100% this. You want to stop the first basic before anything else.Originally Posted by Karhumies
Rabblemathster. x3 presents a metric ton of damage vs Griselbrand. I beat BR Rean somehow with super goblins.
It sort of is dihonest, yes... but what I said still has some truth to it. The argument was Equip was too reliant on other cards - mine was "Yeah, but you have about 20 cards it synergizes with." Consider that Miracles used to run SFM -> Batterskull / Jitte. That fell waaaaay to the wayside, because stranded Jitte was horrible - the only dudes were SFM and Angel tokens, maybe 2 Snaps. SFM by itself is actually pretty terrible - but that you fetch up an Equip for your 20 other dudes... now that makes your SoFI super consistent. Batterskull in those decks (DnT, Stoneblade) is probably the weakest Equip to fetch out, unless you can protect SFM somehow.
In a prison deck without SFM, but with 16-20 dudes - I think you still jam equip. Makes sense to me!
Final Ritual: "I was your round 14 opponent with the 3 giant goyfs. I didn't know what the fuck you were piloting."
Drunken Master strategy. If I don't know what I'm doing, how would you?
Okay, but your anecdote appears to be the exception rather than the rule. The forced attack from Rabblemaster means a Griselbrand player can sit back and draw 8 cards each of your turns. In pretty much any scenario other than having 3 Rabblemasters on the battlefield, Rabble is weak versus Griselbrand where Sin Prodder excels (menace).
Stoneblade just got 12th and 14th out of 2656 with only 12 and 11 creatures respectively.
In my opinion, equipment is best in this deck when
- your threat base is so underwhelming you need it to turn SSGs into beaters
- your threat base calls for equipment (Prophetic Flamespeaker)
- the opposing deck folds to a specific equipment (Jitte against Elves)
Your opinion appears to be "equipment all the time". In a list that main decks Ensnaring Bridge, or one with sufficiently powerful stand-alone threats (Thunderbreak Regent), equipment are unnecessary or best relegated to the sideboard.
I realize this. I was mostly showing off my unwinnable MU. Still, if your argument is "Sin Prodder is better than Rabble vs Griselbrand," and mine is "Rabble is a relevant T1 threat vs the whole field (or 85% of it)..."
About half-true. My argument was "Equip in a threat-dense deck." Another argument was "Ensnaring Bridge is terrible." It looks great on paper - and is powerful - but MtG wants you to hold answers in your hand. It plays against how you want to play the game in general. It's only really decent with Chandra x4 + Moggcatcher x4 - some version of Zac's deck. You get to still play answers at 0 cards. I agree Bridge decks don't want Equip.
In my opinion, equipment is best in this deck when
- your threat base is so underwhelming you need it to turn SSGs into beaters
- your threat base calls for equipment (Prophetic Flamespeaker)
- the opposing deck folds to a specific equipment (Jitte against Elves)
Your opinion appears to be "equipment all the time". In a list that main decks Ensnaring Bridge, or one with sufficiently powerful stand-alone threats (Thunderbreak Regent), equipment are unnecessary or best relegated to the sideboard.
Heck, I even played 4x Bridge with 4x Tezzeret AoB and 4x Jace TMS. It was still terrible.
Thunderbreak is a terrible card in this deck, IMO. It's vanilla, no card advantage, RR, and finishes slower (and is an extra mana) over Rabbles.
SSG should be a 4x in any build of this deck, and also happens to suit up well. I think it's a few points toward running equip, in most builds anyway. I hope we're gaining some insight into building this deck right-ah-now.
I do have a query about how to beat P Fire. With most of the CMC 3 guys, they all die to a single Fire, other than Hanweir Garrison. That just dies to 2, bleh. I have an idea how not to fold to P Fire, better than mulling into Blood Moon and watch it get FoW'd, but I wonder how other people deal with it.
Final Ritual: "I was your round 14 opponent with the 3 giant goyfs. I didn't know what the fuck you were piloting."
Drunken Master strategy. If I don't know what I'm doing, how would you?
I realize TCDecks is not a true representation of the Legacy meta, or even the optimal build of a specific deck... BUT 19 out of the 22 most recent lists play 4 Ensnaring Bridge main deck despite it being a terrible card in Legacy.*
And the best creature against Punishing Fire is Thunderbreak Regent.
