Lukas Preuss
07-30-2007, 05:40 PM
Hi everyone,
on June 22th, Doug Linn published a very unique decklist in his article on Starcitygames.com and stated the following:
It suffers from the European problem of 61-card lists, but check out what he crammed into the deck! Steve Sadin proved how good Counterbalance could be in Legacy at the last GP, and Hering makes full use of it here. He combines invitational winners Emo Jon, Mascara Bobby, and Chris Pikula (haven't come up with a silly nickname for that card yet) to generate a lot of early disruption and card advantage. He fits in seven cantrips to help out Counterbalance along with Divining Tops. A strong anti-creature suite comes with Verdalken Shackles, Swords to Plowshares and Ghastly Demise. And the buttercream frosting on this delicious cake is splashed-for Tarmogoyf and Tombstalker to get the job done! Hering apparently lives without fear of Wasteland, allowing him to put a seriously impressive amount of really good cards in his deck. This is worth further review.
Doug Linn wasn't aware of the fact, that Hering didn't invent the deck. In fact, it was developed by team aYb a few weeks before the Bazaar of Wonders tournament and had amazing success at two other large tournaments, as well. The deck is called “Baseruption” or, as our team nicknames it: “ayb.aseruption”. It put three people from our team (Christian “Windux” Wilczek, Dennis “Oddball” Kampelmann, and Florian “FlodO” Fischer, who did a great job inventing and developing the deck) into the top16 (with Windux and FlodO making TCool at the May Iserlohn tournament. FlodO and Oddball piloted the deck to two additional top8 appearances at the next Dülmen event, with FlodO winning the whole thing. To keep our exact decklist a secret, we asked the organizers of the events to not publish our decklists, since we wanted to further develop it and place well with it. Which we did.
After discussions and speculations on German Internet forums increased, we decided that it was time to release the Juggernaut and Dennis Kampelmann wrote a primer in German, publishing the decklist. Apparently a lot of people had been waiting for this, started to test the deck and had success with it, as well.
The following text is entirely based on his German primer. To understand some of the card choices, you have to be aware that the German metagame has some differences when comparing it to the American one. Aggro-Control is by far the largest part of the metagame, UWB Fish, Threshold, Deadguy Ale, etc. are everywhere. Landstill and Goblins are the other pillars of the metagame, representing Control and Aggro. Combo is by far the smallest part of the metagame, even though it is on the rise. Most Aggro-Control decks try to support the Counterbalance engine, which is important for some of Baseruption's card choices.
Enjoy!
1. Introduction
2. Decklist
3. Explanation of deck strategy
4. Explanation of card choices
5. Sideboard cards and alternatives
6. Matchups
1. Introduction:
In the middle of April, we realized that the impact of Future Sight and the errata of Flash would define the Legacy metagame for some time (at least until the bannings on July 20th) and, instead of complaining about the obvious brokeness of Flash, we decided to turn the tide and develop a deck that smashes the hell out of Flash and do well against the rest of the field, as well. The post-Future Sight metagame with Flash legal might not have been an important thing in the US, were large monthly tournaments are not as usual as in Germany, but to us, this meant that we had at least three 50+ tournaments that would be under the influence of Flash, Pact of Negation and Summoner's Pact. So, Oddball and Windux started to work on a deck that was able to beat Flash constantly, but could deal with Threshold and UWB Fish (both with Counterbalance), as well. They started with various aggro control builds and compared the strenghths and weaknesses of Threshold and Fish and came to the following conclusions:
Threshold doesn't have a good late game and is therefore unable to deal with control. If Threshold tries to improve its late game (for example if it plays Counterbalance itself), it becomes unflexible and slow.
Fish's mana curve makes it literary unable to deal with an opponent's Counterbalance in the late game and it is way too slow in the early game.
To improve these weaknesses, Oddball and Windux decided to create a deck that used Fish and Threshold's advantages and could control the early game with cheap counterspells and small creatures that guaranteed card advantage, but had the following, as well:
a solid draw engine instead of one that is based on cantrips only, so that the late game is strong, as well.
