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Reeplcheep
09-24-2020, 11:14 AM
https://i.imgur.com/NaZ5G5S.gif
Image courtesy of Mtgo user overhaul or mtgoverhaul on twitter

Intro here. History, card discussion and matchup discussion below.

Why play Curse Stompy?


Curse stompy is a mono black, chalice based prison deck in a somewhat similar style to moon stompy or titan stompy. Similar to all stompy decks, it plans to use mana acceleration to play a disruptive prison card on the first turn and follow that up with an expensive threat to quickly end the game. If legacy is full of 1 and 2 mana spells, like all other stompy shells, playing chalice of the void on t1 is a good way to get free wins. It has generally great unfair and fair-non blue matchups. If you hate losing to dredge or TES, this is the deck for you! Most of the expense of the deck is froom the stompy staples, so if you already have moon stompy it is pretty easy to try out for a FNM.

Why play this over other stompy decks? You have a more explosive opening than other stompy decks since dark ritual makes 2 mana instead of 1, leyline of the void is free instead of blood moon’s 3 mana, and you have a small chance of t1 kills. Your disruption is more multi-axis than other stompy decks, efficiently answering large creatures, planeswalkers, the hand and the gy. You go over the top of other fair decks; goblins can easily answer Chandra or a TKS but folds to a one-sided humility on t3. Game 1 you are creature-less providing a measure of card advantage vs removal.
What are this deck’s weaknesses compared to other stompy decks? The deck has one of the highest curves in legacy, so it is more vulnerable to mana denial and daze than most other stompy decks. None of our disruption interacts with lands, only our payoffs, so fast land based decks (mostly depths) are very difficult to beat.

Why play this over other fair black decks? The F.I.R.E ug apocalypse (oko, uro, coatl etc.) makes trying to grind out the opponent with efficient 2 for 1s like pox or jund a losing battle. All of our threats go over the top of fair blue; demanding an immediate answer or winning the game. This allows us to sidestep a large portion of the card advantage bullshit gifted to us by 2019 WOTC. Furthermore, veil of summer is a large problem for the traditional thoughtsieze/hymn, but chalice and trinisphere interact quite well vs that card. Traditional black decks like pox or grixis would be better if trying to efficiently 2 for 1 the opponent into the ground until they have nothing was a good strategy, but that type of interesting gameplay is dead forever.

Why is Curse of Misfortunes a card worth building around? The card is essentially vintage build around oath of druids for 3 more mana. Yes, we are trying to resolve a 5 drop in legacy, which seems insane at first glance. However, stompy usually has more issues with card selection than with mana. Karn, the Great Creator has shown that having a 6-10 cmc (karn by himself doesn’t do much until you cast the card found) 1 card combo is great in stompy. Curses is essentially a 1 card combo with suspend 1 win the game in most matchups, does not require board control & is difficult for most decks to deal with once resolved. The opportunity cost of running the targets in a deck with chrome mox is quite low. Additionally, in a sol land deck the difference between 4B and 2RR is pretty small; its more like 4.5 mana.

Reeplcheep
09-24-2020, 11:14 AM
History

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image courtesy of MTGGoldfish.


https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EixFng4VgAgWQq7?format=jpg&name=small
The very first list with the curses package. It's come a long way.

Results
X-2 or better in a challenge or other large event. X-0 in a small event.



Name
Record
Place
Date
Event



Reeplcheep
4-2
14th
02/13/22
Legacy Challenge


Tensai
6-1
1st
02/05/22
MTGPL Winter Invi


Tensai
?
1st
02/01/22
MTGPL Jan League



Reeplcheep
5-2
13th
01/23/22
Legacy Challenge


Reeplcheep
5-2
16th
12/12/21
Legacy Challenge


Tomasso de Michele
?
2nd
13/11/21
London Legacy Monthly


Sanchez4272
4-0
1st
02/11/21
Preliminary


Reeplcheep
7-1
3rd
31/10/21
Challenge


SuperCow12653
8-2
4th
24/10/21
Challenge


Reeplcheep
3-2
11th
16/10/21
Anzid 1.2k


Mcguirecj
5-2
6th
27/09/21
Challenge


Sharkcastermage
6-2
15th
19/09/21
Showcase Challenge



Reeplcheep
4-2
21st
11/09/21
Challenge



Reeplcheep
4-2
19th
28/08/21
Challenge



Reeplcheep
4-2
22nd
21/08/21
Challenge



Mcguirecj
4-2
29th
15/08/21
Challenge



Reeplcheep
4-2
9th
12/06/21
Challenge



Reeplcheep
5-1
12th
05/06/21
Challenge



Reeplcheep
5-2
14th
16/05/21
Challenge



Reeplcheep
4-2
32nd
27/03/21
Challenge



Reeplcheep
5-2
12th
16/01/21
Challenge



Reeplcheep
4-2
27th
13/12/20
Challenge



Reeplcheep
4-2
24th
27/11/20
Challenge



Reeplcheep
4-2
12th
24/10/20
Challenge



Reeplcheep
4-2
12th
19/09/20
Challenge


Reeplcheep
5-1
5th
25/07/20
Challenge



Blurb

After the creation of the first chalice aggro deck, they naturally expanded into all the color combinations. Moon stompy due to the strength of blood moon, steel stompy due to the easier mana and artifact synergies, soldier stompy due to thalia and co; and later 4c loam, eldrazi, titan stompy , & urza stompy. Black stompy always fell short for since its mana was bad (the best cards had multiple black pips) and its threats were easy to deal with (Lili is slow, desecration demon dies to plow). This was before I was playing legacy but several attempts were made involving actual demons (www.mtgthesource.com/forums/showthread.php?8332-Deck-Demon-Stompy-(Black-Chalice-Tomb-Aggro)), contamination stax (” www.mtgthesource.com/forums/showthread.php?31886-Contamination-Stompy"), or even pack rat (http://www.mtgthesource.com/forums/showthread.php?33257-Mono-Rat-Stompy).

The start of curses in legacy I believe is one of orim67’s crazy 5-0 brews. (https://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/archive/mtgo-standings/legacy-league-2020-01-25#orim67_-)

People had identified the curse package as an option in rector fit, but this was the first spot where people tried the package in a karn stompy shell. He didn’t develop the deck further,but it was streamed shortly after on ThrabenU’s twitch channel which is where I first saw it. Vod Here (www.youtube.com/watch?v=LrXh7AYN2Po). He had a lot of fun, and got rid of the horrible chancellor – sorin combo as well as chrome mox (not enough black) and ran it back here (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FxavQ82-wME):

This is where I thought the deck had a lot of promise: Leyline over blood moon makes a lot of sense in a meta full of arcanist & astrolabe, and helm & curses go over the top of snowko instead of having your chandra’s die to elks. I did the majority of the brewing after this point. The main issues with thrabenU’s revised list above were that mox diamond and signets were too slow & inconsistant; I revamped the deck to support the moon stompy style mana base by adding chrome mox and another accelerant (dark ritual). I also cut the bridges for black count reasons as well as to have an answer to resolved permanents. I added 4 plague engineer because they help so much with sideboard mapping when your lock pieces are bad. There were several other things in the list that I tried and didn’t work but don’t bear mentioning. The deck was well positioned in the combo heavy breach meta; you can see the list here (https://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/archive/mtgo-standings/legacy-league-2020-04-04#arkn_-) (ark4n 5-0’d the same week I had my first 5-0) and a vod here (https://youtu.be/HIPhplHAuMQ?t=2140) (t1 kill highlighted). During this stream chat suggested vault of whispers which proved to be a great inclusion.

After that the companion spring happened and lurrus was insane; I tried to make a yorion build work. It was fun but always sketchy as an 80 card no cantrip deck; after the nerf happened I went back to monoB. After which with the resurgence of RUG I found dystopia & eliminate was printed to bring that matchup up from horrible to unfavourable. The deck preys on rug hate decks like hogaak, tes and dredge so I got lucky in pairings and got a challenge top 8 (https://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/archive/mtgo-standings/legacy-challenge-2020-07-26#reeplcheep_th_place) in this time. . Most recently zendikar rising released Pelakka predation // pelakka caverns which is the perfect utility land for this deck, providing a critical amount of smoothing and another angle of attack. Having both discard and removal also makes the deck more fun, as those are the traditional interactive spells of black midrange.

Oko/Dha/Labe banning sped up the format quite a bit. It let us switch pelakka pellation to Hagra mauling and eliminate to collective brutality since we didn’t need to kill PWs anymore. MH2 changed the meta considerably but added sudden edict as the perfect removal spell for this deck. It took a bit of tuning but Urza’s Saga replaced the maindeck helm at this point. Both of these spells being uncounterable is so key in a deck that otherwise is very weak to daze.

Thanks to several people on the stompy discord @shevek, @Zio_tibia, @TaoTam @pettdan, @ThrabenU and others to bounce ideas off of.

Reeplcheep
09-24-2020, 11:29 AM
Card Discussion.

https://c1.scryfall.com/file/scryfall-cards/small/front/3/7/37dfe8b8-b39e-4e70-9e5b-be42c93b4f70.jpg?1593272209 https://c1.scryfall.com/file/scryfall-cards/small/front/6/a/6a78299b-27bc-4730-bcb3-75fabc8f92c7.jpg?1599435177 https://c1.scryfall.com/file/scryfall-cards/small/front/c/5/c531d218-ff1c-4333-a19d-446d709b1e28.jpg?1562941569 https://c1.scryfall.com/file/scryfall-cards/small/front/0/6/06a91cf5-4eab-4d9b-90bd-fb933bb00540.jpg?1543675226


Sample list:
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EiM2mhfU0AA5p8h?format=jpg&name=small

8 Snow-Covered Swamp
1 Karakas
4 Trinisphere
4 Karn, the Great Creator
2 Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth
4 Chalice of the Void
1 Curse of Death's Hold
4 Ancient Tomb
1 Cruel Reality
4 Leyline of the Void
1 Overwhelming Splendor
4 Curse of Misfortunes
4 City of Traitors
4 Dark Ritual
2 Helm of Obedience
4 Chrome Mox
4 Eliminate
4 Pelakka Predation // Pelakka Caverns


1 Ensnaring Bridge
1 Mycosynth Lattice
1 Liquimetal Coating
2 Dystopia
1 Sorcerous Spyglass
1 Helm of Obedience
1 Vault of Whispers
4 Plague Engineer
1 Necromentia
2 Hymn to Tourach


Lands:
The land based is extremely similar to the tried and true moon stompy base (8 sol lands, 8-12 untapped lands, 8 pieces of acceleration), with 1-5 more utility lands to support our higher curve without flooding.

• Ancient Tomb

o Tap, pay 2 life: Add 2.

o The best sol land. Play 4.
o It is usually but not always worth taking 2-4 life to play around daze

• City of Traitors

o When you play another land, sacrifice ~.

o Tap: Add 2.
o The second best sol land. Play 4
o It is usually not worth losing city to play around daze, unless you know you will die imminently.
o Putting a land into play with an opponents S&T, uro, or vet explorer will not trigger city. MTGO is bugged and will not trigger when you play a land stolen from the opponent by opposition agent.

• Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth.

o Legendary Land. All lands are swamps in addition to their other types.
o Lifegain with ancient tomb, and helps cast BB spells. Play 1-3 depending on how many BB spells you have.

• Snow-covered swamp

o Can’t be killed by wasteland.
o Snow covered for the fringe situation where the opponent trades you a coatl and for bluffing. Or your favourite basic swamp; you do you. The fact you are reading this primer probably means you care about looking stylish more than that 0.02% winrate increase.
o You need at least 10 t1 untapped black producing lands, fill up remaining slots based on how many urborgs you have.

• Pelakka Predation // Pelakka Caverns

o Target opponent reveals their hand. You may choose a card from it with converted mana cost 3 or greater. That player discards that card.
o Pelakka Caverns enters the battlefield tapped.
 {T}: Add {B}.
o Newest addition to the deck, it’s the worst as a land but the best as a “spell”. It is considerably better than it looks; it has tons on flexibility functioning as a mana source, protection or acceleration (with chrome mox). It should not be compared to thoughtseize; it should be compared to ponder for thoughtseize, ponder for land or ponder for dark ritual.
o Having a land that can trade with the only cards we care about (forces, oko, show & tell) with only 1 black pip and being immediately useful is extremely strong. Has mostly replaced the below utility lands.
o With oko banning planeswalkers and other high cmc cards are less prevelant, and creatures are more common. Hagra’s mauling is considerable as an alternative or in addition to pelakka. Extra cost and black pip are problematic however. 3-6.


• Ifnir deadlands

o Tap: Add 1.
o Tap, pay 1 life: Add 1
o Tap, pay 2BB, sacrifice a Desert: Put two -1/-1 counters on target creature an opponent controls. Activate this ability only any time you could cast a sorcery.
o Lowest opportunity cost, weakest power. Uncounterable arcanist/delver killing. 0-1

• Castle Lochwain or Silent Clearing

o Castle Locthwain enters the battlefield tapped unless you control a Swamp.
o {T}: Add {B}.
o {1}{B}{B}, {T}: Draw a card, then you lose life equal to the number of cards in your hand.
o Strong ability for controlling flooding but slow. I was playing castle prior to pelakka predation.
o Silent clearing has a bit higher floor for a lower ceiling. Silent Clearing over nurturing peatland gives you a small chance of hard casting splendor if you draw 2 or manage to steal a tundra with opposition agent. It also bluff D&T better whereas AFAIK no deck plays nurturing peatland. 0-2.

• Karakas

o Legendary Land.{T}: Add {W}.
o {T}: Return target legendary creature to its owner’s hand.
o Technically better than a colourless land since it can hard cast splendor in conjunction with opposition agent every once in a blue moon.
o Purely played because the turbo depths matchup is so bad. 0-1.


Spells:

The main consideration with spells is to have at least 22 (absolute minimum 20) white or black cards for chrome mox. If you max out on helms and bridges you may have issues with imprinting on chrome mox, especially if you draw 2. Assume mainboard unless mentioned elsewhere. You should have an extremely strong reason for each two black pip card you put in the deck. If you have less than 10 cards that win the game you will give too much time for the opponent to get out of your lock.

• Dark Ritual

o Arguably the best acceleration in legacy. Yes it sucks if you topdeck it with chalice out, but it makes you the best deck in the format at t1 trinisphere. 4.
o Fixes colourless mana into black with 3ball out for dystopia etc…
o More discussion about Dark Ritual & Chalice:

 I will be using this excellent article (https://thesaltminesite.com/2017/07/07/nonbos-using-a-legacy-lens-to-analyse-anti-synergies/) as framework to answer the question about why to play dark ritual in a chalice deck.
 Please think about when patriot was a deck to beat that played bolt & plow. Consider the following non-bos accepted in 2020 legacy: AdNaus & Echo, teeg & gsz, uro and basic plains, 3 of any legendary land, deafening silence & ponder. Its interesting to ask @maxtortion‘s questions about each of these, and if it matters more or less than drit & chalice.
 The answers to the 3 questions in the article are:

1. This anti-synergy only matters after t1, when your chalice has not been dealt with, and only if you top deck it.
2. It can matter but you do have 4 mox.
3. Chalice & Drit are 1st and 2nd best at what they do, respectively.


• Chrome Mox

o Stompy staple. Its probably the best card in the deck. Outlet for dead curse targets/dark rituals. 4.
o You can exile karn to chrome mox if you need to get empty handed, but don’t expect it to do anything.

• Chalice of the Void

o The reason to play this deck. 4.
o You can kill it with Karn+ if you are desperate to dark ritual.
o In paper: stop feelbads, remember your triggers.

• Trinisphere

o Because of dark ritual you are the best deck in the format at getting this out t1. 3-4.
o If you turn Trinisphere into a creature, attacking with it will cause the ability to turn off.

• Leyline of the Void

o The premier black hate card. Against almost every deck this will at least be annoying, which is insane for a 0 mana spell. And 10% of the time it wins you g1 by itself. 4.
o Leyline prevents dies triggers such as the one from Mogg War Marshall, Veteran Explorer or Flagstones of Trokair.
o Usually it is correct to put the first 1 into play t0 in the blind, but the second should be kept for chrome mox. Occassionally you may need to keep the first 1 for chrome mox so don't autopilot.

• Ensnaring Bridge

o We usually lose to mana denial and can easily get cards stuck in hand. Still quite good vs Eldrazi and Marit Lage. 0-2 main, 1 side.

• Eliminate

o 1B Instant. Destroy target creature or planeswalker with cmc 3 or less.
o Answers cards that traditionally prove difficult for stompy to beat (big creatures like goyf, cheap planeswalkers like oko) efficiently, without conflicting with chalice. Play 4 unless you are in a meta with no aggro or tempo.
o With oko gone, if your meta has few planeswalkers, Liliana’s triumph (delve creatures/TNN/marit lage) or collective brutality (combo/control) can be played instead

• Defense Grid

o 2 Artifact. Spells cost 3 more to cast except on their controllers turn.
o After marit lage and force of Vigor, daze is probably the strongest card against this deck. Defense grid is the best possible daze answer in colour and gives you the most nut draws. (Leyline, tomb grid, swamp rit helm is a protected t2 kill)
o Oko being banned makes this worth considering. There are still costs associated that need to be taken into account: it doesn’t do much with a trinisphere in play already, it hurts your B count for mox, it is significantly worse than 3 ball vs combo, and it is a poor top deck.


• Murderous Rider // Swift End

o 1BB instant. Destroy target creature or planeswalker. You lose 2 life. (Then exile this card. You may cast the creature later from exile.)
o 1BB. 2/3 Lifelink. When Murderous Rider dies, put it on the bottom of its owner’s library.
o Additional eliminates that also draws you a great blocker. 1BB is rough on the mana base however and I prefer pelakka predation above as an additional pw removal/expensive creature removal. (0-2 main or side)

• Plague Engineer

o 2B. 2/2 Deathtouch. As Plague Engineer enters the battlefield, choose a creature type. Creatures of the chosen type your opponents control get -1/-1.
o The best 2B hate piece probably ever, it is especially good when chalice and trinisphere are bad. 3-4 between main and side.

• Helm of Obedience

o Artifact, 4.
o {X}, {T}: Target opponent mills a card, then repeats this process until a creature card or X cards have been put into their graveyard this way, whichever comes first. If one or more creature cards were put into that graveyard this way, sacrifice Helm of Obedience and put one of them onto the battlefield under your control. X can’t be 0.
o Since you are playing Leyline anyways, activating this with Leyline out for X=1 or more will exile the opponents entire library. This is true even if the opponent has a Progenitus in their library; they must choose a different replacement effect once they are looping shuffling Progenitus back into the library.
o If you don’t have Leyline, fairly activating it can buy you an emergency blocker, steal a griselbrand vs s&t or BR reanimator, steal a creature for the last few points of damage if they are too greedy with library, “counter” a personal tutor or mystic sanctuary, or slowly mill the opponent out if they are creatureless. I have won multiple times in each of these ways, however it is usually better to try and wait for the Leyline topdeck.
o It’s the worst of the wincons by itself however so trim it first if your curve needs to be lowered. 1-3 MD, 1 side. Side in the helm if Karn passive/Coating is already gg or if Karn is sided out.

• Karn, the Great Creator

o A staple of any deck in any format with ramp or fast mana, you know what this does. 4.
o This card is extra important in this deck as we otherwise have difficulty interacting with lands.
o Helm combo means running him out into a board where he will die, as a 4 cmc tutor, is often correct.
o Remember that Karn can get bog’d or force of negation’d artifacts too.

• Curse of Misfortunes

o 4B Enchantment. Enchant player. At the beginning of your upkeep, you may search your library for a Curse card that doesn’t have the same name as a Curse attached to enchanted player, put it onto the battlefield attached to that player, then shuffle your library.
o It is the namesake of the deck. Play 4. Some basic aura rules:

 Attaching does not target and does not use the stack. Veil/Leyline of Sanctity do nothing to the trigger. They cannot fetch if they see you getting overwhelming splendor after they let the trigger resolve. This also applies to any curse coming down off of show & tell.
 Casting an aura does target. Don’t get blown out by veil. Always target the opponent.
 Aura’s will died as a SBA if turned into a creature. Don’t plus your Karn on them if they are an artifact.
o Due to its wording, if the OP force of vigors your curse of misfortunes in response to the trigger it can get another copy of curse of misfortunes.

• Overwhelming Splendor

o 6WW. Enchant player. Creatures enchanted player controls lose all abilities and have base power and toughness 1/1. Enchanted player can’t activate abilities that aren’t mana abilities or loyalty abilities. 1.
o Primary target, this beats most non-storm decks by itself. Unfortunately it is uncastable; exile it to chrome mox if you have enough black sources.
o Remember the last line affects a player, not a group of permanents. Fetchlands, Wasteland, Vials, and even cards in hand with cycling or ninjitsu.
o As a humility effect you will have to learns lots of layers issues. The most common ones: Elks made before it are 1/1s, elks made after it are 3/3s. Magus of the Moon and Painter’s Servant’s abilities will not be turned off. 0/0 creatures like walking ballista will become bigger.

• Curse of Death’s Hold

o 3BB. Enchant player. Creatures enchanted player controls get -1/-1.
o The least impressive but cheapest curse, it forms a hard lock with splendor above. Considering how good plague engineer is in legacy, just hardcasting it can win games vs some decks such as Goblins. 1.
o If you expect removal or are about to die to a wide board sometimes it is correct to get this one first, as it has the most impact if immediately removed.
o Plus-ing karn on a 1 cmc artifact (for example pithing needle on helm) will kill it with curse of death’s hold in play

• Cruel Reality

o 5BB. Enchant player. At the beginning of enchanted player’s upkeep, that player sacrifices a creature or planeswalker. If the player can’t, they lose 5 life.
o Handles the few permanents that can beat the above lock (planeswalkers, +1/+1 counters) as well as actually finishes the game. 1.
o When against a combo that doesn’t use permanents much like storm, it is usually correct to get this first (If fools wisdom is not relevant or played) to speed up your clock.

• Curse of Fool's Wisdom

o 4BB Enchantment. Enchant player. Whenever enchanted player draws a card, they lose 2 life and you gain 2 life. Madness {3}{B} .
o Historically, it is an additional win con when MTGO is bugged and cruel reality doesn’t work. You can enable the madness with collective brutality if you are playing that card.
o Can cover for one of the good curses being exiled to chrome mox. This is important to increase threat density in control metas, as well as just making the deck more consistent overall.
o Answers klothys/valakut awakening/burn which otherwise can be an issue. Having a curse that is relevant to combo without being as dead as curse of exhaustion is a benefit in combo metas.
o In tempo metas it can be too weak to be worth the extra dead draw, since it is pretty embarrassing to hard cast. 0-1

Primarily Sideboard cards

• Sorcerous Spyglass

o A powerful card against our worst matchups (depths/stryfo/rug), but eliminate is more flexible. I find having more than 12 do nothing hate pieces (chalice/3ball/leyline) MD can lead to games where you just never draw threats and die to that t1 delver. Note that the peek effect is significantly more valuable when curving into a pelakka predation. 0-2 MD, 1 SB
o Although you have one in the sideboard as part of the karn package, feel free to side it in for Wasteland or Marit Lage matchups.

• Vault of Whispers

o Artifact Land. {T}: add {B}
o Allows Karn to get a coloured mana source to hit 5 mana through Trinisphere. 1 SB.
o This allows you to helm combo with just leyline, karn and 4 mana; get helm with one activation and vault with another to activate it.
o This can also come up if you have to lose your City of Traitors to play karn.
o Using Karn + on this will cause a death trigger. Notably, this will exile opposing Bridge From Belows.
o Feel free to side this in vs mana denial or slow control decks, where you want more permanent mana sources.

• Liquimetal Coating

o Allows you interact with lands, extremely powerful with Trinisphere. Don’t side this in ever. 1 SB.
o Minus-ing with karn immediately to get this allows you to start killing lands faster. It does leaves you at risk of being blown out by bolt or a hasty coatl/elk. Consider the risks and rewards.
o Using Karn + to kill lands with this will cause a death trigger. Notably, this will trigger opposing Bridge From Belows.

• Tormod’s Crypt

o A great Karn target vs graveyard decks. However, we are already so favoured vs them that sideboard space is often better served elsewhere. 0-1 SB.
o Can be used on yourself to buy back countered/destroyed artifacts.


• Torpor Orb

o A Karn target that replaces the 4th plague engineer vs creature decks. Not quite as good there, but also being great vs doomsday, oops and Esper vial is nice. 0-1 SB.
o It will stop uro from killing itself.


• Mycrosynth Lattice

o Turns Karn into 10 cmc win the game. 1 SB. Don’t side this in.
o This is not recommended vs collector ouphe. Vs null rod this can still be a win if the opponent has no board, no field of the dead/dryad arbor/emrakul in library and less cards in library.
o This is the easiest way to hardcast overwhelming splendor; which has come up for me once or twice.

• Plague Reaver

o 2B Creature. At the beginning of your end step, sacrifice each other creature you control.
Discard two cards, Sacrifice Plague Reaver: Choose target opponent. Return Plague Reaver to the battlefield under that player’s control at the beginning of their next upkeep.
o With oko and ice fang-coatl mostly gone, this is the classic sideboard juke. None of the text matters except the numbers in the bottom right corner. This is a goyf/mentor for our deck to punk people who sideboard out removal for enchantment hate. Choke on your force of vigors/back to basics and die, control player!
o We play this over Rotting Regisaur since the downside matters less in a high curve, low creature deck. 0-3 SB.

• Snuff out

o Excellent tempo positive removal through chalice and daze when eliminate is too slow. A bit dangerous to your life total and leaves you unable to answer Klothys or Karn. 0-1 SB.

• Soul Shatter

o 2B Instant. Each opponent sacrifices a creature or planeswalker with the highest converted mana cost among creatures and planeswalkers they control.
o A recent upgrade to To the Slaughter, this is an option if you need your PW removal to also deal with Marit Lage and T1/T2 Karn. Ignoring veil of summer & cheap creatures like elemental tokens is a nice bonus. (0-2 main or side)

• Bloodchief’s Thirst

o Your sideboard removal primarily needs to answer either big things eliminate misses (soul shatter for Lage and Karn) or extremely cheap (snuff out for Thalia or dryad arbor) Bloodchiefs thirst does both of those things moderately well, at the cost of efficiency, Non-boing with chalice, and instant speed. 0-1 SB.

• Hymn to Tourach or Collective Brutality or Agonizing Remorse

o All 3 options are primarily to deal with spell based combo or forces. BB is extremely difficult to cast, but against decks which are not attacking your mana it is fine to side in a few. I value non-disenchantable sideboard cards highly; you want 2-3 hand/search/draw hate between this and the ones below. This is a flexible discard spell but it has low impact.
The other two options are even more flexible (delver and uro removal respectively) and easier to cast but are even less game changing. 0-3 SB.

• Dreamstealer

o 2B. ˝. Menace. Whenever Dreamstealer deals combat damage to a player, that player discards that many cards. Eternalize {4}{B}{B} ({4}{B}{B}, Exile this card from your graveyard: Create a token that’s a copy of it, except it’s a 4/4 black Zombie Human Wizard with no mana cost. Eternalize only as a sorcery.)
o A discard spell that is easier to cast and is quite effective vs control sitting on a pile of counterspells. It is quite slow however. 0-3 SB

• Necromentia

o 1BB. Choose a card name other than a basic land card name. Search target opponent’s graveyard, hand, and library for any number of cards with that name and exile them. That player shuffles their library, then creates a 2/2 black Zombie creature token for each card exiled from their hand this way.
o The best sad sac effect since it can target dark depths. It is the best discard spell vs A+B combo & graveyard decks, the worst one vs control. 0-3 SB.
o I have never done this, but against some decks naming a dual that is not yet in play could completely take them off a colour.
o You can die to the zombie you give them, but it is usually better than giving the opponent a random card.

• Chains of Mephistopheles

o An alternative to the discard mentioned above if you want additional blue hate. 0-2 SB.

• Dystopia

o 1BB. Cumulative upkeep—Pay 1 life. (At the beginning of your upkeep, put an age counter on this permanent, then sacrifice it unless you pay its upkeep cost for each age counter on it.). At the beginning of each player’s upkeep, that player sacrifices a green or white permanent.
o Handles snowko/rug delver bullshit effectively. The only card in the format that trades evenly with Oko + elk. It will also deal with goyfs/library/Klothys/Uro which can be a pain for you. You can’t run too many though because it doesn’t answer delver. 2 SB
o It happens to also be great against Thalia decks and decent vs elves/enchantress, but that’s not the reason they are in your sideboard.
o It is removal for leyline of sanctity if you know your opponent is running those.
o If curse of misfortunes & dystopia are triggering at the same time, stack the triggers so that the sac and fail to pay upkeep triggers resolve before you search and put in splendor (a white permanent) into play.
o If Cruel Reality & Dystopia are triggering at the same time, stack the triggers so that you give the opponent the smallest amount of options. Specifically, order it such that the cruel reality trigger resolves first if they have a green or white non-creature permanent or that the dystopia trigger resolves first if they have a red/blue/black/colourless creature.
o Remember that sylvan library & klothys both trigger after the upkeep step; they will not get the effect if they sac it to dystopia.
o When deciding to pay for it with no targets, consider if it would be worth paying upkeep twice to kill something. Table below:
Age counter you are adding this turn 1 2 3 4 5 6
Life to kill something played next turn 3 5 7 9 11 13


• Curse of Exhaustion

o 2WW. Enchant player. Enchanted player can’t cast more than one spell each turn.
o Gives us a great curse target against storm which usually can ignore splendor. However, those decks are already so favoured sideboard space is usually better served elsewhere. 0-1 SB.

• Opposition Agent

o 2B. Flash. 3/2. You control an opponent while they are searching their library. You exileeach card they find, and can play those cards using mana of any colour.
o A very good card for this deck. Note that the card stolen can be played even without agent. The only prison piece ever printed that can be cast at instant speed off of dark ritual. Has the floor of a flash magus of the blood sun, and absolutely dumpsters both spell based combo and green non-brainstorm decks. After the opponent’s fetch gets got once they will respect untapped swamp, giving you free value. Several abilities such as SFM allow the controller to decline to search in which case you would not be able to control them. While controlling the opponent, you get to see everything they can see, except for their sideboard. This includes their hand, which is currently bugged on MTGO.
o It does play very badly with urborg and against removal. For these reasons I have decided it’s not quite good enough to maindeck in fair metas. Urborg should usually be sided out for vault if this comes in. 2-4 SB.
o Don’t underestimate the flash body. Quite relevant vs arcanist, Karn & Narset.
o Deciding whether to run the body out as a prison effect (to make sure it doesn’t let anything through) or try and steal something is a difficult choice. Some heuristics of mine:

o Against sorcery speed effects in decks with little interaction (E.g. GSZ) it’s usually free to wait since you can always cast it eot.
o Against instant speed effects in decks with lots of interaction (fetches in snow) its best to play it out if you have other things to do with your mana. How much does it hurt you if they go fetch pass?
o If you manage to steal something: Vs fetches steal the duals in their removal colours or try to get double white for splendor. Vs green tutors you should be able to find something good against themselves. Vs spell combo tutors: why hasn’t your opponent conceded yet?

