[Deck] TinFins 3: Return of the Onion Burst

[Koby]

Empty the Warrens is okay. It's a good backup plan when your opponent turns off the graveyard but the problem is that you might not be able to pump out a huge amount of Goblins the way Belcher or TES is going to. Making eight goblins isn't great but in the right matchups it'll get you there. This could be because I'm usually playing towards getting Griselbrand into play rather than switching plans to goblins though so it might be more powerful than I'm giving it credit.

I agree, and even in my limited playtesting, there are so many paths with BWish that it can get stumbling just thinking about a potential Plan B. If anything, it informs me that there are many more sessions that I need to practice with. My failures in past lists was the exclusion of LED under the premise of "how to beat blue decks," but after playing with Esper lists of Tin Fins, that has died down. Thanks for sharing your list, I will continue to play it for a few weeks to get a better feel for its full capability. I imagine a few more Turn 2 wins are opened up.

[alastair]

The triple LED stack with SDT and GP does look good; but does this not also work with LED, IU, LED, Petal, ToA? GP into LED, you still have U for SDT after IU, and the LED/Petal pay for ToA.

Its never going to be a perfect DD list, but I like the idea of 2-3 flexible SB slots (if they can be accommodated with one less LED or SDT). I did try 1x SDT main deck to free up a space, but its just awkward Game 1. I would like a second Chains or Echoing Truth.

Against Miracles I wanted to overload their counters, every entomb / DD / (potentially) Careful Study risks a win on the spot. They must commit counterspells at a quicker rate than our disruption can ever hope to take it.

Sheldock was the primary plan against Miracles, with Entomb/Study to bait counters.

-1-2 Griselbrand (I was running 3)
-2 Thoughtseize
-3 Cabal Therapy
-1 Goryo’s Vengence (I like reanimate, as you have the life + time against Miracles).
-1-2 Ponder (SDT in part replaces)
-1 Chrome Mox

+1 Sheldock Isle
+4 Doomsday
+3 SDT
+2 LED
+1 Chains (RIP is a pain)

It means going to 61, but the extra is a land which I’m happy to accept.

[KaiSchafroth]

Watch out for Island... it screws up your fetchland base if you do that as Marsh Flats can't get it. Probably the best you could do then would be 4 Delta, 2 Flats, 2 Flooded Strands.

Did you just want tundra because Scrubland was already in play and tapped?

That would be the issue/next step of reconfiguring fetchlands and I'm not sure that's worth the time/yields a significant enough benefit for a lonely island now that I think about it.
Tundra - exactly that, the scrub already being in play/tapped from being naturally drawn and needed to play out the turn. Very cornercase/rare which I think supports removing the Tundra for something (be that USea, Gemstone, Island)

[lilevo]

So I decided to stick to Shallow Storm aka Pomegrant's list for a while and if I do attend the SCG Open this weekend in Philly that is the deck I will be using to battle, for reference here is the list I have been playing:

http://www.mtggoldfish.com/deck/253782#online

Currently on MODO I cut the cruise for meltdown since I have seen a lot more chalices and trinispheres on paper I am probably playing that exactly 75. The only issue I have found with the deck is that it has no way of dealing with opposing gy strategies and I actually have found out it can be hard to beat dredge and reanimator.

If anyone would like to help me test I will be playing the deck this week on my stream.

[.dk]

The triple LED stack with SDT and GP does look good; but does this not also work with LED, IU, LED, Petal, ToA? GP into LED, you still have U for SDT after IU, and the LED/Petal pay for ToA.

Its never going to be a perfect DD list, but I like the idea of 2-3 flexible SB slots (if they can be accommodated with one less LED or SDT). I did try 1x SDT main deck to free up a space, but its just awkward Game 1. I would like a second Chains or Echoing Truth.

Against Miracles I wanted to overload their counters, every entomb / DD / (potentially) Careful Study risks a win on the spot. They must commit counterspells at a quicker rate than our disruption can ever hope to take it.

