updated the first post with new stuff, decklist, and matchup information. also raised the "take xx" number, will be raising that every time I update the first post
smile,
why riftwatcher over finks in that list? you don't run reveillark or tomb, so i don't see what possible advantage the bird gives you over the ouphes. is it the flying?
the thing i don't like about 4 flagstones (and admittedly, its minor) is that they come into play tapped sometimes. when i was running flagstones i usually did it as a 2-of. plus i tended to run out of plains for them pretty quickly. also, you left out the "edge sacs cycling lands i had to play early on" point in its favor. pre-edge i ran rith's grove for that very reason in some old extended builds.
exploration is an interesting idea, takes the deck in kind of an eternal garden direction.
Riftwatcher is strictly better than Kitchen Finks in Astral Slide. I don't care about having a more aggressive P/T ratio on a creature; I care about my lifegain blocker being able to block fliers and gain me 4 life with each slide as opposed to 2. There's no need for Reveilark to make Riftwatcher better; it's just better by itself for objective reasons.
4 Flagstones will dig out all your plains pretty quickly, but that's not really much of an issue. The key is getting through early turns via free cycling and having Flagstones against LD. I think it's doable to go down to 3, but I wouldn't go below that number with Edge in my deck.
One thing I also forgot about in my list was that I really like Ghost Quarter in a build with Flagstones. The good thing about 4 Flagstones and a couple of Ghost Quarters is that you can pop them to find a basic Plains and another basic land to fight Blood Moon effects, even in response to the Blood Moon itself. Wasteland is better at going LD, but Ghost Quarter gives you that inevitable basic LD with Loam, and Exploration speeds up that process. So I think 2 Ghost Quarter and 2-3 Wasteland is in order for an Edge/Flagstone build.
My eyes were jaded
So close to the center, I could not see....
Sorry if this looks like a double post, but this is a response to the editing of the original post of this thread.
After reading the newly edited opening post, I think the deck you're running is a bit lackluster. I don't like the Hedge-Mage, even with two Bayous, because Reclaim and Regrowth are miles apart in power level. There's a reason why Witness is ridiculous, and I understand the idea of adding copies 5-8 of it to the deck, but your deck has become extremely graveyard-dependent when it comes to abusing slide. If your opponent Leylines you Turn 0 and counters your Wickerborough Elder, then much of your engine is wrecked. 14 Cyclers in a Slide deck? There's just not enough cyclers to play through graveyard hate, and too much emphasis on running cool tricks as opposed to playing more solid solutions. I like the innovation ideas, but let's remember that the plan is to win the game, whether or not it's elegant.
I do, however, think there is something to be said about the discard of the Hedge-Mage, but perhaps that would be better found in Mesmeric Fiend. With a Slide on the table, you can start permanently removing cards in your opponent's hand from the game each turn thanks to the trigger-stacking trick. Seems a bit weak against creature removal, but it's still Thoughtseize every turn.
One last thing: Why is Finks being played over Hierarch? Turn 2 Slide, turn 3 Hierarch, turn 4 swing+cycle looks like a strong curve for your deck, and Hierarch improves the 2lands. I can understand wanting a more aggressive creature than Riftwatcher, but I think Hierarch just looks stronger in your build. Test it and let me know; I'm curious.
My eyes were jaded
So close to the center, I could not see....
First time posting, though I have been keeping track for a bit. I have always been a fan of Slide, but especially Nuijten's version that won Worlds, oh, 4 years ago? Mine is slightly similar, I really enjoy playing this one...I call it Elephant Gun because a. it is an awesome song period (it's by Beirut) and b. I run 4x Loxodon Hierarch, probably my favorite card in the world.