• Treacherous Blessing

o An effective 2 cmc draw 3 in this deck, but it is too likely to kill yourself against aggro. Can be considered in heavy control/combo metas. 0-2 in the 75.
o You can use liquimettal coating or an opponent's council's judgment to get rid of it.


Rejected cards

• Liliana of the veil (And other 1BB planeswalkers such as ashiok)

o Although one of the more powerful cards in black, we have a high curve so the plus is detrimental and 1BB cards are difficult to play early without dark ritual.
o If we are playing a 1BB card, I want it to beat an oko. See murderous rider above. With oko banned Liliana the last hope is a consideration as a wincon we can deploy t1, but sometimes she just doesn’t do enough and you lose before she can ultimate.

• Wasteland

o You have one of the highest curves in legacy.
o If you are playing spyglass MD, you are probably naming this card.

• The Abyss

o Great in a creatureless deck, but I want all my >3 cmc cards to win the game or at least beat oko.

• Nether Void

o You have one of the highest curves in legacy.

• Bitterblossom

o The days of this being good vs control are gone. It loses to oko & uro, especially in an ancient tomb deck.

• Elspeth’s Nightmare

o Does a Kolaghan’s command impression, but a bit slow and a poor topdeck.

• Lotus Petal

o I know dark ritual & chalice looks bad, but the extra velocity and black count is essential.

• Crucible of Worlds

o Better suited for a grindy stax deck, we are trying to go over the top of the opponent. Wasteland and fetches are bad in this deck.

• Feed the Swarm

o Black gets enchantment removal now, but the enchantment we care about most is klothys.
o Worse than dystopia in most situations.

• Hall of Heliod's Generosity

o Legendary Land.{T}: Add {C}.
o {1W}, {T}: Put target enchantment card from your graveyard to the top of your library.
o Extremely powerful vs control, but requiring a small splash and producing no coloured mana screws up your mana too much in other match-ups. 0.

• Ill-Gotten Gains

o Although it does combo with leyline of the void, it is significantly worse with leyline than helm and not much better than helm without leyline.
o Compared to DETH our fair IGG are really bad since we don’t have LED or Tutors.
o Being black for Chrome Mox is not enough of an upside to outweigh the above downsides.

Reeplcheep
09-24-2020, 11:48 AM
Matchups & Sideboard map

Generally matchup difficulty will be based on how much they care about our disruption, and how easily they answer our payoffs. This is based partly on feel, but I also have tracked my last 350 matchs since the companion nerf by matchup. There are basically 4 major groups of matchups:

• fair non-blue (favoured) you are favoured and you take out lock pieces to become a weird black control list,
• vs slow blue (even) you take out mana for discard and threats
• vs combo (very favoured) you take out removal for discard
• and vs fast blue (unfavoured) you remove karn for faster answers.
This is assuming my most recent list, going from hardest to easiest:
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EiM2mhfU0AA5p8h?format=jpg&name=small
Jan 2021: Although a volatile card, opposition agent is an extremely potent tool vs green non-brainstorm decks, doomsday, and postboard control decks. Since It changes your sideboard strat quite a bit, An example list targeting those decks at the expense of tempo mus and it’s boarding will be added in colour.
4 ancient tomb
4 City of Traitors
2 Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth
8 Swamp
4 Pelakka Predation // Pelakka Caverns

4 Dark Ritual
4 Chalice of the Void
4 Trinisphere
3 Eliminate
4 Leyline of the Void
1 Treacherous Blessing

2 Helm of Obedience
4 Karn, the Great Creator
4 Curse of Misfortunes
1 Curse of Death’s Hold
1 Cruel Reality
1 Curse of Fools’ Wisdom
1 Overwhelming Splendor

3 Plague Engineer
3 Opposition Agent
2 Soul Shatter
1 Torpor Orb
1 Vault of Whispers
1 Sorcerous Spyglass
1 Helm of Obedience
1 Mycrosynth Lattice
1 Ensnaring Bridge
1 Liquimettal Coating




Very bad:

• Depths. Nightmare matchup.

o They can win without casting any spells or using the graveyard, they have discard for our payoffs, we don’t have wasteland or plow or blood moon, and they are fast.
o You are usually just barely too slow on finding splendor or bridge.
o Not extremely common, so although there are several sideboard options such as karakas/soul shatter/necromentia/spyglass it is not worth making this matchup your primary consideration.
o – 4 Eliminates – 4 Trinisphere + spyglass, +3x plague engineers, + necromentia, + helm, hymn.
Opposition agent takes this mu from unwinnable to not too bad. This is why you put 3 in your deck. ESG makes going for gotchas dangerous, usually better to play it as a lock piece. -2 urborg —3 eliminate-1 deaths hold -4 3ball, +3 plague +3 agent + vault +spyglass +2 Soul Shatter



Bad:

• RUG Delver. Unfavourable

o The deck is quite good for a stompy deck against the arcanist/oko/goyf part of the deck, but our high curve can be a liability vs the daze/wasteland/delver part of the deck. Every card in our deck is pretty devastating to them if it resolves, but sometimes nothing resolves.
o – karn (too slow, requires board control) + spyglass + bridge + vault + helm – 2drit + 2 dystopia. Additional dark rituals (OTP) or trinispheres (OTD) can be sided out for a few plague engineers depending on their arcanist count.

• Maverick. Unfavourable.

o Our deck relies on expensive enchantments being hard to deal with once resolved, and they usually have gsz for gaddok teeg & ouphe & knight of autumn MD.
o They also don’t care much about chalice & trinisphere, and care less about plague engineer than other thalia decks. Main way to win is t1 or t2 karn/curse/helm kill before they have they have the mana to gsz for KoA.
o -4 chalice -4 trinisphere, +4 plague engineers, +vault + spyglass + 2 dystopia
Opposition agent leads to huge blow outs vs GSZ, fetches, or kotr. -4 chalice -4 3ball -2 Urborg +3 Plague +3 agent +vault +spyglass +2 Shatter

• Stryfo Pile. Unfavourable.

o 4 Trophy makes it easier for them to beat resolved threats, and they care less about chalice and trinisphere than other blue control decks.
o Leyline is quite effective against them however.
o The clock is quite slow and they often play 80 cards so you can still cheese them t1 or slog through all their counters.
o If you are running chains, don't bring it in vs the 4x Dack deck.
o -4 Drit, -4 Chrome mox. + 2 hymn + helm + spyglass +2 dystopia + 1 plague engineer + vault of whispers



Around even:

• Other delver/ninjas. Slightly unfavourable.

o Similar to rug, but no oko means they are both significantly more vulnerable to chalice and trinisphere, and more vulnerable to plague engineer out of the board.
o – karn (too slow, requires board control) + bridge + vault + helm – 2drit - Overwhelming splendor (death’s hold should kill most creatures in UR) + 4 plague engineer

• Snowko or “Snow splashing a combo.” (Aluren, Food Chain, worldgorger, Snow day) Slightly Unfavourable.

o They have a lot of forces and oko but they care about all our cards. With no wasteland and daze you can often just keep casting “win the game” cards until they run out of naturally drawn force effects. Pelakka Predation is a big pickup here to take that last fow out of their hand.
o Plan is to remove fast mana for threats.
o -4 Drit, -4 Chrome mox. + 2 hymn + helm + spyglass +2 dystopia + 1 plague engineer + vault of whispers
extra business and draw maindeck makes a large difference here. Agent punishes them if they side out plows. The various combos snow people play aren’t really different decks and don’t change how you approach the matchup much. Vs combo versions you have to go a bit faster since they have less interaction but a bit better “clock”. Since opposition agent gives an additional way to cheese wins vs them the strategy has shifted to being faster, with less removal.
-2 Urborg -3 Eliminate -1 3 Ball + helm+3 Agent +2 Soul Shatter

• Eldrazi. Slightly unfavourable.

o They don’t care about any of your disruption, but they can’t interact much with splendor or bridge or helm kill. Compared to other tribal decks they care much less about plague engineer.
o Keep a fast threat hands; interactive hands are usually bad.
o -4 chalice -4 trinisphere. + 4 plague engineer, + spyglass, + vault, + 2 hymn.

• 12 post. Even.

o Similar to eldrazi. Curses is less devastating to them but karn is game over usually.
o T1/T2 karn or helm kill or bust. Sometimes t1 curse or t2 curse OTP is good enough.
o -4 chalice -4 trinisphere. +spyglass + vault + 2 hymn + 1 helm + necromentia + 2 plague engineer.Agent is a devestating and hard to answer lock piece vs them if they are green, turning it into a great matchup. -4 3ball -3 Eliminate +3 Agent +1 helm +1 Spyglass +2 Soul shatter

• Stoneblade. Even

o This is a similar matchup to snowko. Dystopia is worse but plague engineer is much better. Eliminate is quite awkward here since it can’t answer jace.
o -4 Drit, -4 Chrome mox. + 2 hymn + helm + spyglass +3 plague engineers + vault of whispers.

• Esper Vial. Even.

o Similar to stoneblade. Venser + soulherder is often unbeatable. Nevertheless, a good deal of their deck is irrelevant in the mu and they are clunky and slow. Priority with spyglass is usually 3feri if they don’t have a vial.
o -4 Drit, -4 Chrome mox. + 2 hymn + spyglass +4 plague engineers + vault of whispers.

• Infect. Slightly favourable

o As the “delver” deck that is the most vulnerable to plague engineer, games 2 and games 3 are pretty easy as you just present a wall of removal.
o -4 karn -4 leyline -2 helm + 4 plague engineer + 2 dystopia + vault + spyglass + bridge +2 hymn

• Rug Midrange. Slightly favourable.

o aka Pokepile. It’s rug that took out cards good against us (delver/mandrills/chain lightning) for durdle (uro/coatl/stifle). An easier version of a challenging deck to face is still not a cakewalk. You can still lose to daze, fow, uro or wasteland, wasteland of course. Compared to snow arcanist plus no decay means they are more vulnerable to our lock pieces. Leyline is very very good against them.
o Same as snow.

• Death & Taxes. Slightly favourable

o Game 1 is somewhat unfavoured in the dark, just because you can keep a hand based on the strength of chalice/3 ball and they can ignore those cards. Game 2 is favoured because you have so many hate cards they have trouble beating. That only averages out to slightly favoured though.
o The main way you lose is to mana denial + thalia, so hands should be either very fast or have a resilient mana base.
o -4 chalice -4 trinisphere, +4 plague engineers, +vault + spyglass + 2 dystopia

• Sneak and Show. Slightly favourable.

o You often win if they go for show & tell, but you don’t have many good answers to sneak attack. This is a matchup to not pitch splendor to chrome mox if you can.
o -4 Eliminate -1 curse of deaths hold, +1 helm +2 hymn +1 necromentia + 1 spyglass

• Burn. Slightly favourable.

o Your t1 chalice or trinisphere can be game over, but since they can win through splendor sometimes your closing speed is just a bit too slow.
o – 4 karn -2 pelakka predation -1 curse of misfortunes -1 overwhelming splendor + 2 hymn + 4 plague engineers + 1 helm +1 bridge


• BR Reanimator. Slightly favourable

o You are a maindeck leyline deck, and they also can have issues beating trinisphere/splendor/chalice. However, chancellor of the annex means they sometimes can just be too fast, especially game 1 in the dark. Reverent silence can be a beating, but pelakka predation and trinisphere can protect you.
o -4 eliminate, + 1 necromentia + 2 hymn +1 spyglass.



Good:

• Oops. Favourable.

o Has replaced BR as the fast gy deck of choice. You are a maindeck leyline deck, and they also can have issues beating trinisphere/splendor/chalice. However, they sometimes can just be too fast, especially game 1 in the dark OTD. 4 FoV 3 natures Claim can be a beating, but pelakka predation and trinisphere can protect you.
o By far the best thing for the mu you can do is figure out if they are playing this ahead of time (do they finish all their matches <10 min?) and mulligan aggressively OTD.

• Moon stompy. Favourable

o Your finishers beat their finishers, and they don’t have the sideboard space to take out all their dead cards unlike yourself. If they are running less rabbles it gets a bit harder.
o -4 chalice -4 trinisphere. + 4 plague engineer, + spyglass, + vault, + 2 hymn.

• Urza Echo. Favourable.

o They are fast but vulnerable to our own hate pieces and our finishers beat their finishers. If you lose its usually to the nuts t1/t2 karn + force backup. Eliminate’s cmc restriction is most annoying here.
o -4 eliminates + 2 hymns + spyglass + helm

• Doomsday. Favorable.

o Compared to other storm, 3ball is not just gg and they have force of wills. But our lock pieces are still quite devastating and they can’t beat splendor.
o If they doomsday when you have a helm out, it becomes a fun minigame of guessing where they put their oracle and where they put their street wraiths.
o -4 Eliminate, -1 Curse of Deaths' Hold, +spyglass, +1 helm +2 hymn +1 necromentia. Agent is a must answer for them if cast before doomsday. -3 eliminate -1 Deathshold - 2 urborg +vault + torpor orb +3 Agent +1 helm

• Elves. Favourable.

o This used to be a cake walk, but allosaurus shepherd made the matchup a bit harder. Remember that removing the shepherd in response to a chalice trigger can result in a 2 for 1. You can also lose to the fetch 2x arbor, natural order for progenitus cheese.
o Chalice, humility, removal, trinisphere, plague engineer are all cards they hate to see, the challenge is what to cut.Like any other base green deck, agent shuts off a ton of their deck, especially the parts plague engineer doesn’t beat.
o -4 karn -2 Eliminate -1 Curse of Fools Wisdom -4 Pelakka Predation 1 Bridge 1 Helm + 3 Plague engineer +3 Opposition Agent +1 Vault



• Jeksai Mentor. Favourable.

o The new hot kid on the block, it is by far the easiest fair daze deck to beat. It’s rug delver but they took out all the cards that were good against us (delver/wasteland/mandrills/oko/chain lightning) for cards that are good in xerox mirrors (CB, Mentor, Plow, Labe, 3feri)
o -4 Karn -1 Splendor +1 Helm +4 Plague Engineer

• Omnitell. Favourable.

o Like sneak and show, but they have to show & tell. Trinisphere is also significantly better here.
o -4 Eliminate -1 curse of deaths hold, +1 helm +2 hymn +1 necromentia + 1 spyglass

• Lands. Favourable.

o Haven’t played against them with valukut exploration, so this may be subject to change.
o Why this is so much better than depths is that they are slower, meaning you have that extra turn you need for your payoff to win (by grabbing splendor or bridge), and they don’t have discard so your wincon is more likely to resolve in the first place.
o Chalice on 2 is very important in the mu; keep a hand that can get under a wastelock.
o -4 Trinisphere -4 eliminate. + vault, + spyglass, + helm, +2 dystopia + necromentia + 2 plague engineers.

• Painter. Favourable

o A combo that cares about chalice, splendor, eliminate, karn & often plague engineer/leyline of the void? Sign me up.
o The only reason this is not very favourable is that you don't have a ton of good answers to their t2 karn. This is due to us running eliminate as our primary removal spell now.
o – 4 trinisphere + necro + spyglass + 2 hymn


Very Good:

• Hogaak. Very Favourable.

o You are a maindeck leyline deck, and they also can have issues beating trinisphere/splendor/chalice. Force of Vigor is quite rough, but pelakka predation and trinisphere can protect you. Remember killing lands triggers bridge from below. Unlike the other graveyard decks, they often will not be able to win in 1 turn so you can slow roll your second leyline sometimes.
o -4 eliminate, -4 karn, + 1 necromentia + 2 hymn, + 1 ensnaring bridge + 1 helm +3 Plague Engineer

• Dredge. Very Favourable

o You are a maindeck leyline deck, and they also can have issues beating trinisphere/splendor/ensnaring bridge. No force of vigor/reverent silence makes this easier than other graveyard decks.
o -4 eliminate, + 1 necromentia +3 plague engineer.

• Goblins. Very favourable

o They are extremely vulnerable to our payoffs, and have no counterspells, and die to plague engineer.
o The way you lose this is G1 keeping an all lock piece hand, or getting t1 lackey -> muxus cheesed.
o -4 chalice -4 trinisphere. + 4 plague engineer, + spyglass, + vault, + 2 hymn.

• ANT. Very favourable.

o We are the best t1 trinisphere deck in the format, and one of the best t1 karn deck in the format. Occasionally they can get us with discard though. And the rest of our cards like leyline of the void are still annoying.
o -4 Eliminate, - 1 splendor -1 curse of misfortunes, +1 helm +2 hymn +1 necromentia +2 plague engineer.

• Cephalid Breakfast. Very Favourable

o A combo that cares about chalice, leyline of the void, splendor & plague engineer? Sign me up.
o – 4 trinisphere + 4 plague engineer

• TES. Dream Matchup. (Currently 16-3)

o We are the best t1 trinisphere deck in the format, and one of the best t1 karn deck in the format. Since TES has gotten a bit slower and cut their discard, they don’t really have a way of answering that. And the rest of our cards are still relevant.
o Vivarus recommends cutting veil vs chalice decks, so chalice on 0 is usually safe game 2 or game 3. You might get t1 cheesed once, but they can’t usually win both post board games like that. Past t1 the only way you are losing is pulverize, so prioritize mountains with liquimetal coating and burning wish with chalice/necromentia . They often won’t be able to wish and pulverize in the same turn so consider saving pelakka predations in hand. Note opposition agent does not affect burning wish.
o -3 Eliminate, - 1 splendor -2 Urborg, +1 helm +3 Opposition Agent +1 Vault +1 Helm

FTW
09-24-2020, 03:34 PM
Great primer! Glad to see this deck becoming established and getting legs after all the work you put into it.

Imagine how many opponents you get on tilt beating them with Pelakka Predation and Cruel Reality!

Are you now 11-1 vs Bryant Cook after the latest deck changes?

Reeplcheep
09-24-2020, 04:17 PM
Great primer! Glad to see this deck becoming established and getting legs after all the work you put into it.

Imagine how many opponents you get on tilt beating them with Pelakka Predation and Cruel Reality!

Are you now 11-1 vs Bryant Cook after the latest deck changes?

11-1 vs the deck in general. I think I'm 4-0 vs Bryant and 3-1 vs Vivarus, 3 other people.

H
09-24-2020, 04:54 PM
Did they finally fix Cruel Reality on MTGO?

Reeplcheep
09-24-2020, 04:56 PM
Did they finally fix Cruel Reality on MTGO?

It was fixed on the aug 19th maintenance, which is why I am no longer running curse of fools wisdom.

H
09-24-2020, 05:02 PM
It was fixed on the aug 19th maintenance, which is why I am no longer running curse of fools wisdom.

Ah, ok. It might help some people if you had a "current" or "sample list" spot. Unless I missed it already there.

Reeplcheep
09-24-2020, 05:11 PM
Ah, ok. It might help some people if you had a "current" or "sample list" spot. Unless I missed it already there.

I have a picture of the current list at the top of the card discussion post & the matchup discussion post

H
09-24-2020, 05:12 PM
I have a picture of the current list at the top of the card discussion post & the matchup discussion post

Oh, ok, yeah, didn't load here for me because of a firewall, but I see the spot now.

FTW
09-24-2020, 11:17 PM
Yeah based on your picture here and in the other thread, I just assumed they finally fixed the bug and you can cheese people out with Cruel Reality again. Great news for the deck! This is no fools' game!

It might be helpful to have a card-tagged sample list for people who can't view the pic or who just can't see the cards that well.

FTW
09-25-2020, 09:31 AM
I noticed you mentioned it in the history, so I found the Mono Rat Stompy thread:
http://www.mtgthesource.com/forums/showthread.php?33257-Mono-Rat-Stompy&p=1080419#post1080419

It was built as a joke (before Curse Stompy), but I had surprisingly good test results with it just based on the power of the Black Stompy Shell of
8 Sol Land
10 black source
4 Chrome Mox

4 Chalice
4 3sphere
4 Karn
4 Leyline
2 Helm

similar Karnboard package

That was build before Eliminate, which is an easy 4-of.

Pack Rat and Nezumi Shortfang let me cheese some wins off 1-card engines, protected by Caverns and Swarmyard, but overall the Curse package looks a lot stronger as a 1-card engine to win games and your Dark Ritual tech is big for accelerating lock pieces. I will say that Pack Rat is an excellent variance-smoother in Stompy, letting you run a high land count and redundant lock pieces and then just convert bad draws into Rats.

Reeplcheep
09-25-2020, 09:39 AM
I noticed you mentioned it in the history, so I found the Mono Rat Stompy thread:
http://www.mtgthesource.com/forums/showthread.php?33257-Mono-Rat-Stompy&p=1080419#post1080419

It was built as a joke (before Curse Stompy), but I had surprisingly good test results with it just based on the power of the Black Stompy Shell of
8 Sol Land
10 black source
4 Chrome Mox

4 Chalice
4 3sphere
4 Karn
4 Leyline
2 Helm

similar Karnboard package

That was build before Eliminate, which is an easy 4-of.

Pack Rat and Nezumi Shortfang let me cheese some wins off 1-card engines, protected by Caverns and Swarmyard, but overall the Curse package looks a lot stronger as a 1-card engine to win games and your Dark Ritual tech is big for accelerating lock pieces.

Yah I referenced your deck because you mentioned it in the developmental thread; I just didn't link it because I didn't know if there were details. I can add the above thread to the history post.

Reeplcheep
09-26-2020, 03:29 PM
I had an excellent co-stream of my most recent 5-0 list. Check it out if you want to see how it plays. Match 5 vs death's shadow was intense.

https://www.twitch.tv/videos/752600046?t=0h0m6s

Mr. Safety
09-26-2020, 07:18 PM
You were streaming with Phil Gallagher right? I think I'll check it out.

Reeplcheep
09-26-2020, 08:33 PM
You were streaming with Phil Gallagher right? I think I'll check it out.

Yes this was on Phil Gallagher (@ThrabenU)'s stream.

Reeplcheep
10-03-2020, 08:38 PM
I have liked pelakka predation so much that I am testing 2 memory leak right now. It is a very similar card which is a bit better as a spell & a topdeck but a bit worse as a land t1.

The first 2 times I have drawn it it won the game, so initial testing is promising.

Specifically it took a goblin engineer that would have found t3 painter kill, and cycled to find my 3rd mana source for t3 helm kill vs burn.

From a matchup perspective having more discard obviously has improved my control & A+B combo matchups quite a bit. Having such tempo negative cards over more removal seems like they would tank my aggro & mana denial matchups. However the land mode of both those cards is quite valuable in those matchups, having 22 lands + 2 redraws instead of previously only 20 lands is pretty great. Overall as smoothing cards that play nicely with 3ball & Chalice I have been quite impressed. Reducing the deck's fail rate seems more valuable than speed which surprised me; I suspect it is due in part to chrome mox allowing you to toss them when the tempo loss would be problematic.

Additionally the information from the peek has been more valuable than I had predicted.

Reeplcheep
10-05-2020, 10:29 PM
Added some additional matchups & discussion on dark ritual.

Reeplcheep
10-09-2020, 07:36 PM
2 new cards I want to test: Skyclave shade as a recursive threat to punish people sideing out creature removal, and [cards]Bloodchief's Thrist[cards] as an answer to delver that is also good vs vial & stompy decks.

Thoughts anyone?

Spigore
10-10-2020, 09:04 AM
Hi Reepl,

I love what you're doing with the deck and I'm going to pick this deck up and have some fun.

Drawing into Splendor (and in a certain way Cruel Reality) seems a bit odd.
Did you consider testing something like Scroll Rack?
I know the deck would need to up the numbers of shuffle effects, so playing sub-par cards just for the shuffle should not be the answer.
Or is topdecking into a dead card something you have to accept when playing the deck?

Reeplcheep
10-12-2020, 04:41 PM
Hi Reepl,

I love what you're doing with the deck and I'm going to pick this deck up and have some fun.

Drawing into Splendor (and in a certain way Cruel Reality) seems a bit odd.
Did you consider testing something like Scroll Rack?
I know the deck would need to up the numbers of shuffle effects, so playing sub-par cards just for the shuffle should not be the answer.
Or is topdecking into a dead card something you have to accept when playing the deck?

Love to hear someone who is interested in the deck. A 1 card combo is way better than a 2 card combo in a list w/o cantrips, and is one of the reasons for this deck's strength. You have 4 ways to get rid of dead cards (chrome mox) and with the London mulligan you can often put them on the bottom of your library.

I tried scroll rack. It was really really slow, the fetches' life loss added up, and if you didn't have any targets stuck in hand it felt like a dead card. Running bad cards to help get rid of bad cards is rough. Collective brutality is better but still not a legacy playable card imo.

____

In other news, even though I dropped at 4-2 since I couldn't get top8, I still got top 32 in yesterday's challenge. The only chalice deck too: (https://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/archive/mtgo-standings/legacy-challenge-2020-10-12#reeplcheep_th_place)

Reeplcheep
10-13-2020, 07:28 AM
If you are worried more about it making curse of misfortunes bad rather than the dead card aspect, generally any 2 of the 3 targets are sufficient to beat most legacy decks. Drawing more than 1 of your targets is unlikely unless it is a really long game.

If you really want something to do with dead targets the best option imo is chrome mox #5 essentially: Gemstone Caverns as an extra land.

Smea.gol.lum
10-13-2020, 06:43 PM
Hi Reepl,
I love your deck. I have always wanted to build a viable black Helmline deck. Since the printing of Karn and Curse of Misfortune, this deck has finally become viable.

Have you thought about replacing Eliminate with Rhystic Tutor and turn the deck even more into a combo deck?
In this shell it often feels like Demonic Tutor. It can get Karakas against Turbo Depths, protection when you already have Karn/Curse of Misfortunes in hand and one of the latter two when you already have protection.

Other cards to consider:
Thought-Knot Seer as disruption and a beater
Parallax Nexus: I imagine scenarios in which you clear the way by exiling 3/4 cards for Curse of Misfortunes or Karn into Sundial of the Infinite that prevents the exiled cards from returning to their owner's hand. But maybe that only happens in Magic Christmas Land.

Rhystic Tutor could be a very good addition though ;)
My suggestion would be:
-3 Eliminate, +3 Rhystic Tutor

Reeplcheep
10-13-2020, 07:02 PM
Hi Reepl,
I love your deck. I have always wanted to build a viable black Helmline deck. Since the printing of Karn and Curse of Misfortune, this deck has finally become viable.

Have you thought about replacing Eliminate with Rhystic Tutor and turn the deck even more into a combo deck?
In this shell it often feels like Demonic Tutor. It can get Karakas against Turbo Depths, protection when you already have Karn/Curse of Misfortunes in hand and one of the latter two when you already have protection.

Other cards to consider:
Thought-Knot Seer as disruption and a beater
Parallax Nexus: I imagine scenarios in which you clear the way by exiling 3/4 cards for Curse of Misfortunes or Karn into Sundial of the Infinite that prevents the exiled cards from returning to their owner's hand. But maybe that only happens in Magic Christmas Land.

Rhystic Tutor could be a very good addition though ;)
My suggestion would be:
-3 Eliminate, +3 Rhystic Tutor

Good suggestions! My initial thoughts are:

TKS without eldrazi temple or eye of ugin needs to be compared to other 4 drops. Compared to helm or Karn it won't win the game by itself; we have no other beaters. It also cuts your black count dangerously low for chrome mox. There are more aggressive lists other people have tried in monoB, but this deck is a very focused "go big" deck and so the body is not as relevant. I am not running Rotting Regisaur for the same reason.

This deck is closer in style to Moon stompy than ANT. I have not tried rhystic tutor but wishclaw talisman was quite cuttable for me. Tutors make the deck even worse against fow; instead of being set back 5 mana now you are being set back 8 mana. Generally the deck only has 3 types of cards: acceleration, disruption & expensive "win the game" cards. Pelakka Predation serves the smoothing role more efficiently as it only costs 1 mana more than equivalent cards instead of 3 mana more.
If you want a tutor based mono black helm deck you should check out DETH; transwidden is an excellent brewer/pilot. Tutors pair much more naturally with LED than with 3ball.

Parallax Nexus could definitely be considered in the sideboard disruption slots over dreamstealer/hymn etc. 2B is a nice mana cost for the deck.

Reeplcheep
10-15-2020, 08:03 AM
5-0 10-0! (https://twitter.com/reeplcheep/status/1316712109003038720)

Update:List posted on the mothership (https://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/archive/mtgo-standings/legacy-league-2020-10-17#reeplcheep_-)

Smea.gol.lum
10-15-2020, 01:40 PM
Good suggestions! My initial thoughts are:

TKS without eldrazi temple or eye of ugin needs to be compared to other 4 drops. Compared to helm or Karn it won't win the game by itself; we have no other beaters. It also cuts your black count dangerously low for chrome mox. There are more aggressive lists other people have tried in monoB, but this deck is a very focused "go big" deck and so the body is not as relevant. I am not running Rotting Regisaur for the same reason.

This deck is closer in style to Moon stompy than ANT. I have not tried rhystic tutor but wishclaw talisman was quite cuttable for me. Tutors make the deck even worse against fow; instead of being set back 5 mana now you are being set back 8 mana. Generally the deck only has 3 types of cards: acceleration, disruption & expensive "win the game" cards. Pelakka Predation serves the smoothing role more efficiently as it only costs 1 mana more than equivalent cards instead of 3 mana more.
If you want a tutor based mono black helm deck you should check out DETH; transwidden is an excellent brewer/pilot. Tutors pair much more naturally with LED than with 3ball.

Parallax Nexus could definitely be considered in the sideboard disruption slots over dreamstealer/hymn etc. 2B is a nice mana cost for the deck.