Sheldock was the primary plan against Miracles, with Entomb/Study to bait counters.

-1-2 Griselbrand (I was running 3)
-2 Thoughtseize
-3 Cabal Therapy
-1 Goryo’s Vengence (I like reanimate, as you have the life + time against Miracles).
-1-2 Ponder (SDT in part replaces)
-1 Chrome Mox

+1 Sheldock Isle
+4 Doomsday
+3 SDT
+2 LED
+1 Chains (RIP is a pain)

It means going to 61, but the extra is a land which I’m happy to accept.

Ah, you're totally right. I'm so used to running Doomsday with Burning Wish that I wasn't even thinking about it. Yes, Petal can replace an LED in the pile. Good work smacking around my lazy brain ;) I'll have to think about that more and what the effects of going to 2 LED would be. Thanks for pointing that out. :) Maybe you're right, and you can actually run a Massacre or something in the extra slot as another piece of hate (D&T feels really bad in this configuration).

And interesting board plan with both combos in - I would usually just be scared of counterbalance from Miracles, essentially turning off Entomb and such anyway. I really like 4 SDT in that matchup to increase our chances of landing one on Turn 1. And yes, Shelldock/Emrakul is the primary plan here, and either hope that they don't run Karakas or that you can manage to land a Pithing Needle on it. Alternatively - you could also run a Wasteland in the last slot of the sideboard if you're cutting the LED, and that would work against Karakas as well. How I miss the days that we could run our own Karakas to kill theirs...

That would be the issue/next step of reconfiguring fetchlands and I'm not sure that's worth the time/yields a significant enough benefit for a lonely island now that I think about it.
Tundra - exactly that, the scrub already being in play/tapped from being naturally drawn and needed to play out the turn. Very cornercase/rare which I think supports removing the Tundra for something (be that USea, Gemstone, Island)

That was my conclusion on Island as well. At least with the current reduction in Wasteland in the format as a whole. If Canadian Thresh somehow gets revived and is popular, then I think you can make a good case for reconfiguring the manabase.

Did you not have a way to discard Children from your hand and reanimate it in that case? It has actually never come up for me that I've had Children stranded in my hand mid-combo. Either a Petal, therapy flashback, or chrome mox with ritual into discard + reanimation has always been available.

[alastair]

Alternatively - you could also run a Wasteland in the last slot of the sideboard if you're cutting the LED, and that would work against Karakas as well. How I miss the days that we could run our own Karakas to kill theirs....

Wasteland might well be a good call. DnT has proved very difficult on both the Reanimate and Doomsday play (except the obvious Turn 1 you're just dead). I agree that 4 SDT is good, I'm just yet to be convinced that the additional bounce, Wasteland, Masacure may not be better than the fourth SDT.

[.dk]

Wasteland might well be a good call. DnT has proved very difficult on both the Reanimate and Doomsday play (except the obvious Turn 1 you're just dead). I agree that 4 SDT is good, I'm just yet to be convinced that the additional bounce, Wasteland, Masacure may not be better than the fourth SDT.

Actually, the 3rd LED does enable more Turn 1 wins with Doomsday as well (and I was experimenting with the 4th LED maindeck as the 61st card for a bit for the same reason). Take this scenario in your opening 7:

Cantrip, LED, Doomsday, 3 black mana, way to cast cantrip (2 life for probe, U for brainstorm/ponder, 1 for SDT).

That wins on the spot, and the extra LED's help enable that. So, they do certainly speed up your Doomsday plan, but the question is whether or not that is better or not than anti-hate. I'm inclined to believe that the faster you combo with these configurations, the better. We don't run a lot of land, and even 1 more piece of anti-hate isn't much. We're not very well equipped to go for the long game like DDFT is, so I think I'd rather try to enable more T1 or T2 wins. But again, just my opinion which could easily be wrong.

