Mi previous post is about the general value of Leovold as card.
In this days i play with Leovold in my 60 because i love to test new cards and interactions.
Imho Leovold need 2x slot for a right build that will maximize his value and maybe in Shardless some cards like Grim Flayer is better (anyway another try).
Originally Posted by grim confident
I try a new deck with 2x Leovold.
A Midrange BUG, without Delver.
I will post my results.
Yeah, I don't think Shardless wants another hard-to-cast three drop. Maybe as a 1-2 of in BUG Control/Midrange.
It looks like you've opted to skew toward beating combo with this list, but I'm still quite skeptical of 6 MD discard spells since combo isn't that large a portion of the meta, at least not at high-level events, and it seems like hour fair matchups suffered a bit (admittedly a small sample size). I'm surprised that you think Liliana of the Veil is the better Liliana against Miracles; I'd much rather have more discard spells + The Last Hope in that matchup. I also think that Crucible is just better than Loam if you're looking for that effect.Been jaming this Build (almost) from scry me a river on cockatrice:
4 Abrupt Decay
3 Ancestral Vision
2 Baleful Strix
2 Bayou
4 Brainstorm
1 Creeping Tar Pit
4 Deathrite Shaman
4 Force of Will
1 Forest
3 Hymn to Tourach
1 Liliana of the Veil
1 Maelstrom Pulse
2 Misty Rainforest
3 Polluted Delta
4 Shardless Agent
1 Swamp
4 Tarmogoyf
1 Tropical Island
3 Underground Sea
4 Verdant Catacombs
3 Wasteland
3 Thoughtseize
1 Liliana, the Last Hope
1 Dismember
SB: 2 Disfigure
SB: 1 Garruk Relentless
SB: 1 Pithing Needle
SB: 1 Toxic Deluge
SB: 1 Engineered Plague
SB: 1 Umezawa's Jitte
SB: 1 Golgari Charm
SB: 1 Hymn to Tourach
SB: 1 Duress
SB: 1 Sylvan Library
SB: 1 Dread of Night
SB: 1 Baleful Strix
SB: 1 Vendilion Clique
SB: 1 Life from the Loam
Deck is really performing really well:
Some card choices are still debateble for me. Not sure about new Lilli I think she is higher variance whereas LotV is always decent (Combo, Miracles are the main reason I tend to swith back to 2 LotV).
I would also like to put 1 Deluge and/or the 4th Vision in the main but don#t see any space atm (maybe Dismember for Deluge)
Also I am not really sold on CLique and Life from the loam in the SB, I think Null rod will go in for one of them.
I tried Grim Flayer and wasn't impressed. I think he's marginally better than Quirion Dryad and marginally worse than Scavenging Ooze and Tombstalker as big dummies 5+, but he's worse than Ponder and the second is probably worse than the third Strix.
Why do you think Crucible is better than LftL? Is it because you can't accidentally cascade into it? I ask because I don't play crucible because there is quite a few Decays running around my meta and I don't think that is so great. If you have an argument supporting a reason why you think it's still more playable, I'd enjoy listening to your point of view.I also think that Crucible is just better than Loam if you're looking for that effect.
...
I tried Grim Flayer and wasn't impressed. I think he's marginally better than Quirion Dryad and marginally worse than Scavenging Ooze and Tombstalker as big dummies 5+, but he's worse than Ponder and the second is probably worse than the third Strix.
I'm also quite curious as to how Flayer wasn't satisfactory. I've been building DnT (finished now) and will come back to this list, but I haven't had the opportunity to pick up Flayers as I don't have the time to play or test with this deck (I love DnT), nor have I picked up the Lilianas. I was really hoping Flayer would be a good way to set up a cascade that wasn't as much of an investment in mana as Jace, and that would lend itself to a more aggressive style overall. I do think more beaters are becoming a necessary part of big lists in general because at Ovino there were 3 Miracles lists in t8, and all were playing Spell Snares. Seems like a big deal to me.
For the past few weeks I've been trying out BUGStill with 3 and 4 Leovold. He's good and worth picking up, but I'm unsure that he's what you want to be playing at the moment. I don't think I can say he isn't good right now, but I think I'm comfortable saying the deck he's best in isn't one we've seen him in yet.
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Part of it is that (like you said) Loam is a stop for Cascades and it's pretty low-impact in tight game states. We don't have a recursion engine, so the milling isn't free the way it is in dedicated Loam decks, and while synergy with Brainstorm, Ponder, and Sylvan Library is a positive for Loam, recurring fetchlands with Crucible has the same effect for only a one-time investment, unlike Loam which has to be recast every time you want to use it. If you recur a single land with Crucible and then it gets Decayed, you still 2-for-1'ed your opponent and still advanced your game plan either by getting back a creature land or Wasteland in the mid-to-late game or by making sure you hit your third, fourth, or fifth land drop in the early-to-mid game. I've actually liked it so much that I've started toying with replacing the fourth Wasteland with a Mishra's Factory so I have a hard to kill threat.