Parallax Nexus sucked during testing, Rhystic Tutor was nice though. Postboard it can also fetch Thought Distortion against control decks :)
Rhystic Tutor fetching Karakas also helps a lot with the Turbo Depth matchup.

Here's the list that I'm testing right now:

7 Snow-Covered Swamp
1 Castle Locthwain
1 Karakas
2 Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth
4 Ancient Tomb
4 City of Traitors
3 Pelakka Predation // Pelakka Caverns
4 Chrome Mox
4 Dark Ritual
4 Trinisphere
4 Chalice of the Void
1 Sorcerous Spyglass
4 Karn, the Great Creator
1 Curse of Death's Hold
1 Cruel Reality
1 Overwhelming Splendor
4 Leyline of the Void
4 Curse of Misfortunes
3 Helm of Obedience
3 Rhystic Tutor

1 Ensnaring Bridge
1 Mycosynth Lattice
1 Liquimetal Coating
1 Sorcerous Spyglass
1 Helm of Obedience
1 Vault of Whispers
2 Murderous Rider // Swift End
4 Plague Engineer
1 Necromentia
1 Dystopia
1 Thought Distortion

Reeplcheep
10-15-2020, 07:34 PM
Parallax Nexus sucked during testing, Rhystic Tutor was nice though. Postboard it can also fetch Thought Distortion against control decks :)
Rhystic Tutor fetching Karakas also helps a lot with the Turbo Depth matchup.

Here's the list that I'm testing right now:

7 Snow-Covered Swamp
1 Castle Locthwain
1 Karakas
2 Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth
4 Ancient Tomb
4 City of Traitors
3 Pelakka Predation // Pelakka Caverns
4 Chrome Mox
4 Dark Ritual
4 Trinisphere
4 Chalice of the Void
1 Sorcerous Spyglass
4 Karn, the Great Creator
1 Curse of Death's Hold
1 Cruel Reality
1 Overwhelming Splendor
4 Leyline of the Void
4 Curse of Misfortunes
3 Helm of Obedience
3 Rhystic Tutor

1 Ensnaring Bridge
1 Mycosynth Lattice
1 Liquimetal Coating
1 Sorcerous Spyglass
1 Helm of Obedience
1 Vault of Whispers
2 Murderous Rider // Swift End
4 Plague Engineer
1 Necromentia
1 Dystopia
1 Thought Distortion


That build isn't too crazy, and I really like it vs snoko. I tried out Read the Bones in the past, which is not that different a card from rhystic study, and it wasn't horrible. But replacing all your removal with expensive tutors seems really, really bad vs daze decks imo. Feel free to test it out and give me some examples of how it plays out. Especially vs rug.

Spigore
10-19-2020, 06:41 AM
5-0 10-0! (https://twitter.com/reeplcheep/status/1316712109003038720)

Update:List posted on the mothership (https://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/archive/mtgo-standings/legacy-league-2020-10-17#reeplcheep_-)

Congrats on the flawless finish!
I'm curious about how the Ashiok package turn out?

Tested Scroll Rack, in the current list;
Doesn't work. The times I drew Scroll Rack, it's basically a once per game use which let me swap only 2-3 cards in hand. Then you're just drawing back your old cards.
Tested Scroll Rack in a different list with some added shuffle effect. It's playing subpar cards only to make Scroll Rack more viable.
The deck loses it's strength.

(Sideboard) Maze of Ith pops into my mind when talking about an answer to Delver. Uncounterable but subject to Wasteland.
But in all honesty doesn't look very promising. Would require to run multiples and/or Crucible of Worlds.
Spot removal would most probably better.

Reeplcheep
10-19-2020, 08:50 PM
Ashiok was never boarded in since I only played vs fair creature decks. But skyclave shade was horrible.

Glad to see your experience was similar to mine with scroll rack and I am not crazy.

"Wastelanding" yourself in a 5 drop deck against a daze deck seems very suspect.

FTW
10-20-2020, 07:08 AM
How does your deck fare against Elves and D&T? There was a strong presence of both in the latest big online event, less blue. Are you running more than 1 SB Dystopia right now? Plague Engineer?

Eliminate seems way too good to cut. It stabilizes your early game, which is what you need to bridge to the point where the expensive cards win. Rhystic Tutor could also be bad in other blue matchups (Snoko) if they just leave up 2 mana to play counters and instants anyway.

Reeplcheep
10-20-2020, 07:33 AM
In general d&t and elves are quite favoured. Postboard, they just can't deal with 9 plague engineers (4 real ones, 4 curse of misfortunes, 1 deaths hold).

Additionally due to new printings (apparition/shepard) they have cut most of their true enchantment removal (c.judgment/reclamation sage). They usually don't have any outs to a resolved curse anymore.

After dying to 1 too many karns/jaces/delvers, I am considering replacing dystopia with murderous riders. Dystopia is still great but I may want something a bit more flexible.

FTW
10-20-2020, 07:54 AM
Additionally due to new printings (apparition/shepard) they have cut most of their true enchantment removal (c.judgment/reclamation sage). They usually don't have any outs to a resolved curse anymore.

Good point. Apparition is seeing a lot of play, in place of other removal, which makes them weak to 5cmc enchantments. And no one is going to metagame their deck just to beat you (at the expense of more common matchups), so you can enjoy this advantage for a while!

Reeplcheep
10-20-2020, 08:02 AM
My big thought FTW is that eliminate while powerful can be a real drag to draw 2 of in mus where it is dead (depths/doomsday/hard blue control/eldrazi/12post/lands etc...).

I definitely want 4 in the 75 however; I am just wondering if I want a few more flexible removal cards MD. I agree that cutting all md removal will make all aggro mu's horrible, I want at least 4.

Thoughts on going from 4 eliminate MB 2 Murderous Rider SB to 2 eliminate + 2 rider MB 2 more eliminates SB?

It would slightly decrease my g1 against thalia & delver decks, but improve g1 vs everything else. g2 & g3 should be the same (since its the same 75).

FTW
10-20-2020, 09:15 AM
The 2/2 split seems worth testing.

How stable is your manabase now with Pelakka? Can you consistently hit 1BB early, or is that cost still a liability? (If I remember correctly, I think that's why you didn't run MD Rider earlier). Between RUG Delver and the recent rise of D&T, there's a lot of Wasteland out there.

If the color requirement is tough, what about 2 Plague Engineer instead? Easier mana cost. It still answers Thalia and other early creatures, can trade on defense, and isn't dead in other matchups. It's probably worse against Oko, Jace and Karn though.

Reeplcheep
10-20-2020, 08:09 PM
The 2/2 split seems worth testing.

How stable is your manabase now with Pelakka? Can you consistently hit 1BB early, or is that cost still a liability? (If I remember correctly, I think that's why you didn't run MD Rider earlier). Between RUG Delver and the recent rise of D&T, there's a lot of Wasteland out there.

If the color requirement is tough, what about 2 Plague Engineer instead? Easier mana cost. It still answers Thalia and other early creatures, can trade on defense, and isn't dead in other matchups. It's probably worse against Oko, Jace and Karn though.

Predation replaced 2 B utility lands and 2 flex slot spells compared to prior lists. Thus (assuming you are using the land side) we went up from 16 to 18 B sources which is the recommended minimum for 1BB spells. Plague engineer seems fine but I really want 4-5 things MD that deal with oko; I would probably run soul shatter if the BB is a problem.

Furthermore, as said above 2x Eliminate hands can be a drag; splitting means 2x eliminate or 2x rider hands will happen only a third of the time as 4x eliminate. Normally 1 eliminate & 1 rider will be better.

In other news, another discord user 5-0'd, which is an important step on the journey from brew to tier 2. (https://twitter.com/reeplcheep/status/1318707928988225536)

Reeplcheep
10-24-2020, 11:43 AM
Went 4-2 in the challenge, which was good enough for 12th/54.
2-1 UR delver
2-0 JPA93 on snowko
1-2 doomsday
0-2 lands
2-1 12post
2-0 d&T
Tried out 3 chains in the SB, it did work vs JPA. Overall the losses felt due to non-optimal play or the opponents having the nuts.

Obamamw3
10-24-2020, 03:14 PM
Went 4-2 in the challenge, which was good enough for 12th/54.
2-1 UR delver
2-0 JPA93 on snowko
1-2 doomsday
0-2 lands
2-1 12post
2-0 d&T
Tried out 3 chains in the SB, it did work vs JPA. Overall the losses felt due to non-optimal play or the opponents having the nuts.
What is the list for your new side board

Reeplcheep
10-24-2020, 07:03 PM
What is the list for your new side board


1 Sorcerous Spyglass
4 Trinisphere
4 Karn, the Great Creator
2 Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth
1 Curse of Death's Hold
4 Ancient Tomb
1 Cruel Reality
4 Leyline of the Void
1 Overwhelming Splendor
4 Curse of Misfortunes
4 City of Traitors
4 Dark Ritual
4 Chrome Mox
2 Eliminate
4 Pelakka Predation
8 Swamp
2 Helm of Obedience
4 Chalice of the Void
2 Murderous Rider

1 Ensnaring Bridge
1 Mycosynth Lattice
1 Liquimetal Coating
1 Helm of Obedience
2 Eliminate
3 Chains of Mephistopheles
4 Plague Engineer
1 Sorcerous Spyglass
1 Vault of Whispers


Flipped the SB riders with 2 MD eliminates to be more flexible in G1, but that was pretty minor.

Reeplcheep
10-27-2020, 07:52 AM
Opposition Agent
2B -Rare
Human Rogue

----
Flash
You control your opponents while they are searching their libraries

While an opponent is searching their library, they exile each card they find. You may play those cards for as long as they remain exiled, and you may spend mana as though it were mana of any color to cast them

---

Absolutely dirty card spoiled. This is a plague engineer for a lot of non-creature decks, hosing depths, doomsday, maverick and more.

On a fundemental level this is a magus of the moon the deck wanted, with tons of upside. Definite sideboard material, possibly maindeck 4 of.

Comboes with field of ruin, scheming symmetry, ghost quarter and assasin's trophy, although we can really only play the first of those effects.

FTW
10-28-2020, 11:02 AM
Just came to comment what you had already posted. This card looks like it has a lot of potential giving you a Magus-like hatebear to attack nonaggro strategies along a new angle. The 3/2 body is also a good clock in the matchups where you just need a body (but can't waste a slot in the 75 for a body that can't also fill a hate role). Looking forward to seeing how it performs.

Captain Hammer
10-29-2020, 11:00 AM
Yep a Dark Ritual into the 3/2 in response to your opponent cracking a fetch in insane tempo.

Fear of that might make opponents hesitate to crack fetches even when you have only one mana open.

FTW
10-29-2020, 03:44 PM
Is Court of Ambition any good here, even in the SB against control, or is it just worse than what the Curses already do?

Reeplcheep
10-31-2020, 12:13 PM
After lots of mulling, here is my draft: (with hired blade standing in for opposition agent)


3 Trinisphere
4 Karn, the Great Creator
2 Snow-Covered Swamp
1 Curse of Death's Hold
4 Ancient Tomb
1 Cruel Reality
4 Leyline of the Void
1 Overwhelming Splendor
4 Curse of Misfortunes
4 City of Traitors
4 Dark Ritual
4 Chrome Mox
2 Eliminate
4 Pelakka Predation
8 Swamp
2 Helm of Obedience
4 Chalice of the Void
4 Hired Blade

1 Ensnaring Bridge
1 Mycosynth Lattice
1 Liquimetal Coating
1 Helm of Obedience
2 Soul Shatter
2 Chains of Mephistopheles
4 Plague Engineer
1 Sorcerous Spyglass
1 Vault of Whispers
1 Torpor Orb


So reasons behind the card choices:

Agent is essentially a magus of the moon with a million upsides. It addresses 2 things not covered by other pieces (lands & a+b combo) and is insane vs all our bad mus (rug/snowko/maverick/depths). I believe 4 will be correct.
Agent has a very strong dissynergy with urborg so we unfortunately have to cut it.
That means we need to cut all the BB spells: rider for shatter, necromentia for torpor orb, and hymn for chains.
Having more t1 lockpieces (that can also pressure pw) means that eliminate/spyglass seemed to be best cuts. Since we already have way more 3 cmc lockpieces, the 4th 3ball is way less necessary
I considered cutting helms, but every time I went lower than 10 wincons the # of games where I did nothing after locking the OP out goes way up.


Overall this should help the deck more consistently curve out(t1 must fow disruption, t2 must fow disruption, t3 win the game card). Cons of course is that the deck has significantly fewer oko removal spells. However in my experience removal heavy hands have been traps vs most blue hands.


Is Court of Ambition any good here, even in the SB against control, or is it just worse than what the Curses already do?

The deck intentionally tries to ignore the board most of the time, and hopes that wincons are good enough to stabilize or render the board irrelevant through mill. Against control snowko leaves in coatls vs me usually; it seems risky there. Although a good card, it seems to fit a removal heavy monoB deck like Pox or the Gate much better imo. For multi colour black decks Kaya, Ghost Assassin is almost the same card and sees play already in maverick.


Yep a Dark Ritual into the 3/2 in response to your opponent cracking a fetch in insane tempo.

Fear of that might make opponents hesitate to crack fetches even when you have only one mana open.

The stifle effect is a real thing. If people start respecting t1 swamp go that is really good for me.

Reeplcheep
11-10-2020, 06:54 AM
Did mediocrely in last weekends tournaments, went 1-3 in the showcase and 4-3 in anzid mtg's lotus box. However I am getting a 5-0 every week or so. I think I underestimated the amount of blue and lack of combo in large events.

Interestingly over those two events + the two preceding leagues I went 0-7 vs fair blue and 14-0 vs everything else.

I thought that plague engineer would be good enough vs RUG & necromentia good enough vs uro.dec that I could run lots of necromentia's for the doomsday players. It appears that they didn't hit hard enough. Necromentia was game winning however vs the 2 doomsday players.

Any thoughts on something to beat blue durdle? My thoughts are pack rat + volrath stronghold, Dreamstealer, or chains of mephistophles.

List:

1 Sorcerous Spyglass
4 Trinisphere
4 Karn, the Great Creator
2 Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth
1 Curse of Death's Hold
4 Ancient Tomb
1 Cruel Reality
4 Leyline of the Void
1 Overwhelming Splendor
4 Curse of Misfortunes
4 City of Traitors
4 Dark Ritual
4 Chrome Mox
4 Eliminate
4 Pelakka Predation
8 Swamp
2 Helm of Obedience
4 Chalice of the Void

1 Ensnaring Bridge
1 Mycosynth Lattice
1 Liquimetal Coating
1 Helm of Obedience
1 Torpor Orb
3 Necromentia
4 Plague Engineer
1 Sorcerous Spyglass
1 Vault of Whispers
1 Dystopia

Reeplcheep
11-12-2020, 09:37 PM
I felt like I am having lots of trouble beating blue, any advice for sideboarding? I went back through my data for the last week and I am 0-9 vs delver, 0-7 vs UGxx durdle and 27-3 vs everything else. I don't feel like the match-ups were that bad priorily, advice?

My plan vs delver is to cut karn for karn targets & some drits for plague engineers/riders to be faster & have more removal. Against snowko I cut fast mana for win cons & discard. In the discard slot I have tried many things, dreamstealer actually got a 6 for 1 the last time I played it but that was still not enough. They always have 3-5 fows by turn 6 or so.

List is basically the same as above with dreamstealers for necro & riders for dystopia.

I am considering going the nuclear option of cavern of souls & pack rat.

kinda
11-13-2020, 06:27 AM
My plan vs delver is to cut karn for karn targets & some drits for plague engineers/riders to be faster & have more removal. Against snowko I cut fast mana for win cons & discard. In the discard slot I have tried many things, dreamstealer actually got a 6 for 1 the last time I played it but that was still not enough. They always have 3-5 fows by turn 6 or so.

I am considering going the nuclear option of cavern of souls & pack rat.

I wouldn't cut any fast mana vs either deck, the longer the game goes vs. both decks the more likely you r to lose. Especially not vs. Delver where people bring in cards like carpet of flowers.

Discard is only good vs. Snoreko if you then immediately win. They've got too much card selection and pure ca (if you don't open with leyline) to try to go 1 for 1 with them.

Reeplcheep
11-13-2020, 06:56 AM
I wouldn't cut any fast mana vs either deck, the longer the game goes vs. both decks the more likely you r to lose. Especially not vs. Delver where people bring in cards like carpet of flowers.

Discard is only good vs. Snoreko if you then immediately win. They've got too much card selection and pure ca (if you don't open with leyline) to try to go 1 for 1 with them.

By discard I meant hate pieces like chains of mephistophlesor dreamstealer, which are usually 3 for 1s

Captain Hammer
11-15-2020, 08:26 AM
How do you feel about a single Noetic Scales in the sideboard?

Its a superior Karn target to Ensnaring Bridge in most situations (bouncing the Emrakul, Titan, Ilharg, Progenitus, Rabblemaster or Marit Lage or 3/3 elks to your opponents hand is better than just preventing from attacking temporarily).

Even bouncing Opposition Agent to your hand after it steals a land so that they cant kill it and you can flash it in again at an opportune time might be worthwhile.

Reeplcheep
11-15-2020, 08:49 AM
How do you feel about a single Noetic Scales in the sideboard?

Its a superior Karn target to Ensnaring Bridge in most situations (bouncing the Emrakul, Titan, Ilharg, Progenitus, Rabblemaster or Marit Lage or 3/3 elks to your opponents hand is better than just preventing from attacking temporarily).

Even bouncing Opposition Agent to your hand after it steals a land so that they cant kill it and you can flash it in again at an opportune time might be worthwhile.

hmm that is a good suggestion. It is better if we can't get empty handed. However it seems very bad vs arcanist, and elves as well as astrolabe elks (now they get an attack in with oko and gives them insane card advantage)

FTW
11-15-2020, 01:32 PM
I felt like I am having lots of trouble beating blue, any advice for sideboarding? I went back through my data for the last week and I am 0-9 vs delver, 0-7 vs UGxx durdle and 27-3 vs everything else. I don't feel like the match-ups were that bad priorily, advice?

My plan vs delver is to cut karn for karn targets & some drits for plague engineers/riders to be faster & have more removal. Against snowko I cut fast mana for win cons & discard. In the discard slot I have tried many things, dreamstealer actually got a 6 for 1 the last time I played it but that was still not enough. They always have 3-5 fows by turn 6 or so.

List is basically the same as above with dreamstealers for necro & riders for dystopia.

I am considering going the nuclear option of cavern of souls & pack rat.

Overall, T1 Dark Ritual -> Opposition Agent should be your best line vs fair blue.

Why is fair blue so bad for you? Chalice and 3sphere are good against Xerox. Eliminate answers most of their threats, which are 1-3cc creatures and planeswalkers. How are you doing preboard vs postboard? I wonder if your boarding is actually making the matchup worse. Fast mana is so important to land early lock pieces, which then slows down the counters and card selection that powers the deck. I would cut conditional cards at the top end of the curve, not acceleration. You still need to land early lock pieces.

The boarding strategy should be to reduce the number of dead draws. Fair blue is inherently very low variance, so you will lose to variance if your hand is clogged with too many uncastable conditional cards (reducing the number of your cards they need to interact with, which helps them win). Maybe cut a Curse and a MD Helm, leave in Karn.

Necromentia seems bad vs fair blue. Cards like Murderous Rider, Chains of Mephistopheles and Liliana of the Veil seem better. Plague Engineer is also a card that's designed to beat aggro, not fair blue. It's serviceable to replace dead slots vs fair blue if you just need more business, but it shouldn't do anything that powerful. It's one of those slots that you want vs aggro but could also use vs blue, but maybe 4x is overkill if you're leaning on it to help with Delver too.

What does Dragon Stompy do against fair blue? I think they leave in Karns. Is Thought-Knot Seer any good for you? It's another disruptive business creature. Pelakka Predations might be weak, with both sides costing you valuable tempo.

Captain Hammer
11-15-2020, 04:22 PM
hmm that is a good suggestion. It is better if we can't get empty handed. However it seems very bad vs arcanist, and elves as well as astrolabe elks (now they get an attack in with oko and gives them insane card advantage)

Its a damn shame they never printed a...
Hullbreech Artifact 2
Flash
Players can’t draw cards beyond the first card drawn in draw step.

Would solve astrolabe issue and fix our issue vs blue xerox

Reeplcheep
11-15-2020, 05:51 PM
Its a damn shame they never printed a...
Hullbreech Artifact 2
Flash
Players can’t draw cards beyond the first card drawn in draw step.

Would solve astrolabe issue and fix our issue vs blue xerox

Uba Mask is close but 4 mana is too much.


Why is fair blue so bad for you? Chalice and 3sphere are good against Xerox. Eliminate answers most of their threats, which are 1-3cc creatures and planeswalkers. How are you doing preboard vs postboard? I wonder if your boarding is actually making the matchup worse. Fast mana is so important to land early lock pieces, which then slows down the counters and card selection that powers the deck. I would cut conditional cards at the top end of the curve, not acceleration. You still need to land early lock pieces.

The boarding strategy should be to reduce the number of dead draws. Fair blue is inherently very low variance, so you will lose to variance if your hand is clogged with too many uncastable conditional cards (reducing the number of your cards they need to interact with, which helps them win). Maybe cut a Curse and a MD Helm, leave in Karn.

I cut karn because it is so bad vs delver, bolt & daze. Vs snowko I leave them in. Agaisnt blue control those hate cards can often be ignored with library & oko. I could definitely be cutting too much fast mana; I will see if my g1 wr is much better.

Against snowko the plan was not conditional cards but just have too many threats for them to force all of them. Necromentia is better than removal vs uro, but i agree vs builds with more diversified threats it was bad.

FTW
11-15-2020, 09:04 PM
Even if Karn dies in 1 hit, he still tutors Helm or Bridge. Is that good enough? Dying to Bolt after tutoring is a 2-for-1, prevents damage to your face, and is lower-variance than replacing Karns with the Karn targets (you the exact card you want, instead of one at random).

Is Leyline enough to beat Uro?

Necromentia just doesn't seem good enough in enough matchups to warrant 3 copies. Maybe cut down to 1-2? You're overkilling combo but don't have enough to fight blue.

How often is Curse of Death's Hold needed in fair blue matches? Is it enough to just put out Splendour and Cruel Reality? They don't have many bodies. Just looking for ways to cram in more business slots postboard.

Reeplcheep
11-15-2020, 09:23 PM
Even if Karn dies in 1 hit, he still tutors Helm or Bridge. Is that good enough? Dying to Bolt after tutoring is a 2-for-1, prevents damage to your face, and is lower-variance than replacing Karns with the Karn targets (you the exact card you want, instead of one at random).

Is Leyline enough to beat Uro?

Necromentia just doesn't seem good enough in enough matchups to warrant 3 copies. Maybe cut down to 1-2? You're overkilling combo but don't have enough to fight blue.

How often is Curse of Death's Hold needed in fair blue matches? Is it enough to just put out Splendour and Cruel Reality? They don't have many bodies. Just looking for ways to cram in more business slots postboard.

The problem is if they counter the thing you get with a delver on board, they are up 7-9 mana on you.

You could be correct about uro.

You are probably correct about necromentia, testing Dreamstealer

Without curse of deaths hold you lose to oko; cruel reality won't clear the board fast enough against oko unless you have 16+ life

FTW
11-16-2020, 05:55 AM
The problem is if they counter the thing you get with a delver on board, they are up 7-9 mana on you.

What's the alternative? Draw a dud like Sorcerous Spyglass 3/4 of the time you wanted Ensnaring Bridge (because you replaced 4 Karn with 4 Karn targets, losing the ability to pick the one you want at the time that you need it)? Yeah you wasted 7 mana, but you did stall 1 turn and take out a counter. If they FoW Curse, they're up 5 mana on you. It's not possible to beat Delver's mana efficiency. They will always be up mana. Stompy decks try to counteract that by running bigger mana and by running 1-sided lock pieces to slow down Delver's mana.

The other problem is if you cut Karn you are losing 4 maindeck wincons. That leaves you with only 6-7 ways to win the game in the entire deck, and they might counter all of them. Could be a lose-less plan instead of a way to actually lead to a winning state.

Do you not get to stick Chalice or 3sphere often enough? Resolving either puts a real dent in Delver's efficiency plan. If those are regularly getting answered, maybe you need to board in more lock pieces. Stompy does a lot better when it can play behind some piece of prison. Chains of Mephistopheles? Defense Grid? Ensnaring Bridge? Tangle Wire? Sphere of Resistance? Lodestone Golem? Opposition Agent will be big.

Reeplcheep
11-17-2020, 08:24 PM
Opposition Agent is live thursday. Some thoughts on sideboarding:

i was going through the meta and agent is gg vs all green decks
(which are our worst mus: depths/maverick)
and doomsday
hits about half the lands in blue & combo
is meh vs vial
and blank cardboard vs chalice decks like eldrazi.

So if we aren't sideboarding out dark ritual vs blue we have essentially no cuts for any matchup except for chalice decks and vial decks. Should I just run 4 plague engineer 4 soul shatter and basically run back my md vs blue & combo then FTW?

FTW
11-17-2020, 10:40 PM
T1 Dark Ritual into Agent or 3sphere seems like the most broken thing you can do against blue decks. Unless they have Force in hand (<45%), you've just made them stumble for their first several turns at least. That gives you the edge you need to try to resolve other business. Boarding out Dark Ritual gives up too many explosive starts, especially on the play. I think you can't afford that. On the draw maybe you could board out Rituals if you think you'll get 2-for-1d by Daze or Spell Pierce, but definitely not on the play.

Is there anything else at the top end that you could board out for blue?
Maybe some copies of Pelakka Predation? (vs Delver the spell side has very few targets, and the land side is a ETBT swamp that dies to Wasteland)
Helms?

What card stays dead in hand the most often in those matchups? What cards are weakest in the blue matches that you're losing?

I wonder if you're actually supposed to board out Eliminate, of all cards. It's counterintuitive because Eliminate kills all their threats. But vs Snowko, you're the aggressor and they're the control. They're more likely to win the late game while you're the one running explosive mana and game-winning combos, which makes you the aggro role. You won't beat them by 1-for-1ing either. So even though Eliminate has useful targets, I wonder if you should be trying to overwhelm them with additional win conditions instead of controlling theirs.

Vs Combo, maybe you only need to board 0-2 slots and run back the main. It sounds like you already obliterate combo.

Reeplcheep
11-17-2020, 11:51 PM
Great comments. Note that all the below is taking into account my agent draft list above, which has already cut 2 eliminates, 1 spyglass and a 3ball md.


T1 Dark Ritual into Agent or 3sphere seems like the most broken thing you can do against blue decks. Unless they have Force in hand (<45%), you've just made them stumble for their first several turns at least. That gives you the edge you need to try to resolve other business. Boarding out Dark Ritual gives up too many explosive starts, especially on the play. I think you can't afford that. On the draw maybe you could board out Rituals if you think you'll get 2-for-1d by Daze or Spell Pierce, but definitely not on the play.

Is there anything else at the top end that you could board out for blue?
Maybe some copies of Pelakka Predation? (vs Delver the spell side has very few targets, and the land side is a ETBT swamp that dies to Wasteland)
Helms?

What card stays dead in hand the most often in those matchups? What cards are weakest in the blue matches that you're losing?


One possibly unnoticed thing that makes t1 agent even better than magus of the moon is that agent protects itself from bolt. RUG has 19 lands that can bolt magus, but only 3 lands that can bolt agent.

The cards that are dead in hand most often vs delver are getting stuck on wincons after getting your first wincon fow'd, then wastelanded, and then you get stuck on lands. The discard on predation is pretty bad but even a tap land is often a better topdeck than a spell vs the wasteland/daze deck.

So generally vs delver I dislike karns as I said earlier. Its the slowest, most vulnerable and most mana intensive wincon. If you don't like siding in bridge & spyglass I could see just siding in 3 Soul Shatter + a helm as just some extra removal in karn's place. Helm I find is the best wincon since it immediately ends the game and they can't bolt you down.




I wonder if you're actually supposed to board out Eliminate, of all cards. It's counterintuitive because Eliminate kills all their threats. But vs Snowko, you're the aggressor and they're the control. They're more likely to win the late game while you're the one running explosive mana and game-winning combos, which makes you the aggro role. You won't beat them by 1-for-1ing either. So even though Eliminate has useful targets, I wonder if you should be trying to overwhelm them with additional win conditions instead of controlling theirs.

Vs Combo, maybe you only need to board 0-2 slots and run back the main. It sounds like you already obliterate combo.

So currently vs doomsday and depths you have issues because they can ignore trinisphere/chalice, and vs gaak & reanimator everything you have is force of vigor-able, so I like having 1-2 extra non-artifact hate such as necromentia to replace cut eliminates. With agent though all those problems are fixed. I can easily bring in karn targets like helm+spyglass for the 2 eliminates and thus have no dedicated anti-combo cards.

vs snowko the most dead cards are lategame fast mana, an extra 3ball or multiple eliminates (esp. if they run jace). the 3rd & 4th eliminates + the 4th 3ball have already been cut from the deck. In this mu predations are the best; lets you keep more hands as a mana source but is a relevant topdeck later.

I could definitely buy that too much removal is bad against snowko. The new list will already have half the eliminates of the orginal list. I like helm as additional threats, & dreamstealer as a 6 for 1 that forces them to have non-counter interaction.

I mentioned it earlier, but I have a very large amount of cuts(3 3ball 4 chalice 4 agent) vs chalice decks so bringing in everything that has any text. Soul shatter is the preferred removal for stompy since it is the cheapest thing that can hit all of TKS & a Karn & a rabble master.

Revised Agent board re your comments: (karn=karn package)


1 Ensnaring Bridge (karn, chalice)
1 Mycosynth Lattice (karn)
1 Liquimetal Coating (karn)
1 Helm of Obedience (snow, combo, karn)
3 Soul Shatter (delver, chalice)
1 Dreamstealer (snow, chalice)
4 Plague Engineer (vial, green, chalice)
1 Sorcerous Spyglass (vial, karn, chalice)
1 Vault of Whispers (vial, karn, chalice)
1 Torpor Orb (combo, vial)

Captain Hammer
11-18-2020, 01:10 AM
I love the new sideboard.

Have you given any thought to adding a single Noetic Scales to the board.

I think you will be surprised with how often you end up grabbing it with Karn and how often you end up siding it in. Its fantastic against Chalice decks.

Reeplcheep
11-18-2020, 07:20 AM
I love the new sideboard.

Have you given any thought to adding a single Noetic Scales to the board.

