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Bane of the Living
03-04-2006, 12:08 PM
Updated 6/17/06 I think most of this decks strength comes from the ability to come out of the gates at blinding speed, quick inexpensive creatures with a broken mid game draw engine. I wanted to put less attention on the graveyard but I dont think it matters too much. Sideboard cards are going to be just good enough against you anyways. I added Lukas' list here, he's worked on the deck for as long as I have and perhaps more in depth. I changed my black splash into a white one for a hidden gem, Ray of Revelation. The decks biggest weakness was artifacts and enchantments, ray deals with them twice per copy or just once when found dredging, adding more synergy which kicks ass. Here is what I consider version 2 of the deck.
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2x Tropical Island
2x Tundra
2x Lonely Sandbar
3x Tranquil Thicket
3x Wasteland
1x Plains
1x Island
1x Forest
2x Windswept Heath
2x Flooded Strand
2x Cephalid Coliseum
3x Mox Diamond
4x Lion's Eye Diamond

4x Basking Rootwalla
4x Wild Mongrel
3x Arrogant Wurm
3x Anurid Brushhopper
2x Wonder

4x Brainstorm
3x Careful Study
3x Deep Analysis
4x Life from the Loam
3x Roar of the Wurm

Sideboard:
3x Solitary Confinement
4x Jitte
3x Meddling Mage
3x Naturalize
2x Mana Maze

...............................................................................................
Why I built the deck..

Madness, once a powerful DTB in every known format (even vintage) is now no where to be seen. Powerful mechanics in madness/thresh/dredge create a godly synergy that proves quite broken once the ball is rolling.

The deck was a submission for the Create a New Good Deck contest. I wasn't even a finalist but the deck seemed like the crowd favorite. Broken plays come up and steal games away, making any Johnny/Timmy quite happy. The problem with my submission was consistancy, I didnt have time to work all the kinks out. When first building this deck I knew I wanted a more aggro route for the deck, going straight for the throat. The advantages of that path are quite clear.

What happened to the old U/G madness decks was simple. Threshold is better. Thresh is the Aggro/Control deck you want to play. Wurms are too expensive, times have changed. To keep the Wurmies up top I needed to add the Diamond, abandoning all focus on Madness's classic counterspell plan.

Loam is one of the most broken tools we've recieved from Ravnica. Its draw engine, though slow, is unmatched steadiness. I didnt originally plan to use it as a draw engine. But its there. LED will dump your hand for amazing benefit, dropping free lizards, free wurms, and giving you 1 mana 6/6 fliers. Then loam can be dredged back for cycle lands to refill your hand or pump mongrel. Loam does read, 1G +3/+3 to mongrel. In Land Ho (r/g loam) A mongrel, 4 mana, and a loam will almost always be lethal, the same goes here. Except now we have flying dogs. aka Wonder Dog!

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Mox Diamond - Turn one mongrel wins most of the games that it happens in. It also has stupidly good tempo with Loam.

Wasteland - Honestly I tested with and without these. In some matches theyre amazing, against other decks they become liability. The good thing is when facing an opponent that they arent good against they can always be pitched to mox. Besides, why not play wastelock when its right there. I had a full slate in the deck that moved to 2 main and 2 sideboard. Im happy with that in MY META, but yours might favor 3 or even 4 copies.

Cephalid Colosseum - Two copies now, originally it was a single copy, but it's just too good to the deck.. While good, in multiples it can hurt you alot.

Wally - He's like Arcbound Worker to affinity. Mongrels best friend. He trades with Mongeese and survives fights with gobs. 0 mana gets him in the deck.

Mongrel - MVP. I would run 10 of these.

Anurid Brushhopper - He replaces the previously testing Psychatog and Aquamebba, being way better with both of those. Togs fanatical late game advantage is minimal here since I run the wurms for that kind of muscle and those cant be needled. Brushhopper is amazingly hard to kill when running LftL and can swing and still block against gobs with a bad version of Vigilance..

Arrogant Wurm - LED makes him a 4/4 trample for 0 mana. Pretty good I'd say. 4 Copies would be great but I can't make the room.

Wonder - Hes so amazing, that pitching him/dredging him away will usually win you the game. Period.

Brainstorm/Carefull Study - The decks draw. So many cards were tested in this spot. Ideals Unbound was nice but only with loam, making it situational. The double blue was also a problem sometimes, I hate problems.. Deep Anal is another good card to run but Im going without it for now. I hate paying 4 for it, and sometimes hate losing 3 life in aggro matches.

Life from the Loam - The deck is not based around this card. I repeat... This card is just a bonus! But what a bonus. It pretty much allows you to be a LED crazy asshole. Speaking of which..

Lions Eye Diamond - This card makes for some explosive turns. I win alot of games I have no right winning cause I rip it off the top of my deck. It gives you the speed you would otherwise not have as old school madness.

Roar of the Wurm - This is what will win most of your games. The deck can constantly get a turn 1 6/6 flyer. Wait are we playing reanimator? No, but just cause your on a diet doesnt mean you cant look at the menu.

Ray of Revelation - This was the biggest reason for utilizing the white splash. White enchantments like Worship, Solitary Confinement, and Humility are problems for the deck, and I see there here and there at my store. You might not need these maindeck if your not seeing those decks or Survival. Otherwise maindeck some Swords to Plowshares to shore up aggro some more.

@No Intuition - In the end Intuition was cut. I put it in and out of the deck alot but finally decided it had to go. WHY?? Because I dont want a spell that expensive in my deck unless its adding a fat creature to the table or manipulating the state of the game in better ways. Yes it finds Wonder to alter the gamestate but I can do that well enough anyways. Feel free to play it at your prefrence, I wouldnt knock anyone for it.

Ill post new matchup analysis soon.

Warmonger
03-04-2006, 12:22 PM
Dude, how are you going to deal with High Tide or another combo, Turboland & Enchantress, any prison; any deck that doesn't die from simple beatdown? I'm sure that 3 SB Trinis and Naturalizes are far too few, especilaly ehn they don't work with deck's strategy in any way.

A Banana
03-04-2006, 12:54 PM
Sorry to everyone else, but this is my favorite deck yet. I really like LED here, as well as the decision to run LftL instead of inuition. However, I really think you should be abusing Cephalid Colliseum more. It's just so good here. Becuase you get thresh so fast, it isn't all that hard to get the ball rolling, and the Colliseum becomes inevitable defeat after that. However, you may not need all that extra card advantage, and you know the deck better than I do, so I'll trust you on this.

Wow, It a good deck
A Banana

Franz Ferdinand
03-04-2006, 12:58 PM
Why exactly does an aggro deck only have 16 creatures (12 non-wonder things and Roar) and 24 mana sources?

Lord Dralnu
03-04-2006, 01:30 PM
Why exactly does an aggro deck only have 16 creatures (12 non-wonder things and Roar) and 24 mana sources?
Half of those mana sources are cycling lands and wastelands.
I'm not so sure about running that many wonder's, but if it works for you go for it.
I don't know what you mean by arrogant wurm doesn't work with LED. If you activate the LED you can cast him using the mana from it for his madnesswhich just happens to be the same amount of mana it produces. You can always cast the roars from the GY later.
The deck looks good, I'm still not sure which I like more this or the Mono-Blue fish deck.

A Banana
03-04-2006, 01:32 PM
Why exactly does an aggro deck only have 16 creatures (12 non-wonder things and Roar) and 24 mana sources?

Because he runs a lot of insane card draw. He will Always have at least 2 creatures in his hand and hit another one by turn 3 (well, most of the time). His creatures are big enough beaters that many of them aren't needed. As I said, he draws/dredges so much it is really easy for him to hit another creature.

Thats said, 24 lands seems like to much, especially with LED. I would cut 1 Lonely Sandbar and 1 Tropical Island and maybe even 2 Ideas Unbound, which seems sub-par, and run 4 wearbear. However, I havn't tested and you have, so you know best.

Thanks,
A Banana

Bane of the Living
03-04-2006, 01:43 PM
@Warmonger
Combo definitly isnt a good matchup but I think it's safe to say combo is no ones favorite match up. With a few exceptions. Trinisphere is ugly to need to sideboard yes. But wastelock + 3sphere is very very good. Try it out and know that I do not lie. That means I have good sideboard against combo that can still come in against non combo decks. Like I said worlds better than Arcane Lab. If you have any sideboard suggestions I welcome them. The composts are quite replacable.

@A Banana
Thanks for the compliments. You'd be amazing what having 4 Black Lotus does for an aggro deck. You just need to make the adjustments. Madness/Dredge/Thresh/Flashback are definitly a start no?

I would love more Colosseums but I made the choice to go with wasteland instead. I was thinking of boarding the Wastelands in place of the Composts. If I do that Colosseum is going in multiples.

@Franz Ferdinand
Simple. 3 Wastelands dont always count as 'mana source' but since it can its a 5 star card. 5 Cycle lands should not be played unless absolutely necessary. Theyre part of your uncounterable draw engine that brings you back from LED. Loam decks require a high concentration of land to abuse properly. You want to have a combination of 3 lands when you play it, meaning you need to dig into 3, and if you play one that means you needed to dig into 1 more each time. That means when Dredging 1/3 cards should be lands. I also run 24 land because I play Mox Diamond. Which needs to pitch land in order to be a 5 star card. playing only 4 basic lands leaves me somewhat shakey to ld unless I have Loam, so drawing land is never really bad. Especially with Mongrel.

With Roar and Wonder included I have 19 Creatures. Thats a third of my deck. That seems like the right number for an aggro deck to me. Especially with tons of card draw, and being able to dredge into roar. I have never in 50 games had a single turn where I couldnt cast a creature 'if I wanted to'.

EDIT

I initially tried Werebear, but I wasnt happy with him. His man producing ability is very obsolete unlike in Thresh. He's also terrible without Thresh, whereas everything else in the deck is good. Even the untargetable goose acts as a lackey face puncher. If I were to add anymore creatures to the deck it would be Arrogant.

Speaking of Arrogant, I wasnt sure you could cast him via LED. At least not with the LED's mana. I thought it was fixed to not do this? LED's requirement for the 3 mana is to pitch your hand, only when your hand is in the graveyard do you have the 3 mana. If I'm wrong please let me know, cards like LED have such nightmare rulings.

A Banana
03-04-2006, 01:48 PM
I did some very breif testing (3 games) and I'm wondering about something: The graveyard. The problem was that I kept getting hit by all this graveyard hate meant for Threshold. That is why I am wondering about something to kepp the 'yard safe, or maybe for just a more reliable finisher. Anyway, this problem needs to be addresed. I think I would put ground seal in the board to deal with it, and anyway the seal is a cantrip.

Thanks for Listening
A Banana

Lord Dralnu
03-04-2006, 01:55 PM
Speaking of Arrogant, I wasnt sure you could cast him via LED. At least not with the LED's mana. I thought it was fixed to not do this? LED's requirement for the 3 mana is to pitch your hand, only when your hand is in the graveyard do you have the 3 mana. If I'm wrong please let me know, cards like LED have such nightmare rulings.
Actually I'm not sure either. Maybe the madness trigger resolves before the mana goes into your pool from LED's effect?
Edit: looked it up on Starcitygames.com

Q: The basic question is, can I use a Lion´s Eye Diamond to cast an Arrogant Wurm with Madness that has been discarded as part of the activation cost of Lion´s Eye Diamond?

What this boils down to is: Does the ability of the Lion's Eye Diamond use the stack, that is does it have to resolve, before I have the mana in my pool, or does it not?

A: You discard the Wurm as part of the cost of activating the LED. You remove the Wurm from the game instead of putting it in your graveyard, a replacement effect. The Wurm's Madness ability triggers. You can't yet put it on the stack, because LED is a mana ability (even though you can only play it when you can play an Instant), so the LED will resolve before you get priority to put the Wurm's Madness trigger on the stack. The trigger goes on the stack, and the active player gets priority. When the trigger resolves, you can, until you next pass priority, play the Wurm - and you have GGG (I assume that's what you got from the LED) in your pool to do so.

Bane of the Living
03-04-2006, 02:12 PM
Well my hope is that yard hate wont hurt me as much it does thresh decks. Loam can be brought back in response with a cycle land or a brainstorm. The Roars and Deep Anal's you lose however. The deck builds thresh fast enough to get mongoose going again, yet with that in mind, I had another reason to not play Werebear. Sideboarded Pithing Needle comes in whenever I expect yard hate.

If you know me or the decks I play, you probably know I cant help but play in the graveyard. Most of my decks are vulnerable to crypts. Damn.

Ground Seal will stop Phyrexian Furnace but not crypt. So it's not quite as good.

Oh and thats a yes to Aroggant I assume? If I read the ruling right. That really changes things. Definitly for the better. Ill begin to work the worm into the deck asap.

@3 Wonder
I forgot the adress this. It's kinda simple tho, no Intuition means I actually need to find this mofo. He's so good, that I really really want to find him. Dredging him or drawing/discarding him wins games. He's also a 2/2 flyer that I can cast in a pinch. Ive killed quite a few people with Wonder actually.

A Banana
03-04-2006, 04:16 PM
Even though ground seal isn't all that, I still think we need a more solid finisher, or at least one in the board. Crypt wrecks you, so that finisher should not depend on threshold for success. I think this is a seriose problem that needs to be addressed, since hate directed at Threshold, while it doesn't afftect you quite is much in the sense that your not as graveyard dependent, it affects you more in the sense that you have 0 ways of dealing with it.

Just thought you might want to know,
A Banana

Bane of the Living
03-04-2006, 04:22 PM
Pithing Needle naming Tormod's Crypt or Phyrexian Furnace is a good way to handle it. It's exactly what Thresh does when they win games against yard hate. I would like a finisher that doesnt depend on the yard, but I'm not so sure what it would be. If Arrogant Wurm goes back in then I'd assume he'll do.

We'll have to see.

A Banana
03-04-2006, 04:40 PM
On that note, what do we cut for da wurm? I'm pretty sure he deserves a spot. I think, however, 4 is the wrong number. Again, I would cut 3 lands for 3 wurms. You still have plenty of mana sources (25 in total, more than most decks in the format) and Life from the Loam. These are my suggested changes:

-1 Tropical Island
-1 Lonely Sandbar
-1 Island

+3 Arrogant Wurm

But that doesn't look right...
A Banana

Brushwagg
03-04-2006, 06:32 PM
Here's a thought -1 Sandbar +1 Volcanic and -1 Wonder-1 LED = +2 Anger(or something like that). Here's why, since you are playing no control elements I think you want to be able to drop dudes and swing that turn. WOG sucks for you hard.

Lego
03-05-2006, 04:21 AM
I'm very, very, very wary of your draw engine. LftL is good in slow control decks that can whether the first few turns. To quote Zilla:

It's a lightning fast aggro deck with a molasses slow draw engine.

The Life engine won't start drawing you a substantial number of cards until well after what should be your fundamental turn.

You're playing draw, and beats. That's it. I don't know a single deck in the format that does that successfully. You've got no disruption and no removal. I don't see how you can win a single game against Combo, while your aggro matchup probably isn't even that great. Goblins can win before you can, Thresh packs enough disruption that even if your creatures are bigger you may not win, while decks like Zilla Stompy and Angel Stompy include disruption and removal to slow you down. Rifter will also eat you for lunch.

I'm not trying to be a jerk, I just can't imagine this deck having a positive matchup against really anything at this point. I think there is a viable Madness deck out there, but what made it good was the same thing that makes Thresh good today. Threshold without the control cards and a worse draw engine would not be viable, and this is what I feel like you are doing to Madness.

Bane of the Living
03-06-2006, 05:30 PM
@Legoman
Lets look at my draw engine.
4 Life from Loam
6 cycle lands
1 Cephalid Colosiem
3 Ideals Unbound
2 Deep Analysis
4 Brainstorm

Thats not too shabby. Loam isnt the whole draw engine, I know I mentioned that. Its just a bonus, which also happens to smooth out your mana base, be reusable, and give you wastelock.

The rest of the card draw is pretty good. 4 Brainstorm is a no brainer. Deep anal and Ideals both have not only synergy, but are overpowered in the deck. Anal is aways good to pitch to wonder dog, and LED. Ideals is always 3 cards for 2 mana, and hopefully some of what your pitching is Basking Rootwalla, Roar of the Wurm, Arrogant Wurm, Wonder.


I've got as good a chance against combo as goblins does. Maybe better since I dont have cards like Gempalm. My match against aggro is quite good because all my creatures are large, have combat tricks, and I can find them constantly. Wrath of God isnt a problem when I only play 1-2 creatures at a time. I didnt say this deck was going to be the next big thing. I also made a very clear statement that this was a complete aggro version of madness, with no counterspells.

This is not threshold. This is madness. The decks play completely different. My deck is the aggro deck in nearly every matchup, because I lack removal/disruption I have a strong focus on power. The deck drops fat threats turn after turn. Test the deck for yourself and see how it works. It doesnt play like thresh, and it doesnt play like a loam deck. Its much different.

Rood
03-06-2006, 10:40 PM
Chalice could serve it's uses in the side against those tricky sleigh and combo decks. Definetally probally a faster and stronger play than Trini. Most combo decks can kill you before you can drop it so drop it turn 2 on them and see how they like that.

SillyMetalGAT
03-07-2006, 11:39 PM
I fishbowled 5 games with this deck and these are the results I got:

Game 1:
1st turn Roar token with a Wonder in the graveyard

Game 2:
1st turn 2 Basking Rootwalla and 1 Arrogent Wurm

Game 3:
Mulliganed to 5 and had 1st turn Wild Mongrel.
2nd discard Deep Analysis Turn Deep Analed for 1 LED and 1 Wurm... lucky i know

Game 4:
1st turn Diamond, Fetch, LftL into turn 2 wastelock wild mongrel/LftL lock...
I hope people actually realize that Mongrel and LftL wins you the game too because it makes him a 5/5 while dredging Wonder into your graveyard.

Game 5:
drew absolute shit down to 4 cards.......

All in all, this deck rocks. It just needs more consistently, it wasn't cool to get absolute shit like that game 5.

midnightAce
03-08-2006, 01:23 PM
I'm just wondering if anybody has tested Quiet Speculation for this deck? Just 2-3 of them in main. Hands without LED opening tend to feel weak. With QS, this deck can potentially dump 3 Roars in the yard by turn 1 via Mox, and just keep the 6/6 coming for 3 turns straight. I'm not sure if it'll solve the consistency problem of the deck, but I think it's worth testing.

minsk2g
03-08-2006, 01:38 PM
The one thing I've noticed about this deck is that with LED in your opening hand you can usually win by turn 4 but ones without aren't very good unless you get a first turn wild mongrel with lftl. I'm not sure what the answer to this problem is, perhaps a couple tutors for LED. The only thing that comes to mind along this mind is trinket mage but that is just a subpar card in general. I think in order for this deck to get better and perhaps upper tier, a way has to be found to search for LED early in the game other than just drawing one.

Bane of the Living
03-08-2006, 04:43 PM
LED is certainly good isnt it? I played the deck today with maindeck Jitte. It offered alittle more kick than the deck had before, it also acts as removal duh. The problem is the bad synergy with mongoose. But this was my turn 1 against goblins once today..

Windswept Heath, Mox Diamond/pitching Lonely Sandbar, Jitte, Lions Eye Diamond, Madness out Arrogant Wurm, Discard Wonder.

Turn 2 I was swinging with a 4/4 trample, flying, jitte equiped guy.

Jitte would be nice maindeck but Im not sure what to take out for it. Instead of Nimble Mongoose, I could try out Psychatog as well. This is probably the next step in development. Mongoose is quite good so it'll be a tough call.

Rood
03-08-2006, 05:52 PM
I really like the deck. I have found a solution to LED in the starting hand issue. Instead of mulliganing until you get one add 4x Serum Powders and you're set bro.
-Roodmistah-

Lord Dralnu
03-08-2006, 06:46 PM
Did someone just suggest running serum powder in a competitive deck...
I really don't think that is a very good solution. powder is the same as mulling if not worse than. You lose the cards removed, even with redundancy that isn't good. Eventually you will be down that card, maybe even more. Think of it this way, you could mull down to 5 and get the hand you want, and be down 2 cards, or you could serum powder, lose your previous hand, and keeps 7 cards. The problem is you will still be down cards. There are still 3 serum powders in your deck that will now be dead draws in your now thinned deck.
I don't mean to be a horrible person going into detail on why that is such a bad idea. I just like telling people why certain cards shouldn't be used rather than laughing at them, etc. etc.

Bane of the Living
03-08-2006, 07:06 PM
The only deck I ever played Serum Powder in was a Onslaught/Mirrodin Twiddle Desire deck. It was still bad.

Usually if I get a hand with either a LED, or Mox I'll keep it. Otherwise I'll mull to 6 to look for one. Ive realized when on the draw, that this infact is one of those decks that likes its extra card. The power boost the deck recieves from LED lets the extra card be worth waiting for sometimes. This usually isnt the case against gobs and thresh, but its still not so bad going on the draw.

A Banana
03-08-2006, 09:51 PM
This deck could really benifit from Jitte of SoFI, as mentioned earliear. I would love to see one or the other included in the list, since they can really give you a chance without a LED or mox hand. I would probably cut LftL from it, as that draw engine, while good, is probably worse than brute Jitte force. But I havent tested it yet.