*4 of those deck lists had three Ensnaring Bridge main with one in the sideboard. And one of the three without any main deck had 2 in the sideboard.
I checked it out... and about 2/3 of those lists are from MTGO. I think that meta is just off-the-wall, and totally unrepresentative of paper magic - I think it's fair to dismiss them. Half of the remaining 3rd are in Japan - and they run Quicksilver Rebels, or whatever the Hill Giant is. I don't think it'd be any good in a paper, 'Merican meta. I think that leaves 3 decks in the last 20, for about 2 months. (Two builds - one deck is a repeat by the same guy.) 2 Bridges total in those 3 decks - both SB.I realize TCDecks is not a true representation of the Legacy meta, or even the optimal build of a specific deck... BUT 19 out of the 22 most recent lists play 4 Ensnaring Bridge main deck despite it being a terrible card in Legacy.*
And the best creature against Punishing Fire is Thunderbreak Regent.
*4 of those deck lists had three Ensnaring Bridge main with one in the sideboard. And one of the three without any main deck had 2 in the sideboard.
That sounds like a poor showing for the deck, overall. I think maybe we can do better. I think it's fair to stir the pot a bit.
Final Ritual: "I was your round 14 opponent with the 3 giant goyfs. I didn't know what the fuck you were piloting."
Drunken Master strategy. If I don't know what I'm doing, how would you?
I took this version to a 4-0 win at my local weekly last Wednesday. My sideboard was different*, but the main deck was card-for-card.
Beat Merfolk, Grixis Delver, RUG Delver, and 4C Delver.
*Sideboard
1 Trinisphere
4 Faerie Macabre
1 Ratchet Bomb
1 Pyrokinesis
2 Sudden Shock
2 Volcanic Fallout
2 Scab-Clan Berserker
1 Zuran Orb
1 Phyrexian Revoker
Last edited by Ace/Homebrew; 06-26-2017 at 09:58 PM.
Yes, if you ignore 95% of the results of any deck, then it will look bad.
I'm not really sure what your argument is here. You didn't actually refute why I'm ignoring MTGO results - which are insane - and Japanese results - where foreign tourneys have shifted metas because of difficult access to the old cards. Same with MTGO results - bizarre access to important cards.
I squeaked in a 22nd of 70 (I think) this past weekend. Nothing to write home about... yet.
Final Ritual: "I was your round 14 opponent with the 3 giant goyfs. I didn't know what the fuck you were piloting."
Drunken Master strategy. If I don't know what I'm doing, how would you?
So no big red/dragon stompy/chandra stompy in the top64 at Vegas. Do we know what the highest finish for the deck there was?
Most people blindly suggest new cards for decks. True contributors also suggest what to remove. It's not about what's good, but rather what's better than the current selections.
ZTurgeon can correct me if I'm wrong, but...
If you start with an unsupported premise (main deck Ensnaring Bridge builds are bad because Legacy) and then ignore 95% of the data that supports the opposite of that premise, then of course you will conclude that your original unsupported premise is accurate.
Look at what you are doing from a statistical standpoint:
You are given a data set of 40 entries. Unadjusted, this dataset supports that 'build X' is the highest performer.
You 'adjust' the data removing entries you feel are not truly representative. This leaves you with 5 entries and the new dataset supports that 'build y' is the highest performer.
Anytime your 'adjustment' removes a high majority of entries, your analysis is suspect and your conclusions are untrustworthy.
Exactly. Removal of data from a set ruins the set.
I can make up any excuse, founded or unfounded, to ignore any decks I want. It's not that hard. We could say that because Tabernacle is so expensive in paper, that it removes one of our best matchups. So therefore, we should ignore paper results because they aren't representing what should be seeing play.
Of course, this is lunacy. We are presented with a pile of data, and we should draw our conclusions from it. We should not ignore some of the data to suit the answer we already want.
You are effectively making a "one-sided argument" or deckstacking (the term, not the actual thing). You are walking into this going "I don't like Ensnaring Bridge" and then you are giving credit to the events that support your theory (large US events only) and then applying reasons why similar data is to be ignored (Japan and MTGO have different metagames). Regardless of if your reasons are true, your method of argument makes it impossible to argue against because you have tried to discredit all evidence that doesn't support your argument.
It's just bad science.