I think you will be surprised with how often you end up grabbing it with Karn and how often you end up siding it in. Its fantastic against Chalice decks.

I am worried about how bad it is vs craterhoof, bonecrusher giant, reality smasher, and urza.

FTW
11-18-2020, 08:23 AM
The new board and MD changes with Agent look good. Looking forward to seeing how it affects your results.

Dreamstealer looks like a good addition.

How is Murderous Rider for you? Should one of those Soul Shatters be a Rider (to have more threats), or does Soul Shatter already answer everything important in both blue and Chalice matches? Is the 1BB harder for you to support in the Agent list (I assume 0 Urborgs now)?

Noetic Scales looks awkward against even things like Ice-Fang Coatl, Goblin Rabblemaster, Endless One, Emry, Lurker of the Loch. How often would it be better than Bridge?

Captain Hammer
11-18-2020, 08:29 AM
I am worried about how bad it is vs craterhoof, bonecrusher giant, reality smasher, and urza.

Good point. Youre right, too much risk.

Reeplcheep
11-18-2020, 05:20 PM
The new board and MD changes with Agent look good. Looking forward to seeing how it affects your results.

Dreamstealer looks like a good addition.

How is Murderous Rider for you? Should one of those Soul Shatters be a Rider (to have more threats), or does Soul Shatter already answer everything important in both blue and Chalice matches? Is the 1BB harder for you to support in the Agent list (I assume 0 Urborgs now)?

Noetic Scales looks awkward against even things like Ice-Fang Coatl, Goblin Rabblemaster, Endless One, Emry, Lurker of the Loch. How often would it be better than Bridge?

I have had dreamstealer in and out of the list for a while due to its comparative weakness vs combo, but if I don't have to worry about combo anymore it seems great.

Soul Shatter was primarily due to cutting urborg yes. However it is considerably better at dealing with t2 karn than rider, which is the primary consideration. Vs blue rider is better but I am not 100% that I even want to side it in their over spyglass or plague engineer.

Reeplcheep
11-22-2020, 10:31 AM
Played 1.5 Leagues & a Challenge. Opposition Agent was absolute gas as expected. It stole multiple fetchlands & was a must answer for elves & doomsday. Additionally the 3/2 flash blocker was way more relevant than I expected, killing unflipped delvers, arcanists, & karn the great creators.

Unfortunately it is bugged to not show hidden zones on MTGO, please upvote bug report here: https://feedback.wizards.com/forums/926092-mtgo-issues/suggestions/42020230-opposition-agent-not-showing-hands.

Other than agent, the challenge I went 4-3 for top 32. 2-2 Delver, 2-0 Elves, 0-1 the rock. Apparently the newest update on MTGO broke Cruel Reality; it triggers for each player instead of just the enchanted player. This directly lead to my loss vs BG. Vs delver they would usually concede before it came back to my turn luls so it didnt affect that.

Obamamw3
11-22-2020, 03:44 PM
Played 1.5 Leagues & a Challenge. Opposition Agent was absolute gas as expected. It stole multiple fetchlands & was a must answer for elves & doomsday. Additionally the 3/2 flash blocker was way more relevant than I expected, killing unflipped delvers, arcanists, & karn the great creators.

Unfortunately it is bugged to not show hidden zones on MTGO, please upvote bug report here: https://feedback.wizards.com/forums/926092-mtgo-issues/suggestions/42020230-opposition-agent-not-showing-hands.

Other than agent, the challenge I went 4-3 for top 32. 2-2 Delver, 2-0 Elves, 0-1 the rock. Apparently the newest update on MTGO broke Cruel Reality; it triggers for each player instead of just the enchanted player. This directly lead to my loss vs BG. Vs delver they would usually concede before it came back to my turn luls so it didnt affect that.

What is your current list

Smea.gol.lum
11-23-2020, 05:56 AM
Hey Reeplcheep,

yesterday I stumbled upon Elspeth's Nightmare while I was searching for good discard spells and I think that it could be a very good addition for this deck.

Pros:

It
- hits unflipped delvers, small Goyfs, Arcanists, Thalia, Teeg, Ouphe, Ninjutsu enablers and Dark Confidants
- fires off a Duress the turn after it enters the battlefield which is very nice, because it makes a big difference if you play a discard spell, your opponent hides a counter with brainstorm and your bomb next turn gets countered by their hidden counter or if you play the bomb the same turn as the discard spell
- removes graveyards as a nice bonus
- pairs well with Karn --> Hex Parasite resetting Elspeth's Nightmare (killing additional creatures, firing off additional Duresses)
- doesn't result in a 2 for 1 against you if your opponent has Veil of Summer

Cons:
- costs 1 mana more than Eliminate
- doesn't hit Oko

Hex Parasite can be used as removal for planeswalkers.

My suggestion for your list would be:
MD: -2 Eliminate, -1 Pelakka Predation, +3 Elspeth's Nightmare
SB: -2 Soul Shatter, +1 Elpeth's Nightmare, +1 Hex Parasite

EDIT: I have also thought about boarding strategies against RUG a bit. Maybe a valid boarding strategy on the draw could be: -7 Curses, +4 Plague Engineer, +1 Soul Shatter, +1 Elpeth's Nightmare, +1 Dreamstealer. RUG doesn't have good answers to Curse of Misfortune, but the question is: How often do you land it postboard against RUG? How often are Curses stranded in your hand or get countered?

Reeplcheep
11-23-2020, 06:53 PM
What is your current list

https://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/archive/mtgo-standings/legacy-challenge-2020-11-22#reeplcheep_th_place


Hey Reeplcheep,

yesterday I stumbled upon Elspeth's Nightmare while I was searching for good discard spells and I think that it could be a very good addition for this deck.

Pros:

It
- hits unflipped delvers, small Goyfs, Arcanists, Thalia, Teeg, Ouphe, Ninjutsu enablers and Dark Confidants
- fires off a Duress the turn after it enters the battlefield which is very nice, because it makes a big difference if you play a discard spell, your opponent hides a counter with brainstorm and your bomb next turn gets countered by their hidden counter or if you play the bomb the same turn as the discard spell
- removes graveyards as a nice bonus
- pairs well with Karn --> Hex Parasite resetting Elspeth's Nightmare (killing additional creatures, firing off additional Duresses)
- doesn't result in a 2 for 1 against you if your opponent has Veil of Summer

Cons:
- costs 1 mana more than Eliminate
- doesn't hit Oko

Hex Parasite can be used as removal for planeswalkers.

My suggestion for your list would be:
MD: -2 Eliminate, -1 Pelakka Predation, +3 Elspeth's Nightmare
SB: -2 Soul Shatter, +1 Elpeth's Nightmare, +1 Hex Parasite

EDIT: I have also thought about boarding strategies against RUG a bit. Maybe a valid boarding strategy on the draw could be: -7 Curses, +4 Plague Engineer, +1 Soul Shatter, +1 Elpeth's Nightmare, +1 Dreamstealer. RUG doesn't have good answers to Curse of Misfortune, but the question is: How often do you land it postboard against RUG? How often are Curses stranded in your hand or get countered?

If you check the primer, I tried nightmare and it wasn't horrible. I just value the smoothing of pelakka predation very highly. Hex parasite takes way too much mana to kill an oko imo. A lower opportunity cost if you want to try it out Nesting Grounds. That was an idea I had thats worth testing but I never got around to.

You aren't going to outgrind rug with removal; thats the whole point of this list. I cut karn instead.

Captain Hammer
11-28-2020, 10:18 PM
I do love the idea of trying a single Elspeth’s Nightmare just because all three sagas are excellent against most of the format, especially Delver

A pretty interesting list just 5-0ed...
https://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/archive/mtgo-standings/legacy-league-2020-11-28#nathanlipetz_-

Its identical to your list except for...

-4 Pellatka Predation
-2 Eliminate
+3 Ensnaring Bridge (to stop creatures)
+3 Sorcerous Spyglass (to stop Oko)

This approach might have merit though losing the extra consistency Pellakta Predation offers is a bummer.

The bigger issue with this approach is that Chrome Mox might not have any black cards to exile.

Do you think Predation really needs to be a 4 of?

What if you instead go with...
2 Pellatka Predation
2 Ensnaring Bridge
1 Eliminate
1 Sorcerous Spyglass

Reeplcheep
11-29-2020, 10:30 AM
I do love the idea of trying a single Elspeth’s Nightmare just because all three sagas are excellent against most of the format, especially Delver

A pretty interesting list just 5-0ed...
https://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/archive/mtgo-standings/legacy-league-2020-11-28#nathanlipetz_-

Its identical to your list except for...

-4 Pellatka Predation
-2 Eliminate
+3 Ensnaring Bridge (to stop creatures)
+3 Sorcerous Spyglass (to stop Oko)

This approach might have merit though losing the extra consistency Pellakta Predation offers is a bummer.

The bigger issue with this approach is that Chrome Mox might not have any black cards to exile.

Do you think Predation really needs to be a 4 of?

What if you instead go with...
2 Pellatka Predation
2 Ensnaring Bridge
1 Eliminate
1 Sorcerous Spyglass

I discussed that list with nathan before he ran it; he changed it to be more like mine as he was not threat dense enough before. I think his choice of flex slots is defensable but I prefer mine. In what mus do you want bridge & spyglass over eliminate? I like predation because there are soo many mus where you just need to hit your land drops

I tried it in the past. It is just a bit awkward and expensive compared to eliminate.

Reeplcheep
12-01-2020, 06:27 PM
Thoughts of Field of Ruin as a way to further break opposition agent? Its a muldovi acid moss that draws a land with agent out, and is still a cantripping sinkhole vs delver/dredge/gaak/loam otherwise.

Also mox + chalice + drit + field of ruin is a t1 chalice + stripmine through daze at card parity vs rug.

Reeplcheep
12-03-2020, 06:52 PM
A really fun stream with ThrabenU of my Opposition Agent list (https://youtu.be/aLYiUpHIlRw)

non-inflammable
12-03-2020, 08:28 PM
A really fun stream with ThrabenU of my Opposition Agent list (https://youtu.be/aLYiUpHIlRw)

great list. phil's my fav streamer.

kinda
12-09-2020, 01:40 PM
Thoughts on focusing more lock pieces on shutting down draw engines?


2 Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth
4 Ancient Tomb
2 City of Traitors
12 BU L
4 Chrome Mox

1 Cruel Reality
1 Curse of Death's Hold
1 Overwhelming Splendor
2 Helm of Obedience
4 Karn, the Great Creator
4 Leyline of the Void
4 Curse of Misfortunes
2 Trinisphere
4 Chalice of the Void
4 Eliminate
4 chains of mephistopheles
4 hullbreacher
2 wheel and Deal

Sideboard
1 Vault of Whispers
1 Torpor Orb
4 Plague Engineer
3 Necromentia
1 Mycosynth Lattice
1 Liquimetal Coating
1 Ensnaring Bridge
1 Dystopia
1 Sorcerous Spyglass
1 Helm of Obedience

Reeplcheep
12-09-2020, 05:10 PM
Thoughts on focusing more lock pieces on shutting down draw engines?


2 Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth
4 Ancient Tomb
2 City of Traitors
12 BU L
4 Chrome Mox

1 Cruel Reality
1 Curse of Death's Hold
1 Overwhelming Splendor
2 Helm of Obedience
4 Karn, the Great Creator
4 Leyline of the Void
4 Curse of Misfortunes
2 Trinisphere
4 Chalice of the Void
4 Eliminate
4 chains of mephistopheles
4 hullbreacher
2 wheel and Deal

Sideboard
1 Vault of Whispers
1 Torpor Orb
4 Plague Engineer
3 Necromentia
1 Mycosynth Lattice
1 Liquimetal Coating
1 Ensnaring Bridge
1 Dystopia
1 Sorcerous Spyglass
1 Helm of Obedience


Shutting down draws does seem very strong right now with the current control decks playing 23 draw a card effects. I think I prefer notion thief because of sharing types with agent. MD blue cards makes the mana denial more impactful than only bringing in blue cards vs decks without mana disruption (doomsday/snowko/urza).

I was thinking only 7 blue sources with sideboard seat of the synod + notion thief.

non-inflammable
12-10-2020, 02:09 PM
Thoughts on focusing more lock pieces on shutting down draw engines?


4 chains of mephistopheles
4 hullbreacher
2 wheel and Deal


spicy and saucy; love it...

Hanni
12-10-2020, 08:44 PM
Wheel and Deal is a lot worse than Echo, especially when you're already running Karn, which tutors for LED. I realize that eats up space and changes some of the focus, but it's a much stronger engine.

EDIT: Chains of Mestopheles works better with Wheel and Deal, and LED is a non-bo with Trinisphere, so you can disregard my original post.

Reeplcheep
12-11-2020, 09:37 AM
I think there is a lot of potential for a UB wheel stompy deck like nekrusar in edh.

Notion thief, narset, USA mask and hull breecher plus echo, days undoing, dark deal, and ancil of Bogardan is a ton of redundancy.

However kinda, it makes more sense in a tezzerator/Urza shell than curses. Petal and opal splash significantly better than chrome and rit, lower curve means you can take advantage of fair wheels better, and led echo is just the best wheel currently legal imo. Brainstorm/personal tutor plus reforgethe soul could be better but doesn’t work in chalice shells.

kinda
12-11-2020, 09:58 AM
I think there is a lot of potential for a UB wheel stompy deck like nekrusar in edh.

Notion thief, narset, USA mask and hull breecher plus echo, days undoing, dark deal, and ancil of Bogardan is a ton of redundancy.

However kinda, it makes more sense in a tezzerator/Urza shell than curses. Petal and opal splash significantly better than chrome and rit, lower curve means you can take advantage of fair wheels better, and led echo is just the best wheel currently legal imo. Brainstorm/personal tutor plus reforgethe soul could be better but doesn’t work in chalice shells.

I don't think you want very much redundancy actually. The wheels are pretty bad without hullbreacher or narset in play and ~30% or so of decks still don't run draw engines, making those lists pretty high variance. I rly like just focusing on some anti draw hate (6-10 pieces) with some light synergy for these thrown in (2-4 wheels). Then a SB focused on removing this stuff when you're vs. Dnt or moon stompy or goblins or burn or cloudpost etc...

Hanni
12-11-2020, 10:32 AM
I don't think you want very much redundancy actually. The wheels are pretty bad without hullbreacher or narset in play and ~30% or so of decks still don't run draw engines, making those lists pretty high variance. I rly like just focusing on some anti draw hate (6-10 pieces) with some light synergy for these thrown in (2-4 wheels). Then a SB focused on removing this stuff when you're vs. Dnt or moon stompy or goblins or burn or cloudpost etc...

Echo is fine when you're emptying most of your hand and then drawing a fresh one while the opponent only gets to draw an extra card or two (during the 1st couple of turns), and you should typically have a Narset or Hullbreacher on the board by the point where the opponent has emptied most of their hand, to break the symmetry.

The fact is, Echo adds a ton of card advantage and consistency to a shell (aka Stompy decks) that sorely need it.

Still though, it's an entirely different deck that doesn't really make sense to try and work into Curse Stompy.

Reeplcheep
12-11-2020, 01:12 PM
I don't think you want very much redundancy actually. The wheels are pretty bad without hullbreacher or narset in play and ~30% or so of decks still don't run draw engines, making those lists pretty high variance. I rly like just focusing on some anti draw hate (6-10 pieces) with some light synergy for these thrown in (2-4 wheels). Then a SB focused on removing this stuff when you're vs. Dnt or moon stompy or goblins or burn or cloudpost etc...

There is a lot of different points you are making.

1. You want more things that hate on draws. I agree, but other than ugxxx chaliceand 3ball already hate out all draw effects, while protecting curses from interaction and more relevant in other mus.

2. You don’t want too much hate on the same thing. Yah that’s why I don’t want these cards in addition to 3ball md. Additionally it makes hate with different angles of attack (agent instead of Hullbreacher) better.

3. You would like to have a mini combo with your hate pieces. My point about was redundancy was assuming you wanted to make a dedicated chalice combo deck.if you just want a small synergy to raise the floor of the effect in mus where it is not relevant, wheel and deal plus Hullbreacher seems worse than field of ruin plus agent. Better mana, more relevant hatepiece by itself (vs 12post/depths/delver), and an untapped land is a much better floor than a 3 mana can trip.

kinda
12-11-2020, 07:31 PM
There is a lot of different points you are making.

1. You want more things that hate on draws. I agree, but other than ugxxx chaliceand 3ball already hate out all draw effects, while protecting curses from interaction and more relevant in other mus.

2. You don’t want too much hate on the same thing. Yah that’s why I don’t want these cards in addition to 3ball md. Additionally it makes hate with different angles of attack (agent instead of Hullbreacher) better.

3. You would like to have a mini combo with your hate pieces. My point about was redundancy was assuming you wanted to make a dedicated chalice combo deck.if you just want a small synergy to raise the floor of the effect in mus where it is not relevant, wheel and deal plus Hullbreacher seems worse than field of ruin plus agent. Better mana, more relevant hatepiece by itself (vs 12post/depths/delver), and an untapped land is a much better floor than a 3 mana can trip.

Good points! I think the biggest difference in our thinking is how good 3sphere is. I'm not thrilled with it right now due to oko, I went down to 2 but considered even going down to 0. But I definitely could be wrong!

Hanni
12-11-2020, 08:53 PM
Good points! I think the biggest difference in our thinking is how good 3sphere is. I'm not thrilled with it right now due to oko, I went down to 2 but considered even going down to 0. But I definitely could be wrong!

Trinisphere is still a house. It keeps them from hitting the 3 mana for Oko by shutting down their cantrips, with the bonus of making Force of Will/Negation, Daze, etc way worse. By the time they can Oko it, the damage is done.

Reeplcheep
12-11-2020, 09:14 PM
Trinisphere is still a house. It keeps them from hitting the 3 mana for Oko by shutting down their cantrips, with the bonus of making Force of Will/Negation, Daze, etc way worse too. By the time they can Oko it, the damage is done.

Trinisphere can be bad in certain mus, but its the reason our good matchups are good. Its the best thing to be doing against gaak, elves, storm, doomsday (other than agent), and still great vs most blue hands as a defense grid with upside. I feel like a large portion of our free wins are 3ball into karn.

Captain Hammer
12-12-2020, 09:08 AM
If you want a synergic combo hate piece, I would go with a single Maralen replacing a single Helm (or replacing an eliminate). Its an instant win combo if they dont have an answer already in hand,similar to Helm. It combos with any of the 4 Agents in the deck similar to how Helm combos with any of the 4 Leylines in the deck. It can even tutor up Opposition agent if you dont already have one in hand and it doest require a color splash/more nonbasics like Wheel and Deal does.

The occasional chrome mox + any land + ritual + ritual + agent + maralen opening play has got to be satisfying.

Reeplcheep
12-12-2020, 01:37 PM
Maralen is a pretty great combo with vial; but without it it is incredibly fragile by itself. Losing to oko in hand, on the battlefield or in their deck is rough.

Hanni
12-12-2020, 01:58 PM
To be fair, Opposition Agent combos extremely well with Trinisphere for attacking the opponent on that angle. Even better if you can manage to run Wasteland to further pinch manabases. There is certainly an argument for running Field of Ruin instead, but that might be too slow; I don't know.

Karn also seems pretty sweet at attacking Astrolabe and artifact mana, while tutoring for strong artifacts to either kill or lockout the opponent.

So in short, I don't see what you gain by splashing blue. At the point where you start splashing blue, you're better off building an Echo deck, I think.

Reeplcheep
12-13-2020, 09:30 PM
I registered field of the dead instead of field of ruin, and played horribly, but got 4-3 anyways :D.

Chains performed significantly better than I remember the last time I tried them, but sylvan library and uro are considerably more played now than last spring I think.

_____

In other news someone 5-0'd with a hybrid of curses and eldrazi post:
(https://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/archive/mtgo-standings/legacy-league-2020-12-12#antarctica_-)

kinda
12-14-2020, 05:21 AM
I registered field of the dead instead of field of ruin, and played horribly, but got 4-3 anyways :D.

Chains performed significantly better than I remember the last time I tried them, but sylvan library and uro are considerably more played now than last spring I think.

_____

In other news someone 5-0'd with a hybrid of curses and eldrazi post:
(https://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/archive/mtgo-standings/legacy-league-2020-12-12#antarctica_-)

Those two r definitely up. Wut did your list look like?

Reeplcheep
12-14-2020, 06:58 PM
Those two r definitely up. Wut did your list look like?

https://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/archive/mtgo-standings/legacy-challenge-2020-12-14#reeplcheep_th_place

Captain Hammer
12-16-2020, 06:38 AM
https://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/archive/mtgo-standings/legacy-challenge-2020-12-14#reeplcheep_th_place

Awesome list and very impressive finish considering misregistering with Field of the Dead instead of Field of Ruin.

Reeplcheep
12-16-2020, 08:25 PM
To be fair, Opposition Agent combos extremely well with Trinisphere for attacking the opponent on that angle. Even better if you can manage to run Wasteland to further pinch manabases. There is certainly an argument for running Field of Ruin instead, but that might be too slow; I don't know.

Even though field of ruin in a vacuum is considerably worse than wasteland, I had a few arguments for it:

Against the vast majority of opponents, you are considerably more mana hungry than your opponent so setting both people back lands is detrimental.
Related to the above, field of ruin can be an excellent curve filler between say a t1 chalice and a t3 curse/karn, whereas wasteland obviously doesn't curve into 4 drops nicely.
Field of Ruin is a black source in a pinch, so it is less painful in a mana base which already has 8 colourless lands.
Forced shuffle is a very nice combo with opposition agent, turning it into essentially a 3 mana uncounterable mwonvuli acid-moss stapled to a lay of the land.


_____

In other news, one of the more prolific rector fit pilots made a sweet video/gif for me. (https://twitter.com/mtgoverhaul/status/1339183470925524993) I added the gif version to the primer.

Reeplcheep
12-21-2020, 10:15 AM
I went 0-4-bye in the Saturday challenge and 3-4 in the Sunday challenge with a md 4x Agent 2x field list. The meta was incredibly blue, with 7/11 mus being wasteland daze decks.

Even after many matches, I am having a lots of difficulty evaluating if agent is good or not.

Pros:

Against almost any deck a few games it just straight up wins by stealing their first fetches.

With field you can get some pretty great mana advantage/denial.

It is an insanely good hate Piece vs all the non brainstorm bad mus. Titanpost/depths/maverick.

A real clock has been helpful in some matchups or if you never draw a payoff.

It’s very good in matchups where removal is mediocre or bad (doomsday/elves/storm/gaakk)

Having a threat that can’t be fon’d is nice.





Cons:


With no other mana denial the stealing a land was often irrelevant.

It’s a flash 3/2 vs Urza echo, the most popular chalice deck.

Having creatures G1 turns on the opponents bolts and plows.

It cuts into your oko and delver answers.

It requires you to cut urborg, making your delver mu and 1BB cards worse.
Holding it up can make sequencing awkward.
Field of ruin cuts into your t1 black sources

Reeplcheep
12-22-2020, 07:44 PM
After further mulling, I think agent is not quite good enough to maindeck. Having eliminate for the first threat is just so important and I undervalued the utility of urborg and being creatureless g1.

Agent is still so good vs green decks and combo that it deserves multiple sideboard slots.

I think I need a bit more gas from my lands and chains to beat fair blue, which is everywhere.

I think I will stick with the below list for a while, and concentrate my brewing juices on making court poxless pox ie monarch MBC work.


4 ancient tomb
4 City of Traitors l
2 Ifnir Deadlands
2 Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth
6 Swamps
4 Pelakka Predation // Pelakka Caverns

4 Dark Ritual
4 Chalice of the Void
1 Sorcerous Spyglass
4 Trinisphere
4 Eliminate
4 Leyline of the Void

2 Helm of Obedience
4 Karn, the Great Creator
4 Curse of Misfortunes
1 Curse of Death’s Hold
1 Cruel Reality
1 Overwhelming Splendor

3 Plague Engineer
3 Opposition Agent
3 Chains of Mephistopheles
1 Vault of Whispers
1 Sorcerous Spyglass
1 Helm of Obedience
1 Mycrosynth Lattice
1 Ensnaring Bridge
1 Liquimettal Coating

Obamamw3
12-31-2020, 12:39 PM
After further mulling, I think agent is not quite good enough to maindeck. Having eliminate for the first threat is just so important and I undervalued the utility of urborg and being creatureless g1.

Agent is still so good vs green decks and combo that it deserves multiple sideboard slots.

I think I need a bit more gas from my lands and chains to beat fair blue, which is everywhere.

I think I will stick with the below list for a while, and concentrate my brewing juices on making court poxless pox ie monarch MBC work.


4 ancient tomb
4 City of Traitors l
2 Ifnir Deadlands
2 Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth
6 Swamps
4 Pelakka Predation // Pelakka Caverns

4 Dark Ritual
4 Chalice of the Void
1 Sorcerous Spyglass
4 Trinisphere
4 Eliminate
4 Leyline of the Void

2 Helm of Obedience
4 Karn, the Great Creator
4 Curse of Misfortunes
1 Curse of Death’s Hold
1 Cruel Reality
1 Overwhelming Splendor

3 Plague Engineer
3 Opposition Agent
3 Chains of Mephistopheles
1 Vault of Whispers
1 Sorcerous Spyglass
1 Helm of Obedience
1 Mycrosynth Lattice
1 Ensnaring Bridge
1 Liquimettal Coating

Is there a reason you dropped 1 chains from the side board in your most recent league.

Reeplcheep
12-31-2020, 01:02 PM
Is there a reason you dropped 1 chains from the side board in your most recent league.

3rd chains vs 4th Plague engineer is personal preference. It depends on how popular you think UGxxx durdle is vs elves/gaak to punish the durdle. Imo the pe maps out cleaner (you don’t really have enough cuts vs durdle) but durdle mus are more common. 1 Liliana the last hope or dystopia can be a middle ground (sort of ok vs both decks)

Reeplcheep
01-04-2021, 09:44 AM
Played in the Sunday challenge. Went 3-0 non oko fair blue, 0-3 oko blue, 1-0 everything else. All the losses were close 1-2s so I think the deck only needs small changes to be great.

Meta is incredibly durdle heavy; even delver is mostly gone. All the blue hate in peoples’ sideboards means they r less equipped for us. I just need a plan to beat the fow, fow oko playstyle.

I really need something that can cheaply deal with their counter magic; I have tried Everything 3 cmc and they were lacklustre. Options I have been considering:

Thoughtseize:
fastest way to deal with their answers but has the chalice and ancient tomb problem. One of the best black cards for a reason.

Defense grid: great with tombs and dark ritual. In the past I have had issues where it doesn’t synergise well with trinisphere. However I was usually slowing down after board for oko removal. If instead I cut all the removal vs durdle grid could be quite good in an all in t1 protection t2 win build.

Reeplcheep
01-04-2021, 10:08 AM
Draft list if I take the “go fasta” approach recommended earlier by kinda and FTW.
Because of all the durdle I thought a little shakier mana was worth more oko answers: split the extra utility lands into a basic and a spyglass



4 ancient tomb
4 City of Traitors
2 Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth
7 Swamp
4 Pelakka Predation // Pelakka Caverns

4 Dark Ritual
4 Chalice of the Void
2 Sorcerous Spyglass
4 Trinisphere
4 Eliminate
4 Leyline of the Void

2 Helm of Obedience
4 Karn, the Great Creator
4 Curse of Misfortunes
1 Curse of Death’s Hold
1 Cruel Reality
1 Overwhelming Splendor

4 Plague Engineer
3 Opposition Agent
2 Defense Grid
1 Vault of Whispers
1 Sorcerous Spyglass
1 Helm of Obedience
1 Mycrosynth Lattice
1 Ensnaring Bridge
1 Liquimettal Coating

Reeplcheep
01-04-2021, 10:13 AM
Boarding would be:

Vs Ugxx
Plus helm, grids, agents
Minus eliminates, urborgs (b/c agent)

Vs RUG
Plus helm, spyglass, grids
Minus Karns.

This is a large departure from my previous plans of cutting drit for oko removal/chains/dreamstealer and Karn for oko removal/plague engineer respectively.

kinda
01-04-2021, 10:36 AM
I'd consider just not running the stompy package right now and leaning into Cavern of Souls. Something like this.

Edit: might want some lilly walkers too.


4 ancient tomb
1 City of Traitors
2 Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth
4 Swamp
4 Scrubland
4 Marsh Flats
3 Cavern of Souls
1 Phyrexian Tower

4 Dark Ritual
4 Cabal Therapy
3 Chains of Mephistopheles
2 Pithing Needle
4 Eliminate
3 Bloodchief's Thirst
2 Opposition Agent
4 Academy Rector
4 Plague Engineer
4 Curse of Misfortunes
1 Curse of Death’s Hold
1 Cruel Reality
1 Overwhelming Splendor

Reeplcheep
01-04-2021, 10:42 AM
I'd consider just not running the stompy package right now and leaning into Cavern of Souls. Something like this.


4 ancient tomb
1 City of Traitors
2 Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth
4 Swamp
4 Scrubland
4 Marsh Flats
3 Cavern of Souls
1 Phyrexian Tower

4 Dark Ritual
4 Cabal Therapy
3 Chains of Mephistopheles
2 Pithing Needle
4 Eliminate
3 Bloodchief's Thirst
2 Opposition Agent
4 Academy Rector
4 Plague Engineer
4 Curse of Misfortunes
1 Curse of Death’s Hold
1 Cruel Reality
1 Overwhelming Splendor


I think that is a decent idea, but if you are cutting chalice and 3ball for cabal therapy and removal, the sol lands and dark ritual lose some of their lustre. I think that build just becomes rector/curse fit, which may indeed be a better choice in this blue meta.

Cabal therapy and rector are going to be pretty bad without each other, whereas leyline and Karn have higher floors.

Also You are going to depend more on creature beats in this build and you have no leyline; uro could be an issue.

kinda
01-04-2021, 11:01 AM
I think that is a decent idea, but if you are cutting chalice and 3ball for cabal therapy and removal, the sol lands and dark ritual lose some of their lustre. I think that build just becomes rector/curse fit, which may indeed be a better choice in this blue meta.

Cabal therapy and rector are going to be pretty bad without each other, whereas leyline and Karn have higher floors.

Also You are going to depend more on creature beats in this build and you have no leyline; uro could be an issue.

