The difference is the 2nd Ad Nauseam is useless while the 1st Empty the Warrens is a card you can resolve, having 1 to 3 copies in the MD is better than having 1 Ill Gotten Gains and X+ Ad Nauseams because the Empty the Warrens isn't a blank while flipping. Obviously having a lot of 4cc cards is potentially GG off Ad Nauseam, but so is having re-active instead of pro-active solutions like Krosan's Grip which are either dead in your hand or a Lightning Bolt and dead while flipping (I'm assuming you're cutting Tendrils of Agony and Ill Gotten Gains for Empty the Warrens, so we're only talking +1 4cc card here).
I've just never found TES to be the kind of deck that supported re-active solutions in the MD well, we deal with Spell Pierce by SBing Xantid Swarm, altering the disruption instead of answering the hate. You can deal with Stax, Counterbalance and hate bears in the same way, alter your threats instead of answering the hate and force them to keep in Swords to Plowshares for Xantid Swarm or Firespout for Empty the Warrens game 3.
Originally Posted by wastedlife
Has anyone said they're cutting Tendrils? I'm certainly not. I'll sideboard one out for a ETW, but I'm not cutting one.
Who is playing MD reactionary spells such as Grip? Where is this coming from?
Flipping multiple ETW is just as bad and as useless as a 2nd Ad Nauseam.
Sorry that none of this is in paragraph form. I just woke up.
We're not on the same page, I was talking about SBing in Empty the Warrens and not MDing them; hopefully that'll clear the confusion.
Edit: And flipping 1 Empty the Warrens isn't as bas as flipping the 2nd Ad Nauseam in the deck, my point was you can resolve the Empty the Warrens where the 2nd Ad Nauseam (assuming 2 copies in the deck total) is worthless. Obviously the 2nd Empty the Warrens you flip is worthless to, I wasn't taking multiples into account I was considering 1 copy of ETW vs the 2nd copy of Ad Nauseam in the deck.
The second Ad Nauseam is worthless after you cast the first, but playing two increases your chance of opening it. Not worthless.
If your opponent is playing MD answers to 1/1 tokens or even has a very large board position/life link guys EtW is as bad as flipping the second Ad Nauseam.
Actually, it's not. It's one life difference, which is a significant difference while flipping AN cards in TES. At least, so I've found.
Wrong. It rarely matters.
I took TES to my local tournament tonight and made it to a top 4 split going 4-1-1. I don't have the time to write a tournament report tonight, but I will post one tomorrow. Here is the list I played followed by the matchups I had:
4x Burning Wish
4x Brainstorm
4x Rite of Flame
4x LED
4x Petal
4x Dark Ritual
4x Ponder
4x Mystical Tutor
3x Chrome Mox
3x Infernal Tutor
3x Duress
2x Xantid Swarm
1x IGG
1x Simian Spirit Guide
1x AdN
1x Tendrils
4x City of Brass
4x Gemstone Mine
1x Bloodstained Mire
1x Polluted Delta
1x Volcanic Island
1x Badlands
1x Underground Sea
Sideboard
2x Krosan Grip
1x Chain of Vapor
1x Ancient Grudge
1x Wipe Away
1x Duress
1x Xantid Swarm
1x Slaughter Pact
Wish Targets
1xEmpty the Warrens
1x Infernal Tutor
1x Tendrils
1x Grapeshot
1x Diminishing Returns
1x IGG
1x Eye of Nowhere
Just 2 slight tweaks from my last list. And here are the matchups I had:
Round 1 - 4c CB Thresh (0-2)
Round 2 - BYE!!! (2-0)!!!
Round 3 - Enchantress (2-0)
Round 4 - U/w/g CB Thresh (2-1)
Round 5 - Burn (draw)
Round 6 - DDANT Hybrid - (2-0)
"I just shot Marvin in the face!"
"Why the fuck'd you do that??"
Can we stop misconstruing each other's comments? Yes, the 2nd Ad Nauseam increases the odds of opening Ad Nauseam, and no it's not relevant because we're speaking in the context of resolving an Ad Nauseam and revealing cards.
@Alderon666.
Count the number of Engineered Explosives in the opponent's deck, then count the number of Counterbalances in the opponent's deck and consider whether or not the number of Engineered Explosives in the opponents deck is < than the number of Counterbalance and finally ask yourself whether or not those Engineered Explosives even remain in the MD post-board.
Yeah, Rhox Warmonk kind of sucks for us, welcome to the world of no perfect solutions.