Thanks, and still my favorite yet,
A Banana

minsk2g
03-08-2006, 10:24 PM
The power of lftl in this deck is just amazing as it acts as card draw, creature pumper, mana smoother and a lock mechanism. This deck without lftl is a much worse deck. However jitte might have a place in the main deck but i don't think as anything more than a 2-of because it is an auxillary plan not the primary plan. If i were to add 2 jitte i would remove the 3 nimble mongoose and also add the 4th arrogant wurm. The only problem with this would be that the maindeck may be a little threat light at that point. Once again I'm not sure what the solution is but just something to discuss.

Kojiro
03-08-2006, 11:10 PM
I like this deck. I think it's a great take on a classic. Madness has been and will always be my favorite deck in any format; however, I'm afraid it's just not as powerful as it used to be. I have been running the more interesting decks through the gauntlet just to see how they fare. Your's I ran against Solidarity, Deadguy and Goblins just because I feel they're matchups you need to go to a tournament knowing you can topple. I'll get to my actual suggestions after my thoughts on the deck.

The great thing about the established builds of Madness/Thresh with Daze/Logic/FoW is that these cards turn you into a tempo machine, not to mention the fear you instill in your opponent when their first turn play is dazed. It's not that you dazed a spell that is detrimental to your deck (which it very well may be), no; it's that most opponents will now do everything in their power not to let it happen again. Therein lies your competitive advantage.

You have very little staying power against superior aggro save for running Wonder (which should be upped, btw), and virtually no plan for combo but for a few niche cards in the board. I don't doubt that adding LftL adds a great amount of gas to your deck, I'm just not convinced you have the control elements to really make your opponent scared of the cards you're drawing.

While playing this deck I often found myself with a winning combination of cards, but no way to protect myself from mass or spot removal. It's sad, really, when having Mongrel, Wurm, and Goose on the table doesn't seal the deal. With these thoughts in mind you might try testing some other cards in this deck, many of which have been mentioned already by other posters.

Jitte / SoFI - If you're going to run these, Goose has to go. Last I heard adding another Madness outlet never hurt, so if you do add some of these badboys, may as well drop Moeba in that spot. I say quit messing around with LftL tricks and just drop them in favor of a 3/2 split on the equipment. It'll clear up that nasty mana base you're rockin' and you'll have at least an element of removal to your deck (aside from Wasteland).

Deep Analysis - With so many cards that force you to have a hand of zero EOT/post combat, I'd suggest upping the DA count to at least three. I seriously wanted to cast deep analysis EVERY single turn in every game I played with this deck.

Wonder - Again, you need to smash opposing aggro like it's your job. With all the card drawing and lack of noncreature threats, your creatures better damn well be flying you to victory. Matrons chumping wurms is so lame.

Mox Diamond - If you're going LftL, this guys in, and a four of. If not, boot it and get some Chromies in there. I honestly like Madness without Moxen but have learned to play both configurations.

Sideboard - Your sideboard is the weakest part of your deck, but then again it's metadependant. You'll develop this more over time, I'm sure.

I hope these suggestions helped. Keep at it; you've got a good start.

mugs
03-09-2006, 12:29 PM
I'm liking it.

I think your on to something good
but I'm hope some disruption in some form can help this deck hinder the opponent perhaps, beyond just the draw engine into more stuff, and wasteland recursion.

Warmonger
03-09-2006, 01:03 PM
Ray of Revelation is great sideboards card against common threats like Humility or Conficement. It's superior to Naturalize.

Foil might be another answer, as it can be easily cast during the whole (short) game.

Syco_Tr0pic
03-09-2006, 01:12 PM
Hello, I'm new to The Source (this is my first post, you see) but I've been following the foruns as a guest for a long time now, and this deck really caught my attention (good insight there, bane.
I was wondering, (I know I can be flamed for this) wouldn't Quiet Speculation be just superior to Ideas Unbound in this deck?
I know that Ideas Unbound can activate dredge and all, but Quiet Speculation acts as a tutor, and a powerful one, for it gets Roars and Deep Anals in any combination. It's good to recover from a Crypt activation (or to set you up into one too, I know, but, then again, Ideas Unbound would do the same for you in this case, wouldn't it?). On top of that, it requires only 1U to cast whereas Ideas cost is UU. I'd rather not depend on getting two blue sources to get things going.
Thanks for reading and let me know what you think.
And sorry if I was not clear in my post (although I think I was), cause English is not my first language.

Syco_Tr0pic

Peter_Rotten
03-10-2006, 08:39 AM
Goblins:
Their swarm starts to slow as you build mana, pumping wallys, getting thresh goose. Mongrel + Loam = Nightmare for gobs. Roar Wurms are way too large for them to handle.

In some brief testing, my wurm tokens were repeatedly owned by cycled Gempalms! Things got real ugly with goblins. Once an early game stale mate occurred, they were able to quickly gain card and board advantage with Matron/Ringleader nonsense. My wurms and dogs were too often relegated to blocking duties.


Your plan of action is really to stay alive with small men, and beat through with a couple wurms.

Do you have any other advice for this match up? I'm still interested in testing it but are disappointed with my initial findings against goblins.

Bane of the Living
03-10-2006, 11:43 AM
@Warmonger
Ray of Revelation is a card I was thinking of thanks to its dredge friendly syngergies. The problem is the white mana.

@Kojiro
The deck has a bad matchup against combo. Instead of retooling the design and functions of the deck, I think I'll just take a shitty win percentage. Sometimes its just not worth weakening the best aspects of your deck to accomidate for where it falls short.

Mongoose vs Equipment

This is a pretty big debate going for me right now. If I were to add any equipment first off, it would be Jitte. The difference in cost/equip really matters, and Jitte is sometimes needed simply because it blows up my opponents. Mongoose gets the nod at the moment because of his history against goblins. He's more turn 1 answers to lackey, which of course, cant be gempalmed, fanatic'd, or bolted.

There is no question that this is an all out deck. I certainly drop all my eggs in one basket, but that doesnt mean your anymore vulnerable to board sweepers than another aggro deck. Goblins runs no disruption, it goes right for the throat. So do I, only my men are far larger, and I have a solid draw engine. This is how the deck was built. If I were to go with FoW, Daze, Logic, I'd just be playing old school madness. This is for CaNGD so it needs to be original. I'd like to play Logic or Daze, but they're quite bad with both Lions Eye Diamonds drawback and LftL's dredge.

@Peter_Rotten
Getting wurms shot down by Gempalm is no fun. My best advice is to keep early pressure on, attack into matrons with dogs and wurms. Keeping their horde to a small number is key in this matchup. If they take the damage and try to Alpha Strike you, hopefully you have Arrogant ready. I find some Goblin players will hold back, not wanting to lose Warcheifs incase the wurm is perching in my hand. If you beat them down enough and can survive they're larger attacks you can sometimes rip into wonder and take to the air ftw. Its a tough matchup, sometimes you just draw like crap and other times you have a crazy start with huge fat coming online in turns 1-2. Jitte really helps here and is probably the push to include it in the deck. Sideboarded Pithing Needle helps bigtime since most of their wins are because of Vial and the nonsense it pulls off for them.

@Syco_Tr0pic
Ideals is great because in the deck it says UU draw 3 cards. It wins me alot of games I have no right winning. It gives wonder dog +3/+3, It dredges loam back again, and it pitches Roar/Wonder/Deep Anal. Its a great turn one play if I dont have any early critters. It puts me at Thresh like its nobodies business, and it has the super awsome ability to dump free lizards into play while still drawing me 3 cards. Its overall synergy in the deck is outstanding. Im literally playing it over countermagic. Feel free to test a different card in this spot, if you do it should probably be logic or daze. Quiet Speculation isnt in the deck for the same reason Intution isnt. LftL dredges all the goodies into your yard, madness/discard outlets get them there too. Speculation isnt a bad card in the deck by all means. Its just that it adds weakness to the graveyard, something I want to steer away from doing more than I already am. This is the biggest reason Mongoose is debatable.

I do sometimes want another madness outlet besides dog, so Mongoose could also turn into Meba or Tog. I'd prefer Dr Teeth but he also puts too much faith in the graveyard.

Ill update as often as possible.
Thanks for the strong interest in the deck!

Warmonger
03-10-2006, 11:49 AM
Ray of Revelation is a card I was thinking of thanks to its dredge friendly syngergies. The problem is the white mana.
7 mana for Roar is also a big problem, but you somehow deal with it.

Anyway, Mox Diamond is some kind of solution if needed. But you aren't going to destroy whole Enchantress, are you?

Lukas Preuss
03-13-2006, 11:36 AM
I've tested this deck now and I really like it. It's pretty explosive and flexible. I love the way everything interacts with great synergy.

But just one question: Are you absolutely sure that you can cast an Arrogant Wurm of a Lion's Eye Diamond? To me it seems that you get LED's mana *after* you discarded your hand. Not at the very exact moment of the discard. At this point, the Wurm should be in the graveyard already, since you didn't have mana to play it for its madness cost during the discard...

Warmonger
03-13-2006, 11:53 AM
^Do yo know how madness works? (I don't :frown: )

Anyway, you can declare madness and then pay it's cost until the END OF PHASE, so Arrogant would be casted indeed.

Tao
03-13-2006, 12:04 PM
But just one question: Are you absolutely sure that you can cast an Arrogant Wurm of a Lion's Eye Diamond? To me it seems that you get LED's mana *after* you discarded your hand. Not at the very exact moment of the discard. At this point, the Wurm should be in the graveyard already, since you didn't have mana to play it for its madness cost during the discard...

Yes, that is possible, because Madness uses the Stack. This gives Lion's Eye Diamond the "time" to produce Mana with Arrogant Wurm in RFG and his ability on stack.

Lukas Preuss
03-13-2006, 01:03 PM
Ah, great, thanks. I thought it worked, but I wasn't sure how.

Lord Dralnu
03-13-2006, 02:30 PM
Ah, great, thanks. I thought it worked, but I wasn't sure how.
I posted the answer on the previous page...

SillyMetalGAT
03-13-2006, 11:08 PM
This may sound silly, but i've included 3 living wish in the deck instead of ideas unbound. It gives the deck the ability to drop a 1st turn arrogent wurm VERY easily......... and if you have a wurm in hand with LED, you can fetch a Wonder. You can also grab Mongrel, Witness, Sex Monkey, Wasteland, Either Fetch, either cycle land, cephalid coloseum...... hell it goes on and on. A partial wishboard is not a bad idea for this deck, it makes it 100X more aggro too. This deck is utterly insane with the amount of combat tricks it has. Mongrel + LftL = GG in pretty much all cases. It makes him a 5/5 that only gets better the longer the game progresses (eventually you throw wonder in the yard and its over) It may sound janky but Brawn might not be bad if you go the wishboard route either, 6/6 tramplers are tech too.

Overall, I definatly get a winning vibe from this deck. Its highly original and its the most popular deck on the forum. Hats off to Bane on this one, bring home those Seas for team w00sta!

Lego
03-14-2006, 12:45 AM
What's up with Living Wish? Land, Mox, pitch, Living Wish, LED seems a bit less likely than LED, Arrogant Wurm or LED, Land, Roar...

EDIT: Wait, Land, Mox, pitch, Living Wish, LED doesn't really give you anything... I'm confused as to how Wish gives you more first turn Wurms...

Bane of the Living
03-15-2006, 04:36 PM
Ive done some testing with Living Wish and I like it a lot. It doesnt give the deck any disruption but it does give it more consistancy. Being able to wish for Wonder or Brawn showed quite powerful in testing. The ability to fetch utility lands is also quite good. I liked how Salvager Game could fetch utility lands, and I do it much better here. Ideas was quite good with LED since I could blow it and get the 3 mana to use on the 3 cards I drew, however Wish is just broken good with LED. It lets me get exactly what I want for free with LED. This gives me Monkey against Vial, and it gets me wurms whenever needed.

I updated the list with a new wish board. Im not 100% sold on Living Wish so I will post a list with and without it. As far as the original list goes, Jitte has been included as a 2 of.

SillyMetalGAT
03-16-2006, 07:24 PM
@Lego_army_man: have you actually shuffled this deck up? I've gotten land, mox, LED almost 75% of my games

SillyMetalGAT
03-17-2006, 08:33 AM
EDIT: Wait, Land, Mox, pitch, Living Wish, LED doesn't really give you anything... I'm confused as to how Wish gives you more first turn Wurms...

Umm.... Land, Mox, pitch, Living Wish and IN RESPONSE blow LED Puts the card into your hand with 3 mana if you want to do something like 1st-turn Sex monkey on that Pithing Needle naming Mongrel or Roar...... If you blow the LED after you get a 1st-turn Arrogent Wurm....... Thats doing nothing? Wow, I guess its not good to have a 1st-turn 4/4 against goblins....

MattH
03-17-2006, 01:29 PM
that Pithing Needle naming Mongrel or Roar
Point of order: flashback is not an activated ability.

SillyMetalGAT
03-17-2006, 03:31 PM
Point of order: flashback is not an activated ability.

Oh yeah....... haha sorry about that

Artowis
03-17-2006, 03:53 PM
@Lego_army_man: have you actually shuffled this deck up? I've gotten land, mox, LED almost 75% of my games

So um.. you haven't played that many games? Real statistics don't lie and there's no way you'll be getting those hands at anywhere near that consistency. ;)

SillyMetalGAT
03-17-2006, 04:24 PM
So um.. you haven't played that many games? Real statistics don't lie and there's no way you'll be getting those hands at anywhere near that consistency. ;)

Actually Artowis, if you need proof of JUST how many games I've played with this, ask Bane himself.... I got grounded last week and he slipped me the deck during that time. I locked myself in my room with the deck and goldfished this about 100 games..... But I will correct myself... it was probably closer to 60-65% but because im an idoit, i didnt write down every hand like I should have. Maybe its dumb luck, but I drew either amazingly or horribly with this.

Now, back to important matters. I would not reccomend Aquameoba in this deck, as Aquameoba has one of the SILLIEST madness outlets. I reccomend if you use a wishboard to run 1 underground sea SB and 2 MB and throw in Dr. Teeth. Not only is he a REDICULOUS madness outlet, he is just REDICULOUS. In a deck like this, I believe Dr. Teeth would just plain own. He can also be a wish target. Black then gives you the added bonus of E. Plague, Therapy (maybe?), or even Ghastly Demise.

Bane of the Living
03-17-2006, 05:03 PM
To add black would make for a very shakey mana base. You'd need to give up the wastelands at least. Wastelock is really what the deck relies on for disruption while it beats for 4 turns. Maybe you could still wish for your wasteland. It depends how much black would add. The obvious is dr teeth, but Im not sure how much he's needed. Playing 4/4 and 6/6 flying wurms is probably better than splashing a third color for another madness outlet. Tog does nothing for the game plan of the deck. He was better in Madtog 1.x cause your gameplan was a bit more control and he had alot of late game power. Über Madness already has staying power with loam and wurms. The Jitte/Wish addition also provides reach, should the game go to turns 5 and on.

Last but not least, Dr Teeth loves the yard a bit too much. Making Tormod's Bastard Crypt better and better. I dont want crypt to be THAT good against me. This was one of the reasons Werebear isnt being played.

cdr
03-17-2006, 07:23 PM
So um.. you haven't played that many games? Real statistics don't lie and there's no way you'll be getting those hands at anywhere near that consistency. ;)
"There are three kinds of lies: lies, damn lies - and statistics."
- Disraeli

Bane of the Living
03-17-2006, 08:15 PM
Getting mox AND led in the same hand definitly does not happen 60% of the time. I would say more like 1/5 of your starting hands or so. Especially since I cut the Mox Diamonds to 3. Still 1/5 isnt bad, how many games do you plan on playing in a tournament? 10-15 in a 5 round tournament? Even starting with just a mox or just a LED is busted enough. Thats why the deck was made.

Lego
03-17-2006, 10:37 PM
No No No, I was saying it doesn't give you a first turn Wurm like I thought it did...

Anyway, yeah, I've shuffled it up a few times, and drawing Land, Mox, LED in 75% of the games you play is a statistical anomaly. I suck at statistics, but bane tells me you have a 40% chance to draw a 4-of in your opening hand. That means your chances of drawing 1 of each of 2 4-ofs is stupidly small. Not 75%. Hence, statistical anomaly.

I like the deck a lot though. Just because I'm playing devil's advocate doesn't mean I don't think it's an awesome deck, just arguing to try to make it even better.

Bane of the Living
03-18-2006, 08:31 AM
Any card ideas worth arguing then? I know you've got some exp with Madness, but just remember this doesnt play like aggro control varients. Counterspells of any kind just dont work well with your game plan, mostly thanks to LED.

Artowis
03-18-2006, 01:51 PM
Actually Artowis, if you need proof of JUST how many games I've played with this, ask Bane himself.... I got grounded last week and he slipped me the deck during that time. I locked myself in my room with the deck and goldfished this about 100 games..... But I will correct myself... it was probably closer to 60-65% but because im an idoit, i didnt write down every hand like I should have. Maybe its dumb luck, but I drew either amazingly or horribly with this.


I'll help you out then.

You have roughly a 13% chance of drawing at least 1 LED, 1 Mox and a land. It drops to about 9% to having the 2nd land to pitch to Mox Diamond. Stealing this off the MWS analysis program and good old math majors doublechecking. Good 'ol otherwise worthless math majors.

Lego
03-19-2006, 07:04 PM
Any card ideas worth arguing then? I know you've got some exp with Madness, but just remember this doesnt play like aggro control varients. Counterspells of any kind just dont work well with your game plan, mostly thanks to LED.

I have experience with UG Madness, which is an entirely different monster. Most of its strength was in the ability to say "NO" followed by swinging for the win. My thoughts from playing that though:

Arrogant Wurm is really good.
Wonder is, too.
Wild Mongrel is funny, and makes people play worse than they should.
When you don't know what to put in your board, play Roar of the Wurm with some Quiet Speculations to find him.
In the above example, when you also put Powder Keg in your board because you've got so much room, pray that you face a Beacon of Creation deck, and then go ahead and ramp your second Keg to three to take card of that Troll Ascetic that can't block your Wondered creatures anyway.
Elephant Guide makes your 6/6 Flyer into a 9/9 Flyer, and is funny, but not good.
Yayyyy Daze.
Ditto on Deep Analysis, it's some good.
Waterfront Bouncer maindeck is really good in Extended. He's also really good against Reanimator. Don't play him.
Ditto for that tap to draw and discard guy.
Lastly, don't play the deck if you're not going to play 4 Aquamoebas.

And as a post-lastly final note, whenever you counter Goblin Ringleader with Circular Logic for the win, point out that you also play Daze and Force of Will (reveal them if you have them) and then chuckle, stating that you don't play Ancestral Recall or Time Walk while Basking Rootwalla swings over the army of Goblins for the win.

As for your deck, I like it a lot, and don't mean for you to think otherwise, but could never justify playing it, seeing as UG Madness was the first deck that I ever played, and is still my favorite deck ever. I won states with that thing, and the combined worth was like $2.50. Ahh, the memories. I think I may just bust it out and kick some sweet bootie. Thanks for the nostalgia!

Lukas Preuss
03-20-2006, 03:52 AM
Just a quick thought (I just thought about it, so nevermind if it's stupid): What do you think about a transformational sideboard? Against combo, you could turn this deck easily from aggro to aggro control. I'm have no idea, how good this would be, but I might test it, though.

In a combo heavy environment, this might actually be a good idea...

Rambo
03-20-2006, 08:08 PM
@Lukas: I totally agree with you as I am a huge fan of transformation sideboards (Though synergy with the wishes isn't that great:frown: ) But you could have daze and forces in you sideboard or something like that. Maybe the green leyline to improve your control matchup?

Bane of the Living
03-20-2006, 08:41 PM
Wow I didnt even think of Leyline. Thats definitly hot, especially when I depend on creatures so much. It would suck really bad to draw the extra copies mid-late game tho. Mongrel food I guess. You'd be suprised at what LftL does to the Madness deck just in itself. Pumping Mongrel and dredging goodies away is huge. LED is the expendature of this power. Ill try out Leyline to see if its any good. I dont know about the whole transformation sideboard but I suppose it deserves a look too.

If I had a combo heavy enviroment Id rather add Meddling Mage so I could keep LED synergy. LED is just bad with counterspells unless you have madness mana for Circular Logic when you blow LED. Maybe on opponents turn and cast an aggrogant wurm too?

Lego
03-22-2006, 02:20 AM
LED is just bad with counterspells unless you have madness mana for Circular Logic when you blow LED. Maybe on opponents turn and cast an aggrogant wurm too?

LED gives you the mana for Circular Logic. Still bad synnergy, just thought I'd mention it.

I like the aggro-control version better for the maindeck anyway, but that's just because I'm nostalgic. If you want to see the UG version play sometime, Bane, lemme know :)

Lukas Preuss
03-22-2006, 05:44 AM
Well, if you really want to transform the deck from aggro to aggro control, you would need to side out LED and side in some counterspells like FoW, Daze, Circular Logic, etc.

I don't think this would be a good idea, though, since the deck would be much slower without LED...

Bane of the Living
03-22-2006, 06:01 PM
Well I think this decks biggest strength is being an aggro/combo deck with the LED. It gives you sick starts that often resemble Reanimator, but the deck has much more staying power and reliability than them. Playing the turn 1 6/6 Flyer with a Madness deck remaining to back you up is quite good.

I actually think this is the way to evolve the deck away from aggro/control. That deck shows its face in the form of Threshold, and it does its thing much better than Madness. This version of madness goes for the throat by abusing the madness mechanic quickly. Trying to turn it back into Aggro/Control old school Madness is a step in the wrong direction. Id rather continue discussion on perfecting the LED version of the deck. Lets work to bring madness back into power! Hail wonderdog!

