[Deck] Monoblue Control (MUC) [Archive] - Page 3

Kadaj

11-29-2007, 06:52 PM

I don't like EE because I will not add fetchlands to a deck that doesn't need them just for the sake of one card. Especially a card that isn't so much stronger then Powder Keg. Second, adding 1 random Plains and a Swamp to this deck is like adding 2 two blanks. While the chances of having those cards screw you up in some way is low, but it does exist, and I'd rather avoid that sort of risk if the gain is minimal.

However, aside from all that, the major reason I don't like EE is actually much simpler. It can't hit manlands. By adding fetchlands, increasing vulnerability to stifle, and removing Powder Keg, increasing vulnerability to manlands, you are actually giving decks like 4c Landstill a chance to beat you, both pre and post board. One of the major reasons I've never lost to 4c Landstill with my current build is because it runs 8+ cards that are totally dead in the matchup, while I run more draw, more counters, and more actual useful removal. Yes, you still have B2B available to ream them with, but they have a better chance of beating you if by some chance you don't draw it, or they manage to remove it, something they don't have nearly as much of if you don't run either fetchlands or EE.

On top of that, Powder Keg also has the potential to hit things of higher cc that slip through the cracks (like Rakdos Pit-Dragon, Mystic Enforcer, and Loxodon Hierarch), which EE cannot do unless you splash another color, something that would undoubtedly not be worth it.

I don't consider EE so much incredibly stronger than Powder Keg that it's worth all of the risks you have to take in order to run it. Especially since I don't run Brainstorm, which basically means that unless I don't draw EE, the fetchlands are basically islands that are vulnerable to stifle and cost you 1 life.

Doks

12-05-2007, 12:54 PM

Just a maybe stupid idea during testing: what about Merchant Scroll?

Sure, I know it's

a)
a Sorcery

b)
in the 2 CC slot where we want counters / keg / Accu / TT

But I do not plan to run more than 1-2 copies for the mid - lategame where I could imagine that it is useful:

a)
fetches the 3rd or 4th Accu or maybe a FoF when you are sure it will resolve

b)
gets you the needed counter, especially FoW (perhaps a second one if you have already one in hand!) in the first 1-2 Turns (with Mox?) which are very important in the fast combo MUs. The sorcery speed isn't even such a big disadvantage then.

If you play Repeal / Truth, it will even give you the opportunity to search for "removal".
As I said, I don't want to use it as an early game tool but more like a tutor that provides flexibility mainly in the mid-lategame.

So what do you think?

Arsenal

12-05-2007, 12:58 PM

I think if we ran more 1-2 ofs, it could work, but between running virtually 3-4 of every relevant spell, and sufficient draw and/or dig, I don't see a real need for it.

Doks

12-05-2007, 03:00 PM

Sure, MUC is mainly built on consistency, but:
have you never experienced a situation you just have established control but couldn't keep it longer because of your opponent's lucky draw / you're missing a counter right then / whatever with plenty of Mana open but no solution?

In addition, I always love to have the last FoF / Accu or a second counter in my hand just in case.

Arsenal

12-05-2007, 03:19 PM

Oh heck yeah I've been in those positions, and I would've loved to Scroll up an answer/response, but what would you cut? And how many Scrolls would you play?

And I agree, Scrolling up your 4th AK and drawing into crazy stuff is always an awesome feeling. I remember WAY back in the day, running Trix w/ Sapphire Medallions, and going crazy with tutoring/drawing cuz all my spells costed U, and most could be done EOT.

Kadaj

12-05-2007, 08:11 PM

Merchant Scroll could be a viable option in the versions that run AK. I don't consider AK to be a particularly strong card by any measure, and every time I've tested a variant with it included I've always hated it. Maybe I just don't get as lucky as you guys seem to with drawing multiples of them, but it always seems like I draw my first AK 10 or so turns into the match.

At any rate, I do agree that Merchant Scroll is a powerful card, and I am interested in trying it out in a version with Chrome Mox to speed up it a bit. Maybe in the slot I would usually include Ancestral Vision...

APriestOfGix

12-07-2007, 01:20 AM

// Deck file for Magic Workstation (http://www.magicworkstation.com)

// Lands
17 [UNH] Island
3 [ON] Flooded Strand
3 [ON] Polluted Delta

// Creatures
3 [LRW] Guile

// Spells
4 [CS] Rune Snag
3 [DS] Echoing Truth
3 [US] Back to Basics
4 [TE] Counterspell
4 [FD] Vedalken Shackles
4 [MM] Brainstorm
4 [AL] Force of Will
4 [CHK] Sensei's Divining Top
4 [CS] Counterbalance

// Sideboard
SB: 4 [TE] Propaganda
SB: 3 [TSP] Wipe Away
SB: 4 [US] Arcane Laboratory
SB: 4 [TSP] Trickbind

This is flagrant spam. (http://www.mtgthesource.com/forums/showthread.php?t=7455) Don't do that, especially in the LMF. - Bardo

Sorry, ok...

So this is a list i threw together after seeing Guile. It's not very well tested yet, but i though i would put it up for critique.

Guile is amazing, once he hit it is almost gg. StP is the ONLY answer to him that is seeing play, and that can be CBed or Countered. It's nice only having to worry about 1 removal spell.

I'm trying to figure out what is better CA, AK and cheap cantrips, or long term stuff like FoF.

So far the deck has been doing well. a resolves Guile is almost ALWAYS GG, as you can use their spells against them.

mackaber

12-07-2007, 09:49 AM

@ A Priest of Gix: I really like your list and have in fact been testing CB top in MUC myself. Guile seems like a cool finisher (morphling sems really weak from my testing until now) but I have a few major issues with your list. Your are running only 23 lands and 4 brainstorms to support a 6 mana finisher. And the greatest problem I see with your list is the complete lack of any sort of Card advantage besides CBTop. Does this suffice?

Kadaj

12-07-2007, 10:24 AM

Four issues I can see, APriestofGix:

1. You have no permenant answer to resolved permenants. This is more than slightly important, considering you will not always have CB-Top established, and even when you do, it is fully possible to have your opponent force something through anyway. Powder Keg or Engineered Explosives is highly necessary to help this problem. Echoing Truth is a strong card that can certainly help with that problem, but 4 Shackles is almost definitely too many, especially since you're trying to fit in the mana sink that is CB-Top.

2. You have no cards that increase your hand size. A single hymn to tourach, or any other 2 for 1 discard spell, and your hand size is permenantly decreased. Yes, SDT does help decrease the impact of Discard, but you won't always have or resolve an SDT, and when you don't you're going to be in a lot of trouble.

3. Guile is not nearly as invulnerable as you make it out to be. Swords to Plowshares, the best and most prevelant removal spell in Legacy, kills it as dead as anything. You could certainly argue that if you have a counter in hand, or CB-Top on the board, Guile is nearly completely unremovable, but the same is true of ANY win-condition in that case. Also, running only one Guile is more vulnerable to things like Meddling Mage, or Cranial Extraction (not likely at all, but the possibility exists). Guile itself is a possibility as a singleton win condition in conjuction with things like Morphling and Rainbow Efreet (or Meloku), but I don't think there's anything to gain by running nothing but Guile in that slot.

4. The final problem is twofold. First off, your list, as is, will never win a single game against Goblins. Ever. You don't have nearly enough midgame tools, Counterbalance Top is surprisingly awful against Goblins, to hold off the rush that they will lob continuously at your face. You don't even have Hydroblast or Chill coming out of the board to help you there. Second, you don't have a single answer throughout the entire MD and SB to Nimble Mongoose. Your only answer is to resolve a Guile and block it. I would imagine the odds for that occurring are pretty low, especially since you only have Brainstorm and SDT to dig you to it and not much to hold the line with when Thresh starts dropping Goyfs, Werebears, or whatever else they have. Echoing Truth is your best answer, but that's temporary, and Shackles is never going to be allowed to resolve if the Threshold player has any clue what they're doing at all.

APriestOfGix

12-07-2007, 10:49 AM

Thanks for the replies guys. I'll try and work on the list a bit, and post a new one later today.

The land count hasn't been a problem, but i think your right on the shackles count, i dropped 3 on the board once, and was like, AHH!

I might splash for another color for EE, or Keg? Has either been proven better?

Guile seems pretty good by himself. Short of the 1 card that can stop him (StP) you are fine, so i think he is ok as the only win con. If they mage him, i shackle the mage and eat face!

Your right, i need some sort of CA. What do you guys think is best, cheap fast CA like AK, and cantrips, or long term and powerful CA like Fact or Fiction?

Thanks for your help guys, this list i threw together in a couple of hours, so i expected comments to help it out.

Thanks

Jander78

12-07-2007, 11:43 AM

I might splash for another color for EE, or Keg? Has either been proven better?
I'n my mind neither is better than the other. Keg leaves the deck more redundant and doesn't require a splash, and EE has speed on it's side. They both have their pro's and con's, it really depends on the build you are gearing towards. I have favored EE lately, but I wouldn't consider it better.

Guile seems pretty good by himself. Short of the 1 card that can stop him (StP) you are fine, so i think he is ok as the only win con. If they mage him, i shackle the mage and eat face!
The problem with Guile, compared to the other standard win conditions that Mono-U runs (Morphling, Efreet, Meloku), is that Guile doesn't have the ability to protect himself. Every other win condition in MUC has an ability that allows you to save resources for other opposing threats and not waste them on your win condition. This is very important in keeping MUC efficient.

Your right, i need some sort of CA. What do you guys think is best, cheap fast CA like AK, and cantrips, or long term and powerful CA like Fact or Fiction?
Fact or Fiction

Also, CounterTop is horrible in MUC as I stated at the end of page 25 (http://mtgthesource.com/forums/showpost.php?p=182229&postcount=500), and Kadaj stated above.

Doks

12-09-2007, 04:06 PM

Merchant Scroll is pure utility, especially in builds with light splashes as you have to cut some of the cards that you would run a full 3 copies or even playset of in pure MUC (Repeal / Truth, FoF).

I played a list with exactly one Scroll and it was every time useful when it came up =P:

T 2/3: get the (2nd?) FoW against fast combo (especially Belcher was a lot easier then), however an extra FoW is always nice.

Mid- / Lategame:

1. get the 3rd or 4th Accu / 2nd FoF
2. get another counter for control
3. let your opponent resolve an EtW and get Echoing Truth =P

Funny enough that 1 felt pretty perfect for the moment...

So did anyone test it, too?

Doks

No_Life_No_Future

12-11-2007, 04:25 AM

Alright guys this might not belong here, but this deck I created was inspired by this thread. I have been winning alot of games with it including a match against a MUC list simmilar to the ones here.

Mana Base:
3 Ancient Tomb
3 Chrome Mox
10 Island
3 Polluted Delta
3 Flooded Strand
1 Swamp
1 Plains

Counters:
4 Rune Snag
4 Force of Will

Draw:
4 Brainstorm
4 Thirst for Knowledge
4 Fact or Fiction

The Good Stuff:
1 Morphling
4 Trinket Mage
2 Chalice of the Void
3 Engineered Explosives
3 Vedalkin Shackels
3 Back to Basics

SB:
3 Tormod's Crypt
2 Chalice of the Void
2 Forbid
1 Pithing Needle
3 Stifle
4 Echoing Truth

My Idea was to speed up the deck adding better draw and disruption while not losing the stable manabase and b2b.

The 3 Ancient Tomb/3 Chrome mox Combination explained:
Ancient tomb enables simply broken plays in legacy and with this deck I tryed to maximize its colorless mana. With Chrome Mox it can drop bombs like first turn chalice/trinket mage/b2b/schackles (not good till you drop some islands) useful against decks playing counters or discard. They also enable the excellent draw engine of Fact or Fiction and Thirst for Knowledge. Their mana boost offsets their card disadvantage making them a necessary evil. You might notice that im playing tomb in a b2b deck... Well it turns out it doesnt matter too much because after you use tomb a couple times the lifeloss will make it unattractive and usless anyway. Because both of these are bad in multiples are 3 of and if you draw an extra you can hope to brainstorm it away or pitch it to TFK.

Trinket Mage:
SO SO SO good. It is strictly card advantage. Not only is mage card advantage, but the cards he snags are also card advantage. Explosives has been mentioned before in this thread. I have found it amazing when you have 7 ways to draw it.

Being able to maindeck Chalice of the Void is so sweet. I ran two Coppies MD because against high curves its not stellar, and i have mages to grab it. In one game against 43 land (a good matchup because b2b is nearly always gg). I had dropped and early Shackels and my opponent had loam engine going well. I topdecked an early COTV and set it at 2 locking him out of the game. COTV creates so much virtual card advantage its almost always a must answer card.

Everything else in my list is pretty common MD except for TFK which i think is better in the build i play which runs more artifacts.

I still need to do more testing, if anyone wants to test with me on mws drop me a pm, but i fear my list has the worst matchup against the gobs........frowntown...

Bahamuth

12-11-2007, 10:02 AM

I like that idea. Trinket Mage seems like he'd do very well here. I've got 2 issues with your list:

- Why only 2 Chalice? With the Chrome Moxes and Tombs, I'd think 4 would be much better.

- Why no Back to Basics? I don't belive it's not a viable option because you run 3 nonbasics.

mackaber

12-11-2007, 10:12 AM

Interesting idea cooldude. The list you posted is only 55 cards. I think we can make more of the dec if you give us a complete list. If you are running no needles or tops I'd have to say that Trinketmage can't be all that good if you have only 2 different targets both of which are situational (EE for 1 ain't that great) and chalice set at any casting cost steals some of your own spells.

No_Life_No_Future

12-11-2007, 06:34 PM

ok sorry guys the 5 cards i forgot where 1 swamp, 1 plains, and of course 3 b2b.

Exploses for 1 or 2 or 3 is ALMOST NEVER a situational card. Chalice on the other hand sometimes can be. And it makes no sense in multiples especially against a high mana curve. That is why I only have 2 Maindeck and 4 mages to nab them if I need to.

Chalice for 1 OR 2 doesnt hurt me much. I was reluctant to add BS because of the interaction with chalice but i have found its not so bad. If you have a bs in your opening grip you can always play it before chalice, same goes for the spell snare.

One card i have considered is Academy ruins, but ith has really poor synergy with b2b so i dont think its a really good idea, but in matchups where b2b is a dead card it would be nice to have so maybe 1 would work.

I have found rune snage to be a drag (rhyme wtf?) because i like to tap out and find answers. I often have time to cast them... I hated morphling because it is too mana intensive and slow. With morphling cut I added 1 EE as its almost never dead, but mabey a third chalice main would be good? Looking for cards to fill the 4 snag slots I thought "I have been need more threats". So i came across Court Hussar which I have found to be so so so good. I have acess to 5 ways of topdecking a plains so usually i have the white to keep it in play. But if not its still awesome because digs really well. With 4 FoF 4 Thirst for Knowledge 4 BS and 4 Court Hussar the deck is amazing in topdeck mode. Im not sure the deck really needs Ancient tomb. Sometimes its really good but other times I wish i had just played an island or plains (hussar). Its definetly good against combo though when you need to drop mage 2nd turn and grab a crypt or a chalice for 0.

Here is my current List:
Mana Base:
3 Ancient Tomb
3 Chrome Mox
10 Island
3 Polluted Delta
3 Flooded Strand
1 Swamp
1 Plains

Counters:
4 Force of Will

Draw:
4 Brainstorm
4 Thirst for Knowledge
4 Fact or Fiction
4 Court Hussar

The Good Stuff:
4 Trinket Mage
2 Chalice of the Void
4 Engineered Explosives
3 Vedalkin Shackels
3 Back to Basics

SB:
3 Tormod's Crypt
2 Chalice of the Void
3 Pithing Needle
3 Stifle
4 Echoing Truth

Also I would like to add that with the changes i made a chalice for 2 now has NO drawbacks to the deck. I the sideboard might still needs work I have found that I didnt like forbid very much. Unlike most Mono U control the deck often just empties its hand. So I cut it and added 2 more needles.

I won all of my matches played so far today: Ichorid, UGw Thresh, Belcher, Landstill, G Stompy with rootmaze wither orb, and meathooks.

Try it out guys and give me some advice.

Doks

12-12-2007, 10:11 AM

I see the characteristics of MUC in your deck, but this build reminds me very much of a FS-like deck.

Anyway, my suggestions are:

-1 Explosives
+1 Chalice

-3 Ancient Tomb
+1 Plains
+1 Tundra
+1 Flooded Strand

Why?
Because Chalice is a nice card you should play early because you lack countermagic (only[!] 4 FoW) to be really "controlish".
3 Explosives + the Mages to find them should ensure that you already have one ready when needed.
You're thinking about cutting Tombs, I think so, too. This damage is too much with 6-7 Fetchlands. In addition, you have a more stable Manabase - Court Hussar any1? ;) - which makes a coloured SB bomb like Meddling Mage available.
The single Tundra provides W if necessary even with only a Delta in hand.

No_Life_No_Future

12-12-2007, 10:37 AM

the only objections i have to removing tomb is its really good against combo oh yeah and first turn chalice is pretty sick too. -1 explosives +1 chalice seems ok.

I'm have trouble against quick black decks anything you can suggest to keep me alive from for a while so that i can find answers?

oh and dont say propaganda because im not a big fan of it.

Kadaj

12-13-2007, 10:22 AM

If you're not a big fan of really the only card that MUC has access to help matchups like that then I don't know what to tell you. Suicide Blackish decks were never an exceptionally good matchup in the first place, and cards like Propaganda are really the only thing you can rely on to keep them from just burying you. At the very least, it forces them to spend their disruption on them rather than your counters or other tools. I firmly believe it's a huge mistake to staunchly be against any specific cards in an archtype, because taking that kind of attitude makes it far more likely for you to miss out on tech that initially appears unwieldy or unorthodox (for example, I absolutely hated Ancestral Vision before I actually went out and tested it).

If I were going to improve upon your list I would actually increase the depth of the splash a little bit, or at least maybe add more fetchlands and another plains and swamp. Court Hussar is a great card, I've been trying to use it in Legacy somewhere forever, and being able to make both Court Hussar and EE more consistent would hardly be a bad thing. I really think your list is closer to a fish build then it is to MUC, but I do think it's an interesting direction to look into taking. You've got a ton of card drawing, a toolbox, some selection, and the tools to compete with almost anything. My only hesistation is that it's highly unlikely you'll be able to hang with Goblins, even with 4 EE and 3 Shackles, because, as is a common failing with MUC lists, your midgame tools absolutely pale in comparison to there's. Rgb Goblins have access to MD Cabal Therapy and Tin-Street Hooligan to make life absolutely miserable for you, and without Propaganda to buy you the requisite time, they'll probably just run you over through whatever disruption you attempt to throw at them.

That's not to say that adding Propaganda would suddenly make the matchup amazing, far from it, or that adding Propaganda is even what your deck is looking for. Really, I think you might end up being better off pushing this towards a more fish-esque approach, adding more plains and swamps, some more creatures (Meddling Mage perhaps?) and Umezawa's Jitte. You'd still retain the trump of B2B if you built the manabase right, so it's at least an interesting idea.

Illissius

12-14-2007, 12:27 PM

Interesting list by Kazuya Mitamura from Worlds:

4 Meloku the Clouded Mirror

4 Ancestral Vision
4 Back to Basics
4 Brainstorm
4 Counterspell
3 Cryptic Command
3 Engineered Explosives
4 Force of Will
4 Spell Snare
2 Vedalken Shackles

3 Flooded Strand
15 Island
1 Plains
4 Polluted Delta
1 Swamp

Sideboard:
2 Blue Elemental Blast
2 Duress
1 Engineered Explosives
4 Engineered Plague
2 Hydroblast
3 Tormod's Crypt
1 Underground Sea

Did you get around to testing Cryptic Command, Kadaj?

Kadaj

12-14-2007, 04:28 PM

I did, but I found it exceedingly ineffective compared to the slots it took up. The only way I could find room for it was by cutting Fact or Fiction and/or Propaganda. Considering the advantages both of those cards bring to this archtype, Fact or Fiction in particular being extremely crucial, it was near impossible for Cryptic Command to fill either slot with any level of consistency. Apparently Mitamura found otherwise, although I have no idea how well he actually did with the deck. All I know is that he lost to Guillame Wafo-Tapa (who was playing Dragon Stompy) in a feature match.

claudio.r

12-26-2007, 03:17 PM

Just as a firestarter, and because it's a very good ideia from back in the days...
Quoting Alan Comer:

"Even without weatherlight, it is possible. The deck I took 2nd place
in the So. Cal Regionals had no rares. It was more by coincidence than
by design. Around here, it has been dubbed the Turbo Xerox deck, as
everybody copied it due to the lack of rares.

4 x Force of Will (The hardest thing to get for this deck.)
3 x Dissipate
4 x Counterspell
4 x Powersink
4 x Memory Lapse
4 x Foreshadow
4 x Portent
4 x Impulse
4 x Suq-ata Firewalker
4 x Waterspout Djinn
4 x Man-o-War
1 x Dream Tides
17 x Islands

The important thing to remember with this deck is that early on, you
MUST use the library manipulation to get to your land. Later, you can
use it to get to cool spells. Things like: I portent your library. I
foreshadow away your good spell...

Oh yeah, Sideboard

1 x Dissipate (For people who are hammer crazy.)
1 x Dreamtides (For green players, and forgotten orb players.
gee, every other turn your erg raider doesn't
untap...)
4 x Hydroblast
3 x Knight of the Mists
2 x Slieght of mind (For Pyroblasts, Nekrataals, Skulking Ghosts, etc)
4 x DanDan (Mr. Blue player, do you have a force of will???)

Alan Comer"

Turbo Xerox was a very powerful deck back in the days... it was short on land wich makes the number of useful spell a lot bigger, and with the number of cantrips we can find the land we need early in the game.

In the current meta, a deck like this would be completely crushed by some of the newer buils like goblins for example.
But couldn't we, using the same principles make a powerful deck from it ???

(sorry about the bad english)

Claudio R.

Illissius

12-26-2007, 03:27 PM

In the current meta, a deck like this would be completely crushed by some of the newer buils like goblins for example.
But couldn't we, using the same principles make a powerful deck from it ???

Yeah, that deck is (increasingly inaccurately) called Threshold, formerly Gro.

claudio.r

12-26-2007, 03:41 PM

It's kind of a "primitive" version of what then became miracle-gro, and now ********. But the matter of fact is that it is indeed a mono-blue control deck !

Could this be any good using more recent cards, like Daze, Threads Of Disloyalty, Predict, Ponder, Brainstorm, Back To Basics... just to name a few from the top of my head.

Arsenal

12-26-2007, 03:48 PM

I think current MUC still has the same plan, Brainstorm/Impulse early for lands (or answers if desperate), stablize your manabase, play spells that help you recover from the early game (Shackles, Propaganda, etc), resolve FoF, then win.

Daze is horrible in MUC. Great in tempo decks, horrible in control decks. Force Spike, Force of Will, and Spell Snare are the premiere counters of choice for early game madness. Shackles is essentially Threads on a stick, but better, as it can grab virutally ANY creature, not just 2cc and less.

claudio.r

12-26-2007, 03:56 PM

I was very impressed to see a MUC deck that played only 17 lands. But i can imagine that to support the todays metagame we need a more solid structure with more lands and more consistency. I can imagine a deck playing only 17 lands runnig shackles... not the best idea !

Just for some for more "food for thought" I found this on the Turbo Xerox deck:

"You will note that Comer's deck plays only 17 lands. This is because he had two huge advantages. The first one is that in the early game, his full compliment of Impulses, Portents, and Foreshadows allowed him to find islands for the first 3-4 turns. On turn 4, having looked at many more than 11 cards on average, he would be able to tap out just once to play Waterspout Djinn (hopefully with Force of Will backup). The Waterspout Djinn would mean that Comer could - actually had to - stay at 4 lands for the rest of the game. The fact that he was less likely to draw lands with only 17 in his deck would now become an advantage. He would only have to attack five turns because of the Waterspout Djinn's incredible efficiency. Meanwhile all that library manipulation would then be used to keep finding "answers"... in Comer's deck even generally weak permission like Power Sink were thrown in. He would be looking at so few lands and so many answers with all those cantrips that playing 1-for-1 with permission - almost any permission it seems - for five turns was a very strong plan.

Now Comer had a lot of other advantages in his deck as well... He could generate tons of cards in hand with cute tricks like Portent + Foreshadow and Memory Lapse + Foreshadow. He could paralyze a green deck with his Dream Tides, or go "machine gun" with Dream Tides and Suq'Ata Firewalkter. But for our purposes, the lesson of Turbo Xerox is twofold: for every 4 cantrips in your deck, you can play 2 fewer lands, and a fast clock is synergistic with a redundant combination of answer cards and quick card drawing over the course of the short number of turns required to win (usually via race, rather than total board control)."

Looks like the deck could (and should) be played as an aggroish-control deck.

Arsenal

12-26-2007, 04:36 PM

As an aside, I've done some testing with Merchant Scroll. Wow. This card is so good. I run a full set, with early game it being pitched to FoW, then late game finding much needed answers/bounce. I like Scroll alot... if only it found it at Instant speed, Scroll would be broken.

deviant

12-29-2007, 01:53 AM

Man.
A sleeples night and about 9h of reading a thread of Blue BullShit.

