Hit top 4 in last weekend's Legacy tournament in Manila. Went really well, in my opinion, even if I was blown out by Omnitell in the semi-finals by sheer luck of the draw.
Here's the list I ran:
Land:
3 Volcanic Island
3 Island
3 Misty Rainforest
1 Mountain
4 Scalding Tarn
4 Ancient Tomb
1 City of Traitors
Creatures:
4 Emrakul, the Aeons Torn
4 Griselbrand
Spells:
4 Sneak Attack
4 Show and Tell
4 Lotus Petal
4 Brainstorm
3 Ponder
1 Repeal
4 Force of Will
1 Misdirection
3 Spell Pierce
2 Sensei's Divining Top
3 Gitaxian Probe
Sideboard: 15
2 Defense Grid
2 Pyroclasm
3 Blood Moon
2 Red Elemental Blast
2 Through the Breach
1 Echoing Truth
1 Swan Song
2 Flusterstorm
I decided to make a hybrid of the Sensei's Diving Top and Gitaxian Probe plans, and for the most part, it wasn't such a bad idea at all.
ROUND 1: vs. Food Chain Griffin (1-0)
Game 1: I win the die roll and open with a solid hand with Sneak Attack at the ready on the 4th turn. I had only Griselbrand, land, Sneak, and a bunch of cantrips. I open with Gitaxian Probe, and see that he has a Show and Tell and Food Chain. I had no idea what he was playing, but made a mental note that playing Show and Tell wasn’t a good idea against him. Turn 3, I hit Sneak Attack, Turn 4, I activate for Griselbrand, draw 14, swing, and pass the turn. He has nothing but a Griffin on his turn, and I have a vague idea what his deck is supposed to do by then. I draw, cast a Ponder, find Emrakul, then Sneak him in.
Boarding: -4 Show and Tell, -1 Repeal, -2 Gitaxian Probe, +2 REB, +2 Through The Breach, -1 Repeal, +1 Swan Song. +2 Flusterstorm.
Game 2: He opens with a Ponder, and I open with land, Petal. I Brainstorm at end of turn, and see that I’m holding Emrakul and Griselbrand, Sneak Attack, Swan Song, among other irrelevant cards. At this point, all I needed was mana, and by turn 5, I made my move, had a Swan Song ready for his Force of Will, then proceeded to win from there. All he had on his side was a Food Chain. I still had no idea what the deck was until I did a bit of research on it just now.
ROUND 2: vs. Dredge (2-0)
Game 1: Oh, man. I was woefully unprepared for Dredge, looking at my board. Thankfully, I had land, land, Lotus Petal, Show and Tell, and Griselbrand. The second turn Gris made him scoop. Off to game 2.
Boarding: -3 Gitaxian Probe, -1 Repeal, +1 Echoing Truth, +2 Pyroclasm, +1 Flusterstorm
Game 2: Wasn’t so sure if I boarded properly, but I mulled a no-land hand into one with Emrakul, Show and Tell, Ponder, and lands. Turn 3 Emrakul yielded a scoop from him.
ROUND 3: vs. Dragon Stompy (3-0)
Game 1: Gio, my opponent, opens up with a first-turn Blood Moon. I had basic islands in hand, and plopped down a third-turn Emrakul. Off to game 2!
Boarding: -1 Gitaxian Probe, -1 Repeal, +1 Echoing Truth, +1 Swan Song
Game 2: Opened with a nuts hand: Emmy and Grissy, Sol Land, Land, Sneak Attack, FOW and blue card. He mulled to 5, so I felt I had a strong edge. I even drew a land on my first turn. Second turn Sneak, third turn Gris, draw into another land, bring in Emmy, win.
ROUND 4: vs. BUG (3-1)
Game 1: I was being brutalized with discard, but he had only Goyf as board presence. I stabilized by keeping Sensei’s Divining Top, floated Show and Tell and Emrakul to victory. Thankfully, he didn’t have Liliana to handle that.