Rambo
03-22-2006, 06:56 PM
The big problem I keep having is dumping my hand to put a 6/6 flyer into play,
then having it swords. Pisses me off.

Bane of the Living
03-22-2006, 07:13 PM
If you know your playing against an opponent with swords play alittle more conservative. Dont discard your hand unless you have a lftl in it. play some smaller threats to try and bait the swords and use card draw to find loam. You rarely want the turn 1 wurm going into game one with an unknown opponent. Try setting up with brainstorm or wally. If you have a mox play early lftl or mongrel.

Bane of the Living
03-24-2006, 11:56 AM
I just made some changes to the maindeck. I really needed another madness outlet. Aquamebba was tried but I didnt like him too much. I'm going with Dr Teeth himself. I know this makes the black splash but LftL and Mox help shore up mana problems. Tog gives the deck the late game staying power it needed. Making attacks with a 6/6 and a possible 12/13 tog puts alot of pressure on the opponent. I'll update the list.

SillyMetalGAT
03-25-2006, 05:30 PM
Bane gave me the deck again yesterday before I went to school (Friday we have Legacy tournements and playtesting afterschool) and I must say that the black splash with Dr. Teeth IS SOOOOOOOOOOOO GOOD!!!! this deck has literally become AGGRO mad-tog. I dropped either 1st turn Wurms, Dogs, or Atogs all day. This deck doesn't even fear Needle or Crypt like regular mad tog does. On top of that, there is so many open slots in this deck, you could easily add removal if you wanted to. Look at your choices: Darkblast(!), Naturalize, Ghastly Demise, pretty much any black removal you can you think of! I will be playing this deck tommorow and see how it fairs against a more established enviroment, but I see nothing but promise for this deck!

Kojiro
03-25-2006, 07:21 PM
After all the changes this deck has gone through it now looks vaguely similar to Moreno's deck from PT:LA. I'm not saying you copped his deck, I just think you could learn a lot from his build even if it was for an entirely different format :smile:

Rambo
03-25-2006, 07:28 PM
How about a list for the black splash? A black splash could also give us some sideboard options like duress:smile:, and help the control matchup a ton.

Lord Dralnu
03-25-2006, 09:36 PM
How about a list for the black splash?
He edited the black splash list into his first post. Not much was added except tog.

Ewokslayer
03-27-2006, 09:12 AM
The mana base so far has been really bad. I have only tested the version with the black splash and I am not really seeing the payoff of tog in exchange for an unstable mana base.

Though from the little I remember of the manabase before the splash it wasn't that stable to begin with.

Perhaps cutting down a wasteland into any actually mana source might be beneficial since the wasteland lock only occurs with LFTL and that should dump a wasteland into the yard anyway.

Bane of the Living
03-27-2006, 06:30 PM
A bit more testing showed me where I had some inconsistancies. I fixed the mana base, cutting another wasteland. I added Intuition to improve games where the deck seems to just diddle around. Meoba was added for some additional aggro component as well as more madness.

Played some games against Rifter..

Game 1
Turn 2 Flashback Roar. He stp's it 3 turns later. Psychatog outgrows rifts damage and finishes the job.

Game 2
Turn 4 Humility he's at 5 life! He cycles Slice and Dice. I play wally, equip Jitte and win.

MonkeY
03-27-2006, 08:48 PM
Meoba was added for some additional aggro component as well as more madness.

Bane, I would like to here your arguement for Meoba over Tog 3-4. They just seem more powerful, and a beeter way to abuse the black splash. Can you explain this more in depth?

Thank you.

SillyMetalGAT
03-27-2006, 11:26 PM
Bane, I would like to here your arguement for Meoba over Tog 3-4. They just seem more powerful, and a beeter way to abuse the black splash. Can you explain this more in depth?

Thank you.

He did that im guessing because he only runs 1 Underground Sea and 1 Swamp, so he only has 6 possible ways to get black. Not to mention in our meta, we have a lot of wastelands floating around, so Its harder for this deck to get black AND blue AND green, and I would rather have green and blue than black and blue, lftl is much better.

MonkeY
03-28-2006, 12:05 PM
He did that im guessing because he only runs 1 Underground Sea and 1 Swamp, so he only has 6 possible ways to get black. Not to mention in our meta, we have a lot of wastelands floating around, so Its harder for this deck to get black AND blue AND green, and I would rather have green and blue than black and blue, lftl is much better.

Then I'm not sure he should run black at all-It seams to weaken the manabase. If you still want to, I would make the following changes:
-1 LftL, because you only have 2 Wastelands now.
+1 Underground Sea

SillyMetalGAT
03-28-2006, 04:17 PM
Then I'm not sure he should run black at all-It seams to weaken the manabase. If you still want to, I would make the following changes:
-1 LftL, because you only have 2 Wastelands now.
+1 Underground Sea

Lftl should never go below 4 in this deck from my testing because you really NEED it in your opening hand as much as possible. I dont see Dr. Teeth being too good in this deck, but then again I haven't tested with it either, I could be horribly wrong.

MonkeY
03-28-2006, 05:29 PM
Lftl should never go below 4 in this deck from my testing because you really NEED it in your opening hand as much as possible. I dont see Dr. Teeth being too good in this deck, but then again I haven't tested with it either, I could be horribly wrong.

there are only 3 LftL in the current build. With Intuition 2 should be plenty. If Dr. Teeth is bad, why are we running him?


I must say that the black splash with Dr. Teeth IS SOOOOOOOOOOOO GOOD!!!! this deck has literally become AGGRO mad-tog.

This is totally contridictory to your first quote. Don't do drugs.

SillyMetalGAT
03-28-2006, 05:40 PM
there are only 3 LftL in the current build. With Intuition 2 should be plenty. If Dr. Teeth is bad, why are we running him?



This is totally contridictory to your first quote. Don't do drugs.

Lol, sorry, didnt notice the Intuition addition there.

About Dr. Teeth... When the idea of him first came up about using him, I came up with a list of Postives VS. Negatives with using Tog. The positives FAR outweighed the negatives. Then we got the report from a friend that it was very shaky to try to drop Tog and have the Green for Lftl, even with Diamond. Sorry about that, I kinda posted about Tog being Uber without really testing.

MonkeY
03-28-2006, 05:53 PM
Lol, sorry, didnt notice the Intuition addition there.

About Dr. Teeth... When the idea of him first came up about using him, I came up with a list of Postives VS. Negatives with using Tog. The positives FAR outweighed the negatives. Then we got the report from a friend that it was very shaky to try to drop Tog and have the Green for Lftl, even with Diamond. Sorry about that, I kinda posted about Tog being Uber without really testing.

Gotcha, it's all good. This considered why don't we just cut Tog and add 2 Meoba's?

SillyMetalGAT
03-28-2006, 09:26 PM
I agree with Monkey, the black splash isn't neccesary unless it gets heavier. Just running black for Tog seems like a mistake.

I dont think it should be Meoba though. Even though its slow, has anyone considered Thought Courier? It allows you to dredge Lftl if you dont have a cycle land in hand and it is a madness outlet, even though it is slow. I think it deserves testing and i'll get back to you when i get the chance to.

Bane of the Living
03-29-2006, 04:25 PM
Courier is way to slow, and just doesnt work good with LED. I dropped LftL to 3 because Intuition can grab one if you see it.

Dr Teeth is debatable depending on the amount of yard hate your going to see. Yard hate is exactly what your opponent will bring in to stop you so I side tog out games 2-3. This does raise the question of his worth in the deck. Currently I have no other black cards in the deck. So siding him out just leaves me with an lame manabase. Wasteland isnt too bad as long as I have a mox OR lftl. My opponent is usually the one that loses too much tempo off their wastelands since I have cheaper beats and fast mana.

Tog is still under testing. I update the list on the first page to match my current build in testing. This is an ever evolving list. There are a good 10 slots in the deck that are interchangeable as long as they keep synergy with the aggro mission of the deck.

SillyMetalGAT
03-31-2006, 04:01 PM
Go Uber Madness!!!

Rambo
03-31-2006, 08:23 PM
Go Uber Madness!!!
I really like the idea of maybe converting the sideboard to a more controlish version, or at least modifying it. I really dont like the trinisphere's.

Bane of the Living
03-31-2006, 08:41 PM
Trinispheres have been taken out, the decklist is updated on the first page. The control sideboard kind of misses the point of being Über Madness does it not?

Lukas Preuss
04-20-2006, 12:53 PM
On April 9th, I played at a 62 people tournament in Iserlohn, Western Germany. I expected quite some Deadguy Ale decks and just a few Gro and Goblins (the last tournament had been won by Suicide, so I expected some netdeckers). I wasn’t too sure about combo, because all the good combo players were either not coming or playing something different. So I thought I’d go with Übermadness. I had playtested that deck extensively, but didn’t get all the cards in the mail yet. The sideboard wasn’t complete, so I thought: “What the hell, I’ll just have fun and go with a transformational sideboard”. The meta turned out to be a lot of Gro, a lot of Goblins and lots of Suicide… I didn’t see lots of Suicide though, because they kept losing to Gro and Goblins… :)

This is the list I played:

3x Tropical Island
3x Lonely Sandbar
3x Tranquil Thicket
3x Wasteland
2x Island
2x Forest
2x Winswept Heath
2x Flooded Strand
1x Cephalid Coliseum

4x Basking Rootwalla
4x Wild Mongrel
3x Arrogant Wurm
2x Wonder
2x Aquamoeba -> I thought I needed another Madness outlet next to Mongrel and LED.

4x Brainstorm
4x Lion's Eye Diamond
3x Life from the Loam -> 3 seemed to be enough for me
3x Roar of the Wurm
3x Deep Analysis
3x Mox Diamond
2x Ideas Unbound
2x Pithing Needle -> I didn’t expect that many people to show up. At small tournaments, this card is useful in the maindeck, since after one or two rounds you know what everybody is playing.

SB:
4x Force of Will
3x Daze
2x Circuar Logic
3x Naturalize
1x Pithing Needle
2x Tormod's Crypt


The sideboard might be the biggest change. As I said, I don’t think I will play it like this again, but it was a hell lot of fun to switch from pure Aggro to Aggro Control. I actually won at least one game because of this. :)


Here’s the short report.

Round 1, Reanimator:
I knew what he was playing, because he scored a first turn kill against Sebastian Ofner during the last Iserlohn tournament that involved multiple dark rituals, and a god hand. He is actually a good player, so I’m a little worried.
Game 1: My opening hand contains two lands, a Mox, LED, Rootwalla and Roar of the Wurm (RotW). I have a pretty explosive start; he only casts Careful Study (discarding two lands). Game one doesn’t last very long, I win.
Game 2: The second game is somewhat similar, I cast Mongrel on turn one, attack for four on turn two, dropping Arrogant Wurm and Rootwalla. I win that match.

1-0

Round 2, Slivers:
Game 1: Before the tournament, he publicly claimed he’d win the whole thing with his brand new creation on the internet. I have no idea what he is playing. He doesn’t know what I’m playing either, so I’m pretty confidant.
Turn one he plays Savannah -> Aether Vial.
I play Tropical Island, go.
Turn two, he plays another Vial and I cast Brainstorm EOT.
On my turn, I play Pithing Needle, naming Vial, waste his Savannah and win from there on.
Game 2: I don’t know, I won. This was a little harder, though. Apparently he didn’t draw any relevant removal and my dudes were just bigger than his.

2-0

Round 3, UGRW Gro:
Game 1: I keep a bad hand after mulliganing. He wins by being very fast with counterbackup. (I think he played like first turn Mongoose, second turn Mongoose, Mongoose and counter all my stuff.)
Game 2: This is a lot tougher for him, he is winning though when I topdeck my fourth land to play RotW from the Graveyard. It looks pretty good for me, he doesn’t have any cards in his hand left and I would win on my next turn. I just hope, he doesn’t topdeck any Burn. He draws his card, casts Mental Note, drawing Lightnng Bolt. GG.

2-1

Round 4, Goblins:
Game 1: He wins. I htin he had a turn four win or something. He had a really good hand, I didn’t. It’s as easy as that.
Game 2: I win. Don’t really remember how.
Game 3: This is really close, at some point, there are no creatures left on the table and we’re both in topdeck mode. He only draws land, I draw good stuff. I win.

3-1

Round 5, Rifter:
Game 1: He casts three Lightning Rifts. I’m stupid. I desperately try to cycle a Sandbar. I’m at 6 life, he has three mana. I lose. I’d have lost that game anyways, so this mistake wasn’t as bad, but I felt pretty stupid afterwards… :)
Game 2: I brought in all my counterspells, along with the Naturalizes from the sideboard, figuring that Aggro Control has a slightly better matchup against Rifter than pure Aggro. This game gets really long, as I counter or naturalize everything he plays. Eventually, I’m able to ride a lonely Wurm token to victory (backed up by FoW).
After Game 2, he offers me a draw, because he thinks I’m playing pure Life from the Loam control with only a few Madness elements (apparently, game 1 didn’t last long enough to reveal my deck). He didn’t want to play the Control mirror again. I’m fine with that, since I’m pretty sure I can’t steal a win from him again… :)

3-1-1

Round 6, UGWR Gro:
Game 1 is the same as in round 3. He is very fast, backed up by FoW and I lose.
Game 2: Because I had so much fun playing Aggro Control during Round 5, I bring in my transformational Sideboard. He doesn’t draw good, I do. My deck suddenly plays like a better version of Gro. I win. So much fun! :)
Game 3: I get Wastelock with Life from the Loam. He doesn’t play any nonbasic lands. I waste away and counter everything he plays. Time is running short, though. I get nervous, because I don’t have enough time to win. When I cast Mongrel, he scoops.

4-1-1

Round 7, UGRW Gro:
Game 1 and 2 are both pretty sad. I lose, having bad hands during both games and he doesn’t.

4-2-1

I don’t make T8, but still manage to win a price (13th place). Overall, I was pretty happy with my decks performance. This is just so much fun and I will continue working on this deck… I think it definitely has lots of potential.

If I forgot something or failed to explain something, feel free to ask. Thanks for reading, and props to bane_of_the_living for inventing such a great deck!

Bane of the Living
04-21-2006, 07:59 AM
Lukas thanks for your interest in the deck. Ive been slaving away at it trying to make it more consistant. What are your props/slops as far as the cards go? Did you like all the card draw you played. Also, what did you change in the deck making it aggro to control?

Maybe I would've did better in the contest if I played the deck at the dual for duals and tore some people up with wurms.

Lukas Preuss
04-21-2006, 08:38 AM
Actually, I'm quite happy with the cards. I might change some of the draw spells to 3 Living Wish, though.

The transformational sideboard looked as follows:
+4 FoW
+3 Daze
+2 Circular Logic

-4 LED
-3 Arrogant wurm (a lot weaker without LED)
-2 Pithing Needle (doesn't do a lot against Gro)

I might continue working on the transformational sideboard, since it's not perfect yet (I threw it together minutes before the tournament) but could have potential against Control and Combo.


One thing, though... I don't like the fact that there are so few one-drops. The original version used to have Mongoose, which was nice, but gets hit by all the Gro hate... I like to be as immune to hate as possible. That's one of the reasons why I included Needle in the maindeck.

Are there any other cards that might fit the 1cc slot?

Bane of the Living
04-21-2006, 02:58 PM
http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=mtgcom/daily/mf90

Actually Spell Snare is looking really good. Its great against Thresh, counters Bears, Predict, Counterspell, Meddling Mage. Against Solidarity it hits Reset, Impulse, ect.

SillyMetalGAT
04-22-2006, 05:15 PM
If you wanted to go with the Black splash, you have access to Putrid Imp. He's a 1cc Madness outlet. Thats about the best I could think of.

As far as any new cards, the Simic guild looks pretty dissapointing for helping out UberMadness.

Lukas Preuss
05-08-2006, 03:52 AM
I actually thought about testing Mind Bomb in the 1cc slot, as it functions as both a Madness outlet and disruption/direct damage. I'm not sure if it's any good, but I think it's worth testing.

For those of you, who don't know about this card, it's:

Mind bomb U , The Dark rare
Sorcery
Each player may discard up to three cards. Mind Bomb deals damage to each player equal to 3 minus the number of cards he or she discarded this way.

This would exclusivly be for the UG version... Putrid Imp is a better card for the UGB version, I think. What do you think about it?

Bane of the Living
05-08-2006, 04:30 PM
Wow thats very nice! Im gonna try that out right away. It seems like it would replace Ideals Unbound or another draw spell. Have you made any changes to your list?

Kazadoom
05-08-2006, 05:04 PM
Hi!
since i saw that deck i'm fascinated of it so i began to tinker arount with it.
I tried the UGb version with psychatog and i really liked it despite the fact that i added Brawn to the deck so i got 3 incarnations which helped much against graveyard hate and random (flying) blockers.

Mindbomb looks really crazy dont know if its really useful as its a sorcery and i usually dont want to spend U+cc for my Madness creatures, furthermore i never really had a problem with dumping things into my yard.
I had more problems with decking myself on the long run!

btw. i want to add chalice to the maindeck as a chalice for one usually does great things against many decks and just shuts down Brainstorm, maibe we can fit them in somehow..

Kazadoom

Lukas Preuss
05-09-2006, 03:30 AM
Chalice doesn't only shut down Brainstorm but Basking Rootwalla as well... I think it's way to risky to be run in the maindeck.

Btw, this is my actual list, but I haven't been able to test it thoroughly. I will take it to a tournament on Sunday, though. :)

Übermadness.dec

3x Tropical Island
3x Lonely Sandbar
3x Tranquil Thicket
3x Wasteland
2x Island
2x Forest
2x Winswept Heath
2x Flooded Strand
1x Cephalid Coliseum

4x Basking Rootwalla
4x Wild Mongrel
3x Arrogant Wurm
2x Aquamoeba
2x Wonder

4x Brainstorm
4x Lion's Eye Diamond
4x Life from the Loam
3x Mind Bomb
3x Roar of the Wurm
3x Deep Analysis
3x Mox Diamond

Kazadoom
05-09-2006, 07:25 AM
Chalice doesn't only shut down Brainstorm but Basking Rootwalla as well... I think it's way to risky to be run in the maindeck.

Stupid mistake i just forgot that as i never harcast them^^
so fpr me they got cc0....

The list looks really solid, but i prefer 4 Roar over 4 loams

Kazadoom

Obfuscate Freely
05-09-2006, 10:07 AM
Übermadness.dec

3x Tropical Island
3x Lonely Sandbar
3x Tranquil Thicket
3x Wasteland
2x Island
2x Forest
2x Winswept Heath
2x Flooded Strand
1x Cephalid Coliseum

4x Basking Rootwalla
4x Wild Mongrel
3x Arrogant Wurm
2x Aquamoeba
2x Wonder

4x Brainstorm
4x Lion's Eye Diamond
4x Life from the Loam
3x Mind Bomb
3x Roar of the Wurm
3x Deep Analysis
3x Mox Diamond
You're playing Mind Bomb over Careful Study? This doesn't look like a Philosophy of Fire deck. I wouldn't even play Mind Bomb over Hapless Researcher; I can't imagine eschewing Study for it.

Lego
05-09-2006, 11:30 AM
Stupid mistake i just forgot that as i never harcast them^^
so fpr me they got cc0....

The list looks really solid, but i prefer 4 Roar over 4 loams

Kazadoom

Even if you use Madness to cast a Basking Rootwalla, his converted mana cost is still 1, and he will still be countered by a Chalice for 1.

Kazadoom
05-09-2006, 02:21 PM
yeah i know i just wanted to expresst hat i forgot that he is a cc1 guy!

Lukas Preuss
05-15-2006, 04:33 PM
I played the list I posted above at a tournament on Sunday.

I didn't do too good, mainly because I lost against Spring Tide twice (really bad matchup), against Landstill (couldn't really do anything about it), and against the worst RG deack I've ever seen (I mean, come on... losing to attacking Orcish Lumberjacks *twice* due to being mana screwed is embarrassing...).

I didn't actually expect any combo at all, but the field appeared to be full of Spring Tide and IGGy Pop (No Solidarity, though). This deck has a really hard time winning constantly against combo that wins on turn three. Thanks to Mind Bomb into two Rootwallas and a Roar, I managed to win one game against Spring Tide, though.

There is nothing you can really do to fight combo without changing a lot in the maindeck, I think.


My games against Landstill (UW) were pretty close, actually. I won one game, because I got the Wastelock in turn two and won from there on. I decked myself during one game with Life from the Loam and got mana screwed during the third game.


Regarding Mind Bomb: I have to say I liked the look on my opponents face whenever I played this card. I most cases, it dealt three damage and gave me free Wallas or dumped Roars, etc. into the yard. I boarded it out quite often, though. Not too convinced, but I might play it again... I think further testing should be done with this card. How is everybody's opinion on it?

Bane of the Living
05-15-2006, 07:31 PM
I havent gotten around to playing it. I was thinking of trying out Infernal Tutor in the black version, still having mana issues with it tho. Wasteland need to come out to acomidate. Ive been playing more standard lately since regionals is next week, Ill hope back on the madness wagon soon.

mogote
05-16-2006, 06:28 PM
I didn't actually expect any combo at all, but the field appeared to be full of Spring Tide and IGGy Pop (No Solidarity, though). This deck has a really hard time winning constantly against combo that wins on turn three. Thanks to Mind Bomb into two Rootwallas and a Roar, I managed to win one game against Spring Tide, though.