The truth is somewhere in the middle, and starts with our ultimate goal. To win, the best bet is to build a deck to attack a particular metagame. If a given metagame (MTGO) is weak to a given card (Bridge), it make sense to play that card in that meta (play Bridge on MTGO). The results show that running Bridge on MTGO is great. That's pretty clear, but it isn't the question at hand here.
Another useful question is how effective is Bridge in paper Legacy in North America? Well, there's a lack of results for NA, and small n makes for unreliable results. Let's evaluate from another perspective then.
Forget other Dragon Stompy decks and look at the metas. If there are concrete meta differences between MTGO and paper NA, then those differences can be evaluated with an eye towards the effectiveness of Bridge.
Most people blindly suggest new cards for decks. True contributors also suggest what to remove. It's not about what's good, but rather what's better than the current selections.
^ All this.
You're going to play what you're going to play, and if you like Bridge, go for it. I offered as much reasoned insight why I don't - really, why I stopped running it. Something tells me no one in their right mind is taking Quicksilver Rebel or wtf it is to any reasonable tournament. They printed a card: Punishing Fire. IDK why Rebel seems to be a card online and in Japan, but yeah, good for them. As for North American large tourney results...
*Ben Affleck walks in* "Here comes the science."
We live in North America. Most of us here, anyway. Metas differ. Online, Europe, Pacific, these things matter. Go pack your Rebels for Japan, I guess. I'm not running that guy - ever. My deck, as it stands, is already weak enough to P Fire, which is any number of MUs that I lose.
I go into large North American tourneys. Weeklies are super skewed metas, especially mine. But yeah, if you like Bridge, go for it. I gave reasons for and against it. I don't feel like spelling them out again.
Final Ritual: "I was your round 14 opponent with the 3 giant goyfs. I didn't know what the fuck you were piloting."
Drunken Master strategy. If I don't know what I'm doing, how would you?
I'd like to look at this a bit more. Perhaps it's because I come from a Stax and D&T background, or I remember those times where some blue deck lost to storm despite a hand full of countermagic, or on some podcast where they said ANT's biggest enemy is neither discard nor countermagic but rather permanent-based hate (The Brainstorm Show perhaps?), or all the times *I* lost to Bridge, or because I was actually looking forward to playing a deck with Bridge, but I don't think permanent-based board control is necessarily so bad.
Having some answers from the hand/library is useful so the opponent cannot operate with perfect knowledge, but that's not entirely mutually exclusive with the idea of Bridge. It can be a good card even if it occasionally lets 2s and 1s through.
(Btw, I don't actually play this deck. I'm looking at building it though.)
Most people blindly suggest new cards for decks. True contributors also suggest what to remove. It's not about what's good, but rather what's better than the current selections.
If you have a ton of aggro loam in your meta I can see disliking quicksmith, but loam is not particularly strong right now. Lands is very strong, but we absolutely wreck lands a fairly large percentage of the time regardless of what threats we run. Rebel is a 5 damage clock against combo and a persistent shock effect against delver, d&t, elves, and any other creature decks which heavily populate the meta in paper and online right now. He also fits the criteria of dealing damage to the opponents face through a bridge.
I play in the Seattle area, a healthy paper meta with a great regular tornament turnout, and I can say that bridge is a pretty effective card right now. I can't speak for everywhere though, tool your deck to whatever your local meta is. When most decks win with creatures though it's quite good. I also played painter for 3 years with 2-3 bridge main deck and can say that even during the miracles era it was a very strong lock piece, and I'd say it's even stronger now that the paper meta is shifting towards mostly delver and 4C midrange/control.
I would also disagree with your assertion regarding reactive cards being better than proactive prison pieces. Unless your meta is years behind there is a LOT of deathrite decks, and deathrite decks universally run some number of therapy/hymn/thoughtseize. In addition two of the most popular combo decks run discard as protection, and at least one control variant (grixis) as well. Rather than sit on reactive spells I'd rather just do what our deck does better than most decks in legacy, which is vomit out prison pieces and beaters before they can take apart our hand.
One way to look at MD Ensnaring Bridge: it has "three modes", one of which has been chosen by our opponent by their 60 card deckbuilding before the tournament starts:
Mode 1) Win the game on the spot upon resolution, we can move on to game 2 (e.g. some Reanimator and Sneaky Show lists without MD bounce/decay or Plan B Omniscience).
