The effect seems similar to the oldie Jin-Gitaxias, which worked as a nice positive back when he was our main source of card advantage. But it was just a pleasant side effect, never the main reason he was included.Originally Posted by ethebubbeth
I actually cut Iona for Sire, since a lot of the decks she was good against either don't exist anymore, or get equally wrecked by Sire of Insanity. Current suite of giant monsters is
4 Griselbrand
1 Sire of Insanity
1 Admonition Angel
1 Elesh Norn, Grand Cenobite
In standard UB daze/petal shell.
11th at SCG Baltimore - 6/02/2013
2nd at SCG Philadelphia - 6/23/2013
28th at SCG Worcester - 7/07/2013
Does this deck still sometimes sb pack rats as a dodge for gy hate, or was I dreaming again?
Pretty sure I'm the only one that does that.
I run 3 Pack Rat SB and the responses of people is quite funny when it is put on the stack... They're typically close to "what the ...!" followed by "Oh S....!".
Jeroen van Beeck
DCI: 8210489125
Mentor | Blade | LandStill
Surprised that that tech is making it around, I'm glad that other people think it's fun too.
What do you guys bring it in against? I'm trying out 2 in the board along with the norm s+t, decays and discard. Does it serve the same purpose as jace would? As I can't see a way to protect him even if the Opp. is light on threats. (Miracles)
I'm personally still testing, but the most common matchups I have found him effective against are:
Miracles
UWR Delver
Shardless BUG
Certain BUG Delver Lists
BUG Control
Deathblade
Esperblade
Basically, any deck that is slow and boards out removal or other ways to interact with pack rat in exchange for being able to interact with us on the stack or in the yard. People tend to think of miracles as a removal heavy deck, but most miracles players I have talked to have come to the common idea that removal is worse against us than counterspells like flusterstorm and spell pierce, or rest in peace, etc. (which I believe is true) thus their deck is often very removal light after board. The problem with pack rat is you have to be able to read your opponent, you can't overextend (if you suspect verdict, terminus, etc.), but you have to extend enough to be able to make the rats a respectable clock.
Note: I don't recommend playing pack rat in lists that also run lotus petal, it makes it much harder to actually activate the ability on pack rat.
Yes, and I continued to run Jin in the slot of one griselbrand for a while but eventually gave up. There were too many times where he'd die before they had to discard their hand. With sire, you have to discard as well, but they lose their hand at the end of your turn so they have to answer him immediately.
Glad to hear he's working out well for you already Worldslayer! I am considering either sire or angel right at the moment. Inkwell leviathan has been working out way too well for me main deck lately.
So I'm looking at:
Main:
4 Griselbrand
1 Elesh Norn
1 Inkwell Leviathan
1 Sire of Insanity / Admonition Angel / Tidespout Tyrant / Iona
Sideboard:
1 Grave Titan
1 Sire of Insanity / Admonition Angel / Tidespout Tyrant / Iona
Glad someone else came to this conclusion.
I think the optimal creature config
4x Griselbrand
1x Elesh Norn
1x Sire of Insanity
1x Tidesprout Tyrant/Ashen Rider.
I think that's pretty close to optimal atm. Ways to combat Karakas, combo, and midrange decks.
UR Dreadstill creator and BRx WGD Combo Pioneer
I do not feel very comfortable with this configuration, it still loses to StoP, ORing and almost everything else death and taxes plays. I know it's a very hard match up, but sire doesn't fix it. Needle on Karakas/ Vial and Iona naming white works much better imo.
I think I'm happy with Inkwell Leviathan (answer to targeted removal + bonus islandwalk / trample) in the main and Sire replacing Iona in the board.
Sire on one or two or (insert Angel/Tyrant here) is really only your game one plan. Game two, needle on karakas, make a Griselbrand is usually way more than enough. This matchup isn't nearly as bad as GW maverick was.
11th at SCG Baltimore - 6/02/2013
2nd at SCG Philadelphia - 6/23/2013
28th at SCG Worcester - 7/07/2013
I have an event coming up in a couple of days & I was hoping I could get some opinions on what my sideboard should look like.
