pact of Negation
4 Ponder
4 Preordain
4 Show and Tell
1 Trickbind

// Sideboard
SB: 1 Echoing Truth
SB: 1 Eladamri's Call
SB: 1 Firemind's Foresight
SB: 2 Flusterstorm
SB: 4 Leyline of Sanctity
SB: 1 Noxious Revival
SB: 1 Pact of Negation
SB: 1 Release the Ants
SB: 1 Slaughter Pact
SB: 1 Trickbind
SB: 1 Wipe Away

Played against Spanish Inquisition, Affinity, Nic Fit, and UWr Miracle Blade.

[KobeBryan]

It's already been established that he should probably be on a different deck.

On another note, I took another 1st place at the LGS last night with the following list:

// Lands
3 Ancient Tomb
2 City of Traitors
7 Island
3 Misty Rainforest
1 Polluted Delta
4 Scalding Tarn

// Creatures
1 Emrakul, the Aeons Torn

// Spells
4 Brainstorm
3 Cunning Wish
4 Dream Halls
4 Enter the Infinite
4 Force of Will
1 Intuition
4 Omniscience
2 Pact of Negation
4 Ponder
4 Preordain
4 Show and Tell
1 Trickbind

// Sideboard
SB: 1 Echoing Truth
SB: 1 Eladamri's Call
SB: 1 Firemind's Foresight
SB: 2 Flusterstorm
SB: 4 Leyline of Sanctity
SB: 1 Noxious Revival
SB: 1 Pact of Negation
SB: 1 Release the Ants
SB: 1 Slaughter Pact
SB: 1 Trickbind
SB: 1 Wipe Away

Played against Spanish Inquisition, Affinity, Nic Fit, and UWr Miracle Blade.

You're an idiot.

[Koby]

On another note, I took another 1st place at the LGS last night with the following list:


Welcome to the Dark Side; "evil will always triumph because good is dumb" - Dark Helmet.

[KobeBryan]

It's already been established that he should probably be on a different deck.

On another note, I took another 1st place at the LGS last night with the following list:

// Lands
3 Ancient Tomb
2 City of Traitors
7 Island
3 Misty Rainforest
1 Polluted Delta
4 Scalding Tarn

// Creatures
1 Emrakul, the Aeons Torn

// Spells
4 Brainstorm
3 Cunning Wish
4 Dream Halls
4 Enter the Infinite
4 Force of Will
1 Intuition
4 Omniscience
2 Pact of Negation
4 Ponder
4 Preordain
4 Show and Tell
1 Trickbind

// Sideboard
SB: 1 Echoing Truth
SB: 1 Eladamri's Call
SB: 1 Firemind's Foresight
SB: 2 Flusterstorm
SB: 4 Leyline of Sanctity
SB: 1 Noxious Revival
SB: 1 Pact of Negation
SB: 1 Release the Ants
SB: 1 Slaughter Pact
SB: 1 Trickbind
SB: 1 Wipe Away

Played against Spanish Inquisition, Affinity, Nic Fit, and UWr Miracle Blade.

FYI, intuition in the Board is better than in the MD. Defense grid is also a must.

But don't listen to me since i shouldn't be playing this deck

[Anusien]

I am pretty sure Intuition in the sideboard is a must have (because it gives your Wishes something to do), but that doesn't mean you can't also have one in the maindeck.

[KobeBryan]

I am pretty sure Intuition in the sideboard is a must have (because it gives your Wishes something to do), but that doesn't mean you can't also have one in the maindeck.

don't listen to me...listen to anusien.

I don't play this deck remember.

[HoneyT]

don't listen to me...listen to anusien.

I don't play this deck remember.

Fortunately, I do. I've been playing it for quite some time as a matter of fact. I've won 5 events and took 3rd at another with iterations of this deck. The 3rd place is currently my worst finish.

