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Thread: Slide wins 8th MTGS Legacy tournament

  1. #1

    Slide wins 8th MTGS Legacy tournament

    An Astral Slide deck won the eighth MTGS Legacy tournament. It beat Hulk Combo, Landstill, and Elf Survival w/NO in the T8. List is below.

    Astral Slide
    Creatures
    4x Eternal Witness
    3x Knight of the Reliquary
    3x Loxodon Hierarch

    Planeswalkers
    1x Elspeth, Knight Errant

    Enchantments
    3x Astral Slide

    Sorceries
    3x Decree of Pain
    3x Life from the Loam

    Artifacts
    4x Chalice of the Void
    4x Mox Diamond
    2x Engineered Explosives

    Instants
    3x Expunge
    3x Radiant's Judgement

    Lands
    1x Volrath's Stronghold
    1x Wasteland
    3x Windswept Heath
    4x Tranquil Thicket
    2x Secluded Steppe
    2x Barren Moor
    3x Ancient Tomb
    2x Bayou
    1x Scrubland
    1x Savannah
    2x Forest
    1x Plains
    1x Swamp

    Sideboard
    3x Lapse of Certainty
    3x Krosan Grip
    3x Extirpate
    3x Ghostly Prison
    3x Ethersworn Canonist

    EDIT: Here is a complete list of the decks Slide beat during the tourney, going 7-0-2.

    2 White Stax builds
    1 Quinn the Eskimo w/Painters servant
    1 Hulk Combo
    1 Landstill
    1 Elf Survival
    1 Threshold Variant

    In the tournament before this, the deck went 4-2.
    Last edited by morgan_coke; 04-08-2009 at 09:45 PM.

  2. #2

    Re: Slide wins 8th MTGS Legacy tournament

    To me this is proof they know next to nothing about legacy.

    The deck above seems like it folds to any deck running tendrils or LED (ichorid) or even painters stone.

    Basicaly the above looks like 43 lands, beats the heck out of everything but combo and has 4 outs on the play to combo. Might be better than 43 lands but considering that 43 lands isnt insane I wouldnt say its the nuts.
    I c h o r i d - my anti blue
    Manaless Ichorid- At least its cheeper than standard.
    We admit for the sake of the exercise that following is true:
    Landstill > Fromat
    Non-Basic Hate > Landstill
    Basics > Non-Basic Hate
    We can therefore logically conlude that
    Basics > Format

  3. #3

    Re: Slide wins 8th MTGS Legacy tournament

    Great News.

    Congratulations for the success.
    Keep the good work going!

    Quote Originally Posted by undone View Post
    To me this is proof they know next to nothing about legacy.

    The deck above seems like it folds to any deck running tendrils or LED (ichorid) or even painters stone.
    Who is "they" ?
    And so many other decks lose to fast combo, too. So this is really no argument not to play this deck. If it was everybody should play fast combo, then?

  4. #4

    Re: Slide wins 8th MTGS Legacy tournament

    Quote Originally Posted by undone View Post
    To me this is proof they know next to nothing about legacy.
    Interesting proof.

    Basicaly the above looks like 43 lands, beats the heck out of everything but combo and has 4 outs on the play to combo. Might be better than 43 lands but considering that 43 lands isnt insane I wouldnt say its the nuts.
    I don't think anyone has claimed this is "the nuts". It won a set of solid matchups, much like a deck like 43 Lands or Belcher could. It's not "proof" that a community knows nothing about Legacy when one of those decks wins.

    I was playing the Elf Survival deck in the final, which was obviously a rough matchup for me, but the deck seemed to play reasonably well, with Knight of the Reliquary being quite the beating.

  5. #5

    Re: Slide wins 8th MTGS Legacy tournament

    Quote Originally Posted by phoenix33 View Post
    It's not "proof" that a community knows nothing about Legacy when one of those decks wins.
    What he probably meant to say was, "This is the last nail in the 'they know nothing about Legacy' coffin," considering the overall quality and huge aversion to criticism of many of the MTGS posters on these boards.

    That said, the deck looks like it would fold to combo, obviously, but it probably has a decent matchup against Threshold and a passable matchup against LSV-style Counterbalance (what are we calling this again? Baseruption or NLU?). I could see beating Landstill on a counter-light draw.

