[Deck] Imperial Painter

[Russki]

Jaya and Chandra can't kill an active Jitte with counters, the problem I have with depending on Jaya to kill artifacts is she doesn't destroy them the turn you play her.

Sent from my XT1585 using Tapatalk

Fair, but Fiery Confluence is a fantastic card that does indeed kill a Jitte AND the creatures it is surrounded by.

[Hopo]

Jaya and Chandra can't kill an active Jitte with counters, the problem I have with depending on Jaya to kill artifacts is she doesn't destroy them the turn you play her.

Sent from my XT1585 using Tapatalk

Obviously, but at least you have it in g1. Or are you playing Vandal in main? Between blasts, Jaya and Sudden Shocks I feel quite confidant playing any g1 against potential Jittes. In game 2 I have so much more powerful cards that Vandal just feels like a waste.

But at the end of the day you just need to play with what works for you. If you manage with Vandal, perfect.

[taco-hell]

Hey guys, I'm getting back into legacy and have been looking at Painter. I've always loved this deck and all of the really unique game states it creates. My question is, in the post-top world, would you buy into it? I saw a few people lamenting that the current version of the deck was a lot less fun than Shortcake was. Is the deck just clunkier or worse now?

Curious what your thoughts are!

[rabidw0lf]

I havent had a chance to do anything beyond goldfishing, is Isochron Scepter too cute?
sticking e tutor/pyro on a stick seems like it could be amazing. It also solves having an e tutor stranded in your hand because blood moons

[Nouille]

Hey guys, I'm getting back into legacy and have been looking at Painter. I've always loved this deck and all of the really unique game states it creates. My question is, in the post-top world, would you buy into it? I saw a few people lamenting that the current version of the deck was a lot less fun than Shortcake was. Is the deck just clunkier or worse now?

Curious what your thoughts are!

Yes, it's cunkier, but to me, clunkier means also worse... You'll often end up playing hellbent/topdeck mode vs fair decks, and it's very frustrating to have no control on this. But it's still very competitive, especially in the current meta I think where bloodmoon often shines.

I havent had a chance to do anything beyond goldfishing, is Isochron Scepter too cute?
sticking e tutor/pyro on a stick seems like it could be amazing. It also solves having an e tutor stranded in your hand because blood moons

Never tested it in painter, but in all decks I tested so far, isochron looks always like an awesome idea, but is quite bad in the end :/


Last night I playtested a lot vs grixis delver, bug control, stoneblade, thing in the ice deck, and I had great success with my new 2 flexslots : Ichor wellspring. I play a shortcake x4 welder x4 petals list, and was not happy at all with faithless looting or with spellbomb. I switched them for x2 ichor and this card is such a blast (haha) drawing mad amount of cards with welder activations in longer games. Definitely deserves a test imho.

[Falconer26]

I have a couple questions about sideboard cards and matchups and wanted some other opinions from other people that have played the deck for longer than I have.
This is the 75 i'm currently on:

4 Grindstone
1 Engineered Explosives
3 Lotus Petal
2 Ensnaring Bridge
1 Pyrite Spellbomb

4 Painter's Servant
4 Imperial Recruiter
2 Simian Spirit Guide
2 Goblin Welder
1 Phyrexian Revoker
1 Magus of the Moon

4 Blood Moon

4 Pyroblast
2 Red Elemental Blast
3 Enlightened Tutor

4 Mountain
1 Great Furnace
4 Ancient Tomb
3 City of Traitors
2 Plateau
4 Arid Mesa
1 Bloodstained Mire

3 Chandra, Torch of Defiance


//Sideboard
1 Tormod's Crypt
1 Ensnaring Bridge

1 Containment Priest
1 Duergar Hedge-Mage
1 Phyrexian Revoker
1 Sulfur Elemental
1 Ethersworn Canonist

1 Sphere of Law

2 Sudden Shock
1 Red Elemental Blast

1 Plains

2 Fiery Confluence
1 Sudden Demise

Some questions I have are:

1. What are the pros and cons of having the 1-of plains in the board? What matchups does it really help out?
2. Warmth vs Sphere of Law vs Circle of Protection: Red, which is the best and what decks in specific do they help against other than burn?
3. How is the ANT matchup? What do we bring in and whats the gameplan?
4. What about Elves? Is the Sudden Demise worth having for that matchup?

I'm still pretty new to the deck and am just starting to mess around with it again since top got banned.