A mana curve that reaches from 1 to 3, with key spells in the 3-cc slot, to outplay an opponent's Counterbalance.
It doesn't depend on the graveyard, but doesn't lose speed in comparison to Threshold.
With this in mind, Windux, Oddball and FlodO, who joined the two with some great ideas, created the following decklist:
Baseruption.dec
//Lands 16
3 Underground Sea
3 Tundra
2 Tropical Island
4 Polluted Delta
3 Flooded Strand
1 Island
//Creatures 14
3 Meddling Mage
3 Dark Confidant
3 Shadowmage Infiltrator
4 Tarmogoyf
1 Tombstalker
//Spells 30
4 Portent
4 Brainstorm
4 Force of Will
4 Daze
3 Counterbalance
2 Sensei's Divining Top
3 Swords to Plowshares
1 Ghastly Demise
2 Vedalken Shackles
3 Chrome Mox
Sideboard
4 Engineered Plague
3 Spell Snare
2 Threads of Disloyalty
3 Pithing Needle
3 Vindicate
Explanation of deck strategy:
Baseruption is an aggro control deck that wants to put pressure on the opponent and generates an enormous card advantage, as well. This ensures that Baseruption doesn't lose its strenghth in the late game. It uses a huge amount of cards that the opponent needs to deal with, such as Confidant, Finkel, Vedalken Shackles, and Counterbalance, ...(maybe Meddling Mage) and excellent disruption to back them up. To ensure a strong early game, Baseruption plays 4 Force of Will, and 4 Daze, but also Chrome Mox. The Mox might be one of the most controversial slots, but I will explain this later. The finishers of this deck are Tarmogoyf and Tombstalker, two of the most efficient and fastest threads in the format.
Here a short glimpse on the deck's statistics:
Mana Sources: 19
Cantrips: 10
Counterspells: 11
Removal: 6
CA- Critter: 9
“Finisher”: 5
And the mana curve:
Cc0: 19
Cc1: 14
Cc2: 17/18 (Stalker)
Cc3: 5
(Cc5: 4)
/ (Cc8: 1)
Explanation of card choices:
Dark Confidant instead of Predict:
Baseruption is a very aggressive deck that wants to put threads on the table that the opponent has to deal with. Predict takes a lot of preparation to ensure a small amount of card advantage. Dark Confidant, on the other hand, can come down much earlier and creates card advantage, as well as puts pressure on the opponent. Just like other creatures in the deck, Counterbalance literary gives Confidant “Can’t be the target of spells”, which makes him a strong and reliable draw engine in the late game.
Shadowmage Infiltrator/Finkel:
The Infiltrator is one of the later additions that FlodO brought to the development of the deck. Just like Dark Confidant, he is a solid draw engine for the deck. He is not influenced by an opposing Counterbalance and makes the cc3-slot for Baseruption's own CB stronger. He blocks early Mongeese and is almost unblockable for most of the creatures in the format. Nice.
Meddling Mage:
Originally, Meddling Mage was, together with Chrome Mox, the strongest answer to Flash. Since Flash is now banned, his role is to protect our own critters from an opponent's removal, as well as to give the deck another boost against control and combo.
Constellation of Swords to Plowshares and Ghastly Demise, Shackles:
We used the split between the two removal spells, because we thought that the Flash hype would result in a huge amount of Meddling Mages. A Meddling Mage on Swords to Plowshares would make our entire removal useless. We never tested a 2/2 split, since Swords is in most cases better than Demise (for example against Mystic Enforcer, a commonly played card in the German metagame).
Verdalken Shackles is one of the most efficient cards in the deck, against all Aggro-Control decks it trades 2:1 and its casting cost doesn't care much about an opponent's Counterbalance, as well.
