There are 3 main routes to the BUG players choices here:
1. DRS land is good enough to keep, often leading into turn 2 hymm or something or are holding abrupt decay as a get out a jail free card.
2. They did not cast t1 discard because they "have protection" like FOW or abrupt decay as a get out of jail free.
3. They are praying for no turn 1 blood moon.
Fact: in this circumstance a resolved blood moon is basically game.
At this point you need to assess a few things:
1. If the blood moon is countered what does the rest of your game look like (ie turn 2 welder).
2. Do you lose significant value out of the blood moon by not playing it in this spot (they fetch a basic, discard it). Often this might lead to them holding up decay mana for the rest of the game, sometimes a good tempo play.
3. Where are you in the tourney? can you afford to risk it? early rounds against a potential bad opponent?
4. What does there body language tell you, did they snap keep?
Overall against RUG I would be inclined to hold it because once resolved it's game over and they cannot get it out of your hand. Against BUG I would be much more inclined to just slam threats until they die because they can attack out hand (and a turn 2 lily or hymm would be awful).
Someone on Jack's stream last night was asking about when to name blue and when not to. I don't know if they post or not, but given how difficult it was to answer concretely, I figured it'd be nice for new players if some of us chimed in here. It is certainly about a feeling for it, but I think some general rules, not absolute rules, for me at least are:
DO NOT name blue unless some of these conditions exist:
1) they have 4 or fewer cards in hand
2) they have used Force of Will already in some number
3) they are also in Red, but it's game 1, so probably no REBs of their own
4) your hand full of blasts most likely beats any combination of countermagic and removal in their hand
5) for some reason, you are playing for Jaya Ballard, or she would be very helpful in your scenario
6) there is a problem non-blue permanent on the board that you will lose to unless you remove it - ie sometimes your out to a Tarmogoyf or whatever is 2 copies of Ensnaring Bridge, and it'd be better to have your outs be 2 Ensnaring Bridge and 5-8 REBs instead. Removing a Jitte approaching 3 counters is another one of these scenarios that comes to mind, as well as any non-Jace planeswalker bothering you.
7) The security that naming blue with a blast in hand gives you is likely the only way you're going to win, and has relatively little downside. Example: Post-board against Omnitell, you know they have either Massacre or Pyroclasm to Cunning Wish for in the board, and you have an Ethersworn Canonist in play, and you want to cast a Painter. In this scenario, naming Blue with Painter is good, because with Canonist, they can't counter back after they play a sweeper, and you for sure need to keep your dorks in play to beat them down and lock them out. This is probably worth the downside of making it so that they can counter the things you cast on your turn more easily, and most likely, you're just holding up blasts for the rest of the game, or faking it. This is also usually correct against Storm, though there isn't really any downside to naming blue against Storm to begin with.
8) they're not playing blue, or if it's after board, red either.
9) they're a combo deck, like Reanimator, where their most problematic spells are all black, not blue, (though countering Careful Study is a good idea too), or are gigantic permanents that need to be taken off the board immediately. Almost anything they pitch to Force is going to be painful for them to do, and you should try to play around Daze, but otherwise you're dead if you're not dealing with Exhume/Reanimate eventually anyway.
10) they have foolishly elected to play with Sword of Fire and Ice against you (though any Sword is pretty bad if you name the appropriate color).
11) you're casting Painter with a Grindstone in play, and a REB in hand, and hopefully killing them in the next couple of turns, and Painter has resolved. They only have mana for one or sometimes 2 removal spells between now and whenever you activate Grindstone, so you can name blue, and hold up your blast and the mana to activate Grindstone until you can activate and REB in the same turn. When you're at this point in the game, you are highly favored, and naming blue gives you a great deal of tempo and possibly great draws in more Blasts, Painters, etc. as you keep their mana hostage with the threat of the Grindstone activation in response.
12) Your luck sack opponent is Blood Mooned, but tripped and fell into their basic lands. Blast/Jaya the lands.
13) You've boarded into or have 7-8 REB effects, and that is a significant amount more counter magic than you expect out of your opponent pre- or post-board.
14) You can't really win no matter what without blasting a few off-color things - this comes to mind against the old U/R Cruise Delver lists, where they were relatively light on permission, but you for sure would need to kill a Pyromancer, counter a Lightning Bolt, and blast a Delver or a Cruise etc. in order to have a chance at winning.
15) Your opponent can't really win anymore unless they resolve a specific spell. Name blue and stop that from happening. Unless that spell they need is Abrupt Decay. You'd be surprised how often you're at 3 or less life but the game is locked up for you outside of Lightning Bolt or something.
I'm sure there are numerous other scenarios, but these are the ones that usually come to mind when I'm naming blue instead of something neutral against a blue deck.
Great points Ringo I more or less agree with all of them. In my local meta people with 2-3 blasts in their side never bring them in, largely because of your points.
