'MUD' solutions to aggro/vial

[GGoober]

So I have been testing a personal aggro chalice build to some good success. There are some issues that I have come across which I hope to get some feedback and advice. I'll post a list so you guys can get an idea where the weaknesses are when it comes to finding the ideal sideboard configuration

Lands: 24
4 Wasteland
4 Seat of the Synod
4 Mishra's Factory
3 Blinkmoth Nexus
1 Island
4 Ancient Tomb
4 City of Traitors

Creatures: 19
4 Steel Overseer
4 Phyrexian Revoker
4 Etched Champion
4 Master of Etherium
3 Lodestone Golem

Non-creatures: 17
3 Mox Diamond
2 Mox Opal
4 Chalice of the Void
3 Crucible of Worlds
3 Umezawa's Jitte
2 Sword of Fire and Ice

Sideboard:
4 Ratchet Bomb
2 Winter Orb
3 Thorn of Amethyst
3 Tormod's Crypt
3 Trinisphere

QUESTIONS ON SIDEBOARD AND IDEAL 'MUD' SOLUTIONS TO THESE MATCHUPS:
The list that I worked out has a surprisingly good Zoo matchup (almost 70-30 right now against little Zoo pre-board and maybe 60-40, 50-50 postboard). These games are won by Etched Champion + Revoker slowing pridemages/lavamancers/knight while getting Crucible and incremental lockpieces out. I'm not too worried about this matchup.

I did try out Ratchet Bomb against Zoo but was not impressed. My experience with Ratchet Bomb now leads me to two conclusions (please let me know if I am wrong on these observations):

1) Ratchet Bomb played pre-emptively usually never leads to an x-1. Your opponent will play around it and it becomes a 1-1 spell at best, and a really slow one.
2) Ratchet Bomb played after your opponents dropped the spells that you want to blow up is usually too slow. It's still decent against 1-2cmc, but from 2-3cmc, playing Ratchet Bomb after your opponents dropped his bombs is usually too slow.

It's almost like Tormod's Crypt v.s. Dredge. Either the Dredge player plays around Crypt (Ratchet bomb) or Crypt (Ratchet Bomb) comes in too late to do anything.

So my question is: against Zoo, what can MUD utilize to improve matchups even better?

Now, the main reason I play Ratchet Bomb, is to hitrandom enchantments in Enchantress or Countertop (I lose to Moat) that MUD simply cannot deal with. These don't crop up often because these decks will have some trouble resolving 3cmc and 4cmc postboard when Thorns and Golems + Wastelock are coming in against them, however, I found that in these matchup, pairing up 3 Ratchet Bombs with lockpieces guarantee some outs in case they resolved something.

Another big reason to play Ratchet Bomb is hitting Vials. It's my strong belief that Stompy/Stax cannot beat Vial if it's in play. Your entire deck strategy crumbles. It's a reason why my MD has 8 hate against Vials (revoker, Chalice), which IMO is sufficient, but I want to ensure that I crush Vial strategies postboard or from the lowest considerations, not lose to Vial. Ratchet Bomb in this respect, when paired with Revokers/Chalice are decent against Vial.

However, my main problematic matchup right now is Gobs. After testing about 8 games, the matchup is 60-40 in their favor, and probably worse for me postboard. It has to do with the combination of Lackey/Wasteland/Vial. If they tempo me out with a Wasteland, I'll be very behind if Lackey is paired with the Wasteland. Many of these games which I tried stabilizing against Lackey involved Jitte, which is tremendous against them. The list I posted above has added 2 Sword of Fire/Ice to deal with Goblins. I'm just wondering if 4 Ratchet Bombs, 3 Jitte, 2 SoFI, eight 1-drops (well 2-drops but I can cast them turn 1), 7 manlands can handle the turns 1-3 of goblins.

What other cards can MUD bring in against tribal/Vial decks? If I can secure good wins against Merfolks/Goblins, I'll be happy because I am satisfied with my Zoo/Control/Combo matchup with this deck so far.

