Ponder is specially great with probe. You can see what your opponent is up to and search for the cards you need. Brainstorm is also great at this, but with ponder if you dont find it in the first 3 cards you can just shuffle your deck and search for the 4th card. Also, if you don't have fetchlands to shuffle after brainstorm and you dont find what you need, well, that really sucks!
It's great in T1 when you need to find lands (IE a hand with only 1 volcanic island, extremely dangerous keep against decks with wasteland if you dont have ponder), or when you need to find action, or specially when you are facing combo and need extra protection. I think ponder is waaaaaay more important than chain lightning.
In the late game, if you are depending on the topdeck to find something, drawing a ponder is the same as 4 chances to find what you need. It's just that good.
I agree with the numbers, but I would probably trim SCM down to 3 since there will also be TC in the new lists. However, I think you are mistaken about D&T. They have a ton of non-basics and PoP / Snap-Pop is actually a high value play against them. Between Karakas, Port, and some versions running Horizon Canopy or Mishra's Factory you can easily get them for 4 damage. This will be important against Brimaz or Jitte encounters. I agree with PoP #3 in the sideboard against decks like Jund or Delver.
I would play the hell out of this list, but I would not play less than 4 Probe. Probe + Monastary Swiftspear + TC is too much synergy and gets you deeper into your deck to find the finishing burn.2 Mountain
3 Island
3 Volcanic Island
4 Scalding Tarn
4 Misty Rainforest
2 Arid Mesa
3 Treasure Cruise
4 Goblin guide / Monestary Swiftspear
3 Snapcaster Mage
4 Delver of Secrets
4 Ponder
4 Brainstorm
4 Gitaxian Probe
2 Spell Pierce
4 Force of Will
2 Price of Progress
4 Chain Lightning
4 Lightning Bolt
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Is there any damn point of not running Goblin Guide alongside Swiftspear and cut the damn Snapcasters?
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Yes, one is a utility creature and the other is an aggro creature. If I cut snapcaster for anything it'll be for young pyromancer. Which is pretty much what everyone is doing at this point. Running swiftspear and pyro it's insanely strong.
Also, "damn snapcasters?" That card is so good, it's like a two mana blowjob. You cast it, then you remove a blocker and then next turn you have a 2/1 beater! And don't be fooled, snapcaster beats get there. I've won many a game as RWU delver (jeskai? Still sounds weird to me) by flashing back two removal spells and just killing them with two 2/1s. (This was back when jeskai ran geist and snapcaster, I haven't played the deck in a while and it's totally different now.)
BUT WAHT IF WE CAN SNAP/TREASURE CRUISE!?!?!?one?
Snap to help us get the last bolt or price to finish the job is VERY tempting. I agree that it may not work, but I haven't seen any evidence either way. I want to test with 2 snaps. If they are garbage with TC, then I would try cutting them and put a mixture of Swiftspear/GG in their place.
Still early in testing with these cards. let's just see how it works out.
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Find me on MTGO as Koby or rukcus -- @MTGKoby on Twitter
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Defining swiftspear an utility creature is wrong. It is an aggro creature exactly like goblin guide, except that in this deck is a lot better than guide.... But running the full 8x doesn't seem an heresy to me.
"Which is pretty much what everyone is doing at this point" ... is this supposed to be an argument? Snapcaster is a 3cc card if you argue with the flashback and all that in a deck with only 16-18 lands atm. I don't see why this 3-mana-durdling is better than going staight up aggro if you are already streamlining the list towards blitz-aggro with that much burn spells like proposed in some posts
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So... I'm still working on my article for CFB, hopefully it will be out next week.
Just wanted to clarify a few things.
1. Monastery Swiftspear shall be henceforth called Taylor Swiftspear
2. My name for the deck is Viking Funeral. You have a bunch of humans, they go on a boat ride, and then they light themselves on fire and throw themselves at your opponent.
3. Another alternative name for the deck could be Zoo. Not sure if that's trademarked or anything, but yes, if you look closely, I pretty much just played Zoo to its first Legacy Open win in a long time. Every creature is in there purely for damage output. Sure, my Zoo deck had Ancestral Recall and FoW, but we Legacy players don't give a damn about splitting hairs now do we?
I think there are two disparate builds emerging.
The older, UR Burn style that plays SCM to stretch the key spells (Bolts, Brainstorm, Ponder mainly).
Newer UR Tempo style that run Pyromancer and Daze, lesser reliance on Bolts (not 8).
Bob demonstrated the latter is quite effective with Treasure Cruise. We're making updates to the UR Burn list. Whichever creature suite is found to be best requires testing. I think that SCM is still acceptable, as having a guaranteed Regrow + spell is slightly better than "draw 3 random cards". I'm not sure if it's a matter of '11% better in these cases' but more of 'I really need this effect with my mana and spells, and chancing on hitting with a draw spell is not ideal'.
