Sorry, I don't think I was quite clear on what I meant regarding the wishboard. I was merely stating that I wanted to generate an exhaustive list of all wish targets first before finally cutting cards that don't do enough. These open slots would then be allocated to cards like leyline of sanctity.
Your point about LED drawing a FoW in a tournament setting is well taken. However, keep in mind that your opponent will have your decklist in the top8. This makes LED significantly worse against blue decks for reasons you pointed out in your previous post. Because a single counter may literally cost us the game (summoner's pact hands), I think it is necessary to sacrifice LED's speed for some protection. Furthermore, I have been burned too many times by not being able to use LED to cast balustrade spy or imprinting it onto chrome mox for mana.
Yes, I am fully aware of EtW not getting there as I once combo'ed off with Elves! after 18 goblins turned sideways the previous turn. Most of the time, belcher will combo off turn 1 with EtW but not actually win until turn 3. This makes safer turn 2 wins acceptable in my eyes since hermit.dec wins the same turn it combos off.
I agree with you that PoN is at the very least necessary in the sb since it's much better than unmask against blue. You have a good point about forcing good players to counter dark ritual because an unanswered one may result in a cabal therapy blanking their counters. I do like your idea of playing a 3-2 split between PoN and unmask though and think shaving DRS would be worth it for that. One of the biggest reasons why I like unmask too is because it gives you another out to faerie macabre, which PoN doesn't answer.
Actually, you can technically get by with 2 cabal therapies by binning your bridge in hand first (1 narc, 1 token) followed by binning the DR, ghoul, or breath stuck in hand next (3 tokens). However, this makes your play vulnerable to removal and thus I still like the 3rd therapy as well.
While I like leyline of sanctity filling up sb slots, I can't say the same for nature's claim. Leyline of sanctity renders all their discard, crypts, and spellbombs useless while hosing storm/belcher at the same time. More importantly, it's free. Nature's claim isn't nearly as versatile and requires one mana. I think the 4th pact of negation belongs in the sb too. Remember that the 4 living wishes are also outs to gy hate. A wispmare and ingot chewer in the sb may be worth considering. However, they require a lot of mana. It may be better to just go for a big creature as the alternate win-con.
I don't have a lot of experience with Living Wish -> Creature as a win condition vs Tormod's Crypt, however replacing the Swamp with Tomb of Urami is something I've considered in order to min/max SB space.
The problem with 3 Narcomoeba, 2 Bridge from Below isn't the absence of the 3rd Cabal Therapy, it's the absence of a 4th creature to sacrifice Cabal Therapy to. Perhaps I should repace Undercity Informant with Balustrade Spry in the SB game 1 in order to reliably have the 4th creature for Cabal Therapy? With Lion's Eye Diamond in the MD, I think MDing the 4th Undercity Informant makes more sense when you can cast Living Wish and Lion's Eye Diamond for 6 mana.
I think SB Nature's Claim comes down to whether or not your expect Leyline of the Void and to a lesser extent Grafdigger's Cage, I pictured MDing Lion's Eye Diamond, SBing Pact of Negation and then choosing the last SB card based on dealing with problems on the board, but I think you're right about Leyline of Sanctity being A) good against discard on the draw and B) an answer to Tormod's Crypt(s) and Nihil Spellbomb(s) being enough where Rest in Peace and Relic of Progenitus can be dealt with thru' speed.
Since I'm more or less playing "catch up" with this deck, what are your thoughts on SBing out Chancellor of the Tangle? I rarely find myself wanting to SB out Cabal Therapy, and if I choose to play Unmask MD and Pact of Negation SB then I can play 12 disruption cards post board. Also what are your thoughts on cutting Chancellor of the Tangle altogether and playing Unmask and Lion's Eye Diamond MD? Our ability to play cost efficient disruption seems like the only differentiating factor vs Belcher, maybe we should push it as far as we can?
The biggest issue with Unmask for me is that it's actually better to not Unmask and try to kill an unknown opponent on the play than it is to play Unmask and wait to kill the opponent when if the black card you discarded was the difference between a T1 and TX kill because they'll have Daze, Spell Pierce and cantrips into Force of Will and Daze online as soon as they play an Island compared to being required to have Force of Will. It's also not like Lion's Eye Diamond is dead vs counter spells, it can still pay for Daze or Spell Pierce on Living Wish or Daze on a Hermit.
For the moment, I think I'm going with Lion's Eye Diamond MD, Pact of Negation SB and Leyline of Sanctity in the open SB slot and I'm going to test my ability to kill with my Tombo of Urami. The one problem I have with the Living Wish -> Creature plan is that I think I was wrong about opponent's SBing out Swords to Plowshares and that keeping in Swords to Plowshares in order to prevent us from playing Undercity Informant, go is worth it for them.
Meh, I think I like the options of Undercity Informant in the SB more than I like the extra black card from the 2nd Bridge from Below, I think you may want to SB out Bridge from Below and Cabal Therapy # 3-4 for something else when you SB in Angel of Glory's Rise and Fiend Hunter.
I hate Deathrite Shaman with a passion, it's just another dead card whenever you draw it in hand and I've had enough of that with the Laboratory Maniac kill already.
My pleasure. I'm glad I can not only have revived interest in this archetype, despite being so far delayed in my work on it in this format, but that I have always managed to make some advances that have pushed the archetype further along...
I will respond in more detail when I have time to your other points, but will address this one now.