Elephant Gun
// Lands
2 [B] Savannah
4 [ON] Tranquil Thicket
2 [MR] Plains (3)
4 [ON] Windswept Heath
2 [US] Drifting Meadow
1 [US] Slippery Karst
4 [ON] Secluded Steppe
2 [TSP] Flagstones of Trokair
3 [10E] Forest (1)
2 [JU] Nantuko Monastery
// Creatures
3 [RAV] Loxodon Hierarch
2 [SC] Eternal Dragon
4 [FD] Eternal Witness
3 [SH] Wall of Blossoms
// Spells
3 [ON] Astral Slide
3 [RAV] Life from the Loam
4 [4E] Swords to Plowshares
3 [9E] Wrath of God
2 [JU] Solitary Confinement
3 [JU] Living Wish
1 [IN] Sterling Grove
3 [SH] Mox Diamond
// Sideboard
SB: 1 [RAV] Loxodon Hierarch
SB: 1 [SC] Eternal Dragon
SB: 2 [TSP] Krosan Grip
SB: 2 [TE] Choke
SB: 1 [SHM] Vexing Shusher
SB: 1 [TSP] Tivadar of Thorn
SB: 1 [LRW] Gaddock Teeg
SB: 1 [TSP] Harmonic Sliver
SB: 1 [DIS] Loaming Shaman
SB: 1 [TE] Wasteland
SB: 3 [PS] Orim's Chant
I love Loxodon Hierarch too much not to run 4. Also, I think Living Wish gives the deck a lot of needed flexibility. The only issue with my list is that it is on the slow side, but it's hard to find slots to speed it up any more. I suppose I could relegate a copy each of Hierarch, Witness, and Wall of Blossoms to the SB to open up for Moxen and etc., or Edge of Autumn, which I have yet to test. Also, the gobs matchup looks iffy, because except for Swords T1 lackey kinda kills me hardcore. However, it looks like if they don't have a T1 lackey, I'm pretty set. The SB isn't set into stone, most of it is dedicated to stuff I will likely see. Tivadar looks really random but you board a copy in for Gobs and you have essentially have 4 copies. It seems like overkill but I feel it's worth it.
I have however contemplated running Goyf in the Wall of Blossoms slot, mostly because Blossoms is the weakest card in the deck. Maybe adding black might be nice for the deck, gives combo hate, which by far looks to be the worst matchups in the world for my deck right now. Fiend sounds like a good idea. Of course, I wanted to keep it GW for kicks.
I feel like people run Finks because Persist is a kinda cool mechanic. It "survives" removal but you should be Sliding it out anyways if removal shows up so Lox will end up being fatter and gain you more life.
Last edited by kidsmokin; 08-15-2008 at 12:27 AM.
Made some minor changes to the board, replaced Wheel with Leyline, experimenting with other options in the Brume slot, namely various mixes of Deed, e.e., echoing decay, and decree of pain. also looking at thorn/sphere of res/winter orb in the 3sphere slot.
I switched from wheel to leyline mainly because of turn zero issues with combo/ichorid etc.
I think i like decay best in the removal/aggro slot since it deals with EtW, goblins, and ichorids/zombie tokens, and it lets the deck kill dark confidant, which is huge, because otherwise your only real answer is turn-by-turn sliding or baiting him into a fight. This is one of those times where I'm reminded how annoying it is that Ichor Slick is a sorcery instead of an instant. Heck, I would've played it at -2/-2 if it had only been instantyspeedy. If there were another two open slots in the deck I'd probably run 3x Sicken/3x Expunge instead of the current 4/0 split even though sicken only really hits lackey and bob, they're worth the killing.
I think goblins is just going to be a bad matchup, and I also think I'm ok with that as long as it stays in the 40/60 range where you have a fighting chance. And Chalice on the play victories almost guarantee that by themselves.
Threshold, at least the lists I've been testing against, are essentially byes, which imho makes up for the goblins issues.
Chalice/Leyline/Decay/3sphere slot/Hag all combine to make combo a good matchup.
With Landstill the main issue is Humility. Because it turns off your enchantment hate and there isn't room for monastery in this deck, it basically means you're trying to beat them with 1/1's. You still get comes into play abilities though, which is nice, but not enough. So I'm also switching the Wickerboughs back to Indriks, with a small possibility of Harmonics. I can think of a situation where Indrik makes you win and Wickerbough makes you lose (Humility), I can't think of one where the opposite is true. God I wish Break Asunder was a 2G instant instead of a 2GG sorcery.