    This deck just feels underpowered. The most broken play it has is sliding out Hierarch every turn, which isn't that spectacular unless your opponent is beating down with a singleton Goyf and doesn't have Shackles. Not only that, Slide is pretty weak outside of a narrow range of "creature-light, mid-range aggro-control deck" matchups.


    EDIT: I'll echo morgan_coke on the list of matchups here. Aggro decks are actively bad for Slide because the mana denial they run bends you over backwards, and Sliding out one or two guys does jack shit to stop them. Sliding out Hierarch a lot can help slow them down a lot, but this list has main deck Decree of Pain for a reason. Still, I really don't like needing a Tomb that badly to really get into the game in a relevant time frame. I ran Wall of Roots in my Slide decks for a reason: having a fat ass and mana acceleration on one guy is really good.

    Traditional Threshold would have a hard time with this deck because of the low creature density coupled with the relative dead-ness of Counterbalance. Baseruption probably has a better time because of the creature theft and main deck Grips, meaning it basically just has to keep Slide off the table to win. I can't see Landstill being a consistently positive matchup, though that's probably build-dependent. Combo is basically an auto-loss, probably even worse for this deck than for Aggro Loam.

    Basically, it's an anti-Threshold deck. I would prefer Aggro Loam in that role, but this probably works too.


    EDIT 2: I guess Sliding out Witness is good, but it's not very exciting when you line it up with, say, locking the opponent out of the game with a two card combo, one of which is in the format's best color. Slide-Witness is the only combo that makes the deck worthwhile, but it won't really help you if you're trying to get ahead because it's so fucking slow and disruption-prone. If you win because of it, you probably had an edge anyway. At least, that's how it's been in my experience.
    Last edited by Aggro_zombies; 04-08-2009 at 05:57 PM.

  6. #6

    Re: Slide wins 8th MTGS Legacy tournament

    This deck is obviously a "glass cannon". No discussion there. And yes, of course MTGS has a lesser Legacy community than we do- it's a general Magic board and some Legacy players stumble upon it, just as some MTGS forummers stumbled upon Legacy. However, I think it's fair to say it's not just MTGS "people" playing in this tournaments. For one, they are always announced on the Source. Secondly, I seem to recal Nihil winning one of the latest tournaments? Players like emidln and Eldariel are regulars as well.

    Don't bash the community or the tournament setting because of what wins- only bash the single tournament. You're more than welcome to take a "deck with Tendrils and LED" and clean house. There's usually prices to win even, so what are you waiting for?!?
    In other words: would you bash every tournament scene that gets a winner piloting 43lands at some point? I hope not, because it's a deck that wins every now and then, whether you like it or not.

  7. #7
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    Re: Slide wins 8th MTGS Legacy tournament

    Sometimes metagame calls own. The deck might be good or bad in a vacuum, but since he didn't run into TES (ostensibly), he ended up golden.


    I do find it peculiar that Death and Taxes has ~4x as many posts (1200) as any other archetype, yet it's pretty rare to see anywhere in T8.

    Goblins has about 300 posts.
    Then Burn, then Ichorid.

    Dreadstill has only 13 posts and the overarching Ad Nauseum Tendrils only has 45 posts. "Balanced Threshold" whatever that is has 90 posts.

    On TS, those numbers might be flipped.

  8. #8

    Re: Slide wins 8th MTGS Legacy tournament

    Originally Posted by phoenix33
    It's not "proof" that a community knows nothing about Legacy when one of those decks wins.

    What he probably meant to say was, "This is the last nail in the 'they know nothing about Legacy' coffin," considering the overall quality and huge aversion to criticism of many of the MTGS posters on these boards.
    Pretty much what I meant.

    The deck folds to almost all combo decks, it seems acutaly rough against team america and red tempo thresh as the deck appears (especialy if they draw a tomb) to be fed on non basics and big spells and the LD plan just seems like it will get there against this deck.

    In short its list of good matches (Merfolk, goblins, elves, fae, some thresh varients) are common but it still seems like the deck punts away any deck that isnt the mainstream or even the control mirror, I mean come on, how terrible is slide vs humility.