One last question: What is MUD's answer to Emrakul/Progenitus? I was thinking Wash Out (doesn't hit Emrakul) which catches any aggro deck or Enchantress/Moat etc. Another option is to play Ensnaring Bridge, which has good synergy in my maindeck with Blinkmoths slowly flying over or hitting with 2-power Etched Champion (unkillable/unblockable) while keeping 2 cards on my turn and 1 card on their turn, and god-forbid Champion accumulating counters on Jitte under an Ensnaring Bridge and swinging for lethal later :P. I'm leaning towards Ensnaring Bridge as an out against Emrakul/Progenitus and maybe goblins (although I really think 2 SoFI + 3 Jitte should shore that matchup now, except when I lose to tempo wars).

I've been very unsatisfied with Trinisphere. It's good against combo, but I feel that Thorns do better since it's consistently castable on turns 1 (not the case for Trinisphere). Both Thorns/Trinisphere requires 3-mana to be paid for combo to Burning Wish for an answer, and Thorns hurt Doomsday variant more than Trinisphere. Against control, Thorn is less powerful for 1cmc spells, but has the same effects for 2cmc spells as Trinisphere, but hurts their 3-4cmc spells as well. It's always a turn faster, and allows me to play more spells out myself. I'm on the fence on cutting 3Spheres, and perhaps adding Ensnaring Brdiges or other selections of cards that you guys suggest.

[Barook]

You run zero cards that require blue.

Why not replace Seat with Darksteel Citadel and the Island with another non-basic to prevent Merfolk from Islandwalk you?

[Mark Sun]

If you're worried about Goblins, perhaps some number of Silent Arbiter might improve the matchup. Really depends on the number of Tinkerer/Scrapper that they bring in post-board, but you might be able to get away with it.

Seconded on the Ensaring Bridges.

[GGoober]

I run 4 Master of Etherium, which IMO are uncuttable (pumping with manlands, and being a 7/7 or bigger on turn 3 most of the time).

The Island was in the most recent iteration after realizing that I do not want to turn opposing Paths into the best removal in the format, and there is no harm with the Island aside from the Merfolk matchup, which conveniently never gets played (1 out of 24 lands) or gets pitched to Mox Diamond in that matchup.

I actually played with 2 Islands and 3 Standstills yesterday (pretty stupid with 7 manlands + 4 wastelands + 4 Overseers) but ended up cutting Standstill because I forgot that Standstill is just 2-mana draw 3 in this deck since I don't play permission/instants to abuse the power of Standstill. Pity though, so now I've cut back to 1 Island just so that in the situations against Path, I don't get blown out without any gains.

@Morbid: Good suggestion! For some reason I knew about Arbiter but thought he was 5cmc, but if he's 4cmc with a 1/5 body, this might be the card I'm looking for against swarm-based aggro. I can deal fine with Goyfs.dec(12-16 creatures.dec) since Champion/Master demands that they need to draw an additional creature to swing through, so I think 2 Arbiter will solve the tribal/swarm matchup much more favorably. Are Ratchet bombs needed against Merfolks/Gobs? I find that against Merfolks it still catches a ton of 2cmc spells, but is weak against Goblins, although recent goblin lists are featuring more Mogg Warmarshall and the tokens can get out of hand.

[Plm]

Hi,

I'm playing roughly your previous list, trini main, but the major difference is that I cut m.o.e. and the blue lands in order to run inkmoth nexus .

Infect is nuts. With chalice protection and ( oveseer, blinkmoth', jitte, cranial plating,ravager ) pump, your are faster than they can handle.
Infect-crucible chump block can kill the mightiest .

Against the big beefs, I board in ensnaring bridge.

Against Gob I tried shield sphere, yes I know... but block lackey good enough.

@ trini , I like them because of the forces running around me. In a aggroer meta I might run sphere of resistance.

playing 12 manland & crucible is so fun against standstill :)

[Aggro_zombies]

Why not something like Portcullis? Your manlands let you circumvent the drawback and Goblins doesn't function well with a limited number of creatures. Granted, if they destroy it they will probably end up with an instant army, but it may be worth looking at for containing other swarm aggro / Show and Tell decks.

