really helps on turn 1, although unprotected.
// 60 Maindeck
// 12 Artifact
4 Lotus Petal
4 Chrome Mox
4 Serum Powder
// 30 Creature
4 Balustrade Spy
4 Undercity Informer
4 Narcomoeba
4 Elvish Spirit Guide
4 Simian Spirit Guide
3 Chancellor of the Tangle
2 Lotleth Giant
4 Street Wraith
1 Wild Cantor
// 2 Enchantment
2 Bridge from Below
// 12 Instant
4 Dark Ritual
4 Cabal Ritual
4 Summoner's Pact
// 4 Sorcery
2 Dread Return
2 Cabal Therapy
-rob
I don't get the point of Sphinx, it's a dead card in and of itself so why not take the mulligan to 6 instead of the Scry to 3 if you don't have a win condition in your hand? Even Street Wraith is more of a card to feed Chrome Mox than it is a card to find a win condition, cycling chaff needs to serve a 2ndary function IMO.
Sphinx is definitely a win condition, I've been pressured playing against it, it also filters your first draws and can be pitched to chrome mox, like any card, and to FoW.
Pettdan pretty much hit it on the head. We've got enough trouble ensuring we'll have a rogue, an initializer, and enough mana to get there in a seven-card hand (and nowadays, even after mulligans). So we're getting something that helps us dig for our win-con and shores up our combo-protection by working with Force of Will.
Whether Force is better than Unmask is, I think, still an open question and one that depends on the matchup. But I've found that our mulligans are a lot worse than they used to be (losing Probe was really bad), so I don't think we can count on having the fastest hands in the West anymore. Sure, cantrip effects were never what we really wanted in this deck, but without them, we're looking for needles in haystacks. If we can't either protect our combo or fix our openers, even at the cost of one card, I'm not really sure what we can do. And I'm pretty thoroughly persuaded that Chancellor of the Annex isn't what we're looking for.
But again, test it and see what you think. I'm really interested to hear what people are up to these days when it comes to tweaking the base deck.
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I goldfished 100 games with Sphinx of Foresight and the card is god awful, I compared it to 100 games of mulligning to 6 on the play and most of the mulligans more consistently found a win condition and went off faster. Something tells me the people who suggested Sphinx don't understand when to keep and when to mulligan, if you're having consistency issues then SB Chancellor of the Annex and play Manamorphose instead.
So assuming we're running identical lists, we're having two wildly differing experiences with the Sphinx. So my first question is what list you were running.
My next question is what you were trying to get the deck to do (aside from win the game, obv.). What I mean is that the traditional approach of the deck is "Gotta go fast." I still think we want to do that, but I don't think it's feasible to assume we'll be getting T1s 45% of the time anymore; we've lost too much free digging and haven't found a surrogate ninth Rogue worth its weight in butts. Back when I played the deck regularly before jumping ship for Storm, I found I'd win or lose just as often if I went off on turn 1 as if I went off on turn 2 or sometimes turn 3—speed was less the determining factor in victory than the contents of our opponents' hands. So as awesome and flashy as it is to just get there immediately, opponents' having Force of Will and Daze was always ultimately more important than our speed. (Obviously the more time our opponents had to dig for disruption, the worse off we'd be. No argument from me there.)
I've said it before and I'll say it again: I'm not looking to drag race anymore with this deck; I'm looking to beat disruption, which was always the thing that kept this deck from being legitimized in the eyes of the community. We all know that Elves is dead in the water against us, but not a lot of people play Elves.
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Can you run your test with my serum Powder list?
-rob
All Spells Primer under construction: https://docs.google.com/document/d/e...Tl7utWpLo0/pub
PM me if you want to contribute!
FF, but anyone can:)
-rob
Ran fine for gold fishing, I think it could work if you had a SB to cut Serum Powder and the duplicates for disruption vs blue.