Boarding: -3 Probe, -1 Repeal, -1 Ponder, +2 Red Elemental Blast, +3 Blood Moon
Game 2: I had 2 Show and Tell, Misdirection, Force of Will, Petal, and lands. He got off a second-turn Hymn to Tourach, which I tried to send back to him, which he Forced, which I Forced, which he Flusterstormed. After that attrition war, he established control with Tarmogoyf and Liliana.
Game 3: More of the same discard goodness, but this time, Redmond made it worse by having enchantment destruction everytime I managed to cast Sneak Attack. I was always forced to tap out to Sneak, and he always had a charm to deal with it afterwards.
ROUND 5: vs. BUG (4-1)
Game 1: Oh, gosh. Another BUG matchup. This time, though, I had Sensei’s Divining Top ready to protect me, and I was able to hold off Jay by getting Emrakul down on turn 2 for the win.
Boarding: -3 Probe, -1 Repeal, -1 Ponder, +2 Red Elemental Blast, +3 Blood Moon
Game 2: I got a turn 2 Show and Tell again, with FOW backup. This time, I plopped down Gris on turn 2, and he plopped down Baleful Strix, which almost threw my plans off-kilter. Thing is, he cast Maelstrom Pulse on Gris, and I drew into Misdirection, targeting Strix. I then swung with Gris, and set up for Sneak and Emrakul on the next turn, which did happen.
ROUND 6: vs. Elves (4-1-1)
We ID’d into the top 8.
QUARTERFINALS: vs. Elves
Game 1: Same guy from Round 6. I mulled to 6 and found this hand: Brainstorm, Lotus Petal x3, Sneak Attack, Sol Land, Gitaxian Probe. I opened with Sneak Attack, then durdled a few turns, hoping for land, which didn’t come, so after two turn, I played Probe, then I fired off Brainstorm, and lo and behold, found Gris in the third card. Unfortunately, this means no land, so I held off for two more turns with another Probe in hand. When I got to drawing my second card, I fired off Probe, and lo and behold, a Scalding Tarn! Plopped it down, activated to Sneak Gris in, swung, then drew 7, with FOW and Emrakul safely at the ready. He tried to go off, I countered the Craterhoof Behemoth, then won next turn.
Boarding: -2 Probe, -1 Island, +2 Pyroclasm, +1 Echoing Truth
Game 2: Did something stupid here. Instead of Show and Tell for Emrakul, I used Sneak on him. He recovered, and won this game. I was too afraid of letting him Show and Tell something backbreaking.
Game 3: My mulligan hand was awesome. Two creatures, Petal, fetchland, Ponder, Sneak Attack. I hit Ponder, drew into a Petal and set up a land on top, then played Sneak on my second turn. Third turn, I won.
SEMIFINALS: vs. Omnitell
Game 1: Attrition, here we come! We kept on playing back and forth, and a Probe revealed he would kill me if I tried to Show and Tell anything. I had a Top on my board, but the game went long enough for him to hardcast Omniscience, and I ran out of answers to it by then.
Boarding: -3 Probe, -1 Repeal, -4 Show and Tell, +2 REB, +2 Flusterstorm, +1 Echoing Truth, +1 Swan Song, +2 Through The Breach
Game 2: We went on an epic counter war for my Through The Breach on turn 3, with him fighting off my Double Force hand via Pierce, Flusterstorm, FOW. I topdecked another Through The Breach, and he had another FOW for it. I was spent by then and he ended up playing Intuition for Dream Halls to hardcast it and Enter the Infinite from there. Just bad draws all around, and no amount of tight play could have saved me there.
After playing Omnitell like that, I definitely missed Intuition in my deck, and I’m looking into removing the Probes and replacing them with 2 Intuition, 1 Misdirection. Nobody seems to be trying to Surgical Extraction Sneak and Show anymore, after all.
The reason Show and Tell won't ge banned for now is that Jared (and Huey in the past) is the only one rocking the deck through every tournament he plays it in.Guess I just have to win in Vegas with it so everyone learns my name
Chas Hinkle has also been pretty succesful with the deck btw!Originally Posted by Ummmyeh13
@ mistervader: Congrats on your finish! Were the BUG-decks you faced Shardless or Tempo? This makes a huge difference, since Shardless is one of the easiest matchups while Team America is pretty tough.