[KaiSchafroth]

Did you not have a way to discard Children from your hand and reanimate it in that case? It has actually never come up for me that I've had Children stranded in my hand mid-combo. Either a Petal, therapy flashback, or chrome mox with ritual into discard + reanimation has always been available.

IIRC it was just a matter of wanting to spin the proverbial basketball on my finger longer since it was one of the first times with the deck - hardcast the Children and save the other stuff to rebuy the entire deck through Emrakul shuffles and tendrils for a zillion
No rational reason for not reanimating which I did most other games

[.dk]

IIRC it was just a matter of wanting to spin the proverbial basketball on my finger longer since it was one of the first times with the deck - hardcast the Children and save the other stuff to rebuy the entire deck through Emrakul shuffles and tendrils for a zillion
No rational reason for not reanimating which I did most other games

Just as a tip, you probably could have done it anyway. Keep in mind that basically if Children ever hits play with Griselbrand in play, you've essentially gone infinite. The drawing power at that point is basically unstoppable. So... my reanimating and sacrificing children, you're then going to draw enough to get more rituals, discard, etc, and if not, then a way to reanimate children again and keep going. It's basically impossible to lose at that point, unless you've only lost 7 life and gained 7 with Children.

[Kryptor]

2 Griselbrand
1 Emrakul
1 Children of Korlis

4 Dark Ritual
4 Lotus Petal
1 Chrome Mox
3 LED

4 Entomb
4 Shallow Grave
1 Goryo's Vengeance

4 Brainstorm
4 Ponder
4 Gitaxian Probe
4 Burning Wish

4 Cabal Therapy
1 Thoughtseize

3 USea
1 Badlands
1 Volcanic Island
1 Swamp
8 black fetches

SB:
1 Tendrils of Agony
1 Empty the Warrens
1 Buried Alive (?)
1 Show and Tell
1 Exhume
1 Reanimate (?)
1 Pyroclasm (? maybe more vs UR Delvers)
1 Massacre
1 Thoughtseize (? might be overkill)
1 Treasure Cruise (? interesting from lists I've seen, emergency cantrip?)
2 Duress (for boarding)
3 Chain of Vapor (still boss)

I really like the Burning Whis idea. But i would adjust somethink.
This list more and more looks like TES (and i like that).

I would cut Emrakul. It was very nice in the "original" list, but now you don´t need to resuffle your grave to get your petals and dark rituals back. Also it suck when you have shallow grave, grizz and LED.
And i am not sure about that chrome mox. i know that is the 5th petal in your combo turn but you don´t want to find it before going off.
i like an island main.
so i would try

-1 Emrakul
-1 Chromemox
-1 Usea
+1 Island
+1 Tropical
+1 LED/Thoughtseize/Preordain (i guess that the 4th LED is not needed)

Did anyone consider to play a TES - Style Board ?

something like

Wishboard: (at this moment 16)
1 Tendrils of Agony
1 Empty the Warrens
1 Show and Tell
1 Exhume
1 Reanimate
1 Pyroclasm
1 Massacre
1 Thoughtseize
1 Treasure Cruise

"real board":
2 Xantid Swarm
3 Decay
2 CoV

[wonderPreaux]

I really like the Burning Whis idea. But i would adjust somethink.
This list more and more looks like TES (and i like that).

