[Deck] Team America (Midrange/Control Thread)

[Razorwynd]

There is surprisingly little discussion of baleful strix in this thread. I am just curious what everyone else thinks of the card? After losing to RUG in the top eight of a recent event I have been trying to get 2-3 copies somewhere in the 75, it is infinitely less clunky than snapcaster mage and certainly much better at clogging the board.

[johanessen]

I played UBG this last saturday and went 3-0 in local. The list contained:

4 Jace, The Mind Sculptor
3 Liliana of the Vess
1 Worm Harvest

4 Abrupt Decay
4 Innocent Blood
1 Maelstrom Pulse

4 Force of Will
4 Brainstorm
2 Counterspell
3 Spell Pierce

3 Life from the Loam
4 Mox Diamond

4 Wasteland
1 Creeping Tar Pit
4 Polluted Delta
4 Misty Rainforest
3 Underground Sea
3 Bayou
2 Tropical Island
1 Island
1 Swamp

SB
3 Damping Matrix
2 Pernicious Deed
2 Flusterstorm
2 Duress
4 Delver of Secrets
1 Spell Pierce

[phazonmutant]

I think this deck can't beat a competent goblins player. Not even great, just competent. I've played various builds of BUG control in 2 local tournaments, lost 3 of 3 matches to goblins with 3 Engineered Plagues in the board and a Darkblast. Last night tested a set against goblins pre- and post-board in a build with 3 1-mana removal spells and a Deed maindeck, another Deed and 4 Engineered Plague post. I won 2 of 8 games (one to him keeping a loose one, the other to EPlague into Jace into EPlague). My playtest partner and I went over the plays after each game and couldn't find any areas to improve my play.

Here's some takeaways (some may be obvious, but still important):
- Always use your removal immediately on a Lackey or Instigator. It doesn't matter if you have a Deathrite, Tarmogoyf, or Strix, it's far too easy for them to have Stingscourger, Incinerator, Tarfire, etc. Anecdote: I played a Baleful Strix instead of AD to his empty grip and lone Instigator, vial on 2. He put vial to 3, topdecked Incinerator, drew into Matron, vialed in Matron, Instigatored in Ringleader into Krenko. I was beyond fucked.
- Never keep a hand without the ability to make a play if you get Ported or Wasted twice, get Deathrite bounced, etc. Deathrite, 2 lands is sketchy, but fine if you have Plague, otherwise probably loose.
- EPlague is beatable. I got attacked for 18 on turn 5 with EPlague on the field in a tournament. Chieftain is scary, Krenko is scarier. Every non-budget Goblins build will board Grips.
- Deed and Goyf suck. Deed doesn't play nice with EPlague, Deathrite, etc. They can combo you out if you leave Goyf back to block and give them time or if you send in with him.

I'm trying a build with Shardless, Hymns, and Vision partly to keep up with them on cards and also clog up the ground.

Reporting back on anything based on Caleb's list - Innocent Blood is ok, it helps fix important blind spots, but we just play too many permanents for it to be good. The manlands are particularly good against Miracles and pretty good against men too. But after testing a control build intensively for weeks, I just don't think a controlling deck that can do well in an open meta. It struggles too much with random non-blue decks.

[Koby]

I think this deck can't beat a competent goblins player. Not even great, just competent. I've played various builds of BUG control in 2 local tournaments, lost 3 of 3 matches to goblins with 3 Engineered Plagues in the board and a Darkblast. Last night tested a set against goblins pre- and post-board in a build with 3 1-mana removal spells and a Deed maindeck, another Deed and 4 Engineered Plague post. I won 2 of 8 games (one to him keeping a loose one, the other to EPlague into Jace into EPlague). My playtest partner and I went over the plays after each game and couldn't find any areas to improve my play.

This is the same conclusion I came to during my run with the deck a month ago. All they need to resolve is Vial or play Caverns and all the spot removal in the world won't help you after that. EE helps to smooth out some of the removal, but that hasn't been adopted readily enough.