According to MTG Top 8, only one of the 3rd/4th place lists was playing Snares. Also, people playing Snares is an argument against Flayer, not for it.I'm also quite curious as to how Flayer wasn't satisfactory. I've been building DnT (finished now) and will come back to this list, but I haven't had the opportunity to pick up Flayers as I don't have the time to play or test with this deck (I love DnT), nor have I picked up the Lilianas. I was really hoping Flayer would be a good way to set up a cascade that wasn't as much of an investment in mana as Jace, and that would lend itself to a more aggressive style overall. I do think more beaters are becoming a necessary part of big lists in general because at Ovino there were 3 Miracles lists in t8, and all were playing Spell Snares. Seems like a big deal to me.
More substantively, while Flayer sets up your Cascades (which is pretty overrated as far as I'm concerned), he's also, at best, a conditional 4/4 with upside. I don't think he's indefensible, but he does push the deck towards being in more of a beatdown role, and once you've assigned that role to yourself you're better off playing a more aggressive deck. Trading with Thought-Knot and being smaller than Gurmag Angler are big strikes against it. I don't even think he's substantially better than Vendilion Clique (which is typically a sideboard card) or Courser of Kruphix (which is rarely run) If you're concerned about having enough giant bodies, I've been a strong advocate for Tombstalker for like the past 6 months.
Hey again!
Unfortunately I didn't get to play Legacy this week, but at least there is some action going on in this thread^^
Nice, I'm glad you are experimenting with this list as well. Do you mind posting some of your games in detail? Maybe we can share some more experiences.
Besides, I agree with you: Garruk seems to be a better choice atm as he can't be pyroblasted and is much easier to cast as far as his colour requirements are concerned. He is also a powerhous against miracles (I played Aggro Loam before and he was always overperforming) and very strong in grindy MUs where board presence tends to be a key factor.
I will also play a fourth hymn in the future - it is a really great card, not only in unfair MUs but also against Miracles and other fair decks (and maybe even Eldrazi).
The lack of graveyard hate is definitely a problem. Thus I really like the Brainstorm Show's approach to include 4 Leylines. I have to admit though that I'm not sure if we can/should afford to dedicate that many slots. What have been your experiences/choices so far?
Last but not least: I tried New Lil in Aggro Loam and I was not impressed at all in the beginning. But the more I played her, the more I got to like her. Her +1 is basically never useless (worst case: shrink an Eldrazi or an opposing Goyf) and her -2 is just crazy. Recycling your value creatures is very nice, especially as we have no use for our graveyards except for DRS and Goyf. This seems to be another route of card advantage/ressources. Finally, her ult can be backbreaking in any grindy MU (and also against Miracles as btm10 mentioned!). I will definitely continue to run a split as Old Lil has useful applications too, but I don't think that there is a strictly "better" Lil at the moment.
Once again, I can totally understand your doubts with New Lil, but I still think that she could be a potentail powerhouse for this deck. As we have quite a number of discard spells in our build (which would be my main argument for Old Lil - at least as long as True Name Decks are out of fashion), I think we can afford to play her. Additionally, she is quite good with handling tokens and other swarm stuff which seems to be a problem for Shardless BUG.
Why do you want to play another Vision? Did you miss the fourth copy? I'm not sure either about the "correct" number...
This would be my "new" SB btw:
SB: 2 Disfigure #DNT, Elves, Delver...
SB: 1 Umezawa's Jitte #DNT, Elves, Delver, Burn, some Grindy MU
SB: 1 Dread of Night #DNT, Miracles
SB: 1 Engineered Plague #DNT, Elves, Miracles, Grixis Delver
SB: 1 Golgari Charm #DNT, Elves, Miracles, Grixis Delver
SB: 1 Toxic Deluge #DNT, Elves, Eldrazi
SB: 1 Pithing Needle #DNT, Miracles, Combo
SB: 1 Duress #Combo
SB: 1 Hymn to Tourach #Miracles, Combo
SB: 1 Vendilion Clique #Combo
SB: 1 Baleful Strix #Eldrazi, Delver
SB: 1 Sylvan Library #Grindy MUs (mirror, Jund...)