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* Maverick is dead. Long live Maverick!
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I don't think snaps is better or worse than cruise, I think it's different. It would be like comparing dark ritual to lightning bolt, they do completely different things so why bother. Plus they're not competing for a slot; snapcaster is a threat and cruise is a draw spell. Doesn't matter how many cards you draw if you don't have any threats to draw.
Again, I think the sweet spot for threats is between 12 and 14 depending on your build.
Man, I really think they are competing for the slot. I mean, you may even try not to delve key spells for snapcaster, but it's hard to do if you dont want to hold back your spells from casting. You may have to wait 1-2 turns until you play TC without delving spells you want to flash back.
There may have a split of TC/SCM, but it really can't be 4/4 IMO. And as there were 4 or at least 3 SCM in most UR Burn lists, I think they are competing with the same slot. I agree that they are different in their accomplishments (but still both are UR's choise for card advantage), the question is: which direction they take the deck to, which of them is more effective in each meta, and if there will have to be any changes on the other 56 cards of the deck to fit them in the way each player want to.
Same random thoughts I had when playing the deck (Bobs MD):
- Cantripping into more cantrips is really, really good in this deck. Between Swiftspears, Pyromancer and a full set of Cruises the payoff for Pondering into Ponder is very high.
- Forked Bolt instead of more Chain Lightning seems really weird
- Countering Counterbalance is priority #1
- Treasure Cruise allows you to outgrind basically any fair deck besides miracles, so you sometimes have to switch playstyle
- Tarmogoyf without Golgari Charm is rarely a problem, the combination should be annoying though. You really can't afford to be behind against Goyf decks, luckily the best of those has abrupt decay, which is really slow
- I often felt like a 11th Fetchland would benefit my hands to get another shuffle/volcanic. The deck is basically wasteland proof the on the play because your opponent can't afford the tempo disadvantage
- Your sideboard artifact removal needs to be instant (Batterskull) and able to kill Chalice
- Sideboard Needle/Meddling Mages are much better in this deck than others bc of the set of Probes
- Submerge seems bonkers
- You sometimes get value out of dazing your own spells to create a token/pump swiftspear
I don't think that the whole eot-snapcaster-flashback-bolt-hope-opponent-doesn't-run-daze-or-drs runs well alongside Swiftspear and I don't buy the tool-box argument if Snapcaster is flashing back Lightning Bolts in 70%+ of cases. Unless you are playing against SFM, you'd likely benefit more from running something like Guide, PoP, etc. than SCM imo.
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Yesterday my set of KTK got delivered along with them SwiftCruise cards so i slammed the deck together and play it at my friends magic night. Sideboard was a bunch of crap, but i was on time pressure so i thought it up to fast.
List:
4 Monastery Swiftspear
4 Young Pyromancer
4 Delver of Secrets
4 Lightning Bolt
4 Chain Lightning
4 Brainstorm
4 Ponder
4 Treasure Cruise
4 Gitaxian Probe
4 Force of Will
4 Daze
2 Mountain
2 Island
3 Volcanic Island
2 Bloodstained Mire
3 Polluted Delta
4 Scalding Tarn
Sideboard
2 Flusterstorm
2 Pyroblast
2 Grim Lavamancer
2 Surgical Extraction
2 Spell Pierce
2 Smash to Smithereens
3 Divert
I must say that this deck is fast and has a lot of cool small interactions to play.
Rounds is played:
WizardsControl: 2-0
Reanimate: 1-2
Dredge: 2-0
DnT: 2-1
Just some thoughts:
-i really liked the mana base. 16 is on the low side and can be tricky, but knowing what lands to get first is really important. It never got mana screwed out of the game and being Wasteland proof is solid. The deck fully functions on 1 Island and 1 Mountain.
-8 Bolt effects was really good. Having to use a bolt on creatures always hurt me, but with all the draw effect i could just draw into more to burn the face.
-at some point against Dredge i really wished that Chain was a Forked Bolt, but other then that 3 damage feels better.
-The creatures are solid and sooo synergetic. It was awesome. Swiftspear was 2/3 nearly every turn and i was able to add a token also every turn. That alone was getting to much for my opponent to take.
-Midgame chaining cantrips into bolts was awesome.
-1 game against DnT i was able to cast a total of 3 Treasure Cruises in that game of of 1 blue mana.
-1 game i got 2 cruises doing nothing, but got 2 flipped delvers against DnT and on themselves won that game, and those delver wher the only thing casted to, lol.
-Reanimate was really hard, i am not sure what to do against it. The best thing was opening with a delver, brainstorm flip it next turn and disrupt everything else. And opponents EoT bolting to speed up the clock. Chains are really crap here.
-Mainboard felt really solid. i aint gonna change it.
-sideboard: Divert gets the axe, but not sure for what pyrokinesis?. The rest was really solid tho. Smash to Smithereens on your Batterskull is nice.
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