I would cut Emrakul. It was very nice in the "original" list, but now you don´t need to resuffle your grave to get your petals and dark rituals back. Also it suck when you have shallow grave, grizz and LED.
And i am not sure about that chrome mox. i know that is the 5th petal in your combo turn but you don´t want to find it before going off.
i like an island main.
so i would try

-1 Emrakul
-1 Chromemox
-1 Usea
+1 Island
+1 Tropical
+1 LED/Thoughtseize/Preordain (i guess that the 4th LED is not needed)

Did anyone consider to play a TES - Style Board ?

something like

Wishboard: (at this moment 16)
1 Tendrils of Agony
1 Empty the Warrens
1 Show and Tell
1 Exhume
1 Reanimate
1 Pyroclasm
1 Massacre
1 Thoughtseize
1 Treasure Cruise

"real board":
2 Xantid Swarm
3 Decay
2 CoV

I don't think you want to be touching the Emrakul or Chrome Mox. Chrome Mox is actually pretty important as a way to accelerate Burning Wish out by imprinting a black card, allowing your duals/fetches to find a red source, when you're running Wishes, the Mox serves as color-fixing, not just IMS post-Griselbrand. Emrakul also contributes to the what I feel to be the greatest strength of this build, the number of lines you can impose on the opponent. Sometimes running in the 15 dmg and X number of vindicates via Shallow Grave is the best way to win or stay in the game, it also becomes easier to beat certain corner cases cards like Meddling Mage when you have a win condition in the main deck. Reshuffling your deck can also be pretty relevant as it can dodge Extraction (including on your Burning Wishes), refill your library with Petals or LEDs if you used a lot of them to combo off etc.

[Higgs]

I would agree with keeping Emrakul in the Burning Wish build. I think it's needed because with the Burning Wish build it becomes harder to go for a Tenrdils kill due to:
1) this being a slower build and by the time you go for it you are on lower life, therefore can draw less cards and can assemble less mana for a lethal Tendrils
2) you having fewer reanimation spells therefore reanimating a Children to going infinite and ending with a Tendrils kill (while also having enough mana) becomes more difficult.

Emrakul gives you either the option to reshuffle if you have Children action going and go infinite OR it's simply an alternate kill condition that ends the game now.

[Pomegrant]

I'm leaning towards cutting Emrakul but it shuts off some potential lines of victory. When you go Shallow Grave into cracking an LED, you will have three black mana available to combo off a Griselbrand pre-combat. Finding another Entomb plus reanimation effect during this is the most efficient kill. Using LED solely as a discard outlet is not bad in these scenarios but being able to utilize the mana is important as well. I've only needed to shuffle with Emrakul a few times while playing the Burning Wish version so I don't think this line of play is too important for this build of the deck. Having Burning Wish to find kill conditions means you won't need to shuffle everything back in and just converts harder when you get to cast it.

Playing green for sideboard options is just too taxing on the mana base and I don't think it provides much to the deck. I think the strong part of TinFins was it's ability to battle through soft permission and even hard counters (to a certain extent). Cards like Xantid Swarm don't really work, in my opinion, because in TES and ANT you're looking to build a large amount of resources that you can't afford to have your payoff countered. Here, once Griselbrand is in the graveyard, you just need to get him into play and it starts going. Abrupt Decay is powerful at removing hate cards but Burning Wish fixes this problem somewhat, and Chain of Vapor bounces hate before you need to go off (I have yet to play with Chains).

Chrome Mox is fine before going off. The whole point is to go fast and going down a card to maintain speed is fine.

[exallium]

3-1 Last night at a weekly legacy event with this list:


1 Children of Korlis
1 Emrakul, the Aeons Torn
3 Griselbrand

4 Cabal Therapy
3 Thoughtseize
4 Brainstorm
4 Ponder
4 Shallow Grave
3 Goryo's Vengeance
1 Reanimate
4 Entomb
4 Gitaxian Probe
4 Dark Ritual

4 Lotus Petal
2 Chrome Mox

3 Underground Sea
4 Polluted Delta
3 Marsh Flats
1 Verdant Catacomb
1 Scrubland
1 Island
1 Swamp

// Sideboard
2 Silence
1 Liliana of the Veil
1 Hoodwink
1 Serenity
1 Perish
2 Massacre
1 Flusterstorm
2 Exhume
1 Tormod's Crypt
2 Pithing Needle
1 Show and Tell


2-0 VS Jund:
Game 1 turn 2 GBrand / Emmy kill.
Game 2 Deathrite was a bit annoying and that plus a Grafdigger's cage shut me down. Eventually I drew a Show and Tell with Emrakul in hand and he conceded.