[learntolove6]

So I decided at my local event tonight to do something different. I have been playing Stoneblade for a long time now and I thought I might as well change it up for the last event of the year. So I borrowed some cards from my girlfriend and threw together this abomination:

4 Deathrite Shaman
2 Snapcaster Mage
3 Jace, TMS
2 Liliana of the Veil
3 Abrupt Decay
2 Life from the Loam
1 Sensei's Diving Top
4 Brainstorm
4 Innocent Blood
3 Lingering Souls
3 FoW
2 Spell Pierce
1 Counterspell
2 Inquisition of Kozilek
2 Thoughtseize

2 Mishra's Factory
1 Creeping Tar Pit
2 Wasteland
1 Tundra
1 Bayou
2 Underground Sea
2 Tropical Island
7 Fetchlands
2 Island
1 Swamp
1 Forest


So this is essentially reminiscent of BUG Control about 6 months ago as opposed to a more recent list. The idea was that with 1 Tundra and Deathrite Shaman/Life from the Loam casting Lingering Souls would be very easy and it would give a huge boost to the control MU, as well as aggro. The goal was to kill them with Jace or manlands. I ended up going 2-1 playing against:
Maverick: 2-1
Jund ScapeWish: 2-1
Dredge: 1-2

Everything essentially played out as planned. Lingering Souls was insane and was never a problem to cast. Loaming back manlands or wasteland felt really good and then you just protect your Jace long enough to get there. As an aside, I do not own Tarmogoyfs (as I have never needed to), but I don't think this list wants them anyway. I am never the beatdown (although they would be worth testing). Things I noted after the day was done:
-The list definitely wanted 3 Lilianas. She was only bad versus Dredge.
-Pernicious Deed should definitely be in the sideboard.
-With Deathrite and Loam, 1 less land seems reasonable.
-1 Vendilion Clique would be a great inclusion in the MD

So clearly the list needs more testing, as I just threw it together today, but I think i'm gonna pick up the few cards I borrowed and seriously work on this list. I just wanted to post it to get some opinions on how the deck looks.

[jeanbathez]

Still brainstorming about the deck, i also realized that decks like goblins and lingering souls can be a problem for us, so i thought about handling tokens or playing also tokens...

What about bitterblossom, and perhaps sprites, could that work and included in our list, what do you think ?

[bartmanqc]

If you're going to splash white for lingering souls, you should replace the innocents blood with swords to plowshares

[godofallu]

There is surprisingly little discussion of baleful strix in this thread. I am just curious what everyone else thinks of the card? After losing to RUG in the top eight of a recent event I have been trying to get 2-3 copies somewhere in the 75, it is infinitely less clunky than snapcaster mage and certainly much better at clogging the board.

I disagree. The thing is Snapcaster can be a removal spell and a beater/blocker against aggro or midranged. Which is basically what strix tries to do.

But against combo Snapcaster can be a discard spell plus a beater. Which is what strix could never do.

So the thing is Snapcaster is good in every matchup. While strix is only good in some of the matchups. Plus sometimes you need a creature dead and they just use a removal spell on strix. That doesn't happen with Snapcaster + removal.

If you had an artifact theme of some kind I could see it. But without that it's a sideboard card at best.

[Razorwynd]

I disagree. The thing is Snapcaster can be a removal spell and a beater/blocker against aggro or midranged. Which is basically what strix tries to do.

Sure, except that snapcaster + abrupt decay isn't really an option until turn four (at the earliest) and still doesn't take care of creatures like nimble mongoose or tombstalker. The difference between UB and UGB1 against RUG is insane.

I am not advocating against snapcaster mage but rather for baleful strix. The two are certainly not mutually exclusive.

