Re: Omniclash and Omnimaniac
Jesus, do we really need 3 threads on page 1 discussing the same deck?
Re: Omniclash and Omnimaniac
No. But instead of posting this here you should have done so in the thread with less relevant information. You could have also posted in the oldest thread to ask it being renamed UR omniscience instead of just omniscience.
Re: Omniclash and Omnimaniac
I'm sure in all 3 threads the Core of S&T, Halls, Omni, (Intuition, Cunning Wish) is the topic.
This reminds me a bit of the flood of Reanimator threads because of the exact selection of creatures and/or if they run S&T.
Re: Omniclash and Omnimaniac
Excellent primer; thanks a lot for writing it!
Re: Omniclash and Omnimaniac
Crushing canadian preboard? Beeing ok postboard because of defense grid?
It looks like you spend a lot of time developing and testing the deck, but this does not seem correct. Compared to sneak attack you are much less hurt by stifle wasteland, but it also takes you a bit longer to resolve all your cantrips and find your 3 card combos.
I assume that you want to believe that you beat aggro-control because you want show & tell banned, but to me that is a classic case of overestimating ones combo deck, but I am happy to be proven wrong by getting my ass kicked. :tongue:
Factors which you should also not underestimate is the surprise, mindfuck liking playing on the draw, people not knowing what's going on in general. Once a deck is established it automatically looses value by people preparing better and knowing how to play against it. Nice deck, but sorry - not breaking the format and getting show banned.
Don't want to turn this thread into a ban or not ban show thing. Enough said about that. I would be more interested in you commenting on my thoughts about the deck:
What I don't get. You mention against death&taxes and maverick:
Remember the game plan against Thalia decks is Emrakul. It also bypasses Teeg. Intuition in means you have 4 spells to trickbind hate permanents on show and tell.
What do you mean? That you cunning wish (or intuition for cunning wish) for trickbind first. Then either cast
show - omni - emrakul with trickbind in hand
show - emrakul with trickind in hand + mana to cast it
show - omni - cunning wish - eladramis find
All this to deal with karakas/oblivion ring while dodging teeg? Besides the difficulty of finding your 1of emrakul or another cunning wish for eladramis call it also looks like a tough plan with Thalia and Pridemage around. Or am I missing something obvious on how you play properly against a thalia with 2 mana cantrips and 4 mana tutors?
What also comes to mind is playing against sneak attack.
If anyone shows and the opponent puts Griselbrand into play you likely loose to them having more counters than you right?. Isn't that a big disadvantage since they have more and faster sneak attacks compared to 3 dream-halls. Not to mention the opponent can also do mean things with dream halls like free pierces/flusters/red-blasts, which he might not have been able to cast before.
Is the sneak attack Matchup really positive in your experience?
Talking about the combo. What about storm: You are not faster and with only 4 FoW you pack way less disruption than them. This matchup seems also bad. Sneak attack is faster than your deck has spell pierces and misdirections for combos discard and hence a way better matchup I think.
So summing up the sneak attack comparison:
You have better mana and probably more consistency due to less clunk, but are a bit slower.
You have an instant win, but rely on some versions of "3 card combo" and are more vulnerable to enchantment hate than sneak-attack..
You have less disruption to interact with the opponents Gameplan, but cheaper protection for your own combo. Pact is much better in protecting yourself whereas 3 Misdirection main are the tits against discard which as you outlined yourself is pretty common.
in matchups to me that looks like:
Delver/Esper/Shardless: Better than sneak
Maverick: Probably equal or slightly better. Less hurt by wasteland & knight into Karakas but more vulnerable to pridemage.
Jund: Probably equal or slightly worse: More consistent, but misdirection >>>> Pact.
Combo (sneak, storm, elves,...): Worse since you are slower and have less protection.
Re: Omniclash and Omnimaniac
Lejay, thanks for writing this primer and congratulations on your results.
Also, interesting take on the "ban SnT!!!" debate.
As for some sour comments: haters gonna hate I guess.
Re: Omniclash and Omnimaniac
Awesome - I really like your list/choices , great work !
Re: Omniclash and Omnimaniac
Re: Omniclash and Omnimaniac
Excellent write up!
However, it's the same exact deck (+ Emrakul and Ants, - Maniac and Firemind), and unfortunately you're splitting discussion that would be better geared to discussing the nuances of each win condition to fight different metas.
I like the Rushing River tech, since at times you'll have to fight multiple hate permanents.
