Adapting to Griselbrand-Show and Tell Decks

[Esper3k]

Haha, didn't realize the new guy (Shardless Agent) was an artifact creature. I should really learn to think before posting.

I thought it was a really nice addition to Hypergenesis, but Canonist is still really amazing against them.

[Worldslayer]

so Thresh is best deck against Sneak attack?

Thresh is the least bad deck against sneak attack. Saying Thresh can beat something if it wants to (read: is constructed to) and draws right is kind of like saying that you get wet when you go swimming: that's kind of the whole premise behind it.



Back to the original post: what's stopping them is that they're a linear combo deck: if their pieces get out of order then they die. If they go up against another deck from comboland and (lose the die roll / draw wrong / the other deck is faster or better) they die. If someone knows of their existence and decided they wanted to beat them, they die. They're on the outside looking in metagame-wise: while the core of Legacy's metagame is defined by people playing decks that can beat anything if they want to, things like SnT and Dredge can beat EVERYTHING, but only if nobody wanted to beat them. It's a big giant "roll the dice" scenario, and one im fond of. Pick a deck like this and you're going in saying "if I hit this match and this, and this, and avoid that, then I win. If I don't, I probably lose. There's very little one of us can do about it in either case".

[ThomasDowd]

Pretty sure most of the time the problem is the functional yawgmoth's bargain(banned) they reprinted, whcih is also a threat on its own that can end the game, and gains you the life back that you paid. before griselbrand, no one cared and dismissed sneak show as an inconsistent tier 1.5 at best combo deck. they just couldn't have enough protection or, they would blow their load on a sneaked in emrakul and have to find the second one before their opponent stabilized. they just had a hard time assembling enough threats to end the game, now they can refill on demand and then just kill you the next turn.


other than that if you want to fight it with countermagic you need at least two (ideally hard) counters since most of the time the sneak show decks will go off with minimum one piece of protection and if they are smart, being able to pay for your spell pierce. oh did i mention their protection is pretty much all free?

discard is probably ok. since they kind of need a somewhat critical mass of cards.

gilded drake/sower are pretty bad against griselbrand since they can just repsond to the trigger with an activation, and will probably justlegend rule your copy the next turn. and those only answer show and tell.

pithing needle is probably good since it comes down on the first few turns and you can name griselbrand/ sneak attack and it also has applications in other matchups. but i still think it does not do enough.

whoever decided to unleash yawgmoth's bargain back into the world and it would be safe was not thinking it all the way through for eternal formats.

but hey the casual market is what wizards primarily cares about these days since thats how they make their money and man oh man is griselbrand a good demon.

agree with koby on being able to play spell pierce right now since the format is very spell heavy

also the deck can be clunky and you lose to variance a lot, but hey, welcome to magic.

[edgarps22]

Pretty sure most of the time the problem is the functional yawgmoth's bargain(banned) they reprinted, whcih is also a threat on its own that can end the game, and gains you the life back that you paid. before griselbrand, no one cared and dismissed sneak show as an inconsistent tier 1.5 at best combo deck. they just couldn't have enough protection or, they would blow their load on a sneaked in emrakul and have to find the second one before their opponent stabilized. they just had a hard time assembling enough threats to end the game, now they can refill on demand and then just kill you the next turn.


other than that if you want to fight it with countermagic you need at least two (ideally hard) counters since most of the time the sneak show decks will go off with minimum one piece of protection and if they are smart, being able to pay for your spell pierce. oh did i mention their protection is pretty much all free?

discard is probably ok. since they kind of need a somewhat critical mass of cards.

gilded drake/sower are pretty bad against griselbrand since they can just repsond to the trigger with an activation, and will probably justlegend rule your copy the next turn. and those only answer show and tell.

pithing needle is probably good since it comes down on the first few turns and you can name griselbrand/ sneak attack and it also has applications in other matchups. but i still think it does not do enough.

whoever decided to unleash yawgmoth's bargain back into the world and it would be safe was not thinking it all the way through for eternal formats.

but hey the casual market is what wizards primarily cares about these days since thats how they make their money and man oh man is griselbrand a good demon.

agree with koby on being able to play spell pierce right now since the format is very spell heavy

also the deck can be clunky and you lose to variance a lot, but hey, welcome to magic.

The thing is He really isn't Bargain. If you have any experience with Bargain you would understand that 7 life chunks is VASTLY inferior to 1 life at a time. I can stop at 3 life and kill you with bargain, if I don't hit what I need in the first 2 chunks, or if dear god they dropped Sower/Drake, or they have burn to finish, removal etc, Griselbrand has a hard time being awesome. This is very evident against Maverick and RUG Delver. If your opponent has Drake or Sower, wow that can be a blowout. Yeah you might get your draws, but so do they, and they get to swing with him ... WOW that is a big shift. Chances are you will hit another piece or two, they will hit removal and enough protection to stop you from doing anything.