    The deck may be a narrow metagame deck but I thought lands already had that slot covered.
    I c h o r i d - my anti blue
    Manaless Ichorid- At least its cheeper than standard.
    We admit for the sake of the exercise that following is true:
    Landstill > Fromat
    Non-Basic Hate > Landstill
    Basics > Non-Basic Hate
    We can therefore logically conlude that
    Basics > Format

  9. #9

    Re: Slide wins 8th MTGS Legacy tournament

    What's with all the hatred? The thread only states that the deck performed X-well in X-tourney vs. X-decks. And the majority of the replies are actively hostile and derogatory. Are you perhaps missing something in your own life that you feel is made up for by insulting others? Do you so lack success that you must attempt to disparage that which others achieve? Undone's last post just really takes the cake for idiocy. There's so much stupidity crammed into so few words I'm not even entirely sure how to respond. So I guess I'll take it apart piece by piece.

    The deck folds to almost all combo decks.
    Almost all combo decks fold to t1 chalice@1, which this deck hits over 30% of the time. Add in Lapse and Canonist from the board and I'm really confused as to how it "folds". (I'll admit Lapse is fairly weak, but Canonist+Chalice are anything but) But hey, maybe that's just me being dumb and not having any idea what I'm talking about since I've never played the deck or tested it or anything. Oh wait. I have, you haven't.

    In short its list of good matches (Merfolk, goblins, elves, fae, some thresh varients)
    You completely don't understand the deck, how it works, or how it plays if you think that is correct. Monored Gobs with a full suite of ports/wastes is actually NOT a good matchup. Same with fishies if they run a full mana-denial suite. All, and I do mean ALL versions of thresh are prey for this deck. It was specifically designed to punish them and their low curve. Notice the "starts at three" curve + mana acceleration and chalice? This avoids counterbalance while shutting down their cantrip plan.

    the deck appears (especialy if they draw a tomb) to be fed on non basics and big spells
    The deck runs four basics and four mox diamonds, plus fetches and KotR. That's quite a bit more of nonbasic hate dodging than the vast majority of decks in Legacy run. It also runs life from the loam for land recursion. LD can be an effective tempo strategy vs. this deck, but only if it a) doesn't draw a knight or loam, and b) that LD is simultaneously supported by large numbers of free attacking creatures + draw (the heavy LD monocolor versions of Gobs and Merfolk)

    Exactly what big spells are you talking about here? Decree of Pain? It's a three-of. Everthing else cycles for one or two, costs three, or is Loxodon Hierarch. (elspeth, e.e., and lftl also do not cost three mana) I'm not really seeing the "big spells" you're talking about. I don't really see 2 or 3 mana as "big spell" territory in a deck that can get three mana on t1 and runs 10 pieces of acceleration.

    Aggro_zombies - the decks most "broken" play is the witness+slide combo, endlessly re-using the same spells. Hierarch+slide is only super great vs. burn.

    Humility is not a huge threat. E.E. can hit it with a Diamond, and Elspeth actively laughs at the card in the maindeck. From the sideboard Krosan Grip rather effectively destroys it.

    This deck has plenty of weaknesses. Dark Confidant, for starters, is a big one. The targeted removal suite doesn't deal well with small black creatures, and he's powerful enough to make that a real liability. Zoo/Goyfsligh is not a good matchup at all. Some builds of combo are easy, others are hard. This deck also has significant strengths. It draws more cards than any other deck barring decks that see their entire library in the course of winning (Dredge, Solidarity, etc.) draws or sees, including Landstill and Threshold. It's a control/prison deck with heavy recursion, draw, and acceleration. It has limited counters, but they are infinitely recurrable (post board) or just lock out a particular cc (maindeck). This is NOT a glass cannon. It's a complex interactive control/prison deck with its roots in Stax and the Rock, but addresses those two decks' biggest weaknesses - i.e. draw/card selection and counters. All of the removal "answers" (decree, judgement, expunge) cycle except for e.e., and it is extremely rare for that to be a dead card.

  10. #10
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    Re: Slide wins 8th MTGS Legacy tournament

    If your going to post a decklist on a top notch legacy website, you have to be ready to accept critisism. I don't see anybody but you "attacking" anyone else on this thread. there is simply discussion on the weaknesses that the deck clearly has. There is no reason to take what anyone else is saying personally.
    The simple fact of this deck is, there are much more efficient decks that do almost the same thing as yours, that are much more competetive, aggro loam pops into mind. Nobody is saying its a bad deck, there are just better ways to do everything your deck does.
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  11. #11
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    Re: Slide wins 8th MTGS Legacy tournament

    I heart Slide more than probably anyone else, but I'm pretty sure that deck needs way more Swords to Plowshares and way fewer cards that cost six million mana. I'm also not sure what Knight is doing in there or why there are 3 Loams.
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  12. #12

    Re: Slide wins 8th MTGS Legacy tournament

    Quote Originally Posted by morgan_coke View Post
    Almost all combo decks fold to t1 chalice@1, which this deck hits over 30% of the time. Add in Lapse and Canonist from the board and I'm really confused as to how it "folds".
    End of turn, wipe away, etc. You put on no pressure so combo literally has infinite time to find a bounce spell or whatever.