2 Scalding Tarn
7 Island
2 City of Traitors
2 Ancient Tomb
4 Flooded Strand
2 Polluted Delta
4 Show and Tell
4 Preordain
4 Ponder
3 Force of Will
4 Enter the Infinite
4 Brainstorm
4 Cunning Wish
3 Pact of Negation
1 Impulse
1 Flusterstorm
1 Intuition
4 Omniscience
4 Dream Halls
Sideboard
1 Pact of Negation
4 Leyline of Sanctity
1 Slaughter Pact
1 Intuition
1 Trickbind
1 Wipe Away
1 Research // Development
1 Laboratory Maniac
1 Firemind's Foresight
1 Echoing Truth
1 Surgical Extraction
1 Force of Will
---
3 City of Traitors
3 Polluted Delta
4 Flooded Strand
10 Island
1 Emrakul, the Aeons Torn
1 Leyline of Sanctity
3 Dream Halls
4 Omniscience
3 Cunning Wish
3 Pact of Negation
4 Brainstorm
4 Force of Will
1 Gitaxian Probe
4 Enter the Infinite
4 Ponder
4 Preordain
4 Show and Tell
SB: 1 Trickbind
SB: 1 Slaughter Pact
SB: 1 Sapphire Charm
SB: 1 Rushing River
SB: 1 Release the Ants
SB: 1 Noxious Revival
SB: 1 Intuition
SB: 1 Eladamri's Call
SB: 3 Defense Grid
SB: 3 Leyline of Sanctity
SB: 1 Pact of Negation
Re: Omniclash and Omnimaniac
Quote:
Originally Posted by
catmint
Crushing canadian preboard? Beeing ok postboard because of defense grid?
It looks like you spend a lot of time developing and testing the deck, but this does not seem correct. Compared to sneak attack you are much less hurt by stifle wasteland, but it also takes you a bit longer to resolve all your cantrips and find your 3 card combos.
I assume that you want to believe that you beat aggro-control because you want show & tell banned, but to me that is a classic case of overestimating ones combo deck, but I am happy to be proven wrong by getting my ass kicked. :tongue:
I have 6+ months of testing the deck behind me so I would have liked critics backed-up by some testing results, but I don't mind answering the first ones as it's inevitable and testing results didn't have much time to occur. I confirm you what I wrote. My playtesting was either against myself, or mostly against Tristan polzl who played tempo thresh a lot and top8ed both the GP Ghent and 2012 BoM. Yes the match-up is favourable as you run more hardcounters than them and can play around a ton of cards (taxing effects, wasteland, stifle, snare is dead if played). When not running intuition your opponent can only counter cantrips which is pretty weak considering the number you have.
Sure results againt TT will decrease with people knowing the deck better, but we already took that into account.
I don't know why you seem surprised by the defense grid influence in the match-up. Yes it saves you from the multitude of conditional hardcounters they will bring in and without them the match-up becomes pretty bad post sb.
About the time needed to find the 3 cards combo there are several things to consider. First Tempo thresh absolutely needs turn 1 delver to be faster than what I need to find the 3 card combo. Second even if they do I can still be faster than them. Third this isn't always a 3 cards combo. Show and tell + omniscience + cantrips very often gets there. There are different 3 cards combo in the deck, dream halls+enter while not the main plan is a 2 card+ blue card combo, and against tempo thresh Show Emrakul is valid without using pacts.
I am not overestimating the TT match-up. TT is always the first deck against which I playtest when building. For me it's the thermometer of legacy deckbuilding. If a deck doesn't pass the TT with at least 50% win I just stop working on it.
I didn't say the deck would always win against TT but I can assure you that if the omni player knows what he's doing he'll win about 2/3 of the time. And I realize it's pretty high for a match-up percentage, there are much closer match-ups. Only a TT player tuning his deck specifically to beat show and tell can change that.
Quote:
Originally Posted by
catmint
Factors which you should also not underestimate is the surprise, mindfuck liking playing on the draw, people not knowing what's going on in general. Once a deck is established it automatically looses value by people preparing better and knowing how to play against it. Nice deck, but sorry - not breaking the format and getting show banned.
I didn't say it will completely dominate the format. There are 2 things to consider :
1) As long as people are running sufficient grave hate, this deck is the best deck in the format (with not enough grave hate it's reanimator)
2) People can adapt to this deck as I said in the format discussion section, but that will still result in an unhealthy metagame with far less diversity because its predator have almost all the same weaknesses and the hate is very limited and manageable.