[CptHaddock]

Some questions I have are:

1. What are the pros and cons of having the 1-of plains in the board? What matchups does it really help out?
2. Warmth vs Sphere of Law vs Circle of Protection: Red, which is the best and what decks in specific do they help against other than burn?
3. How is the ANT matchup? What do we bring in and whats the gameplan?
4. What about Elves? Is the Sudden Demise worth having for that matchup?

I'm still pretty new to the deck and am just starting to mess around with it again since top got banned.

The reason for running the plains is to have a nonwastable white source in matchups where your opponent has a wasteland. This lets you easily cast e-tutors or things like Ajani postboard lessening putting yourself in a position where you can get wasted out of the game. Also against burn you can somewhat avoid price by having a basic white source to cast your spell. I'd say the biggest con is that we're a base red deck so you might be forced to keep awkward hands like Plains + Tomb/City + Blood Moon where you are unable to slam your turn 1 moon which may have won you the game.

I think that Sphere and Circle are probably the better choices. I can't speak to Circle but it seems decent. I've played Sphere and you can usually buy yourself enough time to either combo off or hide behind walkers while killing your opponent.

I think that both the ANT and Elves matchups are good. Imo we're significantly faster than both decks. For the ANT matchup you want graveyard hate, canonist, 3ball, revokers, any ee type effects and if your board wipe of choice is not confluence then bring that in as well. For the elves matchup bring in all your removal, canonist, revokers, 3ball, board wipes and ees.

[Kap'n Cook]

Yo my dudes a few things. A couple random things.

1) I decided to say fuck mono red man. That version is so much less fun than any potential red/white lists we could conjure up. The flexibility is such an upside and I've been on shortcake since mid-2013 there's no way I can seriously leave now and go back to red. Plus I think plateau is such a cool card and the art is sick and we're the only reason it ever went up in price (ignore all the other decks randomly running one sometimes like miracles, gobbos, or dnt haha)

2) so with that, I wanted to say a few musings I've had. One of the reasons old shortcake was so lethal was how well we abused lotus petal. And by this I mean because of top and generating a card and mana with welder. Basically we could blow the petal early on t1 moon or an early tutor/recruiter accelerant, AND THEN rebuy it later when tight on mana with welder/top. We were running arguably the sketchiest manabase in the entire format because we could consistently within matches use Welder/petal shenanigans. And this is a deck built to prey on sketchy manabases!

2.5) now petal is way worse, which might not have at first made sense upon top ban. So, my question is how can we design a more stable manabase while still generating the early/mid mana advantage top/welder/petal enabled. Like I'm thinking something like a no-petal yes-mox opal build (edit: want 1 petal for tutoring corner cases). So mainly I was wondering if one of you guys experienced with mox opal use could design me a starter manabase for what I described above?

3) I had just started up on my annual tradition of reading back through the old thread then this one completely, and realized that i started painting five years ago basically to the day. There have been other things that have been worse than top ban over the years. I'm confident we can come up with something.

[merfolkotpt]

2) so with that, I wanted to say a few musings I've had. One of the reasons old shortcake was so lethal was how well we abused lotus petal. And by this I mean because of top and generating a card and mana with welder. Basically we could blow the petal early on t1 moon or an early tutor/recruiter accelerant, AND THEN rebuy it later when tight on mana with welder/top. We were running arguably the sketchiest manabase in the entire format because we could consistently within matches use Welder/petal shenanigans. And this is a deck built to prey on sketchy manabases!

2.5) now petal is way worse, which might not have at first made sense upon top ban. So, my question is how can we design a more stable manabase while still generating the early/mid mana advantage top/welder/petal enabled. Like I'm thinking something like a no-petal yes-mox opal build (edit: want 1 petal for tutoring corner cases). So mainly I was wondering if one of you guys experienced with mox opal use could design me a starter manabase for what I described above?

3) I had just started up on my annual tradition of reading back through the old thread then this one completely, and realized that i started painting five years ago basically to the day. There have been other things that have been worse than top ban over the years. I'm confident we can come up with something.

So I have played a lot of UR painter, and in that deck usually the deck was playing 3x Mox Opal and the mana base typically was something line 4 sol lands, 4+ Artifact Lands 3 Volcs, 4 basics (we were also playing blood moon out of the board), 6 fetches, 1 utility land (there were a couple different options) and then 3 Mox Opal and some number of LED/Grim Monolith depending on the time period of the deck and whether or not it included transmute artifact. Obviously these are pretty different decks, but I thought it might help.

If I were attempting to build WR painter these days with Mox Opal I would probably cut the fetches and duals down to 4 and 2 respectively and only run 1 Plains (but main) to make room for the other Sol Lands, I would also probably want at least 3 Great Furnace, but maybe more depending on the number of other artifacts in the main.