I had a similar list awhile back, but with 4 Bridge from Below instead of Street Wraiths and 2 Flame Kin Zealots instead of Lotleth Giants for maximum redundancy on RFGing Narcomoebas. With double kill conditions, I would cut all copies of Cabal Therapy - you don't have to discard combo pieces in your hand when you have duplicates in your deck and 99% of people counter your win condition anyway and you're not comming back off the top deck regardless (you can board 1 if they get cute tho and steal a game from them).
sure, with 2 dread return, 2 cabal and 2 lotleth i only died a handfull of times due to having something in hand that i couldn't get rid of.
you probably do need 1 cabal to sacrifice a single narcomoeba to get your zombie chains started. haven't considered sb yet.
lotleth is also pretty cool in the aspect that you can potentially dread return it twice for a ton of damage if you are less than 20 guys in your graveyard.
-rob
This deck never relied on cantrips, it always relied on mulligans, to find win conditions. If the reduced numbers of cantrips made finding black mana harder, then MD Manamorphose or Wild Cantors can solve that problem for you. If your opponent mulligans into Force of Will and Surgical Extraction on the draw, then Chancellor of the Annex locks them out of the game for you. If the opponent is on the play, then you have Unmask and the draw to be able to cast it.
Nothing else works, Scry 3 and pass the turn into a land drop is exactly what causes you to lose the games mentioned and it is even less consistent then taking a mulligan on the draw as well.
The deck abuses the mulligan and a 4 mana win condition to be able to win off of a 5 card hand, if you are holding a win condition and a Street Wraith to find a black mana off the top then you are playing the deck completely wrong. The cyclers should only ever fish for the 4th mana, if that, and 99% of the people who ran Gitaxian Probe over Chancellor of the Tangle were just really bad at mulligans.
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Cantrips suck in this deck, they were always strictly worse than playing with more mana because the only thing they can reliably find is mana anyway. All cantrips did was convince people to keep hands they shouldnt keep over going to 6 or 5. The deck needs hard redundancy so the opening hand is clear, not chaff that adds variance.
This man knows what he's talking about. I play zero cantrips and I'm loving it (4 Wild Cantor, which can be played off a chrome mox or chancellor of the tangle). Not playing lab maniac removes the need for street wraith. However, cutting black cards can be bad for chrome mox so I'm testing some unmasks in the main. A couple tinder walls also helps with mana.
The fact that all the top-8 lists I've been able to find from the past year ran quads of Street Wraith and as many Probes as the format banlist allowed, combined with the sheer paucity of top-8 lists, suggests that you're incorrect and—perhaps more importantly—that we should be innovating. But whatever.
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I don't care about that, you can gold fish the deck and compare your 7 with a cantrip and no critical card to your mulligan to 6 and judge for yourself, with the new mulligan rules the reality now is even more in my favour. I trust in the mulligan to 6 more than the draw for 1, all the deck wants is consistent starting hands.
As far as Manamorphose and Stree Wraith, both of those cards are ok because they filter for black mana, even when you gamble with the draw off of Manamorphose and lose you can still ritual and cast the 3 mana hermit and pass.
Wild Cantors are fine too, they are just a literal different in terms of playstyle because you get the Wild Cantor, go play lines instead of the Manamorphose top deck gambles for the 4th mana to activate the hermit on the same turn. I could go, and have gone, for either but I think that Manamorphose being better in doubles in your hand puts it over the top for me right now.
I agree with this wholeheartedly. As its been configured since 2013 (though sans Probe), this deck will get a HUGE boost if the new mulligan rules take effect, and cards like the Chancellors will become truly absurd on the play.
Just for clarification, are you saying you think both Cantor and Manamorphose are good to run in multiples right now, or are you saying that you think multiple Manamorphoses are better? Thanks in advance!
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Manamorphose is the more powerful card, while Wild Cantor is the more consistent card. It depends on whether or not your opponents will counter the Manamorphose or wait to counter the win condition, the better they are the more likely they will counter the Manamorphose and the value of Wild Cantor goes up as a result because it's harder to counter and you invest less resources into it even when it is countered.
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