[Article]Eternal Europe: Comparative Storming

[Mon,Goblin Chief]

@Megadeus: Uh, yes, those are kinda important. At least you figured out where your problems lie :)

While I probably should have mentioned that Silence is the dominant piece of protection in the Storm mirror, I disagree on that assessment of Silence in a general sense. The only time Chant-walking them is strictly better than Duressing is against extremely heavy discard hands and hatebears while you actually have the turn 2 kill or more Silences. Against Reasonable amounts of discard and stuff like Chalice/Thorn, you get to take out their most important interactive pieces with discard, allowing you to durdle even longer to set up a no-variance kill.

that however would require you to know, against which hate you are up to or casting Gitaxian Probe in advance to identify their most valuable card if we talk about Therapy, just 'cause both decks run Duress.

D'oh! I forgot TES has Duress, too, though I usually expect those to leave the deck for the CoVs against hate permanents. I generally have 3-4 discard spells max postboard against those decks. Against heavy discard, you're generally fine blind-calling Hymn on Therapy as the other discard is rather easy to win through most of the time. I agree though that the TES chantwalk + fast kill approach is probably more efficient against them. ANT makes up for that by having more and better mana a little later in the game to keep those good matchups anyway (that and the fact that ANT is definitely quite capable of just killing them turns one and two, just not as consistently as TES).

Basically, Silence stalls everything but Discard handles the answers it does hit in a "better" way. Don't forget that the higher cantrip count and more long game focused game plan allows ANT to recover more easily from having its hand shredded, too.

discarding is sure better as long as they don't have redundant pieces of disruption in hand like Thalia and Teeg (which happend to me in the past ... Grapeshot cleared however). The higher cantrip count directly faces the Burning Wishes in TES as their counterparts; waging both against each other is a topic as old as Prosaks first T16 finish. The better recovery from discard is a fairy tale imo. TES has 8 ways to grap PIF to battle discard Heavy matchups and a sideplan to present a few goblins against an opponents hand clustered with Thoughtseize, Hymn and Inquisition of Kozilek. Both decks play out their mana and float biz ontop of their Lib with cantrips. I've turned so many games against Thoughseize and Hymn this year that I'd buy that age old Story which had a fiery discussion in the ANT thread :)

If there was a fiery discussion, the TES players were simply wrong from my experience, though I always have access to EtW in ANT at least postboard which influences this quite a lot. Early Goblins are a great plan that would put TES firmly ahead if ANT didn't have access to it. As for Burning Wish compensating for the extra cantrips, that doesn't work as well as you want it to against players that have played the matchup enough because it only represents business. By now my problem against heavy discard is finding mana accell in time just as often as finding actual business. Having basics to make sure discard + Wastelands doesn't cut you off from topdecking your way out plays a big role here, too.

As I've been playing a lot of Storm (meaning my opponent's have learned how the matchup plays out), most black players have stopped boarding out their Abrupt Decays (and black decks without those are largely extinct, I think we can agree) against me to fight the "drop artifact mana and wait to find a tutor" plan. As a result I've largely moved away from that plan and often can't drop LEDs and Petals into play. I only do it when I know they don't have AD after seeing their hand as it gives them more ways to interact with me (and even then I'm hesitant as I want to minimize their possible topdecks/cascades).

Instead I just allow them to disrupt my hand (floating whatever I have least of on top with cantrips) and hope to find a heavy duty mana source at some point to kill them. The benefit of this is that they usually have a hard time really emptying my hand if I manage to discard the Hymns, meaning I usually have something useful left to work with and can kill them once I find either the mana or Tutor (depending on which type of combo piece they've chosen to go after). SDT is insane for this plan, by the way.

Also, I'd much rather Duress Deathblade/Shardless BUG or Fow-combo decks than Chant-walk them. The additional information provided by seeing their hand is incredibly important both against decks that combine discard and countermagic and combo-decks that defend themselves with countermagic (like High Tide and S&T). Against discard plus counters, Chant walking them might mean you run straight into one of their few counterspells and die (if you pass the turn again to find more disruption, Chant walking was pretty pointless, after all). Just remember that a blind Therapy turn one against Shardless should name Hymn, not FoW (if you aren't planning to win there and then).

I agree completely, the combination of discard and counters is annoying as hell but most of those archtypes reduce their countermagic to FoW (with a sometimes questionable amount of blue cards in the deck to feed them). From last weeks tournaments experience I found Deathblade (with MB FoW) suprisingly easy to dismantle. I blame my opponent for that tbh.