Reclaim is a lot worse than Regrowth, no doubt about it. But sometimes you really just want to draw another Expunge and there's two in your graveyard and it's like: Yeaus! Also, the fact that it's a "may" instead of a "must" is huge because sometimes I'd rather draw a random card than anything in my yard, and Hag lets you do that too. But yeah, the Hag's Ravenous Rats impersonation is her best quality since it just gives you silly card advantage vs. controllish type decks. I've played the Rats in Slide before, and it is honestly a bit embarrassing to play with a card like that, but when it comes down and slides twice and you've 3-1'd your opponent in one turn, you start feeling a bit better about it. I think I will try cutting her down to a 3-of, and cutting an Indrik since its a "must" and not a "may" and doing the Expunge/Sicken split thing.
I know Sicken is a one-drop, and the deck loves chalice@1, but two points 1. like unearth, its so good that its worth being dead sometimes, and 2. it cycles for 2, so I don't really care if i can't cast it. Also, since this pushes the number of "cyclers for 2" up to 8, its time to ditch the saga lands for more 1-mana cyclers.
Finally, addressing the Finks/Riftwatcher/Hierarch question, Finks seems the best to me because of Persist. The reason persist is so strong is because they HAVE to kill it twice. So when you throw down a blocker and NEED to block something, it almost always will. Plus, persist is reset by slide, which is beyond nifty. However, I will try a 2/2 split just to make sure I'm not missing something important.
Kidsmokin,
You definitely want some Mox Diamonds in that list, and you would also benefit a lot from some Nantuko Monasteries. Your manabase is really stable with only two colors, so a few massive manlands won't hurt anything and should help out in a lot of situations. One or two Flagstones seem like a no-drawback inclusion as well. Also, how are you having trouble with Gobs? I don't LIKE Solitary Confinement, but it does beat goblins game like a rodeo clown in a cheap motel room. I also like the wishable Wasteland in the board.
@Morgan: I would try running Plow Under in your sideboard for Landstill. Eternal Witness + Slide + Plow Under is savage tech against them. They really hate it when you do that. As for the goblins issue, you could always run Fog effects vs. Gobblins, they aren't a fan when you keep sliding Witness for Fog while swinging with Angels.
@Everyone: Have any of you tried Rendclaw Trow or Grazing Kelpie? I could see both being useful as you can, like with Finks, slide them out after Persist has happened, and get them back without the -1/-1 counter, allowing them to Persist again. Also, are I've been out of the loop for awhile. Are the rules still so you can Slide out creatures during the beginning of the End of Turn phase and they will not come back for an entire turn?
I haven't been able to test the matchup as much as I should, but the results haven't been too pretty considering the couple matches I've had. I suppose it's most been one of absolutely rotten luck, i.e. I haven't drawn a single Confinement when it was proper (e.g. Confinement without Loam or vice versa) so the Gobs has been rough. One time I got it, but then they Gripped it (it was a game 2), untapped and won. Not too happy. I will test further, and hopefully I can ship the Tivadar's out of the SB for something better.Originally Posted by morgan_coke
I can fit the manlands in easy (good decision, I needed some extra power) but I'm not sure as to how the Moxen will fit. -1 Hierarch, -1 Wall of Blossoms, and I suppose a Forest? I can ship an Hierarch to the sideboard methinks and replace a Tivadar...the more I think about it I have just been unlucky so perhaps only one is needed. I'm not certain as to the third cut, seems a little weird to cut a land, even if Loam is there.
Regarding Rendclaw Trow, I feel like it's body is too small for what it does. Sure, a 2/2 Wither dude is not a bad thing, but in Legacy it can't really tussle with a lot of creatures and win. Basically Lackey, a few other Gobs, non-Threshold-ed Mongeese. Then with Persist you're going to have it as a 1/1 for awhile, and that kind of body just doesn't seem worth it.
Regarding the Kelpie, Loaming Shaman >>>>> Kelpie. What's the point of saccing to put one card, when you can play it for the whole graveyard?
Just had a completely random thought I figured I'd run by everyone here, what do you all think of this potential change to the maindeck listed in the first post:
-1 Astral Slide, -1 Indrik Stomphowler, -1 Life from the Loam, -1 Plains, +1 Tundra, +1 Volrath's Stronghold, +2 Intuition.
While you could set up some stupid intuition piles with this deck, that puts you down to just 3 basics and pushes the manabase just as far (perhaps farther) than I'm willing to take it. It also smacks loudly of danger of cool things that fall apart in the face of disruption.
