[Deck] TinFins 3: Return of the Onion Burst

[Richard Cheese]

You'll wish you had less fun!

1. Overview
2. The Name
3. Core Cards
4. Sideboards and Sideboarding
5. Unsuccessful Ideas
6. Tips and Tricks
7. Why not just play ______?
8. Matchup Analysis
9. Coverage, Results, and Decklists
10. Thanks

The Name

Grislebrand = Grizzlebees = TinFins. Still Confused?



Grizzlebee's Introduces the Onion Burst
Take It from 'Ol Hank Murphy
Grizzlebees Burst Meal with TinFins Toys

It's a Sealab 2021 Reference. Good? Good. If you aren't familiar with Sealab, go watch the entire series for free on the Adult Swim site.


Overview
TinFins is a Reanimator / Storm hybrid built around Griselbrand. It aims to reanimate Griselbrand with haste using either Shallow Grave or Goryo's Vengeance, then draw enough cards to reanimate Emrakul, the Aeons Torn and swing for 22 or generate enough storm for a lethal Tendrils of Agony. Children of Korlis is used to enable additional Griselbrand activations and greatly increase the consistency of both win conditions. It is a fairly consistent turn 1-3 combo, often with protection.

The strengths of the deck are its redundancy, speed, and the low resource investment needed to combo off, but its reliance on the graveyard makes it susceptible to a variety of hate cards, especially when backed up by counter magic.


Core Cards


1 Children of Korlis
1 Emrakul, the Aeons Torn
2-4 Griselbrand
1 Tendrils of Agony

4 Brainstorm
3-4 Gitaxian Probe
4 Ponder
0-2 Lim-dul's Vault

4 Entomb
4 Shallow Grave
3 Goryo's Vengeance
1 Reanimate

4 Cabal Therapy
0-1 Silence
2-4 Thoughtseize

1-2 Chrome Mox
4 Lotus Petal
4 Dark Ritual

4 Marsh Flats
4 Polluted Delta
1 Scrubland
1 Swamp
1 Tundra/Island
2-3 Underground Sea


Wincons:
Griselbrand - Draw engine, wincon, reduces storm count by 3, has axes for hands.
Emrakul - Primarily a win condition, but also used for his shuffle effect in conjunction with Children to generate mana and storm count for the Tendrils win. Rarely, he can also act as an emergency board sweeper.
Children of Korlis - Cheap, tutorable with Entomb, and because of the wording it can combine with Emrakul's shuffle effect to give you infinite draws, life, and storm count.
Tendrils - The argument has been made many times to drop it, but as a singleton it is generally worth it to have a way to win outside the attack step. Can also be used in a pinch to stay in the game or enable more Griselbrand activations.

Enablers:
These are all self explanatory. The full set of Shallow Grave is played over Goryo's because it can reanimate Children, and it doesn't target, which makes it easier to play around hate.

Protection:
We choose discard that can target any player because it allows us to use it as another way to get one of our creatures in the yard. While not the ideal situation, it does make us less dependent on resolving Entomb, and thereby more resilient to counters and discard.

Mana:
Most commonly, the deck plays 8 fetches with 5-6 mana-producing lands, including a basic Swamp and sometimes a basic Island. This gives us good resiliency to Wasteland, with plenty of shuffle effects to maximize the usefulness of Brainstorm.
Petals, and Ritual play the usual storm roles. Chrome Mox is a concession to the need to have additional mana sources after activating Griselbrand. Some lists run 2, others a 1/1 split with Mox Diamond.


Sideboards and Sideboarding
The sideboard is still the greatest point of contention. Fighting hate without giving up consistency or just becoming a bad version of something else has proven to be somewhat of a challenge. The options generally involve protection against hate, transformation to a different combo/wincon, or some combination of the two. Note that some lists run a 14-card sideboard and a 61-card main deck.

Reactive
Probably the most common sideboard strategy. It requires knowing what hate you are likely to face from a given opponent/deck, and brings in specific answers for it. An average reactive board looks like this:

3 Chain of Vapor
2 Massacre
2 Pithing Needle
2 Serenity
3 Silence
2-3 Surgical Extraction

The most common cards to cut for a reactive board are Probes, LDV, and Reanimate. You typically don't want to bring in more than 4-5 cards, as any more than that will water down the deck to the point of making it too inconsistent. This limitation is probably the biggest downside to a reactive strategy, as beating opponents with a wide variety of hate cards becomes extremely difficult.

Reactive board discussion and strategy - Thanks Acclimation!

Doomsday
Doomsday takes advantage of boarded grave hate, is very compact, and offers multiple win conditions (Shelldock/Emrakul or Tendrils). Doomsday is a card that can be difficult to use effectively, but offers a high degree of flexibility in return. Practice is highly suggested.


1 Shelldock Isle
3 Lion's Eye Diamond
1 Pithing Needle
1 Chain of Vapor
4 Sensei's Divining Top
1 Ideas Unbound
4 Doomsday

Doomsday board primer/discussion -Thanks .dk!

