Do you mean upping Candles/O-Stones/Kozileks themselves or upping the cards that dig for them, like adding more cantrips/search like Ancient Stirrings, Ponder, or Intuition?
Last edited by Mockingbird; 11-08-2013 at 01:21 AM.
I've resorted to this because my meta is full of awful Goblins, DNT and general aggro, and the mana situation isnt always stable enough to run Bonfire. Since no one sees it coming, they overextend their board while under a Chasm lock, and I can use top to flip Devastation Tide to reset the board and force them to discard 10 gobbos.
Also, theres a lot of joy in chaining Temporal Masteries:)
That could work for some metas, but mine is more combo driven. And Ostone is at least relevant against most decks. But yeah older build makes sense, Neeley's invitational list would be a great example of a blast from the last that has come full circle. I prefer UG needle stone overall, it fits my play style.
I haven't had much luck adding cantrips to the list, but playing the full 12 posts, more candles/maps, and o stone instead. Most importantly- more needles - which affords you the ability to play cloudposts in earlier turns, and have those explosive hands. Recently more blue and green cards have kept my list more conservative and slow, and I've missed often having some hands which play out like GP, Top/Candle> CP > CP, Ostone/Map > Vesuva, Eldrazi. This has all been done before, but those hands I definitely want to see more of if aggro is in the format, they take the strain off of SnT.
I currently play with 2 Trinket Mages, and as such I'm looking rather fondly at Engineered Explosives over Oblivion Stones. Has any analysis been done on this?
I'm always on the fence with this one, too. With mages it becomes much better for sure. Ill need to try it again because it's attrative in theory and O Stone has been better in practice.
Also, I tested the New Merfolk and I found that shielding chasm with Needles is actually enough most of the time. O stones can seal it off. Max needles, show and tell, and Map for Chasm.
Yep. I've been playing monogreen with about 80% colorless for a few years now, and Merfolk is generally a favorable matchup. Adding a 3/1 doesn't change anything (and might make it even better, depending on what they cut for TNN). With a heavier focus on ramp, Daze/Spell Pierce is mostly irrelevant, and All Is Dust becomes very reliable (and can be found with Ancient Stirrings). Maindeck Tabernacle is also solid here, especially with the full 4x of Ancient Stirrings, Map, and Crop Rotation.
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I was toying around w/ sneak show for the past couple of days and the more I played it, the more I realized that it was just a faster, but less consistent version of this deck. The sol-lands often turned out to be faster versions of the posts, but in longer grindier games, I kind of just wanted a more stable mana-base with sdt's. I then just tried adapting sneak-show into the post shell and ended up with monstrosity. It's a lot more combo oriented than the lists that have been posted here, but its nice in that it just overloads opposing counterspells since all of your combo pieces are castable.
Creatures (8)
4x Primeval Titan
3x Emrakul
1x Ulamog
Spells (26)
4x Sensei's Divining Top
4x Brainstorm
4x Ponder
4x Show and Tell
4x Sneak Attack
4x Crop Rotation
2x Candelabra of Tawnos
Lands (26)
4x Cloudpost
4x Glimmerpost
2x Vesuva
4x Scalding Tarn
4x Misty Rainforest
3x Volcanic Island
3x Tropical Island
1x Eye of Ugin
1x Glacial Chasm
Sneak attack-> primeval is pretty disgustingly backbreaking. Its fairly close to some of rocklee's first rug variants with through the breach mb'd. I think repeals might fit in here instead of the ponders or some of the crop rotations (since I'm a lot more all in on the combo plan) and something for 2 maindecked bonfires might be worthwhile. I could also see some slots taken out for a couple of blue cards and fow as well. Just a rough draft but something to think about.
I tested the deck some more and it plays a lot faster than traditional post, while a couple of turns slower than traditional sneak show. I'm actually down to 0 vesuvas and 2 crop rotations atm. The reason is that plan 1 is just to show/sneak something degenerate into play and ride that to victory (I'm also running less land tutors so vesuva isn't copying cloudpost very reliably and was just sitting in hand or copying a volc/trop). If that doesnt work, then you can assemble the posts/6 mana to hardcast titan. I added 4 repeals to the main to help the delver/aggro matchups as well as doing fun shennanigans vs more controlly decks. Ulamog just became the 4th emrakul because repeal takes care of random permanents well enough and ulamog is strictly worse than emmy off of sneak or show. Candles as a 2 of have been good because with just 1 cloudpost and 1-2 glimmerposts, you can accelerate yourself out of pierce/daze range or get the GG/RR for titan/sneak->activate. Here's the current md:
Creatures (8)
4x Primeval Titan
4x Emrakul
Spells (28)
4x Sensei's Divining Top
4x Brainstorm
4x Ponder
4x Show and Tell
4x Sneak Attack
4x Repeal
2x Crop Rotation
2x Candelabra of Tawnos
Lands (24)
4x Cloudpost
4x Glimmerpost
4x Scalding Tarn
4x Misty Rainforest
3x Volcanic Island
3x Tropical Island
1x Eye of Ugin
1x Glacial Chasm
Current SB:
2x City of Solitude
4x Force of Will
4x Swan Song
2x Red Elemental Blast
2x Pyroclasm
1x Karakas
Sb is still a work in progress, but taking a lil bit more from the sneak-show playbook with city of solitude replacing defense grid. Pyroclasm is there to wreck weenie aggro decks like goblins, dnt, and does some work versus an early merfolk board state. Traditional 8 counter suite for the combo matchups, with an extra 2 reb's versus the omni/delver matchups. Singleton karakas is there to find with prime time/rotation in the the show mirror match. This could be moved to the mb, but my blue land count is already quite low (14).