The blue is very consistent if you need it (4 heath, 1 tundra, 4 diamonds), but also very vulnerable.
I also wouldn't be opposed to cutting the third Hag with that change and running a Wasteland or Genesis or what not in that slot. But again, I'm not sure that it actually helps you WIN any games you wouldn't already, and it definitely makes you more vulnerable in other situations, so its usefulness is very suspect to me.
Just figured I'd see what other people thought of it as a concept.
@kidsmokin: Honestly, I was just trying to think of some other Persist creatures that would be useful, however, it occurs to me now that with Slide, you don't need Persist.
@morgan_coke: I don't see why you would run Intuition. It only thins your deck, and what do you do if you Intuition for your only 3 Slides and your opponent simply destroys the one you get into play?
@Rush: Yeah, I really didn't mean for it to come off that way, but I don't see any good Persist creatures outside of Finks and perhaps Murderous Redcap (though it's strictly worse than Flametongue Kavu). Slide invalidates Finks to an extent, and Loxodon's good fatness makes it better when it comes to walling up or going on the offensive, plus you gain more life from it.
@morgan_coke: I really don't like Intuition in the deck, you're already stretching 3 colors and a 4th will basically own you. It's simply a consistency issue. You're going to be hard-pressed to find your proper colors, even with all the cycling and fetches, and then you're susceptible to Wasteland. While Loam helps in a certain respect, you're going to fight an uphill battle. I think the Intuition package is really supposed to be Volrath's Stronghold, Witness and Slide, however. Giving you Witness lets you recur Slide, Slide is what you want, Stronghold gives you Witness to get Slide. It's mostly a consistency issue. I understand Landstill can be UWgb or whatnot, but their manabase also gets on the flimsy side and if you eliminate their Crucible you really have a decent shot of a Wasteland/Loam lock (ish), and so the same principle would apply with your deck too.
In terms of my deck, I edited it again. Mox Diamond was a house, so it's staying. Next change will likely be moving a cycling land to the SB and adding a Loam, because sometimes I've found it's A. sometimes hard to locate Loam, and B. sometimes hard to get a lot of cycling going, so the changes will address both issues in a pinch.
One concern I have is the combo game. I have Teeg, which addresses Tendrils and Warrens, but outside of that I really only have Orim's Chant to get me out. Are there any good solutions that I'm not thinking of?
Guilded Light can stop a buncha Tendrils while cycling when useless. Abeyance can be Chant five to eight. Pyrostatic Pillar combined with lifegain/burn can put quite a vice on your foe.
EDIT: You're running black, not red. In that case recurring Extirpates combined with Teeg and Chants sounds like it could work.
Did some more testing. Sicken sucks balls. It's horrible and atrocious and out of the deck. Basically, it was nice the like 2 times it killed a lackey on the play. Otherwise, it was complete and utter crap because it doesn't kill anything else in Goblins besides Lackey. Which is a 4-of. It didn't even do anything vs. Bob, because bob decks run lots of one-drops which you Chalice against. Essentially, even against the decks it was meant to be played for, it was a blank cycler that cost 2. Cut them and put back the 4th expunge, which leaves two open slots. Not at all sure what to put there. Echoing Decay is a possibility (that cards been great for me out of the board, but there are a lot of matchups where its dead, so maybe it should stay in the board), and the other main option I see is adding more disruption, or more beaters. Nantuko Monastery is a prime "beater" candidate since its fast, cheap and works with the entire rest of the deck. Only problem is its graveyard dependent. Some Angels are a possibility, but they really weren't as impressive as you'd have thought the last time they were in here.
Hag Hedge-Mage is another problem child. The more useful of the two effects, discard, is hard to achieve vs. the decks you want it against most because of the land requirements. It would be a different story with a b/g fetch and basic swamps in the deck, but that's not available. The other problem with the discard is that they'll just start discarding stuff they can't cast under chalice first, so you pretty much have to empty their hand before it starts having a real effect. But again, this would be more worth it if the discard was on all the time.
So basically, the deck has five open slots right now, and at least some of them need to be disruption. Gaddock Teeg would be ideal, except that he doesn't get along with Chalice at all, which is kind of a big deal. The blue splash (-1 Plains/Bayou, +1Tundra/Tropical) would let you try to run Meddling Mage, but the mana is still fragile even with help from moxes.