Historical and Theoretical Transformations

Show and Tell - Loses a lot of redundancy, and still folds to counter + Surgical, so the rest of the board is generally countermagic devoted to winning on the stack, then protecting your beater for a few turns. Pithing Needle is required to beat Jace and Karakas. Show and Tell can also be used as an addition reactive boards, as an out to decks that pack a lot of graveyard hate.

Painter's Servant/Grindstone - Compact, low mana requirement, no reliance on the yard. Also lets you run Blue Blasts in the board as protection, or possibly Red blasts, with a lot of manabase tweaking. Vulnerable to some anti-Griselbrand hate like Pithing Needle. Also doesn't work against opponents running Emrakul.

Ad Nauseum - The OG transformational board. Hopes to take advantage of opponents boarding in grave hate, but becomes more vulnerable to countermagic due to relying on LED/Infernal Tutor. Also soft to anti-storm hatebears like Thalia, Teeg, and Canonist.

The Man Plan - Run a bunch of efficient, evasive beaters like Delver of Secrets, Tombstalker Bitterblossom, and Serendib Efreet. Not graveyard dependent, but even 15 creatures isn't a lot, and can be incidentally hated out by things like Humility, Energy Field, or just anyone with a better clock. Nobody has ever actually tried this.

15x Shadowborn Apostle - #YOLO

Unsuccessful Ideas
These are things that have been tried in the past, but just haven't worked out very well. If you're going to bring one of these up for discussion, please do some testing first to make sure you aren't just beating a dead horse.

Burning Wish - There have been builds in the past splashing red specifically for Burning Wish and a Sneak Attack transformation out of the sideboard. While it does enable us to have answers to hate in game 1, the mana cost and Sorcery speed have just made it a very clunky and slow addition in the past, and that was before we ran White for Children.

Laboratory Maniac - An alternative to Tendrils. It seems slightly cheaper to cast at first glance, but generally requires at least two Children activations to win, so it's not that cheap, is more restrictive, and is a pretty dead card on its own.

Lion's Eye Diamond - It can act as a discard outlet, makes a ton of mana, and enables Infernal Tutor. Unfortunately, it forces you to go all in on your combo turn reducing the benefit of the redundancy in reanimation spells that this deck runs. Additionally, the extra mana provided has proven to be of marginal use as the mana requirements to combo off with this deck are quite low.

Daze/Force of Will - Counters can be better than discard in a lot of situations, but in this deck they don't help get Griselbrand in the yard, and we usually don't have the blue count for Force

Grim Tutor/Infernal Tutor - Tin Fins is redundant enough with 7-8 reanimation spells that tutors such as these have been found to be unnecessary. Your filter spells are generally sufficient to find the pieces that you need.

Cunning Wish - Even though it's already on-color and can be cast on an opponent's turn to somewhat offset the extra cost, 3 mana is still a lot for a deck that only runs 13 land.


Tips and Tricks
Getting Griselbrand in the yard - The most obvious way is via Entomb, but you can also target yourself with discard, or just draw until you have 8 cards and discard him at end of turn.

Reanimating Emrakul - Goryo's Vengeance and Shallow grave are Instants, letting you put Emrakul into play in response to his shuffle trigger going on the stack.

Reanimating during opponent's end step - Both instant reanimation spells exile the target at the beginning of the next end step. Reanimating during your opponent's end step will give you that creature until the beginning of your end step, allowing you to have more mana available during your turn.

Playing around hate - Surgical, Crypt, Deathrite, and other exile effects can all be played around, either by casting another reanimation spell in response, or in the case of Shallow Grave, letting the exile effect resolve and casting Entomb with Grave still on the stack. Finally, Entomb can be used to grab Emrakul to effectively counter these effects in a pinch.

Children of Korlis - Can fog for a turn, or beat other Tendrils decks. Let as many copies of Tendrils resolve as possible, sac them to gain all your life back, live to fight another day.

Going Infinite - Children of Korlis will usually give you enough additional Griselbrand activations to find another reanimation spell to bring back Children with. At this point you most likely have enough life to draw more cards than you have left in your deck (Children only cares about the life lost so far in the turn, not the net gain/loss, so after 2 Griselbrand activations, you gain 14, after 2 more you gain 28, and so on). Now you can draw until you have 6 or fewer cards left, play out all your mana sources, and then Entomb or Therapy/Thoughtseize away Emrakul to shuffle your graveyard into your libary. Continue to reanimate and sac Children, drawing mana sources and business over and over and shuffling with Emrakul when necessary to generate infinite life, storm, and mana. Then, just to rub it in, hardcast Emrakul and go to discard.


Why not just play ______?

• Reanimator: TinFins is faster, by a lot, and does not really care about Karakas or creature removal.
  
• ANT: We play a similar protection suite, but can generally combo earlier, and with less mana. We also don't need to go all-in on Infernal Tutor/LED, so we can simply run multiple reanimation spells into counters until one resolves. The downside is having to fight through much better and more varied hate post-board, although AnT has recently become somewhat reliant on the graveyard too, as Past In Flames becomes the primary combo engine.
  