There is nothing you can really do to fight combo without changing a lot in the maindeck, I think.
What did your SB look like? Did you still use a transformational sideboard to turn the deck into aggro control after boarding? It would be nice if you could post your actual SB for the tournament.
And did you find winning too difficult in the remaining two matches if the first one is an autoloss as you described?

Lukas Preuss
05-16-2006, 07:48 PM
1x Wasteland
3x Naturalize
4x Tormod's Crypt
4x Pithing Needle
3x Tranquil Domain

This is what my sidebard looked like. It contained 5 cards against Gro (4 Crypt and Wasteland), because that's what I lost to last time (see my report). Needle and Naturalizes are pretty self explanatory. Tranquil Domain was there to fight Rifter, because I figured that this deck has a hard time against anti-creature decks (since it runs creatures). Tranquil Domain is a good way to deal with both Humility and Lightning Rift for just 1G.

Landstill was a pretty stupid match, since during the first game, Life from the loam with Wasteland kept him from doing anything, but decked me in the end. There was nothing I could do about it, since I only had the choice between decking myself and being beaten to death by Mishra's Factorys. I chose suicide and scooped shortly after. :)
During the second game, I got Wastelock early on and got him mana screwed. Third game I was mana screwed and lost. I think Landstill is a tough matchup, though. If you're meta is full of it, you might need to rework the sideboard quite a bit. :)

Lukas Preuss
05-21-2006, 06:27 PM
Okay, I played the deck at another tournament on Saturday. Lost to UW Control (WUBS) and had to draw *twice* against Gro, because time was up. I might have won both games, though.

I think Mind Bomb might not be that good in this deck. During most matches I sided it out, because it was the weakest card in the deck. I really wanted to have the fourth Roar of the Wurm in the deck, as well. I'm testing this right now.

Lukas Preuss
06-14-2006, 06:09 PM
Well, I've been working on the deck ever since and took it to another tournament a few weeks ago, going 4-3 only because I mispayed really badly during the last round against Black Suicide (I would have easily won that matchup without any problems, but I seemed to be tired as hell). I missed the T8 because of that stupid mistake... :o

It seems that I'm somewhat of a public relations person in the German Legacy scene... Quite a few people showed a lot of interest in the deck and my version of it (for example, today somebody I have never seen or heard of talked to me on ICQ - appearantly he just did a search on "Lukas Preuss" - because he saw one of my games at the tournament and wanted to get my actual decklist... ). Every tournament I attended during the past two months, people walked up to me and wanted to talk to me about the deck... Friends of mine are already making fun of me and my "popularity", but, hey, what can I do... this deck is amazing. :)


Okay, off of me and on to my current decklist:

Übermadness.dec

3x Tropical Island
3x Lonely Sandbar
3x Tranquil Thicket
3x Wasteland
2x Island
2x Forest
2x Winswept Heath
2x Flooded Strand
1x Cephalid Coliseum

4x Basking Rootwalla
4x Wild Mongrel
3x Arrogant Wurm
2x Aquamoeba
2x Wonder

4x Brainstorm
4x Lion's Eye Diamond
4x Life from the Loam
3x Roar of the Wurm
3x Deep Analysis
3x Mox Diamond
3x Careful Study


Sideboard:
1x Wasteland
3x Naturalize
4x Tormod's Crypt
4x Pithing Needle
3x Mana Maze


I finally came to the conclusion that 4 Life from the Loam and 3 Roar of the Wurm is the right configuration, because with all the draw spells and cycling lands in the deck, you can dredge quite a lot... You don't need to have more than 3 Roars... you will most definitely see at least two during every game.
3 Careful Study: I know Bane didn't like them and chose not to include them in the deck. I have to disagree with him... Careful Study allowed some extremely broken starts during the last tournament I played it in. I know that it is not a good draw during the mid or late game, because you are most likely not going to have a lot of cards in your hand, but my version is more focused on the graveyard (without being as vulnerable to Tormod's Crypt as Gro is) anyways, so this should not be a huge problem.
SB, 3 Mana Maze: These were in there to fight storm combo, because at earlier tournament, quite a lot of IGGy Pop and Spring Tide showed up. I didn't play against any combo, but it won me a game against Burn (which is not really a bad matchup, though).

Well, any suggestions?

@Bane: If you're still updating your opening post to have the most current decklists there, I think you should include a UG version of Übermadness that doesn't use Living Wish, as well. I've found it to be really consistent, and think it's just as viable as the other two versions.
You're signed Roars have become quite famous at Western German Legacy tournaments, as well, by the way. ;)

Bane of the Living
06-14-2006, 08:21 PM
Well, I've been working on the deck ever since and took it to another tournament a few weeks ago, going 4-3 only because I mispayed really badly during the last round against Black Suicide (I would have easily won that matchup without any problems, but I seemed to be tired as hell). I missed the T8 because of that stupid mistake... :o

It seems that I'm somewhat of a public relations person in the German Legacy scene... Quite a few people showed a lot of interest in the deck and my version of it (for example, today somebody I have never seen or heard of talked to me on ICQ - appearantly he just did a search on "Lukas Preuss" - because he saw one of my games at the tournament and wanted to get my actual decklist... ). Every tournament I attended during the past two months, people walked up to me and wanted to talk to me about the deck... Friends of mine are already making fun of me and my "popularity", but, hey, what can I do... this deck is amazing. :)


Okay, off of me and on to my current decklist:

Übermadness.dec

3x Tropical Island
3x Lonely Sandbar
3x Tranquil Thicket
3x Wasteland
2x Island
2x Forest
2x Winswept Heath
2x Flooded Strand
1x Cephalid Coliseum

4x Basking Rootwalla
4x Wild Mongrel
3x Arrogant Wurm
2x Aquamoeba
2x Wonder

4x Brainstorm
4x Lion's Eye Diamond
4x Life from the Loam
3x Roar of the Wurm
3x Deep Analysis
3x Mox Diamond
3x Careful Study


Sideboard:
1x Wasteland
3x Naturalize
4x Tormod's Crypt
4x Pithing Needle
3x Mana Maze


I finally came to the conclusion that 4 Life from the Loam and 3 Roar of the Wurm is the right configuration, because with all the draw spells and cycling lands in the deck, you can dredge quite a lot... You don't need to have more than 3 Roars... you will most definitely see at least two during every game.
3 Careful Study: I know Bane didn't like them and chose not to include them in the deck. I have to disagree with him... Careful Study allowed some extremely broken starts during the last tournament I played it in. I know that it is not a good draw during the mid or late game, because you are most likely not going to have a lot of cards in your hand, but my version is more focused on the graveyard (without being as vulnerable to Tormod's Crypt as Gro is) anyways, so this should not be a huge problem.
SB, 3 Mana Maze: These were in there to fight storm combo, because at earlier tournament, quite a lot of IGGy Pop and Spring Tide showed up. I didn't play against any combo, but it won me a game against Burn (which is not really a bad matchup, though).

Well, any suggestions?

@Bane: If you're still updating your opening post to have the most current decklists there, I think you should include a UG version of Übermadness that doesn't use Living Wish, as well. I've found it to be really consistent, and think it's just as viable as the other two versions.
You're signed Roars have become quite famous at Western German Legacy tournaments, as well, by the way. ;)

I think your right about the Carefull Study, it makes for some just broken plays. Ideals Unbound was played over it for some time but its really only one more card for the double blue cost. Do you really like a full four LftL's? I find 3 might be enough since the deck doesnt have cards based directly off it such as Assault, Confinement, or Devestating Dreams. It is amazing with mongrel no doubt in my mind.

I took a long break from this deck to play Land Ho. I will pick it up again soon, probably when my girlfriend isn't playing thresh.

Are you having any problems with no maindeck answer's to Enchantments/Artifacts. I scoop up to Humility/Worship/Confinement. It was really the only reason I included Living Wish anways.

Ill post your u/g version on the first page along with a primer update. Props on mana maze tech!

Lukas Preuss
06-15-2006, 04:33 AM
Yeah, I think 4 LftL is the right number, since this card alone gives you a solid mid and late game.
- It is recurrable draw (Cycling lands, Cephalid Colisseum)
- It refills your hand (Which is good for Mongrel, but also if you draw Careful study later on in the game).
- In the early game it accelerates into a Wasteland lock (we all know that, but with 4 LftL this gets a lot more likely to gain a huge advantage trough this... maybe it's partly because most mana bases around here are extremly vulnerable to Wasteland)
- It is somewhat of a tutor effect if you're desperatly looking for Roar of the Wurm or need to make your dude's flying. If you want to draw a Roar of the Wurm, dredging three cards away is like drawing three... and you can dredge a lot.

As you said, this deck is not based on LftL, but it gives it some serious strengths. I never regretted having it as a four-of.


I don't really have a problem against these Enchantments, since the red version of Gro is much more prevelant around here -> No Worship. This is also good, because Lightning Bolt is just so much weaker against this deck than StP. :)
Confinement is not played as well... I guess most players around here stick to the 'Tier 1' decks like Gro, Deadguy Ale, Goblins. and Landstill.
Humility, on the other hand, sees some play... but it is not a serious annoyance, because there's only a few people playing Rifter or Wombat.

If your meta is filled with these decks or other problematic enchantments, you might want to include Naturalize in the maindeck, I think. You could even consider Ray of Revelation, with all the LED and LftL action.

bigredmeanie
06-15-2006, 01:15 PM
Actually Ray is a much better answer to enchantments than Naturalize, you can easily include 1 Savannah to pay the cost the first time, becasuse decks you need it against don't usually run wasteland.

Bane of the Living
06-15-2006, 10:56 PM
Thats a great idea. I think Id leave tog out of the deck to fix the mana base for ray. Its probably what the deck needed. I could run Armageddon or STP in the board with a white splash and maybe dare touch for Brushhopper? What do you guys think of that white change? I could sb Sacred Ground against Deadguy as well. Confinement sb?

One change I plan to make is increase the number of Cephalid Colloseums. Its as good as Bazaar when you have LftL going.

Lukas Preuss
06-16-2006, 03:22 AM
I think the White Splash is propably a good idea, although I don't think you really need to worry about the Deadguy matchup since it is in your favor already.

I like the idea of having removal like Swords to Plowshares, because one thing I don't like about the deck is its inability to fight opposing creatures other than blocking or racing them (which is a good plan in most situations, but maybe not in all). StP could even make the Goblin matchup more favorable, as well.

I don't think you have to increase the number of Colisseums, because if you have LftL going, you will most likely see one pretty soon. You could run two, I think, but I hate the idea of taking out something like Wasteland.

I will definitely try Anurid Brushhopper... I think he will replace Aquamoeba in my build.

Bane of the Living
06-16-2006, 08:03 PM
3x Tropical Island
2x Tundra
3x Lonely Sandbar
3x Tranquil Thicket
2x Wasteland
1x Island
1x Forest
2x Windswept Heath
3x Flooded Strand
2x Cephalid Coliseum
3x Mox Diamond
4x Lion's Eye Diamond

4x Basking Rootwalla
4x Wild Mongrel
3x Arrogant Wurm
2x Anurid Brushhopper
2x Wonder

4x Brainstorm
3x Careful Study
4x Life from the Loam
3x Roar of the Wurm
2x Ray of Revelation

Sideboard:
2x Wasteland
2x Ray of Revelation
4x Tormod's Crypt
4x Swords to Plowshares
3x Mana Maze

Ok big changes. I took a bit of time to come to this white splash list. I didnt want to go too heavy. The push for it was certainly Ray. The biggest problems I faced were Worship, Confinement, Humility, and Moat. Damn white enchantments! Its also great against Lightning Rift and Survival.

Brushhopper is the man! He helps capitalize off your mid game loam plan by being impossible to ever kill as well as swing, slide out, and come back to block. One of the bigger problems with the deck was a small shortage of men and trading combat phases with decks like goblins. Tog is out, Hopper is in.

I would've loved to fit swords in the main but the point of the deck is to have the biggest creatures out and fast. StP sucks against combo and I dont want to make that match any worse. Its in the sideboard as a 4 of as needed.

Ill update the list on the first page and Ill try to write a new primer as well. matchups will be posted as they come.

urza_insane
06-16-2006, 08:28 PM
With the White splash could Riftstone Portal be an option? White also provides to ability to play Nantuko Monestary - a big recurring threat with loam out is never a bad thing. It also gets around Humility due to weird rule interactions.

I love Brushhopper in the deck, that card can be very sick. Ray is very helpful as well. I'm really liking the deck, but something has been bothering me - what the heck do you do against combo? The deck can be very explosive, but even with that I don't see combo being very easy to beat. Is it just an accepted bad match? Why not devote more board space to it?

Bane of the Living
06-16-2006, 09:23 PM
With the White splash could Riftstone Portal be an option? White also provides to ability to play Nantuko Monestary - a big recurring threat with loam out is never a bad thing. It also gets around Humility due to weird rule interactions.

I love Brushhopper in the deck, that card can be very sick. Ray is very helpful as well. I'm really liking the deck, but something has been bothering me - what the heck do you do against combo? The deck can be very explosive, but even with that I don't see combo being very easy to beat. Is it just an accepted bad match? Why not devote more board space to it?

Monestary really isnt needed thanks to roar but I will keep that shit in mind. Riftstone Portal seems worth some testing.

Yes combo is my bad matchup with this deck. Not too many people play combo in my store, usually like 2 Solidarity decks out of 20-25 players or something absurd like that. That said feel free to add more anti combo to the maindeck or side. Stifle might be worth a try since its use is very broad. It can come in against an opponents Crypts as well.

Throw the Monestaries in and give it a go. Let me know if it works out.

BlindMage
06-17-2006, 02:15 AM
Also, Arcane Laboratory/Rule of Law could be added, to help with combo. I realize that Mana Maze can do the same thing, but still. There's also Chalice of the Void.

A Banana
06-17-2006, 09:45 AM
I think this deck needs to be seriosly rethought. You are too explosive, to the extent that one counterspell=you lose. Against Aggro, thats incredible. And you say you play conservatively against thresh. I'm not sure this deck can play conservatively.

Lets take a look at the GUW version.

Turn 1: Land, Basking Rootwalla
Turn 2: Land, Wild Mongrel = FoW
Turn 3: Land, Careful Study (Pump Rootwalla). Pitch Roar of the Wurm.
Turn 4: You wont have the mana to flashback Roar Yet, so you pump Rootwalla and EOT brainstorm.
Turn 5: Land, Flashback Wurm = StP. By know they have thresh. You most likely lose because your hand is exhauseted.

[If this example is not enough, I will playtest another one on request]

The very nature of some of the cards in this deck forces you to overextend. Roar of the Wurn requires you to run a discard spell because it is jank on its own. Sure, discard is good in this deck. But when you pitch roar you just spent 4 mana to get StPed? Especially if you don't know what your playing and Roar turn 1 off LED, you lose. I know roar seems like the boost this deck needs, but I think the contrary. This deck needs to be more refined, which is why I advocate cutting Wurm altogether.

This may all be pure idiocy, though. I'm not sure today.

Bane of the Living
06-17-2006, 10:54 AM
Your not really taking into account the broken mana accel. Your saying turn one roar is bad, sure it often is unless backed by Loam and cycle lands.. But your 5 turn briefing there didnt include any LED's or Moxes and your saying you missed a land drop too. This deck doesnt miss its mana often. It plays LftL for crying out loud.

I honestly dont care too much if Roar gets stp'd. I find another one, or I play an Arrogant Wurm. I have a lot of creatures, even Wally, the shitty creature can trade with Mongoose. Thats not good for Thresh. The addition of Brushhoppers gives me a massive body that will never be stp'd. That match usually breaks open when I find Wonder. Lukas can probably back me on that.

I dont know how much Madness you've played in your hayday but Counterspell is not game over. Wally and Arrogant can be played at instant speed for super cheap, Ill play them on my thresh opponents end step, if they get countered I get to resolve a bigger threat on my turn.

I think I need to point out again that this is a much more aggro version of Madness. This is the deck we play Roar's in, not Circular Logic or Counterspell. Ive tried alot of cards in this deck now, Jitte, Tog, Intuition.. I think the best build is coming together well now.

A Banana
06-17-2006, 12:20 PM
Your not really taking into account the broken mana accel. Your saying turn one roar is bad, sure it often is unless backed by Loam and cycle lands.. But your 5 turn briefing there didnt include any LED's or Moxes and your saying you missed a land drop too. This deck doesnt miss its mana often. It plays LftL for crying out loud.

I honestly dont care too much if Roar gets stp'd. I find another one, or I play an Arrogant Wurm. I have a lot of creatures, even Wally, the shitty creature can trade with Mongoose. Thats not good for Thresh. The addition of Brushhoppers gives me a massive body that will never be stp'd. That match usually breaks open when I find Wonder. Lukas can probably back me on that.

I dont know how much Madness you've played in your hayday but Counterspell is not game over. Wally and Arrogant can be played at instant speed for super cheap, Ill play them on my thresh opponents end step, if they get countered I get to resolve a bigger threat on my turn.

I think I need to point out again that this is a much more aggro version of Madness. This is the deck we play Roar's in, not Circular Logic or Counterspell. Ive tried alot of cards in this deck now, Jitte, Tog, Intuition.. I think the best build is coming together well now.

Well look at madness in it's hayday. It ran counterspells as back up so it wouldn't lose when it overextended. However that was a fairly bad hand as I had no mana accel, and by the time a drew LED it was too late to fully abuse it.

I just think LED might be a little much. It forces you to overextend. Though I do not advocate cutting it since it is soo powerful, we should be boarding it out in control matchups.

~Banana

Lukas Preuss
06-17-2006, 12:59 PM
I definitely have to agree with bane on the Threshold matchup. Threshold is a favorable matchup to the extend that I rejoice when I see an opponent drop a Mongoose on his first turn. Your creatures are way bigger than his, he can't handle all your threats with counterspells. Wastelock is a house against Thresh. Seriously, please test this matchup, against a real oponent and you will see how Übermadness crushes Threshold.

It is not an easy deck to play, though. You have quite a few decisions to make every turn. Most people that pick this deck up don't seem to understand that, but you have quite a lot of options. If you really know how to play this deck without making mistakes, you will most likely win against Threshold.

By the way, this actually happened against Threshold during the tournament (it is very unlikely but it shows how explosive this deck can be):
He: Tropical Island, Mongoose, Go.
I: Tropical Island, Tormod's Crypt. He (thinks for a long time): FoW. I: Tormod's Crypt. He: Damn, can't do anything about it. I: LED, sac, play Roar of the Wurm and Basking Rootwalla, discard Wonder.
Two turns after that, he scooped. :)


LED doesn't have that many drawbacks since you run cards that function well from your graveyard (Roar, LftL, Deep Analysis). Speaking of which... I've found Deep Analysis to be quite good, and I don't like to cut it from the deck for the white splash. Since most of my meta doesn't consist of troublesome enchantments, I might still run a few copies of this card in the maindeck.

adrieng
06-17-2006, 01:17 PM
hi everybody i take interest in all form of life from the loam deck
and seing your list i dont see why playing blue over red
in red you have violent eruption and seismic assaut
i think it ld help a lot against the gobelin matchup which seems bad
cause you don t have enough removal
violent eruption seems the best removal with led cause it kills two three gobelins easily and for everybody who played ho land destruction we all know that a resolved seimic assaut is gg against gob
gamble take also an important place you can gamble a life from the loam or eaven an arrogant wurm or a roar of the wurm it seems better than cards like careful study
if you want still to play a blue version have you tryied trinket mage cause it can tutor a led and help the combo matchup to tutor a chalice or a pithing needle
maybe his 2/2 body make him weak in this kind of deck
you have also anger wonder is better but...
as for the ray of revelation maindeck it seems a very good idea cause all the control decks are now playing enchantments good idea

Myrrodin
06-17-2006, 03:04 PM
In the Ug (no splash) builds, have you guys tried running Waterfront Bouncer (over Aquamoeba)? I remember loving that card with the extended UG Madness, even though this does play a lot different. However, I feel that the different play style/deck composition actually further improves the arguement for Bouncer. First off, he is a madness outlet, albiet your least useful one, but he is absurd with LftL, and he makes racing decks a lot easier, especially when you bounce a Warchief at the end of their main phase, or keeping Mystic Enforcer from ever blocking or attacking. Just thought it might warrant testing.

Bane of the Living
06-17-2006, 04:32 PM
In the Ug (no splash) builds, have you guys tried running Waterfront Bouncer (over Aquamoeba)? I remember loving that card with the extended UG Madness, even though this does play a lot different. However, I feel that the different play style/deck composition actually further improves the arguement for Bouncer. First off, he is a madness outlet, albiet your least useful one, but he is absurd with LftL, and he makes racing decks a lot easier, especially when you bounce a Warchief at the end of their main phase, or keeping Mystic Enforcer from ever blocking or attacking. Just thought it might warrant testing.

Well Enforcer is a big man but Roar can match him. Otherwise I just try to out aggro fat creatures like that, which is quite possible. Wonder means even wally chumps him whilst I attack with other men. I drop big guys way faster than other decks so the wurms will eat away early hordes, thus bouncer is not so needed. Id rather run Ray so I have a way to deal with enchantments. Bouncer is also trash against gobs, I'd never see the time to bounce a chief cause of gempalm and fanatic. One more note on bouncer is his lameness against combo, an already bad matchup. I want to stay fast pace aggro to beat them. LED is amazing and I ignore counterspells for its sheer broken plays. LftL's purpose is mid/late game card draw, wasteland recrusion, and most importantly, recovery from pitching my hand and going all in.

