a friend of mine suggested playing Massacre over Infest. You can play it on two mana or with just a dark ritual. Which seems better than pyroclasm and infest for the maverick situation..
Thoughts?
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a friend of mine suggested playing Massacre over Infest. You can play it on two mana or with just a dark ritual. Which seems better than pyroclasm and infest for the maverick situation..
Thoughts?
The point is that you CAN kill thalia with 3 lands + infest, news flash we run 13 land so getting 4 in play is hard especially when the opponent runs wasteland. Or you can sit there with 3 lands while the opponent beats you down and you just lose, in fact losing sounds a lot better than winning in a tournament setting because then I can go out and have a smoke, get some food, and not have to think about anything. Yeah. That sounds so much better than grapeshotting someone for 60 damage.
Gaddock teeg >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> Massacre. True story, massacre was invalidated as soon as teeg saw print and started to see legacy play. Massacre was further invalidated when the GSZ --> Gaddock teeg play was created in maverick. I wouldn't be caught dead running massacre in any deck in legacy right now. If it cost 3, oh god yes I would absolutely adore the card and call it the best anti hatebear card in magic but as it stands the card is jank.
I agree completely with Lorddotm on the same crap getting rehashed every single time a new thread is created. Maybe people don't read the opening post, but there's a list of cards that didn't make the cut. Sure it doesn't list every card ever tested, but it lists the decent cards that didn't make it. If you can't tell why a card isn't in Bryant's list, it's probably because it has been tested and then shelved for another superior card. Preordain is worse than ponder. Plunge into darkness is a heaping pile of crap. Slithermuse isn't good enough. Doomsday is awful in decks with only 8 cantrips. Cabal ritual hurts more than rite of flame when flipped with ad nauseam and is often worse than rite of flame, example being you have 2 cabal ritual/2 rite of flame in hand. Which do you prefer? Rite of flame, since one is a dark ritual in red essentially and if you draw any more they become black lotus and blacker lotus. I can go on and on why certain cards aren't included in TES, but if you can't understand why they aren't included maybe you shouldn't be playing one of the hardest decks to play optimally in the format.
Though Gaddock Teeg > Massacre... Massacre has its own situations where its fantastic. If your opponent has any of the other hatebears out... including Mother of Runes, then Massacre is pretty effective. Its a good wish target.
The following sections can probably be trimmed from the opening post for now:
VI d)
IX a), b), c), e), g), i).
Played today, started 2-0 then lost 2 to U/W. Did end up mulling a lot, and got double wastelanded out one game...
Still used pyroblast, as I need to get foil IoKs, but managed to grab 3 foil ones at my LGS. T1 Inquisition taking stone forge DOES seem a lot better than having to wait till they cast it, or having a dead pyroblast.
Will try using the IoK (3-1 split in SB personally, still a lot of combo in my meta) next time. Or Esperblade since I just finished building it.
almost posted something drunkenly enabled. but decided not to try to offend everyone.
Bryant, great ideas, most of the time i found myself wanting to be more proactive anyways(INQ) as the pyroblast was often stranded in my hand waiting to be discarded to an LED (weird lines). the only thing i liked P blast for was blowing up a flipped delver/ countering something kind of irrelevant (weird metagame). def will be trying INQ. Wish I had more time to contribute to theory/ strategy.
If the idea is to have the opening post be as exhaustive as possible, then I demand two paragraphs of sideboarding strategy for Rifter and Leyline Aggro. And 60Islands.dec for that matter. :wink:
Echoing Truth is starting to feel like a staple, rather than a meta choice over Chain of Vapor, especially with Dredge being so prevalent nowadays. Honestly, I'd run Echoing Truth even if Chalice wasn't a card...
I don't get what your goal is here. If they make 11 billion Zombies you should be dead regardless of an Echoing Truth. Are you trying to bounce an Iona? Just board to make your deck the best at killing them and the best at Time Walking them if you don't just have it.
So, basically, just don't board vs. Dredge.
I bring in Echoing Truth against Dredge just to cut Silences, which are pretty unimpactful if Dredge doesn't have the nuts. Chants can save a turn against an army of Zombies, but how often do you get any value out of Silence, Ari?
Running discard in place of Pyroblast in the board seems interesting. I don't know if I necessarily like the board plan you suggested, Bryant, as Orim's Chant/Silence could be considered the best way to disrupt GW decks, especially considering, in response to IoK, E. Tutor->Canonist/Stony Silence; also, Mindbreak Trap (hey, Wescoe was running it). Having six, even seven (I wouldn't cut the SB Duress for an IoK, maybe Thoughtseize though) or eight if you include Grapeshot, potential cards to board in against Maverick seems like it could be pretty got dang good as long as a board plan could be materialized that wouldn't be overly detrimental to the deck's speed (as I wouldn't want to board out any disruption other than the three Duresses). There's a Big 1.5 tournament at my store in one week, so I'll definitely test it out before then.
Nah, it's a meta choice. I'll play it over Chain at my store since the metagame is so varied (and has had a pretty high density of Chalice of the Void decks over the past month or so for some reason), but I definitely feel Chain was the correct choice for the GP.
Silence is absolutely incredible against Dredge, and is an integral part of the overall gameplan against it. Chant/Silence fits very well into a line on the play of turn one hope they can't kill and/or Wit's End you (although, you can always just Silence in response to the casting of LED if need be), turn two Silence on draw step after determining whether or not you'll actually need to Silence (maybe cantripping beforehand with the other land), turn three win. Take Ari's advice and don't board anything out against Dredge unless they're playing Leyline of Sanctity, in which case you should board out Duress, as opposed to a Chant effect, for the necessary bounce. TES needs to be proactively disruptive, rather than reactively disruptive, against Dredge; you shouldn't (in most circumstances) be expending WW to Chant with kicker against an army of Zombies, as you should have already cast it for W on a previous turn to have prevented them from doing anything other than potentially bringing back an Ichorid and making token(s) off of it EOT.
Winning the die roll and being able to chantwalk Dredge for x-turns is very strong.
If chant's ability to stop them attacking is what you're using it for against Dredge, you're very much doing it wrong.
Since the consensus is clearly that Chant effects are good strategy against Dredge, I'll keep it in mind next time I play them. Either way, I've never had any difficulty against Dredge. They have four relevant cards in their whole deck against us, and we're much faster than they are.
Yeah, if you take out anything against dredge to play defense against their attackers you're doing it wrong. Just chant walk them until you assemble the win, as their entire deck is sorcery based. Chant with kicker against them is very much wrong like Emidln said, as you need to protect your hand from cabal therapy otherwise dredge will tear your hand to shreds in 1-2 turns and you'll be relying on the top of your deck, which isn't any good unless you set it up with brainstorm and have laid down your artifact mana.
Also, leyline of sanctity in dredge? I haven't seen a dredge list packing that card in the SB in ages, at least in the new faithless looting lists. Usually dredge just tries to race us, which they can't do when we chantwalk them and maybe try to land an iona on black.
If chalice of the void wasn't a card, I wouldn't even consider echoing truth in the SB as chain of vapor would be better in almost every case. And it only hits you for one off of ad nauseam versus two, which is a huge difference. I have had ad nauseam's fizzle due to flipping up wipe away, and I always want to tear the card in half afterwards.
Also, Leyline aggro? Do you mean the stupid all leyline's + opalescence + serra's sanctum deck? That deck isn't really a deck, it's just a heaping pile of crap cards that don't do anything on their own.