Quote:
Originally Posted by
catmint
What I don't get. You mention against death&taxes and maverick:
Remember the game plan against Thalia decks is Emrakul. It also bypasses Teeg. Intuition in means you have 4 spells to trickbind hate permanents on show and tell.
What do you mean?
There is no logical connexion between the 2 sentences.
Against Thalia decks Emrakul is the plan as you just need 1 mana to cast enter and then you can untap and play spells you want. Cunning wish on call also bypasses teeg. You can easily dodge the hate bears thanks to the emrakul main deck.
Siding intuition in against thalia decks means you'll have four ways to answer oblivion ring (3 cunning wish + 1 intuition to tutor them). I wasn't talking about trickbinding through thalia but yes that can happen and in that case you probably wanted to wish for trickbind preventively. 2 different hates put you in a tougher spot and 3 different hate can be really difficult. But that's having 3 different hates. When we tested against a maverick with tons of hate at the beginning we had a negative match-up post sb. But not only it's just post sb and maverick decks shouldn't do so, the deck is also almost not run anymore. So there is no reason to highlight that maverick with 10+ targeted hate will be a negative match-up post sb. Also there is stormtide leviathan as long they don't expect it and side out all stps and you can dodge the Oring hate without wish thanks to dream halls when it was their only hate or because you countered a hate bear(s).
Quote:
Originally Posted by
catmint
What also comes to mind is playing against sneak attack.
If anyone shows and the opponent puts Griselbrand into play you likely loose to them having more counters than you right?. Isn't that a big disadvantage since they have more and faster sneak attacks compared to 3 dream-halls. Not to mention the opponent can also do mean things with dream halls like free pierces/flusters/red-blasts, which he might not have been able to cast before.
Is the sneak attack Matchup really positive in your experience?
No. We expected it to be negative for the reason you gave. Testing proved it to be 50/50 somehow though. The main reason it's different from the UR omniscience build is that you can side in defense grid and play them pretty safely in the early game or put it on opposing show and tell because sneak show is far less likely to kill you in only one turn.
Quote:
Originally Posted by
catmint
Talking about the combo. What about storm: You are not faster and with only 4 FoW you pack way less disruption than them. This matchup seems also bad. Sneak attack is faster than your deck has spell pierces and misdirections for combos discard and hence a way better matchup I think.
I didn't claim a better match-up than sneak attack against storm. Although I guess in a storm heavy meta you could play flusterstorm maindeck to improve drastically. That said leyline is really good against non doomsday Tendrils based decks.
About the comparisions you made, I think I answered a bunch of them throughout this post. One last major thing to consider is this deck not only suffers from less hate (humility, ensnaring bridge etc...), but it also can answer the rest of the hate (Oring, Dsphere, angel of despair, venser, even confusion in the ranks with wish->rushing river) with just one sb slot : trickbind.
EdIt : a word on krosan grip which was quoted as hate in the other thread. If you have the card in mind it's very easy to put your opponent on it since he has to keep 3 mana open.In that case he is definitely slower which lets you time to find a second enchantment.
Re: Omniclash and Omnimaniac
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Lemnear
Jesus, do we really need 3 threads on page 1 discussing the same deck?
There is already a primer for this deck - no need for new ones or other showmanships .... just merge this one with the older and already existing ones, please.
Re: Omniclash and Omnimaniac
The thread cunning halls and this one are getting merged, no need to post about it several times a day.
The omniscience thread should be renamed UR omniscience.
Re: Omniclash and Omnimaniac
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Lemnear
I'm sure in all 3 threads the Core of S&T, Halls, Omni, (Intuition, Cunning Wish) is the topic.
This reminds me a bit of the flood of Reanimator threads because of the exact selection of creatures and/or if they run S&T.
You forgot the Dream Halls thread. They've been discussing it too :tongue:
//
Lejay - thanks for sharing your thoughts. As always, your style is abrasive and dismissive, but you always seem to have lots of data and testing to back it up. I appreciate that you go through the thought process for rejecting the other builds like the Emrakul-less Firemind's Foreskin.
Leyline of Sanctity has always seemed like such an awful high-variance card especially when you have so many cantrips and redundant pieces. You really think it's required though?
Just bought the cards to put this together. Seems like the deck has staying power and it's pretty hard to imagine that both Lejay is wrong and winning BoM is a fluke.