@Deep Anal
This card is great and I shed a tear cutting it from my build. I chose between it and Carefull Study, going with the cheaper spell. Carefull Study is the shit with LftL.

@Red Splash
I really think the Seismic Assault/Devestating Dreams plan is a different deck. Land Ho. Its amazing at what it does but it's just a different deck completely. Gamble is tempting for its ridiculous tutor power in decks like these, its probably one of my new favorite cards and seems very under rated. Yet Land Ho is a control deck at heart, looking to disrupt the opponent and win via lftl CA advantage. The white splash has promising aggro help such as Ray to knock out power enchantments and Brushhopper for the invincible beats. Riftstone Portal and Nantuko Monestary both look quite promising as well but I havent even touched them yet.

So in a nutshell..

Red-Control
White-Aggo

Wierd eh?

EDIT

I realize you were talking about taking Blue out for Red but I really cant since blue is what provides consistancy. Brainstorm and CS just cant be matched by Gamble even tho it is THAT good.

Cephalid Coliseum > Barbarian Ring
Wonder > Anger

This is always true.. Card draw is always better than burn. Flying is what breaks aggro mirrors, not haste.

.................
I updated the first page again.

Myrrodin
06-17-2006, 06:42 PM
@ Bane:

Note I was just talking about over Aquomoeba in the UG builds.

Anyhow, I am a fan of splashing white, though I am really tempted not to try it because my area carries a lot of wastelands. I might try to piece it together to try it out, but I don't think it would be a good choice for my meta. I'll probably try to get you guys results for a UG build, probably something similiar to Lukas' build.

On another note, have we considered any of the threshold creatures? I seem to remember them being mentioned, but can't find it, and the 1st post has been edited extensively, so I might not remember some past builds. I'm thinking Mongoose might be a great choice, he seems to be an awesome meta creature, as most people appear afraid of him.

A Banana
06-17-2006, 10:22 PM
On another note, have we considered any of the threshold creatures? I seem to remember them being mentioned, but can't find it, and the 1st post has been edited extensively, so I might not remember some past builds. I'm thinking Mongoose might be a great choice, he seems to be an awesome meta creature, as most people appear afraid of him.

Yes, Nimble Mongoose was in early builds. I can't remember why it was cut...

Lukas Preuss
06-18-2006, 04:17 AM
Mongoose was in the early builds, and was quite nice, but made the deck more dependant on the graveyard than it had to be, I think. During tournaments, I made the experience, that most people already side in Tormod's Crypt against this deck, since it is the only hate they can bring in against it. The good thing is, that without Mongoose you're not entirely dependant on the graveyard, so this doesn't hurt you as bad.

Bane of the Living
06-19-2006, 06:48 PM
This deck does hit a turbo thresh but theres just nothing to abuse with that besides thresh. Id like to try a Hunting Grounds type deck sometime but thats something completely new.

I cut another Lonely Sandbar for my 3rd Coliseum. Once I find a copy Ill usually just go with that for card draw. It works better as playable mana too since it doesnt come into play tapped.

Lukas Preuss
06-20-2006, 06:19 PM
I just did some testing with the white splash version against Goblins and have to say: Brushhopper is simply amazing. The ability to attack, remove itself from the game and block the next turn is awesome.
I won three out of three games without any trouble. Two of these wins were just because I got Brushhopper into play early and he couldn't do much about it. Of course, I also got some 6/6 wurms and crazy stuff like that as well, but that's just what the deck does... ;)

Lukas Preuss
07-05-2006, 07:25 AM
http://forums.mtgsalvation.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=25164&d=1152071269

Could this card be playable in Übermadness?

edit: I just thought about it and think Übermadness doesn't need this card. Traditional UG Control Madness might find this card usefull, but Übermadness doesn't seem to be able to support the Upkeep of the Sphinx to a useful extend without changing too much in the deck. I might be wrong though.

Myrrodin
07-05-2006, 10:05 AM
Lukas: It still might work though since we are playing loam. With LFTL we can support the upkeep cost for a minimum of 3 turns, which is 12 damage, but I don't know if he is powerful enough since we can't drop him early via LED.

Bane of the Living
07-05-2006, 04:15 PM
Yea this guy is stupidly good. Maybe Brushhopper just finished his short run in the deck. He cant be cast via LED either but he's still ridiculous in the deck. This guy can certainly come down turn 2 via mox. The problem is dedicating to him and losing him to stp. Maybe in that case he should be worked into the sb instead?

Sobek
07-06-2006, 06:06 PM
That would really be a meta decision; if your see STPs everywhere, SB it, but if 6-7 out of 10 games you dont see STPs, its worth MDing it.

Windux
07-06-2006, 06:35 PM
Brushhopper is really gold. You discard at the time you want to and only if you want to.
Even if you want to madness your Arrogant Wurm: Do you really want to cast it in your upkeep?
Also brushhopper makes ridiculous Combattricks and your Opponent really must think, if he want to use Removal on him.

Also I'm testing the Sideboardtech of 3 Solidary Confinement+1 Squee.
I really like the idea, to have a good plan against Burn and random Beatdowndecks with big guys.

Lukas: As I told you, 2 Ray of Revelation should be enough. It's not like other Decks, where you don't get the cards. You only want it in your Grave or at least just once on your hand (even if the chance to get 2 seems to be small).

At all: What do you would exactly board at against Goblins? I mean, board in 4 StP + 3-4 Needles would be great, because you are killing Vial, Early Manadisruption, Incinerator etc, but you don't got that much useless cards in your Mainboard (Deep Analysis, 1 LftL can easly be kicked but what else?)

SuckerPunch
07-06-2006, 10:18 PM
Even if you want to madness your Arrogant Wurm: Do you really want to cast it in your upkeep?

But isn't this guy already better than Arrogant Wurm by himself anyways?

Zilla
07-06-2006, 10:42 PM
http://forums.mtgsalvation.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=25164&d=1152071269
Could this card be playable in Übermadness?
At first glance it looks great, but it's really very bad. Cumulative upkeep on him means he will always end up being card disadvantage. By the second upkeep, you will have discarded 3 cards just to draw 2. By third upkeep, you will have to have discarded 6 to draw 3. And this isn't even taking into account the fact that you lose the creature itself when you fail to pay upkeep. If it weren't a cumulative upkeep, it'd be a great card in the right deck. As it stands, it's actually pretty bad.

michael_noah
07-06-2006, 11:51 PM
Cumulative upkeep on him means he will always end up being card disadvantage. By the second upkeep, you will have discarded 3 cards just to draw 2.

This is incorrect. The way that cumulative upkeep is worded, you add age counters before making the decision whether to pay it or not. If you discard the first turn, then decide to let it die the next turn, it already has 2 age counters when it goes to the graveyard. Third turn you will have discarded 3, but you'll also draw three if you don't pay the upkeep. Only after paying the third cumulative upkeep is it card disadvantage (ignoring the fact that the creature itself costs you a card), as at that point you will have discarded 6 total, then draw 4.

Only when it is somehow prevented from going to the graveyard during those first 3 turns will it really hurt.

Edit: Though normal removal in between your upkeeps can end up costing you a card as well.

Bane of the Living
07-07-2006, 09:38 AM
Well he seems worth a try at the moment. Pretty much only because of Flying. Which is greatly under appreciated and under valued in this format. It breaks games. Flying Wurms and Wonder Dog is how this deck pulls off Aggro mirror wins. Ill try him out but I wont hold my breath. Brushhopper has proved amazing especially alongside Mongrel. Combat tricks really mess with a players head. You guys let me know how you feel playing with this new Coldsnap freak.

Lukas Preuss
07-07-2006, 11:16 AM
I have playtested the Sphinx now for a short time (not very much, though), and come to the conclusion that he doesn't replace Brushhopper. Brushhopper is just too good to be taken out of the maindeck... his flexibility and invulnerability ist huge, not to mention the shitload of combat tricks you can do with him.

Windux and I will both play the UGw Version at one of the largest Legacy tournaments in Western Germany (Dülmen) on Sunday and I'm quite confident that at least one of us will do pretty good with the deck. Maybe some other people will show up with my UG list since it got a lot of popularity during some of the last tournaments around here. I will let you guys know how we did.

Nice move to put the deck to the Open Legacy Forum, by the way. It really deserves it!

Lukas Preuss
07-09-2006, 03:16 PM
Okay, Windux didn't show up to the tournament, but Björn Kubik, an excellent player who played exactly my UG version (-1 LftL +1 Mox Diamond), and I both T8ed. He came in third and I sixth. I played the UGw Version with Deep Analysis in the maindeck.

Here's a short report:

Round 1, Goblins:
Game 1: I have bigger dudes, and have an absolutely broken start. I win.
Game 2: I draw crap, he doesn't draw very good either. On 7 life I stabilize the board and we are both in topdeck mode. He plays Price of Progress, I'm like "wtf?" and lose.
Game 3: He mulligans down to 4 (!) and I have 2 Swords to Plowshares in my opening hand. He doesn't do much after I swords his two Lackeys.

Round 2, Spring Tide:
I knew what he was playing, because one of my friends played against him the round before. I have a bad feeling. This is a very bad matchup... you can't really win, since Spring Tide is faster than Übermadness and Snap > Roar of the Wurm. Anyways, I lose. Not much to say here.

Round 3, Deadguy Ale:
I don't remember much, but I won this one... Deadguy is a good matchup für Übermadness, what did you expect?

Round 4, Boros Deck Wins:
Game 1: He's lightning fast, but I'm faster. That's the way things go. Anurid Brushhopper and Wasteland really shine here. I win.
Game 2: I keep a bad hand because it had two Brainstorms and a fetchland. I don't draw anything good and lose.
Game 3: This is a really long game, I beat him down to 5 life or something, but than he kills all my dudes with Burn and the game stalls for some time. He gets Silver Knight with Jitte, but I get LftL rolling and win through awesome card advantage and lots of flying wurms.

Round 5, Deadguy Ale:
Game 1: He plays Swamp, Go. I play Land, Mox, Mongrel. Second turn, he plays Scrubland and casts Gerrard's Verdict. I discard two Rootwallas. Good times.
Game 2: I win this game, as well. Not much to say here... same procedure as last time.

I end up 4-1, sixth place and win a bunch of Ravnica boosters. This deck is amazing. :)

NANTUKO_SHADY
07-10-2006, 05:58 PM
I admit.. this deck looks quite solid and very fun to play.. I just don't see where this deck beats Solidarity or any other fast combo deck for that matter... I.e. Iggy Pop etc. Especially with a strong showing from solidarity in Richmond this past weekend.. it doesn't seem like uber madness is the best deck choice to play currently..

Lukas Preuss
07-11-2006, 03:42 AM
Actually, this deck has a very hard time beating fast combo decks. But there is always good and bad matchups... This deck has a good matchup against Gro, Goblins and Deadguy. Combo is its bad matchup. If your meta is a lot of combo, you should a) dedicate your sideboard to it (Mana Maze, Arcane Lab, Meddling Mage, ... dunno) or b) don't play this deck.

Your only plan against combo is to race it... sometimes it happens that you're able to win, but not often. At the Dülmen tournament, I played against Spring Tide (see my short report) and would have had the fourth turn kill if he didn't combo out on his third turn both times. Spring Tide is an even worse matchup than Solidarity, though.

Bane of the Living
07-12-2006, 05:47 PM
If you read the primer you'll notice I mentioned the bad combo matchup. Taking counterspells out of Madness makes it simply aggro. Combo beats aggro. I dont think anyones breaking ground here. Like Lukas said the combo match is bad but not unwinnable. You have brokenly fast starts that can steal the game quickly such as turn one wurms. If you have a very combo heavy meta pack maindeck Meddling Mage over Brushhoppers. Dedicate some sb room.

www.win
07-16-2006, 05:16 PM
I have been play testing any form of LED madness for years. But I didn't see Lftl draw engine to be used in this deck until recently. First of all, I will post my LED madness deck that I used to play, and instead of running white, I put red for the speed, so here goes:

The madness:
4 Arrogant Wurm
4 Wild Mongrel
4 Basking Rootwalla
3 Roar of the Wurm
3 Aquamoeba
3 Anger
2 Wonder

4 Careful Study
3 Deep Analysis
4 Fiery Temper
3 Umezawa’s Jitte
4 Lion's Eye Diamond

20 LANDS
4 Taiga
2 Volcanic Island
4 Tropical Island
4 Wooded Foothills
1 Polluted Delta
2 Island
2 Forest
1 Mountain

Question of Card Choice:
@Anger: haste to race combo, and as well as race any other aggro deck.
@Fiery Temper: it's a madness removal, for spot kill on those gay goblins.
@ Jitte: Before Lftl, i see this card as my long term plan if i ever get into a late game. Any creature that can wield the power of Jitte can be the monster that win you the game.

As you can see, red provide angers and removal (firey temper) in the main deck. I have read previous posts in this thread, and come to realize the strength of Uber Madness in term of card advantage, and weakness against combo. However, if we could ran red, then the haste provided by red can even race with combo deck in turn 3.
Moreover, red does provide good side board choice vs combo or control deck. (example, Red Elemental Blast to against any blue based control deck, Pyrostatic Pillar to kill any storm-based combo deck, and as wel as any control deck.) However, the weakness of my deck is that it ran out of hand too easily, even with 3 deep analysis in my deck. So, I am wondering you guys can combine this deck with Lftl draw engine with it. It can improve the bad match up vs combo, and while stay consistant and strong side board vs other type of decks.

Bane of the Living
07-17-2006, 05:24 PM
Im glad the CA of LFTL is appealing to you, it works wonderous. The deck really doesnt need a third color splash IMO. Brushhopper and STP help give the deck a bit more against aggro and Ray was needed to deal with problem enchantments. Adding haste certainly came up in the deck building process but I just never found Anger worthy of the splash. Swords is much better removal and cards such as Stifle or Mana Maze go a long way in the combo match. Try our updated version of the deck. If you really want to keep red Ill leave that up to you as to how. Let me know how your playtesting goes.

SuckerPunch
07-18-2006, 12:51 PM
Sphinx looks golden against any deck that doesnt run Swords. It's a 4/4 flyer for three that gets to attack twice, and makes you discard 3 cards and draw 3 cards. Your thoughts on the card in general. I really don't want to (and don't have the duals to) go for the white splash just for brushhopper. Ray of Revelation is worthless in my meta, and I like burn over Swords in my side to give me reach. Have you tested a U/R/G version since Sphinx came out. What would it look like?

A few questions.

Has this archeatype performed well at any tournaments in the past 5 months? Can you point me to the list that won.

Which matchups can this deck consistently beat? Thres? Goblins? Fairie Stompy?

Aside from combo, what are this decks worst matchups.

It's a cool deck and all, but all the 2 ofs etc make it look inconsistent.

How many times does the sneygy of the deck fall apart.

Thank you.

Myrrodin
07-18-2006, 01:15 PM
SuckerPunch: For tournament results, just read the page, Lukas has a report right on it, and there is another in the thread too. But no, there are no current decks that have won, it is a relatively new archetype that came of the CaNG II Contest, so it is just sneaking its way into the meta. You have to wait for a deck to develop before you start getting a steady stream of results.

The two ofs are actually consistantly hit, if you look at how the deck works:

Brushhopper: This card is a good source to supplement Mongrel. If you just go UG this is Aquamoeba, which is designed to give you mroe madless outlets. It's more of a 6-of than a 2-of.

Ray of Revelation and Wonder: These are not really meant to be drawn. Life from the Loam allows you to dig through the deck really fast, so these two come up quite often. LftL is a broken draw engine, especially when you need cards in the grave, not your hand.

I'm sorry, but this is one of my pet peeves. If you want to know how a deck performs, play with it. I'm tired of people just posting and looking to the better players on the forum to just do all their work for them. I'm sure bane, Lukas, and co. could accumulate and post results, but why trust what we say when you can do it yourself, and get a better feel for the deck.

SuckerPunch
07-18-2006, 02:41 PM
There's nothing wrong with asking for matchups from people who have already played the deck a lot.

Esp a deck like this where you it takes a lot of experience before you learn what the optimal play in a given situation is.

www.win
07-19-2006, 03:08 AM
@SuckerPunch: yeah...ask the proz before you even start it. Some people think that a deck sucks, but in reality is that they don't know how to play with it.

P.S. I will be testing the white splash version soon in my local tournment, after that, I will use my original red splash version and try to install Lftl draw engine into it. Hope for the best result, and please give me some suggestion when i post out that red splash version deck.

P.S:2- Oh, btw. I have a question regarding LED and it's relation to cycling land. Can you cycle your land, and in respond to that sac LED, so LED's mana will resolve first, and you gain those 3 mana...and then still get to keep your one card from cycling land? how about for Cephalid Coliseum? (I get this idea from the smiliar trickin Goblin Belchers' deck, which they sac LED, and in respond to their sacrificing they use Land Grant so they still got the land)

Lukas Preuss
07-19-2006, 05:12 AM
I will try to answer some of your questions.


A few questions.

Has this archeatype performed well at any tournaments in the past 5 months? Can you point me to the list that won.

Jus two weeks ago there was a 50+ people tournament in Dülmen, Germany where Übermadness had two T8 appearances. One was my UG list with minimal changes and one was me running the UGw list with minimal changes. The T4 lists can be found here: http://www.trader-online.de/turniere/Decks/2006-07-T15.html .


Which matchups can this deck consistently beat? Thres? Goblins? Fairie Stompy?

Aside from combo, what are this decks worst matchups.

It looks kinda like this:
Übermadness has a very favorable matchup (65+ percent in our favor) against:
- Threshold
- Deadguy Ale
- Mono Black Suicide
- SD Zoo
- any other deck that either runs a very disruptable mana base or tries to get card advantage from discard spells.
- crap decks like Reanimator, etc.

Übermadness has a favorable matchup (50-65 percent) against:
- Goblins
- any other fast aggro deck (Boros Deck Wins, etc.)
- Burn

Übermadness has an unfavorable matchup (35-50 percent) against:
- Landstill
- Rifter (this could be favorable now with the inclusion of Ray of Revelation)
- Wombat
- any deck running lots of creature control like Swords, etc.

Übermadness doesn't win against these decks (if their player isn't completely retarded or an Orang-Utan):
- Solidarity/Spring Tide (The Spring Tide matchup is a lot worse than the Solidarity one due to it's faster clock and Snap). Solidarity might even be a little winnable, though.
- Any other fast combo like Nausea, Iggy Pop, etc.



It's a cool deck and all, but all the 2 ofs etc make it look inconsistent.

No, the deck is very consistent. Myrrodin already explained why. Test it, you will see how consistent it is. :)


How many times does the sneygy of the deck fall apart.

Thank you.

This deck should be called Awesome Synergy.dec ... it's synergy doesn't fall apart very often... you don't always get very broken starts, but there's always an amazing synergy. :)




Can you cycle your land, and in respond to that sac LED, so LED's mana will resolve first, and you gain those 3 mana...and then still get to keep your one card from cycling land? how about for Cephalid Coliseum?

Yes you can do that, but in the case of Cephalid Coliseum this doesn't make a lot of sense since if you activate LED before it's ability resolves, you will discard your hand, and Colisseum will not draw you any cards at all.

SuckerPunch
07-19-2006, 11:27 AM
Thank you very much. I like that UG build that got 3rd a lot.

2 Aquamoeba
3 Brainstorm
3 Careful Study
3 Deep Analysis
2 Wonder
3 Arrogant Wurm
4 Basking Rootwalla
4 Life from the Loam
3 Roar of the Wurm
4 Wild Mongrel
4 Lion's Eye Diamond
4 Mox Diamond
1 Cephalid Coliseum
2 Flooded Strand
3 Lonely Sandbar
3 Tranquil Thicket
3 Tropical Island
3 Wasteland
2 Windswept Heath
2 Island
2 Forest

Would you say that's pretty much as optimal as the list gets or in such a UG build, would you recommend running Sphinx over the Aquameoba. It is afterall a 4/4 flyer with a built in Careful Study.

I have one last question about Mox Diamond. How essential a part of the deck is it. I have Chrome Mox, not Mox Diamond, and was wondering if I could use it the same as I would Mox Diamond (get one last mana source before discarding stuff to LED), but then again, I guess it doesn't have the same synergy with LoftL.

www.win
07-19-2006, 03:16 PM
i don't think chrome mox would be good...you lose one card that you can't get back, and it have no synergy at all with Lftl. I tested chrome mox in my non-Lftl U/G/R madness before, but I was never satisfied with it.

Lukas Preuss
07-19-2006, 03:47 PM
First of the card's name is Life from the Loam. Don't know what the o in LoftL is supposed to stand for. :)

Crome Mox doesn't even come close to Mox Diamond because of LftL. This deck can abuse LftL almost to such an extend that Mox Diamond doesn't have a drawback at all. Chrome Mox has no synergy with the deck, Mox Diamond has.

I would buy some if I was you, because they are essential to the deck... you can also play with them in other decks such as Stax or 5/3...

Bane of the Living
07-19-2006, 05:05 PM
The most optimal list for the deck is probably the straight U/G version. I didn't think it had enough punch in it but it has proved itself. Im not sure how sphinx is because no ones really tried it. I havent gotten around to it though it does seem better than Aquamoeba.