[catmint]

I posted some thoughts about the most important creatures and their strenghts here:
http://www.mtgthesource.com/forums/s...ful#post690089

For me Snapcaster Mage is pretty nailed as a 2-4 of due to its versatility as mentioned and overall much better than Strix. Strix is a flex slot for me (not competing with snapcaster) and a good choice if you expect a lot of RUG and a lesser extend maverick/goblins,.... Especially against RUG you get "unconditional value" once she resolves. Stalling for 1-2 turns and eating a bolt is all what you hope for when you don't want to get the bolt to the face or want your deathrite to live. She is also not an attractive submerge target. Against matchups where strix is bad you cylce for a 1/1 flying/deathtouch. Can think of worse. The important thing is: I would not go lower than 5 slots for spot removal but strix and liliana can fill-up the deck with board control while still beeing playable in other matchups while "pure" board control slots might make the deck worse against the field.

___
Concerning Goblins: Don't know why some of you feel the matchups is so bad. I won my last couple of games and had pretty good testing vs. decent opponents. As I wrote before it is all about getting ahead in tempo/board state/life total to finish them off in time. You should not seek for the big "ultra-lock you out" win. Here some general advice:
- 0 counters post-board
- You have to of course handle lackey - kill if possible and dont rely on a block.
- Kill vial before it goes to 3 as long as it matters (has hand cards or little mana) - if not: have to consider it in every move!
- Usually ignore piledriver (let him live)
- Value discard highly for matron & ringleader
- Kill haste-lords (on sight) or at least before they can get krenko or kiki shit going
- play tarmgoyf early and go to the offense
- Vendilion clique is good hand control & beating in the air
- Dark Confidant & Sylvan Library are often better than Jace but I usually keep 1 jace in.
- deed is bad, Plague good altough obviously not an auto win due to lords and piledrivers surviving (but i never play with it)

[learntolove6]

If you're going to splash white for lingering souls, you should replace the innocents blood with swords to plowshares

yeah i think that you're right. innocent blood wasn't the best yesterday when it could have been a plow

[catmint]

As I wrote I was thinking about the curve and the mana requirements and I was on a much more conservative route than others. For a while I tried to up my curve playing 7 3 drops (3 snapcaster, 2 clique, 2 liliana) and it worked out "ok". Needing UU and BB made playing basics and/or situations where shaman is killed a bit awkward though. What I did now was cutting the weakest card in my list so far: "Spell Pierce" which is pretty situational since tapping out is very common and I only played it to respect Jace and Show&Tell. And I added 2 Ponder which is obv. not only the best mana-fixer but my keeps and draws are much smoother now. I also cut 1 FoW to make space so the combo matchups is surely weaker. Since I usually win against combo and the sideboard has a lot more counterspells I feel ok though.

Here my current list:

23 lands

3 Wasteland
4 Underground Sea
2 Bayou
2 Tropical Island
4 Polluted Delta
4 Misty Rainforest
1 Verdant Catacombs
1 Island
1 Swamp
1 Forest

Creatures
4 Deathrite Shaman
3 Tarmogoyf
3 Snapcaster Mage
2 Vendilion Clique
2 Baleful Strix

Removal
2 Disfigure
3 Abrupt Decay

Discard & Counter
2 Thoughtseize
2 Inquisition of Kozilek
3 Force of Will

Planeswalkers
2 Liliana of the Veil
3 Jace, the Mind Sculptor

Cantrip
4 Brainstorm
2 Ponder

Sideboard
1 Abrupt Decay
2 Ghastly Demise
1 Maelstrom Pulse
1 Engineered Explosives
3 Dark Confidant
1 Sylvan Library
2 Counterspell
3 Spell Pierce
1 Force of Will


Still a lot of flex spots obviously in SB and MD a SB hoping not to face dredge. :)
But I like the route of playing BUG goodstuff and only play countermagic where necessary (combo & jace decks,..). Force of Will ist still the best counter. Loosing a card is so often much less important than stopping/protection in a critical turn.

[Water_Wizard]

catmint - nice list - it looks well-balanced and considerably tested

which match-ups are you bringing in Dark Confidant? What are you boarding out?

Thank you!

[catmint]

Thank you - the list is optimized for the the tough creature matchups RUG (still DTB#1) Goblins & Maverick running a lot of board control and the 2 cliques are there to support the combo & control matchup.