Tombstalker:
Tombstalker is next to Tarmogoyf the finisher of this deck. His evasion ability is very important in many matchups and just great against opposing Tarmogoyfs. His dependance on the Graveyard is not as relevant, because the rest of the deck doesn't depend on the Graveyard. It is useless to board Graveyard hate against Baseruption, and even if the opponent does, it is not as bad, since Tombstalker doesn't need many cards in the Graveyard. His anti-synergy with Counterbalance and, more importantly Dark Confidant might come to mind, but, since we run quite a lot of cantrips, as well as Sensei's Divining Top, and only two Tombstalkers, it is very unlikely to reveal one with Bob. The advantages are far more important and outweigh the disadvantages. If someone is not sure about this though, Sea Drake, Mystic Enforcer, etc. could be used as finishers, too, although they are not as strong as Tombstalker.
Chrome Mox:
This might be the most controversial slot for an Aggro-Control deck. Many decks have to do without Chrome Mox, since it is speed at the cost of pure card disadvantage. It is weak in the late game and a late Chrome Mox is the suckage. Combo like TES and Belcher are able to play Chrome Mox, because these disadvantages don't mean much to them, but how can Baseruption play Chrome Mox?
Well, just like Combo, Baseruption uses Chrome Mox to build up a fast early game and put pressure on the opponent. Even on the draw, Chrome Mox is an important tool that helps Baseruption to establish a strong early game. Baseruption's threads (Finkel, Bob, Counterbalance, etc.) all generate such an insane amount of card advantage, that Chrome Mox's small card disadvantage is not very important. Alternatively, an early Tarmogoyf on turn 1 creates enough speed to justify Chrome Mox. A late Chrome Mox isn't very good, but you have enough draw engines and cantrips to compensate these disadvantages.
But why run Chrome Mox as mana source no. 17-19, when 17 mana is usually enough for Fish and Threshold? This deck plays different than Fish and Threshold, since it wants to put more pressure on the opponent, while drawing a shitload of cards. Fish and Threshold use the first few turns to play cantrips. This is the time when Baseruption already wants to establish a strong early game with threats and gain card advantage over the opponent. Also, this deck has, on average, a much higher casting cost. To maintain its speed, the deck has to run more mana sources such as Chrome Mox.
If you have any more questions regarding the card choices, feel free to ask, I only covered controversial card choices and those cards, that serve different functions than in other decks. I will try to answer them as fast as possible and I'm sure the other members of my team will do so, too.
Sideboard cards and alternatives:
Engineered Plague: This card is the only answer to Vial Goblins, which is otherwise bad matchup for Baseruption, since it is one of the only decks that combines speed, pressure and mana curve in such a good way that it is too fast for Baseruption. Sure, Vial Goblins is on the decline, but it is still a strong contender in the metagame, so you have to run Plagues to beat them.
Spell Snare: We chose this card to deal with combo (Burning Wish, Flash, Tutors, etc.), as well as Aggro Control (Tarmogoyf, Counterbalance). These are the matchups, were bouncing a land for Daze can mean a significant disadvantage in speed. You bring in Spell Snare to take care of this. Since the deck doesn't have to rely on many slots in the sideboard to deal with bad matchups, this is a slot that makes favorable matchups even more favorable.
Threads of Disloyalty: This complements Verdalken Shackles and is a great card that takes care of your opponent's creatures (Tarmogoyf, etc.). An opponent that brings in Pithing Needle from the SB might be surprised to find ToD taking control over his creatures.
Pithing Needle: This is mainly in the sideboard to deal with Landstill, which is an important part of the metagame in Germany and was also successful due to the impact of Flash on the metagame. Needle hits Mishra's Factory, Engineered Explosives, etc.. Greenbased control is also on the rise in Germany, so Needle is even more important since it hits cards like Pernicious Deed, Survival of the Fittest, and so on.
Vindicate: This used to be Krosan Grip, but we quickly noticed that Vindicate fits a lot better into the deck since it is mostly based on black instead of green anyways. With this, you can also set Meddling Mage on Sword to Plowshares post-board since it won't affect you much anymore.