The mox debate is futile. Chrome is garbage. They really only reprint moxen worse and worse. Thankfully they gave us a new card to make Mox Diamond amazing. We play it like its our job.

www.win
07-22-2006, 03:32 AM
Ok..right now this is what I am going for the upcoming game, I make few changes just for my meta, and I will explain that later in the post:

Mana:
3x Tropical Island
2x Tundra
2x Lonely Sandbar
3x Tranquil Thicket
2x Wasteland
1x Island
1x Forest
2x Windswept Heath
2x Flooded Strand
2x Cephalid Coliseum
3x Mox Diamond
4x Lion's Eye Diamond

4x Basking Rootwalla
4x Wild Mongrel
4x Arrogant Wurm
2x Anurid Brushhopper
2x Wonder

4x Brainstorm
3x Careful Study
4x Life from the Loam
3x Roar of the Wurm
2x Umezawa's Jitte
2x Sword to Ploweshares

For: Jitte and Sword to Ploweshares=creatures removal.
I just realized that there are people playing decks like secret tech, ATS, or elves(all of which beat me when I ran the version that showed in the first page)...well, i guess creatures removals are important here, any suggestions??

I am also wondering that if aquamoeba can be included in this deck, cuz I feel that one of madness great strength is to drop the turn 2 discard outlet, and drop arrogant wurm on turn 3. Therefore, I want to see that turn 2 discard outlet more often....well, what do u guys think?

P.S. Since I ran Jitte in the main board, my land count are dropped by 2...I am wondering if that would be alright in this deck? Or have you guys look at some other white discard outlet: such as 1cc Tireless Tribe, and 2cc Patrol Hound?

SuckerPunch
07-23-2006, 02:29 PM
Is Life of the Loam really as needed as you guys think it is. It honestly seems like it slows this deck down.

I used to run a rather different build (it had a light red splash for Anger, ran 4 Deep Anaylisis and even a couple of Birds and Ideas Unbound) before Life was printed and it was most certainly more consistently explosive. Tge whole deck was designed to best abuse Lion's Eye Diamond, not Life.

It does seem like this lost some of the consistent explosiveness in the way for the sake for slower more controllish cards.

I'll try to find the list as I had to take apart the deck to use the cards in my Thres and RG Beats deck.

www.win
07-23-2006, 09:52 PM
Well, the good thing about Lftl is that once you run out of card from LED, you can always regain your card advantage by getting Lftl from your graveyard, and use it to draw/get land/dredge...etc. The only reason that I want to import Lftl into my U/G/R madness (the one I posted before) is to make sure I don't ran out of card advantage at mid game, so therefore I can use Lftl to fufill my hand after I ran out of cards.

Bane of the Living
07-24-2006, 05:04 PM
Loam plays an important roll in the deck. Not only letting you go all out with LED and abuse Madness, but it also gives you the good draw engine and Wastelock. LftL has good synergy with Deep Anal and Roar because you dredge them into the yard, and Wild Mongrel and Brushhopper become scary bastards when you have a loam active. Feel free to play without it but I feel it to be a useless endeaver and a step in the wrong direction.

www.win
07-26-2006, 03:25 AM
LftL has good synergy with Deep Anal and Roar because you dredge them into the yard,

Speaking of Deep Analysis, I look back on the first page, but I don't find deep analysis in your build...is it useful in that version?? Can you provide a deck list that you currently is playing and have sucess with it?

Lukas Preuss
07-26-2006, 03:35 AM
This is the list I'm currently running:

3x Tropical Island
1x Tundra
1x Savannah
2x Lonely Sandbar
3x Tranquil Thicket
3x Wasteland
1x Island
1x Forest
2x Winswept Heath
2x Flooded Strand
2x Cephalid Coliseum

4x Basking Rootwalla
4x Wild Mongrel
3x Arrogant Wurm
2x Anurid Brushhopper
2x Wonder

4x Brainstorm
4x Lion's Eye Diamond
4x Life from the Loam
3x Roar of the Wurm
3x Deep Analysis
3x Mox Diamond
3x Careful Study


I don't have Ray of Revelations in the main deck, since enchantments are not very prevalent in my meta. Instead I chose to go with Deep Analysis, since they are awesome with LftL. I usually side them out during game 2 & 3, though.

Lanfeng
07-28-2006, 06:38 AM
Lftl is definately a keeper, the simple reason is

Land mox diamond led pitch my hand arrogant wurm

FoW

I don't have many cards in hand do I?

dredge your LftL grab some cyclers fill up on the card advantage.

LftL lets you go all in with LED and not be afraid of the consequences.

midgame go enginelike with your lftl, and if you have enough mana you can make your wonder dogs relatively insane.

It might not be the sole reason for the deck but it is just insanity.

so you can go through all the plays that are really fast but have risks and you substantially lower those risks with lftl

The deck seems really good, remisent (sp?) of the gobbo bidding decks of old that are resilient whatever stage of the game.

Eldariel
07-28-2006, 06:57 AM
Mmm, is the Brainstorm really that good in this deck? To me it looks like, if you're planning to pitch your hand anyways that it wouldn't do a whole lot good. Wouldn't Sensei's Sensitive Torpedo be better for the repeatability? Is an effect like that really worth spending cardslots on in here in the first place? I mean, it's not like you'd be finding FoWs or anything.

Bane of the Living
07-28-2006, 07:48 AM
Brainstorm draws three cards for 1 mana at instant speed. This is a blue deck.

Its also got synergy with Loam since you can dredge away bad cards much like with fetch lands, which are also present.

Brainstorm also works amazing with Lion's Eye Diamond. The longer you play this deck I'm sure you'll realize how much the cards help each other. There have been many situations where I hid my Jitte or Brushhopper or whatnot on top of my lib to draw next turn, after LED abuse. If I happened to draw a Deep Anal without a madness outlet I can Brainstorm it to the top and dredge it away.

Brainstorm also helps consistancy with your opening hands. There are 4 Mox and 4 LED to draw in multiples in your opening hand. Making something beautiful kinda janky looking, Brainstorm helps smooth out your hand. Duh.

I have swapped between 3-4 copies of each Brainstorm and Carefull Study, Brainstorm seems better early game, CS is a bomb when you have loam going.

www.win
07-28-2006, 04:01 PM
@Bane of the Living: I have seen Lukas deck running deep analysis...and I would like to see your deck that run Jitte because you didn't put that in your front page. And by the way, I just modified this deck that run both Jitte and and Swords to plowshare (my meta need them), can you guys take a look and tell me what you guys think?

3x Tropical Island
2x Tundra
2x Lonely Sandbar
3x Tranquil Thicket
2x Wasteland
1x Island
1x Forest
2x Winswept Heath
2x Flooded Strand
2x Cephalid Coliseum

4x Basking Rootwalla
4x Wild Mongrel
3x Arrogant Wurm
2x Anurid Brushhopper
2x Wonder

4x Brainstorm
4x Lion's Eye Diamond
4x Life from the Loam
3x Roar of the Wurm
2x Umezawa's Jitte
2x Swords to Plowshares
3x Mox Diamond
3x Careful Study

Is 20 lands enough in this deck? I am also trying to put Genesis in this deck because sometimes when you dredge Lftl, you dredge away your creatures. Therefor, putting Genesis in this deck can get your creatures back....what do you guys think?

Bane of the Living
07-28-2006, 05:57 PM
I find that Genesis would probably tie up your mana too much. Id rather it just be the fourth Roar.

Your list looks good besides that. Its really what you want the deck to look like in an open field. Ray doesnt need to be maindecked unless white enchantments are heavy in your meta. Ill probably just pull them out of the maindeck build anyways.

I should be taking this to a good tournament this weekend so I'll have a nice tourny report.

I update the list on the mainpage to the most current build.

www.win
07-29-2006, 04:04 AM
you updated? Do you mean the first page?? I don't see any change though...

Gloomdrifter
08-06-2006, 03:52 PM
Hello I´m new to this Forum. I´m from Munich and I tested the UG Version of the LED-Madness yesterday.
I haven´t played it a lot before, so I don´t knew a the tricks you can do with this deck. But I get a 3:2.

The two losts were against Goblins and a awsome performing Faery Stompy.
(turn 2 tripple cloud of faeris and sofai....:confused: )

I like Madness a lot and it is very consistant. And now I want to test 4 Berserks. What you guys think? It makes the turn 2 kill possible....:cool:

Ch33bs
08-07-2006, 01:14 AM
I use 2 Berserk instead of 2 Ray of Rev since I don't see many if any enchantments around here. Berserk helps the soldarity match up a bit by at most 5%.

Bane of the Living
08-07-2006, 04:53 PM
Nice to know more people are catching on the this deck. Its a powerful aggro engine. I played it two weeks ago and went 1-2 drop. I lost a legit game to white thresh where I saw no acceleration, won against affinity, and lost to a pikula variant running Ghost Quarters. The judge at the event made a terrible call concerning the Ghost Quarters, treating the strip ability like a 'stifle' effect, countering the activated abilities on my fetchlands, wastelands, and colesieum. It cost me the top 8. Very unfair.

www.win
08-08-2006, 04:35 PM
Wtf? that judge is dumb..geeze...

Anyway, Bane, i feel sorry for you. By the way, you said that you have updated the decklist at first page, but I don't see any change though...so what do you run this time?

Bane of the Living
08-08-2006, 11:31 PM
Yea it was quite a noob judge call.

The list I played is updated but I dont think I like only 3 LftL. It will go back to four.

Lukas Preuss
08-09-2006, 03:49 AM
How has Solitary Confinement been for you? Against what deck did you side it in? Was it good?

I'm curious, since I thought about using it, as well, but haven't been able to test it...

Tao
08-09-2006, 04:38 AM
I don't play the deck, just 2 ideas:

Trinket Mage: Can get you LED and maybe cards like Divining Top, Chalice of the Void, Engineered Explosives or Pithing Needle.

Quiet Speculation: maybe a bit slow, but still draw 3 for 2 Mana

Lukas Preuss
08-09-2006, 09:09 AM
I don't play the deck, just 2 ideas:

Trinket Mage: Can get you LED and maybe cards like Divining Top, Chalice of the Void, Engineered Explosives or Pithing Needle.

Quiet Speculation: maybe a bit slow, but still draw 3 for 2 Mana

I don't think this deck needs Trinket Mage... it is not a strong enough creature to be included... this is an Aggro deck and Trinket Mage doesn't do much for this purpose. You don't really need a tutor for LED, by the way... you draw them quite often and this deck is not based around LED... it is just another (very good) piece of acceleration.

Quiet Speculation isn't that good. I'd rather run Intuition, since it can put Life from the Loam into the yard, as well.

Bane of the Living
08-09-2006, 05:14 PM
How has Solitary Confinement been for you? Against what deck did you side it in? Was it good?

I'm curious, since I thought about using it, as well, but haven't been able to test it...

Solitary Confinement has the ability to just win games. It's good against other aggro decks like Affinity or Goblins because they often have no outs to it. I play it over Jitte if I expect needles. Confinement is also good against combo obviously. Burn is unfavorable so it helps there as well. Its not as narrow as Meddling Mage, as good as he is.

Lukas Preuss
08-10-2006, 02:58 AM
Solitary Confinement has the ability to just win games. It's good against other aggro decks like Affinity or Goblins because they often have no outs to it. I play it over Jitte if I expect needles. Confinement is also good against combo obviously. Burn is unfavorable so it helps there as well. Its not as narrow as Meddling Mage, as good as he is.

Okay, as far as I understand, you're just playing the Confinement to buy time, right? You have no way to uphold the Confinement lock forever, because even with LftL recursion you will eventually deck yourself before your opponent.
Also, a single Tormod's Crypt (which is the most frequently boarded hate card against me) would ruin the plan of LftL recursion.

So, that being said, what did you board out against said aggro decks to bring in Confinement?

www.win
08-10-2006, 05:13 AM
My guess? Deep analysis. 3 damage for 2 cards can cost you the game when fight against goblin.

Bane of the Living
08-10-2006, 11:22 AM
Yea Confinement really just buys me time while a couple wurms eventually break through. Deep Anal is what I almost always side out yea. Confinement is fine against Tormods Crypt if you remember to keep a cycle land ready to dredge back loam in response. Saving your soft lock.

www.win
08-11-2006, 01:53 AM
just wondering...will you lose if dredge out your libary? Like you have 2 card left, and you dredge, then you lose?

Lukas Preuss
08-11-2006, 04:43 AM
No, you just can't dredge since it's a replacement effect and you need to have three cards to use this effect.

rockSTAR
08-11-2006, 05:59 AM
yes you do lose since you try to dredge and then have to draw a card. Read the dredge abilitie's text.

Bane of the Living
08-11-2006, 07:31 AM
The full payment for Dredge is the amount to dredge. You need to make the entire dredge mayment of 3 to get the card back. If you dont have 3 cards to dredge you dont get to dredge and must draw your normal card. No you dont lose the game until there is no card left in your library to draw.

PunkRocker1134
08-14-2006, 03:30 PM
I have read the last few pages of the thread and thought maybe if we modeled madness like Gro but less dependent on the yard maybe we could have something that is really good here. So i threw a rough list together, and I'll explain why it is different.

Madness (no seriously it is)

// Lands
4 [A] Tropical Island
3 [5E] Island (3)
5 [RAV] Forest (2)
4 [TE] Wasteland
2 [ON] Flooded Strand
4 [ON] Windswept Heath

// Creatures
2 [JU] Wonder
4 [TO] Arrogant Wurm
4 [TO] Basking Rootwalla
4 [OD] Wild Mongrel

// Spells
4 [MM] Brainstorm
3 [NE] Daze
3 [BOK] Umezawa's Jitte
4 [OD] Careful Study
3 [TO] Deep Analysis
4 [AL] Force of Will
4 [OD] Roar of the Wurm

thsi verison rusn 12 creatures which aren't too bad, and are/ can be huge without help from the yard. Deep Analysis you normally discard then play right away. So 2 mana for 2 cards isnt too bad. Brainstorm and Careful study helps me find my 7 free counters. Jitte helps against aggro. It's like a less graveyard dependent verison of Gro. I know its really rough but thoughts?

Lukas Preuss
08-14-2006, 04:08 PM
I have read the last few pages of the thread and thought maybe if we modeled madness like Gro but less dependent on the yard maybe we could have something that is really good here. So i threw a rough list together, and I'll explain why it is different.

Madness (no seriously it is)

// Lands
4 [A] Tropical Island
3 [5E] Island (3)
5 [RAV] Forest (2)
4 [TE] Wasteland
2 [ON] Flooded Strand
4 [ON] Windswept Heath

// Creatures
2 [JU] Wonder
4 [TO] Arrogant Wurm
4 [TO] Basking Rootwalla
4 [OD] Wild Mongrel

// Spells
4 [MM] Brainstorm
3 [NE] Daze
3 [BOK] Umezawa's Jitte
4 [OD] Careful Study
3 [TO] Deep Analysis
4 [AL] Force of Will
4 [OD] Roar of the Wurm

thsi verison rusn 12 creatures which aren't too bad, and are/ can be huge without help from the yard. Deep Analysis you normally discard then play right away. So 2 mana for 2 cards isnt too bad. Brainstorm and Careful study helps me find my 7 free counters. Jitte helps against aggro. It's like a less graveyard dependent verison of Gro. I know its really rough but thoughts?

This would ba an entirely different deck than Übermadness, though. Feel free to open a new thread in the Developmental Forum for this deck, although I'd wait at least until Roland Chang's Gencon Madness list is published.

SuckerPunch
08-14-2006, 07:54 PM
I've heard from multiple sources that Roland's list didn't run Life from the Loam.

It seems odd but back when I was trying this deck, I noticed that trying to use Loam tended to slow you down quite a bit so I'm thinking it was a good call on his part.

Remeber, the guy has been playing UG Madness for the past two years. He was aware of Loam, but also knew the deck inside and out. I would think that his list would be about as optimal as you could get.

Bane of the Living
08-14-2006, 08:03 PM
IMO Chang didnt know the format so he played one of the decks he knew how to play well. I dont think he put any research into Über Madness. He surely put his playskill to the test here and took home a well deserved win. Whether or not he played Loam doesnt determine whether or not it makes Madness viable. What should be noted is that Madness is still alive and well. We've been working hard on getting a reliable evolved madness deck going. It has the innovations needed to port into legacy with LED. Just as it uses Bazaar in Vintage.

If your playing loam and finding yourself slowed down then stop playing loam and play your threats. Loam is only there as a safenet. When you have nothing at all you can dredge into Roars and Deep Anals. When you have Mongrel play it to give him +3/+3. If you have LED in hand feel free to use it because of LftL being there. Its what lets you blow up diamond and not be in top deck mode till the game is over. You may want to familiarize yourself with the primer on page one a bit. LftL use is discussed there.

SuckerPunch
08-14-2006, 08:15 PM
LftL does have the slot of four other cards we could be running instead. Let's see which ones once Chang's list comes out, and keep that in the back of our heads when playing the deck in the future (keep track of when we would rather that LftL be that card instead).


IMO Chang didnt know the format so he played one of the decks he knew how to play well. I dont think he put any research into Über Madness.

I don't think it's possible for anyone to win a 190 man tourney if they aren't familiar with the format they're playing in.

90% of playskill is understanding what your opponent's gameplan is and abusing that knowledge. That's simply not possible unless you're deeply familiar with the format.

Roland Chang's deck ran 12 counterspells, 4 daze, 4 fow, and 4 circular logic.

There's no conceivable way he could have used those spells optimally or won the tourney unless he knew the format a heck of a lot better than you're giving him credit for. Especially considering some of the random decks (Golden Grahams etc) that he faced.

Bane of the Living
08-14-2006, 08:40 PM
If Changs list ran 12 counterspells then these are surely different builds of Madness and the discussion of LftL is moot. Lions Eye Diamond forces the exclusion of counterspells and thus Über Madness plays no control roll as a U/G deck. There are strengths and weaknesses of playing with counters. It doesnt take a bachelors in Legacy to know what to counterspell though. Its not like he was playing Meddling Mage or Cabal Therapy. No doubt Chang was prepared for the tourny, but my point was he may have lacked proper playskill with other well known Legacy decks.

www.win
08-14-2006, 10:11 PM
Well, first question of all. Who's this change guy u guys are talking about? Is he the one proivde the decklist above without Lftl and LED, and he add Fow/counters instead?

Secondly, UBer Madness is a pure AGGRO deck that can abuse LED and recover with Lftl. While the one that run 12 counters is more like an aggro/control (like threshold), and this should be taken into another fourm or something.

p.s. Have you guys thought about using vexing sphnix from coldsnap?

Bane of the Living
08-15-2006, 02:43 PM
Well, first question of all. Who's this change guy u guys are talking about? Is he the one proivde the decklist above without Lftl and LED, and he add Fow/counters instead?

Secondly, UBer Madness is a pure AGGRO deck that can abuse LED and recover with Lftl. While the one that run 12 counters is more like an aggro/control (like threshold), and this should be taken into another fourm or something.

p.s. Have you guys thought about using vexing sphnix from coldsnap?

Thank you, yes discussion of the Aggro//Control version of Madness should be discussed in a separate thread just as the various Threshold decks have separate ones. There has been discussion on this thread about a control sideboard switch. My testing with the deck shows FoW very playable in the maindeck but suboptimal when drawn along with LED. If you wanted you could go for 4 FoW and sideboard addition counter such as Circular Logic in the board. Boarding out LED against control decks. Sacrificing speed for consistancy is important against matchups like Thresh.

I havent personally tested the Vexing Sphinx yet. Id like to get around to it but Ive been putting interest into LftL exploration decks at the moment. Try it out. It does look promising.

NANTUKO_SHADY
08-16-2006, 01:24 AM
I haven't tested the card yet, but actually Vexing Sphinx seems pretty darn good. It is an early fast beater, and you can discard madness cards and Wonder and such during its cumultive upkeep. Get your beats on for afew turns, then draw some fresh cards. This card seems like it carries alot of potential. I would be interested to see some results with it...

laststepdown
08-16-2006, 04:54 AM
It's worth trying once Coldsnap becomes legal-it has almost an engine feel to it. Plus, it refills your hand after you've gotten all your fattys on the board.

kicks_422
08-16-2006, 05:15 AM
So is the UGW version of Uber Madness now considered the better version? I'm still fiddling with the UG Wish version, and I'm having fun with it... I 've been trying to look for the straight UG lists (Wish and non-Wish), does anyone have them? I wanna test every possible version of this deck... :tongue:

Lukas Preuss
08-16-2006, 09:05 AM
The optimal straight UG-list (without Wish) looks something like this (I posted this a few pages back):

Übermadness.dec

3x Tropical Island
3x Lonely Sandbar
3x Tranquil Thicket
3x Wasteland
2x Island
2x Forest
2x Winswept Heath
2x Flooded Strand
1x Cephalid Coliseum

4x Basking Rootwalla
4x Wild Mongrel
3x Arrogant Wurm
2x Aquamoeba
2x Wonder

4x Brainstorm
4x Lion's Eye Diamond
4x Life from the Loam
3x Roar of the Wurm
3x Deep Analysis
3x Mox Diamond
3x Careful Study

Bane of the Living
08-16-2006, 06:29 PM
U/G
Works out alittle smoother. If you have alot of nonbasic land hate in your meta you might want to try this version. Vexing Sphinx should be considered. I think the two color version supports Living Wish more if you chose to play it. I wouldnt mind messing around with the wish version again, it seemed helpfull when I tried it.

