[Premium Article] Doomsday: The Puzzling -- Five Doomsday Puzzles to Blow Your Mind!

[Smmenen]

Steven, not a lot of people are playing your deck, so I would love to read a report. Also, as your article is premium content there is no dedicated thread for discussion, so the chances to read about how the deck performs are few and far between. I have read both your articles and would like to see how Flusterstorm and Chain of Vapor went for you.

Flusterstorm has been all-star: It stops High Tide in its tracks, is good against RUG for stopping the cards you cards you care about, nails Show and Tell, and slows Reanimator. It's pretty good in almost every matchup as well.

Chain has rarely come up, but it allows you to do so many interesting and useful things.

[.dk]

I've had a tough time against High Tide with this deck, really. It seems that it usually comes down to who can go off first. I've had a few occasions where I've gotten into flusterstorm wars with my High Tide opponent, both to protect my combo, as well as disrupt theirs. The math starts to become kind of insane... Outside of that, however, Flusterstorm has been great in my testing. Trumps pretty much every non-flusterstorm counterspell out there.

I also feel like with the amount of discard that is entering the format right now, Divert might be a real card again. I haven't tested it against the BUG decks, but I could see it having some pretty great value, and can let you still use your Brainstorms proactively to find Doomsday.

[Smmenen]

That's difficult to me to understand, because I've never lost to High Tide after facing it three times in tournament now, but I have some advice.

First, I think you are may be playing /approaching the matchup wrong. Don't worry about trying to combo out. Just play a hard control role. The difference between a deck like High Tide and a combo deck like Reanimator is that High Tide takes a lot of resources to go off. If you get them to play a bunch of thier spells, it takes many turn for them to set up again. Just use your cantrips and Topping to find countermagic and set up a huge counter-wall. They can't beat that. USe Probes to mold the perfect hand to set up traps. For example if you know that they are going to pay High Tide and then Turnabout to untap their lands, don't counter the High Tide -- counter the Turnabout.

Once you've depleted their hand, then you should try to hardcast Dday. Shuffling back Rituals -- dont even bother with them. Once they are spent, you should be able to easily hardcast Dday off of 3 Seas and win this or the following turn.

Second, bring in at least 1-2 Cabal Therapies, if not both Therapies and a few Bobs, both to generate card advantage and to flashback Therapy, which really does The Rape High Tide. Keep at least 3 Dark Rituals in post-board for turn one Therapy/Top + Bob.

***

The main complaint I've heard from people playing this deck is the RUG matchup. I've not lost to RUG in tournament, although I did lose a very close game 3 to UR Delver at the SCG Open (after really miscuing game 1 -- which I should have won).

The key to the RUG matchup is realizing you are going to use your life as a resource, so you should plan to end the game at 1-2 life. WHen you play Dday, you will be at 8-13 life, which means, post-Dday, you will be at 4-6 life. You probably will use some combination of Force/Fetch/Probe post-Dday to win, so you should end every game at 1-2 life.

[.dk]

That's fair - against most high tide builds that is probably fine. We have a local High Tide player that packs a lot of countermagic as well - including 3 flusterstorms main - which make taking the control role a bit harder. Likely your advice is correct in most cases though. I run a petal in my list, so if I can T1/2 Ritual into Doomsday with 1 protection spell, that is usually game as High Tide won't keep a hand with just a bunch of countermagic and no business for them to win. I agree that Therapies and Bobs are usually pretty killer post board, since High Tide can't attack your life total.

RUG hasn't usually felt that awful to me. Spellskite does SO much work in that matchup - my biggest problem there is usually finding DDay quickly enough to still have enough life left for Probe post DD. Mulligans are key in this matchup to give yourself the best chance of getting DD in hand, or a good chance to find it quickly (Ponders and Tops...)

[thra1l]

Hi,

I have really enjoyed the puzzle article so far (and the Primer, for that matter). I do have a question: on puzzle number 4, it shows that a Flusterstorm is in hand. However it shows that the Flusterstorms were boarded out for this puzzle. This is the only one I haven't solved, merely because I want to make sure everything is correct before I attempt to solve it.

I would love to see more articles like this for this deck; I'm really enjoying it.

-Jacob

Edit - typo

[Smmenen]

Hi,

I have really enjoyed the puzzle article so far (and the Primer, for that matter). I do have a question: on puzzle number 4, it shows that a Flusterstorm is in hand. However it shows that the Flusterstorms were boarded out for this puzzle. This is the only one I haven't solved, merely because I want to make sure everything is correct before I attempt to solve it.

I would love to see more articles like this for this deck; I'm really enjoying it.

-Jacob

Edit - typo

Yes, it won't change the hypo. Just follow what the blurb says, and not the image. Thanks for your interest in this article! I'm really glad folks enjoyed it...


Stephen

[Smmenen]

That's fair - against most high tide builds that is probably fine. We have a local High Tide player that packs a lot of countermagic as well - including 3 flusterstorms main - which make taking the control role a bit harder. )

One of my testing partners is Danny Friedman, who plays 3 flusterstorm high Tide, and I crush him with this deck. All you do is play a hard control role, and it's impossible for them to win. They have to resolve High Tide to win, and even if you don't counter the High Tide, they basically need to resolve a Time Spiral, which is easy to counter. Then you've 2-for-1ed them with your countermagic. If they wait too long, then you combo out before they can.