    Other than seeing that, I have nothing to say as I haven't played a game with the deck, but even then I don't care about results from MTGSalvation anyway. :\

  13. #13
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    Re: Slide wins 8th MTGS Legacy tournament

    Quote Originally Posted by morgan_coke View Post
    Exactly what big spells are you talking about here?
    I disagree with the people that say the deck "runs big spells" but I do think that it's VERY mana-hungry; doesn't it need ~5 mana every turn to get rolling?

    Also, it looks mentally tiring to play

  14. #14

    Re: Slide wins 8th MTGS Legacy tournament

    Doesn't Aggro Loam need 5 mana every turn to get rolling? Yet that's not a bad deck, as far as I've noticed.

  15. #15
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    Re: Slide wins 8th MTGS Legacy tournament

    How does aggro loam need 5 mana?
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  16. #16

    Re: Slide wins 8th MTGS Legacy tournament

    Quote Originally Posted by Jujuhawk View Post
    End of turn, wipe away, etc. You put on no pressure so combo literally has infinite time to find a bounce spell or whatever.

    Other than seeing that, I have nothing to say as I haven't played a game with the deck, but even then I don't care about results from MTGSalvation anyway. :\
    It's more nuanced than that.

    TES is the worst of the combo decks for you because it's fast, consistent, and has Wish-able answers. A turn-two Chalice at one (the most likely scenario) against ANT makes things much better because most of their dig costs one mana, but they have turn-one cards like Duress that make it harder to resolve a Chalice. It also doesn't help that Ad Naseum is way outside Chalice range, and that you really need to land a Chalice at zero to put the game away. I can't see this deck applying enough pressure fast enough to prevent the ANT player from dropping a bunch of mana artifacts, a Cabal Ritual or two, an AN, and a Tendrils, or from looping Tendrils with IGG. Chalice and Canonist can help, but getting those into play on turns two and three (or one and two) won't happen often enough to make it a universally positive matchup. This is also ignoring the fact that each time you use Tomb, you add -1 to the lethal storm count.

    It's really sort of irrelevant anyway; it's like arguing whether it's better to get a relatively mild case of ebola or a really bad case of Marburg. Neither of them crop up enough to really matter to you unless you're in a very specific place, and when (if) they do it'll be pretty bad regardless.

    I'll agree with frogboy that Knight seems out of place here. You really can't abuse it in a deck like this, especially considering that a bunch of your lands (cycling lands) should never come into play to begin with. Also, froggy, I'm pretty sure you don't have a bigger Slide fetish than I do.

    Aggro Loam works just fine on three or four mana, and pretty well on as little as two.

    This deck did well through a combination of luck and the right meta. Play skill may or may not have also been a factor.

  17. #17

    Re: Slide wins 8th MTGS Legacy tournament

    Knight, Hierarch, and Elspeth all provide plenty of pressure. Knight in particular is like a bigger Tarmogoyf that does something useful besides turning sideways to attack. You have eight "pressure" cards, which is at least equal to what Threshold has, so I don't see how combo has all day to find an answer, especially given that the decks disruption prevents or slows down a combo decks ability to FIND an answer in the first place.

    The deck is very mana hungry and it does take a lot of mental effort to maintain top game form. Lots of decisions and options. If that's not something you're interested in/good with, then this is a bad deck to play.

    This doesn't do any one thing exceptionally well aside from drawing lots and lots of cards. It does a whole lot of things in the "average to good" range though.

    EDIT: This is an incredibly short and abbreviated match report from the T8 match against Landstill.

    Game one he had a factory and a standstill down by t2. I cycled and waited for awhile, taking damage. Killed two factorys with a cycled Decree of Pain. Used recurring wasteland to fend off Nantuko Monasteries, killed a tarmogoyf with a knight of the reliquary by cycling a land into a loam dredge that revealed more lands. The highlight of this game for me was killing KRM's last two tarmogoyfs and my own witness and elephant with a hardcast decree of pain. KRM conceded this game with 9 cards and one factory left in his library as a win condition opposed to my 13 cards and volrath's stronghold with witness and elephant in the 'yard.