There are fewer sacred cows in this deck than you think. In my testing I've very rarely wanted to Wish for Intuition. Firemind's Foresight in the board makes the sideboard Intuition less necessary and frees up an extra slot. You just grab the maindeck one. If you aren't playing Foresight, I agree an Intuition in the board is a must. Interestingly enough, in game 3 against UWr Miracle Blade last night, I was in a situation with a Dream Halls in play and a Cunning Wish in hand where grabbing Firemind's Foresight was the only card in the game that would allow me to win the game.

Defense Grid is also not a must have. With the amount of fast combo in my meta, I wanted a card that was not only good at protecting my combo, but stopping others; hence the Flusterstorms in the board over Defense Grid.

[Koby]

Fortunately, I do. I've been playing it for quite some time as a matter of fact. I've won 5 events and took 3rd at another with iterations of this deck. The 3rd place is currently my worst finish.

There are fewer sacred cows in this deck than you think. In my testing I've very rarely wanted to Wish for Intuition. Firemind's Foresight in the board makes the sideboard Intuition less necessary and frees up an extra slot. You just grab the maindeck one. If you aren't playing Foresight, I agree an Intuition in the board is a must. Interestingly enough, in game 3 against UWr Miracle Blade last night, I was in a situation with a Dream Halls in play and a Cunning Wish in hand where grabbing Firemind's Foresight was the only card in the game that would allow me to win the game.

Defense Grid is also not a must have. With the amount of fast combo in my meta, I wanted a card that was not only good at protecting my combo, but stopping others; hence the Flusterstorms in the board over Defense Grid.

What is this "free-thinking" you're doing here? We don't allow that in the Hive Mind. Out! Out with your creative thoughts!

[Shawon]

What is this "free-thinking" you're doing here? We don't allow that in the Hive Mind. Out! Out with your creative thoughts!

Run, Edward Snowden-- err I mean, HoneyT-- he's one of THEM!

[seamonkeyman]

Does anyone know of any links to SCG Opens or other videos of this deck if action? I would like to see it in action.

[apple713]

i know i'll probably be shunned for this next statement but it might kinda work

Why dont we run Thwart's in here..maybe 2-3? It seems like if we are protecting the combo we win that turn anyways so the lands back in the hand is irrelevant. its not really card disadvantage otherwise. It can be hard casted for less than FOW.




Does anyone know of any links to SCG Opens or other videos of this deck if action? I would like to see it in action.

proxy it up and playtest. it cost nothing to proxy bro

[Tom T]

Played omnimaniac at a small local tournament. Went 3-1.

Match 1 vs UR Delver (2-0): Pushed through the counterspells and won both games. Never felt like I was in a tight spot, despite the constant heat.

Match 2 vs. mono-W hatebears (1-2): Games 1 and 3 I could not fight my way past double Port and double hatebear (Canonist and Thalia). I found myself able to set up a way to deal with one (Canonist) but couldn't work my way past Thalia's taxing effects with two Ports locking me down.

Match 3 vs. UR Stasis (2-0): Game 1 was pretty standard, Game 2 I lost a blowout counterbattle with 5 counterspells ending up on the stack. Followed with a S&T a couple turns later (after paying off Pact) and won.

Overall, solid and redundant combo with a great manabase. I ran LoS in the Board and plan to keep it, but will find three spaces for Defense Grid.

Does anyone know of a way that this deck can deal with two hatebears at once? Besides moving Sapphire Charm maindeck and hoping to draw it while wishing for slaughterpact...

In rare situations Cunning Wish -> Hideous Laughter, when you have Omniscience out. But I guess those situations would be rare.

Started playing this deck next to TES. I love the dark side.

[Anusien]

Hideous Laughter can't beat Gaddock Teeg.

The problem with relying on just Firemind's Foresight in the sideboard is that you don't have access to Wish->tutor.


When you build your maindeck, you have to be careful. For basically any playable card, I can craft a situation where that is the only card that can win you the game. Our brains are actually hardwired to remember these cases and ignore all the cases where you lose because you don't have the cheaper, less flashy card.