[Koby]

Propaganda is a natural fit in here to handle swarm style. Combined with the Winter Orb, this has the potential to even shut out the attack step for your opponent, while negligibly affecting yours.

You would need to keep an eye out for a timely REB/Pyro however, but Chalice can take care of that. Also keep in mind that it doesn't fall prey to splash damage on Artifact hate.

Another option is Pendrell Mists, but it's not as effective vs vial rush/Haste.

[GGoober]

Thanks for the suggestion guys! This is what I needed.

Currently I'm digging Ensnaring Bridge and Propaganda I'm leaning heavily towards although Show and Tell might be a problem for Props.

Portcullis will put some limitation on my SB choices i.e. I'll probably have to board out creatures, which may not necessarily be a good strategy. E.g. I found that pre-board without Ratchet Bombs against Zoo, I play much better than boarding Ratchet Bombs against Zoo. Sometimes I feel that if i can match them creature for creature (having Champion/Master to stall/cheat), I should be able to win. The same philosophy doesn't work for Gobs because they just outbreed me with Lackey/Ringleaders. Merfolk has only been problematic when Vial is active, in the same sense they get more creatures faster than I do.

I think I'll test out Propaganda though. Seems brutal with Winter Orb, and I should probably pack Winter Orb against Show and Tell to stop their cantripping/digging in addition with 4 Thorn of Ametyst.

I had an idea: what do you guys think about Tangle Wire?

I have used the card before in stompy variants (green primarily) and it is very effective in slowing aggro down. It doesn't solve the Vial problem but I should have enough hate for Vial post board. The one synergy with Tangle Wire from my list is if I land an Overseer with manlands under Tangle Wire, I can grow them anyway since I was intending to tap mana activate manlands and grow dudes anyway. Tangle Wire might also boost dude + equipment beating in and start chaining Jittes and SoFI activations. Although Tangle Wire drawn mid-late game just blows since the gobs and merfolks would have breeded more babies by then that Tangle Wire becomes useless.

I think the strongest option right now for my list is Silent Arbiter. That way I can have a high density of 20+ creatures, which matches my dudes against their creature base, and when Arbiter comes online, it's a one-man show with Champion/Master v.s. small fish/gobs (except Coralhelm D:)

@Plm, glad to see you pick up the list. It's really fun to play and has a great combo/control/zoo matchup. Once I work out the vial.dec matchups and test against Bant (should be favorable), I should be set. I think not going to care too much about Enchatnress and I can see MBC and Eva blowing this deck to ashes. Or random Kataki killing me (how do I deal with Kataki? My only outs right now are Ratchet Bombs). I'll be posting an article for this deck soon and will let you know on my thoughts behind working out the list. Your list is interesting, and definitely seems very fresh. Ravager + Inkmouth + Plating + Overseer is going to win you good games. I've cut Ravager from my list due to the conflicting interest in what my deck wants to achieve (I'll address that in the article), but in your list, that seems like a brutal beating if you secured protection on inkmoth.

[Rico Suave]

I've spent more than my fair share of time trying to devise a way for an artifact based deck to survive an early, aggressive onslaught.

For starters, we must identify how they are attacking us. One is to play cheap threats, like the ones presented by Wild Nacatl. Another is to play Vial and "cheat" their creatures through a disruptive field created by the MUD deck. Decks will have reach ranging from burn to on-board tricks like Siege-Gang. They will be able to disrupt us in our mana base with Port/Waste, they will have counter-magic like Daze and Force, and they will often have removal that could be standard fare like Pridemage or SB material like Goblin Tinkerer.

These are what I would consider the biggest problems our opponent can represent, but of course they are always going to finish by reducing our life total to 0.

The way I see it, there are 2 main approaches we can take. We can opt to play aggressively which would involve trying to be faster than them. We can also take a defensive approach and try to fend them off long enough for our superior late game to come into play and overpower them.

If we are trying to race them, normally the first thing I would suggest is adding equipment. Except you already have this...