SB: 1 Life from the Loam #DNT, Delver, Grindy MUs
SB: 1 Garruk Relentless #Miracles, Grindy MUs
I need to test Clique but I think she might be important against Combo decks (instant speed threat and disruption) as a back up for our strong discard.
As a Jund/Aggro Loam player I just love Life from the Loam. It is a very strong card in any Delver MU (defensive and offensive) and it can be a great tool for any grindy midrange mirror as it opens up another angle of attack with land destruction. I think I will keep testing it some more time.
After all, the graveyard hate seems to be the biggest problem atm...
I agree with your opinion on New Lil in the Miracles MU. But I also think that discard spells (especially the Hymns) are not restricted to the Combo MUs. It is doing some serious work in the fair MUs and also against Miracles.
Honestly I have never thought about the Crucible, but it is an interesting idea. Maybe another argument for Loam (besides being Decay-proof) could be the inclusion of New Lil and the resulting synergy.
Finally I also think that the Flayer discussion should be intensified. What would be the best shell with Flayer (yes, as you can imagine, I think about New Lil^^)?
Kind regards,
C
hey all ive been playtesting quite a bit lately against death and taxes and their variants and have found taking my 2 liliana of the veil out and keeping the md 2 hymn in to be quite good. lili doesnt overperform here except really when played on turn 2 it seems. the only problem i see with hymn in the particular matchup is it makes you fetch awkwardly sometimes and it doesnt play to the board but with the inclusion of recruiter now plus the standard tutored equipment it seems like getting stuff out of their hand is a bit stronger. what do you think? i keep lilis against maverick and board all hymns out here though.
current sideboard plan for d+t:
-4 force, -2 liliana of the veil
+1 toxic, +1 golgari charm, +1 disfigure, +1 pithing needle, +1 murderous cut, +1 maelstrom pulse
plan for maverick:
-4 force, -2 hymn, on the play -1 strix
+1 toxic, +1 golgari charm, +1 disfigure, +1 pithing needle, +1 murderous cut, +1 maelstrom pulse, on the play +1 grafdiggers cage
any opinion on the grafdiggers cage against maverick? does it do enough?
my current deck list:
https://manastack.com/deck/shardless-bug-4
hey guys，what do you think about grim flayer？can these bg 4/4 with trample replace goyf in bug shardless？
Certainly，it is most of the time not as big as goyf，but it can not only get across the TNN or tokens，but also give you a free sensei's divining top's ablility，when it does combat damage to player. That means more chance to find an anwser，like decay or something else，or even vision mit shardless agent.
He may be OK, but it can't replace Goyf. Thanks to Agents and Strix goyf is quite easily a 5/6 which is key to beating Eldrazi and Gurmag Anglers.
Well, the Resulsts are not very telling yet (the delver Match was just too quick free wins for him).
I's not like the 3 aditional Seizes are only working against combo. I took a Goose and a goyf with turn 1+2 TS against RUG for example, which gave me the game easily. I like that it lowers our curve significantly by giving us something to do on Turn 1 consistently (turn 1 suspending vision is not the most impressing play to me). I feel like most games with this deck are lost to falling too far behind early and allways starting 0-1 against combo. Because TS helps alot with this I will stick to this Version for now. (I have played the other version for so long now, I just want a large enough sample size to compare).
Ok I will keep on trying new lili. I would be happy if I can replace one of the LotV because then I would have to spenn 700$ less for the jap foil oneSo agaisnt miricles - do you try to ULT her as quickly as possible or do you try to keep reucirring threats from the GY (allthough our creatures rarely end there more in our library and in exile)
Sorry can't give much details on the games, exept that I felt quite good agaisnt combo with the Discard. Thoughtseize was pretty ok to good in the fair MU as well, as I described above.
I don't think we can afford to use 4 SB slots on leylines. There isn't even that much decks running around where you would need it right? I think Cage, Spellbomb and Surgical are the best options atm.
As I said, I will keep on trying new Lili. She was defenitly good against creature decks. The decks that are light on creatures are my problem (combo, miracles)
I miss the 4th vision because cascading into vision is still the reason we play this deck afer all. And I don#t know about others but I cas my agents blind pretty liberaly. But maybe it's correct to play 3, I don't se any card to cut at the moment anyway.
My current plan is to switch the Maindeck Dismember with the SB Deluge. Just because we can catch up if we fall behind to much and also people don't play around it in G1 as much.