Concerning confidant: he usually replaces Goyf
Against combo goyf usually only beats for 1 damage more than confidant, so with the extra draw confidant is way better in that matchup imo. In some combo matchups (TES, Belcher) jace is bad so confidant can replace jace instead. Also clock has never been my problem with clique and a lavamancing birds of paradise. :)

Versus Stoneblade Goyf is stronger than vs. Miracles, so I sometimes leave in 1 random Goyf but in general in these matchups I don't want to play a 2 drop creature which they can ignore for a while and handle with Batterskull, snapcaster-swords or Terminus. Also since UW tends to kill deathrite asap confidant is the best turn 2 play.

Versus Maverick Goyf is outright bad and confidant very good. Competent Maverick players will switch gears from slow grindy to beat your f*** face if they expect confidant, so there is never an autowin against this deck. :)

Against Goblins I side out Force of Will & Jace (red-blast & a million haste creatures), so with the lower curve confidant replaces jace nicely (altough I usually leave 1 random jace in again ...lol). Also I try to play this matchup in a way that I am the aggressor seeking for the tempo advantage (better board position) so the impact of liliana & confidant is as big as possible.

Vs. Bug control or something like POX I like Confidant over Force of Will.


The reason why I did not play confidant maindeck is:
1) I choose Baleful Strix & Clique over it since the value you get out of those one is more "assured".
2) I don't like to run confidant against an open field. Especially because I still expect a lot of Canadian, BUG tempo and to a lesser extend Burn, UR Burn where confidant is pretty bad.

But writing this I realize that I bring in confidant a lot, so I might try to play the 3 confidant maindeck with all the counterspells (including FoW) in the sideboard. However it is a bit odd if you have to pay mana for every single spell which makes me feel exposed in the critical turns :)

[Water_Wizard]

Thanks for the awesome analysis!

It seem that there is a trend away from maindeck countermagic as of late - I think it is only a matter of time before combo picks up again if this trend continues.

Personally, I'm relying upon discard and conditional countermagic with additional counters (including FOW) in the side. I'm debated cutting FOW all together.

[jarvisyu]

Played the side event on day 2 of GP Indy after playing sort of loose in the sealed event.

Went 4-1-1 then lost R1 of top 8 to a friend of mine playing RUG.


3 Polluted Delta
3 Misty Rainforest
3 Verdant catacombs
4 Underground Sea
3 Bayou
1 Tropical Island
1 Creeping Tar Pit
1 Island
1 Swamp
3 Wasteland

//25
4 Brainstorm
4 Ancestral Vision
4 Thoughtseize
2 Hymn to Tourach
3 Jace, the Mind Sculptor
1 Dismember
4 Abrupt Decay
2 Liliana of the Veil
1 Life from the Loam

//12
4 Tarmogoyf
4 Shardless Agent
4 Deathrite Shaman

Sideboard
2 Nihil Spellbomb
1 Misdirection
4 Force of Will
1 Maelstrom Pulse
1 Jace, the Mind Sculptor
2 Umezawa's Jitte
3 Engineered Plague
1 Darkblast

R1: Win vs metalworker-forgemaster (2-1)
R2: Win vs blue-affinity (masters/thoughtcast, sideboarded etched champion) (2-1) (I managed to win g1 and lost g2 to 3 etched champions in a row, if you're worried about etched champion a lot, you can plague Soldier twice to kill them)
R3: Win vs goblins (2-1) (Again, managed to win g1 somehow after he flooded out, g2 mulled to 5 and was still in it to draw an E. Plague to stabilize, g3, plagued him on t3, then got locked down under 3 ports for a while until i finally drew some lands to loam back other lands and cast a second plague).
R4: Loss to TES (Ari Lax) (0-2). Yeah ok, sb fow is a joke here :P
R5: Win over Esper Stoneforge (Matt Hoey) (2-1). Very interesting games. He therapied me in game 2 for Liliana when it should have been mostly clear that it is no longer in my deck because of Lingering Souls.
R6: Draw with Scott Barrentine (Merfolk). Scott Barrentine once beat me in the 10-0 backet of GP Denver (Lorwyn Block Constructed) as Merfolk.
R1 of T8: Loss to RUG (Andrew Shrout). This guy plays a lot of MTGO so he's pretty solid, although he's not that familiar with Legacy. Mostly he didn't know that you shouldn't play a lot of lands out as RUG (although it's less true in this matchup because of Wasteland). I lost 0-2, but I think the matchup is still more than fine. Sylvan Library did me in both times iirc.

