By the way, how do you guys determine which starting hand you hold and when to mulligan?
What has to be on your hand to say that it won't work out and are there any cards that MUST be on your starting hand?
Hand keeping is the most important skill with this deck. It is the reason that I suggest heavy playtesting for someone who wants to have success with the deck at competitive events. My best simple guide to hand keeping would best be put as a priority of axioms and some general rules. I'll probably put this on the first page since it is so important to piloting the deck well.
Don't keep hands without turn 1-2 plays.
- The deck runs 21 cmc 1 spells on turn 1. Often you are clearing the counter-wall path for a crop rotation to resolve later, so don't be afraid of throwing spells into dazes and pierces early on if you have more relevant spells after them. My priority of willingness-to-get-countered in the early game is from lowest importance to greatest: Candelabra -> Pithing Needle -> Map -> Brainstorm -> Sensei's Divining Top -> Crop Rotation. As the game progresses those priorities shift, but for the purpose of opening hands I keep the more I have of cards on the higher importance group, with a caveat of multiple crop rotations not being strong.
Don't keep hands that require you to be unmolested for several turns in regards to discard/destruction.
- Have faith in the deck. I will often keep hands of 5-6 lands if there are Cloudposts in them or if the remaining 1-2 cards are strong cmc 1 spells like Brainstorm, SDT, or Crop rotation.
Keeping hands with Eldrazis in them are essentially mulligans to X-y, where X is your hand size, and y is the number of Eldrazis in your hand.
- This is not true of Primeval titans, since they are castable on turn 3 with candelabras and normal conditions, or on turn 5-6 under duress.
Don't keep hands on Show & Tell.
- Show & Tell is your plan B, not plan A. Plan A is sit around, not be pressured due to repeal/bog/karakas/Hatecards doing their jobs, and then casting your stuff. Show and Tell can be a supplement to your hand, but it should never be its primary goal and only avenue.
Don't be afraid of having Cloudposts get wastelanded early.
- I will often play Cloudpost on the blind my first turn if possible if I don't have a needle or crop rotation, since it means that they MUST wasteland it that turn or fear me drawing into more answers. Most importantly, it means they cannot develop delvers/heirarchs/vials/lackeys. Hesitating with this deck can easily cause you to lose matches you would otherwise crush.
- Keep in mind that this logic is turned on itself when on the draw, where they can play their Turn 1 board advancement, and then wasteland your tapped Cloudpost while maintaining pressure.
Keep hands entirely differently based off playing or drawing.
- One of your best cards on the play is Repeal, but it becomes one of the worst on the draw.
- Against a blind opponent Pithing needle is weak on the play, but strong on the draw. The opposite is true against a known opponent.
- SDT is amazing on the play, but weaker on the draw. Despite it being weaker on the draw, it is still one of your strongest turn 1 plays.
- Hate lands, such as Tabernacle, Bog, Karakas, are stronger on the draw after they commit. Obviously Glacial chasm is weaker on the draw due to needing two land drops.
Dangerous and Risky keeps
- Low mana hands are your most dangerous keeps. they MUST have either multiple SDT's and/or brainstorms, with a clear path to additional mana and/or shuffle effects for increasing your odds of drawing mana should you see none.
- All colorless mana source (this includes bog/karakas) hands are dangerous if you have brainstorms and repeals as your only cantrips. Despite this, Vesuva, Expedition Map, SDT, and actual colored sources as outs are an extensive list of outs, so I list this hand as not dangerous.
- All colored mana source hands are not risky at all. Crop rotations can easily convert 4 colored mana sources into a Primeval titan, or 7 mana for eye of Ugin.
- Keeping complex hands are ok. Keeping a hand of Trop, Brainstorm, Brainstorm, Crop Rotation, Crop rotation, X, X is ok if you are on the play, and riskier on the draw, but not the end of the world thalia/Chalice-withstanding. In this situation you brainstorm their eot, keeping Crop rotation up at all times for a response to wasteland, brainstorm eot, if you see nothing you crop rotate in upkeep to shuffle, draw and hope, if you see nothing brainstorm in your turn and now you've looked at 7 additional cards for a land and can still shuffle in your next upkeep should the worst happen.