Re: Omniclash and Omnimaniac
I am a lot more precautionous when I don't have data about new cards. But I rarely post in these cases.
High variance doesn't mean bad. Yes I think it's necessary because versus discard, games with LLoS and games without it are uncomparable. With mulligans you are between 40% and 50% chances of having the protection, and it isn't only useful against discard.
Re: Omniclash and Omnimaniac
Does Personal Tutor deserve MD consideration - even as a 1 of? S&T is still the card you want to find the most.
Re: Omniclash and Omnimaniac
In addition to all the obvious disadvantages of the card that only limited it to a one-of in the UR omniscience builds (in which a simple show and tell+creature is much more likely), in this one you want to find show and tell about as much as an enabler (DH/omni). I know 2 people to which I talked about the deck before the GP who wanted to include it, but they ended up not running any.
Re: Omniclash and Omnimaniac
Thanks for the comprehensive answers Lejay. Here my further comments to some topics.
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Lejay
I have 6+ months of testing the deck behind me so I would have liked critics backed-up by some testing results, but I don't mind answering the first ones as it's inevitable and testing results didn't have much time to occur. I confirm you what I wrote. My playtesting was either against myself, or mostly against Tristan polzl who played tempo thresh a lot and top8ed both the GP Ghent and 2012 BoM. Yes the match-up is favourable as you run more hardcounters than them and can play around a ton of cards (taxing effects, wasteland, stifle, snare is dead if played). When not running intuition your opponent can only counter cantrips which is pretty weak considering the number you have.
...
I didn't say the deck would always win against TT but I can assure you that if the omni player knows what he's doing he'll win about 2/3 of the time. And I realize it's pretty high for a match-up percentage, there are much closer match-ups. Only a TT player tuning his deck specifically to beat show and tell can change that.
If you win preboard 66% of the matches against an experienced canadian player that is impressive. It still seems way too high to me but if you want we can make a session an play a couple of games in cockatrice so I can confirm that data. I am still a bit sceptic. Possible explanations might be that he was playing honestly against "unknown" while your playing/mulligan decisions were influenced by you knowledge. Maybe it is also a phenomenon that I can see with 2 very good austrian players and friends of mine. One is playing Storm - the other Canadian and canadian gets his ass kicked all the time like its the worst matchup. In tournments however the canadian player wins a lot against torm and the storm player has a tougher time against canadian. Our explanation is that the better you know each others playstyle the more it favours the combo player. Therefore I would recommend testing against different Canadian players and not only your buddy and yourself to get more reliable results.
On dodging taxing counters. my feeling from both sides (combo and delver) is that countering cantrips can have a very strong effect. Sure you run a lot of but let's say your ponder is dazed you miss with your preordain and than your brainstorm is pierced your hand might easily look very crappy. Academic discussion though - if you have solid test results it is safe to say that your pre-matchup is at least solid. I doubted the "crushing" though.
What I meant with my comments on postboard vs. candian is that surely defense gride has a high impact - I play it myself - but that it does not mean post-board games are not unfavourable. Of course with 66% g1 win a slight game 2 negative is still overall positive. Despite defense grid beeing the best option it also has an impact on your gameplan (a bit slower) and it is not unanswerable. My canadian lists pack 2 ancient grudge which I always bring in.
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Lejay
I didn't say it will completely dominate the format. There are 2 things to consider :
1) As long as people are running sufficient grave hate, this deck is the best deck in the format (with not enough grave hate it's reanimator)
2) People can adapt to this deck as I said in the format discussion section, but that will still result in an unhealthy metagame with far less diversity because its predator have almost all the same weaknesses and the hate is very limited and manageable.
I and I am sure others have different opinions about this and there is no data to support your claims as fact.
Besides beeing a worthless statement to say: "If the hole format would not rely on the GY as a resource and therefore making rest in peace, deathrite shaman, ooze and surgical extraction really good cards - then a certain deck would be the best". I am sure that even if Esper and Canadian would not play surgical/rip their reanimator matchup would be positive. So you evaluating reanimator as the best deck if there is no gravehard hate is a funny statement and in my opinion shows that you overevaluate combo in general. If your evaluation that this is the best deck is true we should soon see sneak attack going down and this deck taking it's place in the DTB top 4. At that state your claim might be worth discussing, but with a negative storm matchup and surely difficulties if hatebears/esper/canadian start to tune I highly doubt that.