[Lejay]

Tom the card you are looking for is sudden spoiling. And I clearly wouldn't run it.
Thwart cannot be played in more than 1 copy. I don't think the first one is better than anything else, so no.
Tefeiri's realm has been on my list of to be tested cards for 5 weeks, but with cunning wish it's hard to run them. I would try in a metagame with no tempo decks but a lot of hate.

[apple713]

Tom the card you are looking for is sudden spoiling. And I clearly wouldn't run it.
Thwart cannot be played in more than 1 copy. I don't think the first one is better than anything else, so no.
Tefeiri's realm has been on my list of to be tested cards for 5 weeks, but with cunning wish it's hard to run them. I would try in a metagame with no tempo decks but a lot of hate.

Have you made any changes to your list or sideboard Lejay?

[Lejay]

No. But I didn't play much neither.

[Anusien]

It's a pity that there's no white version of Hibernation.

Did you ever consider Ancestral Vision? It is admittedly worse than both, but I wonder if you could use it to replace both Leyline of Sanctity and Defense Grid to free up extra sideboard slots against other decks.

[Lejay]

It has been considered at the very beginning, even in the main deck as a way to combo with less dead cards. The idea was to combo with draw spells that could be used before the combo. It was quickly dismissed as the games aren't long enough for that to happen. The same problem will arise if you use it as sideboard against discard. Ancestral won't be good enough outside of the opening hand, less good when in it, and LLoS is useful against some combo decks.

[HoneyT]

The problem with relying on just Firemind's Foresight in the sideboard is that you don't have access to Wish->tutor.


When you build your maindeck, you have to be careful. For basically any playable card, I can craft a situation where that is the only card that can win you the game. Our brains are actually hardwired to remember these cases and ignore all the cases where you lose because you don't have the cheaper, less flashy card.

Sure, but I have played Intuition in the board and have almost never had the need, want, or time to Wish for Intuition when Foresight wouldn't do the same thing. Wishing for Intuition to find Show and Tell or Omniscience was simply too slow. The only time you would Wish for Intuition for Enter is if you already have Omniscience/Dream Halls in play. In that situation, Foresight does the same thing. Making the most of your sideboard slots is arguably the most important part of this deck and cutting the Intuition has freed one up for me. If you're not playing Foresight, then Intuition is certainly necessary in the board. If further testing shows I want Intuition in the board, I'll certainly put it back there, but for now I'm gonna keep winning.

Also, having the miser's tutor in the maindeck to cantrip into has actually been awesome.

[Natedogg]

Sure, but I have played Intuition in the board and have almost never had the need, want, or time to Wish for Intuition when Foresight wouldn't do the same thing.

Aside from the obvious that you have to have omni or DH already in play to cast foresight. The intuition is there for when you are stuck with no cantrips and are missing a crucial piece. It's molasses slow, obviously, but end step wish, next turn intuition has saved me numerous times.

[Adan]

I would not call Miracle the easiest matchup, but of course the only clock that they really have is the CB lock. Counterbalance is more than annoying though in my experience. Not cantripping can be gamebreaking and they can counter cmc3 & cmc5, but much easier is cmc0, so defense grid does not always help you if they can counter once and then use counterbalance to counter your counters. Also don't forget the popular maindeck vendilion cliques and venser.

I absolutely agree, CBalance is THE card to keep off the table in this matchup.


According to the Mai DTB matchup Reanimator, dredge and death and taxes (on ranks 12 - 14) are not really popular.

I know, but the Hassloch metagame does not care about that. Some dude will always bring it to the tournament (the Dredge player that won last month for example has no other deck, so he will be playing that coming Sunday again. Same is true for the DnT player I lost against in Mannheim).


Discard is very popular with Esper, Jund and Team America raking 2, 4 and 6. In terms of beeing most resilient to manadenial and taxing counters I agree with omniclash beeing better than sneak and show. But sneak and show packing 2-3 misdirections and 2-3 pierces maindeck plus the 4 leylines does have way more resilience against discard. It can also just slam down a sneak attack and cantrip and does not need to assemble a 3 card combo in the hand.

Yes, I agree. I am thinking about trying Divert in the SB, that could be a hell of fun to deflect Hymns and Thoughtseizes.