Additionally, Indrik is almost universally worse then Wickerbough... except vs. Humility, where he turns a loss into a win. Not sure what to do about that yet. Suggestions welcome.
So basically, the deck has five open slots, and the prime contenders are in no particular order:
Cranial Extraction (probably not great)
Wasteland (no way to take advantage of it aside from LftL)
Nantuko Monastery (GY dependent)
Gaddock Teeg (conflicts with Chalice mb and Leyline sb)
Meddling Mage (bad mana)
Glittering Wish (slow, bad mana, requires re-worked sideboard)
Living Wish (slow, bad mana, requires re-worked sideboard)
The point on the wishes and mana is simply that hitting their casting costs and whatever you're wishing for on the same turn isn't easy. For example, teeg goes to 1GGW or GWGW. Neither of those is particularly manageable for this deck. The point on Wasteland is that this deck isn't fast or tempo oriented, so if you don't hit wastelock, it only ends up costing you a land drop.
I think mage is the most interesting possibility mainly because i've always wanted to try him with the ability to reset his card. For example, vs. solidarity, he comes down naming High Tide. two turns later, you stick a chalice@1, he goes to the rfg zone and comes back naming cunning wish. Quite possibly more cute than effective though.
I'm not sure what else should be on that list above, though I am pretty sure it should be longer. Very open to anybodies ideas on this because I'm fairly well stuck on this point. Thanks.
Indrik Stomphowler, Eternal Witness, and all "When this comes into play" creatures do not work under Humility either.
Though at least Indrik doesn't come into play with a -1/-1 counter that immediately kills it.
YOU'RE GIVING ME A TIME MACHINE IN ORDER TO TREAT MY SLEEP DISORDER.
Nihil, your post seems to contradict itself. Wickerbough has the same comes into play wording as indrik/witness/etc. Though any wickerboughs already in play would destroy themselves.
It has always been my understanding that the timing on humility has to do with timestamp layers, thats why manlands work under it, they're on different layers.
Witness is an eternal witness when she comes into play, then state-based effects take hold and resolve in the order of their timestamps. I've always understood the comes-into-play effects to be the first layer of timestamp checked. This was done in order to prevent lots of non-sense with not paying comes-into-play costs iirc.
This would make stuff come down, trigger ability, be 1/1, not come down, be 1/1. I'm not at all an expert on layers and timestamps, but that has always been my understanding of how it works.
EDIT: I'm wrong, humility does indeed remove abilities from comes into play. stupid rulez. anyone know how humility does with nantuko vigilante and morph?
Well, it's a little confusing, because I have found different answers.
According to one answer, you could play a creature face-down and still pay the morph cost to turn it face-up, because they determined that playing the creature face-down set up a continuous effect. However, I don't think that a creature's "when X is turned face-up" ability would trigger with Humility.
However, according to rule 502.26d: Any time you could play an instant, you may turn a face-down permanent you control face up. To do this, show all players what the permanent’s morph cost will be when the effect ends, pay that cost, then turn the permanent face up.
Due to this odd wording, it won't have a "morph cost when the effect ends", because Humility removes that ability. So, you won't be able to turn a creature face-up with Humility in play.
I have no idea which is more recent. I'd try asking Akki or maybe in the Rules forum at MTG Salvation, and actually wait for a judge (they have mutliple L2-3 judges floating around) to respond to know for sure.
"As this comes into play" works very differently from "When this comes into play". Humility only deletes the latter.
While Humility is in play creatures lose the Morph text, so you can't turn them face up (and even if you could, they wouldn't have the "When this is turned face up, Disenchant" ability anyway).EDIT: I'm wrong, humility does indeed remove abilities from comes into play. stupid rulez. anyone know how humility does with nantuko vigilante and morph?
Basically, it's no coincidence that even Survival decks rely on spells to get rid of Humility. You'd need a creature that Channels into Disenchant or something, and it hasn't been printed yet.
For more Humility discussion, I refer you to the thread in the Rulings forum.
YOU'RE GIVING ME A TIME MACHINE IN ORDER TO TREAT MY SLEEP DISORDER.