The next thing I would suggest is some bomb you can play that will instantly lower their life total. Burn spells accomplish this very nicely, though there are other things like Eldrazi Monument or Coat of Arms (moreso in Elves, not so much this deck) that will enter play and your opponent will go "yup, I'm very dead." If you feel that you might have potential to race the opponent, you might want to find a card that will make your creatures fat and scary.

On the other hand it seems you are pretty well set on taking a defensive role. I can't really blame you because outside of decks like Affinity I'm not sure you're going to find the speed necessary to end the opponent before he can end you.

Silent Arbiter is one approach. It is most useful against Goblins, because they are the ones who are going to amass a large army in an attempt to overrun you. Cards like Piledriver lose their power with Arbiter on the board. And Arbiter can certainly have a tremendous impact even in other matches such as Dredge or anything that is going to Empty the Warrens against us like Belcher. But you also need to be aware that Coralhelm Commander is a very good card and he will easily trump an Arbiter by himself. Additionally, if you're attacking with a Master against Goblins they can block it for eternity with a Piledriver. And Zoo can still present a trump threat in the form of a giant Goyf or Knight. So I would say Arbiter is a step in the right direction but it is certainly not an all-inclusive answer to creatures, and rather it must work in conjunction with other cards.

If you are tight on SB space I don't think Arbiter will cut it. On the other hand, if you have a lot of SB space available, you may find Arbiter helps contribute as part of an overall plan.

Propaganda effects follow a similar route as Silent Arbiter. They are the most effective against Goblins, while much less effective against Merfolk and Zoo. They work best in combination with other cards like Winter Orb and not as a single defensive measure.

Another possibility is to play bigger creatures. By this I mean cards like Wurmcoil Engine, Platinum Angel, Razormane Masticore, or other cards that are above the normal curve but are very powerful. A Wurmcoil is expensive, and this is the downfall of the card, but when it enters play it will do a lot of scary things to an opponent. All of the above creatures also double not just as defensive measures, but ways to turn the role around and begin taking the offensive too. You can turn all of the above cards sideways and they still help maintain your survivability. Razormane is pretty good too if you want a 5 drop that will help swing the board to your favor.

The last way I know to increase survivability is to simply overload on removal. This is...tough in a blue-artifact deck. But this would involve running a lot more removal than just Ratchet Bomb.

Ultimately, you are playing a creature based strategy which is not as good at doing what it wants as Goblins. They are better at beating down, and their late game is better. You need to come up with a way to change at least one of those if you want to succeed.

[Grollub]

I've had alot of fun with Tabernacle and Winter Orb, but that've been with a shell more focused on powering out beefy robots...

[JCLe]

Silent Arbiter can be a good inclusion vs swarm as well...

[FieryBalrog]

Propaganda is not good without more mana denial (except "OK" vs Goblins & great vs Dredge, not much else). Even with tons of mana denial, I can recount a lot of times when Ghostly Prison wasn't good enough at keeping me alive in Geddon Stax. I also think that if you want a MUD deck you have to decide if you're going to be the disruptive beatdown deck (sphere effects + some mana disruption + golem beats, etc.) or if you're going to be the prison deck (sphere effects + more mana disruption + lock effects). Since Prison deck is just some MUD Stax variant which doesn't look like what you're going for, I think it's appropriate to examine card choices for how they serve the dual purpose of clock and disruption. Lodestone Golem and Phyrexian Revoker are both great examples of cards that might make MUD tick as they serve those dual purposes. Though Revoker ain't much of a threat without equips, he is still a warm body and sometimes that is enough. Master is fat enough to be worth it and he immediately pumps all your other guys. Steel Overseer on the other hand isn't, and I think it's a bad creature- even in Affinity, let alone here. I also think once we want to build a MUD beats deck and not a prison deck, Crucible of Worlds doesn't belong, it's not really disruptive except hoping to Wastelock someone (that will not happen nearly enough and in the right fashion to be worth slots here), it's a long-game "lock piece" card that brings card advantage.