I am mostly trying to get into playing iPainter now, but I figured a couple years of playing UR painter back in the day would be somewhat helpful.

[CptHaddock]

Yo my dudes a few things. A couple random things.

1) I decided to say fuck mono red man. That version is so much less fun than any potential red/white lists we could conjure up. The flexibility is such an upside and I've been on shortcake since mid-2013 there's no way I can seriously leave now and go back to red. Plus I think plateau is such a cool card and the art is sick and we're the only reason it ever went up in price (ignore all the other decks randomly running one sometimes like miracles, gobbos, or dnt haha)

2) so with that, I wanted to say a few musings I've had. One of the reasons old shortcake was so lethal was how well we abused lotus petal. And by this I mean because of top and generating a card and mana with welder. Basically we could blow the petal early on t1 moon or an early tutor/recruiter accelerant, AND THEN rebuy it later when tight on mana with welder/top. We were running arguably the sketchiest manabase in the entire format because we could consistently within matches use Welder/petal shenanigans. And this is a deck built to prey on sketchy manabases!

2.5) now petal is way worse, which might not have at first made sense upon top ban. So, my question is how can we design a more stable manabase while still generating the early/mid mana advantage top/welder/petal enabled. Like I'm thinking something like a no-petal yes-mox opal build (edit: want 1 petal for tutoring corner cases). So mainly I was wondering if one of you guys experienced with mox opal use could design me a starter manabase for what I described above?

3) I had just started up on my annual tradition of reading back through the old thread then this one completely, and realized that i started painting five years ago basically to the day. There have been other things that have been worse than top ban over the years. I'm confident we can come up with something.

I agree with merfolkopt, I think you can do something like this:

4 Ancient Tomb
2 City of Traitors
3-4 Great Furnace
3-4 Mountain
2 Plateaus
0-1 Plains
4 Fetches

3 Mox Opal
1 Lotus Petal

edit:

I think that Drude was running opals a while back, looks very similar to what Merfolkopt and I are thinking about.

I have also actually really been liking mox opal. The mana base of all the painter decks I'm currently working on look like this right now:

4 Ancient Tomb
2-3 City of Traitors
4 fetch
4 Great Furnace
2-3 Mountain
2 duals
3 lotus petal
3 mox opal
(+/- 1 LED)

With this mana base I never feel like I am cutting myself off of my splash color. In a way it's a little more vulnerable to wasteland but on the other hand you can't wasteland opals and it's not card disadvantage like chrome mox. Obviously null rod sucks but that is a must answer card for our deck anyway. I have never really had a problem turning the opals on and in fact can often turn them on turn one with a 1 drop artifact and a petal or furnace. I have many turns where I play turn 1 furnace, grindstone, opal, welder. Downside is they don't always turn on on turn 1 so it isn't always fast mana for blood moon on turn 1. That would be the one major benefit of chrome mox.

[drude1]

I agree with merfolkopt, I think you can do something like this:

4 Ancient Tomb
2 City of Traitors
3-4 Great Furnace
3-4 Mountain
2 Plateaus
0-1 Plains
4 Fetches

3 Mox Opal
1 Lotus Petal

edit:

I think that Drude was running opals a while back, looks very similar to what Merfolkopt and I are thinking about.

Yes, I am still pretty much playing that same mana base (granted, I'm currently on a 4 color list right now). I don't know if you can get by without petals. There is not another fast artifact mana that will work like petal (that is legal in legacy). Opal is great but you really do have to build your deck around it to some extent so you have to decrease your basic land count and in general make sure that you have a very high artifact count. If I were to play a "traditional" w/r painter I would play this:

// Lands
4 [ZEN] Arid Mesa
4 [MR] Great Furnace
2 [EX] City of Traitors
1 [B] Plateau
4 [TE] Ancient Tomb
3 [ZEN] Mountain (3a)
1 [BFZ] Plains (4F)

// Creatures
4 [SHM] Painter's Servant
3 [P3] Imperial Recruiter
3 [UL] Goblin Welder
1 (your favorite hate bear)
1 (your other favorite hate bear)

// Spells
4 [TE] Grindstone
4 [IA] Pyroblast
4 [CH] Blood Moon
2 [SH] Ensnaring Bridge
3 [ARE] Enlightened Tutor
3 [TE] Lotus Petal
2 [B] Red Elemental Blast
3 [SOM] Mox Opal
2 [MMA] Pyrite Spellbomb
2 Chandra, Torch

You really have to have a lot of artifact hate in your SB with this kind of list though because null rod is a thing and it sucks. For that reason, I am also splashing black for a couple daretti and a a bunch of SB stuff.