• TES: Tinfins has a better manabase, and again we don't need to commit our entire hand to Infernal Tutor. Speed is similar though, and Burning Wish provides TES a ton of options for answering hate without diluting the deck.
  
• Belcher: We're just about as fast, but we actually have protection, and don't need to dump our entire hand to combo off.
  
• Sneak/Show: Again, we're faster and we win the turn we land Griselbrand. We're also a lot more resilient to discard.
  
• Dredge: We lose to a lot of the same hate, but we have better potential for a transformative sideboard, and the ability to win as soon as we deal with hate, rather than needing to re-establish our graveyard.

Matchup Analysis
Generally, TinFins has a similar matchup against the field as AnT. Tempo decks are the most difficult because of their counter-suite combined with a quick clock. BUG especially because of the presence of maindeck Deathrite Shaman.

Miracles is also tough, but moreso post-board because of the amount and variety of hate they have access to (Rest In Peace, Karakas, Meddling Mage, Pithing Needle). Similar story with Deathblade, but possibly more difficult due to maindeck Deathrite.

Death and Taxes can be troublesome, but they have no turn 0/1 interaction, and Massacre is brutal postboard.

Anything else without counters is generally a cakewalk.

Other combo decks are usually slower, and we have silence in the board.

Update, March 5th 2018:
Given the current popularity of BUG Delver, BUG Control, Czech Pile, and Grixis Delver, thecrav was kind enough to prepare this excellent visual representation of the current meta:



Coverage, Results, and Decklists
Coverage:
Carsten Kotter's Article on SCG
Caleb Durward's Article on ChannelFireball
Deck Tech with Greg Mitchell (phazonmuant)

Games:
SCG Atlanta 2013 - Greg Mitchell Round 5, Legacy
http://www.twitch.tv/scglive/b/363601431?t=6h56m

SCG Cincinnati - Caleb Durward Round 6, Legacy
http://www.twitch.tv/scglive/b/368418943?t=3h25m

SCG Las Vegas 2013 - Jacob Kory
Round 7
http://www.twitch.tv/scglive/b/373519422?t=3h55m
Quarterfinals
http://www.twitch.tv/scglive/b/373519422?t=6h42m
Finals
http://www.twitch.tv/scglive/b/373519422?t=9h3m

MTGO Streaming Legacy Daily - Jacob Kory
http://www.twitch.tv/jkory/b/366844881
http://www.twitch.tv/jkory/b/369271763
http://www.twitch.tv/jkory/b/371412000
http://www.twitch.tv/jkory/b/371766972
http://www.twitch.tv/jkory/b/374336353

MTGO Legacy Matches - Caleb Durward
http://www.channelfireball.com/video...ins-matches/#1


Results and Decklists
Josh Bingaman - 58th place, Grand Prix New Jersey (2014-11-16): Report

Max Martinez - 15th place, SCG Oakland (2014-11-2):
http://tcdecks.net/deck.php?id=15152&iddeck=112440

Logan Creen - 8th place, SCG St. Louis (2013-06-09):
http://tcdecks.net/deck.php?id=11068&iddeck=80871

Chad Warford - 14th, SCG Seattle (2013-04-21):
http://tcdecks.net/deck.php?id=10720&iddeck=78247

Jacob Kory - 2nd place, SCG Las Vegas (2012-03-03):
http://tcdecks.net/deck.php?id=10299&iddeck=75048

Caleb Durward - 18th place, SCG Cincinnati (2013-02-17):
4 Griselbrand
1 Emrakul, the Aeons Torn
2 Children of Korlis
4 Goryo's Vengeance
4 Shallow Grave
2 Reanimate
4 Entomb
3 Careful Study
1 Tendrils of Agony
3 Cabal Therapy
4 Thoughtseize
4 Brainstorm
4 Dark Ritual
4 Lotus Petal
2 Chrome Mox
1 Island
1 Swamp
1 Marsh Flats
4 Polluted Delta
2 Misty Rainforest
1 Verdant Catacombs
4 Underground Sea

// Sideboard
3 Surgical Extraction
2 Mindbreak Trap
2 Deathmark
2 Pithing Needle
2 Chain of Vapor
1 Duress
3 Blue Elemental Blast

Greg Mitchell - 34th Place, SCG Atlanta (2013-02-12): Report

Josh Bingaman - 86th place, GP Atlanta (2012-07-01): Report


Thanks
Many, many thanks go out to .dk and Phazonmuant for contributing so much to this primer. What I didn't outright steal, I used for ideas and inspiration, and there's still a ton of content I haven't included yet. Also many thanks to those two for keeping the thread and the dream alive in the early days, and for continuing to be great contributors to the thread as the popularity has taken off.

Thanks go to Dela for seeing the potential in Children of Korlis, and .dk for taking the time to test it.

Many thanks to CalebD and Koby for all the publicity and the great results, and thanks to Cedric Phillips for actually reading a Sealab episode synopsis on air.

Lastly, thanks to everyone who has contributed to the thread. We've had some great ideas, and the discussion has been civil and productive so far. This is my favorite thread on The Source, and not just because I started it.

"This deck has everything going for it" - Koby