F) I think Goblin Charbelcher is a bit too cute, this deck doesn't really ramp up to 7 mana and anything you SB out for it really hurts the consistency of the deck's main win condition. Nobody really plays 4xTormod's Crypt and you can deal with Surgical Extraction with Pact of Negation and Cabal Therapy. It's really hard to know whether or not this is the right SB card to bring in until you actually see what hate your opponent is playing in his side, which puts you at a pretty huge informational disadvantage compared to something like Leyline of Sanctity where it's obvious he's playing discard.
Sideboarding in Belcher does not require you to ramp to 7 mana. That's a misunderstanding of why I have Belcher here. There are two key points here:
1) you are really only trying to ramp to 4. You just want to cast Belcher and resolve it, and focus on activating it as soon as possible. I will use a Pact to protect a Belcher, and then upkeep activate the Belcher. Another thing is that you can use Pact to protect a Belcher, and then use LED to activate it. LED can also be mana 5-7, so you don't actually need to ramp to 7 in a general sense.
That makes Belcher totally compatible with everything here.
2) My testing of the Vintage list suggests that anyone who can will bring in GY hate for you. The best answer isn't anti-GY hate, but Belcher or ETW, which obviate GY hate. I think Belcher, in Legacy, is the best answer in this archetype to lots of GY hate.
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For me it's not a question of whether or not it's the best SB strategy vs hate but what do you SB out for it and what do you have to MD/SB in order to support it. In terms of EV, I think if you're playing Goblin Charbelcher in the SB then you're also playing Lion's Eye Diamond somewhere in your 75, and I think if you're playing Lion's Eye Diamond somewhere in your 75 then playing it in your MD is the obvious choice because you're playing with 4 less dead cards in all match ups.
The second question that comes to mind is whether or not having an alternate win condition that "requires" Lion's Eye Diamond to also be in your MD is worth it compared to having free protection like Leyline of Sanctity, which is one of the only cards that can protect you on the draw vs discard and vs Tormod's Crypt simultaneously. For linear combo decks, especially graveyard based combo decks, Leyline of Sanctity solves the coin flipping problem vs Swamp.dec.
Any deck that boards in Surgical Extraction is just best met by Pact of Negation because Surgical Extraction is basically a game winning counter spells as opposed to hate in a zone that has to be directly dealt with.
I guess the biggest issue now that we have a good idea of what the MD and SB should be is how do you SB appropriately? Right now all of the hate seems to be MD Deathrite Shaman and Rest in Peace and SB Surgical Extraction with a few shrewd people playing some Tormod's Crypt effects to diversify their hate and force decks like Tin Fins to worry about a zone of play other than the opponents hand. None of the aggro control decks are going to play Relic of Progenitus for obvious reasons and the aggro decks seem to prefer Relic of Progenitus (or in G/w Goblin's case RIP) because they double as Goyf and Goose hate, but that pretty much means we wipe the floow with them game 1, force them to mulligan into hate game 2 and get at least one turn to go off immediately with an 8 card hard so I don't think Charbelcher is really necessary there. That means we play Charbelcher for pretty much the RUG match up? And we're probably talking about 2 Tormod's Crypt max? I'm not sure how much that is worth it compared to just SBing in Pact of Negation and playing Leyline of Sanctity in the board for guaranteed 4x Thoughtseize, 4xHymn to Tourach and possibly more discard post board.
I guess if people start using Faerie Macabre at any point then alternate win conditions go way up in value, but the hate as it is seems pretty slanted towards Deathrite Shaman and Rest in Peace MD and Surgical Extraction SB, and I think Jund is a question of winning with speed MD (Lion's Eye Diamond) and protection vs discard SB (Leyline of Sanctity) with aggro-control being dealt with via Pact of Negation, Cabal Therapy possibly Unmask and just grinding out wins.
I'm not really confident in alternate creature win conditions, Tomb of Urami is pretty cool but I think the right play for RUG and Blade is to keep their creature spot removal in and force you to have 4 mana for Undercity Informant.
Vintage is a different bag for Belcher than Legacy, you've got the permanent mana sources to cast Belcher and activate it without LED.
What is the aim of publishing 10 positive goldfishes? Deliberate deception of the decks consistency or did you really not bother to test it more?
I goldfished several versions of the deck for 50-70 times and came to the conclusion that it won't be a viable deck.
Currently playing: Elves
To keep things short, I omitted most of the things I agree with or still pondering over. Cutting a swamp is not worth throwing away a win to wasteland. It's very common to go for swamp and wait until next turn to reuse chrome mox and dark ritual in hand.
The major problem with this deck as you'll agree is the number of dead cards (I've posted about this on the thread before). In order to save chancellor mana, I'm starting to like the idea of using 2 tinder wall in a LED speed build to push through as fast as possible (cut bridge and down to 2 therapy). Using 4 is dangerous though. I've thought about unmask and LED as well but cutting chancellor really hurts the speed of the deck.
The reason why your opponents won't sb out StP is because you're running the sutured ghoul kill. I really think we need to switch back to lab maniac kill to blank their removal. It also strengthens the wish for creature plan since they'll be caught off guard without removal. Also keep in mind that you can pitch angel or azami to chrome mox if you didn't need summoner's pact to combo and win with maniac on your upkeep. You can then cabal therapy away any possible removal they have after milling. I like desecration demon more than tomb since it doesn't die to karakas and has a faster clock.
Definitely deliberate deception, obviously. (sic)
Seriously, though, I tested this deck alot against a range of decks before publishing the article and doing ten goldfishes for the article. See the first part of the article (the Vintage edition) for more on the answer to your question.
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8 cards is the great math problem. I use 4 reforge the Soul. It becomes a 12. Math with 8? Never works...
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