One could argue cutting chalice improves dark ritual in the deck :tongue:. I still really like the fast mana, I'm viewing it as a deadguy ale curses hybrid.

Therapy I think will still be strong on its own but Rector if you don't find therapy or phyrexian tower isn't the best..
but it'll still stop uro from attacking all day. In a pinch you could blow it up with your own Bloodchief's Thirst too.

Yeah the plan vs uro G1 is to resolve Rector or Misfortunes before turn 6 which should be very doable I think. Then the SB will need some uro answers.

Reeplcheep
01-04-2021, 11:53 AM
Hmm I think that deck is decent but without chalice, Karn, leyline and 3ball the matchups would be so different. It would probably be better to get input from dga/pox players.

kinda
01-04-2021, 12:28 PM
Hmm I think that deck is decent but without chalice, Karn, leyline and 3ball the matchups would be so different. It would probably be better to get input from dga/pox players.

Oh I'm not fussed on exploring the list more, just thinking how curses could help its snoreko mu :cool:. This is wut I could come up with.

Reeplcheep
01-04-2021, 12:52 PM
Oh I'm not fussed on exploring the list more, just thinking how curses could help its snoreko mu :cool:. This is wut I could come up with.

Are you still of the opinion that drit plus grid is a better plan than oko removal plus discard. (In the context of my list)

kinda
01-04-2021, 03:07 PM
Are you still of the opinion that drit plus grid is a better plan than oko removal plus discard. (In the context of my list)

The last list you posted has 10 win cons: 4 ktgc 4 Misfortunes 2 Helm. 6 of these though need leyline in play, which when factoring in mulliganing is 50% ish. This is 10/60th of your deck so over the first 5 turns you will see 1.4 on average (4+(6*.5)/60) * (7 in opener plus 5 draws). 4c snow it looks like is running 4 fow plus 2 fon which stop these 10. But on top top of their natural draws will see something like 8-15 more cards over their first 5 turns to find these due to labe/library/ponder/bstorm/snow snek etc. So estimating here (6/60) * (7+5+~11) which is 2.3 or so. So we need to make up the difference here since they're winning currently 2.3 >= 1.4. Your old list has chalice to lower their '8-15' extra cards number and 3sphere/pelakka to try and lower their fon/fow count. However, when you begin using cmc 3 or less permanents (especially artifacts) to fight their counters you turn on more of their cards (decay/oko). Which unless you resolve chalice that they can't remove, they will again see more answers than you see 3 sphere/CotV. 4 pelakka gives you (4/60) * (12/60) over 5 turns or an extra .8 (assuming you never need the mana) but you're still losing here 2.3 >= 2.2. So, no I do not like the permanent based protection plan and yes I like using fast mana to try and improve your clock.

Reeplcheep
01-04-2021, 03:10 PM
The last list you posted has 10 win cons: 4 ktgc 4 Misfortunes 2 Helm. 6 of these though need leyline in play, which when factoring in mulliganing is 50% ish. This is 10/60th of your deck so over the first 5 turns you will see 1.4 on average (4+(6*.5)/60) * (7 in opener plus 5 draws). 4c snow it looks like is running 4 fow plus 2 fon which stop these 10. But on top top of their natural draws will see something like 8-15 more cards over their first 5 turns to find these due to labe/library/ponder/bstorm/snow snek etc. So estimating here (6/60) * (7+5+~11) which is 2.3 or so. So we need to make up the difference here since they're winning currently 2.3 >= 1.4. Your old list has chalice to lower their '8-15' extra cards number and 3sphere/pelakka to try and lower their fon/fow count. However, when you begin using cmc 3 or less permanents (especially artifacts) to fight their counters you turn on more of their cards (decay/oko). Which unless you resolve chalice that they can't remove, they will again see more answers than you see 3 sphere/CotV. 4 pelakka gives you (4/60) * (12/60) over 5 turns or an extra .8 (assuming you never need the mana) but you're still losing here 2.3 >= 2.2. So, no I do not like the permanent based protection plan and yes I like using fast mana to try and improve your clock.

So you would rather run discard and dark ritual? Do you think the efficiency of Thoughtseize outweighs the chalice and ancient tomb problems?

kinda
01-04-2021, 03:43 PM
So you would rather run discard and dark ritual? Do you think the efficiency of Thoughtseize outweighs the chalice and ancient tomb problems?

Post SB they bring in veil, Opposition Agent, and meddling mage so you need to keep in your eliminates too g2/3. I prefer discard and fast mana md but overall I see the deck as a losing proposition vs. the 6+ force decks...as explained above. Which is why I pitched the Bw Cavern list before. Your deck math is pretty simple though due to 0 draw, filtering, or tutors. I would just keep fiddling with it till you get numbers you're OK with, but I don't ever see the 6+ force matchup being good unless you radically change things.

Reeplcheep
01-04-2021, 04:24 PM
Post SB they bring in veil, Opposition Agent, and meddling mage so you need to keep in your eliminates too g2/3. I prefer discard and fast mana md but overall I see the deck as a losing proposition vs. the 6+ force decks...as explained above. Which is why I pitched the Bw Cavern list before. Your deck math is pretty simple though due to 0 draw, filtering, or tutors. I would just keep fiddling with it till you get numbers you're OK with, but I don't ever see the 6+ force matchup being good unless you radically change things.

The meta is so inbred right now I don’t think those cards are being played. Look at the Sat challenge. The lists have 6 blasts/carpets, 0 veil, 0 mages, lots of Hullbreachers, no agents. The only thing they will bring imo is a few wilts and extra libraries/surgicals. That does lend credence to your discard over grid plan.

kinda
01-04-2021, 04:36 PM
The meta is so inbred right now I don’t think those cards are being played. Look at the Sat challenge. The lists have 6 blasts/carpets, 0 veil, 0 mages, lots of Hullbreachers, no agents. The only thing they will bring imo is a few wilts and extra libraries/surgicals. That does lend credence to your discard over grid plan.

Oh ok, I used this list https://www.mtgtop8.com/event?e=28701&d=426612&f=LE
.

Reeplcheep
01-06-2021, 03:23 PM
Ok I goldfished several hands with a 4CB Thoughtseize sideboard plan. Thoughtseize was quite good in low resources hands to get rid of forces without requiring additional resources, and vs ugxxx we care about their forces much more than their threats. However it’s not that much better than chalice so I think 4 is too many (since if you want ts and chalice you don’t have enough cuts). Chalice also protects agent better than discard. Using your theory I want a few more Thoughtseize as fow answers and a few agents as “wincons”.

Compared to Defense grid or chains they don’t turn on decays as mentioned and more quickly trade for forces, at the cost of being a poor top deck. Another thing I hadn’t considered was that a lot of my fastest hands leave me with 5 not 4 mana. This makes Thoughtseize effectively free. Boarding would be urborgs and eliminates for helm, 2 Thoughtseize, 3 agent

Redoing line up theory vs Sunday’s 3rd place Snowko list:

Cards that matter vs win cons: 9
Forces 6
Trophy 1
Veil (1 Sb)
Ouphe (1 Sb)

Cantrips 22

Anti hate: 5
3 oko
2 Decay

My wincons: 14
Curses 4
Karn 4
Helm 2 (+1)
Agent (+3 sb)

Protection 6
4 Pelakka
TS (+2)

Cantrip hate 8
Chalice 4
3 ball 4

Postboard those numbers seem quite favourable.

Vs rug I would probably cut Karn and a Pelakka for vault, helm, spyglass, and 2 Thoughtseize. Maybe OTD cut 3balls for PE

Reeplcheep
01-08-2021, 11:05 AM
Went 4-1 in a league with 3 SB Thoughtseize.

The tempo was really great in some cases (had a t1 ts fow into t2 Karn win vs Snowko). It was a bad top deck late game or if I had chalice, my life total got sketchy sometimes, and ofc it was bad if they had library or uro.

Usually vs snow the only cards that matter are forces, and sometimes uro/oko. The ability to trade directly with forces without turning on their decays like grid or spyglass is great and a draw to Thoughtseize. A user in pox discord tried agonizing remorse and said it was decent. I am thinking about trying Memory Leak again. Paying 1 more mana for a life and cycling seems good, and would let me become more land light. It’s a decent top deck and smoothing, and I didn’t realize it but it actually answers uro relatively well. Obviously it’s horribly tempo negative vs rug which is why I stopped testing initially. But Pelakka has performed so well vs blue durdle, where they only that matters is how many forces they draw. It doesn’t conflict with chalice or 3 ball, and rugs metagame share has decreased.

Compared to spyglass it’s much worse vs oko and Marit Lage and somewhat worse vs wasteland. But it is way better vs uro, elves, post board unfair decks, & forces, is better at manafixing vs non-wasteland, and exiles to Chrome mox. Compared to pelakka it is a better spell and top deck for a worse land and in your opening hand.

Basically the meta rn is snow variants and rug, with a bit of random resilient combo to metagame vs them.

My matchups vs the unfair decks (gaak/elves/doomsday/12post) are really good, so all I need to do is make one of the two blue categories positive. I think wasteland and daze will always be good against me unless I splash for carpet. Perhaps I should forfeit that MU for md leaks to beat durdle?

Reeplcheep
01-08-2021, 11:52 AM
Draft list of “best g1 vs snow”

4 ancient tomb
4 City of Traitors
2 Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth
7 Swamp
4 Pelakka Predation // Pelakka Caverns
2 Memory Leak

4 Dark Ritual
4 Chalice of the Void
4 Trinisphere
4 Eliminate
4 Leyline of the Void

2 Helm of Obedience
4 Karn, the Great Creator
4 Curse of Misfortunes
1 Curse of Death’s Hold
1 Cruel Reality
1 Overwhelming Splendor

4 Plague Engineer
3 Opposition Agent
2 Simian Spirit Guide
1 Vault of Whispers
1 Sorcerous Spyglass
1 Helm of Obedience
1 Mycrosynth Lattice
1 Ensnaring Bridge
1 Liquimettal Coating


This deck looks quite clean, with 6 answers between leak and pelakka/leyline/eliminate for each of the problem cards (fow/uro/oko). Discard plus fast clock plus hate pieces should make all non-depths unfair mus even better. Rug and other wasteland decks probably gets worse but that doesn’t matter as much rn.

With extra discard I need less SB help vs snow. This leaves room for 2 screw delver cards. I was thinking either ssg, fatal push, bloodchiefs thirst or snuff out as a screw daze card.

Ssg is the best answer to daze but will probably make you eliminates overworked to deal with their threats. Snuff is great vs or with chalice but iffy vs bolt. Push is decent vs delver but I can’t enable revolt easily. Thirst gives additional oko and fast Karn answers but sorcery speed is annoying.

Reeplcheep
01-08-2021, 12:21 PM
I went pretty far down the theorycrafting hole here so I’d be interested in people’s opinions on adding more draft chaff to the deck.

kinda
01-09-2021, 02:38 PM
I went pretty far down the theorycrafting hole here so I’d be interested in people’s opinions on adding more draft chaff to the deck.

Remorse is cute, I prefer it to memory.

Reeplcheep
01-10-2021, 07:24 PM
I did some testing. The idea of needing something else cheap that control cares about is good. All the games go really long so being more threat dense is important and drawing your targets is less of an issue since you can hard cast them. Tried putting curse of fools wisdom back in and 2 treacherous blessing.

In the past it was a bit iffy but in so many matchups right now your lifetotal is irrelevant (looking at the popularity of library). It won the game vs UR delver and Depths by powering into a fast helm combo.

Edit: I guess I didn’t explain what was iffy with remorse. It was great at clearing the way of forces or combo pieces, but I was losing many games to just not drawing a win on. That’s why I thought more card draw might be good.

Reeplcheep
01-11-2021, 02:22 PM
Updated the primer with new card choices and thoughts
________

Went 3-2 with a treacherous blessing list. It accelerated me into fast helm kills vs ur delver and depths and usually only cost around 4 life. Being immediate card advantage through removal is nice compared to phyrexian arena. Compared to read the bones after testing I think drawing 1 card is worth more than the addition life loss and seeing 1 deeper.

Treacherous blessing list going forward would be something like this:


4 ancient tomb
4 City of Traitors
2 Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth
7 Swamp
4 Pelakka Predation // Pelakka Caverns

4 Dark Ritual
4 Chalice of the Void
4 Trinisphere
3 Eliminate
4 Leyline of the Void
2 Treacherous Blessing

2 Helm of Obedience
4 Karn, the Great Creator
4 Curse of Misfortunes
1 Curse of Death’s Hold
1 Cruel Reality
1 Curse of Fools’ Wisdom
1 Overwhelming Splendor

3 Plague Engineer
3 Opposition Agent
2 Bloodchief’s Thirst
1 Torpor Orb
1 Vault of Whispers
1 Sorcerous Spyglass
1 Helm of Obedience
1 Mycrosynth Lattice
1 Ensnaring Bridge
1 Liquimettal Coating


From a meta point of view this list should destroy all the current unfair decks (eves/oops/doomsday) and fair non blue decks like lands/12 post. Fools wisdom plus blessing over spyglass/eliminate should hopefully make snow positive. The deck is weaker vs delver but hopefully Bloodchief’s thirst compensates or I can dodge.

Reeplcheep
01-12-2021, 01:12 PM
Treacherous blessing and curse of fools wisdom are definitely winning matches for me, but I am mulliganing a lot. I think only 13 untapped black sources is too few and I should trim one blessing for utility lands.

Reeplcheep
01-13-2021, 02:48 PM
Adding the extra business spells (1 fools wisdom 2 blessing) to the deck has greatly improved my control matchups, and I think I will keep it that way for the showcase. In leagues at least everything seems to be combo or snow rn which is a good spot for the deck.

Added some of the new FOTM decks (mentor/pokepile/oops) to the matchup sections. I’ll do a more comprehensive update (mus and sideboard changes a lot with opposition agent) at a later date.

Reeplcheep
01-14-2021, 03:46 PM
Updated primer with an opposition agent list and the matchups it most affects.

Obamamw3
01-15-2021, 07:33 PM
Updated primer with an opposition agent list and the matchups it most affects.

What's your current list

Reeplcheep
01-15-2021, 07:38 PM
What's your current list

It was added to the third post of the primer.

Reeplcheep
01-18-2021, 08:46 AM
Mini TR:

Got 12th/72 in the Saturday challenge (http://https://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/archive/mtgo-standings/legacy-challenge-2021-01-17#reeplcheep_th_place)

I made small changes to the list. I expected lots of combo and snow, so I trimmed some oko removal for more gas. The most important thing vs control is drawing that second must-answer threat, so an extra curse target curse of fools wisdom and “Sylvan library” Treacherous Blessing was great. This does make your tempo Matchups worse but rug is already pretty bad. Plan was to dodge rug.

Opposition Agent continues to be game winning vs combo, control and base-green, but I do think it is better served in the sideboard. Mostly to avoid turning on opponents’ g1 plows. The smoothing of pelakka predation continues to overperform. The recent popularity of snow Hullbreacher (more arcanist, less decay) made leyline and chalice a lot better in control matchups than normal. Elspeth’s nightmare was great in the extra removal slot. With rug running y. Peezy over green creatures and arcanist/uro everywhere, it can often be a 2 for 1.

Matchups:

0-2 some snow variant
2-1 rector fit. 1: they played neoform plus deep glow skate for the instant ultimate off of arena rector. maximum jank, I love it. 2: Opposition agent is insane vs them.
2-0 some snow variant. Hard cast foolswisdom was actually pretty strong here if I remember correctly.
2-0 no-R loam. They just don’t have answers to a fast curse, I think they were running apparitions.
2-1 Rug Delver. Failed the dodge rug plan. Elspeth leads to a t2 helm kill through brainstorm & force of negation.
0-2 D&T. Kept hands that were a bit too land light and never drew out of them. Probably should have mulligans more aggressively instead of getting tempted by the 2x PE 2 lander. He went on to get 4th.
2-1 snow day. I think it’s silly that 4 slots makes a completely new deck in blue control land. Don’t remember games much, but he asked for a concession into top8 after losing g3. Is that BM? I thought it’s pretty haughty to not ask before g1. He ended up making top8 and then lost in finals anyways after I refused.

Overall very satisfied with the performance. hopefully this puts more spotlight on the deck as one of the best chalice or monoB decks in the format.

Reeplcheep
01-18-2021, 12:55 PM
As you can see from my matchups, generally your life total is irrelevant and the games are all about engines right now. Sylvan Library is highly played for this reason. I was thinking of trying a jank list with 2 nesting grounds.

I was very high on this card when Ikoria was spoiled, but then companions happened...

Now that wasteland is at an all time low, the engine of nesting grounds plus treacherous blessing seems very attractive. With no 1BB spells at all and extra black sources in pelakka caverns, the opportunity cost of an untapped colourless source is pretty low. It offers raw card draw to power through the “force everything” play style rampant nowadays. Additionally Elspeth nightmare is a card I already want to play as an arcanist/uro answer; with nesting grounds it is a Defeat or Duress with buyback. Minor advantages would be resetting chalice if you cast it in the blind vs Urza or something. Or you can use it to save loyalty from legend ruled karns.

ESG
01-18-2021, 05:34 PM
Mini TR:

Got 12th/72 in the Saturday challenge (http://https://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/archive/mtgo-standings/legacy-challenge-2021-01-17#reeplcheep_th_place)

...

2-1 snow day. I think it’s silly that 4 slots makes a completely new deck in blue control land. Don’t remember games much, but he asked for a concession into top8 after losing g3. Is that BM? I thought it’s pretty haughty to not ask before g1. He ended up making top8 and then lost in finals anyways after I refused.

Yeah, that's ridiculous. The time to ask is before the match begins.

Congrats on your finish. Looks like the deck is back on the menu.

Reeplcheep
01-20-2021, 08:18 AM
Same thing I posted on Twitter: a few leagues after the challenge I got another 5-0 with almost the same list. I feel pretty good about the meta position of the deck. Sideboard discard/agent and the extra curse improves the blue control matchup greatly, and you still destroy non-blue or unfair decks. Curse of Fool’s wisdom has been good vs control because sylvan library/Klothys/days undoing combo are being played more, which it shuts down. Additionally with games going longer drawing your targets is more likely. This both improves the quality of curse of misfortunes if cruel reality is drawn and is not unreasonable to hard cast if drawn itself in long games.

Depths, Stryfo, and RUG are the only matches where I feel like the underdog, but these matches are still more winnable than they used to be. Rug is easier since they have mostly switched to Young Pyromancer from green creatures, making them more vulnerable to Plague engineer . Opposition Agent has been a godsend for the depths and stryfo matchup. It also improved maverick/12 post so much I think they’re actually favoured post board.

List
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EsJLujYVEAIo344?format=jpg&name=small

Matchups
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EsJLwjmVcAE1YVo?format=jpg&name=small

My time as a modern lantern player taught me how strong targeted discard is in prison. Theoretically, this is since prison quickly reduces the amount of relevant cards to a very small number. Vs snow for example basically all that matters are forces and ways to find forces through chalice (uro/library). I have tried non targeted discard in the past in curses like hymn and davriel but they usually have a ton of irrelevant cards to discard. The deck really wants Thoughtseize on a theoretical level but the chalice and ancient tomb non-bos are too strong I think. Hence I am trying the various alternatives like collective brutality , Agonizing Remorse and Elspeth’s nightmare. Collective brutality is the worst discard but is cute with fools wisdom and can kill ouphe/delver. Remorse is the closest to Thoughtseize but has minimal upside (minor gy hate). Elspeth has the highest upside (2 or 3 for 1 some of the time) but is expensive and slow. What do people think is the best?

An example of the discard being strong this league was t1 remorse taking their only creature interaction (FOW) into t2 agent steal a fetch. This single handily beat snowicles with a great anti prison hand (2 wilts, land plus fetch, cantrips, snap).

Reeplcheep
02-03-2021, 02:03 PM
I went back to curses Monday after flirting with Esper control and got an easy 4-1. The deck is great at beating the anti blue decks and slow blue can be beat with proper Sideboarding. Just gotta dodge or get lucky vs rug.

You can see the strength of the deck vs combo in this vid posted today (https://youtu.be/c456UMrBn24?t=3800s)

I make 2 critical errors (not saving pelakka for pulverize g1 and giving free storm with agent g2), but still manage to beat the best in the business.

I also added some thoughts to the primer in orange.

Reeplcheep
02-04-2021, 02:59 PM
I would be interested in people’s thoughts about discard vs removal. The tempo of Eliminate is essential vs the top deck rug delver, and also good vs ur and d&t. However almost every other popular deck it is dead or bad compared to the more versatile Agonizing Remorse Vs snow and snow variants taking fow/uro is more important than killing one of their endless 3 drops. Vs elves and titanpost it is about equal. Vs oops, Doomsday, TEs, gaak, lands the exiling discard is amazing and the removal is dead.

In agreement with kinda gold fishing has shown 2 mana to be more important than cycling of memory leak or the removal of Elspeth’s nightmare.

In general I don’t win rug even with 4 eliminate so maybe it’s better to focus on turning my 55-50 % matchups (a+b combo and slow blue) into clear wins. What makes remorse a good maindeck card (ok but not amazing vs anything) makes Sideboarding weird due to lack of cuts. Maybe I add more karn bullets that I took out for lack of space. (Torpor orb for doomsday and crypt for gy decks)

Perhaps in a list with so much mana and so little card selection the flexibility of Thoughtseize is better than the tempo of removal. I’m not convinced Thoughtseize is better than chalice hence the 2 cmc version in remorse.

Draft:


4 Ancient Tomb
4 City of Traitors
2 Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth
8 Snow-covered Swamp
4 Pelakka Predation // Pelakka Caverns
4 Dark Ritual
4 Chalice of the Void
4 Trinisphere
4 Agonizing Remorse
4 Leyline of the Void

2 Helm of Obedience
4 Karn, the Great Creator
4 Curse of Misfortunes
1 Curse of Death’s Hold
1 Cruel Reality
1 Curse of Fool’s Wisdom
1 Overwhelming Splendor

3 Plague Engineer
2 Opposition Agent
2 Soul Shatter
1 Torpor Orb
1 Tormod’ Crypt
1 Vault of Whispers
1 Sorcerous Spyglass
1 Helm of Obedience
1 Mycrosynth Lattice
1 Ensnaring Bridge
1 Liquimettal Coating

Reeplcheep
02-04-2021, 03:33 PM
Any other good karn targets I am missing for this meta?

Juntu Stakes
Cheap elves/arcanist/y. Peezy answer

Armix, Filigree Thrasher
Wish-able Ouphe answer.

Welding Jar
Protect a Chalice?

Pithing Needle
If you cast karn with a mana floating.

Shield Sphere
Free elk Defense

Heart of Kiran
Elk/delver Defense.

FTW
02-08-2021, 07:30 AM
Glad to see you're back on this.

Just watched the video. Good match. Game 1 I think playing out Predation as a land was not a mistake. You already saw their hand with Memories (no 3cmc) and you discarded the Burning Wish, so what were the chances they had a 3cmc to hit? They got lucky immediately cantripping into a 2nd Wish and another red source, then they chose to Wish for Pulverize the turn before using it instead of the same turn. If they hadn't found Wish so easily or hadn't held Pulverize for a turn, Predation wouldn't have mattered. That was the one narrow scenario where you needed Predation, just variance. Based on the information you saw, playing out Predation seemed reasonable. It was unlikely to have targets.

Have you cut Curse of Exhaustion? Bryant Cook played around you as though you had it.
Cruel Reality isn't bugged again is it?

How bad does the RUG matchup become if you cut Eliminate completely? What about a 2/2 split with Memories? Or some Eliminate in the SB? Using 3cmc Soul Shatter to remove 1cmc Delver seems like how you lose vs tempo.

For Karn targets, think about what would help you either win or not lose the game, because SB space is precious. Welding Jar and Shield Sphere seem too marginal. It's good sometimes, but enough to take a spot?

Needle seems bad with Chalice and sphere. The cases where you need it, don't have a resistor, and don't have enough mana for Spyglass are probably narrow. Record some games and see if it comes up often, but I'm guessing it was just a bad beat from variance.

Armix is an interesting answer to Ouphe stopping Helm. You could also Eliminate it, but if you cut all targetted creature removal from the 75 then you probably do need an out somewhere.

Reeplcheep
02-08-2021, 09:40 AM
I appreciate your comments.

In hindsight I think you are right. The can win through chalice on 0, so playing to end the game as fast as possible is correct. If I had a trinisphere however they can only win by pulverize so I should have saved it.

I cut exhaustion a while ago since with the rise of doomsday it’s worse in combo matchups, and fools wisdom was printed which does similar things. Fools wisdom can be hard casted, answers Klothys and burn, and provides a secondary wincon if cruel reality was exiled to mox. No cruel reality bugs, but a few minor city of Traitors and agent ones.

Losing eliminate makes my Delver mu a bit worse and maverick/d&t mu a lot worse. Improves most other matchups though. Soul shatter is for turbo Tibalt and Marit Lage, perhaps should just be more spyglasses? Agreed it’s bad vs Delver.

Agree on the iffier karn targets.

Do you think armix is better than more removal in the board or ballista?

kinda
02-08-2021, 11:23 AM
If tibber's is here for good, should Necromentia return to the deck? Possibly unmask too to get more turn 1 interaction.

FTW
02-08-2021, 11:36 AM
In hindsight I think you are right. The can win through chalice on 0, so playing to end the game as fast as possible is correct. If I had a trinisphere however they can only win by pulverize so I should have saved it.

They also have 4xVeil of Summer main to turn off Chalice @ 0 for a turn, so there were a lot of outs besides Pulverize. They could also Wish and cast Pulverize in the same turn, protecting them from discard, or be holding up Veil to turn off your discard. There were a lot of ways for them to win in that gamestate that Predation couldn't stop. Meanwhile you had nothing else out, so it seemed like you needed the mana to be proactive.

I thought they also had Abrupt Decay or Chain of Vapor too (for even more outs), but the Decays are in the board and they cut Chain completely from that build.

With a 3sphere game 1 (and their Decays in the board), then yes their only out is to Wish into Pulverize over separate turns, and they can't protect it with Veil, so that's where discard really secures the lock.



I cut exhaustion a while ago since with the rise of doomsday it’s worse in combo matchups, and fools wisdom was printed which does similar things.

That makes sense. Other than Doomsday and Burn, which matchups are Fools Wisdom better in? Which are Curse of Exhaustion better in? Is Exhaustion only better vs Storm? Does it help low-curve matchups like Delver at all, or have you already won either way once you have Curses out?



Losing eliminate makes my Delver mu a bit worse and maverick/d&t mu a lot worse. Improves most other matchups though. Soul shatter is for turbo Tibalt and Marit Lage, perhaps should just be more spyglasses? Agreed it’s bad vs Delver.

Do you think armix is better than more removal in the board or ballista?

Tough call. I would definitely run Armix if you stick with 0 Eliminate, because you need some targetted removal somewhere. Armix looks better than Ballista because Ballista can't kill Ouphe. Is there no Shriekmaw effect on an artifact creature?

Oh right, Turbo Tibalt. Soul Shatter's strong then. Is there room for some Eliminates while keeping the Soul Shatters and Engineers? That's where I think you have to be careful with the Karnboard because adding too many tools really cuts down your SB space. How often is Torpor Orb good?

Edit: I assume Necromentia was cut earlier because of the BB cost, and that doesn't help much vs Turn 1 combo decks.

Reeplcheep
02-08-2021, 11:37 AM
If tibber's is here for good, should Necromentia return to the deck? Possibly unmask too to get more turn 1 interaction.

Necromentia or unmask could return to the deck. Those seem to bleed more value than just playing more md spyglass however.

The other option is to cut chalice for 1 cmc discard as tomjab did above.

Reeplcheep
02-08-2021, 11:51 AM
They also have 4xVeil of Summer main to turn off Chalice @ 0 for a turn, so there were a lot of outs besides Pulverize. They could also Wish and cast Pulverize in the same turn, protecting them from discard, or be holding up Veil to turn off your discard. There were a lot of ways for them to win in that gamestate that Predation couldn't stop. Meanwhile you had nothing else out, so it seemed like you needed the mana to be proactive.

I thought they also had Abrupt Decay or Chain of Vapor too (for even more outs), but the Decays are in the board and they cut Chain completely from that build.

With a 3sphere game 1 (and their Decays in the board), then yes their only out is to Wish into Pulverize over separate turns, and they can't protect it with Veil, so that's where discard really secures the lock.
Yah I am in agreement.




That makes sense. Other than Doomsday and Burn, which matchups are Fools Wisdom better in? Which are Curse of Exhaustion better in? Is Exhaustion only better vs Storm? Does it help low-curve matchups like Delver at all, or have you already won either way once you have Curses out?


Fools wisdom has been helpful vs control (additional wincon if curses are drawn in long games, punishes uro + karakas durdle) and vs Wheel decks. The primary benefit of fools wisdom vs delver/xerox is turning off sylvan library and Klothys which are big problems for this deck. Exhaustion is only good vs storm(very good matchup) and Omni (favourable, but splendor is almost as good vs them). Both are not great vs tempo though just because you are adding 1 more difficult to cast card to the deck.




Tough call. I would definitely run Armix if you stick with 0 Eliminate, because you need some targetted removal somewhere. Armix looks better than Ballista because Ballista can't kill Ouphe. Is there no Shriekmaw effect on an artifact creature?

Oh right, Turbo Tibalt. Soul Shatter's strong then. Is there room for some Eliminates while keeping the Soul Shatters and Engineers? That's where I think you have to be careful with the Karnboard because adding too many tools really cuts down your SB space. How often is Torpor Orb good?

Edit: I assume Necromentia was cut earlier because of the BB cost, and that doesn't help much vs Turn 1 combo decks.

The karn targets are just because the discard is always ok thus less cuts. If I ran more removal main board I would have more things to side out and thus trim on my karn package.

There is noxious gearhulk And duplicant, but I was worried that might be a bit expensive. Pith Driller and Exectuioners Capsule Are cheaper but worse options.

FTW
02-08-2021, 01:31 PM
Yeah that makes sense.

Gearhulk and Duplicant both seem too slow. If you have the game state to pass the turn with Karn and play a 6 cmc, how often is Lattice or Bridge or Helm not enough to get there? You could also run something like Steel Hellkite as a wincondition / removal, but you already have such big haymakers.

I assume you need cards to help when those don't work: e.g. Ouphe stopping Helm/Lattice (because Karn would be an artifact) or weenies like Dreadhorde beating through Bridge. In those scenarios Executioner's Capsule, Walking Ballista and Pith Driller don't really do much. But Armix solves a lot. Armix seems worth testing.