Edit: My bad, Strix and main deck Lili clearly indicate Shardless.
About your semifinals: Why would you go for a T3 TTB against Omnitell? Even though we are the faster combo deck, we really want to play the control role in this matchup. Just wait until you have A LOT of mana to pay for soft-counters and the perfect 8 cards with at least two hard-counters.
Something I learned in many mirror testing sessions is that whoever tries to go off first usually loses. Patience is the key to success.
This doesn't mean that you can win the mirror through skill, it's still quite random and feels stupid. But you can certainly increase your chances by knowing how to approach it.
You have to understand, I'm the king of the goldfish. ALL my playtesting has been done in a vacuum, so at no point did it occur to me that I should have waited out OmniTell instead of attempting to combo out. LOL.Chas Hinkle has also been pretty succesful with the deck btw!
@ mistervader: Congrats on your finish! Were the BUG-decks you faced Shardless or Tempo? This makes a huge difference, since Shardless is one of the easiest matchups while Team America is pretty tough.
Edit: My bad, Strix and main deck Lili clearly indicate Shardless.
About your semifinals: Why would you go for a T3 TTB against Omnitell? Even though we are the faster combo deck, we really want to play the control role in this matchup. Just wait until you have A LOT of mana to pay for soft-counters and the perfect 8 cards with at least two hard-counters.
Something I learned in many mirror testing sessions is that whoever tries to go off first usually loses. Patience is the key to success.
This doesn't mean that you can win the mirror through skill, it's still quite random and feels stupid. But you can certainly increase your chances by knowing how to approach it.
Lesson learned. Will do better with this next time.
Yeah, SnS is not a very fun matchup for Omni (I play Omnitell a lot, currently trading my way up to Sneak) - Playing Show is usually very bad for us, as it can result in a free draw-14 on the other side of the table. (Btw - always double-activate the Grisseldraw, since we can Trickbind), and our Dream Halls plan is easily a turn or two too slow with regular draws.
Hi to all,
I don't really play the deck but I happen to have all the cards and a friend of mine would like to bring it to a tournament this weekend, so I got a couple of questions:
- what are the arguments for top VS probe? I know that top is better for longer games and to recover from discard, while probe is excellent for speeding up the deck and with the information you get you can often plan ahead your next 2 turns. Do this deck happen to go in mid-late game often?
- is playing blood moon main deck an option in a meta full of jund and shardless BUG? If so, what would you take out to accomodate 2-3 moons?
Thank you for the answers!
Ignorance is strength
If your meta really is dominated by Jund and Shardless BUG, maindecking 2-3 Blood Moon is a reasonable choice.
And as you described, SDT is pretty good against those discard-heavy strategies, too. Probe supports the game plan we want better, but SDT is nice if things don't work out as planned.
In my opinion, there are 9 flex slots in the main deck:
16 combo pieces (4 emmy, 4 Grisel + 8 Sneak & Show)
4 Brainstorm
4 Ponder
4 Force of Will
4 Lotus Petal
4 Scalding Tarn
3 Blue Fetches
3 Island
1 Mountain
3 Volcanic Island
5 Sol-Lands (either 3-2 Tomb-City or 4-1)
=51 cards
If you want to play Blood Moon and SDT and expect a BGx dominated metagame, I would fill these slots like that:
3-4 Spell Pierce
2 Sensei's Divining Top
1-2 Misdirection
2 Blood Moon
If you expect a lot of combo, I would recommend the full set of Pierces. If not 3-2 Pierce-Misd.
Hope that helps.
how do y'all find the MUD matchup?
Theoretically it should be a piece of cake because all you have to do is counter the lodestones / wurmcoils.
I'm having a terrible time against it, partly because of luck, i.e. drawing 14 cards and not hitting a creature / FOW, things like that.
bad luck aside i'm having Karn's being cast, phyrexian revoker on SA, thorns make it harder to cantrip, Spine off S&T sucks too.
Play 4 Card Blind!