Other options include: Extirpate, Tormod's Crypt, Loaming Shaman, Duress, Stifle, etc.
Matchup analysis:
I don't like to make assumptions based on percentages, so I will only focus on the important cards in the different matchups and the sideboard options.
UGR Threshold: In the early game, it is important to prevent as much damage from early Mongeese, so that you're not under too much pressure during the midgame. Meddling Mage and Shadowmage Infiltrator are really good for this. The midgame should focus on gaining control of the game with Counterbalance and Tarmogoyf until Verdalken Shackles and the better creatures overwhelm the opponent. In the late game, Meddling Mage helps to lock the opponent down when Counterbalance takes care of most of his card (Mage on Fledging Dragon, for example).
Sideboard: -4 Daze, -1 Verdalken Shackles, +2 Threads of Disloyalty, +3 Spellsnare. If the opponent plays Counterbalance, bring in some Vindicates, as well.
UGW Threshold: Similar to UGR Thresh, but with less removal and not as fast. Meddling Mage is better in this matchup, since it is not as vulnerable. Sideboarding is basically the same as against the UGR version.
UWB Fish: Fish has difficulties to handle the amount of threats that Baseruption plays, which makes the matchup very good. If Fish has an early Mother of Runes and Umezawa's Jitte, things can get ugly, but you should be able to take care of this. Fish is slower than Threshold, so you should be focusing on the mid and late game. Counterbalance is great in this matchup. It basically nullifies the card draw from Fish's Dark Confidant.
Sideboard: -3x Chrome Mox, -1x Swords, -1x Ghastly Demise, +3x Spell Snare, +2x Vindicate. You could board Threads of Disloyalty, as well.
Deadguy Ale: This is a good matchup, because Baseruption has a very good mana base that is not easily disrupted (thanks to Chrome Mox) and enough card draw to deal with Deadguy's discard. The opponent will give you several chances to get into the game, if you use them, you should be able to win. Watch out for Dystopia post-board, you have enough answers to it, but keep one ready.
Sideboard: -3x Infiltrator, -1x Swords, -1x Ghastly Demise, + 3x Spell Snare, + 2x Vindicate
Vial Goblins: With Chrome Mox, you have 11 answers to first turn Lackey on the draw, which is very important. But even then, Goblins' mana disruption can be too much and keep you from gaining an advantage. Counterbalance is crap against them due to their mana curve and Aether Vial. Pre-board, your only chance to win is through multiple Tarmogoyfs and fast beatdown, which is extremly difficult. Postboard, things get better, thanks to Engineered Plague. But even then, it should be a bad matchup.
Sideboard: -3x Counterbalance, -3x Meddling Mage, -2x Vedalken Shackles, +4x Engineered Plague, +2x Vindicate, +2x Pithing Needle
Faerie Stompy: Thanks to Baseruption's mana curve, you're often able to ignore Chalice completely. Verdalken Shackles shines here, and in games 2&3, you bring in Vindicate as additional removal, as well. This matchup shouldn't be too bad.
Sideboarding: -1x Demise, -1x Swords, -1x Dark Confidant, +3x Vindicate
Burn: This is a great matchup, Tarmogoyf is a decent clock and Counterbalance hits their spells even without library manipulation often enough to let the opponent run out of gas.
Sideboard: -3 Confidant, +3 Spell Snare
Thanks for reading this, feel free to ask questions if things are unclear or if you want to know more about certain things. Even if this deck was created to deal mainly with Flash.dec, it will be a strong contender in the post-Flash metagame, as well. It had great success in Germany with an enourmous amount of T8 and T16 appearances during the Flash month and continued to be amazing afterwards, with even more T8 success. This deck is definitely very, very strong.
Thanks to:
- Dennis Kampelmann, Christian Wilczek, and Florian Fischer for creating this deck.