Nevinyrral's Disk is also a card. Unlike Oblivion Stone, it doesn't kill Karn and costs less total to activate. But it doesn't deal with Ouphe.

Reeplcheep
02-08-2021, 02:15 PM
Torpor orb is not completely necessary, but it is useful in most matchups where I’d want the 4th plague engineer. The upside is the free value game 1 vs doomsday, goblins, breakfast, and oops.

Armix could also do silly things with the madness on fools wisdom.

Reeplcheep
02-15-2021, 10:44 AM
Banning affecting this deck:

Oko being banned is a big deal; we can win through it but chalice and 3ball are more likely to eat a force of will from the opponent, and thus our payoffs should resolve more frequently.

Astrolabe isn’t a huge deal for this deck, but making blue decks choose between B2B or decay is nice. More fair non blue though helps a bunch. lands, D&T and Loam are pretty good matchups that fell of the side of the earth. I’m not sure what the effect on uro will be, but I don’t see leyline being bad vs fair blue anyways; if they cut uro they are probably playing sevinnes and sanctuary. Delver is likely cutting arcanist for Gurmag or goyf

This deck was quite good against arcanist, but the card kept down slow combo a bit. More storm would be great for us.

Cascade change: Valki, God of lies was a massive problem for this deck since it dodged eliminate and chalice was dead. Now we can go back to eliminates over spyglass/soul shatter.

Overall this should mean less of our worst matchups (rug directly, Valki directly, depths because more wasteland decks) and more of good matchups (loam, d&t, storm).

I would likely go back to 4 eliminate 4 Pelakka 1 Fools wisdom in fleet slots. In my experience vs ur delver that Configuration actually has a decent shot of winning there and should be good vs the rebirth of Thalia decks.

Tomjab
02-16-2021, 03:22 AM
Good news for Curse players.
I expect to see less delver decks - our worst mu and arise of mavericks, loam decks & spell combos which is fine. Will try to change back main to 4cotv/4trini instead of 8 discards

Reeplcheep
02-16-2021, 07:25 AM
yah well done with the success of discard. How has opposition agent md been? More blow-outs or more turning on dead plows?

Reeplcheep
02-18-2021, 10:55 AM
I have gone 16-4 since the bannings in leagues. Deck feels quite good right now; blue control feels good and delver is no longer unwinnable now that plague engineer and chalice are real threats.

More fair non-blue and less depths is also great for this deck. List and mus in tweet (https://mobile.twitter.com/reeplcheep/status/1362210567843274756)
Deck feels solid. Only wondering if 3rd agent is better than a torpor orb (game 1s vs doomsday) and if I need a 19th untapped land (t1 b sources are at the bottom end)

Captain Hammer
02-18-2021, 11:11 AM
List looks good overall but 4 Eliminates seems excessive (and dead against too many matchups) in the post-oko world.

Maindecking Ensnaring Bridge, Agonizing Remorse, or one of the new removal spells seem like the better route to take.

Reeplcheep
02-18-2021, 11:18 AM
List looks good overall but 4 Eliminates seems excessive (and dead against too many matchups) in the post-oko world.

Maindecking Ensnaring Bridge, Agonizing Remorse, or one of the new removal spells seem like the better route to take.

Yah that is where I am least certain. I was expecting a bunch of very fast ur delver and Thalia decks where it is great, but that didn’t materialize.

Options:

Soul shatter: answers to fast Marit Lage and fast karn which are problems for the deck. clunky

Hagra’s mauling: an extra land drop is always useful, helps against uptick in wasteland. Really clunky.

Remorse: really flexible. Proactive so better t1 play usually. Tempo negative, life loss.

The abyss: very powerful, slow

Rider: threat if dead, hard to cast.

Bridge: the deck gets cards stuck in hand too easily imo.

Perhaps the best option is swap in the remorses with 2 of the md eliminates?

Reeplcheep
02-24-2021, 09:08 AM
Still trying to figure out the last flex slots. One thing I have realized and why I don’t go below 2 helms is that the deck has a mild threat density problem. It’s constructed such that only 1 card needs to resolve to win, so you can run more interaction. That does mean however that ~ 10% of hands just have all hate and you don’t draw a finisher before t5. Having an eliminate rotting in your hand while the opponent draws out of 3 ball is a problem.

My wish list for it would be:


1 black pip

2-3 cmc

Doesn’t die to removal

Proactive, can play t1 otp.

Flexible enough to be worth playing vs all fair decks at least.

Can win the game if given enough time.




Agent was proactive but not great vs all fair decks and dying to removal was a big problem. The early damage often didn’t matter either.

Eliminate is great in oko.fmt but not being proactive and not helping the decks threat density problems.

Rider is wincon and flexible, but not really proactive, also BB pips.

Maybe it’s time for Liliana the last hope? She meets everything except for double black pips. However since I last tried her oko has been banned (who just destroys her) and I started running pelakka predation (way more black sources if I need them). We are starting to see more x/1s like peezy and Thalia and snapcaster again. She is very good against decks that ignore chalice like plague engineer. Doesn’t turn on removal. T1 play worth Ritualing into. Actually wins the game within 5 turns if the opponent doesn’t do anything, increasing threat density vs control. Has slight synergy with splendor, deaths hold and plague engineer.

Thoughts? If you like it, how many copies? Does she need some eliminates as support?

Edit: I want 2 urborg for Liliana and 0 urborg for agent. The only matchups they overlap really is maverick so I think I should be ok with a clean swap for sideboard agents and vault of whispers.

Doom fall is proactive removal but is pretty low power level. Collective brutality might be good again with pws and x/3s being less common. Synergy with bridge and fools wisdom.

tillcor
02-24-2021, 06:47 PM
Hello Reeplcheep,

Love the deck, I have been brewing on some Black Stompy for a while, then I saw your nice video with Phil G, it made me try the deck and I'm enjoying it very much!

Liliana LH seems a good idea, maybe just 1 MD? BB could be a problem, but I've tried Liliana of the Veil in a Zombie Stompy with the same mana base and it was okay. Worth trying for sure!

Other ideas..: 1 Toxic Deluge? Liliana's triumph?

Reeplcheep
02-24-2021, 11:27 PM
Hello Reeplcheep,

Love the deck, I have been brewing on some Black Stompy for a while, then I saw your nice video with Phil G, it made me try the deck and I'm enjoying it very much!

Liliana LH seems a good idea, maybe just 1 MD? BB could be a problem, but I've tried Liliana of the Veil in a Zombie Stompy with the same mana base and it was okay. Worth trying for sure!

Other ideas..: 1 Toxic Deluge? Liliana's triumph?

Really glad to hear I inspired you!

I tried 2 brutality 2 lili in 2 leagues. Lili was ok but the flexibility of brutality (with oko and arcanist gone) was really good. I could see a 3/1 split making sense.

Reeplcheep
02-26-2021, 07:23 AM
Compared to something like eliminate, the combo and control matchups are way better, and the deck just runs smoother. After a few leagues , I ran hot through a bunch of well-known grinders for a 5-0.

2-1 bant miracles
2-0 Omni (first lili emblem kill)
2-1 turbo depths (nightmare mu)
2-0 esper tezzerrator yorion ... thing
2-0 grixis phoenix (g1 t0 leyline concede :D)

FTW
02-26-2021, 07:39 AM
Looks like a strong choice. Brutality's modes do everything you need it to now that Oko is banned.

tillcor
02-26-2021, 09:16 AM
Okay, so 2/2 then and no Eliminate? let's go!

I understand the flexibility of c. brutality, but I also noted that big creatures are back, like Tarmogoyf (at least in my community). I guess we'll reconsider it in a while when combo will be less present and the meta stabilized. And combo decks are a bit less played in paper, so...

Love Liliana though, reminds me of a good old huge Pox T1...

Reeplcheep
02-26-2021, 10:07 AM
I was running 3 collective brutality 1 Liliana last hope that league which I think is better. I really dislike bb cards in the main deck but 1 lily (In addition to fools wisdom as a 4th curse) drastically lowers the amount of games where you lose to never drawing a win con.

Generally any creature that doesn’t care about brutality is weak to the plague engineers post board. It’s really only KOTR in maverick, deaths shadow in its namesake deck, or LOTV in pox where you’d rather have eliminate. Any delver threat taking their daze/fow is way more important than killing the threat. Additionally goyf is usually only to beat the mirror; most delver players prefer delve threats like mandrills/Gurmag in an open meta (which dodge eliminate). Hullbreacher/narset you can just take the days undoing or fow which are just as important. Elvish reclaimer is probably not a 3/4 on t1 or t2.

In the first omni game lily emblem provided a wincon where I never drew one which was great, but it was really the brutality stripping the show & tell that won me the game.

Warning long theory blurb

This actually leads into some of theory and innovation behind my deck that may not be obvious at first glance. When you put ancient tomb and chalice in your deck you inherently are trading flexibility and consistency for tempo. The first way people actually made stompy decks good is balls to the wall aggro deck like eldrazi. All your card do the same thing (smash face) and consistency doesn’t matter because they are hopefully dead by t4.

My deck takes the opposite approach of trading back some tempo for consistency. Traditionally decks do that with cantrips like brainstorm or tutors like GSZ but that’s not an option in stompy decks. Pelakka predation is not an mana-efficient card in your good hands but it’s your best card if your are pinched or flooded on mana. It’s always worth a card against almost any matchup, since it can answer a wasteland, a force, OR a doomsday. Collective brutality is similar in that it is less efficient than remorse or eliminate, but it gets stronger the worse your hand is (because of escalate) and can always trade with something (delver, Thalia, or show & tell).

The core idea is your lock pieces or fast threat hands are going to win no matter what in your good hands; your flex interactions job is to rescue your shitty hands. Which pelakka predation and collective brutality do very well. Flex interaction intentionally being low ceiling high floor cards is a large departure from other chalice deck and part of what makes my deck good.

The other reason why I like the targeted discard is that a+b combo is more popular than engine combo right now. In the league above you have depths/Phoenix/omni, and doomsday/narset day is popular too. Not too much elves/ant/TES/enchantress/Hogaak. Targeted Discard is so much better than additional hate pieces vs those decks (except depths, which is why it’s tough) because they only have a few cards that matter. Imagine drawing blood moon vs omni or spyglass vs omni. And then your lock pieces makes it hard for them to find another piece before they die.


This has been jank deckbuilding 201 with Dr. Reeplcheep. Tune in next time for “Sideboard mapping for dummies”.

tillcor
02-26-2021, 04:19 PM
Thank you for your thorough analysis, I totaly agree with you on all those points... I really like Pelakka too, and I understand that it is the obvious exemple of how flexible a card can be to serve our purpose. Can't wait to try Collective Brutality. Oh, and I just saw on twitter that you were running 4 Plague Engineers in SB, I get it now...


Do you remember how the Dark Depths match went?

Reeplcheep
02-26-2021, 05:34 PM
Thank you for your thorough analysis, I totaly agree with you on all those points... I really like Pelakka too, and I understand that it is the obvious exemple of how flexible a card can be to serve our purpose. Can't wait to try Collective Brutality. Oh, and I just saw on twitter that you were running 4 Plague Engineers in SB, I get it now...


Do you remember how the Dark Depths match went?

Game 1.

Got discarded into t2 combo otd.

Game 2.

They had t3 natural combo without casting any spells. This is usually strong because it dodges 3ball/agent/chalice, but i had karn for bridge and they had no answer.

G3.

They kept a force of vigor + decay based hand for my lockpieces but got bodied by opposition agent x2.

Reeplcheep
03-01-2021, 09:43 AM
Played in the challenge; depths was suddenly 10% of the meta and I faced them twice oof. Ended up 3-4. Perhaps with brutality main I need more flexible removal like soul shatter sideboard.

The flexibility of brutality has been great. I liked the extra win cons in lili tlh but she is very hard to cast and isn’t always great. Additionally the deck has felt a bit mana light: I have to use the predations as lands too much (would rather be spells most of the time and only lands in emergencies).

Thoughts on Crawling Barrens? Black decks have often used workshop to increase threat density. Untapped land when land screwed, powerful mana sink when flooded. I can pretty easily afford the charge up cost. 4/4s are quite a bit harder to kill than 3/3s in legacy. Now that oko is gone a 4/4 murders most planeswalkers. It also makes agent more of a gotcha since I have a credible reason to hold up mana until end of turn.

FTW
03-01-2021, 09:58 AM
What's your current list?

When did you cut Soul Shatter in the SB? I thought you were running at least 2 for a while, not just for Turbo Tibalt but also Depths.

Liliana's Triumph is also an option but the 2B cost should be easy enough for you.

What were your other wins and losses in the Challenge? Did the deck have any new strengths or weaknesses with the change to Brutality?

Reeplcheep
03-01-2021, 10:36 AM
I cut soul shatter for 1 Tormod crypt and 1 Torpor orb after the ban. Brutality/lili was replacing my prior flex slots of either eliminate (great vs tempo, useless otherwise) or remorse (great vs control and combo, bad otherwise).

5-0 list here (https://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/archive/mtgo-standings/legacy-league-2021-02-27#reeplcheep_-)

I had two reasons: I though doomsday would go up and depths would go down with the resurgence of fair non-blue. Brutality is flexible but low power compared to my old options so I thought I would have less cuts. Less cuts means less cards to bring in g2 means I should just run more karn targets. I think the second point is correct that I want less targets, but perhaps I cut the 4th engineer and the third agent for 2 soul shatters.

In general I think it just makes land based matchups worse. I lost to leovold beats vs nic fit and primeval Titan out of 12post where eliminate or remorse could have been helpful. However compared to eliminate it massively improves the combo and control matchups and compared to remorse it massively improves the tempo matchups.

Several combo control matchups I would just go chalice, discard 2x, curse where before with eliminate you would go chalice, curse they force, than you sit around with useless eliminates until they draw out of the chalice and you lose. Remorse solves that problem but then you just concede to t1 delver or t2 Teeg.

FTW
03-01-2021, 10:40 AM
Yeah, I see where Brutality's flexibility helps fill the deck's gaps in those scenarios.

Then the answer is just in the SB. I think you can't afford to lose those Soul Shatters as long as Depths is a top contender. Brutality's flexibility is great, but it means the deck has no removal in the 75 for cards like Marit Lage, Leovold or Prime Time. That's your 4 losses right there. Soul Shatter would answer all 4. You wouldn't necessarily have won all those games, but at least your deck would have some answer vs no answers. Soul Shatter should also help against randoms walkers like Jace that will reappear post-Oko.

Edit: Maybe you don't need so many Karn slots. I would guess that you're already winning the games where you untap with Karn or Curse. You already have answers to dangerous board states through them. Your SB should be helping you in the games where you don't have those engines.

Reeplcheep
03-01-2021, 10:48 AM
The downside with brutalities flexibility is that the sideboard improvement is less. Vs depths I would want 4 plague engineer, 2 shatter, 3 agents, spyglass, and helm. but what am I cutting to make room? Sure lili and 3 ball and urborg are bad. But you still have 5 more things to bring in. Karn gets bridge. Helm kill actually can race them. Chalice is great. Brutality takes crop, discard, and counter hate like fov or decay.

I think I agree I need 2 shatters. The question is should they replace the worst karn targets or trim the black cards.

The thought behind the additional karn targets is the most common situation I lose after untapping with karn is vs gy decks in the blind (when I didn’t keep a leyline hand), an uro that is about to escape, vs d&t (apparition hitting karn and bridge is oof) or vs a resolved doomsday. Hence torpor orb and Tormod’s crypt.

Reeplcheep
03-04-2021, 09:49 AM
So brutality continues to be great in testing as additional 2 cmc flexible plays. It also makes ensuring bridge considerably better in the deck.

Liliana is really nice as a threat you can play t1 off of dark ritual. Having additional threat density has made me consider dropping the md helms. Helm is often an awkward card in the early game but you need more than 8 wincons to be sure of finding something to end the game.

However, they haven’t worked super well together. Brutality excels vs control and small creatures, Liliana excels vs control and small creatures, and plague engineer also answers small creatures. Having no answers to a TKS or even KOTR game 1 has been an issue and makes my already bad depths/maverick matchup worse.


Thoughts on 0 brutality 0 helm 3 liliana’s triumph 3 last hope?

Triumph and lily cover each other’s weaknesses (go wide vs go tall) and gives maindeck outs to lage. Bonus 2 for 1 synergy. You will have worse spell combo and control matchups than brutality but those matchups are already pretty good. The cards are great vs all my worst mus (depths/delver/maverick). And my curve goes down/black count for mox goes up, at the cost of being more black intensive (min 2 urborg). Sideboard will need to be rejigged slightly (more agents/less shatters)

FTW
03-04-2021, 10:19 AM
LtLH is good at managing small creatures but seems much better in a deck with value creatures to return, like Grixis Control running Snapcaster Mage and Baleful Strix. The emblem is still a wincon, but without creatures main LotLH is doing much less than its supposed to do, just killing X/1s and growing slowly.

Is Liliana of the Veil any good here? Is the problem that untargetted discard is bad in prison, and you need the Edict effect at instant speed for Marit Lage and SneakShow?

Liliana, Death's Majesty or Liliana, Dreadhorde General? These are normally not in consideration for Legacy because of CMC but you're Stompy. Both immediately act as a wincon, making 2/2s while threatening to Wrath the opponent's board. Maybe there are curve issues. It could replace Helm for the spot of MD wincon without being dead outside the combo.

The best answer for TKS, Marit Lage or KOTR is Soul Shatter. Is it worth running any copies main?

Reeplcheep
03-04-2021, 10:37 AM
LtLH is good at managing small creatures but seems much better in a deck with value creatures to return, like Grixis Control running Snapcaster Mage and Baleful Strix. The emblem is still a wincon, but without creatures main LotLH is doing much less than its supposed to do, just killing X/1s and growing slowly.

Is Liliana of the Veil any good here? Is the problem that untargetted discard is bad in prison, and you need the Edict effect at instant speed for Marit Lage and SneakShow?

Liliana, Death's Majesty or Liliana, Dreadhorde General? These are normally not in consideration for Legacy because of CMC but you're Stompy. Both immediately act as a wincon, making 2/2s while threatening to Wrath the opponent's board. Maybe there are curve issues. It could replace Helm for the spot of MD wincon without being dead outside the combo.

The best answer for TKS, Marit Lage or KOTR is Soul Shatter. Is it worth running any copies main?

All good points. The minus is pretty bad mainboard but returning a agent or plague engineer could be devastating in the right matchup. Perhaps I should focus the sideboard on creatures so I can keep her in for more matchups.

The reason I didn’t consider Liliana was because untargeted discard is really bad in prison and you need so many lands to function. The deck is hyper focused on card quality over card quantity, between chalice/3ball/no creatures/threats that dodge decay. If you go t1 mox chalice, t2 urborg Lotv you only have 2 cards in hand and they have 7. Trading a curse for plow there seems absolutely aweful. She also doesn’t actually kill the opponent.

I do like Deaths majesty but being castable off of t1 dark ritual and can win the game are the primary considerations. I loved agent for that reason but turning on removal was really bad, and attacking with a x/2 7 times was more difficult to accomplish than protecting her for 5. The list of cards that can do that without turning on removal is quite short: phyrexian arena/treacherous blessing/bitterblossom are all going to kill you.

Having more t1 things off of dark ritual also helps with the chalice/drit problem. City/chalice/deaths majesty/dark ritual is considerably more awkward to sequence than city/chalice/dark ritual/Last hope. There is no 1 cmc removal for lily other than needle so just play her first and then chalice around daze. Agent was awkward for the opposite reason, you had to choose between ritualling it out or protecting it from plow.

Once you get to 4 mana and beyond it’s a lot harder to justify over helm. It may not seem like it, but 5 mana is a lot easier in this deck than 6 mana so I don’t think I would play the general. Between sol lands and my acceleration you usually end up at an odd number of mana (tomb plus swamp plus drit, city plus 2 lands plus mox.)

With oko gone I feel like my mainboard removal should care more about delver/Thalia/daze than JTMS/karn/mentor. Those cards at least can be handled by pelakka some of the time.

tillcor
03-04-2021, 03:07 PM
All good points. The minus is pretty bad mainboard but returning a agent or plague engineer could be devastating in the right matchup. Perhaps I should focus the sideboard on creatures so I can keep her in for more matchups.

The reason I didn’t consider Liliana was because untargeted discard is really bad in prison and you need so many lands to function. The deck is hyper focused on card quality over card quantity, between chalice/3ball/no creatures/threats that dodge decay. If you go t1 mox chalice, t2 urborg Lotv you only have 2 cards in hand and they have 7. Trading a curse for plow there seems absolutely aweful. She also doesn’t actually kill the opponent.

I do like Deaths majesty but being castable off of t1 dark ritual and can win the game are the primary considerations. I loved agent for that reason but turning on removal was really bad, and attacking with a x/2 7 times was more difficult to accomplish than protecting her for 5. The list of cards that can do that without turning on removal is quite short: phyrexian arena/treacherous blessing/bitterblossom are all going to kill you.

Having more t1 things off of dark ritual also helps with the chalice/drit problem. City/chalice/deaths majesty/dark ritual is considerably more awkward to sequence than city/chalice/dark ritual/Last hope. There is no 1 cmc removal for lily other than needle so just play her first and then chalice around daze. Agent was awkward for the opposite reason, you had to choose between ritualling it out or protecting it from plow.

Once you get to 4 mana and beyond it’s a lot harder to justify over helm. It may not seem like it, but 5 mana is a lot easier in this deck than 6 mana so I don’t think I would play the general. Between sol lands and my acceleration you usually end up at an odd number of mana (tomb plus swamp plus drit, city plus 2 lands plus mox.)

With oko gone I feel like my mainboard removal should care more about delver/Thalia/daze than JTMS/karn/mentor. Those cards at least can be handled by pelakka some of the time.


Maybe Walking Ballista then?

Reeplcheep
03-05-2021, 11:23 AM
Ballista is a fine card with sol lands, but is not nearly as impressive t1 off a drit as Liliana the last hope. It also turns on removal. Compared to triumph recurring it with Liliana is great but it’s also pretty bad at answering bigger creatures or Ouphe/TNN.

Murderous rider could be a consideration if people think I need more recurable creatures maindeck (because it’s already done it’s job by the time it gets plowed). It can only be recurred if it gets countered or discarded though, not removed.

tillcor
03-05-2021, 04:47 PM
I agree that Liliana LH is great, I definitely want to keep her.

I thought about Ballista maybe as a Karn target: today I faced this situation vs 4C Loam where I needed an urgent removal topdeck, and instead drew a Karn and thought that a removal in the toolbox would have been great... like ballista... or meteor golem (lol). But maybe it was just a very unusual situation, as my opponent already got rid of my bridge with decay a few turns earlier.
It kind of felt like you said the other day, an early beatdown is rough. Made me even consider running Plague Engineer MD, this card is so sick right now. Also noticed that Opposition Agent is crucial against those GreenSun decks :frown:!!

Otherwise the deck felt great, played against D&T too, Torpor Orb just shuts the deck down. Miracle was also an easy win... if they don't have the third Force! ^^ But even then, our topdecks are just too good.

Reeplcheep
03-07-2021, 12:30 PM
Ballista or Armix, Filigree Thrasher could be a consideration. Usually though helm or bridge is the primary target if you have mana but are behind on board.

Every removal spell you put in the sideboard is one less plague engineer you can board in though.

Agent has made a massive difference vs both crop rotation and gsz decks, really would like at least 3 if possible.

Reeplcheep
03-08-2021, 10:08 AM
Went 3-3 in the showcase. Overall deck felt great; lost to misplays on my end mostly. Got to learn to be more patient vs daze decks. I may post a more detailed tr later.

Only issue with the deck seemed to be losing to the fow, fon, library/uro thing which a few sideboard remorses weren’t sufficient to deal with. The meta seems slower and control decks have less pressure on life totals. Perhaps I can add back some castle lochwains for additional grind?

List for the showcase:

4 Ancient Tomb
4 City of Traitors
2 Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth
8 Snow-covered Swamp
4 Pelakka Predation // Pelakka Caverns
4 Dark Ritual
4 Chalice of the Void
4 Trinisphere
3 Liliana’s Triumph
2 Liliana, the last hope
4 Leyline of the Void

1 Helm of Obedience
4 Karn, the Great Creator
4 Curse of Misfortunes
1 Curse of Death’s Hold
1 Cruel Reality
1 Curse of Fool’s Wisdom
1 Overwhelming Splendor

4 Plague Engineer
3 Opposition Agent
2 Agonizing Remorse
1 Vault of Whispers
1 Sorcerous Spyglass
1 Helm of Obedience
1 Mycrosynth Lattice
1 Ensnaring Bridge
1 Liquimettal Coating


Edit: the only other thing was that in leagues I was seeing lots of marit lage so triumph seemed great. In the showcase there was lots of control and brutality may have been better.

FTW
03-08-2021, 12:49 PM
The Challenge meta is often different than the League meta. People are more likely to play tier 1 blue decks in the Challenge, while Leagues could be full of random combo and brews.

Maybe you just need to allocate a certain number of "meta slots" in the maindeck. Right now that space is taken by 3 Triumph + 2 Lili. Maybe those should be flex slots and adjusted based on the expected metagame for an event, instead of fixed. Triumph is useful sometimes. Brutality is useful other times.

Reeplcheep
03-08-2021, 01:12 PM
For sure. IMO there are 50 core cards. You need 8 sol lands 8 fast mana to be fast enough. 10 untapped black lands to have t1 black mana. 12 core lock pieces of 3ball/chalice/leyline. 12 core win cons (4karn 4 curse 4 targets). The last 10 can be adjusted based on meta, but past experience has shown that at least 2 of the slots need to actually win the game.

What do you think is the best choices against delver? Or current meta fair blue in general? My non fair blue non depths mus are so good I can make sacrifices there.

During oko times I was running 2 helm (cheapest additional wincon that beats oko ) 4 eliminate (best oko removal) pelakka (smoothing that kinda answers oko)

The above list was 2 lily 1 helm (cheapest wincons) 3 triumph (efficient removal that answers lage, which is scariest fast threat to me) 4 pelakka (smoothing)

Perhaps lily is good enough against fair decks and the meta is so open I should just focus on the most consistent maindeck possible with my flex slots and hedge only in the sideboard for bad matchups.

In my opinion the best choice of flex slots for flexibility/reliability is 2 brutality (flexible, smooths our hands with too many curse targets) 2 lili last hope (cheapest wincon) 4 pelakka (smooths land screwed hands) 2 castle lochwain (smooths land flooded hands)

That Configuration was too weak to beat oko in the past but is the best at not having dead cards. It’s “better” deck building. Thoughts on the above ideas?

tillcor
03-08-2021, 02:52 PM
Maybe you just need to allocate a certain number of "meta slots" in the maindeck. Right now that space is taken by 3 Triumph + 2 Lili. Maybe those should be flex slots and adjusted based on the expected metagame for an event, instead of fixed. Triumph is useful sometimes. Brutality is useful other times.

Totally agree

tillcor
03-08-2021, 04:04 PM
Played a lot of games this weekend against Death Shadow.
My list was running 3 Eliminate/1 Lili. Eliminate felt good. I also mulliganed a lot of times to have a Chalice/Trini hand, Chalice is still a game winner, especially against Shadow (so is trinisphere, but trickier against wastelands).
I don't think I want Castel Locthwain, our manabase is fragile (boarded the Vault in), and I used Pelakka a few times to clear the way from countermagic (what a nice card!). Post sideboard, Vault in,3 Engineers and 1 Ballista (which unfortunately, never appeared during games to get a feedback), cut 1 Helm and Chrome Moxes. Still learning to pilot the deck, but those choices seemed ok...

FTW
03-08-2021, 04:18 PM
Played a lot of games this weekend against Death Shadow.
My list was running 3 Eliminate/1 Lili. Eliminate felt good. I also mulliganed a lot of times to have a Chalice/Trini hand, Chalice is still a game winner, especially against Shadow (so is trinisphere, but trickier against wastelands).

Did you lose after playing T1-T2 Trini and getting immediately Wasted?
I would think that's a losing play for Shadow. You're trading lands at parity, but they have fewer mana sources than you, and they won't be able to cast any spells either. You should recover to 3 mana before they do, and then you're spending 3 mana to cast 3-drops while they're spending 3 mana to cantrip. That's the kind of game Black prison wants to be playing.

tillcor
03-08-2021, 04:39 PM
Did you lose after playing T1-T2 Trini and getting immediately Wasted?
I would think that's a losing play for Shadow. You're trading lands at parity, but they have fewer mana sources than you, and they won't be able to cast any spells either. You should recover to 3 mana before they do, and then you're spending 3 mana to cast 3-drops while they're spending 3 mana to Daze.

True. I remember now, it wasn't against Shadow but against D&T where I faced this strange situation where his mana denial was quit efficient against a fast Trini. But generaly speaking, and against Delver in particular it's obviously great, wasteland or not, you are totaly right.

tillcor
03-08-2021, 05:11 PM
Perhaps lily is good enough against fair decks and the meta is so open I should just focus on the most consistent maindeck possible with my flex slots and hedge only in the sideboard for bad matchups.



So you would consider running Lily's Triumph in the sideboard? Cutting 1 Engineer and 1 Agent maybe?

Reeplcheep
03-09-2021, 08:32 AM
So you would consider running Lily's Triumph in the sideboard? Cutting 1 Engineer and 1 Agent maybe?

I would probably run soul shatter in the sideboard so it can also cover the control and 4cmc karn matchups.

Vs delver decks getting wastelanded with a 3ball in play is usually fine. Between pelakka and your sol lands you should draw out of it first. Against any Thalia deck it’s often worth not casting your lock pieces at all since dark ritual can be so important.

FTW
03-09-2021, 10:20 AM
True. I remember now, it wasn't against Shadow but against D&T where I faced this strange situation where his mana denial was quit efficient against a fast Trini. But generaly speaking, and against Delver in particular it's obviously great, wasteland or not, you are totaly right.

Oh, it was vs D&T. Completely different story. They're also a prison deck. If they have an early Thalia or Vial and Waste you with a Trini on the board, you're done. Reeplcheep, would you board out Trini for that match? Seems good. You don't want to accidentally help their mana denial plan. You want all the Plague Engineers, Lilianas, and Brutality/Triumphs.

Reeplcheep
03-09-2021, 10:24 AM
I always build my sideboard so that I can cut all chalices and 3balls vs every Thalia or non-urza chalice deck.