Currently Playing
Legacy: Dark Depths
EDH: 5-Color Hermit Druid
Currently Brewing: [Deck] Sadistic Sacrament / Chalice NO Eldrazi
why cards are so expensive...hoarders
It is a tough matchup, but since it isn't among the popular archetypes, discussing dedicated hate cards like Shattering Spree seems pointless to me. Pox for example is a bad matchup as well, but just as irrelevant.
I think the MUD match-up is difficult. If you play against the Koldutha build or Blightsteel build, S&T is effectively shut-off. Most of their threats are creatures, so Spell Pierce and Misdirection are dead. We have to rely on Sneak Attack and TtB and they are taxing our mana with Wasteland and Lodestone. I find this match-up to be difficult because they ramp their mana more quickly than we do and they have big threats too.
The best you can hope for is an early Emrakul to nuke their board or a Blood Moon (which may not hurt them that badly if they play Goblin Welder or already have a Metalworker in play).
Sneak and Show has cantrips, while MUD plays off the top of its deck. You have to slow them down enough to land a threat. I recommend using your Spell Pierces on their Grim Monoliths and Lightning Greaves, as you won't have many other targets (and Chalice of the Void, obviously).
"Never argue with a fool, people might not know the difference."
What do you guys think the 9 flex slots would look like if the meta was made of fair UBx (Shardless, Deathblade, etc.) decks? Other decks to consider in this meta are things like Delver and Maverick.
I don't feel like the 1 Intuition, 4 Probe, 4 Spell Pierce package is correct for that kind of meta. I don't think Probe does enough versus these matchups, especially considering that the 2nd and 3rd copies are much less useful than the first. That being said, it draws a card, which is nice, but perhaps having more to a card than that is necessary. Some number of Spell Pierce has to stay in (respecting cards like Liliana and such) and Misdirection seems to help against both counterspells and discard. So... my initial guess would be
2 Misdirection
3 Spell Pierce
2 SDT
2 more cards
The SDTs are in there to fight against discard and enable a grindier mid/late game. However, I can't figure out what the two last slots should be. Do the first 7 seem correct? What are ideas for the last 2?
Blood moons main. Fair decks have greedy manabases
Play 4 Card Blind!
Currently Playing
Legacy: Dark Depths
EDH: 5-Color Hermit Druid
Currently Brewing: [Deck] Sadistic Sacrament / Chalice NO Eldrazi
why cards are so expensive...hoarders
What I wrote for GBx applies for UBx as well; both try to attack us with discard and Liliana.
The 4 FoW that Deathblade brings - instead of the additional discard that Jund has - opens up another angle of hate we have to fight through, but since we have a.) our own playset of Force of Wills and b.) Misdirection, which is both great against discard and opposing counterspells, it doesn't make a huge difference.
Thus, Blood Moon and Sensei's Divining Top alongside Misdirection and Spell Pierce are good choices for the flex slots in a UBx/GBx-dominant meta.
However, in a non-local/big-tournament metagame, I would definitely recommend using Jared Boettcher's list as the stock one. It's well tuned against everything.
What about Jensen's list? How does it compare against Boettcher's?
@JPA: thanks for your answer, it makes sense. I'll let you know how it will serve my friend ;)
MUD player here, I'll try to give some advices.
First of all you need to know what kind of MUD you are facing: the combo version (with kuldotha and graves) or the stompy one (smaller robots and more disruption).
The first one is the more played I think, but in my experience the second is stronger.
In the kuldotha matchup you are gonna face disruption in the form of chalice of the void and lodestone golem, plus a spine of ish sah as a tutor target (some versions have a couple of trinisphere too). In G2/3 they will side a number of trinisphere and extra spines and maybe an ensnaring bridge as a tutor target.
Their plan is to slow the game with chalice@1 (for the cantrips) enough for their combo to get online, and remember that of you S&T they can drop forgemaster and then tutor spine. There is no hard lock aside the ensnaring bridge, which you should save your bounce for.
Your best strategy is to win via sneak attack before they have an active forgemaster.
The real problem I think it's the stompy matchup: maindeck they have (or I should say "I have" ^_^ ) chalice, trinisphere, golem, phyrexian metamorph (cloning golem), phyrexian revoker (for sneak attack), tangle wire, wasteland, rishadan port, karn liberated.