- Dennis Kampelmann for writing the German primer
- Everybody else who picked this deck up and did well with it already
- Team aYb for being awesome
- You for picking this up and winning with it, just as we did.
on June 22th, Doug Linn published a very unique decklist in his article on Starcitygames.com and stated the following:
It suffers from the European problem of 61-card lists, but check out what he crammed into the deck! Steve Sadin proved how good Counterbalance could be in Legacy at the last GP, and Hering makes full use of it here. He combines invitational winners Emo Jon, Mascara Bobby, and Chris Pikula (haven't come up with a silly nickname for that card yet) to generate a lot of early disruption and card advantage. He fits in seven cantrips to help out Counterbalance along with Divining Tops. A strong anti-creature suite comes with Verdalken Shackles, Swords to Plowshares and Ghastly Demise. And the buttercream frosting on this delicious cake is splashed-for Tarmogoyf and Tombstalker to get the job done! Hering apparently lives without fear of Wasteland, allowing him to put a seriously impressive amount of really good cards in his deck. This is worth further review.
Doug Linn wasn't aware of the fact, that Hering didn't invent the deck. In fact, it was developed by team aYb a few weeks before the Bazaar of Wonders tournament and had amazing success at two other large tournaments, as well. The deck is called “Baseruption” or, as our team nicknames it: “ayb.aseruption”. It put three people from our team (Christian “Windux” Wilczek, Dennis “Oddball” Kampelmann, and Florian “FlodO” Fischer, who did a great job inventing and developing the deck) into the top16 (with Windux and FlodO making TCool at the May Iserlohn tournament. FlodO and Oddball piloted the deck to two additional top8 appearances at the next Dülmen event, with FlodO winning the whole thing. To keep our exact decklist a secret, we asked the organizers of the events to not publish our decklists, since we wanted to further develop it and place well with it. Which we did.
After discussions and speculations on German Internet forums increased, we decided that it was time to release the Juggernaut and Dennis Kampelmann wrote a primer in German, publishing the decklist. Apparently a lot of people had been waiting for this, started to test the deck and had success with it, as well.
The following text is entirely based on his German primer. To understand some of the card choices, you have to be aware that the German metagame has some differences when comparing it to the American one. Aggro-Control is by far the largest part of the metagame, UWB Fish, Threshold, Deadguy Ale, etc. are everywhere. Landstill and Goblins are the other pillars of the metagame, representing Control and Aggro. Combo is by far the smallest part of the metagame, even though it is on the rise. Most Aggro-Control decks try to support the Counterbalance engine, which is important for some of Baseruption's card choices.
Enjoy!
1. Introduction
2. Decklist
3. Explanation of deck strategy
4. Explanation of card choices
5. Sideboard cards and alternatives
6. Matchups
1. Introduction:
In the middle of April, we realized that the impact of Future Sight and the errata of Flash would define the Legacy metagame for some time (at least until the bannings on July 20th) and, instead of complaining about the obvious brokeness of Flash, we decided to turn the tide and develop a deck that smashes the hell out of Flash and do well against the rest of the field, as well. The post-Future Sight metagame with Flash legal might not have been an important thing in the US, were large monthly tournaments are not as usual as in Germany, but to us, this meant that we had at least three 50+ tournaments that would be under the influence of Flash, Pact of Negation and Summoner's Pact. So, Oddball and Windux started to work on a deck that was able to beat Flash constantly, but could deal with Threshold and UWB Fish (both with Counterbalance), as well. They started with various aggro control builds and compared the strenghths and weaknesses of Threshold and Fish and came to the following conclusions:
Threshold doesn't have a good late game and is therefore unable to deal with control. If Threshold tries to improve its late game (for example if it plays Counterbalance itself), it becomes unflexible and slow.
Fish's mana curve makes it literary unable to deal with an opponent's Counterbalance in the late game and it is way too slow in the early game.
To improve these weaknesses, Oddball and Windux decided to create a deck that used Fish and Threshold's advantages and could control the early game with cheap counterspells and small creatures that guaranteed card advantage, but had the following, as well:
a solid draw engine instead of one that is based on cantrips only, so that the late game is strong, as well.