For the SB I have found the Clique and Loam to be the weakest cards. But i will keep on using it until I have enoguh matches under my belt to come to a conclusion. I would like to put in Null Rod (because I want a 2nd card to shut down STD and it's also good against ANT and random artifact decks) and 2 gy hate cards... 15 cards just isn't enough
I haven't been able to play much lately, but I did finally get a chance to try out more MD discard in a couple of matches (both online and in paper) yesterday. My (preliminary) thoughts in no particular order:
1. The sorcery count feels about right with a 3/3 Hymn/Thoughtseize split.
2. Moving the discard back to the maindeck opens up those sideboard slots. I started with 3 Thoughtseize in the sideboard, so I got to add a third piece of graveyard hate, the Jitte from the maindeck, and a long-game flex slot (Crucible/Sylvan Library/Jace/etc).
3. With so much discard, having additional cantrips or filtering seems even more important than before, and I'm not super comfortable with only 19 blue cards. I'm going to go down to 5 discard effects with the 1-of Ponder as a first pass, but having a 1-of Jace might be ok as well. I'm still iffy on maindecking Sylvan Library.
4. Thoughtseize makes Jace, the Mind Sculptor more attractive. Not only is Jace a Brainstorm every turn to prevent flooding on discard, but knowing what our opponent has seen or has access to means that it's much less likely to get hit with a Pyroblast on the stack
I've also messed around a bit with the manabase, but that's a topic for another post.
I think it's cool that you're experimenting with a more discard-heavy build. You should definitely test against Grixis Delver a bit though, because I would be a little concerned about having too many cards that don't affect the board and subsequently getting tempo'd out. Discard can also be somewhat of a liability against Miracles and in the Shardless mirror, as they are not great cards to topdeck.
Nobody plays Legacy anymore, the tournaments are all too crowded
Hymn is actually pretty okay against Miracles until top is active and they have an empty hand. Thoughtseize helps make sure top doesn't become active. Later, when discard is bad against most things, yes, it becomes a bad draw.
The mirror can be tricky, and is definitely an attrition war. I think discard is fine here. Top decks, yes, but I am still hoping a shardless brew of more than normal count of discard + some number of Grim Flayer will become a thing.
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Discard is pretty polarized in my experience on both sides of the Grixis matchup. It's really good on the play, especially if you have a Deathrite, but I agree that it's quite bad if you get too far behind on board. The only "stock" slots that play to the board I was cutting are Pulse and Deluge/Jitte, and they're both quite expensive (Deluge in particular is much better with Thoughtseize to make sure it resolves). I'm very much in the camp of going down on discard and up on removal postboard, especially on the draw, but I'm not locked on any list in particular right now.
Aluren is giving me fits lately. Anyone figured this matchup out? What cards are super important? I like hymn force tarmogoyf golgari charm and trying to keep them off 4 mana. Don't think I've won a match against aluren to this date haha.
Get an aluren in their yard and then Surgical.
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I don't think this is a great plan since it requires running Surgical (which is, at they very least, a horrible hit off of Agent even in matchups where you want graveyard hate), and only works if you get lucky enough to hit exactly Aluren with your discard or put them in a position where they have to try and stick Aluren without protection and you have a castable Force.
It's not a great matchup for all sorts of reasons, not the least of which is the fact that we typically can't destroy Aluren. I've actually been playing some Aluren lately, and the best ways to fight the deck is to try to tempo them out. The most effective disruption is permant-based. They can't combo with Night of Souls' Betrayal/Engineered Plague (on Advisor or Soldier to stop Recruiters, or on Beast to stop Cavern Harpy) or Sphere of Resistance on the table, so stick one of those and go to Goyf town. They have(tutorable) removal for both, so it's imperative that you actually kill them quickly. Jitte can complicate their combo, but can't stop it outright unless you've got a lot of counters stored up.
Last edited by btm10; 10-26-2016 at 11:51 PM.
It's a bad version of this deck if you do get the surg. on it. I think you definitely win when they have no trump card.
It's a fine strategy against aluren, any deck with show and tell, painter, and any other deck whose win condition hinges on an effect you can only get from a single card. It neuters an entire line as early as turn 1. I play Thoughtseizes main; I know you do not, and do not care for it afaik, but between those and FoW, there's a reasonable chance of successfully resolving a Surgical Extraction on an Aluren.
As to the Shardless Agent comment, that is what it is and this particular argument can be used on a number of cards to include; in the sideboard especially.
We can agree to disagree, but I have a history since the Extirpate days of doing this against lists like this without issue.
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If you have a lot of Storm in your meta, Arcane Laboratory is an option, as well.
I quote this.
Aluren is a very good deck in this meta.
We have no way to remove Aluren if we don't discard it (or mono-Maelstrom).
There's no simply to Surgical it imho.
Turn 2 Lost Legacy, accelerated by Deathrite Shaman.
They may draw a card, but last I checked the deck can't do nearly as much without Aluren itself.
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