[Article] Cook's Kitchen: Changing Tempo

[Bryant Cook]

Cook's Kitchen: Changing Tempo

Enjoy?

[TheBirdMan]

Neat article.

[Gheizen64]

Nice article and analysis. At first sight it seems a bit hard to manage your mana with all those BB costs and only 19 lands compared to TA usual of 22/23.
Also i couldn't help but imagine how such a deck would have been with snapcaster red and delver black (and note too feel more black than blue, but whatever). Curse you wotc.

[dahcmai]

Awwww, I thought he was actually going to have a deck using Flash Reaver again for a minute. I used to love that card. It just screams ballsy by playing it at all.

[John Cox]

How are you liking no basics?

[Purgatory]

I like the article, and I love the Grixis Tempo list. I also happen to have the entire thing sans maybe a REB lying around somewhere here, so I think I will sleeve it up and give it a spin! :)

Thanks for writing this up, good work!

[Julian23]

Would definitely love to see an actual tournament report with this baby.

[Koby]

Smother > GFTT/Dismember.

That is all.

[AngryTroll]

I've been running Ubr Dreadstill lately, and I've been sold on not running green for quite a while. Lately I've been tempted to cut Dreadnoughts for Delvers entirely to make the deck more consistent (but less explosive). (-4 Delver of Secrets, +4 Phyrexian Dreadnoughts, -1 flex spot, +1 Trickbind.

I agree with Bryant that Green is unnecessary, and that both red (Grim Lavamancer, Lightning bolt) and black (Dark Confidant or Tombstalker, removal (see below) ) offer more to the deck than green and Tarmogoyf.

I'm on the fence about Go for the Throat vs. Dismember vs. Ghastly Demise to supplement Lightning Bolt. I think that it comes down to a metagame call; if you expect to play against Affinity, you can't run Go for the Throat; if you expect to see Tombstalkers and Dark Confidants, you can't run Ghastly Demise. If you expect to see Knight of the Reliquary, you are better off not running Dismembers. I would take these slots and metagame appropriately, with extra removal in the board.

Either way, I think that Ubr is a better color choice than Urg or Ubg.

[Bryant Cook]

I ran the deck in our Syracuse local tonight and went 5-0 through the swiss beating Dredge, Maverick, Enchantress, RUG, and Bant. Then forced the top 4 playoffs and lost to RUG.

I lost to myself in top four for not being aggressive enough. My opponent mulled to five and my hand was...

Stifle, Wasteland, fetchland, Delver, Hymn, REB, and REB. I decided to play Fetchland, pass. Hoping that I could Blast his first turn cantrip, Delver, or Stifle a fetchland. Instead we sat there while he drew lands and I didn't. I probably should've been more aggressive. Oh well.

[Purgatory]

I ran the deck in our Syracuse local tonight and went 5-0 through the swiss beating Dredge, Maverick, Enchantress, RUG, and Bant. Then forced the top 4 playoffs and lost to RUG.

I lost to myself in top four for not being aggressive enough. My opponent mulled to five and my hand was...

Stifle, Wasteland, fetchland, Delver, Hymn, REB, and REB. I decided to play Fetchland, pass. Hoping that I could Blast his first turn cantrip, Delver, or Stifle a fetchland. Instead we sat there while he drew lands and I didn't. I probably should've been more aggressive. Oh well.

How are your matchups against Maverick and Bant? I take it that KotR is a handful pre-board, of course, but otherwise?

Also, have you tested much against Snapcaster.dec - I found that with TA (where I played 4 Delvers, 4 Goyfs, 3 Tombstalkers) it was really difficult to keep a threat on the table against StPs with flashback. The threat density in this deck is more or less the same as in my TA, with the difference that this doesn't run Ponder to find them, or an additional threats (Jace) in the board.

[catmint]

Interesting Article.

Question is if Terminate is good enough to risk having awkward casting costs.

The best thing green has to offer (at least for BUG) is pernicious deed. Anyway deed is nedded for BUG to beat creature based matchups and is much stronger in BUG control than TA. Question is if bolt & lavamancer make that much difference that the sweeper is not needed.

[Purgatory]

Interesting Article.

Question is if Terminate is good enough to risk having awkward casting costs.

The best thing green has to offer (at least for BUG) is pernicious deed. Anyway deed is nedded for BUG to beat creature based matchups and is much stronger in BUG control than TA. Question is if bolt & lavamancer make that much difference that the sweeper is not needed.