Another thing that I do think you should consider if you are going to play opals is Git. probe. You can essentially play with a 56-57 card deck and later in the game you can usually pay blue for your probes so they aren't hurting you. They are also nice early when you want to make sure the coast is clear for a moon or combo or whatever. We are looking to make the deck more consistent right? I think probe is a good start. Personally, this is what I'm playing right now:


// Lands
3 [MR] Great Furnace
2 [EX] City of Traitors
4 [TE] Ancient Tomb
2 [UNH] Mountain
2 [B] Badlands
1 [B] Plateau
1 [UNH] Plains
4 [ZEN] Arid Mesa

// Creatures
4 [SHM] Painter's Servant
3 [UL] Goblin Welder
2 [P3] Imperial Recruiter

// Spells
4 [TE] Grindstone
3 [TE] Lotus Petal
3 [SOM] Mox Opal
4 [IA] Pyroblast
2 [SH] Ensnaring Bridge
2 [KLD] Chandra, Torch of Defiance
4 [DK] Blood Moon
2 [MMA] Pyrite Spellbomb
1 [SOM] Nihil Spellbomb
2 [MI] Enlightened Tutor
2 [CN2] Daretti, Ingenious Iconoclast
3 [NPH] Gitaxian Probe

Talk about a sketchy mana base right?!? It's actually been working pretty well for me. the probes let you get to your lands faster. The Daretti's have been crazy good. They just take over the game when up against the tempo decks. I am also playing enough black in the sb (slaughter pact, toxic deluge, engineered plague, chains of mephistopheles) that I would have a hard time playing without it at this point. I'm still a big fan of the spellbombs as well but I could see trying a couple ichor wellsprings in their place I guess, especially if you are looking to turn them into petals. One of the best things about Daretti though is that his tokens are artifacts so you can do the same thing with those.

Anyway, I certainly wouldn't blame anyone for not wanting to run a 4 color deck with blood moons. I do think mox opal is a really good option as well as gitaxian probe. If I were to personally play a r/w list right now it would probably be this:


// Lands
4 [ZEN] Arid Mesa
4 [MR] Great Furnace
2 [EX] City of Traitors
1 [B] Plateau
4 [TE] Ancient Tomb
3 [ZEN] Mountain (3a)
1 [BFZ] Plains (4F)

// Creatures
4 [SHM] Painter's Servant
3 [P3] Imperial Recruiter
2 [UL] Goblin Welder
1 Ethersworn Canonist

// Spells
3 Gitaxian Probe
4 [TE] Grindstone
4 [IA] Pyroblast
4 [CH] Blood Moon
2 [SH] Ensnaring Bridge
2 [ARE] Enlightened Tutor
3 [TE] Lotus Petal
2 [B] Red Elemental Blast
3 [SOM] Mox Opal
2 Pyrite Spellbomb
2 Chandra, Torch

[pettdan]

I'll add my list too since the discussion is close enough to what I'm playing in terms of mana base (based on your recent suggestions, it's been working well for me) and the Gitaxian Probe deck thinning. I'm playing Baubles for this, they also make it a smaller deck but at the same time enable Mox Opals, can be reused with Welder and provide a card advantage engine with Auriok Salvager. With Top gone I decided to go the Bomberman Route. I like how the LED's accellerate the original combo, enable the Mox Opal and provide a secondary combo alternative with Salvager. I also like how the Salvager brings back key combo pieces (Grindstone), how Grindstone enables the Bomberman combo if you need it (grind yourself with Painter out to assemble the combo when playing against Emrakul) and how he also brings a good route for card advantage. Also the Pyrite Spellbomb provides good creature removal or card draw as has been discussed, and it's sweet that it's a combo piece in the Bomberman combo. The two Salvagers basically replaced two Welders. Welder is very cheap but Salvager is harder to remove and provides an alternative win condition and card advantage engine, he's also a good beater and blocker. Salvager also provides a win condition that ignores Chalice@1. I felt that in my relatively fair meta the Bomberman would be better. Also as has been discussed recently, fun-level of the deck is a factor and I find Painter + Bomberman very fun with lots of acceleration, synergy and the extra grinding potential.

I so far only played the deck in two locals, with the following results. I made a couple of mistakes and mulliganed a lot in the second tournament (should have mulliganed even more), and playing against red-based decks didn't help.