No need to blame your opponent. I've gotten in a rather solid testing session of LDV ANT against Deathblade with a competent pilot (we also discussed decisions during the match to make sure his lines were optimal) a couple of weeks ago. I don't think your experience is far off the mark as I only lost a single preboard game (from ~6 or 7) in which I didn't choose optimal lines and only a couple of postboard games (3 out of 10, I believe?). Not sure how it would play out with TES but I'd play against Deathblade every round with ANT given the choice (if I can't pick something like Goblins or Elves ;) ). They have no (relevant) clock and nearly no countermagic so the onlymeaningful thing they can usually do is play an early Deathrite and hope they can keep me from recovering with PiF that way.
I don't see how the variance of "Chantwalk, try to kill you" (and possible run into FoW) is worth it in that matchup in the long run.

Against S&T, Duress can stop them from winning first when necessary and open the window when they can't. Chant on the other hand can only ever either slow them down OR push through your combo (natural AdN aside) and the decision will often have to be made in the dark, sometimes leading to wasted protection spells or dieing to their countermagic (which is another area where the ability to read your opponent is more important with TES than with ANT).

Something that is often forgotten, is the ability to chantwalk into a Wish for a Therapy to dismember FoW-combo decks.

Sure, you can do that, but I'm sure we can both agree that just casting discard turn one and knowing for sure without investing multiple cards is a significantly more efficient line in that case, especially if your wish-target is Therapy (which will be blind half the time). Something that surely plays a role there and that I forgot to mention is that I play a 4 Duress, 2 Therapy configuration - and that matchup is one big reason for doing so over the standard 4 Therapy, X Duress setup.

As a result, playing ANT I've actually been incredibly happy with my S&T matchup, often taking the control role game one or when they don't have/hit Leyline postboard (if they do, obviously I either go aggressive, hopefully with Swarm backup, or hope to have a Chain in hand to try and bounce the Leyline, which should also draw out countermagic if they have it).

i can't complain either. Running over them with EtW + upkeep Silence/Therapy is hilarious.

Yeah, I can totally see that!

That being said, Silence is obviously the right tool for TES - as you said, being able to Chant-walk is insane when you're just trying to shoot them in the face ASAP. It's just that ANT almost never wants to do that any more against anything other than tribal and Maverick as any passing turn will make your Cabal Rits and Pif better and better. I've even won a number of games where Thalia was sitting in play without ever being interacted with (Cabal Ritual is some good).

yes Cabal Ritual is awesome. I just don't want to play the long game here and rather dump a dirty dozen before a hate bear or crap hits the field.

I think I overstated my point here. I obviously also try to win early whenever the opportunity presents itself (as I said, I do believe not having EtW access in ANT at least postboard is just wrong) but I'm quite comfortable going a little longer. Games usually end turn 3-5 when I'm done cantripping, bounce/Clasm their hatebear(s) and kill them.

As a result, I don't really think there are metagame considerations that are even close to as important as playstyle preference and natural skill at certain elements of the game when choosing which of these to run (other than a meta of pure goldfishes, in which TES obviously excels, though ANT probably crushes it well enough, too. The right deck to play there is probably Belcher, though).

I still considering the flurry of 2cc sorcery speed hate in the meta important to consider the Rude, fast TES and the Silence-walk in your opponents 2nd upkeep as a meta-advantage as outlined.

I agree that Chantwalk, win is a great plan in the current meta. I just don't think the advantage it has over ANT's resilience plan (which isn't very large if it even exists as far as win percentage is concerned, don't have numbers to really compare the two decks, just how the matchups feel) is even close to significant enough to outweigh the value of your deck fitting your playstyle better with decks this intricate.

Finally, concerning the whole difficulty thing, both decks are pretty much equal in that regard. I've played some TES (not a whole lot, but enough to be aware of how the decision-making works out) and wishing is easy as pie, in all honesty (as long as you know how to play Storm in the first place).

somehow many TES players still struggle to handle D.Returns, PIF and IGG. The current discussion in the TES thread is very revealing :((

I think that's probably due to the whole "as long as you know how to play Storm in the first place" thing ;) Figuring out which engine can work and then Wishing for it should really be quite automatic most of the time. Just imagine you cast Infernal Tutor but can only get those cards... (Diminishing Returns aside, maybe)

Just go through the engines you can actually cast (possibly looking ahead to next turn like you would when using Infernal, Grim or LDV to set up in ANT if you plan to Wish now and win later) by potency. Can I just Tendrils? No. Ok, does IGG work? No. Ok, does Pif work? No. Ok, is making Goblins enough? No. Ok, I guess I'll have to Dim Ret or wait for next turn. In TES you're more likely to say "screw it, Timetwister" than you would be in ANT if it ran the card, but the decision if you should go for it now or not isn't really any more difficult.

i eagerly disagree here. Mindlessly going for DR or using it as a panic Button (STILL a Common misconception) loses many games. Even more than the habit to try mulling into a miraculous 6 or 5 does. There is no Wonder TES is considered a gamblers deck if peeps play it like Belcher.