Yeah, what Nihil said. As I said, even if you *could* turn it face-up, it wouldn't have the triggered ability due to Humility.
I'd like to get back onto the topic of what would make Slide viable in Legacy. For starters, I was playing around with the list I posted earlier, and here's some problems:
25 Lands
4 Mox Diamond
3 Exploration
That's 32 cards just devoted to mana in a non-storm deck. Even with lots of cyclers, that's too much. Looking at Morgan_Coke's list on the first page, he has 28 lands. At this point, why even bother with a Slide engine? With Explorations and Witnesses with Intuition/Academy ruins, we might as well just build Eternal Garden or 43 Land decks and scrap the Slide plan. But I'd rather at least try to build a good Slide deck, so here's what I see as necessary:
1. Slide should theoretically own aggro hardcore because Astral Slide itself dominates creatures. Plus, splashing into Rift would put the nail in the coffin against weenie aggro (Goblins in mind). Burn is also beatable due to the large amount of solid lifegain available. It's also really good against aggro-control if you can fight through the counterspells themselves, since Goyf loses to Slide, Dreadnaught really loses to Slide. Counterbalance itself shouldn't be doing much against a lot of 3-4 mana spells anyways, and we out-draw Thresh by far.
2. Vs Combo--Not exactly a good matchup for any slide deck, but when you start factoring Solitary Confinement, Orim's Chant/Abeyance locks with Witness and slide, Gilded Light, and Gaddock Teeg into the picture, the situation is different. It also would be possible to run a blue splash, Meddling Mage out of the board, maindeck Force of Will, Gifts Ungiven and cyclers like Miscalculation and Complicate. Cycling Venser and Trinket Mage couldn't hurt either, potentially with counterbalance out of the board for switch tech vs combo.
That was quite a mouthful.
3. Vs Control--I don't know. I'm not going to worry about this until I can figure out how to handle combo.
I'll work on a blue-splash list in the next day or so.
My eyes were jaded
So close to the center, I could not see....
Keep in mind that with the hedge mage you can completely shut them out of playing all non-instants by cycling something after they draw and when you get priority during their draw step. Like a virtual orim's chant. However, I think black is a pretty weak color here, and I actually wouldn't want to have to worry about 2 swamps in order to make it have an effect. Yet, since you can stack a cycling card on top of your deck every time you play him as well, it might not be completely terrible. I'd like to see how he plays.
Also, about the "old stuff" on the first post--Chalice at one still counters Orim's chant. Paying an extra cost doesn't change the converted mana cost of the card.
Also, sicken is a very weak choice, even as a cycler. I'd run more cycling land before that crap =/
I have 28 lands in that list? Should be only 24. Which really works out to 12 - 4 tomb, 4 bayou, 4 basic + 4 diamonds, so 16.
I came up with a formula awhile ago called mana density that covers how and when land isn't land in a deck. Like in slide, the cyclers are really cantrips that can be played as a land if you're desperate. Kind of like how wasteland is listed as a "spell" in some decks. Here's a link if you want to read: warning, lots of math.
mana article link
control really isn't much of an issue for most witness/slide/loam decks. You're both pseudo control decks with lock elements. slide draws more cards and has more mana. mana advantage+card advantage are what most control mirrors come down to. advantage: slide.
Its like this: landstill thinks they're cool because they have a 1U enchantment that conditionally allows them to draw three cards. Slide is cool because it has a self-recurring sorcery that draws three cards. (usually two cantrips and a land, but sometimes not)
slides problem vs. combo has always been the same as deadguys. disruption isn't the issue, kill speed is. Thresh owns combo because its pressure + disruption. Slide has and always has had tons of disruption, pressure is something else. For another example of a deck that loses to combo despite heavy disruption, see BW Deadguy. Much as I dislike Goyf, that is the main thing he brings to the table, a way to pressure combo. The original version of this deck didn't put anything besides lands and sorcerys in the yard, goyf was a 2/3 here. Now its got more artifacts and instants, so that may have changed.
valtrix,
hedge mage plays awesome when you've got two swamps, and crappy when you don't. see about two posts up and i talk about it more. same on sicken.
I need to update the first post, and this one should be longer, but I'm late for a party so I'll do it tomorrow. Thanks for the rules clarifications everyone.
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