Usually +4 PE +vault +spyglass +2 whatever your flex removal was.

I was talking more in game 1, as soon as you see they are a Thalia or red prison deck you should probably stop casting your chalices or trinispheres. This is because they don’t care much about your lock pieces, but dark ritualling into a wincon is devastating for them.

Reeplcheep
03-10-2021, 03:44 PM
With oko gone and my curve lower, is Defense grid a reasonable anti delver card again?

Reeplcheep
03-18-2021, 03:59 PM
With Liliana being a viable wincon now, do you think I can cut the md helms now for more removal?

Pros:
lowers curve (helps vs daze/wasteland?)
improved black count for chrome mox.
Less vulnerable to bull rod effects and reef/Lavinia.
Less likely to be wincon flooded, Liliana can be exiled to mox if needed.
Can cut more easily cut leyline if it or karn -> helm combo is bad.
Liliana gives opponent more time to come back into game, whereas helm can punk people who don’t respect it.

Cons:
All sol land hands becomes worse and the deck relies on black mana sources more.
Less free t1/t2 wins vs resilient non-blue (elves/gaak/lands)
top decks are poorer, can’t win if severely behind on board.
Sideboard in mus where I want leyline but not karn becomes weird.

Reeplcheep
03-19-2021, 02:55 PM
Big creatures were quite weak previously vs coatl/oko/dha double bolt.

What are people’s thoughts of Plague Reaver out of the board?
With less coatls it should be a must fow for control post board and vs rug or walls their goyfs. Combo it gets them dead fast if they slowed down for interaction. A good proactive library answer too. A bit smaller but the downside is less relevant for me than rotting regisaur. Also plays nicely with Liliana TLH. However if their plan is force everything 3 cmc and over anyways, adding another 3 drop doesn’t help.

Alternatively, Woe Strider gums up the board quite nicely vs creatures and is recurable against control. Quite bad vs combo though.

tillcor
03-24-2021, 08:19 PM
Hey Reeplcheep, I just saw you playing against Phil. So you're trying both Defense Grid and Plague Reaver? Let us know how it went.
There's a small tournament at my local shop this weekend, I think I'll play the Curses, I'm expecting a lot of Control/Midrange decks. Also D&T.
To answer a previous post, I like Helm just for the fact that it is a great topdeck.
About Plague Reaver, it caught my eye immediately when it came out, it is very appealing as a Dark Ritual threat. But Regisaure didn't make the cut, so I'm note sure. Give us a feedback.
Talking about creatures, in my previous zombie stompy shell I also tried Graveborn Muse as a body/draw engine.

Reeplcheep
03-24-2021, 09:20 PM
Hey Reeplcheep, I just saw you playing against Phil. So you're trying both Defense Grid and Plague Reaver? Let us know how it went.
There's a small tournament at my local shop this weekend, I think I'll play the Curses, I'm expecting a lot of Control/Midrange decks. Also D&T.
To answer a previous post, I like Helm just for the fact that it is a great topdeck.
About Plague Reaver, it caught my eye immediately when it came out, it is very appealing as a Dark Ritual threat. But Regisaure didn't make the cut, so I'm note sure. Give us a feedback.
Talking about creatures, in my previous zombie stompy shell I also tried Graveborn Muse as a body/draw engine.

Testing this:


4 Trinisphere
4 Karn, the Great Creator
2 Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth
1 Curse of Death's Hold
4 Ancient Tomb
1 Cruel Reality
4 Leyline of the Void
1 Overwhelming Splendor
4 Curse of Misfortunes
4 City of Traitors
4 Dark Ritual
4 Chrome Mox
4 Pelakka Predation
8 Swamp
2 Helm of Obedience
4 Chalice of the Void
1 Curse of Fool's Wisdom
2 Collective Brutality
2 Defense Grid

1 Ensnaring Bridge
1 Mycosynth Lattice
1 Liquimetal Coating
1 Helm of Obedience
4 Plague Engineer
1 Vault of Whispers
2 Opposition Agent
2 Plague Reaver
1 Tormod's Crypt
1 Sorcerous Spyglass



In my testing of lili, the ability to always use dark ritual to play a threat before its screwed by a lock piece was good. (like dark ritual chalice lily is much less awkward than dark ritual chalice curse) . But lili herself wasn't good enough compared to helm. Thats why I wanted to try defense grid, since its protection that lets you cast dark ritual as a follow-up play. In the past defense grid screwed up your black count and died to oko, but those are not relevant now so its worth testing again.

Plague Reaver has been pretty great in my testing for punking people who side out removal, and eating interaction (trophy/fow) that was meant for my curses. The downside of reaver is much more tolerable in a low creature deck, whereas my curve is quite high so the downside on regisaur hurts a lot. In a low to the ground aggro deck it would be the opposite.

Reeplcheep
03-26-2021, 12:10 PM
Got a 5-0 with basically the test list above. - 1 Trinisphere -1 Swamp for 2 Hagra’s mauling since 10 lockpiece artifacts are too many and I wanted to squeeze in more removal.

Matchups:
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/ExXpZxzUYAAXmfo?format=jpg&name=small


Brutality was decent, madnesses a fools wisdom which was nice.
Tormods crypt was nice and let karn immediately answer a loam and another time an uro.
Defense grid got a fow once or twice and made it awkward for them to cast brazen borrower so it seemed fine.
Plague reaver was a very effective sylvan library/gurmag answer and won a game vs lands where presumably they sided out maze.
Opposition agent won both postboard matches vs Grixis.
Never cast hagra’s mauling; jury is out.

Reeplcheep
03-29-2021, 09:57 AM
Went 4-3 in sat. challenge. Plague reaver continues to be great; opponents are ill prepared for it. Either it gets them dead (reach from brutality was surprisingly good) or it takes significant resources for them to deal with so I can win with my main plan.

Overall losses were to fair blue that were preventable in hindsight. The choices with this deck are very punishing and made with very little information, so I need to think more about my plays than go with the flow. More positively, I faced several of my poor matchups and none felt unwinnable. My good matchups (ant) felt like a breeze.

I think from a deck building POV I am satisfied where I have gotten the deck. From a results POV it has the best claim to being the top monoB deck in legacy. It also has the same or better results as all the tier2 chalice decks (bomberman/turbo muxus/eldrazi). With plague reaver I have gotten rid of the last “probably not legacy playable” slot in the 75 (Soul shatter) so the deck feels tight and solid.

Reeplcheep
03-29-2021, 12:33 PM
Challenge list: (https://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/archive/mtgo-standings/legacy-challenge-2021-03-28#reeplcheep_nd_place)

tillcor
03-29-2021, 03:41 PM
Challenge list: (https://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/archive/mtgo-standings/legacy-challenge-2021-03-28#reeplcheep_nd_place)

Thanks for the list. I'll try it as soon as possible.

Reeplcheep
03-29-2021, 07:42 PM
I just got a 5-0 with the same list. Deck feels really hot if you can dodge the faster delver variants and rainbow depths.

Reeplcheep
03-30-2021, 11:45 AM
Anyone have thoughts on the 3 ball/grid split?

T1 3 ball is why this deck has such a good combo mu and is more applicable to the meta as a whole. But it has a lot of friendly fire in chrome mox and dark ritual. 2nd copies don’t do anything unless you have karn.

Defense grid plays much better with dark ritual and gives more consistent nut draws (t1 grid, t2 rit wincon). Very good vs my most difficult matchups and stacks better than 3 ball. It can also attack without its ability stopping. But it’s completely useless in more matchups.

More than 9 hate artifacts between grid/ball/chalice leads to too many all hate piece draws imo.

Captain Hammer
04-04-2021, 09:09 PM
What do you guys think of the new 5-0 list?

Creature (19)
1 Juzam Djinn
2 Archfiend of Ifnir
4 Desecration Demon
4 Opposition Agent
4 Plague Engineer
4 Rotting Regisaur

Instant (8)
4 Dark Ritual
4 Eliminate

Artifact (14)
4 Chalice of the Void
4 Chrome Mox
1 Sword of Fire and Ice
4 Trinisphere
1 Umezawa's Jitte

Land (19)
4 Ancient Tomb
4 City of Traitors
9 Swamp
2 Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth

Sideboard (15)
2 Helm of Obedience
4 Leyline of the Void
1 Nature's Ruin
3 Necromentia
1 Pharika's Libation
2 Plague Spitter
1 To the Slaughter
1 Virtue's Ruin

Reeplcheep
04-05-2021, 08:27 AM
I think an aggressive approach could be good, but I don’t like some of the card choices here.

I think the djinn and archifiend are unplayable other than for nostalgia reasons. I’d rather play more “regisaurs”:
plague reaver
Egon, god of death
Ammit eternal
Hunted Nightmare

Are all considerations.

Alternatively

Blackbloom rogue
Kalitas, traitor of Ghet
Mardu strike leader
Kheru mind-eater

All have utility.


Also I really dislike helms in the sideboard. Helm is not to make leyline good vs gaak; you could win with anything if leyline sticks. Helm is to make leyline good vs goblins. You could board in the combo vs decks weak to the combo but not creatures or gy hate, but why not just play more cards directly for those matchups?

kombatkiwi
04-05-2021, 08:54 AM
I think an aggressive approach could be good, but I don’t like some of the card choices here.

I think the djinn and archifiend are unplayable other than for nostalgia reasons. I’d rather play more “regisaurs”:
plague reaver
Egon, god of death
Ammit eternal
Hunted Nightmare

Are all considerations.

Alternatively

Blackbloom rogue
Kalitas, traitor of Ghet
Mardu strike leader
Kheru mind-eater

All have utility.


Also I really dislike helms in the sideboard. Helm is not to make leyline good vs gaak; you could win with anything if leyline sticks. Helm is to make leyline good vs goblins. You could board in the combo vs decks weak to the combo but not creatures or gy hate, but why not just play more cards directly for those matchups?

I agree Juzam is probably a bit shit but at least the archfiend has cycling
Plague Reaver you don't want to play because you have too much other stuff to sac to it
Egon not great because you don't want to commit a ritual into it just to have it selfdestruct later
Maybe the Ammit or Hunted Nightmare are ok
I wouldn't play Kheru Mind Eater because opponent will just put stuff under it that already gets blocked by trini/chalice
Custodi Lich I think isn't too bad either if you are willing to consider 5drops but maybe it's too matchup-dependent (or you can play something like Court of Ambition that's not a creature but has the same monarch problem that's a bit risky to cast)
or a PW like ob nixilis or whatever

edit
Maybe Rankle is ok as well

Reeplcheep
04-05-2021, 08:57 AM
Went 3-4 in the Sunday challenge. Lots of ur delver and elves.

Lost to sneak and show because I played scared (playing discard instead of jamming curses).
Lost to elves because removed a dryad arbor instead of hand checking for decay with doom fall.

Brutality performed well.
Doom fall was undergoing testing as brutality 3; worse than brutality most of the time.
Plague reaver continued to punk people who didn’t expect it.
Better than 50% vs delver which is very encouraging. Lost easy matchups like S&S and elves due to poor play.
Defense grid seems like it made a difference for the above, I am liking the 2/3 split with trinisphere.

Still not sure if md helms are better or worse than Lilliana’s. Half the time they win the game half the time they are completely dead. Lily helps with black count but is harder to cast and also has that binary play pattern.

Reeplcheep
04-05-2021, 08:59 AM
It’s possible Liliana last hope could be a great fit for this deck. Both the plus (strix) and the minus synergize very well with your scary creatures

In my experience, the ability to play as a land is way better than cycling so I’d rather play blackbloom rogue.

chunderbucket
04-05-2021, 09:45 AM
What if we just jammed the Witch/Smog combo? You could go off with Trinisphere backup.

Reeplcheep
04-05-2021, 09:50 AM
In what situations do you think the witch/smog combo is better than helm/leyline? Or are you talking about the aggro version above?

chunderbucket
04-05-2021, 01:35 PM
-Combo is lower CMC
-The witch is a creature and still useful on its own (Leyline is okay when in one's opening hand but sucks as a topdeck. Helm is useless on its own). As a creature it also means it can't be spell-pierced, it can be caverned, etc.
-Witch doesn't suck in multiples
-Combo isn't vulnerable to needle, karn, null rod and other such nonsense

But ultimately you can still run both combos if you feel like it, like those wacky decks such as DETH and the like

Reeplcheep
04-06-2021, 10:12 AM
Those are good points and maybe it’s worth it for the aggro version.

Assuming that you start with leyline in play, it’s 4+1 mana instead of 3+2 (or 3 +3 with 3 ball in play). Being less black intensive is a major factor in a deck with so many sol lands.
You can play the combo pieces in either order so you are faster in case of a top deck and avoids discard.
The combo is vulnerable to the mentioned cards, but decay/plow/bolt/plague engineer/eliminate/Dismember/tabernacle/glacial chasm/Ensnaring bridge are more played.
The combo is a turn slower to actually win if you don’t have a sac outlet, which is quite relevant for combo decks and marit lage.
The combo is an artifact for karn (but not for chrome mox, to be fair)
If your leyline gets brazen borrowered in response to helm, you can just go off again later. With chain of smog you lose the chain, the witch (because it’s in your hand with a smog activation on the stack) and the rest of your hand too.
I made this deck partly because I think leyline is a great, 0 mana, hatepiece for the entire meta. In a deck with few instants is witch really that good?
Imo Un targeted discard is quite bad in prison, so I don’t like chain in fair games.
Helm is actually pretty good vs doomsday, mystic sanctuary, and most griselbrand decks used fairly. Or as a 4/4 with karn.

I think witch/smog is a decent combo, but it works better in a discard shell (pox perhaps) than a prison one.




As an aside, chrome mox is often the best card in the deck; it trades useless targets for acceleration. Should I experiment with gemstone caverns as mox #5?

SamuelRichards
04-07-2021, 07:48 AM
Great primer!

FTW
04-07-2021, 09:55 AM
Yeah, Witch/Smog does not fit here. You've already got a strong deck going with consistent results. No reason to dilute it with a less consistent aggro-combo when you're trying to play prison-combo.

People are overhyping an expensive One With Nothing that loses to Bolt. It should be strong in a dedicated combo shell, but you can't just cram those 8 slots into anything with swamps and expect to not get blown out.

As long as fair blue keeps playing cards like Uro, Snapcaster and Loam, G1 Leyline is free value. Not to mention all those times you make Reanimator, Dredge and Hogaak scoop on Turn 0. One of the best things going for HelmLine is that Leyline is good and also dodges a lot of hate (Decay, counters). Then you don't even need to run 4x of piece B because Karn can find it, so you can get away with fewer Helms main. Any other A+B combo would take more space, be more vulnerable to more interaction, and wouldn't give you some % of free T0 wins.

If you're finding Helms dead, maybe 1 copy should be a Liliana. As you've said before, you need a certain density of win conditions, but it doesn't have to be that heavy on Helm. With 1 Helm main and the 4 Karn you can still get it if you need it.

Maindeck 2 Grid / 3 3sphere is a gambit. You're gambling to see a lot of fair blue so you're mainboarding for them. If you don't see much blue, those Grids will be dead. But you're trying to improve a tough and popular matchup. Maybe in the Leagues it's not always worth it. But in the Challenges you must see more fair blue. Are Grids performing well in the Challenges?

Reeplcheep
04-07-2021, 10:08 AM
Yah I whiffle-waffle on lily vs helm. Both helm and lily don’t do anything about a third of the time (no leyline in first quarter of deck vs combo/big creature), and can be challenging to cast (4-5 mana vs BB). But they are also the best possible thing you can do a good portion of the time.

After the printing of opposition agent aggro blue is probably my worst common matchup. I think in the challenge grid definitely was a reason I went 2-1 vs delver/ninjas instead of 1-2 in matches.

Reeplcheep
04-09-2021, 02:53 PM
So far grid has felt very good in challenges. I feel like my ur winrate goes way up; its way easier to play around daze than trinisphere. Rug is harder because brutality doesn’t kill as much; but brutality is more generally relevant I feel than liliana’s triumph.

I might go up to 3 grids it has felt so good.

Von
04-10-2021, 11:38 PM
What do you guys think of the new 5-0 list?

Creature (19)
1 Juzam Djinn
2 Archfiend of Ifnir
4 Desecration Demon
4 Opposition Agent
4 Plague Engineer
4 Rotting Regisaur

Instant (8)
4 Dark Ritual
4 Eliminate

Artifact (14)
4 Chalice of the Void
4 Chrome Mox
1 Sword of Fire and Ice
4 Trinisphere
1 Umezawa's Jitte

Land (19)
4 Ancient Tomb
4 City of Traitors
9 Swamp
2 Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth

Sideboard (15)
2 Helm of Obedience
4 Leyline of the Void
1 Nature's Ruin
3 Necromentia
1 Pharika's Libation
2 Plague Spitter
1 To the Slaughter
1 Virtue's Ruin

Djinn is obv just there for fun. Not a fan of single ton sword or jitte, or singletons in general in a deck with 0 filtering. I'm guessing Archfiend is some kind of anti elves/gobbo tech?

Reeplcheep
04-14-2021, 08:31 AM
From Twitter: Helm is strong and steals lots of games. But it can't be pitched to mox and 25% of the time does nothing. Liliana TLH has her own problems, but I 5-0'd with a list based around her. It should lose to itself less at the cost of a lower ceiling. Not sure what approach is best.

Grid plus helm lists had the most nut draws but also lost to themselves a lot (little removal, high curve, poor black count). I tried a list focused around not losing to itself, ran into a bunch of mildly favourable matchups and got a 5-0.
List
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Ey7j4GgVEAMBxQ1?format=jpg&name=small

Matchups
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Ey7j1ehVIAUpLXb?format=jpg&name=small



Liliana

improves the floor of the deck by being a wincon you can play t1 before your chalice, making dark ritual always great t1 acceleration.
Also black for chrome mox.
Needs to be protected

Needs BB


Triumph
Collective brutality is a more flexible card than triumph, but I need hard creature removal to complement and protect Liliana.
Bonus 2 for 1 is nice.

Deck is very soft to marit lage so extra help there is nice


Hagra’s Mauling

Extra hard removal

A land drop when needed or dead.

Fast smoothing

Pitches to mox

Worse land than silent clearing

Worse spell than murderous rider.

Reeplcheep
04-15-2021, 09:25 AM
The various flex slot options that I can’t decide between: (remaining 53/60 core cards identical as per list above)

Most nut draws, but terrible mana:
2 Helm
3 brutality
2 grid

A bit of everything but has trouble vs big creatures.
2 helm
3 brutality
1 Lily
4th 3ball

The above with the best fair game and mana but slow and many dead cards vs creatureless decks:
3 triumph
2 mauling
2 Liliana

Go big with max smoothing, slow, poor black count and little removal:
2 Brutality
2 Castle Lochwain
2 Helm
4th 3ball

I have tried most of the above and they all feel great or awe full in different situations.

Reeplcheep
04-20-2021, 10:47 AM
Got another 5-0 with lilianas plus triumph and another with helm plus grid. Still not sure what is the best approach.

FTW
04-21-2021, 05:33 AM
This is tough to evaluate because it could be meta-dependant.

Defense Grid is going to be bad when you see a lot of nonblue decks and better against fair blue. The 4th 3ball will be better against unfair decks. Grid may be better in the Challenge than it is in random Leagues, but you also don't get as many opportunities to test that out.

Your Liliana package will do best against fair creature decks, especially ones with mana denial (D&T, Goblins, UR Delver) where you can benefit from the smoother mana. It'll be worse than Helm against creature-light decks and unfair decks. It probably reduces your variance but you need a lot more than the 5 games in a League to really see the difference. Many games you won't draw any of those 7 cards so you'd need more games to notice.

As you said, they're probably great or awful in different situations. Instead of just looking at your record in a league (random matchups), I would start tracking results against different archetypes across multiple leagues. Which tier decks is the Helm-Grid build >50% against? Which tier decks is the Lili build >50% against?

Reeplcheep
04-21-2021, 07:49 AM
This is tough to evaluate because it could be meta-dependant.

Defense Grid is going to be bad when you see a lot of nonblue decks and better against fair blue. The 4th 3ball will be better against unfair decks. Grid may be better in the Challenge than it is in random Leagues, but you also don't get as many opportunities to test that out.

Your Liliana package will do best against fair creature decks, especially ones with mana denial (D&T, Goblins, UR Delver) where you can benefit from the smoother mana. It'll be worse than Helm against creature-light decks and unfair decks. It probably reduces your variance but you need a lot more than the 5 games in a League to really see the difference. Many games you won't draw any of those 7 cards so you'd need more games to notice.

As you said, they're probably great or awful in different situations. Instead of just looking at your record in a league (random matchups), I would start tracking results against different archetypes across multiple leagues. Which tier decks is the Helm-Grid build >50% against? Which tier decks is the Lili build >50% against?

That probably requires at least 50 matches with each deck, but is the more structured approach. T1 grid through daze is my best possible start vs delver & fow combo, but t1 lily is great vs vial and control. The amount of times i don't have BB or they don't care about lily is probably about the same I don't have leyline in top quarter of my deck or I need to pitch something to mox.

FTW
04-21-2021, 11:39 AM
That probably requires at least 50 matches with each deck, but is the more structured approach. T1 grid through daze is my best possible start vs delver & fow combo, but t1 lily is great vs vial and control. The amount of times i don't have BB or they don't care about lily is probably about the same I don't have leyline in top quarter of my deck or I need to pitch something to mox.

Then it sounds pretty close between the two. You'd know best from your games.

To take it any steps further, you may need to just track a large number of games and check your results against the top decks. That's what AnziD and some other competitive streamers do. If you already know what the better matchups are for each build then maybe you just pick between the two based on the expected metagame at the time. The Legacy subreddit has metagame predictions for the weekly Challenges.

Reeplcheep
04-22-2021, 10:24 AM
Updated card discussion part of primer with the cards that were most made viable with the labe/oko bannings (plague reaver/Liliana’s triumph/Liliana the last hope/Defense grid etc.)

Reeplcheep
05-06-2021, 01:01 PM
https://twitter.com/reeplcheep/status/1390133994239320064

Got a 5-0 with the anti delver choices; mus and screenshots in twitter above. With oko gone and ur delver everywhere grid has performed well. However pelakka and grid didn’t play well together. So the list became 3 brutality 2 helm 2 grid 4 Hager’s mauling. Mauling ended up being ok in the list. BB is annoying but the list has a ton of removal and early powerful plays against blue decks.

hax0rm4n
05-06-2021, 01:14 PM
Any consideration for Baleful Mastery in the flex slot over the Hagra Mauling/Eliminate? Only 1 black pip and good vs Marit Lage/walkers at the cost of not being land in a pinch.

Reeplcheep
05-06-2021, 01:26 PM
Any consideration for Baleful Mastery in the flex slot over the Hagra Mauling/Eliminate? Only 1 black pip and good vs Marit Lage/walkers at the cost of not being land in a pinch.

Hagra is a land 60 % of the time... I would only replace it with silent clearing/ifnir dead lands/pelakka predation.

Baleful mastery compared to pure removal:

Brutality is way better vs control and combo, and eliminate is so much better if you don’t need to deal with jtms or lage. Soul Shatter is much better if you need to kill JTMS and lage reliably. It only seems good if you are seeing tons of Lage AND uro, but I’m not too scared of uro in my leyline plus chalice deck.

FistaCuffSmith
05-06-2021, 03:48 PM
Really interested in trying this deck. Any tips for playing it?

Reeplcheep
05-06-2021, 04:35 PM
Really interested in trying this deck. Any tips for playing it?

I have comments on the play with particular cards in the primer on the first page or in my costreams with ThrabenU. I also discuss particular matchups.

I guess some of the simplest advice:

The deck is filled with Hate cards for each matchup, but other cards will be dead. Get good at guessing the opponents archetype quickly and determining the best course of action. If you keep a hand with t1 rit 3 ball, but op leads on plains pass, you need to completely change your approach. Now you want to keep dark ritual since all that matters is resolving a payoff through D&Ts mana denial, don’t even cast your artifacts.

The deck is incredibly mana hungry. Blowing a city of traitors early is much worse than in red stompy.

The deck is built so that you don’t need all your curse targets. You should usually be ok to pitch them if you draw them.

Make sure you don’t need leyline for chrome mox before you put in in the blind.

Remember to play your tap land before your city of traitors.

A big strength of this deck is that you can side out all your lock artifacts when they are bad. Remember to do so.

Reeplcheep
05-10-2021, 03:29 PM
Went 4-3 in the challenge for 29/76. (https://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/archive/mtgo-standings/legacy-challenge-2021-05-09#reeplcheep_th_place)

I beat both of my hardest matchups (GW depths and RUG delver). In my losses I can point to several mistakes in the matches in hindsight. Overall I think the build is solid in the current meta and I just need to tighten my piloting. I bought the deck in paper ($$$ cities ugh) and hope to play webcam games soon.

tillcor
05-14-2021, 05:48 AM
Would you consider putting the 4th Trinisphere in the sideboard as a Karn target? I could imagine cutting the Vault since we have more mana available now with Hagra Mauling

Reeplcheep
05-14-2021, 08:53 AM
Would you consider putting the 4th Trinisphere in the sideboard as a Karn target? I could imagine cutting the Vault since we have more mana available now with Hagra Mauling

I want my karn targets to do things the maindeck doesn’t do to take advantage of the tutor aspect. I think I’d rather just cut the 2nd grid for 3 ball #4 MD if you want more 3 balls...

Additionally you often aren’t casting your karn target until t3, which is pretty late for trinisphere.

Reeplcheep
05-14-2021, 08:59 AM
Shelled out for my first paper legacy deck. https://pbs.twimg.com/media/E1WBu9wVkAMrFho?format=jpg&name=small

H
05-14-2021, 09:30 AM
Nice! WB Grids and Bridge hurt my soul a little bit, but at least they don't have terrible art.

The list of cards I am missing to make this in paper are rather embarrassing cards (besides the Opposition Agents). Just haven't been playing enough to order things from the newer sets right now.

Reeplcheep
05-14-2021, 10:09 AM
Nice! WB Grids and Bridge hurt my soul a little bit, but at least they don't have terrible art.

The list of cards I am missing to make this in paper are rather embarrassing cards (besides the Opposition Agents). Just haven't been playing enough to order things from the newer sets right now.

My art choices are a bit weird because I wanted to prioritize purchasing from locals or content creators (you can see mtgtheepicstorms views on karn on the mox)

I’ll probably pimp it out a bit once I recover from realizing I spent over 1000$ on 4 pieces of cardboard. I love the masterpiece trinisphere.

H
05-14-2021, 01:29 PM
My art choices are a bit weird because I wanted to prioritize purchasing from locals or content creators (you can see mtgtheepicstorms views on karn on the mox)

I’ll probably pimp it out a bit once I recover from realizing I spent over 1000$ on 4 pieces of cardboard. I love the masterpiece trinisphere.

Yeah, the prices are frightening nowadays. If I didn't have what is now the expensive stuff from long ago, I'd certainly be out.

But I agree, the Masterpieces are some really fantastic art, but the boarder bothers me. I like it, I also hate it and I also hate that I like it. I am the same way on foils. Lately though I just can't justify the expenditure on foils though.

But Opposition Agents are likely a card that will see more play going forward, so eventually I'll get them. The rest of the things I'd need probably total 5 dollars, so I'm certainly not worried there.

tillcor
05-14-2021, 05:16 PM
Shelled out for my first paper legacy deck. https://pbs.twimg.com/media/E1WBu9wVkAMrFho?format=jpg&name=small


:cool::cool::cool::cool::cool: :4::b:


Great!!! Enjoy!!!


Love the Chrome Mox signature :laugh: a real "cri du cśur"

Fox
05-14-2021, 05:23 PM
Shelled out for my first paper legacy deck. https://pbs.twimg.com/media/E1WBu9wVkAMrFho?format=jpg&name=small
You're a terrible person for putting this together; also congratulations! :cool:

Now you'll need to start your maybe-box. Begin with Yixlid Jailer

Reeplcheep
05-17-2021, 07:04 AM
I was 2nd in the challenge for a bit, but the wheels fell off the bus and I didn't make top 8. I was experimenting with trimming top end for more lands, seems decent in a tempo metagame.

May 16 Challenge.
Moon Stompy WW
UW Humans WW
Elves WW
Eldrazipost WW
Snowko 2 Electric Boogaloo WLW
GW Depths LL
BUGR Control LL

Deck has legs.

Reeplcheep
05-17-2021, 04:30 PM
List (https://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/archive/mtgo-standings/legacy-challenge-2021-05-17#reeplcheep_th_place)

Reeplcheep
05-21-2021, 11:19 AM
In the list above I was hedging hard for delver but didn’t play it once. I was experimenting cutting fools wisdom for lands but there have been a few situations where I wished I had the lifegain, sylvan answer, or additional threat. Conversely, it’s hard to identify where the grids or lands were game changing. One particular game in leagues vs delver the lack of it allowed my opponent to dig to enough bolts to burn me out.

I am mostly losing to forces and wasteland, and daze and enchantment hateare also problematic but I see them less.

Perhaps I should change The flexes from 4 Hagra 3 brutality 2 grid 9th swamp to 4 hagra 2 brutality 2 pelakka 4th 3ball 1 fools wisdom.

Better B count, more lands, more threats, more generically strong cards but slower and weaker to daze.

Edit: if I cut grids I would go back up to 4 3ball to help the lack of t1 plays.

FTW
05-21-2021, 02:55 PM
4x Grief? It's black Stompy's TKS that can also Unmask opponent when you need to stop combo or force through a lock piece.

T1 Unmask + Chalice @ 1/3ball must crush Delver. If you're OTD they can't even Daze or Pierce the Unmask, only Force it. If it resolves you know if the coast is clear for Chalice/Sphere instead of having to trade them with counters.

Looking at your list, you cut all the answers to Marit Lage so no wonder you got crushed by GW Depths. Despite all those adjustments for Delver it's still a bad matchup?

Reeplcheep
05-21-2021, 03:42 PM
4x Grief? It's black Stompy's TKS that can also Unmask opponent when you need to stop combo or force through a lock piece.

T1 Unmask + Chalice @ 1/3ball must crush Delver. If you're OTD they can't even Daze or Pierce the Unmask, only Force it. If it resolves you know if the coast is clear for Chalice/Sphere instead of having to trade them with counters.

Looking at your list, you cut all the answers to Marit Lage so no wonder you got crushed by GW Depths. Despite all those adjustments for Delver it's still a bad matchup?