[KobeBryan]

I absolutely agree, CBalance is THE card to keep off the table in this matchup.



I know, but the Hassloch metagame does not care about that. Some dude will always bring it to the tournament (the Dredge player that won last month for example has no other deck, so he will be playing that coming Sunday again. Same is true for the DnT player I lost against in Mannheim).



Yes, I agree. I am thinking about trying Divert in the SB, that could be a hell of fun to deflect Hymns and Thoughtseizes.

I don't think Divert is a good sideboard slot. You already run 4 leylines, which you cannot short change because you can't really cast it. If you do add divert, it will just thin your win conditions.

[Jin Gitaxias]

From my experience, the divert is not really worth it either. I have played 2 local events (4 rounds each) with a misdirection in the board. I never brought it in, not even vs decks like BUG delver because I could not find a card to cut.

[Adan]

I don't think Divert is a good sideboard slot. You already run 4 leylines, which you cannot short change because you can't really cast it. If you do add divert, it will just thin your win conditions.

I'd just cut the Leylines for Divert. So far LLoS has been shit to me. Topdecking them in the mid-game makes me want to quit Magic over and over again. I just play them because Hassloch has like 3 people who - for some reason - think that Pox is a competitive deck. And redirecting a Toughtseize or a Hymn to themselves sounds sexy. It can also act as a Spell Pierce during counterwars, so it's not a bad card per se.

The metagame of Hassloch is just wierd, there is no optimal SB option. There is an equal portion of deck against which Leyline is very good and some against which Thoughseize would be brilliant. And Divert could be a compromise, even though it's the least spectacular card of these 3.

[sauce]

thoughts on the UR delver matchup lejay?

[Lejay]

Didn't test but seems like the deck has a ton of weapons against it.

[Adan]

UR Delver is probably not much different from CanThresh. It can be tricky.

I went 4-2-0 today.

Affinity 2-0
UBR Nic Fit 2-0
Esperblade 2-0
CanThresh 1-2
MUD 0-2
Enchantress 2-0

The CanThresh player was obviously the best pilot there [/SARCASM]. Tapped himself out for a Goyf (3 cards in hand). I chose to wait a turn to not get blown out by 2x Daze or Daze & Force, turned out that his hand was Daze and 2x Spell Pierce. I should have slammed the SnT with Pact backup. And g3 I simply lost because this deck is still basically relying on a "3 card combo", I didn't find either EtI or CWish.

MUD was a complete mess, g1 he was on the play and dropped a 3rd Turn Lodestone Golem which I couldn't force due to Cavern of Souls on Golems, then he dropped a 2nd one on Turn 4.

And g2: turn 1 Ancient Tomb, Grim Monolith, Trinisphere, go and turn 2 Lodestone Golem. Well played.

At that point I was quite upset with the deck but the Enchantress MU last round basically demonstrated why this deck might be - IN A VACUUM - superior to SneakShow as he really had the Oblivion Ring for my Show and Tell. In that case I would not have won with a big dude (Griselbrand would have drawn 7 cards, that's it). However, with Cunning Wish and FF for Flusterstorm/BS, Trickbind and Intuition, it was a cakewalk.

Still it's not dominating everything and there are decks that are already good/well equipped against OmniHalls by nature (and I bet next tournament I will have to play against Reanimator who will destroy me with Iona). But against decks that are not prepared for this, winning could not be easier.

[apple713]

Divert is better than LLOS because you will only start the game with LLOS in play about 40% of the time, which means that if you got to 3 games you might get it once. Mulligaining into it aggressively is a bad idea cause now your already down a card assuming you stop at 6. If you dont get it on the mull to 6 and you try for 5 well then you already in a much worse situation than if you just have a hand of 7 and didn't draw it.

Divert is better because instead of them just drawing a card that doesn't get played, they are now wasting a turn to cast a spell to make themselves discard a card. I belive this is what you call card advantage. if you happen to hit a hymn with divert then you've hit the jackpot with a 3 for 1.

worst case, they anticipate you having it and wait till they have 3-4 lands to start making you discard. Chances are that you'll have won by then.