4-0 May 17th
2 DnT - Win (4-0)
1 Omnisneak - Win (2-1)
1 BUG delver - Win (2-0)

1-3 May 24th
Burn - Loss (1-2)
UR Delver - Loss (0-2). Made a bad decision by not letting Chandra bolt his unflipped Delver which may have cost me a game. Also forgot to keep lands in hand due to Price of Progress, very bad. In the second game I kept a hand with Sphere of Law and 1 land, 1 Mox Opal and I never drew into 4 mana.
Sneak and Show - Loss (0-2?). Mulliganed in most games but never saw any of the three Bridges or the tutor.
Cloudpost-Tron Eldrazi-modular - Win. First time he played legacy. His mana base was a bit vulnerable to Blood Moon.

And here is the list.

Bomberman-package: 7 cards + 2 LED's
2 Auriok Salvagers
1 Walking Ballista
1 Pia and Kiran Nalaar
1 Pyrite Spellbomb
1 Urza's Bauble
1 Lodestone Bauble

Anti-combo package: 4 cards
2 Ensnaring Bridge
1 Enlightened Tutor
1 Ethersworn canonist

Painter-package: 18 cards
4 Grindstone
4 Painter's Servant
4 pyroblast
2 Red Elemental Blast
3 Imperial Recruiter
1 Goblin Welder

Control / lock-pieces: 6 cards
2 Chandra, Torch of Defiance
4 Blood Moon

Mana-acceleration: 7 cards
2 Lion's Eye Diamond
3 Mox Opal
2 Lotus Petal

Lands: 19 cards
4 Ancient Tomb
3 City of Traitors
4 Arid Mesa
2 Plateau
2 Mountain
4 Great Furnace

As you may have noticed it's 61 cards now so I need to cut something. I want to try out different things so I may leave it. Lodestone Bauble never gave a win, so far it's just been worse than another Urza's Bauble so maybe I'll change it into that. I guess a Pia and Kiran Nalaar could be cut, I always liked it for providing good grinding power, chump-blocking ability, creature control, card advantage etc and in this list it serves as a win condition with Salvager too.

It may be a good idea to change a Plateau into a Plains.

In the sideboard I especially like extra copies of Ethersworn Canonist and Ghirapur Aether Grid. Canonist doesn't stop the Bomberman combo unlike Trinisphere and Thorn of Amethyst. The Grid is of course great with all the cheap artifacts and can provide a win condition through Null Rod. Also Fiery Confluence to deal with Chalice and creature swarms.

Btw I had quite a lot of inspiration from the Bomberman thread.
http://www.mtgthesource.com/forums/s...=1#post1006547
http://www.mtgthesource.com/forums/s...=1#post1008316

Edit: AND drude1's list: http://www.mtgthesource.com/forums/s...=1#post1003675

[pinkfrosting]

Having tested mono red for about 5 leagues now I have to agree with Jack. Not only is the list not particularly fun to play but it just feels like a sub-par version of the walker/bridge stompy lists that have been doing well lately. Why try to make mono red painter work when you can just play a deck that gets t1 moon much more consistently and gets to play chalice? The only advantage painter has over that deck is access to blasts. With the walkers as a wincon and 4 bridge main that deck also gets a wincon that ignores blockers and also doesn't fold to emrakul, and with sneak performing well online red painter just feels awful to play in comparison.

With that in mind I really think the direction we need to go is UR with preordain and intuition. I know there was some discussion of a light blue splash right after the top ban but I never saw anyone post a list or results. I do think mox opal is the way to go 100% though, it seems very strong if we can get a list that consistently powers it and still supports moon.

As much as I like the white sideboard cards, I really think entering this new era without top that we need to focus on finding a new way to increase draw consistency, and blue seems like the best way to do that. It also opens up access the a host of cards that have always been good at synergizing with imperial painter like trinket mage and intuition. The best reason to play white was enlightened tutor for silver bullets, it made all our bad match ups so much better. Without top though that card feels very bad to play, it's card disadvantage in a format where, without miracles, over half the field is playing therapy or hymn.

I've begun working on a list but I don't have the spare mtgo tickets to get all the pieces yet, but I'll post my ideas and eventually get some testing in.

[drude1]

@petdan: If I were to play a bauble, I would play conjurer's bauble as I think it has a lot more utility (put needed cards back in your deck like a salvager, keep you from decking yourself, hide something from surgical) and it draws the card immediately. Having said that, I think I still like git.probe more as the information it provides can be crucial in knowing if you can go for a certain play or not. I do actually like auriok salvagers myself but I don't think you will get a lot of love on the forum for it.