Anyway. I just felt the need to stress the issue of Cryptic Command.

Someone briefly said something about using it as a Dismiss but never really discussed it more than just stating it wasn't good enough to warrant a slot.
I think this needs a little more enlightening with that Brainstorm issue starting to run wild again. :rolleyes:

Ok.
To business.

As a 4-mana counterspell it sucks.
Check.
As a time walk to let you untap your Disk ( yeah it costs a lot but those situations could happen? ) or put a counter to your keg - it still sucks a little.
Check.
As a way of getting rid of CB or some other nasty permanent as timewalking,cantripping or countering - it doesn't suck that much.

Now really, have you tested it properly?

I just think it could work as a 2-of. Maybe as a meta call or something..
Just want to hear some excuses for dismissing it so briefly.

Clark Kant

12-29-2007, 05:01 PM

I run currently it as a 1 of, along with a 1 of Capsize, just for the hell of it (and to test the cards). Maybe I'll play 2 of each, or possibly squeeze in a single Memnarch.

It's fairly good, rarely gamebreaking (like Fact or Fiction can be) but good nonetheless.

Shtriga

12-29-2007, 06:24 PM

cooldude254, you rely on trinket mage and court hussar to go all the way as kill conditions?

fact or fiction is hardly a kill condition, per se

someone_unimportant

12-30-2007, 01:44 AM

I played a MUC variant to a top 4 finish at my local 1.5 tournament. The tournament had 41 people, and I received 2 scrublands for my trouble. The decklist is janky as hell because I couldn't get a common and the sideboard was thrown together 10 minutes before the tournament. Some numbers will be discussed at the bottom. My meta is EXTREMELY Thresh heavy (read: 80%) so that influenced some of the choices.

Decklist!

Instants:
3x Brainstorm
3x Fact or Fiction
3x Thirst for Knowledge
4x Force of Will
3x Force Spike
1x Spell Snare (think of it as a 4th Spike)
2x Counterspell

Sorceries:
Pshaw who plays sorceries?

Artifacts:
3x Vedalkan Shackles
3x Engineered Explosives
4x Chalice of the Void

Enchantments:
4x Back to Basics

Creatures:
2x Meloku
1x Morphling

Lands:
3x Polluted Delta
3x Flooded Strand
1x Plains
1x Swamp
16x Island

Sideboard:
4x Blue Elemental Blast
3x Propaganda
1x Vedalkan Shackles
3x Tormod's Crypt
3x Threads of Disloyalty (Completely Random! Never boarded them!)
1x Fact or Fiction (15th card!)

Like I said, my meta is infested with Thresh, which is why I played 4 maindeck B2B and 4 MD CotV. Chalice at 1 is a savage beating against Thresh. Force Spikes instead of Spell Snares because I felt that the cards in Thresh that I was losing to were not 2-costers. CB is terrible vs the deck that plays 3, 4, and 5 costs. Goyf is very Shacklable, and much worse than Mongoose. Also, cards in general that are good against me are Needle, Deed, EE, cards that don't cost 2, etc. 3 FoFs because I felt 4 would clog my hand up too much, but I boarded in the 4th so often and it never did, so I think I'll go up to 4. 3 Brainstorms because ... I had to cut the 4th for a Chalice. Thirst for Knowledge is the nut high, I love that card. I cut the number of counterspells very low because I wanted to be more proactive with Chalices and Back to Basics. I wanted to play like a prison deck with counterspells. I would've played 2 Morphlings and 1 Meloku, but I only had access to one. My meta has nearly no goblins, so no Propagandas main. Matchups!

Game 1 (UW Landstill): He plays ~5 nonbasics in a row, so the B2B in my hand is smiling at me. On 3rd turn he plays a Standstill, which I have nothing for. I have spells I want to play, so I run a B2B out, which he counters after drawing 3. I Spike his draw spells and play my own, which draw me another B2B and some more counters. I resolve my B2B, and I assume I have the game. He plays land, Oblivion Ring. :frown: However, I have EE at 3 for it and keep locking him out. Morphling kills him.

Game 2: No B2B were resolved this game, ut I got more card drawing and resolved a Morphling and killed him.

Round 2 (Dragon Stompy)

Game 1: This is one of my friends and teammates, and he unfortunately has no idea what my deck is or how it works since we haven't hung out since I built it. He plays first turn Chalice 1, which I don't care about, and then later a Chalice 2. I FoW and Spike his dudes, and kill him with Meloku.

Game 2: He plays first turn Defense Grid and follows up with two Magi of the Moon. I blow the Grid with an Explosives and lock his three nonbasic Mountaints with B2B, leaving him unable to play anything. He beats me to 4 when I resolve Meloku and slowly kill him to death.

Round 3 (Ubwg Landstill)
Game 1: I am playing against a player who I think is playing Thresh, so I play EE at 1 first turn. Turns out he's playing Landstill. D'oh! Oh well, I Spike a FoF and eventually resolve B2B. He resolves EE at 3, but doesn't pop it right away as he isn't tapped (2 basics in play). However, when I play a different threat he taps mana to counter it, thinking that he can untap his two basics and blow my B2B. However, I play an EE at 0 and explode both his and my EE. He cannot recover, and Morphling kills him.

Game 2: I get beat down by two Mishra's factories for a looooong time after getting Duressed three times. I am at 5 when I finally resolve a Meloku. This game in particular I definitely wish the Meloku was a Morphling. I thought it would get Swords'd and I would lose to the factories. However, I think my opponent boarded them out thinking I only had Morphlings for win conditions. In any case, I make illusions as carefully as I can, trading them with mishra's factories and trying to kill him before he can draw Deed. I manage it, although it is very close.

Round 4 (UGb Thresh)
Game 1: I am Thoughtseized many times, but eventually resolve a B2B and a Shackles. i believe there is also an EE at 1, as my opponent scoops and I don't think he would do that if he had Mongoose as an out. My memory is bad for this game.

Game 2: A B2B is discarded and Extirpated, and my Shackles is Needled. I get beat down by a Mongoose and a Confidant, and my opponent smashes me with the card advantage and beats.

Game 3: My 2nd turn is Chalice 1, which resolves, then Chalice 0 (for EE). Next turn B2B. Stupid.

Round 5,6 ID

Top 8 (Landstill)
See the other Landstill matches, they are all basically the same. A B2B is resolved, probably a Shackles too, and eventually someone is killed with Morphling.

I then had to leave, and picked up my prize for my trouble.

Thoughts:
I think Force Spike is REALLY REALLY good. It was nuts all the time I played it. It either countered my opponents expensive spells or shuffled away via brainstorm or discarded to TfK. Oh, and it pitches to Force of Will. I also very much liked the immediacy of EE over Keg. Keg would have been much worse almost every time I used EE effectively.

TeKo

01-02-2008, 12:07 PM

I like your Chalice Build.
But why you play Chalice with so many cc1 Spells? (Brainstorm, Force Spike, Spell Snare) Or do you sometimes play Chalice 2?
In my Chalice Build I play Impulse and Rune Snag, because I don't have to dig for mana or something first Turn and I don't want to have cc1 Spells.
Imo Snag > Spike in my build with Mox, I think after about Turn4 Spike is useless most of the time.

Aren't 24 Lands to much? I play 19-20+3 Mox and think its enough.

EE is good I think, but I don't want to have non blue mana in the first 4 Turns (first 4 Lands). And EE@3 blows B2B.
Maybe I splash 1 Plains for EE, because there are many cc2 Creatures and when your opponent cast cc3 (or above) Critter you should be able to counter them.

But when I play Fetchlands, BS, which is bad with Chalice I think, is better
then Impulse.

someone_unimportant

01-02-2008, 06:19 PM

Occasionally I play Chalice 2, but since my meta is so thresh-heavy I usually set it at 1. "So many" is apparently relative, since I think having only 8 1cc spells is very low. Force Spikes become highly irrelevant the later the game goes so shutting those off isn't too bad. I am certainly sad to see Brainstorm go, but I can always pitch to Force or discard to TfK. I think both spells are far too strong to cut just because they get shut off by Chalice. Also, there's the other factor in that even though my spells are nullified, roughly a third of Thresh's spells are (especially the most dangerous Nimble Mongoose). Lastly, if I REALLY need to get rid of it, EE does the trick.

As for mana count, I like 24 lands. Sometimes I still miss land drops which cause me to lose the game. I tried mox for a little while but cut it since the matchups its really good in (i.e. fast decks) aren't very present where I play.

Seeing one non-blue source in the first 4 lands actually doesn't really matter to me, although in the first 2 lands would be extremely annoying. But I'm probably mulling a 2-lander anyway. I have very few UU cards, and sometimes I need to set EE at > 1 quickly.

Having both basics is good, I think. Admittedly EE@3 is a rare play (although I have done it before) think of it more as a more consistent EE@2. And obviously I wont blow an EE@3 with a B2B in play if its winning me the game.

Finally, you would be surprised how often FS counters spells past turn 4. Silly people try to play multiple spells a turn :smile:

raharu

01-04-2008, 06:03 AM

Ugb Turbo Xerox:

4 x Force of Will
4 x Smother
4 x Counterspell
4 x Force Spike
3 x Memory Lapse (Repeal?)
4 x Predict
4 x Ponder
4 x Portent/ Impulse
4 x Pernicious Deed
4 x Tarmogofy/ other win-con
4 x Dark Confidant
2 x Morphling
1 x Back to Basics

12 x Islands
1 x Tropical Island
1 x Underground Sea
4 x Polluted Delta
1 x Forest
1 x Swamp

Splashing green for ‘Goyf (I didn‘t want to, really, I didn‘t), black for Smother (MD removal is tech for MUC), and both for Pernicious Deed (Deed + ‘Goyf = Fart + church, but really, what are you going to do?)

Alternative list here

Ub Turbo Xerox:

4 x Force of Will
3 x Smother
4 x Counterspell
4 x Force Spike
4 x Memory Lapse (Repeal?)
4 x Predict
4 x Ponder
4 x Portent/ Impulse
2 x Moroii
4 x Nyrval’s Disk (please forgive the spelling)
4 x Dark Confidant
2 x Morphling
3 x Back to Basics

13 x Islands
4 x Polluted Delta
3 x Swamp

Black Splash for Dark Confidant and Smother (I‘m not too fond of Disk, but the manabase is too retarded with green in it).

Both lists have a sickening amount of draw, so I figured that Fact or Fiction could stand to not make it into the list. Moroii was included because it’s a threat that comes down about as early the Dijjin (spelling again) without hampering our land development. I think I’ll build the black list some day (I have 2 decks in the works and I‘m strapped for cash).

Both lists need help. Get crackin’.

Kadaj

01-06-2008, 03:24 PM

Neither of the above lists belong in this thread, frankly. They are clearly not MUC in any way beyond the fact that they run blue cards. Turbo Xerox is an aggro-control concept, and one that doesn't belong in a thread discussing Mono Blue Control.

raharu

01-06-2008, 11:58 PM

The only difference I see between those lists and MUC is that it runs cantrips and more board sweep/ spot removal, but it's actually great you think they should be in a different forum because I kinda wanted to do that anyway :smile:.

goofy

01-19-2008, 10:19 AM

why not use Gaea's Blessing against solidavity

CleverPetriDish

01-19-2008, 10:27 AM

Gaea's Blessing looks like it should work, right? Not so much. The pertinent effect is a trigger, which goes on the stack like all triggers. Before it actually resolves, the Solidarity player can perform all their usual shenanigans at instant speed. You will get decked and be forced to draw a card you don't have with the trigger sitting on the bottom of the stack.

Also see: David Gearhart, I hate you.

Kadaj

01-19-2008, 10:42 AM

Two reasons why we don't use Gaea's Blessing against Solidarity:

1. It doesn't actually work. Any good Solidarity player will kill through a blessing.

2. No one plays Solidarity any more, so devoting SB space for a non-existent deck would be a bad idea.

Silthyn

02-13-2008, 01:48 AM

// Lands
21 Island

// Creatures
2 Morphling
1 Meloku the Clouded Mirror

// Spells
4 Counterspell
4 Spell Snare
4 Force of Will
2 Vedalken Shackles
2 Back to Basics
4 Fact or Fiction
2 Powder Keg
3 Propaganda
4 Impulse
1 Forbid
3 Ancestral Vision
3 Chrome Mox

// Sideboard
SB: 1 Vedalken Shackles
SB: 1 Back to Basics
SB: 1 Powder Keg
SB: 1 Propaganda
SB: 3 Chill
SB: 4 Tormod's Crypt
SB: 4 Stifle

I'm entering a legacy tournament soon, and I'll be playing MUC. I'm thinking about cutting the Chrome Moxes for lands though, since I rarely use them. Ancestral Vision has been really great, and I almost want a 4th :)
The sideboard is a little random :/
Any suggestions?

Brehn

02-13-2008, 05:44 AM

Silthyn

02-13-2008, 06:56 AM

Cut the moxen for land and the 3rd Shackles or the 3rd Back to Basics. Also, don't you want Rune Snags in the place of the Spell Snares? Everybody is preparing for the Counterbalance matchup nowadays so decks play more 3cc spells.

I've been tinkering with the white splash featuring Cunning Wish lately (1 Tundra, 2 Plains, Fetchlands). Engineered Explosives >>> Powder Keg. Swords to Plowshares, Enlightened Tutor, Meditate and Dismantling Blow have been great in the wishboard so far. However, I can't think of a better bouncespell than Echoing Truth.

Is 22-23 lands really enough? I didn't have any problems with 21 (I almost never used the moxes), but you know, maybe I was lucky those games? :]
In my testing, Spell Snare has been really good. It's still very common with 2CMC cards (Survival, Loam, Goyf, Balance, Counterspell, Standstill, Bob, you name it). I've never tested Rune Snag though.

Brehn

02-13-2008, 07:11 AM

Even with 3 clunky Cunning Wishes in my deck I've never felt the need for more than 22 lands. My current Brainstorm- and Wish-supporting manabase is:

4 Flooded Strand
1 Polluted Delta (could be cut for an Island)
2 Plains
1 Academy Ruins (absolutely worth the dissynergy with B2B)
1 Tundra (fetchable by Delta, can be fetched as the second land with Counterspell and EE in your hand if your opponent doesn't play Wasteland etc)
13 Island

However, Brainstorm helps you getting your land drops, Vision doesn't. That's why maybe you want 23.

KillemallCFH

02-13-2008, 07:12 AM

Is 22-23 lands really enough? I didn't have any problems with 21 (I almost never used the moxes), but you know, maybe I was lucky those games? :]
In my testing, Spell Snare has been really good. It's still very common with 2CMC cards (Survival, Loam, Goyf, Balance, Counterspell, Standstill, Bob, you name it). I've never tested Rune Snag though.Spell Snare is great, and I think better than Rune Snag. However, with the exclusion of Brainstorm in place of Ancestral Visions (with which I agree BTW), Spell Snare is your only 1cc spell. Therefore, I might consider cutting the Snares for 4 Chalice of the Void MD. And if you do that, I'd of course keep the 3 Chrome Mox. It's true that Chalice hits different spells from Spell Snare, but with Chalice countering their 1cc spells, you can save your CSpells, Forces, and Forbid for their Survivals et al.

TeKo

02-13-2008, 09:23 AM

Can you post your Cunning MUC+SB, Brehn?

I already thought about that, but are there enough slots in your SB and stuff to fill them?

Silthyn

02-13-2008, 09:44 AM

Spell Snare is great, and I think better than Rune Snag. However, with the exclusion of Brainstorm in place of Ancestral Visions (with which I agree BTW), Spell Snare is your only 1cc spell. Therefore, I might consider cutting the Snares for 4 Chalice of the Void MD. And if you do that, I'd of course keep the 3 Chrome Mox. It's true that Chalice hits different spells from Spell Snare, but with Chalice countering their 1cc spells, you can save your CSpells, Forces, and Forbid for their Survivals et al.

I'll try Chalice out, but I'm not really sure I'm comfortable with cutting Spell Snare. It does however shut down all their cantrips and discard... Hmm....

Brehn

02-13-2008, 12:49 PM

Can you post your Cunning MUC+SB, Brehn?

4 Flooded Strand
1 Polluted Delta
2 Plains
1 Academy Ruins
1 Tundra
13 Island
1 Morphling
1 Meloku, the Clouded Mirror
4 Rune Snag
4 Counterspell
4 Force of Will
3 Impulse
4 Brainstorm
3 Fact or Fiction
3 Vedalken Shackles
3 Engineered Explosives
2 Propaganda
3 Back to Basics
3 Cunning Wish

WB
1 Swords to Plowshares
1 Enlightened Tutor
1 Meditate
1 Dismantling Blow
1 Echoing Truth
1 random slot (I've tried Spell Burst. It sucks)
SB
1 Back to Basics
2 Propaganda
3 Tormod's Crypt
3 Blue Elemental Blast

Seriously, try out Engineered Explosives. If you're not facing aggro, it's like a one-sided Nevinyrral's Disk. I'm not happy with my sideboard, Stifles should be in there, I guess, but I don't know what else. Control Magic?
About the wishboard: Dismantling Blow is as good as it can get. Meditate should also be a staple: If I'm wishing for Meditate, the board is favorable for me anyway. Otherwise I'd wish for removal. In the place of Echoing Truth I should probably try Capsize. Spell Burst was a random idea I had which turned out not to be great, but I don't want to go with Forbid either. So far I can't think of a good wishable counter.

godryk

02-13-2008, 01:20 PM

I don't know if this is off-topic but, seeing you guys discussing splashes in MUC I've started considering red-splash for, basically, Blood Moon. I know MUC is the right deck to abuse of Back to Basics. People have played B2B because, well, we run a ton of islands so, that doesn't hurt at all but does hurt our opponent. Well, my reasoning is that, if we run a ton of islands, we can afford playing Blood Moon and shut our opponents' fetchlands and untapped duals.

Red splash will let us play EE @ 2 and gives us access to Pyroclasm and maybe REB's in the SB, which seems rather useful.

I don't know how hard would be drawing lands that don't tap for blue (fetchlands and Volcanics, after Blood Moon), but we just need a little splash, so I don't think it would hurt so much. I just find sexy playing Blood Moon in a blue-based control shell.

Anyway I haven't tested it, so I may be wrong an that could be an awful idea. What do you think?

Brehn

02-14-2008, 04:21 AM

The red splash is not attractive:

- Pyroclasm is good against Goblins, Storm Combo and Ichorid. Echoing Truth is better against Storm Combo and Ichorid and it's blue.
- Blood Moon is not strictly better than Back to Basics, and I think B2B is more synergetic with the deck:
> Blood Moon: you colorscrew the opponent. He plays a spell that only requires one colored mana (he has a basic) -- you counter. He plays another one -- you counter. He plays the third spell -- whoops, no counter anymore. He taps 2 "Mountains" to attack through Propaganda each turn.
> Back to Basics: you manascrew the opponent. He plays a spell -- you counter. He plays another one -- you counter. Now he's tapped out and has to wait 3-4 turns to find more land. Then he plays the third spell, but in those 3 turns you have found a Rune Snag, which is now a hard counter. Also, his creatures don't attack through Propaganda.
> Back to Basics is blue, Blood Moon is not. Back to Basics pitches to Force. If you have tried a light splash you probably have seen that you won't always have access to 2 colors. Nothing like having a Moon in your hand and no mana to cast it.
- I've said it in the Enchantress thread, I'll say it again here: Dragon Stompy is a beast because it actually plays the Moon on turn 1. We can't do that. Everybody's expecting Blood Moon now, everybody's building their manabase around it. Nobody's building his manabase around Back to Basics.
- There's no UR Fetchland so you need to play more than 1 dual, I think. Makes B2B/Moon more symmetrical.

someone_unimportant

02-23-2008, 11:44 PM

I has another report! I took 2nd with MUC in a ~40 person tournament. Since this was the first 1.5 tournament since Morningtide became legal in my area, I figured there would be a lot of Goblins. Also, Thresh has been on the decline in my meta, so I tweaked the list from last time to be better against Goblins.

Creatures:
2x Morphling
1x Meloku

Instants:
4x Force of Will
4x Force Spike
4x Brainstorm
4x Impulse
3x Fact or Fiction
2x Counterspell

Artifacts:
3x Vedalken Shackles
3x Engineered Explosives

Enchantments:
3x Back to Basics
3x Propaganda

Lands:
1x Swamp
1x Plains
3x Flooded Strand
3x Polluted Delta
16x Island

SB:
2x Blue Elemental Blast
2x Hydroblast
2x Tormod's Crypt
1x Vedalken Shackles
1x Propaganda
1x Back to Basics
2x Counterspell
4x Chalice of the Void

Round 1: Ichorid

Game 1: My hand is Force Spike, Engineered Explosives, Brainstorm, Impulse, and some lands. I stall with Force Spike and EE@0, then Brainstorm/Impulse into Propaganda.

Game 2: Basically the same as game 1.

Round 2: Goblins

Game 1: I may have mulliganed (don't remember), but I end up keeping a hand with 2 force spikes, and I hope he doesn't have turn 1 lackey. He does, and Lackeys in a piledriver then plays another lackey. I don't find propaganda and die shortly thereafter.

Game 2: I Force Spike a Lackey, which buys me enough time to play several Propagandas and a Vedalken Shackles. He plays a Clickslither, but I Counterspell it.

Game 3: He starts by Chain Lightning me and Lightning Bolting me a lot. I play two Vedalken Shackles by the time I'm down to 8 or so. I also get a Propaganda so he cannot overrun me. I had to shackle a Mogg Maniac because he had a Gempalm Incinerator in hand, and I was pretty low. Eventually I get a Morphling and kill him.

Round 3: UGw Threshold
Game 1: This game is fuzzy and long. We get in a long drawn-out fight. I resolve Back to Basics and Propaganda, but he has 3 basics. He plays an Engineered Explosives and blows them up. I get a Morphling which holds off a 6/7 Tarmogoyf by me paying UUUUU a turn (untap and -1/+1). Then he plays another goyf and a Mystic Enforcer in 1 turn. I play a Vedalken Shackles and steal his Mystic Enforcer and block both Goyfs. I play another Shackles and steal 2 goyfs, but he plays two Nimble Mongeese and since I am at 1, overruns me.

Game 2: I don't remember this game at all. I played a Morphling and attacked but it died before it could kill him somehow.

Round 4: Belcher
Game 1: He is on the play and thinks a really long time before keeping his hand. I keep my Force Spike, Impulse, Brainstorm hand. He says go. Without playing a land. Hmmmm ... I get the nasty feeling that I'm playing against Belcher. I play a land and pass. He Land Grants, showing me Dark Ritual, Desperate Ritual, Simian Spirit Guide, Lion's Eye Diamond, Goblin Charbelcher, 2x Chrome Mox. I think a while, planning out my plays. If he plays Dark Ritual then I can Force Spike it and he won't have the right mana to play the Desperate Ritual, which will make him come up short. I do exactly that, and he obviously doesn't pay. Then I Brainstorm into Counterspells and Counterspell things. I eventually play a 5-mana guy and kill him.

Game 2: I mull my first hand, and keep a Force Spike and Engineered Explosives. If he has first-turn Belcher I die. But if he has 2nd turn I can might be able to Force Spike his colored mana. If he has Empty the Warrens I can stop him. He indeed has Empty, and I blow them up, stabilize, and eventually kill him.

Round 5: Dredge
Game 1: I mull my first hand because it has many a land. He does 1st turn LED, LED, discard hand. Despite his slow start, I don't find a Propaganda through my Brainstorms or Impulses. I die.

Game 2: I mull to 5, but it is 1x Island, 2x Propaganda, 1x Tormod's Crypt, 1x (don't remember). I play the Crypt, and it stalls long enough for me to draw 2 lands and play sequential Propagandas. It slows him long enough for me to play Back to Basics and lock him out. He was gracious enough to scoop to me even though it is definitely in his advantage to play it out.

Game 3: I have Tormod's Crypt, which makes him play bad beatdown deck. I get beat on by a hardcast Narcomoeba and Golgari Thug for a little while until I drop Propaganda again. He scoops shortly afterward.

Top 8: Belcher
I don't really want to write about this again. Roughly equivalent to the other round.

Top 4: UGwb Thresh
This Thresh is a much better matchup since it's four colors, so he only has one basic.
Game 1: I Force Spike a Tarmogoyf, which makes him play around them the rest of our matches. I resolve a Back to Basics while he was tapped, and then later a Vedalken Shackles. His Counterbalance is very useless even though he does have 3's (Trinket Mage and Shackles). We both have Shackles, and I use mine to steal his Trinket Mage every turn, then give it back so he can't hit me. He scoops after a Fact or Fiction reveals 2x Shackles 2x Force of Will 1x Propaganda.

Game 2: He gets 2 Dark Confidants after Duressing me. I play an EE@2, but he plays his own EE@0 and pops mine. He kills me dead with large numbers of card advantage.

Game 3: Runs similarly to game 1. Back to Basics is resolved, and his mana is severely restricted. I play a 5-mana thing and kill him.

Top 2: Solidarity
Ooooooohhhhhhh ... not good. This is the first time I've ever seen someone besides my friend play Solidarity at the store. This is going to be ... not good.