+1 Show and Tell
+2 Pithing Needle
+1 Hoodwink

-4 Probe

1-2 VS Elves:
Game 1 Turn 2 Tendrils Kill!
Game 2 Deathrite held me off long enough for him to go off, and I never saw an entomb, through 3 brainstorms and a ponder, or a fatty for my discard.
Game 3 I learned how bad a card Hoodwink is, because had it been chains I would have destroyed him. My sideboard has since been updated. (Hoodwink was in the board of the deck I originally copied)

+1 Show and Tell
+1 Hoodwink
+2 Massacre
+1 Perish

-4 Probe
-1 Therapy

2-0 VS Sneak and Show:
The feels when you kill someone because they cast Show and Tell.
Game 1 I got the turn 2 GBrand / Emrakul kill through force of will.
Game 2 He Show and Tell'd in GBrand, and I played my own. I drew my cards and started going off. He was at 14 because he was running some shocks and fetches, so he could only draw once and didn't find a relevant counterspell, and then died to Tendrils.

+1 Flusterstorm
+1 Hoodwink
+2 Pithing Needle
+2 Silence

-2 Therapy
-4 Probe

2-0 VS Affinity:
Game 1: Turn 1 kill.
Game 2: Turn 2 kill.

+1 Hoodwink
+1 Serenity
+2 Pithing Needle

-4 Probe

I'm still working on sideboarding plans, and I've changed the Liliana and the Hoodwink to a Chain of Vapors and an Echoing Truth

[.dk]

Grats on the finish! Though, all of those 1 ofs in your sideboard look a little odd to me without something like LDV to be able to find them more consistently.

[exallium]

Grats on the finish! Though, all of those 1 ofs in your sideboard look a little odd to me without something like LDV to be able to find them more consistently.

Thanks!

The board is sort of a work in progress, and I definitely want to make it more consistent. I'm trying to have a good number of anti-hate that allow me to play around meddling mage. I'll try a one-of Lim-Dul's Vault next time I bring the deck out, as I'm suspecting that next week people will be running a bit more GY hate than this week (Dredge took second, I took third)

EDIT: Yeah, I shouldn't have blindly copied the sideboard. It's been changed since ;) Good general advice though.

[Koby]

Stop copying sideboards without thinking about them.

That's how you end up with shitty SB cards like Hoodwink, Echoing Truth, & Tormod's Crypt.

Lilliana is "neat", in that she can kill some Hatebears and provide discard for Shallow Grave. HOWEVER, this seems more trouble than its worth.

[.dk]

Stop copying sideboards without thinking about them.

That's how you end up with shitty SB cards like Hoodwink, Echoing Truth, & Tormod's Crypt.

Lilliana is "neat", in that she can kill some Hatebears and provide discard for Shallow Grave. HOWEVER, this seems more trouble than its worth.

Yeah, I haven't ever understood Hoodwink... and I see it crop up from time to time. We can beat Karakas as it is, and I don't really see any other usage.

Lili seems like a good idea, until you realize that you don't really want to waste rituals on her, and if you get her in play, the game is late, we run 12-14 lands, and you're probably losing.

[lilevo]

Hoodwink is a boomerang that doesn't cost UU and it doesn't get countered by chalic of the void but I agree that it's very unnecessary.

[Koby]

Hoodwink is a boomerang that doesn't cost UU and it doesn't get countered by chalic of the void but I agree that it's very unnecessary.

There are so many better options than Hoodwink that fill the role of "get rid of Chalice @ 1" for 2 mana. While I understand that bouncing Karakas or Maze of Ith is applicable in this case, I don't think we care. Simply getting Griselbrand (Bargain mode) into play is a winning line 80% of the time.