Discard shouldn't pose that much of a threat in general because if you play smart and keep the cards you need on the top of yournlibrary instead of in your hand they wont have anything to discard.

Divert is also castable for other roles like in a counter war, it acts as a spell pierce.

and the obvious... you cant cast LLOS...

[KobeBryan]

Anyone wanna playtest divert vs. LLOS on cockatrice?

You can play the omnitell deck, i'll play the discard deck.

[Tom T]

I'm questioning the sideboard Slaughter Pact. You also have Rushing River and Sapphire Charm to tutor for, so why play the Slaughter Pact?

[Larzdk]

I'm questioning the sideboard Slaughter Pact. You also have Rushing River and Sapphire Charm to tutor for, so why play the Slaughter Pact?

It's very useful when you're limited on mana (say, 4) with a Thalia on the other side of the table. Eot Wish for Pact, own turn pact the Thalia, SnT->Win. It's one mana less than doing the same thing with Charm.

[Lejay]

I wanted 4 slots in (pact, RR, charm, intuition) against Thalia decks because I have 4 cards to cut from my main deck. I prefer having a wish option than running 2nd charm, there are numerous situations where only pact can win.

@Adan : I'm surprised you seem disappointed by your result. The deck has positive match-ups against almost everything, you could have won against TT, and other than that you only lost against MUD which has some weapons and presents a lot of variance to play against.

As a whole however I am disappointed by the results from SCG. Clearly people are hating the deck a lot by reading the top8 players profiles as well as some of their sideboards (and as usual once in the top bracket people with a ton of combo hate will fold to people with less combo hate). This results in an almost no man's land of other combo decks in the top16. Outside of the 2 omnitells there is just a elf deck that is a bit less weak to the omnitell hate than sneak or storm.
Because of survival era and other periods I always thought people in the US were more inclined towards playing the best deck rather than hating it as it is the case in Europe. It seems that the fact show and tell is so dumb and because of the risk of seeing it banned, people are not many to play it and prefer to hate the deck. A good illustration is GerryT who was already working on the deck before GP Strasbourg. It would seem natural for him to get on the train but instead he chose to play Gro-a-fiend (no idea how he calls the deck, but that was the name in France after I made a good performance at BoM 2010 with it) a kiln fiend-berserk-cheapcounters deck designed to crush into combo metagames. As long as even good players prefer the hating rather than playing the best deck, we won't get show and tell banned and my call to SCG grinders will be a failure.

@apple+Kobe duo : I can save you a lot of time instead of testing. You already pointed out the best cases for divert as well as the bad cases for leyline. I guess it could be a good idea to just try to figure out what NUMEROUS cases make leyline better. I know this isn't easy but if you can turn on your brains and figure those out, you probably won't need any testing.

[apple713]

It's very useful when you're limited on mana (say, 4) with a Thalia on the other side of the table. Eot Wish for Pact, own turn pact the Thalia, SnT->Win. It's one mana less than doing the same thing with Charm.

if the mana is so tight, why play sapphire charm at all?

[Lejay]

Because having a second slaughter pact doesn't add any wish option ?
Because a sided in answer that can be recycled is better than one that can't ?
Because a blue card is better than a black card ?
Because having the option to cycle a wish is more relevant than the times where you would need 2 S.pact game one ?

[Jessenator]

I want to personally thank Lejay and his friends for their hard work on this deck. It helped me obtain my SCG top 8 this Sunday with the deck. I was 7-0 in swiss and double ID into top 8. The matches I played all seemed extremely one-sided for me. I played 2 BUG, 1 Deathblade, 2 RUG, 1 Elf, and 1 Burn throughout the day.

I lost in the top 8 to UWR Delver. Game 2-3 I just couldn't draw my third combo piece after cantripping multiple times. I guess that's what happens sometimes when you run a three piece combo deck. I was on the draw for about 80% of the matchups as well, was very happy with the results.

The faces of people reading Release the Ants and Sapphire Charm is just priceless. Thanks again!