When and how to use Dim Returns is probably the hardest thing to learn among the Wish targets TES has as my inclination is to say "never" :p Draw 7s are just such crapshots that I'd rather not cast them ever if I can possibly avoid it. The same was true when I played actually good draw7s in Vintage ;) (which illustrates why I play ANT, I guess *g*).

The three main uses I see for Dim Ret in my, admittedly rather unexperienced, opinion are:
a) you're playing something Goblins won't beat and you have a lot of fast mana early (Chrome Moxes especially) and can value-draw seven by dropping most of your hand and following it up with Returns to get ahead by a couple of cards and manasources while messing up the opponent's hand.
b) Your hand was emptied with discard/by getting a combo-attempt stopped and you'd rather have both players with full hands instead of yours being empty.
c) You need to go off or die and no other engine will get there - the "hail mary" Returns.

Even then, none of these should be hard to recognize if you know what you're doing. If I'm missing something here, I'd be happy to be enlightened.

I'm a weirdo toying with Gifts Ungiven in ANT instead of the LDV and Grim durdling. Gives mana, stormcount and ******** lol

As someone who has an unhealthy love for Gifts Ungiven, I've obviously experimented with the same thing :p When you get there, the card is utterly amazing. Sadly I found that four mana is just too much to actually be worth it but maybe someone will find a working configuration at some point. I'd love to be Giftsing into Will kills again!

Hope to see you in the ASL two weeks from now!

[Lemnear]

-discussion we could enjoy for the next 7 days coming-

I'll let us off the hook here ;)

Boarding against Leyline of Sanctity, Value of Abrupt Decay vs. LED's, Wish as a pieces of disruption, SB-Engines in TES, etc. ... too much topics

Yes, storm is a drug i'm addicted since Vintage's Burning Desire aka original Long.dec and my love for Gifts is also a relic of playing Dark Gifts. Nice memories, but not having the chance to play in tournaments anymore with Power made me sell my Betas. Still remained a combo-addict with TES, TRS Doomsday and Combo Elves :)

What was the schedule in ASL? 1st and 3rd Saturday? If so that would be bad news 'cause my sis will be in town :/

[Bryant Cook]

Article was fine. I think you remained unbiased for the most part, however, I think some things were underplayed/overplayed. Such as Wasteland versus both decks, TES isn't nearly the dog that writers (not just you) tend to make it out to be. Not to mention that ANT's manabase isn't that better since it's a two color deck often with two splash colors.

That paired with the fact that ANT has a tough time against Sensei's Diving Top since discard can't handle a counterspell/stifle floating on top of the deck. There were a few other things, but I can't remember them since I read the article this morning. Just some general thoughts.

Not to say I didn't like the article, I think it was much more successful than other attempts to describe the differences in the past.

[Adryan]

That paired with the fact that ANT has a tough time against Sensei's Diving Top since discard can't handle a counterspell/stifle floating on top of the deck. There were a few other things, but I can't remember them since I read the article this morning. Just some general thoughts.

Play lands. Wait and then natural tendrils them. Repeat with PiF when they have Stifle. I don't think i know Storm good enough like you two guys but if i would play Storm for a tournament (only played it on Magic Online a few times) I'd definetely choose ANT over TES because it's better against RUG Delver.

I appreciate any comments about the last part, but that's what I've read and experienced when playing Storm. I just don't play decks that don't beat RUG Delver 60% of the time.

[Bryant Cook]

Play lands. Wait and then natural tendrils them. Repeat with PiF when they have Stifle. I don't think i know Storm good enough like you two guys but if i would play Storm for a tournament (only played it on Magic Online a few times) I'd definetely choose ANT over TES because it's better against RUG Delver.

I appreciate any comments about the last part, but that's what I've read and experienced when playing Storm. I just don't play decks that don't beat RUG Delver 60% of the time.

Ah! I've never thought to play lands, build up mana, storm, cast Tendrils and then have enough mana to play Past in Flames with mana floating. How foolish of me. I'll make sure to try this one out, thanks for the advice!

My track record is pretty good against RUG. Honestly, I place the blame on inexperienced storm pilots.