@pinkfrosting: I personally am trying to hold out from blue. I have tried it a few times myself and the problem I have is that it always just turns into the u/r painter-stone deck. It just makes no sense to play blue and not play brainstorm and force of will in a combo deck. If you are just going to play blue for intuition then you really need to be running 4 x welders and 3 x all the other relevant cards that you would be searching for. I'm not saying it can't work. It just seems really slow if you aren't playing the pure combo u/r deck.

[pinkfrosting]

@pinkfrosting: I personally am trying to hold out from blue. I have tried it a few times myself and the problem I have is that it always just turns into the u/r painter-stone deck. It just makes no sense to play blue and not play brainstorm and force of will in a combo deck. If you are just going to play blue for intuition then you really need to be running 4 x welders and 3 x all the other relevant cards that you would be searching for. I'm not saying it can't work. It just seems really slow if you aren't playing the pure combo u/r deck.

I don't think a deck running 4+ moons in the main that turn off fetches can support brainstorm, I'm not even sure about ponder. As long as we're running the core recruiter package and moons main we're a distinctly different deck from the UR combo lists. I'm talking a light blue splash on the same level as the white splash, like 4-6 cards just to increase consistency, which isn't enough to turn on force anyway. There are also some pretty sweet recruiter targets in blue, like Padeem, Trinket Mage, and Llawan Cephalid Empress, just to name a few.

[pettdan]

@petdan: If I were to play a bauble, I would play conjurer's bauble as I think it has a lot more utility (put needed cards back in your deck like a salvager, keep you from decking yourself, hide something from surgical) and it draws the card immediately. Having said that, I think I still like git.probe more as the information it provides can be crucial in knowing if you can go for a certain play or not. I do actually like Auriok Salvagers myself but I don't think you will get a lot of love on the forum for it.

Thanks for the comments! I wasn't aware of the Conjurer's Bauble, it indeed has the utility you mention but I'll prefer the other two baubles since a) zero cost for Urza's Bauble means you can sacrifice it t1 without giving anything up, which is how I mostly use it, and it means you can pay 2 mana with Salvager in play to draw an extra card, and b) the Lodestone Bauble is a win condition by itself since you can force the opponent to draw their entire deck. I'll keep it in mind though, if I would have needed protection from Surgical. On that topic, I think Surgical is a good reason to run the Bomberman combo, people like to surgical Painter or Grindstone and then it's nice to have a second combo available.

Yes, I imagine few others are playing this mix, I did see you mentioning this approach a few pages back (I'll add a link to my previous post, probably I should try your list once too). I'll report back if I update the list with some moderate success.

[Hopo]

At some point Hollywood was playing with Pyromancer's Goggles. Now since Fiery Confluence is a thing, I started to think how well those two play together.
5 mana just seems too much no matter how I look at it. Has anyone managed to fit Goggles in somehow?

[merfolkotpt]

I know it has a lot of utility, but is Torch of Defiance better than Pyromaster in the current meta? There are lots of elves and D&T floating around which feels like it makes Pyormaster somewhat good. I know Torch's ult and card draw is better, but just wanted to start the conversation a bit.

[CptHaddock]

I know it has a lot of utility, but is Torch of Defiance better than Pyromaster in the current meta? There are lots of elves and D&T floating around which feels like it makes Pyormaster somewhat good. I know Torch's ult and card draw is better, but just wanted to start the conversation a bit.

Yes, i'd say that in general TOD is way better than any other Chandra that can be played in this deck. As a disclaimer this is mostly from the Rw side of things but i've found that walkers are way too slow against a deck like elves especially with a deck like this. I can see a world where you'd want Pyromaster against D&T especially if you are running revokers maindeck but I think that TOD is just better. She has the potential for sniping some of the x/2 creatures that they play, she clocks your opponent while drawing into cards and her ultimate is game ending and she can ultimate pretty fast.

I haven't been too happy with mono red painter either, it feels really loose playing a stompy deck with just blood moon as your lock piece. I like the blue splash on paper like what Jack posted a couple of pages back but I think it's just insane to play a blue combo deck without brainstorm. Intuition doesn't seem like the best when every is running copies of surgical extraction and Delver is a real thing. I think that ponder > preordain too if you want to try out the blue splash. I'm not convinced that the Rw splash is completely dead, I think that there is still a good deal of room to play around. The salvagers combo seems interesting, I sadly sold painter on mtgo to buy into other decks so I can't really test it out. I like it but it feels like it opens this deck up to yard hate which it was pretty immune to before.