The reason Goblins is good against this strategy is because Goblins can get around the mana disruption you're trying to impose on them better than most decks, since even more than other Vial decks they also have Lackey. And you have no great way to punish them for swarming the board around your one or two fat dudes. Silent Arbiter might be good since he's plenty disruptive vs Goblins and all else failing, can carry a weapon. He also leverages your fatties vs tribal decks nicely while drawing precious removal (which is pretty rare in the decks he's good against).

If we start talking about Ensnaring Bridge and Propaganda we're moving in a totally different direction towards a Prison deck with Golem for a quick clock who furthers the prison lock, in that case we can bring in Crucible and stuff and aim for locking down the board, but that's a different deck from the list in the original post... You cannot try and build an aggro MUD deck and then shove in Bridge and Prop to hope to shore up some matchup, it is muddling the strategy and counterproductive, as an easy example just think about how you are supposed to beat down around Bridge, now you have to spend slots on Cloister or something as well...and like I said earlier Prop doesn't really do enough with such light mana disruption, 4 Wastelands and some Golems is not exactly enough. Not to mention both vial decks run easy trumps to Prop (Coralhelm in fish, and Siege-Gang in gobbos).

[.nemesis]

MUD Stompy decks over here in Germany are quite popular these days. Those win the creature-based matchups mostly on the back of a supercharged attack of raw card quality. Think Wurmcoil Engine and ]Steel Hellkite, cheap fat that's going to trump their cheap fat. They accellerate into their bigger creatures by using Grim Monolith, Voltaic Key and Thran Dynamo, plus of course Tomb and City. You might want to try building around that too.

Of course, Silent Arbiter becomes googolplex better when you have the better beatsticks.

If you want to continue using blue, you might want to run Thoughtcast. It's 1 mana draw 2 and gets through Chalice@1. With a lot of crappy topdecks, you probably want to draw some extra cards.

[GGoober]

I've spent more than my fair share of time trying to devise a way for an artifact based deck to survive an early, aggressive onslaught.

For starters, we must identify how they are attacking us. One is to play cheap threats, like the ones presented by Wild Nacatl. Another is to play Vial and "cheat" their creatures through a disruptive field created by the MUD deck. Decks will have reach ranging from burn to on-board tricks like Siege-Gang. They will be able to disrupt us in our mana base with Port/Waste, they will have counter-magic like Daze and Force, and they will often have removal that could be standard fare like Pridemage or SB material like Goblin Tinkerer.

These are what I would consider the biggest problems our opponent can represent, but of course they are always going to finish by reducing our life total to 0.

The way I see it, there are 2 main approaches we can take. We can opt to play aggressively which would involve trying to be faster than them. We can also take a defensive approach and try to fend them off long enough for our superior late game to come into play and overpower them.

If we are trying to race them, normally the first thing I would suggest is adding equipment. Except you already have this...

The next thing I would suggest is some bomb you can play that will instantly lower their life total. Burn spells accomplish this very nicely, though there are other things like Eldrazi Monument or Coat of Arms (moreso in Elves, not so much this deck) that will enter play and your opponent will go "yup, I'm very dead." If you feel that you might have potential to race the opponent, you might want to find a card that will make your creatures fat and scary.

On the other hand it seems you are pretty well set on taking a defensive role. I can't really blame you because outside of decks like Affinity I'm not sure you're going to find the speed necessary to end the opponent before he can end you.

Silent Arbiter is one approach. It is most useful against Goblins, because they are the ones who are going to amass a large army in an attempt to overrun you. Cards like Piledriver lose their power with Arbiter on the board. And Arbiter can certainly have a tremendous impact even in other matches such as Dredge or anything that is going to Empty the Warrens against us like Belcher. But you also need to be aware that Coralhelm Commander is a very good card and he will easily trump an Arbiter by himself. Additionally, if you're attacking with a Master against Goblins they can block it for eternity with a Piledriver. And Zoo can still present a trump threat in the form of a giant Goyf or Knight. So I would say Arbiter is a step in the right direction but it is certainly not an all-inclusive answer to creatures, and rather it must work in conjunction with other cards.