Game 1: After missing 3 land drops and looking at my terrible hand of enchantments that cost 2U, I just scoop because I'm tired as hell. I have no chance game 1 anyway.
Game 2: I win ... somehow. I didn't even play a Chalice. I attack with a Morphling and have a hand of 2x Counterspell 2x Force of Will. When he plays a High Tide, I can actually play all 4 of them. He can't fight through that.
Game 3: Draw-go for a few turns until I play a 5-mana guy, he remands, I force, he forces back. Next turn I play another 5 mana guy, and he Forces again. I try to find the last one, but by the time I do it's too late and he has Brain Freeze + Remand.

Ah well. 2nd is fine. My matchups were really weird, but Propaganda was nuts and I'm glad I moved them to the main. I'll write another next month probably ...

MattH

02-24-2008, 04:21 PM

Against which decks do you side Counterspell in?

Also, would you ever have wanted Spell Snare?

Poron

02-24-2008, 04:34 PM

I can't see any way to play this deck seriously without 4x Chalice of the Void

Eldariel

02-24-2008, 05:48 PM

I can't see any way to play this deck seriously without 4x Chalice of the Void

What exactly would you want Chalice in for?

Poron

02-24-2008, 05:58 PM

almost anything?

Threshold:
Nimble Moongose
Brainstorm
etc. etc.

Solidarity
all

Burn
all

Chefalid Breakfast:
nomad en kor

and anyway MUC is a slow deck, Chalice is a card that slows the game a lot. I would play it 4x, probably with some Thirst for Knowledge if we run in multiples.

Kadaj

02-24-2008, 06:31 PM

clavio

02-24-2008, 08:56 PM

This might be considered off topic, but is 4 fof too many? A lot of lists only run 3. I feel like every time I cast it, I win.

someone_unimportant

02-24-2008, 09:30 PM

@SB Counterspells
Because I was playing so many cards that could be terrible depending on the matchup, I wanted a general card that I could board in for those that were bad. For example, when I played against Thresh with Windswept Heaths and 3 basics, I could board out the B2B for Counterspell. In addition, I thought that it might be likely that I would want additional Counterspells (Belcher).

@Spell Snare
I've expressed this already, but I feel that the cards MUC is going to lose to do not cost 2. Nimble Mongoose, Goblin Lackey, Goblin Warchief, Breakthrough, Pernicious Deed, EE@3, Terravore (who knows, it MAY be too big to shackle), Fact or Fiction, Smokestack, Armageddon etc. do not cost 2. There are few exceptions to this, including Dark Confidant and perhaps an early Goyf backed up by lots of protection. Both are shackleable and EEable. Counterbalance is just awful against us, and Piledriver isn't a serious threat without Warchief or Lacakey. In my mind, they compete with Force Spike, and I love the spike. It will be hard to convince me that it is bad.

@Chalice of the Void
Meh. It was decent when my meta contained 89532751250985 Threshold decks, mainly to shut off that damn Nimble Mongoose and Pithing Needle. It isn't actually useful against much else though. If you think it's good against Solidarity, I don't think you have actually thought about the matchup. Even if you get it quick, you still have approximately 0 pressure. They can get 9-11 lands in play before you can even try to kill them, and Reset still generates 7 mana. But worse than that, they don't even need to combo kill you. They can just play some spells, get them countered, play Brain Freeze, Remand it, play it again. Or just 2 Brain Freezes. What are you going to do? I Counterspelled the Remanded Brain Freeze, and died anyway. They are just going to mill you with a bunch of lands in play. I think I'll probably cut it from the board. I boarded them in twice, once I feel it was the wrong call and I boarded them out for game 3, and the other time they were better than Propaganda against Solidarity :tongue:

@Thirst for Knowledge
I actually liked it A LOT when I had only 10 artifacts (Shackles, EE, Chalice). However, when I cut the Chalices, I obviously didn't have enough artifacts to support it. I replaced it with Impulse, and was very happy with the result, although my matchups were kind of weird. All of them were pretty much find Propaganda or die (or find B2B or die). Impulse is good at finding those.

I also second Chrome Mox being garbage. All your blue cards are good, or food for Brainstorms. Imprinting them seems ... bad. Also, as me writing about Brainstorm just reminded me, slowrolling that card is phenomenally important. Don't just play it when you have the mana. Play it when you need to hit a land drop, or have terrible cards in your hand.

Illissius

02-26-2008, 09:19 AM

Chalice sucks in MUC. Why? Becuase to make it work you have to run Chrome Mox, which sucks almost as much as Chalice. Threshold is already a favorable matchup without it, and I doubt adding Chalice would even help considering the stuff you'd have to cut to make it fit. Solidarity isn't played anywhere anymore, and even with Chalice you can't beat Solidarity anyway. Burn is another deck that isn't played commonly, and you stomp them postboard if you have Chill and BEB anyway. Cephalid Breakfast is one of the few combo decks that essentially doesn't care about Chalice, as they'll just counter it, or bounce it, or make you discard it because you had to play it on turn 2 because you have no way to accellerate it out on turn 1.

Also, as an aside, Thirst for Knowledge is awful in MUC. The only way to make it truly consistent is to run Chrome Mox in addition to Powder Keg, Vedalken Shackles, and whatever other artifacts you might be running. That might sound like a good idea in theory, but Chrome Mox is utterly terrible in MUC, and Thirst is potentially even worse. Fact or Fiction and Ancestral Vision do twice as much as Thirst ever could without requiring your deck to be diluted with garbage like Chrome Mox.

Shorter Kadaj: Chalice of the Void sucks because Chrome Mox sucks. Further, Thirst for Knowledge sucks because Chrome Mox sucks, and because Thirst for Knowledge sucks, and because Chrome Mox sucks.

I mean, given your experience with the deck, you may very well be right, but a whole lot of logic is what much of that post did not contain.

P.S. I happen to be rather sympathetic to the "Chrome Mox sucks" argument. I absolutely hate playing Chrome Mox in any deck with a nontrivial amount of artifacts. And then you want to run Thirst so you can pitch extra Moxen, and then more artifacts so you can pitch something to Thirst if you don't have extra Moxen, and it doesn't end up turning out very well. Moxen without Thirsts, or Thirsts without Moxen, however, are possibilities which might not suck, and might merit further exploration.

Brehn

02-26-2008, 01:33 PM

The reasoning should look somehow different (and I think Kadaj did more or less post the same):
- Chalice sucks on its own. It's good against Threshold (good matchup), it's good against Loam. That's it. Ok, sometimes you can also steal a game against Combo with it (usually that's what Force of Will is for).
- Mox sucks on its own. Blue-based control doesn't want to produce card disadvantage, and if it does, it does so via Enlightened Tutor (not this deck) or Force of Will, which are game-winning cards.
- Chalice and Moxen have synergy, but this doesn't outweigh the fact that both cards suck.
- The only way how Thirst of Knowledge could possibly not suck is to run crappy artifacts - like Chalice and Mox - that can be pitched to it. Thirsts without Moxen - good luck pitching your Shackles. :2: :u: : Draw 3, discard 2 also sucks.

DaiJou

03-01-2008, 06:57 AM

Long time reader, first time poster and english as secondary language. Bear with me alright? :smile:

I’ll start by posting my current MUC decklist

Main:
4 Polluted Delta
2 Flooded Strand
15 Island
1 Swamp
1 Plains

2 Morphling

4 Force of Will
4 Counterspell
4 Cryptic Command
4 Force Spike

4 Fact or Fiction
4 Brainstorm
3 Impulse

3 Propaganda
3 Engineered Explosives
2 Vedalken Shackles

Side:
3 Back to Basics
3 Blue elemental Blast
4 Tormod’s Crypt
3 Arcane Laboratory
2 Chill

-I think 2 win-conditions are enough with all draw and Impulses.
-My list also runs a full set of Cryptic Command, which in my opinion should be run in every MUC list. It works like Swiss army-knife. It does anything. That 4cc may seem awful, but believe me, it’s worth it. Against combo it may be just Dismiss, but in more aggro-ish (is that correct?) metagame, like mine, you can counter their new threat and bounce old one, or just tap their men and bounce. Command is just amazing.
-I run 3 Propaganda in main and 3 Back to Basics in sideboard. Reason for that is simple: In my local meta, we have only few decks which are affected by B2B. My meta has more Aggro, so maindeck propaganda’s are way to go. Obviously if I go to larger tournament or event, I’d switch places with Propaganda and Back to Basics.

What do you guys think?

slyfer

03-01-2008, 11:13 AM

I think that you can maindeck back to basic in place of propaganda because you already play many counters, + 4 bounces + explosives + the shackles, so you can take care of creatures quite well i think....
Instead back to basics is THE bombs in many match and sometime s they just concede when it's in play...

my2 cent

Kadaj

03-02-2008, 02:41 PM

Chalice of the Void is awful because even at it's absolute best (which would be Chrome Mox + void on turn 1), it's still bad. Why? Because you should be reaming threshold, which is essentially the only matchup it's relevant against, without needing to go three cards on the play. Chalice is also awful, inherently, because Chrome Mox is fucking terrible in MUC. So put two cards that are already bad on their own together in the same decklist and you end up with a load of crap.

Thirst For Knowledge is weak because even at it's best it's still not very good (see the pattern here?). You have, in a list that isn't inherently awful, six artifacts to discard. That being 2 Vedalken Shackles and 4 Powder Keg. Cards that you might very well be digging FOR. You can see the conflict of interest there. If you don't have an artifact you're stuck with essentially Brainstorm for 3 mana. Hardly the effect you're looking for I would imagine.

Now, moving on to the continued usage of Fetchlands and Engineered Explosives, allow me to give everyone a piece of advice: Don't do it. The best reason to run MUC in the current metagame is because you have such robust matchups against Threshold and Landstill while still maintaining a manageable matchup against Goblins. Remind me why you'd want to weaken your matchups against Thresh and Landstill by opening up vulnerabilities to Stifle and removing your ability to destroy man-lands against Landstill? Especially when the only thing you gain is a slight increase in your matchup against Goblins, which you dilute even further by not running additional draw alongside Fact or Fiction and running stuff like Cryptic Command that looks amazing on paper but will clog your hand too much against stuff like Tempo Thresh and Goblins.

The key to being able to maintain positive matchups against Threshold and Landstill while still remaining somewhat competitive game 1 against Goblins is running enough Mid-Game bombs against both decks while still being able to protect those bombs with countermagic. Diluting the deck with stuff like Brainstorm, Impulse, Cryptic Command, etc, only makes it harder to achieve that end, particularly when you add in further vulnerabilities by adding Fetchlands and off-color basics (the basics are admittedly negligible, but the weakness to stifle is annoying as hell against Tempo Thresh and 4c Landstill).

Doks

03-02-2008, 02:49 PM

Diluting the deck with stuff like Brainstorm, Impulse, Cryptic Command, etc

You even think of cutting Impulse?!
I guess it was you who really argued for it instead of Brainstorm in the "Cantripping Discussion" to find all those 2-ofs like B2B, Keg, Shackles, etc.

Can MUC really leave out all cards of any kind of cantripping that smoothes its draws out and finds the needed solution for CC 2 or less?

Proz0r

03-02-2008, 04:26 PM

Diluting the deck with stuff like Brainstorm, Impulse, Cryptic Command, etc, only makes it harder to achieve that end, particularly when you add in further vulnerabilities by adding Fetchlands and off-color basics (the basics are admittedly negligible, but the weakness to stifle is annoying as hell against Tempo Thresh and 4c Landstill).

Not playing fetchlands because you are scared of Stifle is obviously nonsense. Playing fetchlands enables you to play one of the strongest blue cards available, Brainstorm.

Daze

03-02-2008, 05:22 PM

You even think of cutting Impulse?!
I guess it was you who really argued for it instead of Brainstorm in the "Cantripping Discussion" to find all those 2-ofs like B2B, Keg, Shackles, etc.

Can MUC really leave out all cards of any kind of cantripping that smoothes its draws out and finds the needed solution for CC 2 or less?

I think so. Brainstorm is good, but since I don't like loosing life and having fewer lands in the lategame, I opted for a list without them, and it is doing quite well.

Mana:

26 Island

Creatures/Win:
1 Morphling
1 Meloku the Clouded Mirror
1 Rainbow Efreet

Counters
4 [AL] Force of Will
4 [7E] Counterspell
4 [DIS] Spell Snare
1 [EX] Forbid
Draw:
4 [IN] Fact or Fiction
4 [TSP] Ancestral Vision
"Lock":
3 [TE] Propaganda
2 [FD] Vedalken Shackles
2 [US] Back to Basics
3 [UD] Powder Keg

Sideboard:
1 Propaganda
1 Vedalken Shackles
1 Back to Basics
1 Powder Keg
4 Stifle
4 Blue Elemental Blast
3 Repeal

Kadaj

03-02-2008, 05:23 PM

Not playing fetchlands because you are scared of Stifle is obviously nonsense. Playing fetchlands enables you to play one of the strongest blue cards available, Brainstorm.

Sigh... And I here I was hoping I wouldn't have to have this discussion again. Basically, here's what it comes down to. Brainstorm is an amazing card in a vacuum. However, it's not very good in MUC. Why, you might incredulously ask? Because Brainstorm doesn't actually do anything to affect the board state. Yes, it does filter your draws, and yes if you run fetchlands (a huge mistake in this deck) Brainstorm is an amazing cantrip. However, it is only that. A cantrip. Casting Brainstorm will not stop Threshold from bashing your face in with a Goyf, and it won't stop Goblins from running you over with Piledriver into Warchief. Yes, it will dig you towards answers to the aformentioned threats, but what if you had Propaganda in hand instead of Brainstorm? You could drop that on turn 3 and turn off half of Goblins offense and make Threshold choose between cantripping or attacking.

Draw-Go style MUC does not work in this type of format. Threats are too fast, too protectable, and too resilient to be beaten by such a narrow form of defense. You need stuff like Propaganda, Powder Keg, AND Back to Basics available together if you want to be able to combat the swiss army knife that the Legacy metagame can often be. Sure, you can just cut the numbers down on the aformentioned cards to fit in Brainstorm, but you will be reducing the deck's consistency in order to do so. A consistency that is one of this deck's major selling points in a format loaded with more explosive, more flashy, options.

In a similar vein to the reasons why Chalice of the Void and Thirst for Knowledge are awful in MUC, Brainstorm is less than it's usual spectacular self because even at it's best it's still not good enough to fill the roles you need in a deck like this. Brainstorm is a cantrip designed to increase consistency, yet if you look at the lists running Brainstorm you'll find the numbers of important cards like Back to Basics and Powder Keg have to be chopped while Propaganda is often cut altogether. What consistency is being gained there? Maybe you'll be landscrewed less often with Brainstorm in your list, but you'll also be less answer-dense and have a harder time managing threats in the mid-game (which is by far the most important phase in all of the three major matchups, Goblins, Threshold, and Landstill).

You even think of cutting Impulse?!
I guess it was you who really argued for it instead of Brainstorm in the "Cantripping Discussion" to find all those 2-ofs like B2B, Keg, Shackles, etc.

Can MUC really leave out all cards of any kind of cantripping that smoothes its draws out and finds the needed solution for CC 2 or less?

As I came to the conclusion that MUC wins in Legacy through sheer muscle and brute mid-game force and not through finesse and incrimental card advantage like the old draw-go builds I looked through my list to find a card to cut for Ancestral Vision, my auxiliary draw spell alongside Fact or Fiction. It is at that point I realized the only way I could make room for something I felt was crucially important to the overall function of the deck without losing a significant amount of answer density was to cut Impulse. I was worried at first, but having now tested cantripless-MUC for well over 300+ games at this point I can safely say I haven't missed Impulse or Brainstorm once.

Edit:

Just as a reference, compare Zvi's MUC list from the 2000 Invitational to Randy Beuhler's list from the 1998 World Championships:
http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=mtgcom/daily/mf113
In my opinion, MUC in Legacy has to be built more like Zvi's then like Randy's if it is to be successful.

Proz0r

03-02-2008, 05:36 PM

I don't play MUC, but I play UWB control, which is basically MUC with 2 splashes. In my version Brainstorm is by far the most powerful card in my deck. I fail to see why this would not be the same for a mono U build. The only way I can see this being true is that you don't use your Brainstorms properly. If you keep them in your hand as long as possible, and play them ONLY when you either need a land or an answer, they are insane.

Kadaj

03-02-2008, 05:42 PM

someone_unimportant

03-02-2008, 05:54 PM

EDIT: This was written before Kadaj's post concerning Brainstorm, and I edited it accordingly to address Brainstorm more centrally.

If you get your fetchlands stifled by Thresh then you are just playing badly. Playing around Stifle is not hard, especially when your opponent's deck is based around playing many spells and having a low land count. If they are determined to Stifle a land, it means the earliest they can play a cantrip/goose is turn 2, and the earliest they can play a Goyf is turn 3. If they hit their land drops. Meanwhile you can make land drops by drawing lands (we don't play 23+ lands for nothing) and you are already past the worst part of the game for you, the early part. Stifle does so little it should be Brainstormed back/pitched to Force of Will on your opponent's first opportunity. I haven't played against any Landstill lists with Stifle, but I imagine it's probably equally bad there.

The number one advantage about fetchlands is their ability to make Brainstorm good. Brainstorm is one of the most powerful blue cards in the format, and it is excellent at digging for the right answer or just producing virtual card advantage by shuffling back excess lands or dead cards. Brainstorm doesn't dilute a deck, it makes it more consistent. I can look for Propaganda or Shackles against Goblins, Shackles or Back to Basics against Thresh, etc. Calling Brainstorm "just a cantrip" shows a misunderstanding of what exactly Brainstorm is. Brainstorm is excellent at finding cards you need early in the game and in that sense, it is indeed a cantrip. However, as the game progresses, Brainstorms functions become stronger and stronger, and more and more varied. It serves as a virtual Ancestral Recall by holding your 8th and 9th lands in your hand and shuffling them back, or 9th land and dead card X. If your hand is good, it is simple to just not play Brainstorm. You have more important things to be spending your mana on. But Brainstorm shines when your hand is bad. If your hand is clogged with expensive cards, Brainstorm lowers the curve and lets you play cards. Obviously, against Goblins if my Brainstorm were a Propaganda that would be better. But against Landstill, if that Brainstorm were a Propaganda I'd be pissed. It lets you run more answers in fewer slots. Kadaj, I think you and I disagree on a fundamental level on cards like Brainstorm and Impulse. I view them as necessary components to keep the deck running smoothly and consistently hitting land drops, as well as being able to quickly find answer cards (proactive ones, not counterspells) or ways to force those through (counterspells). I would never, ever play with Ancestral Visions because it doesn't serve either of those roles, even though its effect is much stronger than Brainstorm and Impulse. We both agree that MUC cannot be a draw-go deck, and I think that Brainstorm helps you find the cards you are using for your proactive game plan. I didn't cut the proactive cards for Brainstorm, I cut some Counterspells.

As for Engineered Explosives, I actually think it's better against Thresh than Powder Keg, and I can't imagine a serious scenario in which I would want it to kill manlands. Your goals against Landstill are to resolve Back to Basics and Fact or Fictions, or possibly stick a Morphling (that one's a long shot if you haven't had any FoFs). Engineered Explosives and Powder Keg are equally bad against Landstill as they don't advance your strategy. If you really, really, really need to get rid of those manlands, play a Shackles. I play Engineered Explosives over Keg because it's better against Goblins, and it's better against Thresh because you don't have to wait 2 turns.

I agree with Kadaj about Chalice and TfK, they are definitely suboptimal. Chalice doesn't DO enough, and TfK costs too much mana and the artifacts you are playing are artifacts that are good and you probably want.

Cryptic Command seems extremely expensive. I don't think I want to play a counterspell that costs that much. It produces card advantage, yeah, but not enough for the mana it costs. It's good when there's an empty board (read: you're winning) and bad when you're behind, and really, REALLY bad when your opponent thinks you have it and plays around it.

Proz0r

03-02-2008, 06:10 PM

Frankly, if you don't even play the deck, and considering I highly doubt your UWB build is comparable to the style of MUC I'm referencing, I'm disinclined to give your arguements any credence. Particularly when your only point is "Brainstorm is insane!" without offering any real reasons why. Every 'reason' you listed I already refuted in my previous post.

I have played MUC before, until I realized there was no good reason not to splash colours into the deck for Swords to Plowshares and Engineered Explosives. My colored list doesn't differ alot from a normal MUC list.

I didn't mention any reason why Brainstorm is insane because I thought the reasons would be clear to anyone who has played with the card. The biggest reason why Brainstorm is so good is that it makes you shuffle back cards that are useless in a certain situation and trades them for random cards, creating virtual card advantage. Your deck revolves around card advantage so virtual card advantage +2 for just U is pretty good. In addition Brainstorm helps you find lands early game, however this doesn't show up often.

In addition to that, UWB Control gets to run things like Smother, Swords to Plowshares, and Thoughtseize which MUC does not have access to and completely change the way the deck plays. You can answer threats in a more individual manner and still be effective while MUC has a much harder time with that. UWB Control is also more or less required to run fetchlands simply because it's three colors, which makes it a lot easier to justify the inclusion of Brainstorm because it also helps smooth out any potential color issues, something that MUC does not have to worry about (unless you run the "splash" versions with EE, which opens up that admittedly minute possibility).

Color issues basically never show up with 8 fetches and 11 basic lands. You can easily run 6-8 fetchlands in MUC just for Brainstorm.

Kadaj

03-02-2008, 06:24 PM

To be blunt, I'm not really interested in debating the merits of Brainstorm. I assure you, I'm not just drawing conjecture here, nor am I unaware of what Brainstorm is capable of. However, after having tested hundreds of games with various MUC builds, both with and without Brainstorm, I have come to the conclusion that the list is far better without Brainstorm, or Impulse, than it is with them. Calling Brainstorm an incredibly powerful card is far from incorrect, but it does show a total lack of understanding about why it's so strong. Once again, I'm not debating the strength of Brainstorm in a vacuum, but I am saying that it has no place in a properly built Legacy MUC list.

In addition to that, I'm basically going to assume you've never tested against Tempo Thresh or Landstill if you honestly believe that getting a land Stifled against Thresh doesn't matter, or if you honestly believe that you'd never blow a Keg to kill man-lands against Landstill. Landstill absolutely has to be the aggressor in that matchup, and the way they do that is to attack as much as possible with man-lands. What could possibly be better than to prevent that from happening and buy yourself more time? Having tested the matchup extensive, I can basically say it comes down to this. Resolving and protecting Back to Basics, or not resolving and protecting Back to Basics. Powder Keg aids in this goal by buying time to dig for counterspells and Back to Basics. The same general principle is applicable in the Threshold matchup. They're obviously the aggressor, so why wouldn't they want to play the mana-denial game, which they'd be looking to do against control anyway, if they know they'll lose the long game? Removing an avenue of attack against your overall game plan for them to target hardly seems like a bad thing to me.

I also disagree that EE is better against Threshold than Keg is. Why? Because if you tap out for EE on turn 2 to deal with the Goyf they just played (assuming you're on the draw), you get a worse effect overall than if you tapped out for Keg. EE requires additional investment on turn 3 if you want it to be faster than Keg, an investment that prevents you from say, playing a Propaganda or a Back to Basics until at least a turn later. In the mid to late game you have far more avenues available to you to deal with things like Goyf or Mongoose, like Shackles or just a plain old counterspell, so the difference in effectiveness there is off-set to an extent.

As far as the Goblins matchup goes, both Keg and EE suck against Goblins. Your aim in that matchup is get multiple Propagandas in play and mop up from there, or to resolve a Propaganda and a B2B and hope you're playing against the 3 Color version that has almost no basics. EE is slightly better because it can deal with Lackey if you have it on the play, but they're both more or less equal in dealing with Aether Vial, which is basically they're only practical use in that matchup.

Edit responding to Prozor:
Basically the entire reason I think Brainstorm is unnecessary in this deck is because the ONLY matchup you truly have dead cards against is Combo, which Brainstorm will not help you against. There shouldn't be any "useless" cards to shuffle away to create "virtual" card advantage. Your "virtual" card advantage, which is otherwise known as card quality, is instead created by running overall better cards and not needing Brainstorm to filter through the narrow or shitty ones.

someone_unimportant

03-02-2008, 06:52 PM

I suppose I'll drop the Brainstorm bit, if you really don't want to talk about it. However, I'll continue debating Stifle with you. I fully realize getting a land stifled would be a huge deal. What I think, however, is that actually getting a land stifled is going to be difficult if you know what you are doing. Just don't break the fetch. What are they going to do, not play spells? They'll have to play a cantrip or creature at some point. If they aren't making efficient use of their mana, then they aren't serving their role as aggressor very well, and the game will naturally progress into the long game where you have the advantage. A 3rd or 4th turn Goyf is not scary in the slightest.

As for Landstill, I don't think them tapping mana to attack you is a very good plan. If they tax their own mana resources, it just means you can resolve a Back to Basics that much more easily. If you take your beats a few times and then set up an EOT Fact or Fiction along with a mainphase Back to Basics, with perhaps a counter or two, I think they are going to be hard-pressed to stop you, especially if they are down 2 mana every turn. Don't think this is a rare occurrence either, this is why I play my Impulses and Brainstorms.