A mana curve that reaches from 1 to 3, with key spells in the 3-cc slot, to outplay an opponent's Counterbalance.
It doesn't depend on the graveyard, but doesn't lose speed in comparison to Threshold.
With this in mind, Windux, Oddball and FlodO, who joined the two with some great ideas, created the following decklist:
Baseruption.dec
//Lands 16
3 Underground Sea
3 Tundra
2 Tropical Island
4 Polluted Delta
3 Flooded Strand
1 Island
//Creatures 14
3 Meddling Mage
3 Dark Confidant
3 Shadowmage Infiltrator
4 Tarmogoyf
1 Tombstalker
//Spells 30
4 Portent
4 Brainstorm
4 Force of Will
4 Daze
3 Counterbalance
2 Sensei's Divining Top
3 Swords to Plowshares
1 Ghastly Demise
2 Vedalken Shackles
3 Chrome Mox
Sideboard
4 Engineered Plague
3 Spell Snare
2 Threads of Disloyalty
3 Pithing Needle
3 Vindicate
Explanation of deck strategy:
Baseruption is an aggro control deck that wants to put pressure on the opponent and generates an enormous card advantage, as well. This ensures that Baseruption doesn't lose its strenghth in the late game. It uses a huge amount of cards that the opponent needs to deal with, such as Confidant, Finkel, Vedalken Shackles, and Counterbalance, ...(maybe Meddling Mage) and excellent disruption to back them up. To ensure a strong early game, Baseruption plays 4 Force of Will, and 4 Daze, but also Chrome Mox. The Mox might be one of the most controversial slots, but I will explain this later. The finishers of this deck are Tarmogoyf and Tombstalker, two of the most efficient and fastest threads in the format.
Here a short glimpse on the deck's statistics:
Mana Sources: 19
Cantrips: 10
Counterspells: 11
Removal: 6
CA- Critter: 9
“Finisher”: 5
And the mana curve:
Cc0: 19
Cc1: 14
Cc2: 17/18 (Stalker)
Cc3: 5
(Cc5: 4)
/ (Cc8: 1)
Explanation of card choices:
Dark Confidant instead of Predict:
Baseruption is a very aggressive deck that wants to put threads on the table that the opponent has to deal with. Predict takes a lot of preparation to ensure a small amount of card advantage. Dark Confidant, on the other hand, can come down much earlier and creates card advantage, as well as puts pressure on the opponent. Just like other creatures in the deck, Counterbalance literary gives Confidant “Can’t be the target of spells”, which makes him a strong and reliable draw engine in the late game.
Shadowmage Infiltrator/Finkel:
The Infiltrator is one of the later additions that FlodO brought to the development of the deck. Just like Dark Confidant, he is a solid draw engine for the deck. He is not influenced by an opposing Counterbalance and makes the cc3-slot for Baseruption's own CB stronger. He blocks early Mongeese and is almost unblockable for most of the creatures in the format. Nice.
Meddling Mage:
Originally, Meddling Mage was, together with Chrome Mox, the strongest answer to Flash. Since Flash is now banned, his role is to protect our own critters from an opponent's removal, as well as to give the deck another boost against control and combo.
Constellation of Swords to Plowshares and Ghastly Demise, Shackles:
We used the split between the two removal spells, because we thought that the Flash hype would result in a huge amount of Meddling Mages. A Meddling Mage on Swords to Plowshares would make our entire removal useless. We never tested a 2/2 split, since Swords is in most cases better than Demise (for example against Mystic Enforcer, a commonly played card in the German metagame).
Verdalken Shackles is one of the most efficient cards in the deck, against all Aggro-Control decks it trades 2:1 and its casting cost doesn't care much about an opponent's Counterbalance, as well.