I beat RUG three times in Boston a few weeks ago (I went 8-0-1), it's all about knowing how to play your cards in the correct situations.

[Lemnear]

Play lands. Wait and then natural tendrils them. Repeat with PiF when they have Stifle. I don't think i know Storm good enough like you two guys but if i would play Storm for a tournament (only played it on Magic Online a few times) I'd definetely choose ANT over TES because it's better against RUG Delver.

I appreciate any comments about the last part, but that's what I've read and experienced when playing Storm. I just don't play decks that don't beat RUG Delver 60% of the time.

My TES results against RUG are BY FAR better than 60%. TES just wins by EtW easily; most ANT lists cannot

[Mon,Goblin Chief]

Article was fine. I think you remained unbiased for the most part, however, I think some things were underplayed/overplayed. Such as Wasteland versus both decks, TES isn't nearly the dog that writers (not just you) tend to make it out to be. Not to mention that ANT's manabase isn't that better since it's a two color deck often with two splash colors.

That paired with the fact that ANT has a tough time against Sensei's Diving Top since discard can't handle a counterspell/stifle floating on top of the deck. There were a few other things, but I can't remember them since I read the article this morning. Just some general thoughts.

Not to say I didn't like the article, I think it was much more successful than other attempts to describe the differences in the past.

Happy to hear you approve of the article in a general sense. Concerning Wasteland, no, TES obviously isn't dead to it,but it is significantly stronger against it than against ANT. If you don't think you will lose a ton of additional games to Wastelan with a 12-land, no basics, 3 fetch deck that often needs R, B and W all from non-LED sources during its combo turn compared to a UBr deck with 2-3 basics and eight fetches that needs only B and R including LED mana, you're deluding yourself. Chrome Mox doesn't compensate for that much.

I totally agree on SDT being much more powerful against ANT because of (no) Silence but I don't think that is major enough to mention in a general comparison.

@Adryan: If that's your general plan, you'll be losing most of your games against RUG. This isn't Grinding Station, finding your natural Tendrils is actually quite hard. In the grand scheme of things, those games really aren't particularly relevant. You usually win by exhausting their disruption and winning from there.

My TES results against RUG are BY FAR better than 60%. TES just wins by EtW easily; most ANT lists cannot

I'll use this to answer the whole 60%+ win percentage debate:
My win percentage against RUG with ANT in tournament play is a lot higher than 60%, too. If you believe that means our actual win percentage is that high, you need to playtest more efficiently. The reason here is that the matchup is hard to play and most RUG players don't actually know what to do (in part because they don't actually play Storm). In the case of Bryan, Lemnear and - playing the arrogant card - myself, the high win percentage isn't because of RUG being a dog to that point. It's because we are much better at the match up than our opponents are. The matchup against an opponent that is actually experienced is a nailbiter with ANT and I guarantee that's the case for TES, too.

Lemnear, if you don't believe me, try to get a few games in against Jona at some point. He's knows how to play both tempo and storm very well and if you manage to take over 60% of games from him (including sbing), I'd be very much suprised.

[Bryant Cook]

Happy to hear you approve of the article in a general sense. Concerning Wasteland, no, TES obviously isn't dead to it,but it is significantly stronger against it than against ANT. If you don't think you will lose a ton of additional games to Wastelan with a 12-land, no basics, 3 fetch deck that often needs R, B and W all from non-LED sources during its combo turn compared to a UBr deck with 2-3 basics and eight fetches that needs only B and R including LED mana, you're deluding yourself. Chrome Mox doesn't compensate for that much.

I totally agree on SDT being much more powerful against ANT because of (no) Silence but I don't think that is major enough to mention in a general comparison.

I'm not saying they're on par against Wasteland decks but I think the difference is greatly exaggerated. Many lists of ANT run additional dual lands to support Decay and/or Past in Flames sacrificing some of the stability that the more traditional lists have making them weaker to Wasteland as well. I can only imagine how awkward it must be to be stuck with basic Island and Tropical/Volcanic Island. Because of this, I think it's a fallacy that ANT is much better against Wasteland than TES. It may be marginally better, but not by much.

[Bahamuth]

I think that in the discussion of TES or ANT vs RUG it also matters a lot how your opponent is playing. The RUG players can play their decks very differently. For instance, with the hand

Fetch
Delver
Stifle
Pierce
Ponder
X
X

If you are playing against Storm, but you might not know what version of it, you might decide to play the Delver or to leave Pierce/Stifle open. Depending on the route the RUG player takes, either of the decks can gain a pretty significant advantage. The RUG vs storm matchup is always full of these kinds of choices.