I don't particularly like the scenario you present for EE vs. Thresh. I would not want to tap out on turn 2 for an EE, especially not against a Goyf. This may be because I play more Shackles than you (at least I think I do. You mentioned you only play 2 right?), but I don't consider Goyf too much of a threat. He is very Shackleable, and the EE's are more for Nimble Mongoose honestly. Of course, they CAN deal with Goyf, which is an added bonus at only the cost of 2 essentially colorless lands. And in the other scenario, clearly activating EE on a turn where you'd rather play Propaganda or Back to Basics is a mistake. Then just don't do it. Just play Propaganda or Back to Basics. Are you really within goyf range on turn 3, especially when it is probably only 2/3, 3/4 if they played one of the few sorceries? Much more importantly, EE is faster than Keg later, when you topdeck it. Killing Pithing Needles, Mongeese, Oblivion Rings (It happened! I needed my B2B back ...), Dark Confidants, etc. right away can make the difference between winning and losing. Perhaps a difference in our opinions comes again from the role of these cards. From the scenarios you present, it seems that you want a card that is an early answer, with low mana investment. I use that slot as a catch-all which, for more mana, is much better later in the game. I control the early game via other cards, like Force Spike, Counterspell, and enchantments, and use EE as something to answer a topdecked card later, or a troublesome permanent that circumvents my answer permanents or counterspells. This way, it would make sense why we prefer the things we do.

Proz0r

03-02-2008, 06:55 PM

As far as the Goblins matchup goes, both Keg and EE suck against Goblins.

When on the play, I have found that EE is actually good vs goblins. Going Island -> EE turn 1 is pretty good against both Vial and Lackey. It can also randomly deal with Warchiefs in a 3-color list. On the draw it can still deal with Vial.

Edit responding to Prozor:
Basically the entire reason I think Brainstorm is unnecessary in this deck is because the ONLY matchup you truly have dead cards against is Combo, which Brainstorm will not help you against. There shouldn't be any "useless" cards to shuffle away to create "virtual" card advantage. Your "virtual" card advantage, which is otherwise known as card quality, is instead created by running overall better cards and not needing Brainstorm to filter through the narrow or shitty ones

Examples: drawing 3 FoW, drawing 2 B2B, drawing B2B against a mono colored deck, drawing 2 FoF's early game, drawing 2 Kegs, drawing Morphling early game, drawing many lands early game, etc etc. In those cases you want to shuffle at least one card back. Only when your hand has been optimized you don't neccesarily want to play Brainstorm, which is when you are probably winning already.

Regarding the tempo thresh matchup: I guess it's an unfavorable matchup for me. I don't think cutting fetchlands will help that much.

I also agree that TFK, Chalice and Chrome Mox do not belong in MUC.

Kadaj

03-02-2008, 07:09 PM

someone_unimportant:
Indeed, at this point I think the majority of our differences are philosophical rather than material. I do not want Powder Keg to be a catch-all, I want it to be a stop-gap while I work towards my bigger bombs in whatever matchup I happen to be stuck in.

The reason Landstill is more or less stuck being aggressive against you is because their draw engine sucks against you if they don't actively go after your life total to make you play spells. In addition to that, they have less draw (than my list at any rate) and less counterspells, and we have the one big trump in B2B, which I run as a 4 of to make it even more likely that I'll draw two or three over the course of a game. I've had plenty of Landstill players attempt to play draw-go against me, and that strategy has major issues dealing with either Morphling or Rainbow Efreet backed up by a ton of lands, which isn't a hard scenario to arrive at if Landstill isn't putting any pressure on you.

I don't doubt that FoF into B2B is a rare occurance. Insinuating that not running Impulse or Brainstorm reduces the chances of that is facesious in this case, because I run 4 of both cards in addition to 4 Ancestral Vision to add further raw drawing power. Especially in the Landstill matchup where FoF will often lead to a 4 against 1 split with the one being Back to Basics.

Prozor:
Yes EE can deal with Lackey on the play, I made a note of that in my previous post. However, it's other usefulness is essentially nil aside from dealing with Vial, which Keg does equally well.

In both of the scenarios you presented regarding Brainstorm's effectiveness I deal with them a different way. I mulligan. Or, I wait to draw one of the inevitable bombs in my deck because I run 4 of each of them. If by some chance I get unlucky and die because I drew nothing but lands, FoWs, and B2Bs against say, Dragon Stompy (that exact scenario happened to me in a tournament), I just shrug and procede to maul them in games 2 and 3 (which also happened in that same tournament).

I will concede that Brainstorm helps offset the effects of a potential bad hand, but I will also say that if you mulligan properly and build your deck properly the odds of getting into that sort of situation are wholeheartedly reduced.

someone_unimportant

03-02-2008, 07:26 PM

You're right, that was a bad insinuation. I was straw-manning in my mind, trying to imagine an argument you would present and preemptively countering it. A bad habit, I know. It won't happen again. Anyway, I think that you are correct in that draw-go will probably lose Landstill the game, but so will attacking for 2, I believe. This is exactly why the matchup is so good. It's kind of a damned if you do, damned if you don't. And thus I think that EE's inability to kill lands is irrelevant, since Landstill will probably lose no matter what they do.

Brainstorm does indeed offset a bad hand, but like you I prefer to mulligan bad opening hands. Brainstorm is good when you draw bad cards over the first few turns, or when you need the right answer but have the wrong one. I don't like Ancestral Visions because I feel that with smart play, one can get a similar and almost-as-powerful effect out of Brainstorm, in addition to being able to play it early as a Ponder-like dig spell. I like the versatility over the raw power. Also, keep in mind that I did not cut bombs for brainstorm, I cut counterspells and reactive cards that I felt were bad.

Kadaj

03-02-2008, 07:47 PM

Brainstorm does indeed offset a bad hand, but like you I prefer to mulligan bad opening hands. Brainstorm is good when you draw bad cards over the first few turns, or when you need the right answer but have the wrong one. I don't like Ancestral Visions because I feel that with smart play, one can get a similar and almost-as-powerful effect out of Brainstorm, in addition to being able to play it early as a Ponder-like dig spell. I like the versatility over the raw power. Also, keep in mind that I did not cut bombs for brainstorm, I cut counterspells and reactive cards that I felt were bad.

See, a part of this is a total myth. I don't care how amazing you are at Magic, you could be Kai Budde for all I care, you're not going to be able to turn Brainstorm's effect into anything close Ancestral Vision. Drawing three cards is totally different from drawing three cards and needing to put two back, shuffle effect or not. If you wanted to argue that the delay in Vision's effect is why you don't like it I'd be fine with that. Sure I wouldn't agree with you, but it'd be an actual argument. However, stating that you can replicate that effect with Brainstorm is just false.

What if those two cards you had to put back turn out to be needed 3 turns from now? What if don't have any cards you want to put back? You could say in that case you hold onto the Brainstorm, but in that case you have a dead card in hand. I'd infinitely rather have Visions in that situation.

As far as digging for a specific answer goes, most of MUCs answers are so broad that you're not looking for a specific card. More often than not I find myself thinking "If I had a Propaganda, OR a Back to Basics, OR a Vedalken Shackles here I'd be golden." Very rarely does a situation come up where only one card will save you. Especially since once you hit the midgame you should be casting Fact or Fiction, or whatever auxiliary draw spell you might be running, to dig for answers and sheer card advantage, not relying on Brainstorm to get half the relevant effect.

someone_unimportant

03-02-2008, 10:49 PM

See, a part of this is a total myth. I don't care how amazing you are at Magic, you could be Kai Budde for all I care, you're not going to be able to turn Brainstorm's effect into anything close Ancestral Vision. Drawing three cards is totally different from drawing three cards and needing to put two back, shuffle effect or not. If you wanted to argue that the delay in Vision's effect is why you don't like it I'd be fine with that. Sure I wouldn't agree with you, but it'd be an actual argument. However, stating that you can replicate that effect with Brainstorm is just false.

What if those two cards you had to put back turn out to be needed 3 turns from now? What if don't have any cards you want to put back? You could say in that case you hold onto the Brainstorm, but in that case you have a dead card in hand. I'd infinitely rather have Visions in that situation.

As far as digging for a specific answer goes, most of MUCs answers are so broad that you're not looking for a specific card. More often than not I find myself thinking "If I had a Propaganda, OR a Back to Basics, OR a Vedalken Shackles here I'd be golden." Very rarely does a situation come up where only one card will save you. Especially since once you hit the midgame you should be casting Fact or Fiction, or whatever auxiliary draw spell you might be running, to dig for answers and sheer card advantage, not relying on Brainstorm to get half the relevant effect.

I believe we are going to have to agree to disagree. I believe you CAN get a large degree of Ancestral Vision's effect out of a Brainstorm. I think drawing three cards is the most important piece of both cards' functions. Seeing three new cards is ridiculously powerful, especially for only a single U. If you put back two lands and shuffle, the only difference between the two is you now have 2 less lands in your hand, and 2 more in your deck. The latter is relevant, but only by an infintesimal amount. The former is also highly irrelevant if you already have 8 or more lands. If you don't have cards to put back, odds are your hand is good and you have better things to be spending your mana on. I wouldn't suspend Ancestral Visions on a turn where I want to play Back to Basics, and I doubt you would either. If you don't have enough cards in your hand, then you can wait to play it. But you would wait for Vision's effect as well. As for cards you would like to have in a few turns, those probably qualify as good cards, so you probably can foresee wanting them in a few turns, and you can not shuffle.

I also did argue that I didn't like Visions delay when I said that I liked being able to use Brainstorm in a Ponder-like manner to dig for cards in the early game, when we are most vulnerable.

As for specific answers, we will have to disagree there as well. I hate drawing Propaganda and Shackles against Landstill, Back to Basics against Goblins, Shackles against Belcher, etc, etc. I don't think the permanent answers are similar at all, I think they are tailored to specific scenarios, and that's why we play them all. And lastly, yes Fact or Fiction is better to cast midgame than Brainstorm. I'm probably going to go up to a 4th as well because I haven't been getting clogged hands like I thought I might.

So, in summary, I believe this: Brainstorm can have an effect comparable in power (though still smaller) to Ancestral Visions, but can also function as an early game cantrip to dig for lands/answers. If you still think that Brainstorm is in no way comparable in power to Ancestral Visions, then I suggest we merely go our separate

Kadaj

03-03-2008, 08:16 AM

I believe we are going to have to agree to disagree. I believe you CAN get a large degree of Ancestral Vision's effect out of a Brainstorm. I think drawing three cards is the most important piece of both cards' functions. Seeing three new cards is ridiculously powerful, especially for only a single U. If you put back two lands and shuffle, the only difference between the two is you now have 2 less lands in your hand, and 2 more in your deck. The latter is relevant, but only by an infintesimal amount. The former is also highly irrelevant if you already have 8 or more lands. If you don't have cards to put back, odds are your hand is good and you have better things to be spending your mana on. I wouldn't suspend Ancestral Visions on a turn where I want to play Back to Basics, and I doubt you would either. If you don't have enough cards in your hand, then you can wait to play it. But you would wait for Vision's effect as well. As for cards you would like to have in a few turns, those probably qualify as good cards, so you probably can foresee wanting them in a few turns, and you can not shuffle.

There is a huge difference between drawing three cards and seeing three cards. No matter how amazingly you play your Brainstorms they will not increase your hand size by two. Period. You can argue hyperbole all you like, but the end result of a Brainstorm is you have the same number of cards in your hand, they're just often different cards. Vision leaves you with far more options and is much better in the mid to late game, where you need as much power as you can get. There is a reason why Thirst For Knowledge sucks, and it's because it essentially ends up being a marginally better Brainstorm for three mana. The investment just isn't justified. Brainstorm for three mana is a pathetically weak effect, so Thirst remains a garbage card in this archtype. The fact that you can suspend Vision on turn 1 and reap a huge reward in four turns is perfect for the strategy of investing in mid-game permenant answers that often require tapping out on turn 2, 3, and 4.

See, I love drawing Shackles against Landstill and Back To Basics against Goblins. Shackles prevents Landstill from attacking profitably, which is the only course of action they can profitably undertake, and I love B2B against Goblins which shuts down their ability to use Port and whatever dual lands they might have fetched out in addition to making Propaganda even more effecient against them. Even Propaganda against Landstill, which is certainly not the optimal answer to draw in that matchup, makes attacking almost a non-option for them in the early to mid-game if they want to be able to fight against your EOT Fact or Fictions. Indeed I usually end up beating Landstill by using Powder Keg, Shackles, and/or Propaganda to make attacking so impractical that they can't do it, and then I get in an EOT fight over FoF. If it resolves then you know you'll be able to drop B2B with impunity on your own turn, and if it doesn't resolve then you've probably exhausted them of their answers and forced them to tap a ton of mana so B2B is even more deadly.

clavio

03-04-2008, 11:31 PM

I really like Muc now. I used to hate it.

My list:

24 Island
1 Morphling
1 Meloku
1 Guile

2 Vedalken Shackles
3 Powder Keg

4 AK
4 Fact or Fiction
2 Think Twice

3 Propaganda
3 Back to Basics

4 Force of Will
4 Counterspell
4 Force Spike

SB:
4 Chill
1 Propaganda
10 Undecided

Guile is probably sub optimal, but I love it. It has the Clunkiness of Vizzerdrix, but it's usually game over once you play it. Also you can save yourself from decking if you need to.

I think if more people saw how one sided B2B is they would play this deck.

EDIT: Something else. Since you don't have to worry about dual lands, this deck is much easier to pimp than most other decks.

pingveno

03-07-2008, 04:26 PM

ive been playing MUC since I first saw FoW. Here is my current list:

4 Polluted Delta
14 Island
4 Quicksand

2 Morphling

4 Force of Will
4 Counterspell
3 Mana Leak
3 Spell Snare
2 Stifle
4 Accumulated Knowledge
3 Fact or Fiction
4 Ancestral Vision

3 Back to Basics
3 Powder Kegs
3 Vedelkan Shackles

SB:
4 BeB
4 Chalice of the Void
4 Propaganda
3 Tormod's Crypt

Its pretty standard, but I was wondering what everyone thinks about Propaganda. Every time I board it in against aggro it doesn't pull its weight, I am always disappointed in drawing it, what else is there to help the MU against aggro?

Also, brainstorm isnt that great for the following reasons:
-You dont have all that many shuffle effects.
- You dont need to be smoothing your draws because there is 4 (minimum) more lands than Threshold, which has a reason to cantrip.
- Doesn't provide REAL card advantage, which every other draw spell does. You dont want to see a bunch of cards to put back, you want to put them into your hand to counter stuff.
Brainstorm is outstanding, one of the top 5 blue cards in legacy, but in MUC it is nothing special. You could do worse certainly, but you could do better.

Kadaj

03-07-2008, 04:36 PM

If you've honestly been finding Propaganda weak then I don't know what to tell you. Have you been attempting to drop it on turn 3 as much as possible, as opposed to holding back for counterspells? I don't think I've ever been more satisfied with an anti-aggro card then I have with Propaganda.

At any rate, as far as your list itself goes I think it's pretty solid in general. The only things I dislike are Stifle, which is pretty weak, and Mana Leak, which is irritatingly narrow. And your win-conditions should be more diverse to avoid falling prey to Extirpate or Pithing Needle, among other things. You've certainly managed to cram a lot of stuff into the list though, so for that I give you credit. If I were to make changes I'd cut the Stifles for the 4th Spell Snare and the 4th Mana Leak (assuming you want to keep the Leaks) and I might think about cutting Accumulated Knowledge for some more lands, another win-condition and the 4th Fact or Fiction.

Out of curiousity, as you're not running Brainstorm or Engineered Explosives, what is the purpose of the fetchlands in your list?

pingveno

03-07-2008, 04:39 PM

fetchs are only in there for land thinning. more than a few games ive been in the drivers seat and draw one too many lands to really stabalize. they can easily be cut, but ive been happy with their addition.

Kadaj

03-07-2008, 05:12 PM

Hoojo

03-07-2008, 05:27 PM

You do realize that the actual land thinning fetches provide has been mathematically proven to be almost non-existent right? I don't have the formula on hand right now, but I'm sure it wouldn't be too difficult to find. I do remember that each fetch reduces the odds you'll draw land by something less than 1%, which doesn't make up for their vulnerability to stifle, Blood Moon effects, and the life loss (which can surprisingly matter) against aggro.

Here is the article (http://www.starcitygames.com/php/news/article/10898.html) (myth number 3.)

Honestly, Brainstorm is an awesome card, but it is not a card for MUC. The way I look at it, you run Brainstorm when you are playing blue, have shuffle effects, and function well in top-deck mode. MUC only meets one requirement. You have to mold MUC to fit the requirements for running Brainstorm.

KillemallCFH

03-07-2008, 05:33 PM

For anyone who is interested, here is the mathematical proof (http://magic.tcgplayer.com/db/article.asp?id=3096) that Fetchlands do next to nothing in terms of deck-thinning.

memnarch

03-07-2008, 06:03 PM

Here is the article (http://www.starcitygames.com/php/news/article/10898.html) (myth number 3.)

Honestly, Brainstorm is an awesome card, but it is not a card for MUC. The way I look at it, you run Brainstorm when you are playing blue, have shuffle effects, and function well in top-deck mode. MUC only meets one requirement. You have to mold MUC to fit the requirements for running Brainstorm.

Yes. I think Portent would be good for this deck instead. Turn one you want to have that spike/snare/stifle ready but if you don't end up using it spend your mana on Portent.

Sanguine Voyeur

03-07-2008, 06:11 PM

Yes. I think Portent would be good for this deck instead. Turn one you want to have that spike/snare/stifle ready but if you don't end up using it spend your mana on Portent.I don't follow, Portent is a sorcery.

There aren't many good one costing, instant cantrips. There's the priviously mentioned Brainstorm, the mana hungry Whispers of the Muse, and, I guess, Opt.

memnarch

03-07-2008, 06:14 PM

whoops

Nihil Credo

03-07-2008, 06:22 PM

There aren't many good one costing, instant cantrips. There's the priviously mentioned Brainstorm, the mana hungry Whispers of the Muse, and, I guess, Opt.
I wonder if Peek could be good in a deck full of counters like this one.

memnarch

03-07-2008, 06:23 PM

Hmm I would probably go opt out of all of those but thats pretty mediocre only looking at one card. Perhaps its just better to wait to turn 2 for impulse.

Kadaj

03-07-2008, 07:01 PM

Peek would be bad. All it provides is information on your opponent's hand without providing any sort of card quality or card advantage. It's not at all powerful enough to justify the cuts you'd have to make to fit it in, especially since it's significantly worse than Brainstorm or Impulse, neither of which currently reside in my list.

To be frank, I don't think cantrips of any kind are particularly necessary in MUC. The deck is designed to be nothing but counterspells, answers, and card drawing. It's not like you're playing Threshold where you absolutely need cantrips to keep both your lands and threats flowing alongside making sure you have enough counterspells to keep your threats on the table. There is literally one matchup where MUC isn't the control deck, and that matchup (Solidarity) is rarely if ever seen anymore. Having such a clearly defined role means that if you build your deck properly you'll rarely need to filter through your cards looking for variable answers/threats because you have such a one-track frame of mind.

Arsenal

03-09-2008, 11:21 AM

I know that this was semi-discusses many, many pages ago, but I'd like to re-enter this guy into discussion; Jace Beleren.

It seems as though more and more control deck, of the multi-colored variety, have been adding this guy into their decks. True, those multi-colored control decks have non-blue spells that really make Jace shine (TEC uses Hoofprints of the Stag + Jace to beat face), but he's at least being seriously played. Does he have a home in mono-blue perhaps? Pitchable to FoW at worst, a secondary win condition at best, and a consistent, permanent card-drawer at average (although, Ophidian can easily fulfill this function, and he doesn't see play anymore).

TeKo

03-09-2008, 11:32 AM

You can't really protect Jace in MUC, all the Control deck which play Jace also play Goyf or other things to protect Jace.

So Jace isn't good in MUC.

Kadaj

03-09-2008, 11:34 AM

I run Jace in my sideboard against other control decks, he's been pretty solid there. In particular, he's really good against Landstill, which has no way to remove him other than to counter him, so he just sits there drawing you a ton of cards and eventually milling away their whole deck.

As far as maindeck applications go, I don't think he's worth it. There are way too many matchups where he's either the last thing you'd ever want to draw or pretty close to it. Yes, he shines against other control, but control isn't the only thing you'll come up against in this metagame. On the other hand, if your local metagame has a ton of Landstill and not much aggro, feel free to run Jace. He's undoubtedly a house in that matchup.

Lhet

03-09-2008, 11:39 PM

I'm currently working on MUC. This list is what I currently have (the most important thing I'm missing is 2 fow).
Thoughts on this?

// Lands
19 Island
2 Wasteland
3 Mishra's Factory

// Creatures
2 Meloku the Clouded Mirror
4 Ophidian

// Spells
4 Counterspell
4 Mana Leak
2 Force of Will
2 Daze
1 Stifle
2 Fact or Fiction
4 Accumulated Knowledge
1 Chain of Vapor
1 Rushing River
3 Vedalken Shackles
2 Powder Keg
2 Back to Basics
2 Propaganda

Arsenal

03-10-2008, 01:53 PM

At first glance, I wouldn't play Daze. Daze in tempo-based decks, such as Fish or Threshold, is amazing. Daze in pure control decks, that absolutely needs to hit a land drop turn 1-4, is not.

I'm always going to love Ophidian, but I dropped him for actual draw spells. (1.) Ophidian will not be swinging unopposed as often as you'd like in the current metaGoyf, (2.) Ophidian dies to virtually everything; Bolt, Shriekmaw, StP, Smother, etc. (3.) You can't afford to tap out on your mainphase on turn 3. If you wait until turn 4-5 to cast Phid w/ counter backup, you could have just as easily played an actual draw spell at EOT on turn 3, gotten some goods, then been prepared to tangle on turn 4 w/ all lands available for whatever. All in all, I'd drop him for actual draw spells; Think Twice looks nice in that 4x slot.

I'd go 1x Meloku, 1x Morphling. Having 2x ______ opens you up to Expirtate, Meddling Mage, etc. Also, by having two different win conditions, it makes you more flexible and makes your opponent combat two avenues of attack (1 Superman + lots of 1/1 flyers).

Factory is interesting, how's your testing gone? I've always favored the traditional Quicksand in that slot, as B2B + Quicksand = okay, but B2B + Mishra's Factory = anti-synergy.

Lhet

03-10-2008, 04:01 PM

For the factory, it's proved itself valuable. If I don't have b2b, it's amazing at blocking stuff as a 3/3, and even with b2b out, it's a 2/2 blocker.
As far as Ophidian, I like that it really never stops. I've won many games off it, and alongside blocking small stuff, it will generally draw me 3+ cards.
As far as a 1x morphling 1x meloku. Yeah, I'll probably do that later, once I can actually find a morphling.

Arsenal

03-11-2008, 09:55 AM

Kadaj -

On your suggestion, I've been testing Ancestral Visions vigorously (in place of my beloved Brainstorm). As you have far more experience with the card I have a question:

When do you suspend AV usually?

Assuming I have it in my opening hand, I've noticed alot of times, the turn I suspend AV has alot to do with if I played first or not. My build of MUC also runs Force Spikes & Spell Snares, so 1st turn AV isn't always as attractive if I suspect my opponent is going to open with something nasty. If AV and Force Spike are in my opening hand, and I'm playing first, I find myself going Island -> pass about 50% of the time; the other 50% is taking a chance and going Island -> AV -> pass. Obviously, if I have FoW, it makes AV suspend way easier, but I can't always rely on having AV + FoW in my hand; nor do I want to play a card (AV) that needs FoW to be a good turn 1/2 play, I want to play a card that has potential to be a good turn 1/2 by itself.

However, the games I do not suspend AV on turn 1/2, even though I technically could (had it in opening hand), I've found that I needed to wait until turn 3-4 to suspend it, allowing me to have counter mana open for my opponent's mainphase. This is especially true if I'm on the draw. I cannot tell you how frustrating it is to have it in my opening 7, but since I'm on the draw, I choose not to suspend AV asap, because I want to have Force Spike/Spell Snare mana open when my opponent hits his 2nd land drop.

In your testing, how often did you suspend AV on the play turn 1, and how often did you suspend AV on the draw turn 1? There are a couple decks out there with zero turn 1 plays, but the vast majority of them have legit turn 1 plays that I need to have Force Spike (on the play)/Spell Snare (on the draw) mana for (Goblins, Stompy variants, Stax variants, Sui variants, Thresh, all combo).

I've had no problems with it when everything is going my way (I'm on the play, I suspend AV and pass, my opponent drops a land then passes), and I like drawing 3 cards, but it's getting it suspended that is frustrating me. There have been times where I risk it, then I see a turn 1 Lackey/Vial/3Sphere/Needle/Tangle Wire/Pit Dragon/etc from my opponent and I stab myself in the eye. It's either (a.) go all in and run the risk, hoping that AV draws you into Keg/Shackles/bounce, or (b.) hold back and suspend AV on turn 3-5, allowing you counter mana + AV suspend.