    Game 2 I almost got locked out by a counterbalance floating a 3cc deed. However, I managed to land an elspeth, which we then proceeded to spend the next fifteen turns fighting over. Eventually KRM had to draw the deed in order to get green mana from a fetchland to play tarmogoyf. He didn't find a brainstorm or another 3cc spell before slide and witness hit the table. this led to a very complex stack where i declared blockers on goyf with witness, cycled decree sliding witness out, KRM responded with a deed activation for 3, i cycled an expunge to slide the witness out, and KRM responded with an StP, finally offing the witness. However, this cleared all of our boards except for my elsepth. I had a Knight of the Reliquary in hand, and two turns later it was all over.

    EDIT2:

    A_Z has it right, combo decks with wishes are much worse than the "speed" versions as they can find answers via unchalice-able mana costs. Although post board, Canonist and Lapse help with this issue a lot. Depending on build and type of combo, this deck can have anywhere from a 30%-70% match up against it.

  18. #18
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    Re: Slide wins 8th MTGS Legacy tournament

    Quote Originally Posted by morgan_coke View Post
    The deck is very mana hungry and it does take a lot of mental effort to maintain top game form. Lots of decisions and options. If that's not something you're interested in/good with, then this is a bad deck to play.
    Gotcha, that was my impression. ("interested in" is more like it -- I like straightforward Magic )

    Reading the T8 match, though, what the hell was he doing g2 during the time you were waiting for Elspeth? Nothing? He was counterbalancing your stuff, but what? Were his draws useless for that long?

  19. #19

    Re: Slide wins 8th MTGS Legacy tournament

    Let me clerify, I dont think the deck is terrible, I think the deck is a nitch deck that is slightly outclassed by decks in the same current nitch.

    If I was to make changes to this deck my first 3 would be

    1)

    2 MD guided light
    2 SB Guided light

    4 Chant SB

    This gives you more outs to combo which isnt bad at all.

    2)

    4 Needle SB

    This prevents you from randomly being wastelocked or ported out of the game. Also good vs top.

    3)

    4 MD swords

    Not running this seems stupid it lowers problems with tons of decks including bob ichorid and other various creatures which you have few outs to (such as a teeg backed up with a stifle and a way to keep slide off the board.)
    I c h o r i d - my anti blue
    Manaless Ichorid- At least its cheeper than standard.
    We admit for the sake of the exercise that following is true:
    Landstill > Fromat
    Non-Basic Hate > Landstill
    Basics > Non-Basic Hate
    We can therefore logically conlude that
    Basics > Format

  20. #20

    Re: Slide wins 8th MTGS Legacy tournament

    Quote Originally Posted by morgan_coke View Post
    Knight, Hierarch, and Elspeth all provide plenty of pressure.
    Wait, what? Am I blind? I don't see her in the list.

    Also, pressure is a function of both damage and threat density. The cycling cards effectively raise the threat density, but they really don't in the combo matchup because you're spending time rooting around for threats instead of actually playing them and connecting.

    Knight may be big, but she requires a lot more babysitting than Tarmogoyf to get there. If you play Knight ASAP, she'll probably be a 3/3 or 4/4, so roughly comparable to Goyf. However, she's a full turn slower and really, really wants you to chain cycling lands into each other to be good - otherwise, you blow even more time using her ability to make her bigger.

    Hierarch is also too slow to matter against anything but ANT. TES can consistently go off on turn two or three, which is realistically about the time Hierarch comes down. You may force them to play one to two more spells to actually kill you (depending on whether you used a Tomb or a Mox Diamond to play it), but it sure as hell won't be connecting.

    Winning against combo with Eternal Witness beats is just you being a dick and/or slow playing to buy time. Similarly, bringing in Canonist doesn't improve your clock appreciably in the places where it counts.

    Basically, TES is bad for you and ANT requires you to hit the right cards in time and to not have them go for a fast kill in games two and three. This ignores the fact that combo will be combo and randomly steal games from you.

    This deck really, REALLY wants more mana than you're giving it, especially in terms of acceleration. 3 Tomb and 4 Mox do not feel like enough given your curve and minimum mana requirements.

    EDIT: If Elspeth is in the list, that changes the math a little, but not much. If you play her on turn three and already have a guy in play, you can start using the Angelic Blessing ability to get there faster. If you don't, she's going to be glacially slow.

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