So, as I've mentioned in this thread, I'm missing the big money cards for the deck (no Revised duals that tap for blue mana, no Candelabra, no Tabernacle). I've been playing it in weekly tournaments, and I've also been losing: a lot. Losing three life to go from Zendikar Fetch to Ravnica Shock is very painful in Legacy. Having to run stuff into counters is painful. Not being able to have the big explosive turns that something like a Candelabra provides is, again, painful. I was browsing online and found NM Trops for about $80 and NM Candelabras for $235. I know those are good prices for both cards...but I just couldn't pull the trigger. Maybe I will eventually, but that day is not today and it probably isn't tomorrow. I'd love to be able to just throw a grand down to finish the deck, but I just can't.
Then I realized I was taking the wrong approach. Basically, I was trying to build half-assed (or maybe three-quarters-assed at best) versions of what Rock Lee was running. Budget substitutes only get you so far, and clearly I wasn't going far enough. If I didn't just get pounded into the dirt, I was running into the problem of having to cast multiple threats just to get one to stick, and quite frequently it resulted in me being dead a turn or two before I could take over, even when I ran Boseiju and Miracles. Anyway, long story short, I took the deck apart and rebuilt it from a new angle. The deck still needs to be tweaked a bit, but it has a much less half-assed gameplan. I didn't get to play it in a tournament today, and I don't have the luxury of being able to just privately test it against everything that's run in Legacy, but I played a good dozen games versus U/R Burn/Delver and RUG Delver and won all but three, with two of those losses coming on keeping one-land hands after mulliganing to five and not table shuffling because I was lazy.
If there's any interest, here's the current 75:
// Artifacts
3 Pithing Needle
3 Oblivion Stone
3 Expedition Map
4 Sensei's Divining Top
// Creatures
4 Thragtusk
4 Oracle of Mul Daya
1 Kozilek, Butcher of Truth
2 Ulamog, the Infinite Gyre
2 Emrakul, the Aeons Torn
4 Primeval Titan
// Instants
4 Crop Rotation
// Sorceries
1 All is Dust
// Lands
1 Glacial Chasm
1 Karakas
5 Forest
4 Glimmerpost
1 Eye of Ugin
1 Bojuka Bog
4 Vesuva
4 Cloudpost
4 Cavern of Souls
// Sideboard
2 Surgical Extraction
2 Elephant Grass
3 Chalice of the Void
4 Mindbreak Trap
2 Venser, Shaper Savant
2 Bane of Progress
I'm reasonably certain that monogreen's potential is still lower than what others are running, but it definitely beats what I was previously doing.
I'm curious as to what you're testing now Rock Lee. My testing ended with me very frustrated at the delver matchup--the manabase is just disgustingly susceptible to wasteland/stifle blowouts. I might have tried pushing the list too combo-y and lost too many of the control elements though.
It really sounds like you people want be playing Sneak and Show instead of this.
You are playing the most inevitable deck in the format. Shouldn't your goal be to survive until the casting of unlimited Emrakuls instead of being a worse Sneak and Show?
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I actually really like somethingdotdotdot's list, I had been testing something similar when I fiddled with the deck before. The manabase gives the inevitability that traditional sneak/show and reanimator didn't have. However, without the ability to interfere with opposing spells, bad things could happen. I'm not going to say what bad things, but bad things may happen.
Was digging through on gatherer to find something to help hose the delver decks and saw meekstone. It could be useful since most of our guys win with a single swing (or at least pretty close to winning) and it turns delver/goyf into a burn spell for a single colorless mana. Might merit some testing in the board at least. What meekstone doesn't stop can be handled with pyroclasm/bonfire quite easily.
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Theyre not out of the question, theyre just not enough at times. Pithing needle doesn't stop delver; elephant grass is a good sb card but more useful for swarms than the 1 attacker theyre pushing through; oblivion stone is terrible versus delver as 1 stifle trades for 1 card+8 mana; and repeal is nice but not permanent.
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