It’s actually the maverick parts of gw depths plus mox diamond that beat me this time (t1 Teeg, t2 knight etc). I wasn’t seeing depths much and plague reaver has been outstanding at cheesing people who side out removal, so I wasn’t running sac effects.

When I tried unmask it was pretty crappy in this deck. However the better hard cast mode is definitely very interesting in my deck, which always wants mana sinks. I can’t abuse it with reanimate easily. Additionally itwill definitely stretch my black count and could be too much card disadvantage. But this deck really wants more pitch cards and mana sinks: it could very well be better than brutality.


They did improve delver to even, but were pretty crappy in other matchup, and wasn’t always better as my example was trying to show. Is 50% delver 55% everything else a better or worse matchup spread than 45% delver 65 % everything else?

Reeplcheep
05-25-2021, 11:30 AM
4x Grief? It's black Stompy's TKS that can also Unmask opponent when you need to stop combo or force through a lock piece.

T1 Unmask + Chalice @ 1/3ball must crush Delver. If you're OTD they can't even Daze or Pierce the Unmask, only Force it.

On the grief idea I do think it has promise on further reflection. Being able to pitch extra curses to chrome mox is strong in this deck. I do think you would have to pay retail a lot of the time but that might be fine. You also would need to max out on black cards to support 8 pitch cards.

———————
Lots of media attention last week, I guess due to the top 16.

Deck guide by rich Cali (questionable sideboard guide) (https://strategy.channelfireball.com/all-strategy/home/legacy-mono-black-curses-deck-guide/)

4-1 on much abrew by SPBKASO (quite a few painful punts tho) (https://t.co/xKbIDfpgdK)

Shoutouts on the everyday eternal and eternal glory podcast.

————————

Went 4-3 in the challenge. Resurgence of rug and bug midrange was annoying to deal with since it’s hard to know what to play around. I got burnt out from 11 after stabilizing once, another was playing daze with taiga and basics

Reeplcheep
05-28-2021, 05:02 PM
Unless an oko level planeswalker is printed again, this is a 4 of in our flex removal slot.

Marit lage and delver are the scariest threats for this deck. It deals with both nicely.

https://twitter.com/NumotTheNummy/status/1398362138150805512/photo/1

4 chalice, 4 3ball, 4 this, 4 hagra mauling is a insane amount of delver hate that should bring that matchup up to even.

edit: the split second edict i mean

Reeplcheep
06-03-2021, 10:56 AM
There has been a lot of talk of flex slots to beat the meta. I think I will summarize everything so I can think about it/discuss it more clearly.

Curses core:

4 Chalice
3 Trinisphere
4 Leyline of the Void

If you aren’t playing these cards, why are you playing black stompy?

4 Ancient Tomb
4 City of Traitors
8 Swamp
2 Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth
4 Chrome mox
4 Dark Ritual

Standard stompy manabase.

4 Karn, the Great Creator
2 Helm of Obedience
4 Curse of Misfortunes
1 Curse of Death’s Hold
1 Cruel Reality
1 Overwhelming Splendor

Expensive win the game cards that make curses curses.

That leaves 10 flex cards to adjust to the meta.

My Oko era flex:

4 Pelakka Predation
4 Eliminate
1 Trinisphere
1 Curse of Fools Wisdom

Maximized answers to oko, while having smoothing and outs vs klothys.

Post banning flex:

3 Brutality
2 Defense Grid
4 Hagra’s Mauling
1 Curse of Fools Wisdom

Flexible but weak cards with a bit of a focus on delver. With further play grid seemed very good vs delver.

Post MH2 flex? I expect monkey delver to be insane, with endurance elves and grief gaak to be the next best decks.

4 Sudden Edict
4 Hagra’s Mauling
2 Defense Grid

So the above is the most hateful deck I could come up vs delver. Uncounterable removal seems great at punishing them for letting our lock pieces resolve, and makes it easier to interact on t1 without getting dazed. Cut fools wisdom to lower curve, and Hagra’s is answers to follow up creatures of wasteland.

Thoughts? Does edict make grid unnecessary? Is edict not actually that good?

————
TheEnduringIdealist is actually streaming this deck semi-regularly on Twitch. Check him out if you want to see more of the deck.

FTW
06-06-2021, 04:26 PM
Forgot to reply to this earlier.

Congrats on 12th!

What decks did you face? What were your losses? How did the flex slots chosen line up against the blue-heavy meta? Was Edict good against them or did they just sac extra X/1s? Did you ever wish Edict was Collective Brutality?

Reeplcheep
06-07-2021, 11:24 AM
List from the challenge is here: (https://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/archive/mtgo-standings/legacy-challenge-2021-06-06#reeplcheep_th_place). It is exactly what I said above.

————
Mini TR:

M1: Affinity WLW
Breakout deck of the event. Although strong vs blue, they have no answers to a t1 curse (g1) or t1 karn (g3).

M2: UR Delver LL
Undazeable removal is nice but I don’t think I took advantage of it enough to protect my sol lands. My mana sequencing needs to be updated.

M3: UW Mentor LWW
Usually this is where I would bemoan the lack of brutality. But Sudden Edict was absolute gas, killing mentors before they could make tokens 2 different times.

M4: UR Delver LL
Cutting fools wisdom lost me g2. I had locked them out but without lifegain they had enough time to cantrip for burn.

M5: RUG Delver WLW.
Drew oodles of removal, full 4 edicts felt great. I think g3 was a plague reaver kill.

M6: GWr Depths WW
Sudden edict over brutality turns this matchup from unwinnable to decent. TBF triumph would have been just as good here, but triumph is less justifiable in other matchups.

M7: Goblins WW
Opponent had very fast lackey -> muxus hands, but t2 curse otp and t1 curse OTD Easily stabilize vs the 8 goblins he dumps on the battlefield.

Overall list felt sweet. Edicts makes depths a lot better and delver a decent bit better, which are my worst matchups. I am still consistently beating everything else. Hagra’s mauling was quite good in all three modes vs delver compared to predation. In other testing it only felt worse than brutality vs GSZ decks, burn, or storm, which are generally good matchups. All the broken new cards have mostly replaced y. Pyro, so I haven’t missed brutality there. think I will cut a grid to fit the fools wisdom back in; the lifegain could have got me a top 8 instead of out on breakers.

In leagues I got a sweet kill on griselbrand when they gave me priority before drawing. The targeting downside vs triumph did come up once (vs bug with leovold)
————
Well done tomjab on the 5-0 last week (https://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/archive/mtgo-standings/legacy-league-2021-06-05#tomjab_-)

FTW
06-07-2021, 11:34 AM
M2: UR Delver LL
Undazeable removal is nice but I don’t think I took advantage of it enough to protect my sol lands. My mana sequencing needs to be updated.


How have you been sequencing that loses to Daze?



M3: UW Mentor LWW
Usually this is where I would bemoan the lack of brutality. But Sudden Edict was absolute gas, killing mentors before they could make tokens 2 different times.


Sounds like a critical error from the opponent, casting a naked Mentor without making tokens. Was this because Chalice or 3Sphere stopped them from casting more spells that turn? Overeager Mentor windmill slam on 3 mana? Or were they holding up spells to make tokens at instant speed and burned by split second? Edict should fail miserably vs Mentor normally.



M4: UR Delver LL
Cutting fools wisdom lost me g2. I had locked them out but without lifegain they had enough time to cantrip for burn.


Should be easy to cut either 1 Grid or 1 Edict to make room. Given the popularity of UR Delver and Uro decks in this week's Challenges, do you think you need Grid more than the 4th Edict? Does the Depths match get much worse with only 3 Edicts?




M7: Goblins WW
Opponent had very fast lackey -> muxus hands, but t2 curse otp and t1 curse OTD Easily stabilize vs the 8 goblins he dumps on the battlefield.


Being able to stabilize against T2 Muxus just shows how strong Dark Ritual is in your deck, for anyone questioning playing Ritual in a Chalice deck.

Reeplcheep
06-07-2021, 11:47 AM
How have you been sequencing that loses to Daze?

Not to daze, to wasteland. I think I autoplayed tomb plus mox to kill delver like it was a normal 2 cmc removal (exposing myself to wasteland) instead of playing swamp plus mox.

Edit: I had a curse and city in hand, so it was not completely unreasonable to go faster in a vacuum but probably still bad.



Sounds like a critical error from the opponent, casting a naked Mentor without being able to make tokens. Was this because Chalice or 3Sphere stopped them from casting more spells that turn? Overeager Mentor windmill slam on 3 mana? Or were they holding up spells to make tokens at instant speed and burned by split second? Edict should fail miserably vs Mentor normally.

Chalice was in play, and they had used a ancestral knowledge 2 turns previously to hit land drops. They had 5 lands but one was an I cracked fetch. It’s likely the only castable cards less than 3 cmc were countermagic. Anyways the fact it makes their sequencing awkward is still an advantage even if they play around it.



Should be easy to cut either 1 Grid or 1 Edict to make room. Given the popularity of UR Delver and Uro decks in this week's Challenges, do you think you need Grid more than the 4th Edict? Does the Depths match get much worse with only 3 Edicts?
I’m not sure. All things being equal I prefer a card that pitches to mox, top decks better, and that I don’t need to side out vs non-blue. Having 2 edicts in my hand g1 made it basically impossible to lose vs depths, but that deck doesn’t see a ton of play anymore. However grid is easier to play on t1 and gives you more nut hands.



Being able to stabilize against T2 Muxus just shows how strong Dark Ritual is in your deck, for anyone questioning playing Ritual in a Chalice deck.

Sol lands plus dark ritual is a drug I just can’t quit. And part of the reason I have such better non-blue control/midrange matchups than most other stompy decks.

Reeplcheep
06-08-2021, 01:09 PM
With how absurd Urza’s saga is in non-colour intensive decks, should I be playing it?

Pros:
Uncounterable threats help a ton vs the pile of forces deck.
Large ground blockers.
I am running a minimum of 13 artifacts plus 4 karn so the tokens will usually be of a decent size.
I could easily run 3 vault of whispers if I wanted to.
It could justify a mox opal which I have considered in the past as chrome mox #5
Hagra’s mauling allows me to support more colourless lands than normal.
Increases threat density.

Cons:
I don’t have as many artifacts as affinity
Losing a land is a very large cost in a high curve deck.
Huge anti-synergy with city of Traitors.
It will increase me susceptibility to wasteland and possibly null rod/Ouphe/force of Vigor.

If I do play it what role is it serving and what card does it replace?
Is it a fragile land with massive upside (city traitors)? Is it a utility land (urborg)? Is it a fuck counter spells card (grid)? Is it a “Hope the opponent sided out plow” card (reaver)?

FTW
06-08-2021, 02:57 PM
I think Saga is not worth it.

1) You don't have any good targets to tutor, maybe a Mox. If you sacrifice a land to tutor for Mox Opal in a monoblack deck, this is worse than just playing Swamp.
2) You have much lower artifact count than the decks abusing it, so the creatures might only be 3/3s. Since you're a creatureless deck whose win condition isn't combat damage, making 3/3s doesn't necessarily help you win, and it turns on their dead removal.
3) It taps for 1 instead of B or 2
4) It's not a permanent mana source

The last 2 are the main reasons not to play it just for marginal value. Near the start of the development, there was more discussion about optimizing the manabase. I remember you saying some cards were hard to support due to lack of black mana or vulnerability to manabase attacks. You need both acceleration and consistent black mana. Land drops that don't tap for 2 or B slow down the main plan too much. Running Vault of Whispers over Swamp would also impair your mana for the main stompy plan.

I think the Saga decks are going to force people to run a lot of artifact hate. Decks that aren't going completely degenerate with artifacts will get punished for running random artifact lands. For example, if UR Delver uses Meltdown now instead of Abrade to answer Chalice @ 1, Vault of Whispers means you're just sacrificing a land for no reason.

Reeplcheep
06-08-2021, 03:03 PM
Good points overall. Losing to the fow fow library is frustrating but less so than losing to your own manabase.

Reeplcheep
06-09-2021, 12:22 PM
Getting a mox opal might be worse than a swamp, but getting an uncounterable meekstone vs delver...

Reeplcheep
06-12-2021, 11:39 PM
Played a list with 4 edict, 0 saga, 1 fools wisdom as above (cutting grid). Wnet 4-2 for 9/64 in challenge today.
Mini TR:
9th on breakers in today's challenge. Some of the wins feel dominant and the losses feel close; curses feels pretty good. Sudden edict is sweet.
D&T WW
GWr Depths WW
$T4X LWW
UR Delver WLL
Super-Sweet Madness brew LL
Bant Control WW

Edit:List posted. (https://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/archive/mtgo-standings/legacy-challenge-2021-06-13#reeplcheep_th_place)
As discussed above, ended up cutting 2nd grid for fools wisdom as it delver was getting hated out. Although powerful, I did not end up trying Urza’s saga due to the manabase issues it might cause.

Reeplcheep
06-17-2021, 03:40 PM
phil playing curses (https://t.co/uaMoGFdCNA?amp=1)

Not the best showing as splendor stuck to him like glue. Nothing seemed horrible but he just couldn’t quite beat delver. I’m not totally sure what I could add to improve the matchup however. Since I don’t have many bad cards md except karn.

More brutalities? Delver is running a bunch of X/1s, perhaps Desert or Blast Zone.
Could be good as a maze of Ith-esque land that can also tap for mana? Sideboard Spinning Darkness? Liliana, the last hope?

FTW
06-17-2021, 05:13 PM
Congrats on 9th. You keep just barely missing Top 8, but overall doing well.

Vs Delver that's a tough one. You already have 4x Sudden Edict main. I don't think any other 1-for-1 will be better vs Delver, so now we are talking about potential 2-for-1s to recover from behind. Plague Engineer or Night of Souls' Betrayal attack their X/1s. Desert or Liliana, the Last Hope could represent the same thing, but this build already has 4x Engineer in the SB. How much space is there? Opp Agent also seems good as a 2-for-1, and you already have 3 of those too. Those are easier to cast early than Lili. So it's tough.

I think Phil misplayed a bit because he doesn't have your experience with the deck.

R1G1 - Big punt not imprinting Splendor on Mox. He wanted BB short-term, but I think he didn't see the bigger picture. Wasting a Dark Ritual to cast a 3-drop, when the hand can already make 3 mana on turn 1, ignores the long game plan of needing to cast even bigger spells. The deck is low on BB requirements. Eventually you will draw a 2nd black source (or can Ritual for it), but you will never be able to use that Splendor or put it back in the library, so the opening hand is already 6 cards. He had the option to play it as a 6-card hand (imprinting dead card on Mox) or a 5-card hand (imprinting usable card on Mox) and went for the 5-card hand, which fails to punish opponent for the 2-for-1 T0 Force on only business.

I think Phil wins that game by playing T1 White Mox, keeping Dark Ritual in hand to hardcast future business (like that Cruel Reality when a 3rd land is drawn). That allows him to play with -1 card (imprint already dead card) instead of -3 cards (2 dead cards in hand + useful card imprinted on Mox). +2 hand size is a big difference. Ritual in hand to cast that Cruel Reality off Hagra Mauling might have won the game (Grid protection active).

How do you SB vs Delver? He boarded:
-4 Karn, -3 3sphere, +4 Engineer + 2 Reaver +1 Helm

That doesn't look right to me. 0-1 Helm feels more correct than 3. It's the worst wincon in this match and dead in multiples. 3sphere is also such a beating against Delver, even OTD. Their deck engine is superior mana utilization. Resolving 3sphere is like resolving 5 Time Walks.

In G2 I think he got punished by running too many Helms and drawing 2. 1st Karn is much better than 2nd Helm, even if Karn just tutors for Helm and then immediately dies. Karn for Bridge (then dying to Delver) is much better than whatever those Helms did. I think he also lost by prematurely committing mana sources to the board. He played Mauling as a land and imprinted Reaver on Mox to try to ramp to 5 for Curse, but this is going -2 black cards just to try to resolve another 1. I think that was the wrong play. It was not yet clear if Mauling or Reaver would be useful or if he could guarantee resolving Curse, so why force a decision whether they should be mana or business? Opponent did nothing to force a decision yet. Sure Curse represents GG, but accelerating out Curse loses to Wasteland or Daze/FoW/FoN+3 mana. Delver has too many answers. Meanwhile Phil was already ahead on board. He was not forced to jam. Opponent was forced to stabilize. The way he loses his advantage is by Hymning himself to overcommit to 1 other card and then not being able to resolve that card. With Delver running 13-14 answers, that's not a gamble I would take. Keep the 2 cards in hand for now in case they are useful later. Casting Curse later could still win the game, opponent has no clock yet, but Hymning yourself into missing Curse could absolutely lose you the game.

Basically he started with a lead but then hemorrhaged cards from decisions (-1 Mauling as land not used to cast anything important, -1 Reaver imprinted on Mox without casting anything important, -1 useless Helm cast, -1 dead Helm in hand). -4 hand size for no reason. Not boarding in Helms and not overcommitting to Curse would give +4 cards in hand!! With a 0-mana Opportunity he probably doesn't lose that advantage. Spell-side of Mauling kills Delver, Karn over Helm gets Bridge and absorbs damage, etc. In both games he basically had more dead cards than he needed to, then ended up running out of resources. A different set of decisions leaves him with a higher number of business spells to interact and thus a bigger fighting chance.

How would you have played those matches?

I don't know how you're sequencing vs Delver, but I think more wins could be unlocked by sequencing decisions not just deck composition. Especially against blue decks, expect disruption. Hemorrhage as few cards as possible to have the most tools available to fight them. The fewer business cards you cast, the easier they can stop you. Play to increase the number of things you are casting so they are less likely to have enough answers.

Reeplcheep
06-18-2021, 08:24 AM
Thanks for the great comments.

Yes I agree that R1G1 imprinting dark ritual hurt quite a bit and he might have been able to resolve cruel reality.

Especially on the play I would keep Trinisphere. I usually do board out karn though as the most expensive wincon. I will usually trim a bit on dark ritual since they will force the first thing anyways.

I would usually +1 helm +1 Bridge +4 PE +vault -4 karn -1 Splendor -2 dark ritual

I Agree he could have played more patiently. Karn is just so slow, when you are cluttered with 5 drops karn is very bad.

Liliana the last hope is definitely a consideration. With the success of Hagra’s mauling I could also play Easy Prey or death pulse as 1 for 1 removal that has the upside of smoothing.

FTW
06-18-2021, 12:52 PM
Interesting. How do you find boarding out Karn performs vs Delver? How is Karn vs them in Game 1?

How does Helm perform vs Delver postboard? What happens when you draw 2 Helms?

Karn is slow yes, and they tax your mana. I just wonder if Helm is even slower and more conditional. It's less about if Karn is good vs Delver than if Helms 2 & 3 are worse. Helm is usually a textless card. Even when you have Leyline, the 2nd Helm is just a 4-mana shield vs counterspells. Blue decks will punish you for having textless cards.

If you're facing beatdown from a Delver/DRC and hit 4 mana, you can cast Karn and -2 to get Bridge. Delver/DRC/Bolt will then kill Karn, but Karn just gained you 3 life and then next turn you cast Bridge to stabilize. That's a lot better at stabilizing than Helm for the same mana cost.

If you're in a position where Helm could win, Karn over Helm slows you down 1 turn but also absorbs damage. Cast Karn and -2 to get Helm. Either they kill Karn (saving you 3 damage) or you still have Karn next turn (e.g. to get mana or Bridge), but either way you have Helm. It's a bit slower for the Helm combo kill, but it also gives you the option to get Bridge if you're facing that much pressure.

If you're not facing immediate pressure but don't have Leyline out (not a priority to mulligan into vs Delver), Karn lets you find other win conditions: Coating or Lattice. Helm would just be a dead card here.

To me it looks like having Helm over Karn is only faster in magical Christmasland where you have everything set up and just need to win 1 turn sooner, but in the other scenarios Karn does more than Helm would. Gambling for the perfect combo setup makes sense vs nonblue decks. But vs blue decks (in general, piloting any deck) I think you have to play expecting disruption and try to maximize the different lines you can take instead of playing Roulette magic of slamming the thing and hoping they don't have the answer. Against a deck with 6x Force 4x Daze and other possible free cards too, they probably have the answer.

Another option could be to board out both Karn and extra Helms (cut down to 1) for 3-mana black creatures, Vault, and Bridge. It's going a bit light on wincons, but the creatures make up for that.

Reeplcheep
06-18-2021, 02:08 PM
The reason for cutting karns is that they are secretly the most expensive wincon, and is much worse if behind on board. If they force a karn target and then kill him they just traded 2 cards for 7-10 mana instead of 4 mana. Karn is a more flexible card which is why it is md. But against delver specifically spending 4 mana to get the perfect card is silly if they will just fon it always. Helm makes karn much better than otherwise but still not great. (see all the moon prison decks have cut him since they can’t keep the board control.

Helm into curse demands 2 answers whereas karn into helm only demands one and the curse in hand will likely be too slow. I think I am justified in disliking karn from a tempo POV, but I could bring in additional creatures instead of the helms. I like having an instant win button to ignore grindy sb cards like uro/library/Klothys or just getting bolted out.

Alternatively I could just accept this is the best the deck will be vs delver (I have beaten a decent amount of the slower versions in challenges) and play a bunch of sagas to dunk blue control.

FTW
06-18-2021, 02:54 PM
The reason for cutting karns is that they are secretly the most expensive wincon, and is much worse if behind on board. If they force a karn target and then kill him they just traded 2 cards for 7-10 mana instead of 4 mana. Karn is a more flexible card which is why it is md. But against delver specifically spending 4 mana to get the perfect card is silly if they will just fon it always. Helm makes karn much better than otherwise but still not great. (see all the moon prison decks have cut him since they can’t keep the board control.

Yeah, that makes sense. It's basically Mastermind's Acquisition + gain 3 life (if they don't kill Karn immediately you -2 again for a 2nd card). It's an expensive line, but less conditional than Helm. I'm not saying Karn is great. Helm just seems worse. Moon has neither postboard.


Helm into curse demands 2 answers whereas karn into helm only demands one and the curse in hand will likely be too slow. I think I am justified in disliking karn from a tempo POV, but I could bring in additional creatures instead of the helms. I like having an instant win button to ignore grindy sb cards like uro/library/Klothys or just getting bolted out.

Helm into Curse demands 1 answer the 60%+ of the time you just have Helm and no T0 Leyline.

If you cast Leyline into Helm into Curse, that demands two answers but is as slow as Karn into Karn-target into Curse (without the benefit of +3 life).

Helm doesn't demand an answer on its own. Vs Delver it's textless and requires Leyline to unlock it. Most of the time you are not prioritizing mulligan to Leyline vs Delver, and a topdecked Leyline is usually better imprinted on Mox than cast unless you also draw Helm, so getting Leyline out opposes the play patterns you would normally take against Delver (prioritize hand with T1 resistor over T0 Leyline, develop black mana, keep as much business as possible). If you imprint another black card over Leyline, you have 1 fewer threat for them to answer. If you're forced to use Mauling as a land to curve out Leyline, you have 1 less interaction for the Delver killing you. Even if you have T0 Leyline, you got tempo but still have -1 hand size. Either way, there's 1 fewer thing they had to answer. It's still a 2-card combo that requires 1 answer for the 2 cards. They can also embarass you on tempo with Petty Theft/FoV on Leyline, making the mana on Helm a waste.

Blue tempo decks do best against decks with dead cards and A+B combos, because instead of having to answer everything they only have to answer certain things. The worst thing for the FoW player to see 30x Tarmogoyf because there are no cracks for them to attack. The power level is uniform and they can't possibly answer everything. The best thing for the FoW player is a deck that has dead draws, Hymns itself, and needs certain cards to unlock other cards, because it makes it easier for their disruption to attack the cracks and tear things apart. From what I saw in the video, some of it was bad luck, but decisions also played into having fewer relevant cards to cast and that meant the blue deck had to answer much fewer things, which is exactly where the blue deck wants to be.

Sure, there is the possibility you had T0 Leyline and they don't have answers for both Helm and Curse and you win. But that seems Christmaslandy. What about the times you have Helms but no Leyline? Or have to lose tempo to cast Leyline to enable Helm? Or had 1 less other thing for them to answer because you had that Leyline, so they end up having answers for both Helm and Curse?

Maybe the line here is just to board out the entire Helm combo and board in all the creatures.
+4 Plague Engineer, +3 Opposition Agent, +1 Bridge, +1 Vault, +1 Spyglass, -4 Karn, -4 Leyline, -2 Helm

This way you're replacing expensive threats with cheaper threats, and each card demands an answer instead of them needing 1 answer after 2 plays. Overloading their answers is what beats Delver.


Alternatively I could just accept this is the best the deck will be vs delver (I have beaten a decent amount of the slower versions in challenges) and play a bunch of sagas to dunk blue control.

To some extent, yeah. The bigger issue is Monkey Delver is broken, so maybe you just play to beat all the other decks that try to beat it (and beat the combo decks trying to beat Bant).

Pelpopayo
06-21-2021, 02:02 PM
Yeah, that makes sense. It's basically Mastermind's Acquisition + gain 3 life (if they don't kill Karn immediately you -2 again for a 2nd card). It's an expensive line, but less conditional than Helm. I'm not saying Karn is great. Helm just seems worse. Moon has neither postboard.



Helm into Curse demands 1 answer the 60%+ of the time you just have Helm and no T0 Leyline.

If you cast Leyline into Helm into Curse, that demands two answers but is as slow as Karn into Karn-target into Curse (without the benefit of +3 life).

Helm doesn't demand an answer on its own. Vs Delver it's textless and requires Leyline to unlock it. Most of the time you are not prioritizing mulligan to Leyline vs Delver, and a topdecked Leyline is usually better imprinted on Mox than cast unless you also draw Helm, so getting Leyline out opposes the play patterns you would normally take against Delver (prioritize hand with T1 resistor over T0 Leyline, develop black mana, keep as much business as possible). If you imprint another black card over Leyline, you have 1 fewer threat for them to answer. If you're forced to use Mauling as a land to curve out Leyline, you have 1 less interaction for the Delver killing you. Even if you have T0 Leyline, you got tempo but still have -1 hand size. Either way, there's 1 fewer thing they had to answer. It's still a 2-card combo that requires 1 answer for the 2 cards. They can also embarass you on tempo with Petty Theft/FoV on Leyline, making the mana on Helm a waste.

Blue tempo decks do best against decks with dead cards and A+B combos, because instead of having to answer everything they only have to answer certain things. The worst thing for the FoW player to see 30x Tarmogoyf because there are no cracks for them to attack. The power level is uniform and they can't possibly answer everything. The best thing for the FoW player is a deck that has dead draws, Hymns itself, and needs certain cards to unlock other cards, because it makes it easier for their disruption to attack the cracks and tear things apart. From what I saw in the video, some of it was bad luck, but decisions also played into having fewer relevant cards to cast and that meant the blue deck had to answer much fewer things, which is exactly where the blue deck wants to be.

Sure, there is the possibility you had T0 Leyline and they don't have answers for both Helm and Curse and you win. But that seems Christmaslandy. What about the times you have Helms but no Leyline? Or have to lose tempo to cast Leyline to enable Helm? Or had 1 less other thing for them to answer because you had that Leyline, so they end up having answers for both Helm and Curse?

Maybe the line here is just to board out the entire Helm combo and board in all the creatures.
+4 Plague Engineer, +3 Opposition Agent, +1 Bridge, +1 Vault, +1 Spyglass, -4 Karn, -4 Leyline, -2 Helm

This way you're replacing expensive threats with cheaper threats, and each card demands an answer instead of them needing 1 answer after 2 plays. Overloading their answers is what beats Delver.



To some extent, yeah. The bigger issue is Monkey Delver is broken, so maybe you just play to beat all the other decks that try to beat it (and beat the combo decks trying to beat Bant).

Hi guys, I enjoy a lot playing this deck. What about ratchet bomb in the sideboard to deal with monkey delver era?

Reeplcheep
06-21-2021, 02:27 PM
The “MBC” approach vs delver could be the best. In the oko era I felt that was not an option since they would all have sideboard grind cards like library/Klothys/uro that would beat you if you tried to grind too much. But perhaps I should reevaluate as expressive iteration is not nearly as scary.



Hi guys, I enjoy a lot playing this deck. What about ratchet bomb in the sideboard to deal with monkey delver era?

Glad to hear it! Ratchet bomb or walking ballista is definitely a consideration. You only have so many slots for a karn target against creature decks however. In what situations do you think it is better than ensnaring bridge, sideboard helm, or sorcerous spyglass? Those are the targets it is competing for slots with.

Pelpopayo
06-21-2021, 03:48 PM
The “MBC” approach vs could be the best. In the oko /)I felt that was not an option since they would all have sideboard grind cards like library/Klothys/uro that would beat you if you tried to grind too much. But perhaps I should reevaluate as expressive iteration is not nearly as scary.




Glad to hear it! Ratchet bomb or walking ballista is definitely a consideration. You only have so many slots for a karn target against creature decks however. In what situations do you think it is better than ensnaring bridge, sideboard helm, or sorcerous spyglass? Those are the targets it is competing for slots with.
Hi Reeplcheep!
I consider these slots untouchable (at least for the moment). As I run 2 off Plague Reaver in the sideboard like you do,
maybe one could be enough...don't you think?

Reeplcheep
06-21-2021, 03:58 PM
I am just not sure how many situations you resolve karn, then a 2 drop, then wait a turn to tick up vs multiple delver 1 drops and you aren’t just dead.

Pelpopayo
06-21-2021, 04:35 PM
I am just not sure how many situations you resolve karn, then a 2 drop, then wait a turn to tick up vs multiple delver 1 drops and you aren’t just dead.

I always take Karn out from the main against Rug delver. I agree with your previous comments. I don't like Karn for this matchup. So I would bring into bridge + vault + helm + ratchet bomb. I'll test it.

Reeplcheep
06-21-2021, 10:28 PM
I always take Karn out from the main against Rug delver. I agree with your previous comments. I don't like Karn for this matchup. So I would bring into bridge + vault + helm + ratchet bomb. I'll test it.

Ohh, you want it as a card to bring in rather than a karn target. That is totally reasonable if you think it is better than the black boardwipes. Damnation and toxic deluge are quite awkward indeed in a tomb deck.

Meekstone might be another option since it is probably decent in the deck g2 & g3 but 1 mana makes it possibly worth searching for G1.