Mode 2) Requires time & resources to deal with, e.g. digging for and resolving Abrupt Decay, Council's Judgment, Engineered Explosives, Qasali Pridemage. Chances are, the opponent is running less than 4 of the solution cards in their MD, and if we have a Chalice @ 1, it makes it very difficult for the opponent to filter through their deck unless they have tutoring (e.g. Green Sun's Zenith). However, even efficient tutoring or casting an appropriate spell from hand will cause them to spend time & resources, which is typically more restrictive than the investment of 3 colorless mana + 1 card we put into casting the Bridge. Meaning that we are likely to gain either a small or substantial tempo advantage by disrupting the opponent's flow.
Mode 3) The opponent can completely ignore it. Either they don't care about the combat step (e.g. Tendrils of Agony), their creatures have 0-2 attack and we can't reduce our hand size in time (e.g. t1 Empty the Warrens tokens, swarm of t2 elves), or they have a Plan B which does not require the combat step (e.g. Jace TMS ultimate).
If you have knowledge about your (FLGS) metagame, you know roughly what percentage of opposing decks are "choosing Mode 1), Mode 2), Mode 3)" -> you roughly know the odds of running MD Bridge instead of another MD card. If you are going into an unknown metagame, MD Bridge = gambling with a high variance card. Some people love high stakes "win on the spot" high variance cards (see the Modern deck "Free win red"); others want to minimize the variance and run a 50-50 against the wide field decks.
Personally, I believe that we are running a bunch of high variance "oops I win" cards already (Blood Moon, Chalice of the Void, potentially Magus of the Moon, possibly Trinisphere, possibly Gemstone Caverns) -> I guess it comes down to personal preference whether you want to "go all-in" and add the MD Bridges (or MD Trinispheres if you think that is a better local meta call) into the mix as well, or whether you want to "downplay" the variance. However, my personal opinion is that if you want to downplay the variance and have 50-50 against the field instead of "accidentally stealing wins", you should probably be running a FoW tempo deck instead of Monored stompy.
I thought that too and then i started playing MTGO. Now I know that it's actually 100% true holy balls.
In 18 matches I've played 3 different people on Enchantress, 4 chalice decks (all different), and a few very random brews. It's pretty surreal.
That said, I've been playing in the Tournament practice section; so I don't know if the tournaments will be weird.
Quicksmith Rebel is effectively "Monored stompy's own Punishing Fire". It allows us to kill an opposing creature with 2 or less toughness every single turn, and we are also allowed to direct that damage into Planeswalkers (e.g. kill Liliana after -2 without losing a card in the process) and to the opponent's face. The best part is that the damage is coming from a colorless source, so we get to kill nasty stuff from Death & Taxes like Mirran Crusader and Mother of Runes, unless they respond to the ETB trigger by Swordsing the Quicksmith Rebel. In a D&T heavy meta, the Quicksmith Rebel has been pure gold for me.
Not a great card against Lands and Loam decks, though, but those decks are super rare in my local paper meta.
My problem with Quicksmith is that it's super-dependent on your having Chalice @ 1 on the field. Or not to run into a P Fire deck. And if you don't, you get tempo-ed out hard. REALLY HARD - to the point that you get Time Walked and likely lose. If Rebel made the artifact permanently shock, it'd be great, but it doesn't. Only as long as Rebel is around.
If you're on the Bridge plan, it's not 5 dmg / turn.
I lost to Bridge with P Fire at my weekly. RW Painter got me - he had Welder, Painter, and Chandra (with Bridge out, Grindstone in the GY). He cast Daretti 1, and then beat me in the next few turns. Go go Bridge!
Playing with P Fire in my other deck, I smash Stompy strategies. Esp everything with 2 toughness. It's the single card that wins me most games. Unless you run all Dragons, which are super slow, all your threats will die to the Fire. The toughest deck in my meta is a FoW + P Fire deck. It runs other major card advantage engines, but it's the Fire I can't get past. FoW my Moon, then burn every creature out. I have no other threats he needs to Force. Which is why I'm asking what other options I have to beat P Fire. Hazoret is the only one I can think of - well, there's one other awful card - but Hazoret is super hard to get online when you only cast 1 spell a turn.
Final Ritual: "I was your round 14 opponent with the 3 giant goyfs. I didn't know what the fuck you were piloting."
Drunken Master strategy. If I don't know what I'm doing, how would you?
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