I feel like if I was going to play Rw, i'd try something like this:

4 Painter's Servant
1 Engineered Explosives
3 Grindstone
3 Goblin Welder
2 Plateau
4 Arid Mesa
3 Great Furnace
4 Mountain
3 City of Traitors
4 Ancient Tomb
2 Pyrite Spellbomb
1 Lion's Eye Diamond
4 Blood Moon
3 Mox Opal
4 Imperial Recruiter
3 Enlightened Tutor
2 Ensnaring Bridge
2 Chandra, Torch of Defiance
2 Lotus Petal
4 Pyroblast
2 Red Elemental Blast

1 Magus of the Moon
1 Duergar Hedge-Mage
1 Ethersworn Canonist
2 Tormod's Crypt
2 Kozilek's Return
2 Sudden Shock
1 Trinisphere
2 Ajani Vengeant
1 Ensnaring Bridge
1 Plains
1 Thorn of Amethyst

[Kap'n Cook]

I'm not sure how helpful this post will be for everyone, but I'm going to do it anyway mainly because I have a lot of time on my hands right now to type a long ass post out, but more importantly because i am hoping it will help people build and remember the Shortcake roots and basic principles in a time where we have no clear direction.

I've talked about this before in the thread and I know that Seth has a ton as well: determining what kind of 'core' you have. I have this entire post by Seth in my signature already, but want to post some parts of it here on the actual thread because I think it is more important now than ever. Also keep in mind that this was like three years ago, yet is still relevant in 2017.

Most of what is going on with it has been fairly static for the past 2-3 years. Most lists are pretty much 56 cards and then you have about 4 cards to wiggle with. For me that is an EE, Etutor, Peacekeeper, and unknown at this time. You could also swap out one of the city of traitors for another land of your choosing. But other than that I would find it hard to modify the deck, unless you are in an extremely small and inbred meta. I have always held that I like diversifying answers, which is my choice of Peacekeeper over the 2nd Bridge(although they are slightly different each with its own pros and cons) along with the EE and extra tutor to make removal and finding what I want a little easier

...

Most of my 75 hasn't changed in 2 plus years. Its the same list, with maybe one change from that event in Bmore and my ok finish at SCG open. That is because the cards that i wanted to fight may have changed but what they represent hasnt. Take Firebolt for example. When I dug that card out it was over two years ago. Jund was raging. Go ahead look and see what was a deck to beat then. The card was strong then as it is now because it allowed you to out grind those grindy decks and just barely get some card advantage to get that extra turn, make that extra land drop, that extra mill for your Welder to be live. It worked bc it killed Bob, and Stoneforge, and Clique, and Delver, and Bloodbraid, and then Deathrite. It bought you turns which is all that matters when you are playing combo and the card still functions to this day, even as the craetures have changed and Death and Taxes hardly resembles its original incarnation. Its the strategy behind the card and what we wanted it to do that makes it work. In each of the cases above it slows down the rate at which you die and then if you are lucky it lets you repeat the process.

For the most part, the core isn't changing too much, but how you fill out the flex slots changes the deck an insane amount.

I know that everyone has different tendencies and thoughts on some card choices (such as less than 4 recruiters) but I think it still helps the deckbuilding approach. I'll do a Shortcake approach, but having the core in place really helped when I was initially looking at blue, as you can just swap in blue lands and stuff like intuition for tutors to start the shell. For me it breaks down like:

4 Recruiter (I always view it as play the 4th Recruiter over the 4th Welder since it can still grab painter)
4 Painter
3 Welder (bossman)

4 Grindstone
4 Blood Moon

4 Pyrobast
2 Red Elemental Blast (for newer players its a 4/2 split rather than 3/3 because of Bridge)
2 E Tutor

1 Bridge
1 Chandra TOD (this used to be my Jaya slot for the longest time as mandatory, but new chandra is good enough where jaya can take a lesser role now)

4 Fast Mana (which ones always throw off mana ratios, as you can argue that petal/monkey are like .33-.50 of a land, while mopal and chromox are worth more)

And then our Manabase. I am always going to run 19 land, mainly because ive done 18 in mono-red with 4 monkey/2 chromox and 20 with only 4 fast mana and neither number ever felt right, and even with no top smoothing I still feel that the number should be correct. Anyways, my land config is always probably going to be at least:

4 Ancient Tomb
2 City of Traitors (what fast mana direction/splash or not will determine Cities #3 and #4)
4 Fetch
2 Plateau
3 Mountain
1 Great Furnace

With filling it out based again on the fast mana direction. This is another reason I made the post I did about Lotus Petal earlier. I never really thought too hard about the fast mana in Shortcake beyond the correct SSG/Petal ratio, but after the top ban I realized how much it affected the rest of the decks build, especially when it came to the land base.