On a second note I have been running Pyroclasm in the side in my mono red build and saw Jack running it in shortcake. In the past during the hayday or UR delver johnothan saurez also ran 3. Overall this card is a great hedge against some cards or decks that can wreck us or cause headaches.
Death and taxes- often devolves into a large buildup of men on the DnT players side.
Elves- they are often a turn faster then us.
Pyromancer and monestary mentor- these are not blue and can end the game very quickly if we don't. With a lot of miracles players drinking the mentor koolaid this can help us not lose games we should win. In this instance it would likely a g3 board.
Last edited by mcbain; 05-28-2015 at 01:34 PM.
I still struggle a little with mass removal as well. Right now I'm playing Pyrokinesis as it can be free and it's instant speed so catches a lot of people off guard. I will say that the gaining popularity of mentor makes it a little tougher, although I think that would also be true of pyroclasm, especially at sorcery speed. I've considered trying Auelia's Fury, as it would also be good against decks like ANT where you could hit them with a point of damage in response to them sacking LED, or against Omnitell in response to show & tell, similar to canonist effect. It's definitely more mana intensive than many other removal spells but its utility is unmatched. Also, wouldn't volcanic fallout or starstorm be better than pyroclasm just for the instant speed?
Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
@ Ringo- I think in general those points are most of the time correct. In general I will call blue slightly more than 50% and I think Jack is similar in his call. Usually the key determining factor is always a fear in FoW and possibly falling prey to your opponents blast effects. That is the decision in a nut shell. There are some other corner cases like various swords, but there aren't really cards anymore where calling black to protect your dudes matters anymore in Legacy. For a new player I would boil it down to, If this Painter resolves, can a FoW stop me from winning? If the answer is yes then call black( Probably the best default color to call except against TEPs as you make their chrome mox better). If FoW doesn't matter, then call blue as you have high upside if the game state changes due to blast effects and Jaya. Post board, I usually only make a change with red decks. Against burn and the like I think you have to call blue when you have a blast in hand every time. Although against burn you can't really go for the combo unless you either have a blast effect or two painters in play. In many ways the call is this simple and that is who I would initially tell players to call with painter till they become comfortable with the rarer variations. Thoughts?
With respect to mass removal, I still really like EE. I think it is still really good in the monored lists. In the Shortcake lists, which I have to stress is probably the optimal direction to take the deck in a developed meta, EE in the main is a very strong card. Its ability to kill tokens, one drops(think delver, DRS, and elves) and fight counterbalance are huge. Pyroclasm has a place for sure, I just think EE is superior as the first mass removal spell and then pyroclasm or even earthquake would be the second one to explore. Earthquake scales nicely with sole lands. yes it hits us, but being able to kill creatures that are x/3 and bigger is huge and may lead to actually saving life in the long run. I haven't tested it yet, but the potential seems high for the card. I guess my fear with pyroclasm is that it is shit against Mentor. This may be from playing a lot of vintage lately but I would like my mass removal to hit that. I know right now young Pyromancer is played more, but having that answer is huge I think as I expect Mentor decks to become more popular as people find ways to use the card better.
Seth
…no matter how much you think you love somebody, you’ll step back when the pool of their blood edges up too close.
As far as mass removal goes, I've also been rolling with the Engineered Explosives, as it also destroys Chalice of the Void, and can be tutored preemptively against it, as well as TES and Miracles, and it can be welded back for 0 to deal with tokens again. I play Sudden Shocks as my spot removal, so I'm usually not concerned with pumping Mentor in response, and I agree that Pyroclasm is bad for this purpose.
Sudden Demise is a peculiar card to consider, as it can be one-sided in many scenarios, but will also often be a board wipe if you have Painter out, depending on the colors you choose for each spelll. I haven't liked any of the red board wipes much in practice, particularly against Mentor, and also against Young Pyromancer decks, and while Sphere of Law is great against Pyro Token, it's pretty painfully slow.
Maybe something like Moat or a reverse Meekstone/Bridge if something like that exists would be nice.
EDIT: Also, against Grixis and Miracles, and U/R Delver variants with Pyromancer....pretty much every Pyromancer or Mentor deck except the Midrangey Pyro-Stoneblade deck, Blood Moon is not at it's best, meaning that if you wanted to splash something tutorable like Illness in the Ranks or similar to shut down tokens, you could probably do it off of a single Badlands. REALLY REALLY not sure this would be worth the trouble, but it is quite the good solution to these decks if they're running over you constantly. You have 3-4 Lotus Petals that also cast the card, so it's not necessarily totally dead under Blood Moon, much in the same way that E-Tutor operates. Against the Grixis Control decks, I'm sure this would be backbreaking, as Young Pyromancer is their most common win-con, and as far as non-blue threats go, you'd only really be worried about a Tasigur or a Gurmag Angler to close out the game as long as you keep Jace and Dack, and Delver if they run them, off the table.