Kadaj

03-11-2008, 03:11 PM

It probably has more to do with the way I've been building my MUC lists recently more then anything. Because I only have two potential turn one plays outside of AV (I run 2 Spell Snare) I almost always suspend AV on turn 1 if I can. However, as I have tested lists like the one you've described, with 7-8 other turn 1 plays, I would say when I suspend (or even whether I would even play AV in the first place) depends on the makeup of the rest of the list. If you play the maximum number, or close to it, of Propaganda and Back To Basics suspend them on turn 1 every time, period.

I've actually won games against Goblins where they've gone Lackey into SCG on the play and my turn 1 play on the draw was AV. How? I dropped Propaganda and Back To Basics and shut down their ability to attack me for the rest of the game. In fact, in my last preboard. testing session against Goblins, I had a 5-5 game record overall and was 3-2 on the draw, 2-3 on the play. Two of my wins included being hit by Lackey on the first turn and the other three were total blowouts. Most of my losses involved an active Aether Vial, but that's another story.

Basically, I've gotten to the point where I no longer consider it crucial to counter opponent's turn one plays because I feel confident that my mid-game tools will mitigate any potential damage I might suffer in the early game. I've applied this against Goblins, Threshold, and Landstill (different, because it's control) with favorable results so far. Obviously this approach is hardly a sound way to deal with combo, but against more or less everything else it works out very well. I daresay the only deck I would not risk that against is Dragon Stompy, because there's a good chance they'll be able to kill you before you even reach the midgame if you offer up no resistance.

Anyway, in summary, I almost always suspend AV as soon as I can. However, in your list I would imagine suspending it on turn 2 or 3 is potentially the correct play a large amount of the time as well.

Arsenal

03-11-2008, 03:54 PM

That's the problem I've been having; I run light creature control (only 2 Kegs and 2 Shackles). I cannot hope that AV on turn 4-8 draws me into answers for resolved turn 1/2 threats my opponent played, I just don't run that many solutions to resolved threats, I run plenty of 1 mana counters and dig to ensure they don't resolve in the first place.

I suppose that in creature-solution lite builds, like mine, AV is less than stellar. Suspending it on turn 4, then getting 3 cards on turn 8 is less than attractive, as the late game has never really been a problem for me w/ FoF and natural drawing redundancy, it's surviving the early game; hence, why I play bunches of 1 mana counters to stop that pivotal turn 1-3 insanity that most decks play.

In creature-solution moderate-heavy builds, I can see why AV on turn 1 is a better play, even if means letting a turn 1/2 threat resolve.

I think I'll stick with Brainstorm for now. If I move away from counter-heavy to creature-solution heavy, I'll give AV another shot.

For reference:

20 Island
4 Quicksand
4 Ancestral Vision
4 Impulse
4 Fact or Fiction
4 Force Spike
4 Spell Snare
4 Counterspell
4 Force of Will
2 Powder Keg
2 Vedalken Shackles
2 Back to Basics
1 Morphling
1 Meloku, the Clouded Mirror

I replaced Rune Snag with Spell Snare, as an experiment to deal with turn 1-3 insanity. I might be switching these back. I'm experimenting with running 4-of everything to see how the redundancy effects my deck, but might be cutting a FoF, Impulse, and a Spell Snare to fit 3x Propaganda.

Kadaj

03-11-2008, 04:40 PM

Yeah, in a list like that I wouldn't bank on Ancestral Vision. The advantages do not outweigh the drawbacks that would that kind of list pretty hard when it counts. Mind you, I'd still advise you find room for more mid-range punch in that particular list, I just wouldn't suggest Ancestral Vision.

KingAlanI

03-13-2008, 09:23 PM

My latest 1.5 (Legacy) deck is MUC (monoblue control); which requires a fair amount of decision-making to play properly. I would like help with that.

First off, here's the decklist I'm working with: (I'm not looking for decklist analysis per se, but it's obviously important info. :))

Sleeves: Black
Format: Legacy
//
Land (25)
25 * Snow-Covered Island

Creatures (3)
1 * Teferi, Mage of Zhalfir
1 * Meloku, the Clouded Mirror
1 * Morphling

Instant (27)
4 * Counterspell
4 * Dissipate
4 * Force of Will
4 * Spell Snare
4 * Fact or Fiction
4 * Ancestral Visions
3 * Remand

Enchantment (2)
2 * Back to Basics

Artifact (2)
2 * Vedalken Shackles
1 * Powder Keg

Sideboard (15)
2 * Blue Elemental Blast
2 * Hydroblast
4 * Trickbind
3 * Annul
2 * Back to Basics
1 * Powder Keg
1 * Vedalken Shackles

Some of my strategy involves the big question:
(Assuming I have a counter in hand, should I try to counter spell such-and-such)
That's something I've had problems with occasionally during playtesting.

Fact or Fiction I wait to play until opponent's EOT. Isn't that the correct way to do it?
* Note: If I have no counter sin hand, and my opponent puts something obnoxious on the stack, I sometimes play FoF in the hope of digging up a counter.

That brings up another question: Once my opponent makes the piles, what should I keep?

Teferi is similar - I wait till EOT to play him, unless I have a chance to flash him in as a surprise blocker.
Also, what should I do if I have Teferi in play and Morphling or Meloku in hand? Something similar?

KingAlanI

03-13-2008, 09:25 PM

Also, I have some sideboard questions:

Often, it seems obvious what I should sideboard in, but sometimes not so obvious what to board out. Any help there?

What comes to mind is:
side out Back to Basics if their deck is all basics; but what should I do if I face only a few nonbasics?
side out Vedalken Shackles if opponent's deck is creatureless
side out Spell Snare if none (or only a few) of opponent's spells cost 2.

Failing that, I think I'd take out the Remands next.

Nihil Credo

03-13-2008, 09:33 PM

How long have you been playing? Do not take this as an attack, but if you're still wrestling with the "Play instants at EOT unless needed otherwise" concept, it makes me wonder if you might need some more time playing a proactive deck before picking up something as intricated as MUC.

KingAlanI

03-13-2008, 09:39 PM

The reason I said that, "Play instants at EOT unless needed otherwise", is an attempt to make it clear that I already have a handle on the obvious. :)

raharu

03-13-2008, 09:52 PM

Asking in the MUC thread would help :] That's what those threads are for, right?

Constructive comments time: If you have Teferi in play, don't play another Win-Con. You shouldn't try to protect 2 different valueable assets if you can avoid it. Hold the other one until you can no longer protect the other threat (i.e. It's killed).

@ list: I would cut the Remands from the deck, playing +2 Back to Basics, and +1 something else (possibley Cryptic Command). Is 25 lands too much?

Braves

03-15-2008, 02:47 AM

I have a couple of quick questions. how does countertop do in testing. And is stifle not effective enough to justify maindeck 4?

Bahamuth

03-15-2008, 07:07 AM

I have a couple of quick questions. how does countertop do in testing. And is stifle not effective enough to justify maindeck 4?

CounterTop is quite a tough call. I've seen some people have some success with it in MUC, but I think it's generally not suited for MUC. First of all, you absolutely need Top to make Counterbalance usefull, and vice versa. Beside that, you will have to run Brainstorm and fetchlands to properly use it, which are both questionable in MUC.

CounterTop to me feels more like a pair of cards that are better at gaining tempo-advantage rather than control. MUC is just the deck that cannot abuse this tempo control.

The same basically goes for Stifle. Stifle will usually only give you a tempo advantage (storm-combo aside), which MUC can barely use to gain overall advantage or cardadvantage. The card does not provide a permanent answer to your opponents threats. I think it's therefore not suited for MUC.

Kadaj, could you please post your latest list with Ancestral Visions and Propaganda? I'm considering running MUC at some tournaments soon.

Silthyn

03-15-2008, 07:50 AM

My current MUC-list:

// Lands
23 Island

// Creatures
2 Morphling
1 Rainbow Efreet

// Spells
4 Force of Will
4 Counterspell
4 Spell Snare
1 Forbid
4 Fact or Fiction
4 Ancestral Vision
4 Impulse
3 Propaganda
2 Powder Keg
2 Vedalken Shackles
2 Back to Basics

// Sideboard
4 Blue Elemental Blast
4 Chalice of the Void
3 Tormod's Crypt
1 Vedalken Shackles
1 Back to Basics
1 Powder Keg
1 Propaganda

Basically, I run Rainbow Efreet over Meloku because of Pernicious Deed. Chalice are there for the StifleNaught matchup (I met three in the latest tournament), and the GAT matchup (yes, GAT sees some play here). However, I'm not really sure they're necessary. :rolleyes:

deadlock

03-15-2008, 11:32 AM

Nice list, mine looks similiar:

-1 Efreet
+1 Meloku

-2 Impulse
-1 Forbid
+2 B2B
+1 Propaganda

Notes:
-Impulse is great, i see it as additional copies of your most important cards, therefore i wouldnt go to 4 B2B and 4 Propaganda maindeck.
-23 Land may be enough, i have to test this.
-I like Meloku as an anti aggro tool, it may be too slow though.

Sb notes:
My current Sb looks like:
1 Shackle
1 Powder Keg
1 Propaganda
4 Force Spike
4 Crypt
3 Hydroblast
1Echoing Truth

Keep in mind that this is just a rough draft.

Kadaj

03-15-2008, 12:35 PM

Counter-Top and Stifle have both been discussed previously and are both awful in MUC for reasons stated several pages back in this thread (and reiterated on this very page by Bahamuth).

My list has been in flux for about a month at this point, but this is the build I was referencing that went 5-5 against Vial Goblins in testing:

X25 Island
X4 Fact or Fiction
X4 Ancestral Vision
X4 Force of Will
X4 Counterspell
X2 Dissipate
X4 Back To Basics
X4 Propaganda
X4 Powder Keg
X2 Vedalken Shackles
X1 Morphling
X1 Meloku, The Clouded Mirror
X1 Rainbow Efreet

SB:
X4 Blue Elemental Blast
X4 Chill
X3 Jace Beleren
X1 Vedalken Shackles
X3 Variable Slot (This has been everything from Repeal to Pithing Needle and everything inbetween)

The sideboard is obviously customizable to whatever your metagame happens to be, but the maindeck also has a very important qualifier attached to it.

This build is designed to be optimal against Goblins, Threshold, and Landstill, AND THAT'S IT. I did not design this list with a single other matchup in mind. That's not to imply that you don't have solid matchups against other archtypes inherently due to card choices and whatnot, but my main goal was to have positive expected value against a field of nothing but Goblins, Threshold, and Landstill.

For what it's worth, this list accomplishes that very well. You have 60-40 overall matchups (with sideboard) against all three of the aformentioned decks and are very well equipped to handle all other incidental control and aggro-control variants you might run into. Aggro is fairly solid, although Suicide Black Variants and Tomb Stompy can be a pain in the ass if you can't find a Propaganda early (these are the rare matchups where I wanted some kind of card quality or dig effect, and if your metagame has a significant amount of Red Death or Eva Green, find room for some Brainstorms of Impulses). The major weakness is combo. Yes, this is a MUC deck that has awful matchups against most combo assuming your opponent is competant.

There are a lot of compromises going on in the above list, so make sure to tailor both the sideboard and the mainboard to fit your expected metagame. However, if the tournament you're attending will likely contain mostly tier decks and not alot of Suicide Black variants or combo, I can say with almost total confidence that this is the build of MUC you want to be playing.

On the other hand, if you're expecting almost no Vial Goblins or other aggro you should almost definitely cut the Propagandas out of the main and put them in those variable sideboard slots. You might even look at replacing Ancestral Vision, which is believe it or not most important against Goblins, with Impulse or Brainstorm. I'd also probably look to find room for more countermagic in that type of metagame.

As far as specific card choices go, the one card I don't like at all in the above list is Dissipate. Primarily because it sucks. I tried out Cryptic Command for a while, but it was more or less a piece of garbage because 4 mana is way too much for a counterspell in Legacy. I'll be looking into Foil, Thwart, and Pact of Negation despite their janky appearance in my upcoming testing, so I'll let you all know how that goes.

EDIT:

The more I look at this list the more I think I'll at least experiment with going back down to 23 lands and cutting 1 Propaganda and 1 Back To Basics for 4 Impulse. I'm not sure if that'll be an effective compromise, but I think it might smooth out some issues against random aggro the list has.

slobad23

03-15-2008, 03:06 PM

@ Kadaj

"You have no idea what you are talking about in any way what so ever!". This is what i thought of you when i first started reading through the MUC thread. I must admit, that opinion has drastically changed now. It all started when you said "I play MUC without brainstorm" and i just wanted to reach through my monitor and give you a gentle slap. i have however, followed this thread while doing playtesting of my own with MUC and find what you have been saying makes more sense. it has taken what, 5 or more pages of the same topic being talked over again and again but each post you made got me a little more on side.

After playing MUC myself, i can see exactly why you would build your deck the way you have for the tier one decks. it has taken me a while to realise this because my meta contains a lot of 1.5 to tier 2 decks aswell. This makes building MUC to have a good game one less than easy! as you have pointed out... your list struggles with stompy. i have to face that as much as i am facing thresh.

My list for ref:

13x Island
1x plains
1x swamp
4x polluted delta
4x flooded strand

1x morphling
1x meloku
1x teferi (a love hate relationship for this guy)
1x rainbow efreet

4x brainstorm
4x fact or fiction

4x force of will
4x counterspell
4x spell snare
2x mana leak

3x back to basics

3x vedelkan shackles

2x powder keg/propaganda (i am changing these a lot atm)
3x engineered explosives

As with most formats, control has to be built differently depending on your meta - but never has this been more true than with legacy. it used to give me emo tears when i would hear people saying "blue control can't compete in legacy" and i wanted to prove them wrong. MUC would pop up in tournaments every now and again... but it would need a good combination of luck and skill (with a knowledge for what you would be seeing on the day) to make any sort of progress.

my point in this post? well i guess it was just to pop in my 2 cents and apologise to Kadaj for all the insults that got thrown at him my side of the interweb :tongue: , and also to just say that no list you are going to find on here is going to be copied and suceed for you. when people are posting their lists, they need to be specific as to what metagame they are playing in. you can't just build a generic MUC list and rely on your sideboard to get you through.

Slobad

Poron

03-15-2008, 10:58 PM

I'd like to crosspost this http://www.mtgthesource.com/forums/showthread.php?t=7855

It appears very good to me, I can't really see the point of not to run CounterTop in MUC. It just works.

I also like the SB, really but the deck really needs
-board sweepers
-WC
-Draw spells

can we work on that list? it seems pretty strong

KingAlanI

03-15-2008, 11:02 PM

Remand was already kinda slated for removal.
More B2B, Keg, Propaganda or Shackles into maindeck in its place, for sure.

And I understand, protecting the wincons, since I only have 3. :)

Kadaj

03-15-2008, 11:11 PM

See but that's the thing, it doesn't work. There have been numerous posts in this thread explaining precisely why it doesn't work, and I'm not going to reiterate the entire set of reasons all over again, but they basically come down to this. Contrary to popular belief, Counterbalance-Top is not a hard-lock. It grabs a ton of tempo, but it can be removed and it is more of a stop-gap then anything else. MUC is not equipped to utilize the amount of time and tempo bought by Counter-Top, and there is not nearly enough space in the deck for it to fit anyway.

slobad23:

I appreciate the compliments. The less predictable your metagame is the harder it is to build MUC successfully. Knowing what you're aiming at makes your job a lot easier, being unsure makes it many times as difficult.

Bardo

03-16-2008, 12:21 AM

Merged the "Tips on Playing MUC" thread from "Forum Discussion" here. Shit may be a little confusing above with the merge.

mercenarybdu

03-16-2008, 02:55 AM

slobad23

03-16-2008, 10:44 AM

@ mercenarybdu

basically you have just posted a decklist that looks totally different to anything that has been posted previously. The decks that have been listed contain cards that have been discussed (at length, even with things that would normally seem obvious like 4x brainstorm, have been talked over), have been tested and have been fiddled with in terms of numbers of those particular cards.

You can't just post a list with a radically different layout and ask for us to contribute and make it a deck that will win you tournaments. For that you should really be posting in the new and developmental forum.

If you would like to have a MUC deck that will fair well against the field, might i suggest you take a look at what has been put together by peope who have posted before you.

Don't get me wrong. There is nothing wrong with innovation - but you should explain why you feel that spire golem or quicksilver dragon deserve a place in the list.

here are some questions about your list which should really have been addressed by you in your post:

what is quicksilver dragon doing in there? has he proven to be invalueable in certain matches?

same question applies to spire golem ^^

the lack of card draw would seem to be a problem... am i wrong?

low land count, even if you were going to play the lonely sandbars as lands - MUC and dedicated control lists in general run large numbers of land.

your list does not include any board sweepers like engineered explosives or powder keg - how do you not lose to aggro?

has the tempo loss caused by daze not caused you a great deal of problems?

idraleo

03-16-2008, 12:47 PM

by now i'm testing Guile as my only finisher, running 3 Cryptic command, 4 Propaganda and 3 Shackles by maindeck to have a large number of tempo spells against aggro and aggro-control.

Anyone have tested it before?

Poron

03-16-2008, 05:40 PM

Guile is useless it's just a 6/6 that comes down with UUUUUU.

there are far better WC

idraleo

03-16-2008, 07:18 PM

it's just a 6/6 that comes down with UUUUUU.

Everybody knows it. Tell me why it is useless if you have tested it.

Kadaj

03-16-2008, 07:28 PM

Would you play an unblockable Sea Monster in MUC? If no,then don't play Guile. If yes, then relearn how to play magic.

Poron

03-16-2008, 07:33 PM

Everybody knows it. Tell me why it is useless if you have tested it.

because a Morphling is far better? Meluko is 4 times bigger? Even Rainbow Efreet is better then Guile here

mercenarybdu

03-16-2008, 07:36 PM

@slobad23

I put the Dragons in there as it gave me some tempo in the early game as I later threw in the Shapeshifters as something to throw off my opponent. The Dragons have won me games in the past when I still played T2 and Extended, and I intend to repeat the trend here as a midranged creature in the plan. The golems are there for the same reason as it gave me tempo.

Sandbars are just mainly there just to cycle for more card bringing my amount of card drawing tools to 12.

I put a set of Daze in the plan since I liked ambush tactics so Force of Will won't be so obvious as I would have 14 blockades.

Opps, I made an error when typing up that SB. As it should be....

4 Chalice of the Void
4 Pithing Neddle
2 Echoing Truth
3 Is. Scepter
2 Capsize

....I had some other ideas for this plan which included:

Foil
Jushi Apprentice
Sword of F/I (when I had a lot of creatures to boot)
Perlious Research (I thought it was a pretty good trade off for two mana and a permanent)
Additional Capsize
Boomerang
Voidmage Prodigy
Dimir Guildmage
Izzet Guildmage
Sea Drake (I put the dragons in over this option after doing an analysis about the entire card)
Gifts Ungiven
Intuition

I never imagined to see:
Morphling
Fact or Fiction

....in a format of limitless options to construct, I find every opportunity to try to make the deck better and better from my original plan.

My plan started out as a monoblue aggro, then it shifted to aggro control and soon I just found myself with a control deck that wasn't quite there. Afterwards I dove this straight into making it work in this format with my own take on the plan. Although my original has been long dismantled, I still have ambitions for the plan.

In fact I need to do a bit more renovation with it as this was just a draft of mine.

MB mods:
-2 Spellsnare
+2 Perilous Research
-2 Stifle
+2 Echoing Truth

Mister Agent

03-16-2008, 07:42 PM

I had a plan with this prototype but my original didn't quite work due to budget cuts, so when I do find the funding I might end up building this plan if the format doesn't shift drastically yet.....

8 Island
4 Flooded Strand
4 Polluted Delta
4 Lonely Sandbar

4 Quicksilver Dragon
4 Spire Golem
2 Vesuvan Shapeshifter

4 Spellsnare
4 Stifle
4 Counterspell
4 Force of Will
4 Brainstorm
4 Serum Visions
4 Daze
2 Shackles

SB
4 Chalice of the Void
4 Pithing Neddle
2 Spell Snare
2 Echoing Truth
3 Is. Scepter

....I have not much of a clue of how the deck will fair against the field but with everyone's ideas we could put this on the top of the standings one of these days or perhaps make it a premier.

Your manabase looks like a mess especially since your playing an one color deck. You technically do not really need cycling lands with all of the utility spells blue has to offer in the draw mechanic department. Cycling lands prevents you from consistently capitalizing on the usage of shackles while not running back to basics is a big mistake as well.

Poron

03-16-2008, 07:51 PM

I read again the thread and I still haven't understood why CounterTop wouldn't be hot here...

I find it very strong, at least Top is (very) strong even on its own with CounterBalance it just win some matches alone and anyway gives us BIG utility as draw engine and control tool...

we have just to dedicate 8 slots

This is the decklist I'm trying now

4 Counterspell
4 Force of Will
4 Spell Snare/Rune Snag (I would stay on the first perhaps...)
4 Counterbalance

4 Sensei's Divining Top
4 Brainstorm
4 Impulse

4 Vedalken Shackles
3 Back to Basics
16 Islands
4 Flooded Strand
2 Polluted Delta

3 WC (Guile, Morphling, Meloku, Rainbow Efreet, etc.)

SB:
4 Arcane Laboratory
4 Trickbind (storm matchups)
3 Wipe Out
4 Propaganda (+ Back to Basics, gg Threshold, Zoo, etc.etc.)

I think CounterTop is still worth here

Kadaj

03-16-2008, 07:59 PM

So what, you scoop to Nimble Mongoose? You have nothing that actually draws cards, nothing that removes permenants, and, in-turn, a much worse matchup against control. You traded away everything that makes MUC good for a tempo tool you can't utilize in any real way. Does that sound like a good option to you? If it does, go play Threshold. They make infinitely better use of Counter-Top then MUC ever could. If it doesn't, then cut Counter-Top and play a good MUC list.

Doks

03-17-2008, 07:10 AM

I find it very strong, at least Top is (very) strong even on its own with CounterBalance it just win some matches alone and anyway gives us BIG utility as draw engine and control tool...

Not only do you scoop to a single Mongoose, but what do you plan to do postboard?

O: "I play Grip - target: CB!"
You: "In response... - lol? DANG! I lost all my heavy CA and Removal to a card that sucks because I am not even able to blindly hit with it."

It takes up too many slots - 8 (!) in your build. So you are missing the tools to handle the things that slip through before your Engine is going. You even cut the pure carddraw which usually is the heart of every MUC. You will run out of gas sooner or later.
No question, it might be amazing if you get it going (but not as amazing as it is in ******** / Baseruption) but is too weak in MUC imho since you can't abuse it like the other decks.

So long,

Doks

Arsenal

03-17-2008, 12:27 PM

What do you guys feel is the minimum amount of counterspells to play in MUC, regardless of meta? In my current build, I run 16 (used to run 15). I see that in Kadaj's latest build, he runs 10. I'm thinking of trimming it down to 12 so that I can fit more permanent-based solutions in my deck.

Here's the absolute-must-have counters:
4 Fow
4 Counterspell

But what about after that?

Tacosnape

03-17-2008, 12:40 PM

IMHO, The best hard counters (Of spells, excluding Stifle-type things) after the two listed are Spell Snare, Annul, and Dissipate. Snare probably gets the nod due to how insanely good it is on the draw. Annul or Dissipate would probably only get the nod in certain metagames.

I do think that Annul is getting stronger and stronger as the metagame evolves. However, any counter that can't stop a threat in a deck that dies to threats has problems.

Hoojo

03-17-2008, 01:25 PM

memnarch

03-17-2008, 02:42 PM

idraleo

03-17-2008, 03:51 PM

i pLayed a Lot Spikes and now i turned to Cryptic Command on maindeck, because if you run at least 3 or 4 copies of propaganda GobLin became a not too bad mu. I' ve noticed that running AV the deck could handle well midlate games withuout getting ever tapped to cast FoF and meaning that you are able do did a good threat with cryptic: it is at the same time an hard counter, an answer to aether vial (bouncing it), a Fog effect against aggro and, however, it recicles itself. So i think that it will be useful to play another fast counter like Spike if you are as well capable to deal without it against goblin and all other decks.
This could sound stupid but to build my current decklist i took inspiration from extended and from standard Sonic Boom over the old legacy building.

Arsenal

03-17-2008, 03:53 PM

Silthyn

03-17-2008, 04:09 PM

So, I'm going to play this deck once again in a fairly large tournament. Here's my decklist. (http://www.mtgthesource.com/forums/showpost.php?p=215675&postcount=614)

The thing with this list is that I don't run many permanent controlpieces:

3 Propaganda
2 Powder Keg
2 Vedalken Shackles
2 Back to Basics

I would probably like 1 more Shackles, 1 more B2B, and 1 more keg/ganda. I don't know what I'll cut though, and which card's best of those cards I mentioned. :confused:
Any tips?

Hoojo

03-17-2008, 04:13 PM

I actually kinda like force spike in this deck. Its the best 1st turn play I think. Running that or spell snare along with disrupting shoal seems good too because it lets you counter 1 cc for free. Like nimble mongoose and lackey.