This is my deck list:
4 Griselbrand
1 Elesh Norn
1 Tidespout Tyrant
1 Iona
4 Lotus Petal
4 Brainstorm
4 Careful Study
4 Entomb
4 Reanimate
4 Exhume
4 Force of Will
3 Ponder
2 Thoughtseize
2 Daze
2 Show & Tell
4 Polluted Delta
1 Marsh Flats
1 Bloodstained Mire
1 Misty Rainforest
1 Flooded Strand
4 Underground Sea
2 Swamp
2 Island
For an unknown meta I run the following Sideboard:
3 Pithing Needle
2 Thoughtseize
2 Show & Tell
2 Flusterstorm
2 Echoing Truth
2 Massacre
1 Blazing Archon
1 Ashen Rider
I expect the following decks to make an appearance at the event, & do not want to board in anything too narrow to help me with these matchups, since the event is small & I do not expect a very large number of players. listed here:
Death & Taxes
High Tide
Maverick
Jund
Elves
BUG Delver
Shardless BUG
UR Delver
Canadian Threshold
Mono Red Burn
UR Burn
My greatest concerns are what Reanimation Targets to run in the sideboard (Sphinx, Grave Titan, Sire, Ashen Rider etc.) & avoiding diluting my deck by siding in more than 4 or 5 cards.
Any tips, strategy advice, opinions or advice on my Mainboard, Sideboard & matchups would be appreciated.
While I still strongly support Admonition Angel over Tyrant (your list even has an extra fetchland), think Sire is just superior to Iona anymore, and don't understand two Daze (seems like a four or zero of, personally), your list and notably sideboard seems about "as good as it's going to get". The two Truth seems awkward, but they're probably fine. Archon i've stopped running as Norn does most of the same work and Inkwell has been a welcome player lately.
Generally, Dazes come out for needles, usually one of your silver bullets is fine to cut (typically Elesh), and sometimes I'll take out one of each reanimation spell if I'm on the show and tell plan post board. Don't be afraid to Mulligan aggressively since, at least personally, the " cantrips and counters " hand is a trap.
Delver variants just dig for and make your land drops until you can make a griselbrand. Don't draw 7 unless absolutely necessary - they can't beat a 7/7 flying lifelinker, and turning stifle into a seven mana lava spike feels awful.
Death and Taxes - make a sire if you can to bin their Karakas game 1. Tyrant/Angel also works. Don't let them t Mom + flyer online, and feel free to run Elesh Norn into a Karakas as your secondary reanimate just to plague wind them.
Show and Tell - make a griselbrand or Sire. Be aware a lot of sneak players are back on Grafdiggers Cage as of Elvrs' resurgence, and lately I've been crafting games to Show and Tell x4 post board to make an Admonition Angel +fetchland post SnT ( or Tyrant + spell + instant). Your Thoughtseizes support this plan, board them in. Of nothing else, sometimes you can just get a free Griselbrand to reanimate from them. Needle goes on sneak attack, though they usually cut Shows for Boseju and Through the Breach.
High Tide is Iona if you run her, Sire if you don't. They can't really beat either card.
Elves is Elesh. All day, every day. Board in Shows for their DRS, it's a free roll. Needles probably. Griselbrand is choice two but still usually enough. Watch for NO. Daze sucks here. Bug, blade and Jund are all about the same - needle on Drs, Lilliana of the Veil. Their main interaction is Surgical and Discard, but if you can get a Grisel to stick youre usually fine. If you have a ton of disruption live, Needle Karakas vs. blade and just fight the Lilly. Griselbrand all day, Inkwell is also fine vs. blade.
Maverick - blind, needle Karakas. Drs only if it's an issue. Counter KotR even if you needle karakas as Maze of With and Depths combo are problematic. I find Show into Inkwell to be particularly effective.
Hope this helps! Dazes and sometimes some studies and up to 2 reanimate spells are my cuts depending on matchup and player.
Mulligan. Aggressively. The cantrip hands are traps.