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Lejay
EdIt : a word on krosan grip which was quoted as hate in the other thread. If you have the card in mind it's very easy to put your opponent on it since he has to keep 3 mana open.In that case he is definitely slower which lets you time to find a second enchantment.
This seems a bit optimistic to me. You would often "lose" a show as well so you need either show/omni again or have 5 mana and halls. Yes your opponent might be slower but you will have your fair share of not finding the combo twice.
Also your evaluation to deal with come into play effects. Preemtively wishing for trickind is not only turning your 2-3 card combo into a 3-4 card combo and is therefore slow and requires a lot of mana. Yes your mana is great, but people will also have time to find some other form of disruption.
Re: Omniclash and Omnimaniac
Quote:
Originally Posted by
catmint
If you win preboard 66% of the matches against an experienced canadian player that is impressive. It still seems way too high to me but if you want we can make a session an play a couple of games in cockatrice so I can confirm that data. I am still a bit skeptic.
What a great idea! I would love to hear that turns out if it could be arranged.
Re: Omniclash and Omnimaniac
Quote:
Besides beeing a worthless statement to say: "If the hole format would not rely on the GY as a resource and therefore making rest in peace, deathrite shaman, ooze and surgical extraction really good cards - then a certain deck would be the best". I am sure that even if Esper and Canadian would not play surgical/rip their reanimator matchup would be positive. So you evaluating reanimator as the best deck if there is no gravehard hate is a funny statement and in my opinion shows that you overevaluate combo in general. If your evaluation that this is the best deck is true we should soon see sneak attack going down and this deck taking it's place in the DTB top 4. At that state your claim might be worth discussing, but with a negative storm matchup and surely difficulties if hatebears/esper/canadian start to tune I highly doubt that.
Canadian Threshold has no effective tuning options. Play with Thresh assuming they get 4 REB/Pyroblast and add that to 4 Force and 4 Spell Pierce main. Their clock isn't fast enough and Pact of Negation and Defense Grid hiding behind basics really are just that good. If you had to build a blueprint for a combo deck that beats Threshold, you would ask for all of the things that OmniHalls gives you.
A negative storm matchup is randomly something that can be addressed, although doing so tends to weaken the Thresh matchup enough to not really make it worthwhile until OmniHalls has significant penetration. The reason I was advocating a singleton Underground Sea and sideboard Thoughtseize is that these cards significantly increase your matchups against other combo decks (Storm, Reanimator/TinFins, Sneak Attack, and OmniHalls). Thoughtseize can also deal with cards like Krosan Grip if they begin to see play. Further, the line of play in the R&D->Lab Man build included stacking 2x Thoughtseize so you can always cast Thoughtseize (2x so you can cast off Dream Halls by pitching the other Thoughtseize) pre-Lab Man (so you can even beat the most random hate like Sudden Shock/Death/Spoiling).
Something that will become apparent is that those of us who have had access to these lists for months have done preparations for both the existing metagame and how we envision the metagame to shift once OmniHalls was public. Should an uptick of combo happen, cards like Thoughtseize, Vendilion Clique, and Notion Thief will make appearances in the OmniHalls sideboard.
Quote:
This seems a bit optimistic to me. You would often "lose" a show as well so you need either show/omni again or have 5 mana and halls. Yes your opponent might be slower but you will have your fair share of not finding the combo twice.
You misunderstand the sequence of events and the way priority works.
Player A resolves SnT, puts Omni/Dream Halls into play.
Player A now has first priority (assuming SnT wasn't cast with Quicken or something similar), and immediately casts another Omni/Dream Halls.
Player B now has priority for the first time and can Krosan Grip. This is...less than useful.
Alternate Scenario:
Player A resolves SnT, puts Omni/Halls into play.
Player A now has first priority (assuming SnT wasn't cast with Quicken or something similar), and immedately casts Enter the Infinite.
Player B now has priority and casts Krosan Grip on the Omni/Dream Halls. This, best case for Player B, yields this situation:
Enter the Infinite resolves. Player A draws their deck. They lack 3 mana for another SnT, so they sculpt a perfect 7 card hand and discard Emrakul reshuffling their deck. You better kill them on your turn with cards on board, since their hand is probably something like this:
Force of Will
Force of Will
Pact of Negation
Pact of Negation/Cunning Wish
Enter the Infinite
Show and Tell
Omniscience
Worst case is that Player A has another 3 mana and just wins that turn.