Anyways, after all that is said and done, I'm looking at starting points of:
19 land
4 fast mana
11 Creature
6 blast
2 tutor
4 moon
4 stone
1 chandra
1 bridge

That's 52 cards that I'm probably not going to change no matter how the current meta shakes out. Explosives is probably the 53rd card for me, I'm just not sure yet if I want to be running that or Ghetto Bomb, although something is probably necessary for chalice. Anyways, the coolest part after doing the core was I looked back at the pre-ban Shortcake maindeck partly because I knew that it was basically perfect (R.I.P.) but also you could then see the flex spots and that helps you determine how to tweak the deck toward what you were looking to do. SDT would obviously be part of the core if it weren't banned, but the flex spots end up now being: 3 top, 1 Reb, 1 LED, 1 Fast Mana, 1 EE, 1 Tutor.

I think the whole spellbomb path some of you have been trying is probably a good place to start and is why I started asking about how to build a manabase to support Mopal. I don't know if the extra fast mana in #5 or the LED are where we should be right now given how grindy things are getting. There are a lot more fair decks popping up which is why I dont think blast 7 is needed either. I also don't know if Bomberman will work, mainly because we don't have great filtering and it would be slow to assemble, but I am not going to test it so I could be wrong on that front.

Okay finally, a list (I realize this thread has mainly been infinite lists recently since no one has a true idea of where to go lol). I've been actually having some decent success recently with the following (meaning not getting absolutely destroyed by everything and actually having a shot to have a positive win-rate), but there are still a ton of small changes that likely will need to be made. Inspiration for this list comes courtesy of all you homies who haven't given up on our Shortcake. Thoughts on this specific list afterwards (also keep core in mind when viewing)

4 Ancient Tomb
2 City of Traitors
4 Arid Mesa
2 Plateau
3 Mountain
4 Great Furnace

2 Lotus Petal
2 Mox Opal

4 Imperal Recruiter
4 Painter's Servant
3 Goblin Welder
1 Phyrexian Revoker
1 Jaya Ballard, Task Mage

4 Blood Moon
4 Grindstone
2 Ensnaring Bridge
1 Chandra, Torch of Defiance
1 Engineered Explosives
3 Pyrite Spellbomb

4 Pyroblast
2 Red Elemental Blast
2 Enlightened Tutor
1 Faithless Looting

This looks to play less of a turn 1 advantage and more of a turn 2/3 advantage compard to Old-Shortcake. Looting over a 3rd tutor to help our random flood problems. Everything else is probably self-explanatory. EE does help out with Mopal more than Bomb, though. Mesas because I'm trying the plains in the board. Verdict still out on that, though.

I'll post the sideboard although its insanely in flux, so don't take too much stock from it right now.

Sideboard
1 Plains
1 Chandra, Torch of Defiance
2 Ajani Vengeant
2 Pyroclasm
2 Tormod's Crypt
1 Ethersworn Canonist
1 Enlightened Tutor
1 Magus of the Moon
2 Thorn of Amethyst
1 Viashino Heretic
1 Manic Vandal

Going up to the 4 walkers is still very nice, especially when each of them can pick off creatures. Is Duergar Hedge-Mage even still playable with dropping another Mountain from the main? I chose two artifact bears because for some dumb fucking reason people are still on null rod. The baord construction is half a holdover from before and half a guess at what the new meta might be.

Well yea this was a lot of random thoughts. The list is nowhere near a finished product but I think that spellbomb is an okay substitute for now given its dual draw/removal abilities, but only because of the deathrite meta we currently reside in. I am going to be refining this skeleton moving forward. In the back of my mind is still a non-opal list, since I feel like firebolt is an insane card for the meta right now, I'm just not sure how to flesh out of the rest of the board/flex spots to make that work at the moment.

I'll leave one more quote. I admit that I was almost ready to put the deck down after the top banning. But that's part of what will make this part even more fun. We probably right now have the most flexibility in how we can build Shortcake than we have ever had before. There are a ton of strategies we can explore.

I will end with this, just play the fucking deck, enjoy it. Its a fucking blast, takes forever to get good as you have no cantrips to lean on and the lines of play are far deeper to read. That and pray Spinal Villian is sometime playable again.

Seth