11th at SCG Baltimore - 6/02/2013
2nd at SCG Philadelphia - 6/23/2013
28th at SCG Worcester - 7/07/2013
If it is safe to take out a fetchland for another card (wasteland worries me here), then I think I'll take out both dazes & bring the Thoughtseize up to 4 Mainboard & get a 4th ponder. I haven't tested sire but I'll run him SB, as I've been on the fence about trying him for a while. I haven't played admonition angel, so I'm hesitant to bring her in until after the tournament, but she looks promising with fetches. I will definitely test it out soon. I feel like I just have so much sideboard space & I feel silly having so many creatures in there. With your suggestions in mind I've done the following to my sideboard:
-Archon & 1 or 2 Thoughtseize (making 3-4 Mainboard, depending on if I should really go down to 15 land, is that not too greedy?)
+Grave Titan, Sire of Insanity & Inkwell Leviathan
Is the extra 2 power & islandwalk really worth it to run inky over empyrial? I feel like I already have enough creatures to board in for the blue decks & I kinda like the idea of taking less damage from creatures, although I do realize it dies pretty easily so I guess I answered my own question.
I like Grave Titan vs Decks with sac effects (lilly, pox) & I don't really think I need anything else other than maybe 2 City of Traitors to go deep for SnT or a couple graveyard hate cards for dredge/mirror.
I will definitely be goldfishing to practice what hands to keep. Your enthusiasm & input means alot.
The two Truth slots might be fine as sol lands. I've enjoyed the two Ancient tombs in my board, for whatever that's worth.
My current list runs fifteen lands, 4 petals, twelve cantrips. While mana is occasionally an issue, the emphasis there is on occasionally. Fifteen with two in the board has been fine for me since I started running the deck. 4 basics (2/2), 4 seas, 4 delta, 2 black fetch, 1 blue fetch.
Three guys sends excessive in the board, but Titan can be fine against Lilly decks. Thing is, so is Griselbrand typically. Titan tends to only pull it's weight after a resolved Lilly, or if for whatever reason Gbrand can't protect himself. He's decent against Maverick. I haven't felt the need to run him lately, but if you're more comfortable go for it.
Sire is a wasted board slot. I recommend him over Iona, but if you're going to run Iona shes your silver bullet for almost every matchup Sire would also be (with the exception of sometimes just mind twisting DnT if they open on land vial.) Having both is unnecessary, they're the same plan, more or less.
If you run GY hate, run Surgical as that also has application vs. SnT if you need it - but really, our graveyard matchups are pretty excellent already.
11th at SCG Baltimore - 6/02/2013
2nd at SCG Philadelphia - 6/23/2013
28th at SCG Worcester - 7/07/2013
I really would like Admonition Angel to be good, but I don't see it. Let me explain my thoughts on it & you can tell me what I'm missing.
There are three major things that separate Admonition Angel from Tidespout (other than Tidespout's ability to be exiled for FoW); it's power/toughness, it's frequency of removal (average landfall per turn vs average number of cashable spells per turn) & it's type of removal (exile vs bounce).
The power & toughness of admonition angel are high enough to do three important things:
not only is admonition angel able to withstand a dismember, but it can also survive combat with a 2/2 followed by a 3 damage spell such as lightning bolt. It can not be killed by a 1/X with batterskull.
Unlike all other Reanimation Targets, Reanimate followed by Swords to Plowshares will net 0 life for us, while other creatures lose us life in that scenario.
When evaluating the kill speed or "clock" of a creature (which I consider highly relevant against combo decks especially), I prefer to assume that the opponent is at 18 life, due to the heavy use of fetchlands in legacy. This means that while an unopposed Admonition Angel can secure the win in only three turns, tidespout will often require 4.