With the exception of Miracles and the Young Pyro Blade deck, most don't have good outs to enchantments either, and our threat density of artifacts usually exhausts these options anyway.
Could someone post a link to the stream?Originally Posted by RingoDeathStarr
http://www.twitch.tv/kapncook this is his channel on mobile can't get direct link.
How well is the Painter positioned in the meta right now, especially in the European meta? Legacy GP Lille is closing in and I'm still undeciced what should I play there. I've been pondering between RW Painter (Jacks list), Omnitell and MUD. I think that there are going to be lots of Miracles and Omnitell decks there at Lille and for that reason the Painter just don't feel like a best deck to choose. Although we have 7 red blasts in the mainboard the Omnitell matchup still feels very hard, we can't combo kill at game 1 and so on... Any ideas and tips are appreciated.
If one is going to succeed with Painter it's gonna be because of vast amounts of experience with the deck. There's even less margin for error with a deck like this against Omnitell, Miracles, and XUG decks. I'll be playing it regardless at Lille, gonna be good times.
sweet thanks!
I'm also going to play Shortcake at GP Lille. It's my only legacy deck, and probably the only one I'll play for years to come, it's just too much fun with all the different approaches.
As for the matchups, I think the meta is not too good. Miracle and DnT is decent, but Omnitell and Grixis Delver is in their favor. However, there's also speculations for some good amount of lands
Sweet! We have to organize a secret Imperial Painter-meeting there somewhereI'm also going to play Shortcake at GP Lille. It's my only legacy deck, and probably the only one I'll play for years to come, it's just too much fun with all the different approaches.
As for the matchups, I think the meta is not too good. Miracle and DnT is decent, but Omnitell and Grixis Delver is in their favor. However, there's also speculations for some good amount of landsGrixis matchup is awful, luckily sometimes Blood Moon cripples them enough for us to win. I even went and ordered few foil Caltrops for my local meta against Grixis, although Painter is not the best deck for having those.
I'm game for meeting some of you guys down there :DSweet! We have to organize a secret Imperial Painter-meeting there somewhere
Indeed! :)Sweet! We have to organize a secret Imperial Painter-meeting there somewhere
So what are people gonna be bringing til GP Lille? MonoR or R/W? :)
Personally, I don't have all the cards for the R/W version yet and I'm still in love with the MonoR version, since it still provides a LOT of different card choices.... :)
I am however a little concerned with the meta changing from x/2 creatures to x/3 creatures, especially Death and Taxes... Sudden shock is a bomb against all the creatures in the deck, besides Serra Avenger, which I'm having trouble handling properly....
I'm trying out Sudden Demise to see if that could help though :)
So I watched Jack's most recent replay and got my interest back on the Punishing Fire version. Attempted to throw together a R/G Version with Fires, decent sideboard options, and Huntmaster of the Fells as tutorable finisher:
http://tappedout.net/mtg-decks/02-06-15-rg-painter/
Something to work on?
Punishing fires/grove deck with the 5 moon effects is hard to balance. So I don't know if you want to have both plans main decked. Perhaps the Fires in sb for the matches it's handy. Plus I was surprised to see no choke in the SB. I think if your splashing green you need to push it hard for things abusing Painter like GSZ and Natural order. I did try a RG painter and it never felt smooth. If you want a green painter you should look into N.O. Painter. My latest version with that is GW and plays more like a variant of Maverick than painter.
Bridge has always been good for me in this match. Just another thinbg they have to deal with and it shuts down their wincon.
And im for a meet up, someone else decide when and where
Lots to be done, it was merely a beginning :) I totally forgot about Choke when teching.. geez.Punishing fires/grove deck with the 5 moon effects is hard to balance. So I don't know if you want to have both plans main decked. Perhaps the Fires in sb for the matches it's handy. Plus I was surprised to see no choke in the SB. I think if your splashing green you need to push it hard for things abusing Painter like GSZ and Natural order. I did try a RG painter and it never felt smooth. If you want a green painter you should look into N.O. Painter. My latest version with that is GW and plays more like a variant of Maverick than painter.
As for the Punishing and Moons, I don't think it's too much of a hassle. If you moon, the Fires isn't a dead card, just a much worse card.. but still removes early threats. The other way around however, in matchups where Fires are good and moons are bad (Tribals, DnT), they would be awkward to have at hand anyway. The eventual solution is to use Chrome Moxes instead of SSG and Petal to pitch moons, but still not sure what's the better mix. I also don't think we need to splash hard, just a dip like the white in Shortcake.
Anyways I'm not gonna come and say green splash is better than white or blue, because at the moment it probably isn't at all. Just sniffing the possibilities ~
There are currently 1 users browsing this thread. (0 members and 1 guests)
Reply With Quote