The issue I take with Force Spike is the same problem I have with Mana Leak and Rune Snag; in the late game, the game that MUC is supposed to dominate, they are dead. In playing a round versus Enchantress I realized this as I wanted to counter Sacred Mesa, and all I had was Rune Snag, and even with two in the graveyard, it was dead. After that, I make it strict policy to only run hard, unconditional counters in MUC.

Shimster

03-17-2008, 04:16 PM

I'm thinking of a 12 counter/14 permanent board solution & win condition/10 draw config.

4 Fow
4 Counterspell
4 Spell Snare

4 Brainstorm (or AV since I'm running less counters and more permanent solutions)
3 Impulse
3 Fact or Fiction

3 Back to Basics
3 Powder Keg
3 Propaganda
3 Vedalken Shackles
1 Morphling
1 Meloku (or Rainbow Efreet)

20 Island
4 Quicksand
I am not convinced of Brainstorm withouth shuffleeffects. Nor I am of Powder Keg.

Therefore I would like to change the manabase for

- 7 Island
- 4 Quicksand
+ 4 Flooded Strand
+ 4 Polluted Delta
+ 1 Plains
+ 1 Swamp
+ 1 Academy Ruins

I like Engineered Explosives more than Powder Keg, as they are much faster and almost as versatile, so

- 3 Powder Keg
+ 3 Engineered Explosives

should be obvious. :)

idraleo

03-17-2008, 04:41 PM

b4r0n

03-17-2008, 08:52 PM

The issue I take with Force Spike is the same problem I have with Mana Leak and Rune Snag; in the late game, the game that MUC is supposed to dominate, they are dead. In playing a round versus Enchantress I realized this as I wanted to counter Sacred Mesa, and all I had was Rune Snag, and even with two in the graveyard, it was dead. After that, I make it strict policy to only run hard, unconditional counters in MUC.

While I agree that Force Spike and Rune Snag are pretty weak, they do allow you to slow the game down until you can establish control. Finding the balance between surviving the early game and dominating the late game is pretty difficult, especially with the deck's focus on stack control rather than board control. Basically, the biggest problem I've had with MUC is actually surviving the late game; if a threat hits play turn 1 or 2, the deck has a lot of difficulty answering it. Ultimately, I think the answer to this is running more board control elements, like Arsenal's latest list.

memnarch

03-17-2008, 10:17 PM

I don't think Cryptic Command is worth it I would just run FOF in that slot for four cc, It should draw you into answers.

Ya the board sweepers are key to surviving till the late game but don't forget how fast legacy can be the first 3 turns can mean GG if you don't pack quick enough answers. Once you hit 3 mana you should be good with propaganda etc. Some decks just run out of gas after the initial hand is dropped. Thats the beauty of this deck. That and I don't have to spend any money on duals just wreck everyone else's with B2B. :tongue:

@Shimster: why is EE better then keg in this deck? keg can hit diffrent cc. I understand that it hits low cc a turn quicker but the ability to hit 2 cc is important. Although I definitely agree brainstorm does not belong in this deck. serum visions and ponder > brainstorm in here.

Arsenal

03-17-2008, 10:28 PM

I am not convinced of Brainstorm withouth shuffleeffects. Nor I am of Powder Keg.

Therefore I would like to change the manabase for

- 7 Island
- 4 Quicksand
+ 4 Flooded Strand
+ 4 Polluted Delta
+ 1 Plains
+ 1 Swamp
+ 1 Academy Ruins

I like Engineered Explosives more than Powder Keg, as they are much faster and almost as versatile, so

- 3 Powder Keg
+ 3 Engineered Explosives

should be obvious. :)

I think that in permanent-light, counter-heavy MUC builds, such as mine I posted a page back, Brainstorm is solid even without shuffle effects. In counter-light, permanent-heavy builds like Kadaj's most recent build, Brainstorm is not as good and it needs raw draw spells.

Also, I'm not convinced of opening myself up to Moon effects just to support Explosives. A resolved Moon essentially makes 11 cards dead (8 fetches, 3 Explosives) unless I magically draw my 1-of Swamp and 1-of Plain.

raharu

03-17-2008, 11:11 PM

I think that in permanent-light, counter-heavy MUC builds, such as mine I posted a page back, Brainstorm is solid even without shuffle effects. In counter-light, permanent-heavy builds like Kadaj's most recent build, Brainstorm is not as good and it needs raw draw spells.

Also, I'm not convinced of opening myself up to Moon effects just to support Explosives. A resolved Moon essentially makes 11 cards dead (8 fetches, 3 Explosives) unless I magically draw my 1-of Swamp and 1-of Plain.
You can use the Moon-Mountains for EE. They wouldn't be any dead-er than the Basics you would be fetching.

On the note of Fetchland MUC, has anyone been working on the Cunning Wish version of MUC?

Arsenal

03-17-2008, 11:36 PM

You can use the Moon-Mountains for EE. They wouldn't be any dead-er than the Basics you would be fetching.

On the note of Fetchland MUC, has anyone been working on the Cunning Wish version of MUC?

Island + Mountain = EE @ 2. Like I said, unless you are extremely lucky and draw into your Swamp or Plains to make EE @ 3, you are running 11 dead cards.

mercenarybdu

03-18-2008, 04:29 AM

perhaps the counterbalancetop plan could work, but then I would have to get rid of a few things here and there. But, I've played with cycle lands just to pitch for more cards over actually playing them. I don't see any other reason to remove them other than it makes shackles weaker in my plan.

might renovate it some more.

idraleo

03-18-2008, 04:58 AM

// Lands
24 [CS] Snow-Covered Island

// Creatures
2 [LRW] Guile

// Spells
4 [AL] Force of Will
3 [FD] Vedalken Shackles
4 [TE] Propaganda
4 [IN] Fact or Fiction
4 [MM] Counterspell
3 [DIS] Spell Snare
4 [TSP] Ancestral Vision
3 [US] Back to Basics
3 [LRW] Cryptic Command
2 [UD] Powder Keg

// Sideboard
SB: 1 [UD] Powder Keg
SB: 4 [TE] Chill
SB: 3 [US] Arcane Laboratory
SB: 4 [TSB] Tormod's Crypt
SB: 3 [MR] Annul

this is my current decklist that plays Guile and Cryptic. By now i'm positive impressed by each two, Guile is a powerhouse because if it survevives at least one or two turns is an impressive finisher and transforms each counterspell effect into a 2x1 card, keeping the stolen cards removed until you need to use them. I found that playing Cryptic and the full set of Propaganda boosts the mu versus goblin; the fog effective is surprising well, and it at least recicle itself, adding possibility to find more Propagandas. Guile is moreover good when you find it by Fact or Fiction, because unlike Morphling or Meloku you can put it in the graveyard pile without losing it for the rest of the game, the shuffle effect is simply amazing and opponent shuold shut it down only using StP. I think i' ll continue with my playtest with Guile as WC, it is doing well by now but i'm not saying that it will replace at 100% Meloku or Morphling or Rainbow Efreet

fallenphoenix

03-18-2008, 06:41 AM

keeping the stolen cards removed until you need to use them

Well, not exactly...
The missing timing condition (like "until EOT") means that you have to play them right after they are countered.
This makes countered Counterspells rather useless, and Global/Spot-Removal-Effects might be cards you do not want to play, if Guile is the only target.

What's so nice about Cryptic Command is, that it allows you to neutralize the board with bounce while still countering stuff.
Often waiting for the opponent to cast his postcombat-spell, then countering his spell while bouncing his Turn-1-Drop, is the right play to make.
Before Cryptic Command you would have needed Counterspell AND Repeal/Truth, which is not as often the case as holding that single Cryptic Command is.

Brehn

03-18-2008, 09:20 AM

idraleo: Tell me want you want about Guile. A list that scoops to first turn Dark Ritual -> Thoughtseize, Extirpate is a list that shouldn't exist.

idraleo

03-18-2008, 10:37 AM

I' m not sure to understand what you would say.

GUnit

03-18-2008, 11:01 AM

idraleo: Tell me want you want about Guile. A list that scoops to first turn Dark Ritual -> Thoughtseize, Extirpate is a list that shouldn't exist.

Doesn't threshold pretty much scoop to that if they have a goyf in hand?

Brehn

03-18-2008, 11:38 AM

idraleo: Play more diverse wincons. Not only are you playing a vunerable-as-hell wincondition with Guile, you also lose if your opponent manages to get one into your graveyard and then Extirpate it. The most horrible scenario is first turn Dark Ritual->Thoughtseize on Guile->Extirpate, which is absolutely equivalent to a first-turn-kill. Your only out to that is Force of Will, no matter if you're on the play or on the draw. Extirpate is the main reason why many lists run strange-looking configurations like 1 Morphling, 1 Meloku, 1 Efreet.

GUnit: Threshold still has Nimble Mongoose, other creatures and/or burn spells. Also, if Threshold is on the play, they have additional outs to this scenario, including 4x Daze and 4x Brainstorm.

deviant

03-18-2008, 11:48 AM

Technically he still has vedalken shackles and decking the opponent with ancestral visions but I do agree that Guile sucks. I mean, it's barely even playable in T2 MUC.

idraleo

03-18-2008, 12:48 PM

The most horrible scenario is first turn Dark Ritual->Thoughtseize on Guile->Extirpate, which is absolutely equivalent to a first-turn-kill.

Sorry but i'm really impressed that your motivation to keep Guile in the collector book is something like what you explain over. Losing a game by Extirpate means that your opponent won' t play any other creature during the entire game to stole by Shackles, and\or that he plays only creatures with shroud. As far as my experience is in this format, i think that a deck that plays maindeck Extirpate and wins only by untargettable creatures doesn't exist. I've played around MuC since from this summer and even previous, but by now, after tons of game with Meloku, Morphling and\or Efreet as WC, i' mm completely sure that i will run Guile
for a lot of other games before dropping it in favor of other WC.

I simply noticed that every time Guile comes into play, if it survives at least until the next untap step since it cames into play, it makes opponent concede. I'm not sure that it is unviable in legacy because it is less played in t2 or extended. Nimble Mongoose, for example, is a legacy powerhouse but is unviable into extended decklists as far as the metagame is today. I hope that before saying that Guile is only a stupid 6/6 for 6 mana you have tested it at least for 20-30 games.

Brehn

03-18-2008, 12:56 PM

Whoops, I phail. Guile gets shuffled back. (How come that nobody pointed this out?)

Still, he's horrible.

I simply noticed that every time Guile comes into play, if it survives at least until the next untap step since it cames into play, it makes opponent concede.
And if he doesn't? Morphling and Efreet at least protect themselves...
Please tell me in what kind of situations casting Guile is superior to casting Morphling. I don't get it.

EDIT: Whoops, phail again. Can be extirpated in response to the trigger. Whatever.

deviant

03-18-2008, 01:16 PM

My Guile got extirpated once.
I was explained that the effect triggers and can hence be responded by extirpate. If this is not the case I got seriously punke'd at that fnm.
Well, shouldn't play standard anyways.

Still though, the thing is so easily removed it makes me a really sad panda :'(
Though so is meloku, which sees play.. (I'm not a fan of that either, maybe I'm old school, but rainbow efreet is still the no:1 beater for me, and even morphling seems still slightly dubious, so processing these new guys is taking some time :) )

idraleo

03-18-2008, 01:24 PM

I found that Guile is better against Landstill and Loam, in the first mu you have onLy to handle on StP and in the second one it is great cause stops LftL and each recursion. However, it is good when you find him by FoF because you can choose the pile that doesn't content him without losing your finisher permanently. Against other decks, it is useless as other Wc meantioned before: tell when does Meloku or Morphling have been relevant against goblin or against pikula. Or even how did Morphling changes your mu against a Rakdos Pit Dragon. Or how good is Meloku when your opponent drops a Pernicious Deed. Everyone of the WC we have talked on had at least one or 2 Mu where they are completely useless, and could do as well in other. GUile sucks a lot on mirrors, but the most important thing that i'm trying to say is that before knowing that Guile sucks, you got at least to test it.

Brehn

03-18-2008, 01:38 PM

I've totally missed the effect on Loam, that's a valid point. Landstill should never be a problem in my opinion, even with Morphling. I'll try to sum it up:

Morphling:
- No need to waste counters on: StoP, Demise, Shriekmaw, Shackles, Sower of Temptation, Mangara of Corondor.
- Unaffected by Moat, Maze of Ith.
- Can attack through 3 non-flying creatures with a total power of 6 or more.
- U: Vigilance. Blocks and survives anything but... Terravores and Crushers?
- Blocks flying creatures.

Guile:
- Not always the need to waste counters on: Deed, Wrath, Damnation, Edict, Weirding, Innocent Blood, Wing Shards.
- Unaffected by Pithing Needle.
- Shuts down Loam engine.
- Not completely removable by Thoughtseize, Hymn to Tourach, Cabal Therapy.
- Synergy with Fact or Fiction.

If anybody has other points, I'd love to add them. Right now, I still prefer Morphling, and if it's just for the vigilance.

Arsenal

03-18-2008, 03:51 PM

So, to further discuss the exchange Kadaj and I had a page back, when do you stop playing Brainstorm and start playing AV? We both agree that in counter-heavy, permanent-light builds, Brainstorm is probably better than AV while in permanent-heavy, counter-light builds, AV is the winner.

My question is, how many of what card constitutes light/heavy? Upping all my 2-of permanents to 3-of permanents (Shackles, Keg, Propaganda, B2B) and cutting back from 16 counters to 12?

Kadaj

03-18-2008, 05:10 PM

In my experience, any list with 12 or less counterspells to work with is probably the point at which you utilize AV. 12 or so board control elements tend to be the magic number when you're working the other way as well. It also depends on how diverse your board control elements actually are. 10 of my board control pieces are all more or less equivalent against creature decks so Brainstorm is less relevant for filtering through potential dead cards, and at least 8 or so of my board control pieces act similarly against other Control.

If you have a series of diverse board control effects and more than 12 counters, Brainstorm/Impulse is worth it, if not, go with AV.

Arsenal

03-18-2008, 05:13 PM

idraleo

03-18-2008, 05:54 PM

I' ve pleyed Quicksand for a while but i wasn't impressed by them. More of the times i was wandering on why i don't played more islands to did each turn a land drop useful to Shackles. They are good against a first turn Lakey, but the "attacking" in theyr text box means that if our opponent drop a Wasteland we probably should go on g2, first because we took a Lakey's bite and not less relevant we loss a precious land on first turn. Quicksand did theyr best if you run stifle too, and probably wastelands by yourself. But it means playing only 2 Shackles beacuse of the high quantity of non-basic lands you play.

Arsenal

03-19-2008, 08:46 AM

Meh, not every deck that runs */2 creatures run Wasteland/Stifle. I'd rather be able to stall for 1-2 turns using a Quicksand, allowing me to find/draw my real board control cards, than not run it because I'm afraid of Wasteland/Stifle.

idraleo

03-19-2008, 09:22 AM

obv, i was just wandering on props and slops of Quicksands.

Ombras

03-19-2008, 10:09 AM

Arsenal

03-19-2008, 10:21 AM

Yes, Quicksands isn't good, run wastelands or only islands.
I use 1 Academy Ruins and 1 Miren, plus one Tolaria West.
Academy Ruins riclice shackles and powder keg, miren with shakles is gg vs all opponent.

The whole point of playing MUC is Back to Basics. This cannot be stressed enough. Running non-basics that NEED to untap in order to be effective and 2-4 maindeck cards that read "Nonbasic lands do not untap" does not work very well.

Also, why is MUC playing Wasteland? That doesn't even make any sense in MUC. MUC very rarely wants to "miss" a land drop unless it will absolutely ensure it's survival to the mid-late game. Quicksand has the potential to do this (opponent might not attack at all, opponent will attack and creature will die, opponent needs to overextend to get around Quicksand, etc), Wasteland does not. Also, thanks to Dragon Stompy, Wasteland (and to a far lesser extent, Back to Basics unfortunately) is becoming less and less relevant as more decks are packing basics to fight off 8x Moon effects.

Ombras

03-19-2008, 11:20 AM

The whole point of playing MUC is Back to Basics. This cannot be stressed enough. Running non-basics that NEED to untap in order to be effective and 2-4 maindeck cards that read "Nonbasic lands do not untap" does not work very well.

Also, why is MUC playing Wasteland? That doesn't even make any sense in MUC. MUC very rarely wants to "miss" a land drop unless it will absolutely ensure it's survival to the mid-late game. Quicksand has the potential to do this (opponent might not attack at all, opponent will attack and creature will die, opponent needs to overextend to get around Quicksand, etc), Wasteland does not. Also, thanks to Dragon Stompy, Wasteland (and to a far lesser extent, Back to Basics unfortunately) is becoming less and less relevant as more decks are packing basics to fight off 8x Moon effects.

I run 21 Islands + 1 Ruins, 1 Miren and 1 Tolaria.
Plus 2 Back to Basics.

Don't running Wastelands, Quicksands, Factories or Ghost Quartier.

Arsenal

03-19-2008, 11:47 AM

Your manabase is shaky. You are now far more susceptible to your own Back to Basics and you've now made your opponent's Wasteland/Magus of the Moon/Blood Moon/Back to Basics relevant. In MUC, I view Academy Ruins + artifact, and Shackles + Miren a win-more condition. Why spend mana and time sacrificing stolen creatures when you could just be WINNING with them?

Ombras

03-19-2008, 12:06 PM

Why spend mana and time sacrificing stolen creatures when you could just be WINNING with them?

Because if you have a propaganda into play your opponent's attack is slow and you kill all creatures. Test it ;)

idraleo

03-19-2008, 12:07 PM

I' ve tryed tons of solution for the manabase, from maze of Ith to Quicksand to Desert to Academy Ruins, to version with Crucible+Ruins+Petrified Field, to version with Conclave and Standtill and a lot of other tech.

Nothing was better than running 24 Islands.

Arsenal

03-19-2008, 12:20 PM

Because if you have a propaganda into play your opponent's attack is slow and you kill all creatures. Test it ;)

You are basically agreeing with then that it's win-more. Why do I want to spend mana and time to kill all creatures through Shackles + Miren when I could just WIN THE GAME with my stolen creatures?

Gaining life and killing creature with Shackles + Miren does not WIN THE GAME. Dealing damage to your opponent with stolen creatures WINS THE GAME.

Are you getting the idea now? Once you have control, you should WIN THE GAME instead of playing win-more/Danger of Cool Things cards.

slobad23

03-19-2008, 01:11 PM

You are basically agreeing with then that it's win-more. Why do I want to spend mana and time to kill all creatures through Shackles + Miren when I could just WIN THE GAME with my stolen creatures?

Gaining life and killing creature with Shackles + Miren does not WIN THE GAME. Dealing damage to your opponent with stolen creatures WINS THE GAME.

Are you getting the idea now? Once you have control, you should WIN THE GAME instead of playing win-more/Danger of Cool Things cards.

I'm still not sure i quite understand you - are you saying that i SHOULD be using Miren and gaining soem life? Because that would just be so COOL. I can't seem to recall a single game where I have won by attacking my opponent... well not at the moment anyway. I'm sure I'll be drifting off to sleep later and feel really silly when i remember when it happened.

Seriously now though - Back to Basics is still good even though people are running less non basics - they're still out there. If you can mess about with half of a mana base, why wouldn't you - all at the cost of running 3 little enchantments!

I do believe MUC would be a good deck without Back to Basics (go ahead and flame!)... but it is a much better deck WITH, and i don't see why you would not put it in.

People can argue over brainstorm and AV, cunning wish and some other blue card that does something a blue card would do... but this point is not up for discussion. So says me! and I'm the king... all hail me.

Quicksand, Wasteland, Academy Ruins, Lonely Sandbar... I just don't see them in MUC unless you are not running Back to Basics... and if you're not, it better be because you have completely revolutionised the archetype with some tech that will win you those games in which the little enchantment that could, really shines.

</little rant>

So I think we are all in agreement that this is the core of the deck (edits made later when people point out the obvious...)

Counterspell
Force of Will
Spell Snare/Force Spike

Vedelkan Shackles
Back to Basics
Propaganda/Keg/Explosives (meta dependant sure, but you're running at least three of these in any configuration)

Fact or Fiction

3/4 Different Win Conditions... (oh, that aren't Guile)

Can we at least agree that if you're not including the above cards (which are showing up in all the MUC lists everywhere in tournament results), then you explain why you are not using them and why you are using something else in it's place.

This is starting to look like the Ichorid thread with all the random "this is my list and i think it is good" posts with no explanation. When they receive criticism, all you get is "you should test it"... Nein! - You shoud tell everyone else how it performed for you in testing... or AT LEAST give some reasons as to why those cards are there.

Here is my list:

29 Islands

2 brainstorm
3 counterspell
1 rune snag
2 mana leak

4 control magic
4 blatent thievery

1 wandering ones
1 flying men (IT FLIES)
1 trinket mage

4 aether spell bomb (trinket mage TECH!)
1 oblivion stone

4 disrupt
3 pongify

My list is good yeah?

Everyone else... don't ask me to explain - just abandon all the work that has gone on for this entire thread and move to this deck. Work on this, and make it good. I really believe in it! You would believe in it too if you just tested it. Yeah... test it... then you'll see...

</LARGE rant>

Arsenal

03-19-2008, 01:40 PM

You have to view Quicksand as a spell that can stall/board control that happens to tap for mana, not the other way around.

4 Quicksand
3 Propaganda
3 Powder Keg
3 Vedalken Shackles

is what I'm running to deal with aggro-rape.

pcccp

03-20-2008, 08:15 AM

If you play Guile in the deck you can add Dovescape and build a more combo like deck.
With Guile and Dovescape in play, just cast Brainstorm or anything else and you get infinite 1/1 flyer tokens. Dovescape counters Brainstorm, Guile removes it, you get a token and you can play it again for free.
Maybe someone is crazy enough to build the deck around this combo. :wink:

deviant

03-20-2008, 03:38 PM

Sadly, I think I wet my pants.

Ombras

03-22-2008, 05:45 AM

Arsenal

03-22-2008, 03:44 PM

Boh, for me, the board control this deck must have was:

3x Vedalken Shackles
3x Powder Keg
3x Propaganda
2-3x Back to Basics

plus eventual blocker. I'm testing Spire Golem and Phirexian Iroonfoot, but the first is >>>>>

This is exactly why I run Quicksand. Propaganda doesn't come down until turn 3, Power Keg doesn't kill of a 1cc creature until turn 3, and Shackles doesn't steal anything until turn 4. This is too slow imo. Many decks have the ability to drop some sort of NASTY creature on turn 1-3, so for me, I want to be able to have a turn 1-2 answer that will kill off whatever slipped through my counters.

@ Kadaj -

This is my revamped AV build, going for less counters (trimmed down to 12 from initial 16) and more permanent solutions. Tell me what you think. So far, I've found that any less than 12 permanent board control cards, and AV is not worth it.

20 Island
4 Quicksand

4 Counterspell
4 Force of Will
4 Spell Snare

4 Ancestral Vision
3 Impulse
3 Fact or Fiction

3 Back to Basics
3 Propaganda
3 Vedalken Shackles
3 Powder Keg

1 Morphling
1 Meloku, the Clouded Mirror

Ombras

03-22-2008, 04:01 PM

This is exactly why I run Quicksand. Propaganda doesn't come down until turn 3, Power Keg doesn't kill of a 1cc creature until turn 3, and Shackles doesn't steal anything until turn 4. This is too slow imo. Many decks have the ability to drop some sort of NASTY creature on turn 1-3, so for me, I want to be able to have a turn 1-2 answer that will kill off whatever slipped through my counters.

@ Kadaj -

This is my revamped AV build, going for less counters (trimmed down to 12 from initial 16) and more permanent solutions. Tell me what you think. So far, I've found that any less than 12 permanent board control cards, and AV is not worth it.

20 Island
4 Quicksand

4 Counterspell
4 Force of Will
4 Spell Snare

4 Ancestral Vision
3 Impulse
3 Fact or Fiction

3 Back to Basics
3 Propaganda
3 Vedalken Shackles
3 Powder Keg

1 Morphling
1 Meloku, the Clouded Mirror

Run Spell Snare and not Force Spike isn't great. If you run Spell Snare, you must run another cc1 counter.

For the quicksands... If you play in first turn quicksands, you sacrifice it turn two for an attack of lackey, piledriver ecc..., and you haven't second turn possibility to play counterspell.
If you run force spike AND spell snare, you will play quicksands.

Bahamuth

03-22-2008, 04:30 PM

This is exactly why I run Quicksand. Propaganda doesn't come down until turn 3, Power Keg doesn't kill of a 1cc creature until turn 3, and Shackles doesn't steal anything until turn 4. This is too slow imo. Many decks have the ability to drop some sort of NASTY creature on turn 1-3, so for me, I want to be able to have a turn 1-2 answer that will kill off whatever slipped through my counters.

@ Kadaj -

This is my revamped AV build, going for less counters (trimmed down to 12 from initial 16) and more permanent solutions. Tell me what you think. So far, I've found that any less than 12 permanent board control cards, and AV is not worth it.