Tombstalker:
Tombstalker is next to Tarmogoyf the finisher of this deck. His evasion ability is very important in many matchups and just great against opposing Tarmogoyfs. His dependance on the Graveyard is not as relevant, because the rest of the deck doesn't depend on the Graveyard. It is useless to board Graveyard hate against Baseruption, and even if the opponent does, it is not as bad, since Tombstalker doesn't need many cards in the Graveyard. His anti-synergy with Counterbalance and, more importantly Dark Confidant might come to mind, but, since we run quite a lot of cantrips, as well as Sensei's Divining Top, and only two Tombstalkers, it is very unlikely to reveal one with Bob. The advantages are far more important and outweigh the disadvantages. If someone is not sure about this though, Sea Drake, Mystic Enforcer, etc. could be used as finishers, too, although they are not as strong as Tombstalker.
Chrome Mox:
This might be the most controversial slot for an Aggro-Control deck. Many decks have to do without Chrome Mox, since it is speed at the cost of pure card disadvantage. It is weak in the late game and a late Chrome Mox is the suckage. Combo like TES and Belcher are able to play Chrome Mox, because these disadvantages don't mean much to them, but how can Baseruption play Chrome Mox?
Well, just like Combo, Baseruption uses Chrome Mox to build up a fast early game and put pressure on the opponent. Even on the draw, Chrome Mox is an important tool that helps Baseruption to establish a strong early game. Baseruption's threads (Finkel, Bob, Counterbalance, etc.) all generate such an insane amount of card advantage, that Chrome Mox's small card disadvantage is not very important. Alternatively, an early Tarmogoyf on turn 1 creates enough speed to justify Chrome Mox. A late Chrome Mox isn't very good, but you have enough draw engines and cantrips to compensate these disadvantages.
But why run Chrome Mox as mana source no. 17-19, when 17 mana is usually enough for Fish and Threshold? This deck plays different than Fish and Threshold, since it wants to put more pressure on the opponent, while drawing a shitload of cards. Fish and Threshold use the first few turns to play cantrips. This is the time when Baseruption already wants to establish a strong early game with threats and gain card advantage over the opponent. Also, this deck has, on average, a much higher casting cost. To maintain its speed, the deck has to run more mana sources such as Chrome Mox.
If you have any more questions regarding the card choices, feel free to ask, I only covered controversial card choices and those cards, that serve different functions than in other decks. I will try to answer them as fast as possible and I'm sure the other members of my team will do so, too.
Sideboard cards and alternatives:
Engineered Plague: This card is the only answer to Vial Goblins, which is otherwise bad matchup for Baseruption, since it is one of the only decks that combines speed, pressure and mana curve in such a good way that it is too fast for Baseruption. Sure, Vial Goblins is on the decline, but it is still a strong contender in the metagame, so you have to run Plagues to beat them.
Spell Snare: We chose this card to deal with combo (Burning Wish, Flash, Tutors, etc.), as well as Aggro Control (Tarmogoyf, Counterbalance). These are the matchups, were bouncing a land for Daze can mean a significant disadvantage in speed. You bring in Spell Snare to take care of this. Since the deck doesn't have to rely on many slots in the sideboard to deal with bad matchups, this is a slot that makes favorable matchups even more favorable.
Threads of Disloyalty: This complements Verdalken Shackles and is a great card that takes care of your opponent's creatures (Tarmogoyf, etc.). An opponent that brings in Pithing Needle from the SB might be surprised to find ToD taking control over his creatures.
Pithing Needle: This is mainly in the sideboard to deal with Landstill, which is an important part of the metagame in Germany and was also successful due to the impact of Flash on the metagame. Needle hits Mishra's Factory, Engineered Explosives, etc.. Greenbased control is also on the rise in Germany, so Needle is even more important since it hits cards like Pernicious Deed, Survival of the Fittest, and so on.
Vindicate: This used to be Krosan Grip, but we quickly noticed that Vindicate fits a lot better into the deck since it is mostly based on black instead of green anyways. With this, you can also set Meddling Mage on Sword to Plowshares post-board since it won't affect you much anymore.