U/G/w
This version plays white to access Swords to Plowshares, Solitary Confinement, Meddling Mage, and Ray of Revelation. Anurid Brushhoper should be considered here as a great madness outlet. Im not sure if any of those cards really enhances the deck enough to make the splash but since Ive played it I wouldnt want to cut white again.

Syco_Tr0pic
08-17-2006, 07:09 PM
Hello. I've been playing with this deck for about 3 months now and I like it a lot, but I'm getting consistently underwhelmed by Careful Study. It sometimes is the stone cold nuts, leading to a series of broken plays, but in the majority of the time it's not even ok for me, causing card disadvantage, being preferred as wonderdog chow, sitting in my hand waiting for LFTL tricks to kick in or, even worse, being topdecked with no cards in hand (Want to see me mad? Topdeck me a CS while empty handed). On the other hand, I can't come up with a good replacement for it, and I don't even know if it's correct to completely cut it. It's a kind of dilema: on one hand it provides brokeness, on the other hand it's chaff outside of the situations where it's clearly broken.
In my list, I cut one of them (I'm playing 2 now), trying to maximize it's late game power, but even by then I can have Coliseum shanenigans going. For the non-Brainstorm draw in my list, I'm using 2 Careful Study and 2 Deep Analysis (and the Loam Engine). What you guys think about it? Am I doing something I shouldn't?

Bane of the Living
08-18-2006, 05:08 PM
If your in topdeck mode with this deck you should be dredging not drawing. get back loam. cast it, cycle lands. Doing this finds Roars and Wonders for the late game win. Not too mention getting cards off loams cycling draw engine should get you back into full swing. Always pitch Roar and Loam to Carefull Study unless you have better plays with it. Remember to use it early.

www.win
08-18-2006, 07:59 PM
@bane: maybe you should write a article of how to use this deck, since a lot people may be making a lot of mistakes when playing this deck without notcing it.

Lukas Preuss
08-18-2006, 08:13 PM
I'm actually writing an article which includes a primer of the deck, matchup analysis and and a report of me winning a tournament an August, 12th with Übermadness. I have been planing on writing it in German, since the article will be for a German Legacy online magazine.

I could translate some of it into English when I'm done, if you want, although I think Bane deserves the honor of writing an article on this deck...
@ bane: If you're going to write an article on this deck, I would be glad to help you out with any information I can give to you. :)

Bane of the Living
08-18-2006, 08:18 PM
I did intend on it though I hoped I'd place well with it in a larger tournament so it would have more public eye. I suppose the wait should be over. A primer//article is on the way. Lukas I would love some highlights from you, having more paper tournament results with the deck and all. Feel free to release a German article on it, I would love for the deck to grow there.

Syco_Tr0pic
08-18-2006, 09:51 PM
If your in topdeck mode with this deck you should be dredging not drawing. get back loam. cast it, cycle lands. Doing this finds Roars and Wonders for the late game win. Not too mention getting cards off loams cycling draw engine should get you back into full swing. Always pitch Roar and Loam to Carefull Study unless you have better plays with it. Remember to use it early.

Man, I told you I've been playing this deck for 3 months now. Before that, I used to play Dredge-a-Tog. So I think I know how to use the LFTL engine. But there are some times when you just get empty handed (LED activation) and no LFTL and they deal with your threat. In these cases I seem to have a Careful Study magnet on my fingers. But that's just me, I think.
I love this deck and I've been playing it to great effect (and success in my local meta), so nevermind what I asked, cause, looking back, I see that I was just trying to correct an unavoidable imperfection and that Careful Study is really needed. Thx anyway.

Lukas Preuss
09-14-2006, 08:14 AM
Okay, since I got eliminated from the Source tournament now, I will share my latest tech with you. Actually, I didn’t really plan on playing Übermadness, since I have played it for quite some time now and wanted to try something new. I couldn’t really decide on something, so in the end I played Übermadness anyways. I figured that it was a relatively unknown deck and that most people would not have tested against it. I on the other hand had plenty of experience with it against every possible decktype. :)
With Coldsnap being legal, there has been a lot of talk about Jotun Grunt. People try him out in Deadguy Ale, UGw Gro, EBA, and so on. Let me tell you right now in case you have missed it: this card really is nuts. Do you know where it shines the brightest? In Übermadness. Forget about Vexing Sphinx - Jotun Grunt is the Coldsnap card that pushes Übermadness the most. With LftL, you can literally keep him on the table forever… not to mention that he wrecks a lot of decks in this format or makes it at least a lot more difficult for them to win (even Solidarity needs to bounce him to win). Since I hadn’t done a lot of testing before the tournament, I only put two Grunts into the sideboard. I sided them in against every single deck. That’s how awesome they are. Well, here’s my short report:

I played the following list:
Übermadness.dec

3x Tropical Island
1x Tundra
1x Savannah
2x Lonely Sandbar
3x Tranquil Thicket
2x Wasteland
1x Island
1x Forest
2x Winswept Heath
3x Flooded Strand
2x Cephalid Coliseum

4x Basking Rootwalla
4x Wild Mongrel
3x Arrogant Wurm
2x Anurid Brushhopper
2x Wonder

4x Brainstorm
4x Lion's Eye Diamond
4x Life from the Loam
3x Roar of the Wurm
3x Swords to Plowshares
3x Mox Diamond
3x Careful Study


Sideboard:
1x Swords to Plowshares
2x Wasteland
2x Naturalize
4x Tormod's Crypt
2x Ray of Revelation
3x Pithing Needle
2x Jotun Grunt

Round 1: I get the bye. I actually wanted to play really bad, but, oh well, 1-0 isn’t bad either.

Round 2: Aseraphim with Solidarity:
Game 1: I get a mediocre start with Mongrel and start beating down on him. Slowly, Mongrel is joined by other creatures. He only plays Island go for a while. I’m like: “Damn, that’s the one matchup I didn’t want to play…” since during my testing, it is favorable for Solidarity… even more so if you keep a relatively slow hand. On my fifth turn, he faces lethal damage and tries to combo. He fizzels because he forgot about Flash of Insight in his grave when he was desperately searching for Reset. He told me that he doesn’t have a lot of experience with Solidarity, so I start hoping I might actually be able to win this.
Sideboard: + 2 Jotun Grunt. +1 Pithing Needle – 3 Swords to Plowshares
Game 2: This time he finds all the combo pieces and I can’t apply enough pressure. He wins.
Game 3: I get a turn 1 Jotun Grunt followed by a turn 2 Roar of the Wurm (or something broken along these lines… I actually don’t remember much). He uses his Chain of Vapors to destroy the 6/6 token. He cast another Roar, since I have LftL active and my graveyard starts to fill (I need to support Grunt). He Twincasts it. I’m like: “Wow, nice move”. Next turn, I attack and both wurms kill each other. Grunt is able to put all his blue cards and Flash of Insight on the bottom of his Library, making it harder for him to combo. LftL finds another Roar and I cast it. No response this time and the next turn he fizzels with lethal damage on the stack.

2-0

Round 3: URABAHN with Red Death:
Well, I haven’ tested this matchup much, but Red Death is basically a faster, more self-destructive Deadguy Ale. The matchup shouldn’t be too bad since discard isn’t that good against Übermadness and Swords to Plowshares and Vindicate are missing… Lightning Bolt is not the best removal against 4/4 and 6/6 wurms. I actually don’t remember much about the three games we played other than that the last one was pretty intense and came down to both of us building up a huge army of creatures. While has was only drawing from the top of his Library, I was able to use LftL to its full extend and got a steady supply of Roar of the Wurms. Eventually, Wonder hit the yard and my wurms were able to fly over his Negators and Shades.

3-0

Round 4: Overlord95 with Duck Hunt (UB Control):
Game 1: He handles all the creatures I cast until his stoned brother walks into his room and falls over the internet cable. We have to replay game 1.
Game 1 (the second): This is exactly like before, I cast threats, he casts Diabolic Edicts, etc. but eventually runs out of solutions. He eventually casts Haunting Echoes, but is not able to remove all win conditions from my library. I ride Anurid Brushhopper to the win eventually.
Sideboard: +3 Tormod’s Crypt +2 Jotun Grunt -3 Shwords to Plowshares -1 Brainstorm -1 Careful Study
Game2: This is basically the same. I cast creatures, he destroys or counters them. At some point, Anurid Brushhopper hits the table and manages to attack for a few turns but gets destroyed soon. He casts Haunting Echoes when he’s on two life, I don’t have Tormod’s Crypt to remove my graveyard and almost my entire library gets removed. I untap and draw: Wonder. I cast it, he doesn’t have a solution and I win the next turn.

4-0

Round 5: Eldariel with ?:
I’m in the T8 already, even if I lose this one. He isn’t. I just scoop to him.


Quarterfinals: Angel of Despair with UGw Gro:
Game 1: I keep a slow hand, hoping she’s not playing Solidarity. She isn’t. Great. I don’t really draw very good, though, and she gets the double Mystic Enforcer with Threshold. Quickly after that, I scoop and we go to game 2.
Sideboarding: -3 StP -1 LftL -1 Brainstorm -1 Lonely Sandbar -1 Tranquil Thicket +2 Jotun Grunt +3 Tormod’s Crypt +2 Wasteland
Game 2: I apply a lot of pressure, as well as a turn 1 Tormod’s Crypt. She can’t really handle all of it. I never got to resolve Jotun Grunt, but he’s another must-counter and great in completing the strategy of having threat after threat until Gro runs out of solutions. At one point, she gets Meddling Mage naming LftL, but it doesn’t stick around for a long time. Eventually, I win.
Game 3: This was quite possibly one of the greatest games I’ve ever played. We deal some damage (she doesn’t reach Threshold), she destroys my creatures and I cast more of them. I don’t really remember the exact situation in the end, but she was at 1 life and had Threshold and a Nimble Mongoose and a Mystic Enforcer on the table. I had Anurid Brushhopper and Wild Mongrel. We both had no (relevant) cards in hand. I desperately activate Cephalid Coliseum and find Wonder, dump it in the yard and swing for the win.
The three games took more than 90 minutes!

Semifinals: Tao with (I won’t tell you since he has yet to play in the final round):
I won’t tell you much, because I don’t think he would want me to reveal his secret deck. ;) Let me just tell you that I didn’t really stand a chance. Oh, and I played really crappy, forgetting about LftL in my graveyard for like five turns, etc… Maybe I shouldn’t have been drinking all these cocktails the evening before. :)


So… That’s about it. I would probably up the Jotun Grunt count to three or four, since he is the nuts. I would even play him in the maindeck, maybe cutting Swords to Plowshares or something. Finally, this should once and for all show people that this deck really is a viable contender in the current metagame.

Props:
- All of my opponents. You were great. Thanks for finding the time to play, even though we had to deal with a time difference of six hours.
- Parcher for this great tournament
- Bane for creating this awesome deck
- Jotun Grunt for being the nuts
- Me for going completely undefeated until the Semifinals

Slops:
- 6 hours time difference
- Me for not having an Instant Messenger like AIM, MSN, whatever.


That’s about it.

Bane of the Living
09-15-2006, 06:36 PM
Awsome job in the tourny. I was going to play the deck in it, but I didnt register on time. Thanks for doing so well with it, as always. I forgot how stupid good Grunt would be in the deck. Another great reason to run white.

Sorry to hear you got smashed by some secret tech.

Awsome job with the Wonder kills btw. In each form.

Im going to rewrite a primer for the deck probably for SCG but I want to wait to see whats in Time Spiral. Even one more Flashback or Madness card would change this deck alot.

Morim_Brightsmoke
09-20-2006, 12:23 AM
and NERFED:
From a recent MTG article (http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=mtgcom/feature/362#nomanacost)

Mark Gottlieb says:
When you discard a card with madness, you can discard it and remove it from the game instead of discarding it and putting it into your graveyard. If you do, an ability will trigger. As part of the resolution of that ability, you can play the madness spell for its madness cost. There is no “tiny window of time” afterwards—do it now, or don’t (and put the card into your graveyard).

This i am almost positive equals no more fun with LED though i am not positive.

Lego
09-20-2006, 01:06 AM
and NERFED:
From a recent MTG article (http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=mtgcom/feature/362#nomanacost)

Mark Gottlieb says:
When you discard a card with madness, you can discard it and remove it from the game instead of discarding it and putting it into your graveyard. If you do, an ability will trigger. As part of the resolution of that ability, you can play the madness spell for its madness cost. There is no “tiny window of time” afterwards—do it now, or don’t (and put the card into your graveyard).

This i am almost positive equals no more fun with LED though i am not positive.

Because LED's ability is a mana ability, it doesn't use the stack. What happens is this:

I announce LED's ability, pay the costs (Discarding Arrogant Wurm in the process,) and the ability resolves. I now have GGG floating. Then Madness triggers, and goes on the stack. Each player may respond, and then as the ability resolves, 2G is removed from my mana pool and Arrogant Wurm is placed on the stack, where he may or may not be countered.

Other than clearing up the things that Gotlieb pointed out, this ability makes Madness a little bit better in the face of Stifle. Suffice it to say that the way it works now, you must Stifle the Madness ability before any costs are played, whereas in the past you could wait until someone paid for Madness, and then Stifle it.

Morim_Brightsmoke
09-20-2006, 01:12 AM
I thought it wasn't a mana ability any more? Or is it just a mana ability that can only be played as an instant?

Lego
09-20-2006, 01:14 AM
I thought it wasn't a mana ability any more? Or is it just a mana ability that can only be played as an instant?

It can only be played as a sorcery, but you had the right idea. It's still a mana ability, as is any other ability that creates mana. Chromatic Sphere's ability, for instance, doesn't use the stack, because the draw ability creates mana, and is therefor a mana ability.

Obfuscate Freely
09-20-2006, 11:12 AM
Suffice it to say that the way it works now, you must Stifle the Madness ability before any costs are played, whereas in the past you could wait until someone paid for Madness, and then Stifle it.
This interaction hasn't changed at all, and you could never Stifle the Madness trigger once mana had been paid.


When you discard a card with madness, you can discard it and remove it from the game instead of discarding it and putting it into your graveyard. If you do, an ability will trigger. Under the old rules, after this triggered ability resolved, it would set up a tiny window of time in which you could play the madness spell for its madness cost.


So let’s try again. When you discard a card with madness, you can discard it and remove it from the game instead of discarding it and putting it into your graveyard. If you do, an ability will trigger. As part of the resolution of that ability, you can play the madness spell for its madness cost.

Under both the old and the new rules, the only part of Madness you can Stifle is the trigger that allows a player to play the card with the Madness cost. Countering that trigger takes away any opportunity that player could have had to play the spell, and therefore they can never pay costs for it.

The only thing that has changed is how the trigger itself resolves, and it's a subtle change at that.


What are the results of this change? Two of the craziest, rules-wonkiest loopholes ever exploited in tournaments have been eliminated. This trick will now no longer work:

Have three lands in play.
Play Careful Study. Draw two cards. Discard Arrogant Wurm and another card.
Remove Arrogant Wurm from the game. Let its madness ability trigger and resolve.
Play a land.
Play Arrogant Wurm for 2G.


The other thing that’s gone is the following interaction:

Player A plays Duress and has Player B discard Circular Logic.
Player B removes Circular Logic from the game. Its madness ability triggers and resolves.
Player A has priority. If she plays a spell, Player B can then play Circular Logic from the removed-from-the-game zone for U. If she passes priority, Player B can then also pass priority . . . and end the phase.

The changes are relevant to LED, but only barely. Since LED's ability is instant-speed, you have to sacrifice it for mana before a Madness trigger resolves if you want to use the mana to play the card. This is really only a timing issue; discarding a Madness card to LED and playing it works as outlined by LegoArmyMan above, but if you discard a Madness card in some other way you have to activate LED with the Madness trigger on the stack if you want to use the mana to play it.

The way Madness worked before, you could technically wait until after the Madness trigger resolves to activate the LED, since mana abilities resolve without the passing of priority, and you could still play the spell. Now, you can't do that, so you have to pop LED before finding out if the opponent has a Stifle. Oh noes!

Bane of the Living
09-20-2006, 04:37 PM
This i am almost positive equals no more fun with LED though i am not positive.

Comon man, comin in here to try and sink my ship. The deck is unstoppable. Face it. No rules will contain me.

parallax
09-20-2006, 04:41 PM
Comon man, comin in here to try and sink my ship. The deck is unstoppable. Face it. No rules will contain me.

For the record, the madness rules were not changed in any noticeable way. The only thing that no longer works is the "Careful Study, pitching Arrogant Wurm, land, Wurm." play. You can no longer play a land between discarding a madness card and playing it.

Bane of the Living
09-20-2006, 05:22 PM
Shit I wish I knew that worked before. I wouldve really mopped the floor with this deck.

Lukas Preuss
09-20-2006, 05:26 PM
Haha, I knew about it... maybe that's the reason I T8ed with it frequently and you didn't! ;)

No, seriously, I rarely used that rule... Like bane said, the deck is as unstoppable as it ever was!

Lego
09-21-2006, 11:43 AM
This interaction hasn't changed at all, and you could never Stifle the Madness trigger once mana had been paid.

Under both the old and the new rules, the only part of Madness you can Stifle is the trigger that allows a player to play the card with the Madness cost. Countering that trigger takes away any opportunity that player could have had to play the spell, and therefore they can never pay costs for it.

The only thing that has changed is how the trigger itself resolves, and it's a subtle change at that.

This is actually untrue. Gottlieb didn't fully explain the way Madness used to work. There were actually two "tiny windows of time" and costs were paid before resolution, but there's no sense arguing about it, as that's not how it works anymore.

parallax
09-21-2006, 11:51 AM
This is actually untrue. Gottlieb didn't fully explain the way Madness used to work. There were actually two "tiny windows of time" and costs were paid before resolution, but there's no sense arguing about it, as that's not how it works anymore.

I'm reasonably certain you could never Stifle madness after the cost had been paid. Madness spells were still played like normal spells. However, it's irrelevant.

The current lists show no combo hate whatsoever. Is it not a concern in your metagame? How good would Meddling Mage out of the side be?

Lukas Preuss
09-21-2006, 01:14 PM
I didn't run any combo hate in the side, because the most popular combo deck in Germany is Spring Tide. There's no way you can make this matchup winnable, since even if you have the nuts with first turn Roar of the wurm followed by Mana Maze, the Spring Tide player will just Snap the token and have all the time in the world to combo out.

Sadly, Snap > Übermadness.

If other combo decks are relevant in your metagame, Meddling Mage and Mana Maze are definitely good choices. Jotun Grunt is not bad in the Solidarity matchup, either.

parallax
09-21-2006, 04:41 PM
I didn't run any combo hate in the side, because the most popular combo deck in Germany is Spring Tide. There's no way you can make this matchup winnable, since even if you have the nuts with first turn Roar of the wurm followed by Mana Maze, the Spring Tide player will just Snap the token and have all the time in the world to combo out.

Sadly, Snap > Übermadness.

If other combo decks are relevant in your metagame, Meddling Mage and Mana Maze are definitely good choices. Jotun Grunt is not bad in the Solidarity matchup, either.

Well, here in America (Virginia, specifically), Solidarity is by far the most popular combo deck, followed by Iggy Pop. Mage seems good against either.

How does LED play out? Do you usually pop it turn two? You need two lands or a Mox to play most of your cards post-LED, so are first-turn Wurms more rare than I originally thought?

SillyMetalGAT
09-21-2006, 05:42 PM
Well, here in America (Virginia, specifically), Solidarity is by far the most popular combo deck, followed by Iggy Pop. Mage seems good against either.

How does LED play out? Do you usually pop it turn two? You need two lands or a Mox to play most of your cards post-LED, so are first-turn Wurms more rare than I originally thought?

Not when I play it. Theres even the chance that you get a Rootwalla in the mix for extra fun! 1st Turn Wurm doesn't happen often, but enough to keep me happy with the deck. Its a lot more fun to get a hand like Mox, LED, Roar. 1st turn 6/6 FTW.

Bane of the Living
09-22-2006, 05:13 PM
Just to point out some broken aggro plays...

When I ran Jitte in the deck my play followed as..

Forest, Mox Diamond (pitch land), Lions Eye Diamond, play Jitte, Sac LED for 2G and play Arrogant Wurm.

Turn 2 equip + swing. GG?

The first turn Roar happens as often as you draw it. But I wouldnt recommend it unless the tactic is the way to go, or unless you have Loam. Loam lets you recover from the suicidal hand pitch.

I know Threshold is a popular deck right now. If your playing my deck for the first times against it remember to always play around Daze. Its a big help with the results. Read the mini primer on page one.

I usually post my latest versions which means sideboard cards fluctuate constantly. I would hope most people playing this deck, or any deck on the source, would take care and customize their own sideboards. The most important part of the legacy deck is your sideboard and how well it matches your meta. Staples like Tormod's Crypt should never leave, but add anti combo if you need anti combo. There was a point that I needed to maindeck Ray of Revelation to combat the popularity of white control decks. Moat and Humility are auto wins against the deck. As is Solitary Confinement.

Anyone see promising cards in the Time Spiral spoilers? Looks like black got the madness cards. =( Maybe Ill go to a black splash! ONE WITH NOTHING!!

quicksilver
09-22-2006, 05:16 PM
Just to point out some broken aggro plays...

When I ran Jitte in the deck my play followed as..

Forest, Mox Diamond (pitch land), Lions Eye Diamond, play Jitte, Sac LED for 2G and play Arrogant Wurm.

Turn 2 equip + swing. Opponent casts swords to plowshares. GG?