20 Island
4 Quicksand

4 Counterspell
4 Force of Will
4 Spell Snare

4 Ancestral Vision
3 Impulse
3 Fact or Fiction

3 Back to Basics
3 Propaganda
3 Vedalken Shackles
3 Powder Keg

1 Morphling
1 Meloku, the Clouded Mirror

That's exactly how I run it, but with 1 Island less and 1 more kill (which is either a Guile or a Rainbow Efreet) and the Quicksands replaced with Islands.

My sideboard usually includes 4 Chalice and 4 Crypt, as well as additional permanent answers.

Kadaj

03-22-2008, 05:23 PM

Assuming you want to hold onto the Impulses my only suggestion is to drop one Vedalken Shackles for one Powder Keg. Shackles is the slowest of your board control cards and although its effect on the board can be irreplaceable at times you have enough search and draw to be able to find it when it's necessary. Powder Keg is extremely important when dealing with Nimble Mongoose, manlands, and all sorts of other nonsense in this format, which Vedalken Shackles cannot deal with.

SuckerPunch

03-23-2008, 09:28 PM

I apolisize, I haven't had a chance to play Legacy in what feels like an eternity. I did read through the thread but I still have some very key questions. Please answer any of them and as many of them as you want to.

1.) When and why did this deck become a Deck to Beat? Last time I was playing it, it was barely competitive, and you had to be lucky to win even a small tourney with it. Did this deck recently top 8 anything? If so, I would really love to hear about it/see the list.

2. Here's what I'm running, please critique it and suggest things I should change...

22 Island
2 Mishra's Factory

4 Force of Will
4 Counterspell

3 Mana Leak
3 Spell Snare

4 Ancestral Vision
4 Fact or Fiction

2 Powder Keg
3 Vedalken Shackles
3 Back to Basics
4 Propaganda

2 Morphling

I think running 4 Propaganda & 2 Keg is preferable to running 3 of each. Is there a reason why this isn't done more?

I love Factories as early game defense, and I love being able to run 2 Morphlings since I have 2 Factories backing them up but I'm not sure how often the dysnergy with Back to Basics comes up. In theory, Factories mainly serve to let me survive the first few turns.

Thank you.

3. Why is no one running Mana Leak anymore? Mana Leak is a great backup hardcounter that is still very strong. People think that it's dead in the mid-late game, but from experience, I assure you that there are plenty of situations where it's still solid in the mid-late game. And the deck needs good counters with all the crazy problems card out there these days.

4. Is impulse really good enough any more. It never seemed like a great card, just a filler. With all the great cards available for the deck now, imho, if you run a card drawer, it should come close to refilling your hand (Visions, FoF), rather than providing zero card advantage. If you feel I absolutely should run it, why and what should I cut for it?

5. Is it pretty much a consensus that neither Counterbalance nor Chalice should be maindecked anymore as Thresh isn't as popular as it once was and which of those two should be left in the sideboard.

6. Without maindeck Counterbalance or Chalice, how does this deck have a shot against fast combo, iggy pop etc. Are fast combo decks no longer a really tough matchup? Are combo decks not played much anymore either?

7. I can't see why Quicksand is superior to Factory, and if a few situations exist, how often do said situations come up. I simply can't see why one would opt for Quicksand over Factory.

Kadaj

03-23-2008, 10:56 PM

1. This deck has been pretty consistently top 8ing in Japan and Europe, but I don't know of any major finishes in the US of late.

2. I'm going to assume you want to at least keep the numbers and not run my list card for card, so my one piece of advice is to cut 1 Morphling for either a Rainbow Efreet or Meloku so you don't scoop to two Pithing Needles (one for Phling, one for Keg).

3. The reason I don't run Mana Leak is because it's just another counterspell, which I barely have enough room for 12 of. And the first 12 are basically locked in for my list (FoW, Counterspell, Spell Snare).

4. I, personally, don't like filter cards in MUC at all. Which is why I don't run any of them. However, Impulse is a decent card if your build has a lot of varied answers and more counterspells then anything else.

5. If it's not a concensus then it damn well should be. Even if Thresh were everywhere Counterbalance and Chalice have no place in the maindecks of MUC. You should be reaming Thresh as it is, and don't need narrow, bad, answers anyway.

6. Chances are, you don't beat combo with my builds of MUC. Maybe with some of the more counterheavy builds, but sure as hell not with mine. Unless you get lucky. I also don't really care because combo makes up such a small fraction of tournament populations that it's not worth it to make concessions to them.

7. Frankly, I think both cards suck in MUC, but if I had to play one I'd play Quicksand because it can at least stop Goblin Lackey on the draw (assuming they drew neither Port nor Wasteland, which seems unlikely). Factory really doesn't do anything unless you run 4 of them and Standstill, at which point you should add fetches and convert to Landstill.

SuckerPunch

03-23-2008, 11:09 PM

I agree with you for the most part.

Have you tried Factory though. I don't see why you dislike it. It's great at providing an early defense, until you draw your Propaganda. It can even trade with Mongoose early on.

And I think 2 Morphling should be fine. Resolving 2 Needles is going to be tough for them given the number of counters you run. And even if they do, you have Factory and Morphling is still a 3/3 which will go the distance if they don't have creatures. And if they do have creatures, you have shackles and you can easily win with their own creatures.

I just don't think it's worth it to run inferior win conditions for the sake of implausible scenarios that you already have tons of ways to get around.

And everytime I tried Meloku or Efreet, it left no doubt in my mind that they were inferior.

So other than my 2 Morphling/2 Factory config, you think my build is perfect the way it is?

Or is there anything at all that you would change?

I honestly can't find you build and I went back 8 pages looking for it. Is it the same?

Thank you for your feedback.

Kadaj

03-23-2008, 11:33 PM

My build differs a bit. It is:

X25 Island
X4 Force Of Will
X4 Counterspell
X2 Spell Snare
X4 Powder Keg
X4 Back To Basics
X4 Propaganda
X2 Vedalken Shackles
X4 Fact or Fiction
X4 Ancestral Vision
X1 Morphling
X1 Meloku, The Clouded Mirror
X1 Rainbow Efreet

The reason I dislike Factory is because it really doesn't do anything that Powder Keg can't do better, and it's awful under Back To Basics, which is almost the only reason why you would ever run MUC. And I would never trade a land drop in MUC for anything. Ever. It's a surefire way to lose a game against just about anything.

So... in summary, the differences between my list and yours are:
-1 Spell Snare
-3 Mana Leak
-1 Vedalken Shackles
-2 Mishra's Factory
-1 Morphling

+3 Island
+2 Powder Keg
+1 Back To Basics
+1 Rainbow Efreet
+1 Meloku, The Clouded Mirror

The Meloku doesn't really need to be there, but the Rainbow Efreet is pretty important against Landstill, as it is completely immune to all of their removal unlike Phling and Meloku, which both bite the dust pretty hard to Deed.

SuckerPunch

03-24-2008, 12:32 AM

Your posts really seem to have guided a lot of my deck's development. Thank you.

But I'm wondering what other people have to say about my list as well.

I'll test...
-2 Mishra's Factory
-1 Serum Visions
-1 Mana Leak
-1 Morphling

For
+2 Island
+2 Powder Keg
+1 Rainbow Efreet

Back to Basics as good as it is IMO shouldn't be a 4 of as it's worthless in multiples and is strongest the later it comes into play anyways.

The decks that it's best against are slower and more controllish, and there, you do fine with 3 as you're not in a rush to find and play it.

SuckerPunch

03-24-2008, 12:26 PM

So does anyone else have any input on my build. Either pre or post these changes?

I would love to hear from a few more of the deck's veterans. Thank you.

Shawn

03-24-2008, 12:58 PM

1. This deck has been pretty consistently top 8ing in Japan and Europe, but I don't know of any major finishes in the US of late.

Muc has been top8ing recently at the Minneapolis tournaments:

http://www.mtgthesource.com/forums/showthread.php?t=7904&page=2 (December)
http://www.mtgthesource.com/forums/showthread.php?t=8612&page=2 (January)
http://www.mtgthesource.com/forums/showthread.php?p=217897#post217897 (last Saturday)

Misplayer

03-27-2008, 03:05 PM

memnarch

03-27-2008, 03:59 PM

I really don't think stiffle nought is a problem for this deck. I'm saying this as someone who tried out stiffle nought at a tournament. MUC lists run EE or powder keg. This list Im tinkering with uses shoals as well. Which can stop early game shenanigans like that. I think this deck just has too many answers. After nought invests two cards into getting a fragile creature on the board, IF it resolves which it shouldn't even then there will be answers.

Arsenal

03-27-2008, 05:37 PM

Hey all,
I’ve been tinkering with this deck for a few weeks, so I probably don’t have the understanding of many that have posted in this thread. My question is: how does this deck handle an early game Dreadnought? Counterspells are ideal, but it’s not uncommon for your opponent to keep :u: up to beat force spike, or spell snare counterspell, or they may just have the god-draw FoW backup. I’m currently not running any bounce spells, so once that thing hits the board it’s gg unless I can resolve a Keg right after.

I’ve found bounce spells to be unnecessary in most other situations, so is it worth running some, or do you think that a scenario where an opponent actually playing a ‘nought deck, having the combo pieces, and having answers for your counters in the first few turns is waaaay too situational?

Control decks in general, MUC being the "posterchild", have always had a suspect early game. If my opponent has the combo, protection, and mana to pull off turn 1 Dreadnaught, then the MUC player will probably lose. But you know what? Almost all decks would lose to that. That's like asking, "what does aggro do against turn 1 TES Tendrils for 10?" They lose, plain and simple.

I wouldn't do much to the deck to hypothetically "solve" it's early-game vulnerability, because 99% of the time, it comes at the expense of your mid-late game dominance.

Doks

03-28-2008, 07:32 AM

And the Naughtplayer has to go first - otherwise, EE or Keg a viable solutions, as are Repeals, if you run them (what I would probably do).

In addition, what do you mean by early game?
Without acceleration, Naught won't give you a first turn 12/12 Trample and say "Smoke that!". And a Second turn Naught + Stifle gives you at least 1 more card that may handle it (maybe even Swords if you run MUC/w) in addition to the the card you gain out of it being a 2-turnclock.

Muradin

03-28-2008, 08:12 AM

What would be a good sideboard with this deck for a meta with nearly no goblins? Most of my meta consists of Fish/******** with some Stax, Aggro Loam, Landstill and Survival thrown in. I thought that MUC might be a good choice for this metagame because it's getting owned by Back to Basics.

At the moment my maindeck is:

4 Flooded Strand
4 Polluted Delta
13 Island
1 Plains
1 Swamp

4 Spell Snare
4 Counterspell
4 Force of Will

3 Repeal
3 Vedalken Shackles
3 Engineered Explosives
3 Back to Basics

4 Ancestral vision
3 Fact or Fiction
4 Brainstorm

1 Morphling
1 Meloku

For the Sideboard I thought of something like:
4 Propaganda
4 Tormods Crypt
4 Chalice of the Void
1 Back to Basics
2 Threads of Disloylaty

Is Repeal a viable maindeck card in MUC or would Propaganda instead of them be better in the Maindeck? As hosers against Red aggro ang Goblins: Is Chill or BEB the hate of choice?

Dilettante

03-28-2008, 09:05 AM

@Muradin
Perhaps as follows... You seem to run against a lot of decks where Annul can be quite useful...

4x Tormod's Crypt
1x Back to Basics
3x Pithing Needle
3x Annul
4x Chalice of the Void

Slate

03-28-2008, 09:59 AM

What is chalice in the board vs? And what do you board out in that matchup for it?

Dilettante

03-28-2008, 10:26 AM

What is chalice in the board vs? And what do you board out in that matchup for it?

What you board out is too numerous to name, since it is very situational, but Repeal seems the most likely candidate... the Chalice can be used against decks with heavy reliance on cost 2 (Aggro Loam, Survival, some Thresh, some Landstill...) on top of your Spell Snares, granted, you would have some issues with Mongeese and such, but that's what engineered explosives are for... Chalice is utility... and against many decks, can be dropped for 0 to good effect, especially if you are on the go and they are mox or lion's eye reliant. I'd only board in 3 if going for cost 2 as a target. You lose counterspell, but in good matchups, it is as effective by the time you cast it. However, if you expect Ichorids and storm combos in your meta, I'd definitely pack the Propagandas, but it doesn't sound... as useful in your meta.

Slate

03-28-2008, 10:41 AM

Dilettante

03-28-2008, 11:06 AM

I see what you're saying, I just dont like the counter-synergy with void and some of your necessary cc spells.

This is what my board looks like, Biggest diff would probably be the uninclusion of propoganda, as i play 3 maindeck.

3 Blue ele blast
3 Submerge
1 Rainbow Efreet
3 Threads of Disloyalty
2 Misdirection
3 Pithing Needle

That SB above was specifically for the metagame that Muradin mentioned. In a more traditional one, I'd do what you stated, especially with the Propogandas... and go with a Hydroblast/REB bent to get around Goblins and RDW.

Pizzatog

03-28-2008, 03:02 PM

Dilettante

03-28-2008, 03:09 PM

Could Mystic Remora have a place in this deck? Along with repeal, which would help against the turn 1 dreadnaught someone mentioned earlier.

And with the high amount of pitch counters and remora, would meditate be a good addition to the deck?

Not for the current Legacy metagame. Early on, you pick a few different paths... What would you remove for the remora? Your broader removal? It's only a card draw mechanism... that eats up your resources. When you are playing a reactive game, Remora sucks away your ability to... be reactive. These are not decks filled with responses like daze and misdirection... you need hard counters. Your opponent plays Turn 1 Mongoose, Turn 2 Tarmogoyf... or Turn 1 Lackey... Do you scoop?

Kadaj

03-28-2008, 03:14 PM

No, maybe, and no.

Mystic Remora essentially says "Pay X, do nothing." Which is hardly an ideal thing in a deck completely ill-equipped to take advantage of the potential tempo boost Remora might give. Remora is almost strictly worse than Standstill in this case, and that's not saying much considering Standstill is fucking awful in MUC.

Repeal is a decent card, and in a wide-open metagame with a lot of Aggro-Control I might consider running it in lieu of Propaganda if I knew there was going to be almost no Goblins or other aggro. On the other hand, it doesn't really help in the early game, where bounce is most needed, because it always costs more than what you're bouncing and is often a tempo loss rather than a tempo stealer like a bounce spell usually is.

Meditate is garbage because you have to skip a turn for it, often with your pants down because you tapped 3 mana for it. You have 4, count-em, 4 pitch spells. That means you might be able to stop a threat on your opponents turn if you tapped for a Meditate early, and by the time you could afford to play Meditate with counter backup Fact or Fiction would be infinitely better.

On a totally different note, I screwed around (briefly) with Pact of Negation and Foil in a more counter-oriented build. Neither of them are exceptionally awful, which was somewhat surprising, but Pact's inability to help in the early game was extremely frustrating and Foil is often too much card disadvantage to overcome when used in desperation. Then again, I did find Foil to be surprisingly solid in the mid-game and in a list with a higher land count (25ish) Foil would be a solid alternative to whatever you might be running counter wise after Counterspell and Force.

Pizzatog

03-28-2008, 03:14 PM

Maybe as a sideboard card?

fetchesbasiclands

03-28-2008, 04:28 PM

Maybe if you expect a lot of storm-combo.It just might be that it's solid in Vintage,but not so much in Legacy,where creatures are actually played.

Clark Kant

03-29-2008, 10:55 AM

There is a lot of different directions you can go with this deck.

I'm just wondering if finally, after all this time, some sort of consensus is building around what an optimal build maybe, something along the lines of...

24 Island

4 Force of Will
4 Counterspell

2 Mana Leak
2 Spell Snare

4 Ancestral Vision
4 Fact or Fiction

3 Powder Keg
3 Back to Basics
4 Propaganda
4 Vedalken Shackles

1 Morphling
1 Teferi

With minor varations ala replacing the conditional counterspells with different ones like Repeal, Force Spike. Or running fetchlands and Brainstorm in place of Visions, EE instead of Powder Keg.

Or if there are still people who continue to play the deck who advocate an entirely different direction...

Chrome Mox
Chalice of the Void
Countertop
Trinket Mage

Etc.

So what say you? Do we finally have a pretty good idea of what the deck should look like, or is there still a lot of disagreement on this?

ebbitten

03-29-2008, 01:18 PM

Most of the lists generally look about like that, i would be more interested in getting some common sb choices.

Muradin

03-29-2008, 02:23 PM

Concerning Force Spike I think that it might actually be good in Legacy because most people think it sucks here. In Extended the NLU and PLU decks are known for playing Force Spike and therefore most opponents are prepared to play arround them. So what do you think: Should Force Spike be played in legacy Mono U Control or not?

Dilettante: Annul is a really good idea for my meta. Thank you, I will try it.

Kadaj

03-29-2008, 02:57 PM

Muradin: That would be logical were it not for the fact that Daze fulfills a very similar role in Legacy to what Force Spike accomplishes in Extended. Intelligent opponents will play around both Daze and Force Spike inherently, because of the former's popularity. In addition to that, Force Spike loses effectiveness after you use it once because then it becomes a known quantity, on top of how suspect it is once you hit the late game.

fetchesbasiclands

03-29-2008, 03:31 PM

Well,in the same sense you can bluff it.And it is good against turn 1 Lackey.I don't mean it should be there,but it is not that bad

clavio

03-29-2008, 05:17 PM

Is there any reason why mana leak (or rune snag) has been thrown out as the counter to use after fow and counterspell? It costs 2, and your opponents rarely have the resources to pay for it in the early stages of the game, and hopefully b2b is screwing them up enough in the late game so they wont have the resources there either.

I ran it in Relic Orb and it never really disappointed me.

Kadaj

03-29-2008, 06:31 PM

Because it doesn't help early game vulnerabilities as well as Spell Snare of Force Spike, which is what we need out of that slot, not further late-game redundancy (which is questionable, because in my testing I found both Rune Snag and Mana Leak to be extremely weak later in the game).

Doks

03-29-2008, 08:08 PM

You just said it: it costs 2(!).
That means that it is just as bad as Counterspell when you are playing on the draw in addition to being weak in the late game. Spell Snare is just godlike when going second - such a big advantage, you can't imagine how many times it saved me from losing a game to a crucial T2 drop (for example, an early Confidant might be even scarier than a Tarmogoyf at that time!).
And it keeps its lategame strength what's another extra point.

Another food for thought:

We concluded that AV is run in builds with more board control elements and BS is run in builds that rely more on stack control.
So what do you run for pure CA in those stack-oriented builds except for FoF?
Accumulated Knowledge was found to take up too many slots (you usually got to combine it with Intuition and it really HATES Extirpate), Thirst for Knowledge is too dependant on a reasonable artifact count and Think Twice seems to be too uneffective for its cost of 5 mana for +1 CA.
I played with Meditate 1 or 2 Tournaments and it was really surprising (I have to add that I ran a little w-Splash for Swords and better EE that helped avoiding too much damage during the opponent's extra turn) and many players threw their counters on it so I could resolve a FoF next turn.
Especially with no current threat out, the unexpected extra turn was used to play "critter/cantrip, go" and I don't really have to underline that it shines in the control MUs.

So long,

Doks

DaiJou

03-30-2008, 03:30 AM

To be honest, I think you don't need other card drawing spells than Fact or Fiction and Brainstorm, they alone should draw/dig you answers you need, let it be counterspell or some sort of boardcontrol.
I don't want to repeat myself in every post I write (two posts, lol) but I'd like to bring Cryptic Command back to conversation. Why it was ditched? Sure, 4cc for counterspell may be too much, we don't run Dismiss for that reason. But Command has those other options to choose from, which makes it very good. For example, against aggro, Counter/bounce is just nuts, and Repeal for everything isn't that bad. And of cource it has the Dismiss option which isn't that bad either. Rarely I use the "tap all creatures" option but I don't think that it is totally unusable. Against control (like landstill) it is another hardcounter with cantrip attached to it. I haven't tested against combo so much but I think that if you get to mid-late game with combo, you should win anyway.

slobad23

03-30-2008, 09:23 AM

@ DaiJou

I don't think that people aren't running command because it is a bad card, but more because there isn't really anything *more* important that can be taken out.

For reference, I will post the last list from Kadaj (AV build) and my list (Brainstorm build):

Kadaj List:

X25 Island
X4 Force Of Will
X4 Counterspell
X2 Spell Snare
X4 Powder Keg
X4 Back To Basics
X4 Propaganda
X2 Vedalken Shackles
X4 Fact or Fiction
X4 Ancestral Vision
X1 Morphling
X1 Meloku, The Clouded Mirror
X1 Rainbow Efreet

My List:

15x Island
1x Plains
1x Swamp
4x Polluted Delta
4x Flooded Strand

4x Brainstorm
4x Fact or Fiction
1x Flash of Insight

4x Counterspell
4x Force of Will
4x Spell Snare

3x Engineered Explosives
3x Back to Basics
3x Vedelkan Shackles
2x Powder Keg

1x Morphling
1x Meloku, the Clouded Mirror
1x Rainbow Efreet

If you could point out where you think Cryptic Command would fit into either of those lists, We can actually start a discussion from there. Personally, I just don't know if there is room in either build for it.

@ Kadaj

I have taken on board your builds manabase of 25 lands and am much hapier with the results. My last build was 23 land and i hoped to find them with brainstorms and fetches... but there in lies a big problem. Fetches were thinning my deck and i had less land to go find. now instead of searching for lands with my brainstorms, i can use them to draw threats/answers.

Slobad23.

Kadaj

03-30-2008, 10:19 AM

Cryptic Command was dropped because 4 mana is too much for a utility based card. 4 mana for a counterspell and a bounce effect is too slow. Yes, there are limited situations where it can be amazing, but they are few and far between. It simply costs too much mana to be effective with the way Legacy plays out.

@Slobad, and everyone else actually

Do yourself a favor; Do not rely on Brainstorm or whatever other cantrips you're utilizing to find yourself land drops. If you do you are making Brainstorm far less effective at what it should be doing, which is digging you to more answers. You have to run enough lands that you naturally make your first 4-5 land drops without assistance, otherwise any card advantage, card quality, spells you use are going to be weakened because you have to place an even higher priority on finding land-drops than you usually would.

DaiJou

03-30-2008, 10:54 AM

@Slobad

I think that Command has no place in AV build, it looks quite solid the way it is.
But for Brainstorm-build I think Command should be considered.

For reference, my list:

4 Polluted Delta
2 Flooded Strand
15 Island
1 Swamp
1 Plains

2 Morphling

4 Force of Will
4 Counterspell
4 Cryptic Command
4 Force Spike

4 Fact or Fiction
4 Brainstorm
3 Impulse

3 Back to Basics
3 Engineered Explosives
2 Vedalken Shackles

Differences with your list are:
4 Spell Snare (which I have replaced with Spike)
-2 Flooded Strand
-1 Flash of Insight
-1 Vedalken Shackles
-2 Powder Keg
-1 Wincondition

If we don't count Snares, that is 7 cards which are my 4 Command and 3 Impulse.
Now, if I were to include Cryptic Commands to your build, I'd do it like this:
-1 Land (I think 25 is too much, but my preference)
-1 Flash of Insight (Is this good as 1 off?)
-2 Powder Kegs (I think these are a bit too slow, you have Engineered Explosives. Aren't they enough?)

Oh, another post came while writing this.
@Kadaj
I test mostly against aggro/aggrocontroll decks. In most cases against say, Threshold or Rocky style deck, getting 4 lands meant that I win mostly because Command. All earlier threats are countered of destroyed by Explosives. (Or at least should be) So I've been happy with Commands. If I were to cut them, I would not know what to put in.

Clark Kant

03-31-2008, 05:35 PM

Do you guys think the Swan's Song + Chain of Plasma instant speed combo could fit into this deck.

Swans' Song 2{w or u}{w or u}
Creature - Bird Spirit Rare
Flying
If damage would be dealt to Swans' Song, prevent that damage. The controller of the damage's source then draws cards equal to the damage prevented in this way.

4/3

The deck could also splash 4 Lightning Bolt and 2 Chain Lightning which are honestly perfectly good cards in MUC as they can deal with a lot of creatures. And with Swan's Song in play, they act like Ancestral Recalls.

Basically rather than being a pure all or nothing combo deck, it would be a more controllish slower combo deck.

One that is harder to disrupt, effective without the combo card and more flexible than any combo deck out there, and it would have an instant speed win the second that you cast Swan's Song.

Just throwing the thought out there.

Brehn

03-31-2008, 05:59 PM

MUC devotes 2-3 slots to its win conditions. None of its win conditions are 2-card combos. Red splashes suck.

The deck could also splash 4 Lightning Bolt and 2 Chain Lightning which are honestly perfectly good cards in MUC as they can deal with a lot of creatures.

Absolutely not. Both the "perfectly good" and the "a lot of creatures" parts.
(Actually, that's the most stupid thing I've heard in a while. Sigged.)

Kadaj

03-31-2008, 06:33 PM

Swan's Song would take an entirely new deck to be successful and makes no sense in MUC, particularly in my builds. A Board-Control-Combo deck? I don't think that's going to work too well. Maybe in some of the more counter heavy builds, but even then splashing red would be stupid because you lose out on Back to Basics and at that point you're playing an entirely different deck.