Not that I think it is completely transferrable, but when I played UBr Tempo Faeries with Tombstalkers, Bitterblossom, Vendilion Clique and Spellstutter Sprite over the creature package that this UBr Tempo list has (the rest is rather similar), I used to run the rather awkward removal package of 3 Bolts, 1-2 Smother and 2 Terminate, and Terminate was fine during the months when Reanimator was really popular around here, since all of their creatures ignore both Bolts and Smothers (though Iona still turned off Terminate all the time).

However, KotR is indeed a problem for the deck pre-board, but there are numerous ways for it to deal with her post-board, and the BR casting cost means that it is that much more difficult to flash Terminate back with Snapcaster Mage than Dismember or Smother/GftT would ever be, at least that's what it looks like to me on paper.

Terminate could warrant testing though, but I don't think I will try and cram in a 20th land just to swap out GftT/Dismember.

[thefringthing]

Good article and interesting list. Maybe you should make a thread for Grixis Tempo in the Developmental Decks forum.

[miko]

I came to the same conclusion that this is one of the best tempo decks at the moment. I started to play UBR Stiflenought, but cut Dreadnoughts and Jace.

/ Lands
3 [ON] Polluted Delta
1 [U] Island (2)
3 [B] Underground Sea
4 [B] Volcanic Island
4 [TE] Wasteland
4 [ON] Bloodstained Mire

// Creatures
4 [ISD] Snapcaster Mage
4 [RAV] Dark Confidant
3 [TO] Grim Lavamancer
4 [ISD] Delver of Secrets/Insectile Aberration

// Spells
3 [4E] Lightning Bolt
3 [SC] Stifle
4 [AL] Force of Will
3 [DIS] Spell Snare
3 [NE] Daze
4 [MM] Brainstorm
3 [AP] Fire/Ice
3 [M10] Ponder

I performed pretty well in a local tournament 4-2 and made top 8.

Matchups: 2 x Burn, Stoneblade, Counterbalance/Punishing Controll, Affinity, RUG

I would play 2 Fire/Ice and 4 Lightning Bolts now.

[Bryant Cook]

The problem with your list is that there are only four beaters and zero creatures that can block and live. It really loses the tempo element. Also, black with no Hymn to Tourach? Card is ridiculous.

[lordofthepit]

I came to the same conclusion that this is one of the best tempo decks at the moment. I started to play UBR Stiflenought, but cut Dreadnoughts and Jace.

/ Lands
3 [ON] Polluted Delta
1 [U] Island (2)
3 [B] Underground Sea
4 [B] Volcanic Island
4 [TE] Wasteland
4 [ON] Bloodstained Mire

There is no reason to play Bloodstained Mire over Scalding Tarn in your list.

[Purgatory]

Sleeved up the Grixis Tempo deck and took it for a spin around my local play group today, with some neat results, I like how the deck plays - and the Grixis colours joins together so many cards that I want to play (Lavamancer, Tombstalker, Hymn, Brainstorm - it's almost like cheating).

I didn't think too highly of Mental Note (and even called it Mental Misstep a couple of times) before, I used to run it as a 3-of back in the day when I played Birdshit in Vintage, which was basically a progenitor for the classic UGw Threshold in Legacy. However, today it was simply awesome, T3 Tombstalker against Reanimator, Brainstorm into Mental Note is basically an Ancestral for UU which also feeds your graveyard for Lavamancer etc. I love the card, and I was happy to grab it out of my old binder again.

However, I think the manabase could use some work. For some reason, I was either manaflooded or colorscrewed all day, and I don't know how to fix that - perhaps with more shuffling :P I also hate the Badlands, mulling to six and opening Badlands + 5 spells or Badlands, Wasteland + 4 spells is a nightmare. I think it is a neccessary evil to be able to cast Hymn and Lightning Bolt reliably. I have the same love-hate relationship with non-blue duals in other Tempo decks, like Bayou in TA, for example.

Overall, the deck is a blast, and the board is fine, although I'm thinking about cutting the singleton EE for something like another Submerge, having 1-ofs with only Brainstorm to find them seems clunky. Submerge, by the way, is a total beast, and I don't think I would go below 3, at least not here where KotR decks, Loam decks and Junk still are quite popular.

2 Spell Pierce
3 Submerge
4 Pyroblast (instead of REB in the off-chance that you need to target a land in order to feed a Tombstalker or a Lavamancer)
3 Thoughtseize
3 Surgical Extraction

I think this is what I would sleeve up if I were to go to a tournament today.