Bargain basically means instant win, Griselbrand there are answers for, and Sower/Drake might be some extremely good ones to start packing now that I really think about how that would work out, as a S&T player do you really want to give Grisel to a RUG player?

[Zinch]

gilded drake/sower are pretty bad against griselbrand since they can just repsond to the trigger with an activation, and will probably justlegend rule your copy the next turn. and those only answer show and tell.

I don't agree with this at all.

Ok, they can draw 7 in response (14 will put them on a high high risk of dying next turn), but you can do the same and you then still have griselbrand in play. If you have Gilded drake/sower in your deck, chances are you are playing blue... you should draw some counterspells on those 14 cards...

This doesn't solve neither sneak attack nor the fact that you are using blue to solve the S&T issue, however...

[Telperion]

Did some testing with Eric Fry's Metalworker list and it is quite favored versus Sneak Attack:
http://sales.starcitygames.com//deck...p?DeckID=46654
This deck was beautifully metagamed, and has a ton of complete blow out spells. Take note of the 3 Ensnaring Bridge, 4 Phyrexian Revoker, and 3 Duplicants. It's a shame he had such a terrible draw in the finals.

Makes me wonder if one of the better avenues for the aggro decks is to play more acceleration. Is it time for moxes/spirit guides in mainstream builds? Have we gotten too comfortable in one land per turn, let's trade one for one mode?

[edgarps22]

His bad draws are the reason i played a UR version of the deck for the longest time. Welder and Fact or Fiction was extremely good at making it more consistent, but I do like how it is built. Duplicant is very powerful, and if you have an active welder, it just gets silly. I ran a more Staxish version, with Wires and Winter Orbs etc, a more aggro version could be better today for sure.

[Koby]

His bad draws are the reason i played a UR version of the deck for the longest time. Welder and Fact or Fiction was extremely good at making it more consistent, but I do like how it is built. Duplicant is very powerful, and if you have an active welder, it just gets silly. I ran a more Staxish version, with Wires and Winter Orbs etc, a more aggro version could be better today for sure.

I would even recommend Forbidden Alchemy for being Sol-land castable while giving you the flexibility to take what you want and setting up Welder shenanigans.

[Telperion]

Does anyone have any good statistics on the effectiveness of stifle? Anecdotally, I see a lot of blow outs on videos/reports of fetches getting stifled, ponder getting dazed, waste your lone sol land etc. I don't know if people actually get to live the dream that often (stifle Griselbrand/annihilator), but I do know that RUG's soft counters often buy it an extra turn against Sneak Attack hands.

[Tacosnape]

Mana Maze doesn't do enough compared to just Chalice of the Void for 0. Here's why Mana Maze will backfire on you.

1. If you have Mana Maze out, and your opponent plays Show and Tell, you can't counter it.

2. If your opponent plays Violent Outburst and is holding a Force of Will, they can respond to their own Violent Outburst with Force. This will not only keep the Cascade trigger going, it will again shut you off of your ability to counter the spell.

If you want to stop Hypergenesis, play Meddling Mage or Chalice of the Void. Or a ton of countermagic. Cards like Thalia and Canonist are still okay, but not the firm stop that these other cards are.

You also have to be aware how insanely regularly Hypergenesis now goes off on turn 2. Better manabases = less durdling = less time for you to get a CMC 2 hatebear down.

Maverick players ought to start looking at Mox Diamond for turn one Thalias at this point.

[KevinTrudeau]

2. If your opponent plays Violent Outburst and is holding a Force of Will, they can respond to their own Violent Outburst with Force. This will not only keep the Cascade trigger going, it will again shut you off of your ability to counter the spell.

Minor nitpick (if I'm not mistaken)— you need two Forces or a Force and a Misdirection for this to work against non-Stifle countermagic. Outburst gets cast; cascade triggers. In order for the Hypergenesis that cascade will fetch up and attempt to cast to resolve, you must cast a nongreen spell, so you Force the Outburst (this prevents Stifle from affecting thangs). Cascade resolves; you cast Hypergenesis. Unless you have another castable blue spell in hand to proactively "counter" other forms of countermagic before passing priority (the second Force or a Misdirection targeting the Force already on the stack), the opponent can just cast a basically uncounterable counterspell targeting Hypergenesis.

Another card Maverick players can run (a card I've been playing as a two-of for quite some time in my Maverick list) that has applications against the card Hypergenesis is Orim's Chant/Silence.

[Koby]

Maverick players ought to start looking at Mox Diamond for turn one Thalias at this point.