So in short, Swan's Song + Chain of Plasma might be decent in general, but it doesn't have any place in MUC.

Nihil Credo

03-31-2008, 07:36 PM

If anything from the current Shadowmoor spoiler has a place in MUC, it might be this little one:

Curse of Chains* http://forums.mtgsalvation.com/images/smilies/mana1.gifhttp://forums.mtgsalvation.com/images/smilies/manawu.gif
Enchantment - Aura

Enchant creature
At the beginning of each upkeep, tap enchanted creature.

As good spot removal as mono-blue as ever had.

ParkerLewis

04-07-2008, 05:41 AM

Hi guys,

since i have around half the cards the deck needs lying around doing essentially nothing, i've decided to try my hands on MUC. I've read the thread here and there but that's about it (well, and i'm a control player at heart). So, I have quoted here two of the last posted lists, and I have some questions (probably very quick to answer). I'd like to know what you guys think.

First list : (posted last page)

24 Island

4 Force of Will
4 Counterspell
2 Mana Leak
2 Spell Snare

4 Ancestral Vision
4 Fact or Fiction

3 Powder Keg
3 Back to Basics
4 Propaganda
4 Vedalken Shackles

1 Morphling
1 Teferi

Second list : (posted last page too)

X25 Island
X4 Force Of Will
X4 Counterspell
X2 Spell Snare
X4 Powder Keg
X4 Back To Basics
X4 Propaganda
X2 Vedalken Shackles
X4 Fact or Fiction
X4 Ancestral Vision
X1 Morphling
X1 Meloku, The Clouded Mirror
X1 Rainbow Efreet

on the first list :

- is only one wincon, or even say one & a half with teferi, actually enough ? i see the shackles, but there are decks where there isn't any worthy target (mostly storm combo decks)
- 4 Propaganda AND 4 Shackles maindeck seems a bit heavy maindeck. hasn't it been a problem in some matchups ? what about 3 of each ?

on both lists :

- i don't see any stifle. hasnt it been needed (here again, i have storm combo decks in mind, but of course the card has a lot of other general utility by itself) ?
- daze ? i know this is a control deck, and daze only shines on the early game, but since there is absolutely no removal in the deck (there are some answers for creatures, but that's it), it seems like the list craves free counters for the early turns, unless you're supposed to always mulligan into a fow ?
- are there any sideboard lists ? on specific card choices, what about said stifles ?

Thank you all for your replies.

DaiJou

04-07-2008, 08:39 AM

@ParkerLewis

MUC does not need more than 3 wincons, and that is IMO absolute max. I run 2 Morphling in my build and you will always find them with Facts/Bstorms/Visions/Impulses etc. And you have many counterspells to protect them (if they can't protect themselves, like Morphling) Running more than 3 win-cons is not necessary.
Stifle, while good card, does absolutely nothing against combo decks. Good comboplayer smells Stifle a mile away and will always play around it, or just cast Chant on you. I would use Arcane Laboratory against combo, but it may be little slow as it costs 3.
As already discussed before, Daze is just big nonono in control, especially in MUC. Deck which wants, no MUST, drop land card every single turn from turn 1 to turn 8 (or more) cannot afford bounce its own lands. It brings you back a whole turn. Force Spike or Spell Snare are good earlygame counters and EE works as boardsweeper if you were on draw with no Force of Will.
Good sideboard cards depend obviously on your meta. Here's mine:

4 Blue Elemental Blast
4 Chill
4 Tormod's Crypt
3 Propaganda

8 anti-red cards, because my meta has quite large amount of Dragon Stompy, Burn and Goblins.

Arsenal

04-07-2008, 10:43 AM

I wish we could find a home for the new Ophidian from Shadowmoor; Auger something? She's a Kithkin Wizard that is 1{wu}{wu}, 2/2, and everytime she deals combat damage to opponent, reveal your top card. Gain life equal to the revealed card's CMC, then put it into your hand.

EDIT: Here she is

http://forums.mtgsalvation.com/showthread.php?t=109458

ParkerLewis

04-07-2008, 11:09 AM

@ParkerLewis

MUC does not need more than 3 wincons

Yeah, i totally agree with this, i was just worried about the count in the first list, which was ONE (or 2 if counted teferi) wincon.

Stifle, while good card, does absolutely nothing against combo decks. Good comboplayer smells Stifle a mile away and will always play around it, or just cast Chant on you. I would use Arcane Laboratory against combo, but it may be little slow as it costs 3.

The point is that by trying to play around it, you'll nail him with another counter (for orim's chant, or thoughtseize, or the spell he's gonna try to play to protect his combo).

What I meant was that i couldn't see these lists have a real chance winning a match against a competent TES player. But of course this depends on the SB choices (stifle effects ?) and the aggressive mulliganing into fow.

i see the EE, but that's no use against a tendrils, which by my experience with the deck tes, is almost always what i'll kill with if i go undisrupted. i'll usually only have to go for etw if i'm already under disruption. So even taking EE into account, i still feel like mulliganing into force is almost necessary, that was my concern on this particular point.

Good sideboard cards depend obviously on your meta. Here's mine:

4 Blue Elemental Blast
4 Chill
4 Tormod's Crypt
3 Propaganda

8 anti-red cards, because my meta has quite large amount of Dragon Stompy, Burn and Goblins.

Aren't your Propaganda maindecked ? Seeing how other lists don't have any other real answer to, say, a swarm of Goblins/whatever, do you just scoop game 1 ??

DaiJou

04-07-2008, 01:12 PM

Aren't your Propaganda maindecked ? Seeing how other lists don't have any other real answer to, say, a swarm of Goblins/whatever, do you just scoop game 1 ??

I wouldn't say that my build scoops to Goblins. I dare to say that only real threats are 1st turn Lackey or Vial. For those I have Engineered Explosives, Force Spike and Force of Will. Of course Ringleader and Warchief can be devastating, but if you can't counter 4cc or 3cc Goblin on turn 3-4 with no Vial or Lackey in sight, something has gone terribly wrong. And if you refer to "swarm of goblins" as Empty the Warrens, Engineered Explosives does the job.

Kadaj

04-07-2008, 03:09 PM

I wouldn't say that my build scoops to Goblins. I dare to say that only real threats are 1st turn Lackey or Vial. For those I have Engineered Explosives, Force Spike and Force of Will. Of course Ringleader and Warchief can be devastating, but if you can't counter 4cc or 3cc Goblin on turn 3-4 with no Vial or Lackey in sight, something has gone terribly wrong. And if you refer to "swarm of goblins" as Empty the Warrens, Engineered Explosives does the job.

Wrong, wrong, and wrong.

My build, meaning the one with 4 Propaganda, 4 Powder Keg, 25 Islands, 4 Force of Will and sometimes (I've waffled on this) 2 Spell Snare BARELY pulls together a 50-50 game 1 against Goblins. If you don't run Propaganda MD you will get utterly hammered. Every. Single. Time. Period.

Every time someone claims Goblins is an easy match with MUC I know they have either never played the matchup and just are drawing (poor) conjecture, or they played against opponents who have no idea what they're doing. Seriously, I've tested this matchup repeatedly against multiple people (one name you might recognize is Eldariel) and I think I've won... 2 game 1s with a build lacking MD Propaganda.

Why, you might ask? Because while you can pretend that stuff like Mogg Fanatic, Piledriver, and Matron are unimportant compared to Lackey, Vial, Warchief, and Ringleader, I challenge you to beat goblins when they open like this:

Turn 1: Mogg Fanatic
Turn 2: Goblin Piledriver
Turn 3: Either a 2/3 drop or a 1 drop and a Port
Turn 4: More dudes

We really don't run that many counters, 12 or so in most builds, and Counterspell is actually horrible against goblins, so that more or less leaves maybe Spell Snare, Force Spike, and Force of Will as relevant counterspells you might be running. Beyond that you have Powder Keg/EE and Shackles as potential board control cards, which are not nearly enough to answer Goblin's threats individually.

An example. In the above opening lets say you Force Spike the Fanatic and Counterspell the Piledriver. Now you're almost definitely out of counterspells, or you have maybe an EE or Keg left in reserve. However, a Warchief or a Matron could easily catch you with your pants down and be followed up by a Ringleader or SCG you can't answer in time. Or, you can not counter the early threats hoping to deal them later, only to realize that you've taken 10+ damage off two cards and are now forced into a position where you MUST answer every threat presented, something you cannot reasonably expect to do, or you will lose.

Another issue that comes up a lot is that even if you manage to completely halt Goblins early game, you will run out of gas extremely quickly following turns 3-4. In fact, that entire issue is why I added Ancestral Vision in the first place. You can invest early on and not have to worry about the immense tempo loss needing to pay actual mana later in the game provides. Hitting turn 5ish without any answers in hand and needing to cast FoF makes it very hard to continue to control the game, and as Goblins mid-game is the best of any deck in the format by far it is almost impossible to make that work.

In fact, the only games I ever won when testing non-Propaganda lists against Goblins were when I used Force Spike early and ended up with Double, and eventually triple, Shackles actively stopping Goblins from attacking with anything and allowing me to win with Morphling.

So yeah, that was an immense rant for such a small quote, but I really do feel like people have no concept of how difficult the Goblins matchup is and how much we have to concede to them in order to have even a passable chance at winning Game 1.

Misplayer

04-08-2008, 08:23 AM

ParkerLewis

04-08-2008, 12:53 PM

So yeah, that was an immense rant for such a small quote, but I really do feel like people have no concept of how difficult the Goblins matchup is and how much we have to concede to them in order to have even a passable chance at winning Game 1.

Even though i haven't played the deck yet, i do realize i the need for some MD Propaganda in the lists ;)

Would you happen to have some SB suggestion ? May I ask what's yours (if the second list i quoted is still the one you're playing) ?

Thank you very much.

Arsenal

04-08-2008, 01:21 PM

Last night I was testing an AV build of MUC similar to Kadaj's and I ran up against Eva Green. Game 1 I stabilized at 2 life with Shackles but I ran out of black creatures to steal and he was holding a Snuff Out that I couldn't answer. Game 2 I pretty much ate it to a resolved Choke. I know Eva Green isn't exactly breaking the format, but B/x Sui variants are being played and this matchup raised some general gameplay questions about this deck. Here are my questions:

- On sideboarding strategy: I wanted to up the count of board control elements as they are all effective in this matchup, so I brought in the 4th Propaganda, 4th Shackles and 4th Keg at the expense of 3 Spell Snare. I know this was incredibly stupid considering 85% of their spells are 2cc. Regardless, what comes out in that matchup, or against any other non-red aggro for that matter?

-On mulligans: 2nd game I knew he brought in Choke and that it would hose me completely. With the only solutions in the deck being counterspells and seeing none in my opening hand, should I have mulliganed? If I had one, do I allow everything else to resolve (including Seal of Primordium) in fear of Choke? When is it appropriate to mulligan with this deck? I'm usually very hesitant because of the extreme importance of card advantage and I find almost every hand to be playable with anywhere from 2-5 lands in it.

As a Sui and MUC player, I can tell you that it's a struggle to beat Sui if they get a "normal" hand, near-impossible if they get a good-great hand.

Even if you're on the play, and do Island -> pass, they will almost ALWAYS open with Swamp -> Duress/Thoughtseize. That play is retarded as it will strip you of that Keg/Prop/Shackles you were planning on using. It get's even worse if they open with Swamp -> Dark Ritual -> Duress/Thoughtseize + Hymn, any variation involving 1cc discard + 2cc creature (the worst being Confidant), or just straight up Hypnotic Specter (which you will likely never recover from).

Running AV sorta helps replenish your hand right around the time Sui is really rolling, so you still have a chance, but it's tough from turn 1. Interesting, Brainstorm, in my experience, shines in this matchup. Brainstorm can actually allow you to protect your vital answers, rather than hope you draw into more of them.

Meh, if I run across Sui decks, I sort-of accept the fact that I will lose game 1 if both decks do exactly what they're supposed to. Game 2, personally, I don't have anything to deal with non-red aggro decks specifically; I run BEBs, Crypts, Needle, and Repeals. Sui > MUC most games. That's just sorta how it goes.

But, I would definitely take out your B2B maindeck and maybe side in your bounce and additional board permanents (Prop, Keg). I don't know, it's pretty dirty fighting 12 discard spells, Hippys, and Negators.

deadlock

04-08-2008, 01:44 PM

In my opinion the this matchup more or less resolves around Shackles. In my expierence (not that much though) they will strip your hand / you will trade some counters with threats, by the time both players have emptied their hand a single Confidant / Specter can seal the game. On the other hand if you manage to get Shackles down they are most likely screwed.

In conclusion if you expect these kind of decks i strongly recommend to play 3 Shackles

Daze

04-08-2008, 03:36 PM

I agree, usually you have to draw the Shakles (Propaganda also helps until you get the Shackles, and FoF finds it); AV was game-winning every single time I suspended it against SuiBlack.
Something else I'd like to know; how is the Crypt doing in your Sideboards? I never played it because Loamdecks in my area scooped to B2B, however this seems to have changed. Is the Crypt the solution to most recursion strategies (it gives you time against Dredge as well, I know), or does it just buy you time? Is Declaration of Naught worth testing vs. Loam?

idraleo

04-08-2008, 05:59 PM

I don' t think that side out Back to Basic is a great threat. When i played on a tournament Sui decks i loss 2 game on swiss only by back to Basic, who completely shut down my manabase. Expecially for decks like Tombstone, Evagreen, Deadguy and Green splash Deadguy B2B did a good work turning itself in a real tempo card, ever more than Propaganda. Vedalken Shackles also did a great job against Sui, expecially if they don' t play white for Vindicate.

Kadaj

04-08-2008, 08:01 PM

Parker: That is indeed my current list. The sideboard really is variable, but my general board for a major tournament would be:

X4 Blue Elemental Blast
X4 Chill
X1 Vedalken Shackles
X4 Repeal
X2 Jace Beleren

Basically I cut the graveyard removal for Repeals because I think they have more utility and are better against a wider variety of stuff. Crypt is nice occasionally, but it's not enough on its own against Ichorid, and it's really not that good against much else, Repeal has applications against almost all aggro and aggro-control and can really tempo some decks out of the game.

Regarding the Suicide matchups, you basically have to accept the matchup isn't great for you, although I have been able to find success against it recently with my builds. Not exceptional success, but a good enough rate that you can still win matches against it without getting ridiculously lucky. That mostly revolves around having 4 Propaganda MD (there is a trend here) and now having additional tempo muscle in Repeal coming in. I would probably take out some number of Powder Kegs and Back to Basics for Repeals and Shackles with my SB. Keg isn't that effective against Sui, and B2B isn't needed as much as it is against other decks.

Arsenal

04-08-2008, 08:09 PM

@ idraleo

B2B is 100% dead in the Sui matchup; including the 2 color variants. Eva Green just needs to tap for green one time in order for it to win; B2B does nothing to stop them. I would seriously suggest you side out B2B for more creature control/bounce in games 2 and 3.

spandyrules

04-08-2008, 08:19 PM

Hi all, here's my list that I'd like to hear your thoughts on.

24 x Island

4 x Force of Will
4 x Spell Snare
4 x Remand
4 x Counterspell
4 x Fact or Fiction
2 x Ancestral Vision

3 x Vedalken Shackles
3 x Propaganda
3 x Back to Basics
2 x Powder Keg

3 x Morphling

SB:

4 x Tormod's Crypt
4 x Blue Elemental Blast
2 x Pithing Needle
2 x Powder Keg
2 x Misdirection
1 x Rainbow Efreet

The sideboard I am not so sure about so that is what I could use the most help on. The Efreet I have SBed in case I came across a GodDamn or Edict deck, which are Morphling's only vulnerabilities. I get a lot of flack on the Gleemax boards for running remand, but I personally absolutely love it.

mercenarybdu

04-08-2008, 10:35 PM

Hi all, here's my list that I'd like to hear your thoughts on.

24 x Island

4 x Force of Will
4 x Spell Snare
4 x Remand
4 x Counterspell
4 x Fact or Fiction
2 x Ancestral Vision

3 x Vedalken Shackles
3 x Propaganda
3 x Back to Basics
2 x Powder Keg

SB:

4 x Tormod's Crypt
4 x Blue Elemental Blast
2 x Pithing Needle
2 x Powder Keg
2 x Misdirection
1 x Rainbow Efreet

The sideboard I am not so sure about so that is what I could use the most help on. The Efreet I have SBed in case I came across a GodDamn or Edict deck, which are Morphling's only vulnerabilities. I get a lot of flack on the Gleemax boards for running remand, but I personally absolutely love it.

You need a win condition with your deck other than just shackles as that is only going to win you only a small percentage of games unless your opponents are running tons of creatures.

spandyrules

04-09-2008, 07:21 AM

You need a win condition with your deck other than just shackles as that is only going to win you only a small percentage of games unless your opponents are running tons of creatures.

Oh, whoops, forgot to put in the 3 morphlings in my list. :frown:

Misplayer

04-09-2008, 08:41 AM

spandyrules

04-09-2008, 09:17 AM

@ spandy

In what situations have you found Remand to be better than a hard counter, or a board control piece, or something that generates card advantage? I only ask because those are the cards that traditionally occupy the slots in which you have Remand.

Also, most lists vary their win conditions to avoid being beaten by a singular Extirpate or Pithing Needle. Why not run your Rainbow Efreet MD?

In the early I game I play it instead of my Counterspells, that way I get to work through my deck slightly faster and it shuts down my opponent for a turn. This also saves my hard counters for the late game where Remand isn't as effective. In the late game Remand effectively doubles the cost of one of their spells, and if I'm in the late game then drawing a card is especially important for finding my answer/win-con. Obviously if I could run another 2cc hard couner in it's place I would, but cards like Mana Leak, Rune Snag, and Daze just don't cut it in the late game, and I dislike 3cc counters.

So far I have been having massive success with the Morphs, but I will probably wind up replacing one of them MB with the Efreet once the next Legacy Grand Prix season comes around.

Kadaj

04-09-2008, 10:18 AM

@ Kadaj

So I take it that you’ve found the matchups where Propaganda is game winning outweigh the matchups that can win through it (Aggro Loam, Stax, Landstill) enough to run 4.

Do you prefer to play Keg proactively or reactively? In other words, do you play it when your opponents have minimal threats out and allow them to play around it, or would you rather surprise them with it if they over-commit?

Lastly, on your sideboard, in what matchups does Repeal come in?

I have indeed found that Propaganda is worth the full 4 slots despite its ineffectiveness against certain matchups. It's far too good against Aggro and Aggro-Control (Goblins, Suicide variants, all of the stompy variants, etc) and doesn't really hurt the deck enough against control to warrant cutting it.

I always play Keg proactively. It's far too slow to be used reactively and my build doesn't run enough counters to be able to keep everything off the board. In fact, Keg's flexibility once played is another major reason why I prefer to EE, aside from the fact that I don't run Brainstorm and will not add fetchlands for one marginal board control card.

Repeal usually comes in against certain Suicide Variants, random aggro, and everything mid-range. I have brought in one or two against Goblins, but beyond that it's hard to justify cutting too many cards.

Just for reference, my swap against Goblins is:
-4 Counterspell
-2 Spell Snare
-1 Fact or Fiction
-1 Back to Basics/1 Island (Depends on whether or not it's Mono Red Goblins or a splash variant. For mono red, 1 B2B comes out, for splash variants the island comes out)
For
+4 Blue Elemental Blast
+4 Chill

I have on occasion seen fit to cut more B2Bs if it was against Mono Red or potentially more FoFs, and the card that would come in those cases is a combination of Repeal and the singleton Shackles.

Baumeister

04-09-2008, 04:30 PM

I have a question, Kadaj:

I've followed this deck since Zvi destroyed Standard with it a while back, and I like where it's gone. I've read through a lot of this thread but I haven't seen why you aren't running Faerie Conclave, even as a two-of. Is it because it comes into play tapped? I've been running two of them and I like when I draw them later in the game since it gives me stuff to do with my mana and it's a threat that's pretty difficult to deal with. Is it not worth the possible "loss" of a land drop?

Also, what is your current draw suite? Are you even running Impulse or do you just have Ancestral Visions and Fact or Fictions? I've been running Impulse, but I get frusterated when it doesn't really gain me any cards, and this deck is very card thirsty.

Arsenal

04-09-2008, 04:40 PM

I am not Kadaj, but I too play MUC extensively. B2B, the reason MUC is still relevant in today's meta, doesn't play well with CIPT lands.

Kadaj

04-09-2008, 04:44 PM

Faerie Conclave is not good in this deck because, as Arsenal stated, the only reason you should ever play this deck is because of how much of an utter beating Back to Basics is. Conclave does not play well with B2B and doesn't really offer this deck anything it actually needs, hence it not being here.

My draw suite for this deck is just X4 Ancestral Vision and X4 Fact or Fiction, although I do have some other variants I'm keeping under wraps for now (muahahahaha secret tech >_>).

Doks

04-09-2008, 06:37 PM

Also, what is your current draw suite? Are you even running Impulse or do you just have Ancestral Visions and Fact or Fictions? I've been running Impulse, but I get frusterated when it doesn't really gain me any cards, and this deck is very card thirsty.

Well, maybe you should post your list here so we can give a better advice since it also depends on land count, stack-oriented version or more board control, etc.

@ Kadaj:

It's probably Meditate, isn't it? =P

Kadaj

04-09-2008, 07:20 PM

Well, maybe you should post your list here so we can give a better advice since it also depends on land count, stack-oriented version or more board control, etc.

@ Kadaj:

It's probably Meditate, isn't it? =P

Actually no, although I did give Meditate a shot for a while. I actually think it has potential to play a supplemental role if I ever decide to do the unthinkable and drop down to 8 counters. Then again, if I ever do that I'll probably just switch to Landstill and call it a day.

On a totally different note, I'm going to sing the praises of Foil at this point. In the builds running more bulk card-advantage the card is a godsend. No it's not perfect, but the added early game flexibility and the ability to be a hard-counter later in the game instead of a dead draw (like Force Spike) have impressed me a lot in recent testing. Another card that has been interesting as a 1 of or 2 of is Pact of Negation. I know I said earlier that it seemed a little too weak, but more and more I've found the added mid-game punch has actually been really useful, and nothing catches people off guard more than Pact out of nowhere.

Baumeister

04-10-2008, 11:42 AM

Well, maybe you should post your list here so we can give a better advice since it also depends on land count, stack-oriented version or more board control, etc.

It's a little weird, so bear with me.

Lands (24)
24x Island

Creatures (3)
1x Masticore
1x Morphling
1x Guile

Draw (10)
4x Ancestral Visions
4x Fact or Fiction
2x Impulse (at the moment)

Counterspells (11)
4x Counterspell
4x Force of Will
3x Spell Snare

Board Control (12)
4x Propaganda
3x Powder Keg
2x Veldalken Shackles
3x Back to Basics

I'm probably stuck in the past with Masticore, but it can be game changing. I'm sure Meluko is better, but I like the agressiveness of Masticore. I like having ten cards that draw cards, especially bombs like Visions and Fact or Fiction. I want to test Think Twice or something else that in place of Impulse so I can actually gain cards. Spell Snare has been a lot of fun, and can be, in some cases, more useful than a counterspell. Let me know what you think.

Richard

04-14-2008, 07:43 AM

@ Kadaj, any new test results or decklist changes?

RoddyVR

04-14-2008, 09:46 PM

I've been gathering the cards i need for MUC, and at the same time keep trying to figure out what i want to play in it. Was hoping to get some opinions on a couple ideas i had.

If i decide to run Jace Beleren as one of the 3 win cons, what in addition to Morphling should be the third?

As of right now my "list" is looking something like

11 Counters
4 FoW
4 Counterspell
2 SpellSnare
1 Daze

10 Draw
4 Ancestral Vision
4 Fact or Fiction
1 Flash of Insight
1 Jace Berelen

2 Win
1 Morphling
1 Rainbow Efreet

13 Control
3 Propaganda
3 Vedalken Shackles
4 Powder Keg
3 Back to Basics

The 1 Daze i put in under the following theory:
Daze is at its best in two situations. One is when your opponent doesnt know that you're playing it, and taps out for an important spell which you counter. Two is when you dont actualy have Daze in hand but your opponent knows you play them, and is forced to leave a mana open for his important spells.
Both of these cases are more likely if you dont have many dazes, but just one. The first time you play it in a match its likely to be unexpected. After that your opponent will play around it, but you wont be wasting deck or hand space by holding what has become a useless card.
I had actuably started with having 1 mana leak also, but have cut it for space reasons.

I would also realy like to put a 1 of Clockspinning into the deck, but cant figure out what to get rid of.
Early on it can speed up Ancestral Vision to draw the 3 earlier, or speed up the counters on Powder keg to wipe the board a turn faster then expected.
Late in the game it can be played with buyback to either make jace be onesided or even speed up the decking kill with jace.
Can also screw up opponents Vials, EE's, Chalices and who knows what else to make these cards work against the opponent instead of for him (making his own chalice counter his spells is just funny as hell).

All this stuff is theory in my head for now as i've never actualy played a MUC deck, so i wont be surprised if its all shot down, but if possible i would much appreciate a reasoning as to why one or another of my ideas isnt good.
Thanks.