You have to keep in mind the rise of Firespout.
That's my point, Firespout is 3cc and replaced both Pyroclasm and Engineered Explosives in a lot of SBs, we can race that on the play now.
IF you go first and IF they dont have countermagic and IF you have the hand to drop warrens turn 1 then yes, you can race. However, real life isnt magical dreamland and thats not going to happen every time. This isnt belcher.
I like having Empty as a backup plan. "Having" to play it because it's replacing an Ad Nauseam sounds really lame, as this deck is designed to play Ad Nauseam as fast as possible and win from there.
Just face it, 99% of the times casting Ad Nauseam > Empty the Warrens, as win now > maybe win 2 turns later. For god sake, I swear to god I've seem Zoo race 10-12 tokens on turn 1 from Belcher when Belcher was on the draw. We have enough chances already to do some stupid number of tokens with Rituals/LED/Burning Wish.
Looking forward to your report.
Saw that you swapped the number of Duress with Xantid Swarms.
I'm still not 100% sold on the sideboard (I'd want Shattering Spree and Cleanfall somewhere, but then again I still expect to see Dragon Stompy and Enchantress show up at my meta), but the MB has been very consistent for me. I do have to say though that I've never really dug the Badlands. I almost always rather have a Volcanic or Sea - any comments here? (I know it's there for like if you have a Duress / Rite of Flame hand, but that hasn't happened for me yet).
No shit, when you solve the TES vs. Balance/Top match up you let me know, until then we've got to use whatever strategies and meta-shifts we can to our advantage; Zoo creatures have an ass of 3, thus SBs are replacing Pyroclasm with Firespout and giving us a potential opening to exploit the 2cc/3cc difference by resolving ETW and racing on the play or resolving ETW and disrupting with Duress on the draw before they can play their sweeper.
The rise of Zoo and the preference of Firespout over Pyroclasm has improved the viability of the Empty the Warrens plan vs. the Balance/Top match up, that's what I was trying to get across.
My point, is that the decks that are switching to firespout have the tools to slow us down to make spout relevant.
And as far as solving the matchup, tight play and a combination of blasts and xantid has always done it for me.
Here is the tournament report on what happened on Wednesday:
Round 1 – 4C CB Thresh (0-2)
G1- t1 Swarm is met with Swords on turn 1 then I draw Duress and see 3x Force and blue cards … 2 Goyfs finish the game quickly
G2 – turn 1 Swarm is swiftly met with turn 3 Firespout in the main and after Duress I see yet again double Force and Swords. He draws a CB 2 turns later and there isn’t a lot I can do. I actually would have won this game had I ran a Thoughtseize I would wish for, during that 2 turn window before CB hit but .. whatever.
SB: -4 MT, -1 SSG, +2 Grip, +1 Wipe Away, +1 Duress, +1 Swarm
Round 2 – BYE!!! YEAH!
Round 3 – Enchantress (2-0)
G1 – I open up a weird hand of: Swarm, 2x DRit, IGG, Petal, Burning Wish, Gemstone Mine. Since I know he is playing Enchantress, I am on the play and go Rit, Rit, Petal, IGG, and bring back Rit, Rit, Burning Wish. The mindtwist delays him, and I know about 3/5 of my deck just wins the game instantly at this point. He plays land go. Next turn I draw Rite and make 10 tokens that go the distance.
G2 – I open up a turn 1 IT + LED into and draw and win.
Round 4 – 3C CB Thresh (2-1)
G1 – He has no answer for turn 1 Swarm and I IGG him out on turn 3.
G2 – I make a serious error here. I keep a weird opening hand of: 3x IT, Wipe Away, Grip, and 2x lands. The hand actually works itself out, but I can not draw a damn Duress for the life or me. So when my opponent has 3x cards in hand I am forced to go off or die next turn. I wished for DReturns a turn before that (yeah, another game where I need a Thoughtseize in the board) and my hand looks like this: IT, LED, LED, Rite, Rite, DReturns, and I have a Chrome Mox in play on blue, 3 lands in play and draw a 4th. He has a EE in play for 0. I run DReturns into his Force (activates Top for a blue card). Then I combo out with a lot of mana and am forced to go IT, BW, Tendrils since he is at 16. So I play LED and for some unexplained reason I don’t drop the 2nd LED. I believe that I was thinking WAY too far ahead and was only focusing on mana (since I assume he has Daze + something irrelevant). I was also thinking that I can’t use the mana from both and just didn’t drop it, this cost me the game, and I was thinking about losing both to EE but not sure why. I play all my cards and IT, into BW and when I cast BW I run into double Spell Pierce … I am 1 mana short of getting Tendrils. Had I forced him to blow up the EE, I win. I haven’t punted a game like this in a long time and am still upset that I fucked up like this. But I simply over-analyzed the situation and it cost me.