I would consider Elvish Spirit Guide before Mox Diamond; especially in Fauna Shaman builds.

[Worldslayer]

This doesn't solve...the fact that you are using blue to solve the S&T issue, however...

Show and tell is a combo card, in a combo deck. In ThomasDowd's post a few above this one, you can summarize the whole thing with:

When [the combo deck] resolves its [key card/engine] it [will probably kill you more often than not]. You want [some number of counterspells, hard counters are more effective]. They will [usually have at least one piece of disruption, most likely cheap or free].

Discard is less effective than counterspells, but still effective, because they need [several pieces and/or a critical mass of cards] to [play effectively / kill you].

There are [a host of other playable cards] with [niche uses in the matchup] that are [less effective than counterspells and / or discard].

[Combo decks are unfair].

[Combo decks will occasionally collapse upon themselves thanks to variance], but hey, welcome to [combo].

I'm not really sure what anyone wants, here. It's a combo deck, and outside of the freak Belcher top 8 SnT combo is the only one still placing at all regularly now that RUG has effectively hated storm away forever. As a combo deck, it dies to cheap or free disruption and a clock. Your g/w maverick-esque deck is a dog to it because it's supposed to be a dog to it. That's the price you pay for having a much better matchup vs. Tempo. If you were better against the fair decks than tempo, and better against the unfair decks too, then there isn't a reason to play tempo because you've got more bases covered. Blue fights broken. Other colors fight blue and/or fair. If you want to beat combo play blue, black, or both. If you want to beat THOSE guys, don't, but then you have a bad combo matchup. What's hard about this?

[Koby]

What's hard about this?

Finding 75 cards that beat everything. The obvious solution is play 240 and play everything.

[Arianrhod]

Or rather finding 75 cards that are at least competitive against everything.

Also, I still say that a lot of the complaining accompanying Sneak/Show is the psychology -- it's an absolutely atrocious deck to lose to, and it doesn't usually even feel good to beat it.

[Worldslayer]

Finding 75 cards that beat everything. The obvious solution is play 240 and play everything.

The best example of "if you draw the right half of your deck, you win" ever. Except maybe it's the right quarter, here.

"Alright. So he's on show and tell. If I can pull the counters from the RUG 60, it'll buy time for Knight of the Reliquary to come down and get karakas. Unless I have my lim dul's vault, in which case ill knight for mosswort bridge, vault, hide emrakul then put in dreadnaught when he show and tells, blank his emrakul plan and take a time walk. I can use my enlightened tutor to go find battle of wits, then I just win."

Besides, if you want to beat "everything", you're either playing a degenerate, bannable combo deck (see: long.dec, hulk flash in vintage) or you managed to pick a combo deck the field wasn't ready for (read: forgot about) and they couldn't stop your cheatyface rampage.

Honestly the four deck mashup sounds like a blast.

[Koby]

The best example of "if you draw the right half of your deck, you win" ever. Except maybe it's the right quarter, here.

"Alright. So he's on show and tell. If I can pull the counters from the RUG 60, it'll buy time for Knight of the Reliquary to come down and get karakas. Unless I have my lim dul's vault, in which case ill knight for mosswort bridge, vault, hide emrakul then put in dreadnaught when he show and tells, blank his emrakul plan and take a time walk. I can use my enlightened tutor to go find battle of wits, then I just win."

Besides, if you want to beat "everything", you're either playing a degenerate, bannable combo deck (see: long.dec, hulk flash in vintage) or you managed to pick a combo deck the field wasn't ready for (read: forgot about) and they couldn't stop your cheatyface rampage.

Honestly the four deck mashup sounds like a blast.

My favorite "quarter" is the CB/top part that also Etutors -> Humility. Also 100% immune to High Tide decks.

[Phoenix Ignition]

Know what no Show and Tell creature can beat? Zur the enchanter (Zur the enchanter).

Running things like Oblivion Ring can always help as well, granted it won't provide the best answer if they drop grisel and draw 7, but sometimes the best way to fight combo style decks is with a lot of little things impeding their progress and not just 1 big "screw you" card.

[Worldslayer]

Or rather finding 75 cards that are at least competitive against everything

Those decks already exist.

You're on u/w/x stoneforge or r/u/g thresh. Most generalized answers in countermagic, most generalized but effective offense in goyf/ooze and delver, or stoneforge -> batterskull.

Success!

[Esper3k]

Those decks already exist.

You're on u/w/x stoneforge or r/u/g thresh. Most generalized answers in countermagic, most generalized but effective offense in goyf/ooze and delver, or stoneforge -> batterskull.

Success!

^^^ This.

Again, Maverick has better game against a lot of combo decks (especially with Thalia now) than one would really expect from a GW deck.