If you are tight on SB space I don't think Arbiter will cut it. On the other hand, if you have a lot of SB space available, you may find Arbiter helps contribute as part of an overall plan.

Propaganda effects follow a similar route as Silent Arbiter. They are the most effective against Goblins, while much less effective against Merfolk and Zoo. They work best in combination with other cards like Winter Orb and not as a single defensive measure.

Another possibility is to play bigger creatures. By this I mean cards like Wurmcoil Engine, Platinum Angel, Razormane Masticore, or other cards that are above the normal curve but are very powerful. A Wurmcoil is expensive, and this is the downfall of the card, but when it enters play it will do a lot of scary things to an opponent. All of the above creatures also double not just as defensive measures, but ways to turn the role around and begin taking the offensive too. You can turn all of the above cards sideways and they still help maintain your survivability. Razormane is pretty good too if you want a 5 drop that will help swing the board to your favor.

The last way I know to increase survivability is to simply overload on removal. This is...tough in a blue-artifact deck. But this would involve running a lot more removal than just Ratchet Bomb.

Ultimately, you are playing a creature based strategy which is not as good at doing what it wants as Goblins. They are better at beating down, and their late game is better. You need to come up with a way to change at least one of those if you want to succeed.

Rico, you pretty much hit the basis of my concerns, and my attempts to make these concerns less appalling.

For a brief summary on what my deck intends to do, you are right that it's a creature-based strategy. This strategy seems weak in the format considering all my creatures are not as great as Goyf.dec or Merfolks/Gobs.dec, but the strategy isn't a pure-aggro approach. It combines little disruptions on creatures and other selection of cards to add up to slowing down the opponent's gameplay.

I have already written up an extensive primer on my thoughts on traditional stompy v.s. the new style of stomping that I am testing it. The main highlight is to not play bombs like Trinisphere/Blood Moon/Bomb X which causes dead draws in various matchups or multiple draws. The goal is to not try to play card X that does X and card Y that does Y, and when the gameplan requires you to specifically draw card X then Y to win games and not the other way round e.g. Drawing beater before resolving Trinisphere or needing a beater to win under Trinisphere. This is the heart of the concern that I am trying to address.

You hit all the important point that this deck is not the best in its aggro strategy, but it is compensated by means of two functions: disruption and beating at the same time, but of course, you can already pinpoint exactly why I have posted this thread, because it is hard to disrupt gobs/merfolks (my main problem is gobs) since these decks not only build up an army fast, but they have a strategy that nullfiies yours (Lackey, Vial, Force). Regardless, the testing I've done earlier about 6-8 games each showed that it was 60-40 in their favor. It randomnly came to me I forgot how awesome SoFI is against gobs/merfolks, so I will be testing this today at my local scene. Zoo/Bant has been favorable until they run Kataki (but that's a narrow SB choice given the overall metagame now so I'm not concerned about this).

In summary, Silent Arbiter would be my choice for today. The reasons why: I am tending more towards aggro than control. The problem with boarding Ratchet Bombs against Zoo was this: I did not need Ratchet. I could race Zoo's clock with Chalice/Revokers/Lodestone/Wasteland disruption while forcing them to deal with those cards while putting out Masters and Champions (they cannot deal with Champion period). Ratchet Bomb was bad against them since preboard they always played turn 1 Nacatl, why do I want to slow myself down now given that they have diluted their maindeck with Krosan Grips (a bad 1-1 removal costing 3 mana)? With Silent Arbiter, I would maintain the same aggression plan against tribal, but nullifying the core of their strategy. Obviously Arbiter is bad against Emrakul, but I'll worry about that sometime. I think tribal is more popularly played than Emrakuls, and I'll just need to work with Thorns + Lodestone + Wasteland combination against those decks.