In the side there are spine of ish sah and/or duplicant.
Their plan is similar to the combo build but is much more effective with all the disruption elements they have; obviously they don't have a combo but will beat you hard with smaller robots that, however, can finish the job pretty quickly. Turn 2 golem, turn 3 metamorph is nothing to sneeze at and it happen more often that you may think.
Your best plan here is to play a fast show and tell because they don't have answers to it maindeck, although they can race you if you play it too late. Don't be overconfident with sneak attack because revoker can take care of it.
Note that the stompy version can, and probably will, avoid to set chalice@1 due to the other disruptive elements, and will often save the chalice for setting them @3 and @4, so beware going in the late game!
In general MUD has consistency problems so it may shit on itself, especially if the builder is too greedy (I worked very hard to smooth the curve and the draws, but it's no simple task).
I've played the stompy version in a fair amount of local and regional tournament I can say I've never lost a match to sneak&show.
I hope this will help you as your suggestions helped me ;)
Ignorance is strength
So, main deck Huey plays:
+1 Misdirection
+1 Volcanic Island
+2 Daze
+2 Preordain
-3 Gitaxian Probe
-2 Intuition
-1 Mountain
Additional counters and "real" cantrips make the deck a little bit slower and more controllish. Generally, you never really want to use Daze reactively, since it sets you back a whole turn. That's why I'm not sure Daze finds its right home in Sneak & Show, even though it gives Huey 8 free counters for the combo turn, which is pretty helpful if you have problems against counter-heavy strategies.
Jared's list is more aggressive because of the Probes, which tell you right away if the coast is clear. Huey would play a Preordain in that place, maybe finding him a missing piece or a counter, but not giving any information whether or not he will actually win if he goes for it.
Intuition and Probe go well together, since you might get Information on which particular combo piece you want. The Probe might show you a Sower of Temptation or that your opponent's only counterspell is Envelop (post-board), so you can easily search up Sneak Attacks with Intuition and win on your next turn (assuming that your opponent doesn't draw a Force of Will in his last drawstep while you have no counter of your own).
We will still board out Intuition against black control decks a fair amount of time (fearing Surgical Extraction), but especially against today's True Blade lists you can keep them in, knowing that Rest in Peace is their current GY-hate of choice.
I like both versions, but started feeling really comfortable playing with Gitaxian Probe lately, because it supports the deck's game plan really well.
Last edited by JPA; 12-06-2013 at 02:08 PM.
Right now I'm running Boettcher's list, but I'm just not sold on Intuition. A lot more decks locally are playing extraction as you mentioned, as it's pretty good against most local metas (storm and delver).
Is preordain worth running directly in place? I don't think a second Misdirection is good just because I'm usually low on the double blue cards anyways. I just don't feel right with the preordains replacing the intuitions.
you may consider personal tutor. Yes i know its card disadvantage but most opponents don't have anything against it main deck. With SDT main (at least in my list and I recommend it to everyone) you can draw it immediately after casting it. Post board for me it gets a through the breach too.
Play 4 Card Blind!
Currently Playing
Legacy: Dark Depths
EDH: 5-Color Hermit Druid
Currently Brewing: [Deck] Sadistic Sacrament / Chalice NO Eldrazi
why cards are so expensive...hoarders
Judge!
@Nocley: If you don't want to play Intuition, Preordain should be a good choice. Personal Tutor is way too narrow and slow, Preordain can help you find anything you need (creature, enabler, counter).
So, this thread's primer seems slightly out of date. I was looking for some matchup analyses but I don't think I found anything relevant or even post-Grizz. I'm mainly interested in the bad matchups. I know that they are few and far between but I'm interested and don't really have a way to find out other than by asking. Thanks in advance. Also, I'm thinking of getting into this Archetype but my heavy concern is that SnT could get banned before I even complete the list, or worse, after. Thanks in advance for your help.
Sent from my SM-N900V using Tapatalk
There are currently 1 users browsing this thread. (0 members and 1 guests)