Knowing your opponent is enormous for what hands to keep as well. If you are at a small tournament scout around for your nightmare matchups where you must keep perfect hands to take game 1 (high tide, elves, weird combo) or non CmC 1 hands (Anything running Chalice @ 1: MUD, Aggro Loam, Dragon Stompy, Faerie Stompy) or situational keeps often on Crop rotation (Belcher, Dredge, Reanimator, Tendrils storm).
Last but not least, confidence is paramount to this deck. Often cards the cards in the deck are highly variant in power level throughout the game, which means the contents of our hand and our random draws often have the ability to alter card values as the game progresses. Use this lack of knowledge and changing power level of cards to your advantage with strong posture and faith in the deck's composition to pull you through even extremely gloomy positions. The deck runs 4-5x the number of choices/searches than any other competitive deck out there right now and often only a small fraction of those choices are the surefire-can't-lose situations, but without knowledge of your hand and often your top 3 cards, your opponent can never know what that plan is since at some point all of the possible plans can be that surefire plan. Abuse this lack of knowledge through confidence and maintained composure.
- An example. A Candelabra may not be useful to us on turn 1 as more than counterbait, but against a deck with no removal like RUG, it is often a must-counter since it shuts off 8 of their counters and accelerates us past the realm of them being able to answer threats. A RuG player can't know what your hand is on turn 1 though when staring down a candelabra. If your hand is two trops then the Candelabra is completely dead. If your hand is two Cloudposts then he will die to that candelabra not resolving. You force the RuG player into an extremely awkward position very early just by playing an innocuous card. If that Candelabra was countered I would be mentally vigilant not to droop my shoulders or change my demeanor to indicate the power of that Candelabra relative to my remaining hand.
Been having success with this deck at our local Thursday Night Legacy going
4-0 and 3-1 (piloted by a friend)
Aside from being fun it's very competitive!
I debated changes I would make, and despite them all running combo decks from belcher to ant to hive mind to storm to high tide, 4 Fluster, 3 chalice, 2 revoker, 1 tabernacle covered all my worries.
The irony is, the deck beats combo as is, even though game 1 is horrid.
If you wanted to get a slight edge you could go to a 4th chalice? But imo it is unnecessary.
I personally really like Revoker because it shores up your absolute nightmare matchups of MUD & Elves, while still being effective against storm & some outlier decks. If you have no-fear against elves/mud, you can absolutely run Trinisphere or Spell Pierce or Envelop in its spot. They all perform the same concept role.
Perhaps the thing I like most about Revoker is that it rewards research and risky/bad situations for opponents, as opposed to counters that are only counters at the end of the day. If you only have 1 blue mana, three counters aren't helping you. Also if they go turn 1 Xantid Swarm/Defense Grid you have your work cut out for ya.
I prefer holistic answers from multiple angles. Also remember Venser is absolutely a counter. I almost always bring him in against anything that isn't trying to combo me out on turn 1-2.
Hi.
Yesterday I win a 63 players tournament with 6 round of swiss plus a cut to TOP 16 (new experiment).
I play the standar list with 1 Karakas, 1 Emrakul, 2 Candelabra, 3 Expedition map and 4 Show & tell main.
Sideboard:
3 FLusterstorm (Combo - Control)
3 Chalice of the void (Storm - elves - burn - RUG? Not tested)
2 Drop of honey (Aggro - RUG)
2 Elephant grass (Aggro - RUG - Dredge)
2 Cursed totem (Elves - MUD - GW)
2 Venser
1 Tabernacle
Short report of the tournament
Round 1
JUNK (Rock) 2-0
Round 2
Geist of Saint Traft Stompy (whit hexproof creatures) 2-0
Round 3
Zombie bombardment 2-1
Round 4
Miracles UW 1-1 (Back to basics and I not found the Candelabras, round time)
Round 5
Esper blade 1-1 (Round time)
Round 6
Mono black 2-0
TOP 16
ANT 2-1 (A little luck)
TOP 8
Esper blade 2-1 (The same player in round 5)
TOP 4
Shardless BUG 2-0
FINAL
Dredge 2-0 (Recorded video)
The video of the final and the all TOP 16 will be on manainfinito.com soon
Congrats!