Jesse

P.S. My decklist for reference.

http://sales.starcitygames.com//deckdatabase/displaydeck.php?DeckID=56677

[sauce]

I've been playing unsummon instead of sapphire charm, I really did not find the phasing to be relevant enough to go finding that card in copious boxes of crap.
I've played the deck in two legacy 4 round events so far. Both were 3-1.

Lost to UWr miracles in 3 where I did not force CB or SDT due to thinking they were largely irrelevant (was wrong.)
Lost to URw delver/burn in 3 where I could not find my combo in g3 after 6 cantrips. Died to goblin guide + delver (flipped t2 blindly)

[sauce]

s&t is not that offensive, it only is bannable vs decks that don't do anything to interact.
the decks that put you on a big clock or decks that are pure control are at least 50/50 (in my opinion) vs s&t.
sure, there are gonna be games where you s&t and they have stone blanks and you roll them, but there are gonna be games where you cannot find all your combo pieces and get locked out or killed by delvers.
I feel like s&t should not be banned, it's not that oppressive. It is good, but not as good as mental misstep where it was just dominating legacy.

[apple713]

@apple+Kobe duo : I can save you a lot of time instead of testing. You already pointed out the best cases for divert as well as the bad cases for leyline. I guess it could be a good idea to just try to figure out what NUMEROUS cases make leyline better. I know this isn't easy but if you can turn on your brains and figure those out, you probably won't need any testing.

Lets assume that Leyline is 100% better in all situations where it is in your OPENING hand.

Cards drawn
4 24.68%
5 30.06%
6 35.15%
7 39.95%

7 cards drawn obviously being the most common which is only 40% of the that it is at all helpful. if you ever draw it later it is just a dead card and cant help at all. You can't cast it nothing.

If I am sideboarding in a card to improve my matchup vs something and my only allabye is to get it opening hand, i need to find a different solution to my problem... its really that simple. It's taking up 4 incredibly valuable sideoard spots.

It's application is incredibly limited because the only thing it protects us from that we care about is discard.

it hozes burn but if we cant beat burn main deck it shouldnt be in a decks to beat section

it provides an additional step for high tide which is irrelevant because it doesnt slow them down since they'll have infinate mana by the time they decide to deal with it.

it prevents jace from fatestealing us.... whoopie.... if they landed a jace and we dont have our combo we still have a ton of ways to find it with cantrips and fetchlands for fresh draws.



returning to my first point of that it only helps at best 40% of the time and the goal i think is to achieve consistency, i would say that 40% is not even close to consitent unless yo want to start flipping coins to determine your victories. Consistency is one of the most important factors in magic and one of the main reasons why blue is the best color.

An example of how important consistency is. mono white stax (a deck i played for years), is one of the most powerful decks I've played. Potential to lock your opponent out of the game before they ever cast a spell. Why hasent this deck won any major tournaments.... Cause it locks oppoents out of the game about 40% of the time...

[Adan]

@Adan : I'm surprised you seem disappointed by your result. The deck has positive match-ups against almost everything, you could have won against TT, and other than that you only lost against MUD which has some weapons and presents a lot of variance to play against.

I am actually not disappointed, I am still convinced this deck is the real deal. And I should have won against TT, yes, the mistake was to play it safe instead of going all-in.
Why? Because I thought that my opponent cannot be THAT dumb and stupid.

But MUD was an absolute pain, even if he does nothing all the time he can simply drop a 3Sphere to SnT which will slow you down by at least 2 turns. Having 6 mana to wish and bounce within the same turn is rather unlikely. And in that timeframe, cards like Lodestone Golems, Thorns and Spheres also have to be handled somehow.
I don't really think that matchup is winnable at all.