[jarvisyu]

It was also a really good t8:

(scott barrentine, gerry, ari lax, matt hoey, myself, alex binek, andrew shrout (aka JohnnyHotSauce and MOCS winner), and some charbelcher player (don't remember his name))

[Water_Wizard]

I originally posted this in the Team America (Aggro/Tempo Thread), but it probably belongs here. Your comment regarding the sb FOW made we want to port it over for further discussion

Here's the list Reid Duke used to win the SCG Invitational: http://www.thecouncil.es/tcdecks/dec...3&iddeck=71582

He goes Delver-less and with a higher Planeswalker count. My only complaint about this list is that it cannot support FOW in the sideboard. Reid's list runs 11 U cards (1 Clique, 4 Brainstorm, 2 Ponder, 3 Jace, 1 Daze) with 3 FOW, 1 Jace, and 1 V. Clique in the board.

If I want FOW, I usually don't want Jace (at least not on the draw). Therefore, you are cutting your U count to 12 cards (3 FOW, 2 Clique, 4 Brainstorm, 2 Ponder, 1 Daze) - This is not enough to support FOW! I'm curious to hear Reid's take on this. Maybe Reid left his Jaces in to up the U count to 16, but do you really want to tap out on turn 3 or 4 to cast Jace vs. a Combo deck? My thought is that Reid didn't face much combo all day, so it wasn't an issue. I built this deck last night, realized Reid's error pretty quickly, and replaced these slots with Flusterstorms. I'm still not sold on Flusterstorm. Perhaps, Spell Pierce? There really aren't too many good answers unless we up the main-deck U count.

...

R4: Loss to TES (Ari Lax) (0-2). Yeah ok, sb fow is a joke here :P

...

I agree because the U count just isn't high enough to support FOW. You are running Shardless, which gives you a respectable U count. V. Clique would also help out.

With Reid's list, the only thing I can figure is that he leaves his Jace's in and taps out when he hits 4 mana to play them and +0/+2 (depending upon the situation) and just totally does not bluff the 1-mana counterspells (Spell Pierce, Flusterstorm, etc.) Leaving Jace in is the only way his U count remains high enough to utilize FOW.

Your build runs max 21 U cards. Not sure Misdirection is worth it against Storm (maybe aimed at their discard? In any case, it only achieves parity and is useless vs. Duress and near useless vs. Cabal Therapy (unless they name Brainstorm or another shared card in the early game).)

I'm curious as to your thoughts on those FOW slots. Flusterstorm? Spell Pierce? Duress? Cabal Therapy? Hymn to Tourach? Mindbreak Trap? Inquisition of Kozilek? Daze might even be an option here...

I feel like MBT is best in non-U decks (surprise factor).

Maybe even a card like Null Rod goes a long way in this match-up? I doubt they bring in Abrupt Decay. If we go heavy discard, it lets us lean on Liliana (Liliana + holding counters in hand = no good :) .)

Happy Holidays!

EDIT: Thanks Julian (below)!

[Julian23]

If you wait for your opponent to name a card with Cabal Therapy before trying to Misdirect it, you're gonna be in for a surprise...

[jarvisyu]

Misdirection isn't for Cabal Therapy or Storm. It's for Shardless mirrors mostly.

The U count isn't the issue for FOW. My comment was more due to the fact that the lack of md FOW means g1 is an autoloss pretty much.