I can't wait for the coverage to show up!
I am always amazed that people dont' run 4 flusterstorm, and then still beat ANT. In my opinion Drop of Honey is overkill against aggro, how was it in your games? If Back to Basics is showing itself more and more, it is a strong case for Spell pierce back in the board.
Against MUD you have very little to "shut down." Chalice is a royal beating, so keeping hands that are CmC 1 dependent can ruin you. Show & tell is often your best avenue of play, but still not nearly as strong as it is against the rest of the format. If possible stopping Metalworker is good, but only possible with Revokers. You are able to out-dude them given time, but time is often something they take advantage of. Really there is very little suggestions to give against MUD besides don't get paired against it, and rely on RuG/Bug/Maverick to annihilate it.
Against elves you name Heritage Druid, then Heritage Druid, and then Heritage Druid. never too many heritage druids. Save your pithing needles for Wirewood Symbiote and then Quirion Ranger.
I went 3-2 with a pertty stock U/G list at a local with 25 peps.
R1: RUg 2-1, elephant grass, and glimmerposts were good all day vs rug
R2: Affinity 0-2 I was utterly crushed both games she drops a T3 Tez and ultimates him next turn, then drops another. G2 she vomits her entire hand on the table + plating on t2
R3: 2-0 Esperblade He saw no disruption in either game and was pounded
R4: 0-2 RUg G1 I mull to 5, and he wastes the crap out of me. G2 he go Delver Waste Waste, guess how that game went, I got stifled in there a couple of times also.
R5: 2-1 RUg this time I saw my needles for waste elephant grass + glimmer post allow mes to chain spaghetti monsters, I may have also snuk a SNT in there also.
Repeal was OK, I think I may try devastation tide in its place, as repel was all but useless against affinity, and does squat against geese.
I'm also beginning to think that repeal just doesn't do enough at the moment. It's okay versus rug by delaying them a turn (and perhaps making them use a brainstorm/ponder) and keep card parity, but I really hate that it costs 3U to bounce a kotr.
I tried devastation tide in repeals place in a couple of tests earlier today, but I still end up with the conclusion that it's too clunky by requiring either UU or brainstorm setup. Its also pretty terrible synergy with pithing needle. I think I'm going to test cyclonic rift in the repeal spots as soon as I grab some. You're not able to do quirky candle tricks or save your needle wih it, but I feel like those tend to be corner cases for what repeal does in the deck anyways. On the flip side, you get a 1U bouncer that an become a 1-sided evacuation. It also has synergy with elephant grass because the grass usually lets you develop your mana enough to overload the rift versus aggro decks.
Well the thing with Cyclonic Rift is that it's basically live at every stage of the game. Even versus Rug/Bug tempo, you can cast it at 1U which is only 1 mana more than repeal (but card disadvantage). However, late game versus decks with 2-3 creatures, it basically becomes a less powerful All is Dust (it does have some advantages in that it doesn't kill your own titans and bounces opposing ensnaring bridges) and stalls 1-2 turns rather than the 4-5. Its just a lot more versatile than either All is Dust or Devastation Tide.
In my RTR testing, there were no realistic situations where Cyclonic Rift had more utility than Devastation Tide. If you're looking for permanent removal, All is Dust is simply better for 7 mana, sometimes 5. Having no applications to bounce Top or Candelabras is hugely inhibitory, since repeal on SDT is your draw engine and on Candelabra is your best mana accelerant.
From my testing so far, the times when cyclonic rift is better than tide is when its in the starting hand or when you draw it while the board is empty. A tide stuck in hand w/o brainstorm is basically -1 card from the starting hand, while a cyclonic rift can still turn 2/3 bounce a delver. I will concede that once you have enough mana, the tide tends to be better because it is 2 less mana (but the UU is what kills it for me) and All is Dust's permanence is a lot more satisfying.
If Team America takes off more, cyclonic rift bouncing a tombstalker is really good. It'll buy at least 2-3 turns for 1U while repeal would need 8U.
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