Fixed.

SillyMetalGAT
09-22-2006, 05:19 PM
Moat and Humility are auto wins against the deck.

That would be why you have Wonders......... you n00b

EDIT: Quicksilver, that was against me........ and I was playing Mono-Red Gobs..... thanks anyways tho.

URABAHN
09-22-2006, 05:22 PM
That would be why you have Wonders......... you n00b

How does making your Humiliated 1/1 creatures fly not make Humility an autoloss?

SillyMetalGAT
09-22-2006, 05:25 PM
How does making your Humiliated 1/1 creatures fly not make Humility an autoloss?

It was in reference to Moat........ DUH!

Bane of the Living
09-22-2006, 05:30 PM
Unfortunately thats the card worth 50 bucks. More people play Humility and it kicks me in the Überballs.

SillyMetalGAT
09-22-2006, 05:46 PM
Unfortunately thats the card worth 50 bucks. More people play Humility and it kicks me in the Überballs.

White splash FTW? Ray of Revalation > Humility

shteev
09-27-2006, 06:47 AM
Gemstone Caverns

Legendary Land

If Gemstone Caverns is in your opening hand and you're not playing first, you may begin the game with Gemstone Caverns in play with a luck counter on it. If you do, remove a card in your hand from the game.
Tap: Add 1 Mana to your mana pool. If Gemstone Caverns has a luck counter on it, instead add one mana of any color to your mana pool.


This any use to us? It helps us cast a wild mongrel on turn 1, and it helps getting two land into play by turn 2 in case we need to throw everything away with a Lion's Eye turn 1 (which we might need to do to sort that lackey out on the draw). We can side it out if we're playing first... if there's enough room for land in the sideboard...

Hanni
09-27-2006, 08:36 AM
I didn't bother to skim through the 11 pages of content, but I just wanted to ask... was Intuition ever considered? It grabs you Loam, so that you can run less copies of dead-in-multiples cards and allows you to toolbox the library for lands (such as Wasteland, draw engine parts, etc). I've seen it used in UBg Loam Tog to great effect so I was wondering why it wouldn't be good here. In your case, it can also put Roar of the Wurm and other flashback essentials into the graveyard as well.

When I faced this deck before, the problem I noticed that it was having was the lack of spot removal (as in none). Even with Jitte, and especially now with a white splash, wouldn't Swords to Plowshares be a good idea (even if it's sideboarded)?

I've seen some people running Patrol Hound because its 2cc and is great against opposing aggro (like Goblins, which I've read is supposed to be a problematic matchup for Madness).

The Loam idea is a great way to stabalize mid-late game, but I know from playing against Tog that it can often be very slow and mana intensive. Since your running the aggro suite, has this ever been a problem? I suppose the Mox Diamonds and LED's take care of that issue though.

Aside from fast starts via Mox Diamond/LED, do you feel confidant stopping a first turn Lackey? Or does that even matter for this deck (no sarcasm intended)?

Again, if I'm just reiterating what has already been discussed and dismissed, I apologize.

Lukas Preuss
09-27-2006, 11:09 AM
I didn't bother to skim through the 11 pages of content, but I just wanted to ask... was Intuition ever considered? It grabs you Loam, so that you can run less copies of dead-in-multiples cards and allows you to toolbox the library for lands (such as Wasteland, draw engine parts, etc). I've seen it used in UBg Loam Tog to great effect so I was wondering why it wouldn't be good here. In your case, it can also put Roar of the Wurm and other flashback essentials into the graveyard as well..

Intuition has been tried before but wasn't necessary.


When I faced this deck before, the problem I noticed that it was having was the lack of spot removal (as in none). Even with Jitte, and especially now with a white splash, wouldn't Swords to Plowshares be a good idea (even if it's sideboarded)? .

A few posts above yours, I posted my list of Übermadness that made T8 at the Source online tournament. It runs three copies of Swords to Plowshares in the maindeck, although I have been cutting them for Jötun Grunt lately. Spot removal is not needed in a lot of matches, since you already beat Goblins, Threshold and Deadguy most of the time.


I've seen some people running Patrol Hound because its 2cc and is great against opposing aggro (like Goblins, which I've read is supposed to be a problematic matchup for Madness). .

Goblins is a problematic matchup for UG Madness (the control version)... Übermadness has a favorable matchup (which of course depends partly on your card choices for the maindeck like Swords to Plowshares or Umezawa's Jitte. Both have been tried and are quite good against Goblins). Patrol Hound is not needed, you have plenty of answers to Lackey and his friends.


The Loam idea is a great way to stabalize mid-late game, but I know from playing against Tog that it can often be very slow and mana intensive. Since your running the aggro suite, has this ever been a problem? I suppose the Mox Diamonds and LED's take care of that issue though..

Yeah, Loam is great in this deck since it allows you to go all in with LED and recover from it with. It has great synergies with Anurid Brushhopper and Wild Mongrel, too. ´Life from the Loam is probably one of the best cards in the entire deck.


Aside from fast starts via Mox Diamond/LED, do you feel confidant stopping a first turn Lackey? Or does that even matter for this deck (no sarcasm intended)?

Again, if I'm just reiterating what has already been discussed and dismissed, I apologize.

You have plenty of answers to Lackey on the first turn, including (but not limited to) Rootwalla, Careful Study for Rootwalla, Mox Diamond and Wild Mongrel, LED for Arrogant Wurm or Roar of the Wurm, etc.

goldenj
09-27-2006, 01:21 PM
Does LED still work with new madness rules? Do you have the mana when madness triggers? Is it saved because of mana source craziness?

New text:
502.24. Madness

502.24a Madness is a keyword that represents two abilities. The first is a static ability that functions while the card with madness is in a player's hand. The second is a triggered ability that functions when the first ability is applied. "Madness [cost]" means "If a player would discard this card, that player discards it, but may remove it from the game instead of putting it into his or her graveyard" and "When this card is removed from the game this way, its owner may play it by paying [cost] rather than paying its mana cost. If that player doesn't, he or she puts this card into his or her graveyard."

Sacrifice Lion's Eye Diamond, Discard your hand: Add three mana of any one color to your mana pool. Play this ability only any time you could play an instant.

EDIT: found confusing answer on page 10, but still don't grok it.
The card is discarded at cost, before mana is added to pool. Madness triggers. Not a problem for rootwalla, but turn 1 wurm...no mana yet for paying madness cost. Wurm goes to graveyard. Mana goes to pool. Why isn't this accurate?

quicksilver
09-27-2006, 01:24 PM
Does LED still work with new madness rules? Do you have the mana when madness triggers? Is it saved because of mana source craziness?

New text:
502.24. Madness

502.24a Madness is a keyword that represents two abilities. The first is a static ability that functions while the card with madness is in a player's hand. The second is a triggered ability that functions when the first ability is applied. "Madness [cost]" means "If a player would discard this card, that player discards it, but may remove it from the game instead of putting it into his or her graveyard" and "When this card is removed from the game this way, its owner may play it by paying [cost] rather than paying its mana cost. If that player doesn't, he or she puts this card into his or her graveyard."

Sacrifice Lion's Eye Diamond, Discard your hand: Add three mana of any one color to your mana pool. Play this ability only any time you could play an instant.

Yes it does still work because it is still a mana ability and thus does not use the stack so you get the mana imediatly and before the madness trigger resolves.

Bane of the Living
09-27-2006, 05:51 PM
I found spot removal unneeded in alot of circumstances. Your men are just much bigger than any other deck in the format. The only creatures you need to remove are Meddling Mage, Disciple of the Vault, and sometimes Confidant. Additional lackey removal is nice but having no answer to turn one lackey is not nearly gg unless followed by the absolute nuts such as Driver, Driver.

Grunt vs StP is an interesting debate. I was trying to decide between Grunt or Brushhoper actually, but Im not so sure its safe to remove those Madness outlets.

shteev
09-30-2006, 10:29 AM
Yes it does still work because it is still a mana ability and thus does not use the stack so you get the mana imediatly and before the madness trigger resolves.

Does this mean that if you have TWO Lion's Eyes, and TWO Arrogant Wurms, you can't cast both of them? If you discard both by activating the first Lion's Eye, then you can't get the mana out of the second Lion's Eye fast enough to pay for the second Wurm?

And while I'm asking rules questions... just supposing some random scrub put a Genesis in the deck (yes, alright, it's me :) ...) can you use a Lion's Eye Diamond to pay for the Gensis' ability?

SillyMetalGAT
09-30-2006, 11:08 AM
Does this mean that if you have TWO Lion's Eyes, and TWO Arrogant Wurms, you can't cast both of them? If you discard both by activating the first Lion's Eye, then you can't get the mana out of the second Lion's Eye fast enough to pay for the second Wurm?

And while I'm asking rules questions... just supposing some random scrub put a Genesis in the deck (yes, alright, it's me :) ...) can you use a Lion's Eye Diamond to pay for the Gensis' ability?

No, you can't cast both Wurms.... I think.... and Yes, you can use Genesis off of LED mana, but its kinda silly to have him.

AnwarA101
09-30-2006, 12:10 PM
Does this mean that if you have TWO Lion's Eyes, and TWO Arrogant Wurms, you can't cast both of them? If you discard both by activating the first Lion's Eye, then you can't get the mana out of the second Lion's Eye fast enough to pay for the second Wurm?

And while I'm asking rules questions... just supposing some random scrub put a Genesis in the deck (yes, alright, it's me :) ...) can you use a Lion's Eye Diamond to pay for the Gensis' ability?

You can cast both Wurms if you have 2 LEDs in play. You activate one discarding 2 Arrogant Wurms. Both Wurms have a madness trigger that goes on the stack. You can then pay for the first madness trigger with the mana from the LED you just activated. Then with the second one on the stack you can break the other LED and pay for the second madness trigger.

www.win
10-07-2006, 05:19 AM
just wondering, can you still discard arrogant wurm to wild mongrel, and cast the wurm with LED? For example, I swing with my mongrel with 2 LED in play, and I have 2 arrogant wurms in my hand. I discard the wurms to pump my mongrel, and play them with LED?

Windux
10-07-2006, 06:16 AM
The only changes are, as far as I know, are, that you can't play a Land between declaring Madness and pay Madness, that you can't remove your ircular Logic, which was discardet by your Opponents Hymn to Tourash (or whatever), and let it stay remove, until he play another Spell so that you can Logic-Counter this next spell.

Bane of the Living
10-07-2006, 10:04 AM
Yea madness will no longer "Suspend" and I figure its to clearify all the time rulings Time Spiral will bring in droves. I for one didnt know you could suspend the madness trigger. I missed out on Onslaught Standard.

Lukas Preuss
10-08-2006, 03:35 PM
Me and fellow Team aYb member Christian "Windux" Wilczek both piloted the deck into the T8 of the monthly Iserlohn tournament (more than 50 participants) today.

We ran excactly the same list, utilizing Jotun Grunt to its fullest potential - it worked out amazing (I might write a short report next week):

Übermadness.dec

Maindeck
3x Tropical Island
1x Tundra
1x Savannah
2x Lonely Sandbar
3x Tranquil Thicket
3x Wasteland
1x Island
1x Forest
2x Windswept Heath
3x Flooded Strand
2x Cephalid Coliseum
4x Basking Rootwalla
4x Wild Mongrel
3x Arrogant Wurm
2x Anurid Brushhopper
2x Jotun Grunt
2x Wonder
4x Brainstorm
4x Lion's Eye Diamond (LED)
4x Life from the Loam (LftL)
3x Roar of the Wurm (RotW)
3x Mox Diamond
3x Careful Study

Sideboard:
3x Swords to Plowshares (StP)
1x Wasteland
2x Naturalize
2x Jotun Grunt
1x Ray of Revelation
3x Pithing Needle
3x Mana Maze

Bane of the Living
10-27-2006, 05:25 PM
I was wondering if either of you got around to that report. Im interested in the decks progess over there. Two top eight showings in a 50 man tourny is pretty damn good. What did you lose too? I havent played Grunt in the deck yet but this looks like the natural casing for him. If your opponents graveyard is obsolete you can easily keep his upkeep going with the loam engine, something few other decks can do.

Lukas Preuss
10-28-2006, 06:27 AM
Well, no, I didn't write a report, because I had a lot to do for university. I lost to Affinity at that tournament and drew against Angel Stompy (due to not having enough time to finish the third game). Somehow, Affinity is not a very good matchup. I lost to it at the German Legacy Champs, as well. I won against Goblins, UGwr Threshold, Suicide, and Landstill, I think.

Right now, the deck is close to optimal, I think. I will take it to the Dutch Legacy Championship tomorrow (eventhough I will be the only one). I might put another StP in the board, just because Goblins will be there in huge numbers. I don't really know what to cut, though. If I do well, I will definitely write a report this time. I promise! :)

Edit: Happy Birthday, Nate! ;)

Lukas Preuss
10-30-2006, 05:15 AM
I didn't do very well, losing every single game in the first 4 rounds to mana screw and/or bad luck. I really didn't want to drop, though, because the atmosphere at the tournament was great and I had a lot of fun. So I ended up with 4-4.

I had a great time, though. Where you there, atwa?

Atwa
10-30-2006, 02:02 PM
Yep, I was standing next to the table where you were playing your 4th match. You had a very nice opening with turn 1 basking rootwalla and arrogant wurm.

I droped after the 3th match, the tournament was great, but I met a guy who I played magic with on high school and hadn't seen in 5 years (he was the little guy with black hair and a small beard, in case you saw us standing, on the left of you).

I was 1-2 at that time (which should have been 2-1, but I made the worst playmistake ever), so I decided to play in the draft, I'd never drafted before, so that was a cool experience.

Alex_van_R was also there, did you see him?

Lukas Preuss
10-31-2006, 10:40 AM
Yes, at some point during the tournament he came over to me and talked to me. He told me that there are supposed to be Legacy Champs in Belgium in November, as well. I might go there... all the German pllayers were really thrilled about the tournament. I don't think it will be hard to find some that will be willing to drive to Belgium.

I'm sorry, I didn't see you. When I'm playing, I'm always concentrated on my opponent and the game. Also, you and your friend might just have seemed to be some of the random Dutch people that were everywhere. ;)

Bane of the Living
03-02-2007, 09:00 PM
I finally made a small update to the deck. For sakes of consistancy Intuition has been included. I was never happy drawing into too many LftL's but dropping any gave me problems finding it when needed. Intuition improves our aggro matches by tutoring for Wonder and it improves control matchups by finding multiple RotW's. The changes..

-1 RotW
-1 LftL
+2 Intuition

The newest list..

3x Tropical Island
1x Tundra
1x Savannah
2x Lonely Sandbar
3x Tranquil Thicket
3x Wasteland
1x Island
1x Forest
2x Windswept Heath
3x Flooded Strand
2x Cephalid Coliseum
4x Basking Rootwalla
4x Wild Mongrel
3x Arrogant Wurm
2x Anurid Brushhopper
2x Jotun Grunt
2x Wonder
4x Brainstorm
4x Lion's Eye Diamond
3x Life from the Loam
2x Roar of the Wurm
3x Mox Diamond
3x Careful Study
2x Intuition

Sideboard:
3x Swords to Plowshares
1x Wasteland
2x Krosan Grip
2x Jotun Grunt
1x Ray of Revelation
3x Pithing Needle
3x Mana Maze

www.win
03-04-2007, 09:52 PM
so..aftering adding intuition, how is it work out for you?
And as far as for your tournment report, how it goes?

Bane of the Living
03-05-2007, 06:44 PM
I didnt end up playing Übermadness, I was warned about ridiculous amounts of combo. Understanding so close to Waterbury. I ended up playing about 3 Solidarity decks and TES. I crushed them with stax.

The tutorability is amazing and Im thinking of splashing red now. The change would be -1 Wonder, +1 Anger, -1 Trop, +1 Volc. In the board we can add the amazing Ancient Grudge. I havent played more than a game of so of this build but its already showing some promise to give those wurms haste. It may make the combo matchup better shaving a full turn off the kills.

ninjabear
07-13-2007, 04:49 AM
@Legoman
Lets look at my draw engine.
4 Life from Loam
6 cycle lands
1 Cephalid Colosiem
3 Ideals Unbound
2 Deep Analysis
4 Brainstorm


As far as I can see, there are only 2 cards in this lot that are actually "draw": Life from the Loam and Deep Analysis. All the other are cantrips, and replacing oneself is not actually draw. Cephalid Coliseum means 2 cards to get 1 card... same as Ideas Unbound, 4 cards to get 3 cards (though ideas unbound in many cases can be better). I know that discarding cards is not really bad for you, but you don't have so many cards to discard (Roar, Arrogant & Basking) and you already have plenty other ways to get rid of those cards (LED, Wild Mongrel...).
I've never seen a person saying Brainstorm is "draw". I like to think of it as "card filtering", not as actual draw...

Windux
07-13-2007, 05:45 AM
I played Ancient Grudge, even without a red splash.
You have Brushhopper, Mongrel, Study and LED to discard the Grudge and flashback it.
The most of the time, when I played it, it was flashbacked because I milled it anyway.

What I was trying was a black splash for Massacre
Here is the list and the place I piloted it:
http://www.planetmtg.de/articles/artikel.html?id=2572

Bane of the Living
07-13-2007, 04:52 PM
I cant reach it from work :(

Care to elaborate?

Windux
07-13-2007, 05:14 PM
1Underground Sea
1Savannah
1Tundra
3Tropical Island
2Lonely Sandbar
2Tranquil Thicket
1Forest
1Island
4Flooded Strand
4Windswept Heath
2Cephalid Coliseum
4Basking Rootwalla
4Wild Mongrel
3Arrogant Wurm
2Wonder
3Jötun Grunt
3Anurid Brushhopper
2Roar of the Wurm
3Brainstorm
3Careful Study
4Life from the Loam
4Lion's Eye Diamond
3Mox Diamond


Sideboard:
1Wasteland
1Cabal Pit
3Massacre
3Mana Maze
2Swords to Plowshares
2Ray of Revelation
3Pithing Needle

The List is from January and it was tuned against RW Goblins, Fish and everytime shown up Stompys.

thefreakaccident
07-14-2007, 04:47 AM
list looks solid for this deck windux... I just have 2 questions.

1.)
why are you running 3 brainstorms?

- brainstorm is never anything less of 4, unless it is not being run... I think that is definitely a first for me (seeing 3 brainstorms in a deck before)

2.)
don't you think 4 Life from the loams are a little too much?

- I think with enough draw in the deck, you would only ever want to see 1 in a single game... but I guess running 4 wouldn't be bad, just confusing that you would run that as a 4 of and not any of the other 3 ofs in the deck.

Bane of the Living
07-14-2007, 08:32 AM
Loam is pretty important as far as dropping LED is concerned. It also gives you solid dredging to find Wonder, Roar, and Deep Analysis when you see more than one.

Brushhopper and Mongrel are far better with active loam.

6 Cantrips feel perfect for the deck and this is one case where Carefull Study is actually equal to, if not better than Brainstorm. This is a rare case but we need to do things like discard Flashback spells and feed Jotun Grunt's unlike thresh. Ive almost considered going to 4 CS and 2 BS because study is just so much better with the deck. Rootwalla?

What place did you come in? Any kind of report?

Windux
07-14-2007, 08:38 AM
I made the 7th Place out of 50-60.
Since it's from january I just can remember the game against goblins:
Game 1 I win, because my critter are better and they can fly.

Game 2: He makes a bomb start, plays 2 Lackey, but I play LED and Rootwalla and he is scared to run into Wurm. Then he draw a StoP swords my Rootwalla and attacks for SCG, Matron, Piledriver etc. He has no cards in Hand and I play Massacre.
He can recover with Ringleader, plays like 5-6 Goblins and I just show my 2nd massacre ;)

Against AngelStompy I made the "My Roar of the Wurms race your Exalted Angel with SoFaI" Move :)

Bane of the Living
07-14-2007, 08:41 AM
I made the 7th Place out of 50-60.
Since it's from january I just can remember the game against goblins:
Game 1 I win, because my critter are better and they can fly.

Game 2: He makes a bomb start, plays 2 Lackey, but I play LED and Rootwalla and he is scared to run into Wurm. Then he draw a StoP swords my Rootwalla and attacks for SCG, Matron, Piledriver etc. He has no cards in Hand and I play Massacre.
He can recover with Ringleader, plays like 5-6 Goblins and I just show my 2nd massacre ;)

Against AngelStompy I made the "My Roar of the Wurms race your Exalted Angel with SoFaI" Move :)

I love the massacre tech. Are there any other black cards you can think to add. Possibly Cabal Therapy? More combo hate would be nice.

Windux
07-15-2007, 03:46 AM
You could add Cabal Therapy instead of Mana Maze, but I don't like the change.
Playind Therapy additional is only an option if there are much combo in your meta. But then you should play another deck anyway :)

uldren
07-19-2007, 04:25 AM
Hello

Sorry for what might be a stupid question but could someone explains me what is the interest to have only one wasteland? How could you ensure to have it when needed?

Regards

Jak
07-19-2007, 04:33 AM
It is there for when you dredge it with Life from the Loam. Just for random times when you get it and can hurt the opponents mana base.

sco0ter
09-26-2010, 04:01 PM
Sorry for necro, but I wonder, if this deck could benefit from the recent UG Madness success, too.

Especially Vengevine looks interesting.

Has anybody tested a LED Madness Version with Loam and Vengevine recently and could provide some input?

perm
09-26-2010, 04:12 PM
wow nice three year necro :|