Admonition Angel's frequency of removal is the primary thing that is holding me back. This comparison is mostly mathematical. Let's assume a favorable scenario. You've entombed & reanimated your creature of choice on turn two on the draw. You've used one fetch, one enabler, one petal & one exhume. Your deck has 13 lands & 29 spells that can be considered 'bounce fodder' out of the 49 cards remaining in your deck (60-7-2 turns-fetchland-entomb). The average number of lands you will draw per turn is about 0.26531, but since 6/13 of the remaining lands are fetches, The number of landfall triggers per turn is 0.39796. The average number of spells you will draw is approaching 0.59184 depending on how much you need to use them as bounce spells. My math is a bit basic, & maybe I'm missing something, so please tell me if I am*
I feel like Angel's greatest strength is its ability to exile instead of bounce. The thing is, I feel like this is win more due to the fact that all exiled permanents return once Angel is removed. With tidespout, anything you bounce must be recast, which becomes increasingly difficult when tidespout can also bounce lands. I like to assume that my opponent has answers, & when they remove tyrant after only a couple of turns, I still have an advantage due to their lack of lands & need to rebuild board state*
*On second thought, if you only cast half of the spells you draw, you will end up with more exiles per turn using Angel. Also, she's better at getting rid of one or two problem permanents as opposed to Tyrant bouncing several things that can simply be recast. What are some permanents that need to be exiled? Jace, Lilly, top, counterbalance... Maybe I will run Angel for a bit longer to see how it plays out. The biggest problem with her is the inability to choke the opponent's mana. It will probably take some time for me to determine which ability is more valuable to me.
I kind of briefly went over this, but my general thoughts are that - tyrant is much more high variance and on a smaller body. Sure, sometimes you cast a billion spells and they pick up their whole board and you win - and I've done that. But sometimes I also had tyrant and a host if reactive cards (more prevalent in the daze version than the seize ones, I'd imagine) and you basically spent five life to make a 5/5 Man o War. Angel sucks when solved, but Tyrant kind of slowly solves itself - it only keeps ahead when you're drawing "well", and can't really answer common board states like Jace or Lilly without additional disruption. Like if Lilly exists on board, Tyrant needs a spell to pick it up and you still need an answer on top of that. I think if you run him over angel, it's because you're on 4 thought seize and I'm still not totally convinced he's correct. I think he suffers mostly from magical Christmas land syndrome, where people remember every time he cat a one sided Upheavel but tend to forget the times they went hellbent to make him, then drew a land and a reanimate they couldn't cast. Angel requires your OPPONENT to have a solution. Tyrant can possibly be his own.
Both enjoy cantrips, since a Ponder can find you a fetchland as often as a brainstorm.
Angel certainly enjoys Daze as a support spell, turning it " on" as a relevant card long after it would usually be a dead draw.
I mean, if you enjoy tyrant run tyrant. Comfort is a huge thing - but so far Angel is a bigger body, for less mana (aka life), a turn faster, (at least in my experience) more reliable, and better in more game states. She can't handle lands, really, but other than the dwindling numbers of Maze of Ith what land are we even worrying about? Tyrant certainly doesn't solve Karakas. He can bounce 12 posts, but when you can just sandbag a fetch crack for their eldrazi do we even care about that? Hell, she's even White so she dodges the random REBs people bring in against the Show and Tells and Careful Studies and counter spells they know we have.
At the end of the day, run what you like and are comfortable with, but so far "make an angel, erase two permanents every turn" has been both easily achieved and strong. I recommend anyone who hadn't played with this card to try it over tyrant and contribute to the discussion. I think she's a huge step forward in terms of our "vindicate" bullet and would love to hear back from others who have tested her.
11th at SCG Baltimore - 6/02/2013
2nd at SCG Philadelphia - 6/23/2013
28th at SCG Worcester - 7/07/2013
Admonition Angel is certainly interesting and a lot better than Ashen Rider (which is fairly bad, in my opinion), but I think Tidespout is still the better in this slot for a few reasons. 1) Pitching to FoW is important since the deck is usually light on blue cards. 2) For me this slot needs to deal with the very few things that Elesh/Griseldaddy/Iona can't deal with, which includes lands. I'm not really wiling to randomly lose to Cloudposts into Emrakul (or Blighsteel/Forgemaster + Lightning Greaves) from 12Post or MUD, or some kind of Glacial Chasm/Maze of Ith lock from a Lands player. I've also had games against Enchantress where I needed to remove 4+ pesky enchantments in 1 single turn to win. I guess in the end it depends on what you require of this slot. Angel is probably better than Tidespout against the more typical Legacy decks/scenarios you will face, but for me this slot is mainly about hosing S&T and having an out to unusual scenarios.
edit: fixed some stupid things
Last edited by Rune; 08-03-2014 at 11:32 AM.
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