@.nemesis: I can safely say that as much as everyone likes drawing cards, I do not need it in this deck. It is funny because Stompy should want more card-draw to be more consistent, but when I built this deck, I was solving Stompy's inconsistency problem not from card-draw but by increasing redundancy and reducing dead draws (IMO Stompy's consistency can only be increased by playing card draw/filter or by optimizing card selection). My topdecks are not terrible in this deck given the extra synergy it has compared to other stompy decks. I feel that Thoughtcast will dilute the gameplan but I have not tested this as much as the German community has, so I will give it a shot in the future.

Anyway, thanks for all the suggestions so far. I will have a relevant article coming up soon but I'm not posting it up because I don't want to make claims or impressions without having the results to back them up :P I've been taking this deck quite seriously for some time now.

[Fossil4182]

MUD Stompy proved to be a pretty good solution to Merfolk last at SCG Open. MUD Stompy just crushed Merfolk and was able to just top deck into a win despite being almost dead on board. I think MUD Stompy as a deck could be really powerful against Vial decks because it exposes two conditions the current metagame: lower levels of spot removal and low levels are artifact hate.

The low levels of spot removal allow cards like welder and metal worker to survive. The trend I've observed the last couple of SCG opens is a shift toward board sweepers instead of spot removal. For example, a significant portion of the Counterbalance lists are trending toward 2-4 Firespouts in the main deck. (usually 3 in the main, one in the board) along with EE. Granted, they still run 4 STP, but having to tap out for three to Firespout a Welder seems disadvantageous. Its also problematic that the deck can just tap out to cast some of the larger threats which can spread the spot removal really thin.

The larger reason why is the lack of dedicated artifact hate. Grips and Sorrows are probably the best cards against this deck that are currently seeing play in boards, but really aren't great solutions (take a match-up analysis which goes from terrible to bad is not much of an improvement post board).

The big problem with these decks is the ease with which then can be hated out. Blue gets access to Energy Flux, Red has numerous answers from Pulverize to Shatterstorm to Shattering Spree, and the colorless answers of Dampening Matrix and Null Rod. Deed also seems like it could be really problematic for the deck as well since it needs a lot of the 0-3 casting cost cards to accelerate out the threats (Assuming the deck can live through Deed). The other issue is the lack of familiarity playing against the deck. Watching the coverage last night, there were at least two game losses directly related to misplays (Countered the wrong card and Thoughtseizing the wrong card).

I think the MUD Stompy will be a powerful deck, but the hate cards will quickly fill sideboards and once people learn how to play against the deck it probably gets relegated to tier two.

[GGoober]

@Fossil:

Grip/Pridemage on paper seems to own artifacts.dec but after playtesting and experience, I find it a decent trade. They spend 3 mana to Pridemage/Grip you 1-1. That is a bad trade for them considering that you hitting 3 mana is easier than them hitting 3 mana. On top of that, MUD Stompy also makes it harder for opponents to hit 3mana. For instance, against Zoo, I tend to keep my explosive starts and not worry about Grips. If they're diluting their maindeck to 'hate' my deck, that's fine because I came to the conclusion I don't lose to Pridemages against Zoo, I lose to their fast clock and burn so if they're packing those out, that's essentially better news for me (obviously all these arguments depend what deck you're playing, Pridemage/Grip will blow out bomb-approach stompy bent on resolving and powering out single-big threats).

But you've pointed the correct observations: If Affinity/Mud-stompy becomes popular, hate cards will kill the deck easily. I'm not even thinking on how I'm supposed to fight Energy Flux, Kataki, Trygon Predators. This is the reason why I feel Stompy/MUD/Affinity will have their successes in by surprising metagames, but can never establish itself as a consistent top-tier deck. The hate is just too much :/

The recent winning lists are awesome, bomb-approach styles that prey on the weaknesses of the current meta running less pin-point removal and overall slowing down. However, I feel that bomb-approach stompy decks tend to fall into a big problem: being inconsistent when a critical piece is countered/dealt with. It's like Dragon Stompy bursting out an Arc Slogger under a Trinisphere, but once it's removed, the deck starts to spiral and lose due to its inconsistencies. Obviously, such a bomby-approach is great when the metagame isn't prepared, but when decks start preparing themselves, Stompy will fail harder than combo decks when Ad Nauseam is countered.