Other options include: Extirpate, Tormod's Crypt, Loaming Shaman, Duress, Stifle, etc.
Matchup analysis:
I don't like to make assumptions based on percentages, so I will only focus on the important cards in the different matchups and the sideboard options.
UGR Threshold: In the early game, it is important to prevent as much damage from early Mongeese, so that you're not under too much pressure during the midgame. Meddling Mage and Shadowmage Infiltrator are really good for this. The midgame should focus on gaining control of the game with Counterbalance and Tarmogoyf until Verdalken Shackles and the better creatures overwhelm the opponent. In the late game, Meddling Mage helps to lock the opponent down when Counterbalance takes care of most of his card (Mage on Fledging Dragon, for example).
Sideboard: -4 Daze, -1 Verdalken Shackles, +2 Threads of Disloyalty, +3 Spellsnare. If the opponent plays Counterbalance, bring in some Vindicates, as well.
UGW Threshold: Similar to UGR Thresh, but with less removal and not as fast. Meddling Mage is better in this matchup, since it is not as vulnerable. Sideboarding is basically the same as against the UGR version.
UWB Fish: Fish has difficulties to handle the amount of threats that Baseruption plays, which makes the matchup very good. If Fish has an early Mother of Runes and Umezawa's Jitte, things can get ugly, but you should be able to take care of this. Fish is slower than Threshold, so you should be focusing on the mid and late game. Counterbalance is great in this matchup. It basically nullifies the card draw from Fish's Dark Confidant.
Sideboard: -3x Chrome Mox, -1x Swords, -1x Ghastly Demise, +3x Spell Snare, +2x Vindicate. You could board Threads of Disloyalty, as well.
Deadguy Ale: This is a good matchup, because Baseruption has a very good mana base that is not easily disrupted (thanks to Chrome Mox) and enough card draw to deal with Deadguy's discard. The opponent will give you several chances to get into the game, if you use them, you should be able to win. Watch out for Dystopia post-board, you have enough answers to it, but keep one ready.
Sideboard: -3x Infiltrator, -1x Swords, -1x Ghastly Demise, + 3x Spell Snare, + 2x Vindicate
Vial Goblins: With Chrome Mox, you have 11 answers to first turn Lackey on the draw, which is very important. But even then, Goblins' mana disruption can be too much and keep you from gaining an advantage. Counterbalance is crap against them due to their mana curve and Aether Vial. Pre-board, your only chance to win is through multiple Tarmogoyfs and fast beatdown, which is extremly difficult. Postboard, things get better, thanks to Engineered Plague. But even then, it should be a bad matchup.
Sideboard: -3x Counterbalance, -3x Meddling Mage, -2x Vedalken Shackles, +4x Engineered Plague, +2x Vindicate, +2x Pithing Needle
Faerie Stompy: Thanks to Baseruption's mana curve, you're often able to ignore Chalice completely. Verdalken Shackles shines here, and in games 2&3, you bring in Vindicate as additional removal, as well. This matchup shouldn't be too bad.
Sideboarding: -1x Demise, -1x Swords, -1x Dark Confidant, +3x Vindicate
Burn: This is a great matchup, Tarmogoyf is a decent clock and Counterbalance hits their spells even without library manipulation often enough to let the opponent run out of gas.
Sideboard: -3 Confidant, +3 Spell Snare
Thanks for reading this, feel free to ask questions if things are unclear or if you want to know more about certain things. Even if this deck was created to deal mainly with Flash.dec, it will be a strong contender in the post-Flash metagame, as well. It had great success in Germany with an enourmous amount of T8 and T16 appearances during the Flash month and continued to be amazing afterwards, with even more T8 success. This deck is definitely very, very strong.
Thanks to:
- Dennis Kampelmann, Christian Wilczek, and Florian Fischer for creating this deck.
- Dennis Kampelmann for writing the German primer
- Everybody else who picked this deck up and did well with it already
- Team aYb for being awesome
- You for picking this up and winning with it, just as we did.