G3 – Turn 1 Swarm into turn 2 AdN.
Round 5 – Burn – We Both ID.
Round 6 – DDANT (2-0)
G1 - I open a beautiful hand of: Mire, Duress, Petal, Swarm, IT, LED, Ponder. He mulls to 6 and plays Tundra go. I draw Brainstorm and Duress him seeing: Silence, Chant, DRit, Top, and something else, I take Top and play Petal, Swarm, go. He draws and passes. I attack with Swarm and try to draw out Chant, nope. Ponder reveals another LED. Next turn I attack with Swarm again, he doesn’t Chant, I have LED, LED, IT in hand, GG.
G2 – I mull to 5 and keep a decent hand. He plays turn 1 Swarm. On his 3rd turn he goes for the AdN and gets really unlucky. He reveals 1 Petal, 1 CRit, and nothing else. He decides to keep flipping and hits DD at 3 life. I hate winning like this but, it happens.
Thus far the deck has been performing very well. As far as maindeck Swarms go … I am going back up to 3. I just love that card in here. It is very situational, and right now my meta loves Spell Pierce, Disrupt, and Divert as their combo hate so … he works quite well! As far as running Swarms in the main, just analyze your meta and see if it will work. If you have a lot of Tempo, don’t run it, but if you constantly see Probasco Blue bullshit then certainly run it.
The Grip VS EtW debate continues on. I am more partial to anything that makes the list more consistent and that would be the Grip plan. Not only is it a lot safer, but IMOP it works better. You don’t have to have it in your opening hand like you do with EtW. And EtW is easily answered since basically all CB lists are running some combination of Firespout and EE. While it is awesome just plowing through Force and making a bunch of Goblins, this is not Belcher. Questions, comments
@yesmilord: I think Badlands is a necessary evil. I am glad I have it but oftentimes don't like seeing it. I really want a Bayou or Trop in there but that would just be terrible unless the land count is upped to 14, which truly kills any chance DReturns has of being effective. I have tried most configurations and DReturns wins a lot in the 11-12 land builds and is about 50/50 in the 13 land builds, but casting DReturns is a lot better than not and just losing when you can't get anything going.
"I just shot Marvin in the face!"
"Why the fuck'd you do that??"
Well you can always run both. It's what I think I may be doing. Has anyone tested the new ETW plan yet? I'm having a hard time being up at school and all.
Badlands? It doesn't cast Brainstorm or Ponder. It's basically a dead draw in your opener if it's your only land.
I did some testing a little while ago against whienot, he was running a generic CB Thresh list. With my list I went 3-2 postboard running my standard build then we switched to SBs. I tested the EtW plan by running 4x Duress, 3x Thoughtseize and another Thoughtseize in the board. It was absolutely AWFUL! Not running Swarm just sucks. You run into all the bullshit and I even had my awesome turn 1 win thwarted by Force on Petal. This deck is not Belcher. We only played 4 games and I won 1. After the 4th I had had enough, you have no control or certainty whether or not what you are doing is going to work. They have so many answers and its just ... bleh. You cast a ton of shit from you hand and hope they can't answer it. Then you go into topdeck mode. It was horrible, I don't need to test that idea anymore than those 4 games. People can but I guarntee you will have similar results. Grips + Swarm + Duress are the way to go.
"I just shot Marvin in the face!"
"Why the fuck'd you do that??"
Is anyone else running this in Madrid?
I'm running a list with no maindeck IGG and one maindeck EtW. Generally makes the deck weaker but makes my game 1 against blue so very much better. Running 3 more EtW in the side, as well as 2 IGG. Game 2 against blue, I go all out on EtW mostly. If I just won on EtW, I sometimes side conservatively so their token hate is rendered useless. Against non-blue decks, I drop the maindeck EtW to give me the option of a maindeck IGG again. Game 3 against blue can really depend on what I think they might board.
I chose not to go for the Grips as they aren't as good against non-CB blue decks. EtW doesn't improve consistency, but it improves speed and it's been succesful for me so far.
If I have any colleagues in Madrid: good luck. I'm going in without byes but I don't intend to give up any time soon.
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