As a whole however I am disappointed by the results from SCG. Clearly people are hating the deck a lot by reading the top8 players profiles as well as some of their sideboards (and as usual once in the top bracket people with a ton of combo hate will fold to people with less combo hate). This results in an almost no man's land of other combo decks in the top16. Outside of the 2 omnitells there is just a elf deck that is a bit less weak to the omnitell hate than sneak or storm.
Because of survival era and other periods I always thought people in the US were more inclined towards playing the best deck rather than hating it as it is the case in Europe. It seems that the fact show and tell is so dumb and because of the risk of seeing it banned, people are not many to play it and prefer to hate the deck. A good illustration is GerryT who was already working on the deck before GP Strasbourg. It would seem natural for him to get on the train but instead he chose to play Gro-a-fiend (no idea how he calls the deck, but that was the name in France after I made a good performance at BoM 2010 with it) a kiln fiend-berserk-cheapcounters deck designed to crush into combo metagames. As long as even good players prefer the hating rather than playing the best deck, we won't get show and tell banned and my call to SCG grinders will be a failure.

I believe it's also a card availability issue. No one wants to spend 200 Euro on a playset of Show and Tells when they also have to spend big cash on a playset Sneak Attacks, Griselbrands, Emrakuls and Sol Lands (that's another 300-400 Euro I believe). These cards are rather narrow and you can't use them for any other archetype (although I must say that people have become very creative with their Sol Lands as that UB Tezz demonstrates even though I really think it was just a fluke).

Well, and some people still deny that OmniHalls is the best SnT-based deck one can play (in terms of consistency and resistance to hate).


@apple+Kobe duo : I can save you a lot of time instead of testing. You already pointed out the best cases for divert as well as the bad cases for leyline. I guess it could be a good idea to just try to figure out what NUMEROUS cases make leyline better. I know this isn't easy but if you can turn on your brains and figure those out, you probably won't need any testing.

By the way, I must add that LLOS has been GOLD for me this time. Against that Nic Fit (which was basically a ported GBR version of Scapeshift), LLOS protected me against Therapies, Thoughtseizes and most important: Slaughter Games. Slaughter Games on Cunning Wish would have been lights out for me instantly.

But I must add that Veteran Explorer is not the best card against OmniHalls. ;)

[apple713]

By the way, I must add that LLOS has been GOLD for me this time. Against that Nic Fit (which was basically a ported GBR version of Scapeshift), LLOS protected me against Therapies, Thoughtseizes and most important: Slaughter Games. Slaughter Games on Cunning Wish would have been lights out for me instantly.


maybe you should add emrakul for this matchup..at least 1 main.

actually Lab maniac seems better here as a 1 main option. you can win clashes with ETI or omni if you really want to. Lab maniac would win more times than Emrakul. consider their life more than 15 with more than 6 permanents...this happens often.


maybe i missed why it isnt main already....


Laboratory Maniac + research/development : this kill simply shuffles back maniac thanks to a wished research. Then you cantrip into it, play it, and play cantrips ftw. In case of removal either counter it or play a brainstorm in response. This kill is only vulnerable to very few random things (sudden shock/death/sudden spoiling, weaker against chains of Mephistopheles or counterbalance) so it’s perfectly good if you really don’t want the Emrakul main deck.

from the OP. imo def seems better except in CB situations, but in cb situations you have trickbind or at least potential to trickbind.

[sauce]

vs counterbalance you can enter the infinite and if they have a 2 drop for ants you can play emrakul take the extra turn, annihilate their counterbalance and then kill them next turn.
alternatively, after you annihilate them you can cunning wish for noxious revival, put ants on top, draw them with gitaxian probe or ponder and then ants them out.

[Jessenator]

I've been playing unsummon instead of sapphire charm, I really did not find the phasing to be relevant enough to go finding that card in copious boxes of crap.
I've played the deck in two legacy 4 round events so far. Both were 3-1.

Lost to UWr miracles in 3 where I did not force CB or SDT due to thinking they were largely irrelevant (was wrong.)
Lost to URw delver/burn in 3 where I could not find my combo in g3 after 6 cantrips. Died to goblin guide + delver (flipped t2 blindly)

The only point of the Sapphire Charm is to battle the Vial decks like Death and Taxes. It gives you a 1 turn window to kill them through Thalia / Canoist etc. It's much much better.