I actually lost with Empty for ten turn one on the play today against Dragon Stompy; I got raced hahaOriginally Posted by Ronald Deuce
But it has also won me a couple games. I think the card has its merits, but it's just not as strong against Grixis anymore, which was the main reason I had multiple copies. I still like having access to one copy against them though. It is currently in the sideboard (updated decklist at the end of this post).
Daze is indeed very nice. If I bring Daze, I board out discard spells. Usually, I take out all discard and bring Daze + Truth. If I bring the full ten discard spells, I board out Lotus Petals. I think Daze and discard spells are pretty much mutually exclusive, although I might want to keep one or two discard spells against Eldrazi. Daze is good enough if they don't have everything though. Daze is really only there to prevent T1/2 shenanigans from happening. The goal is to win before Vial becomes relevant.
I hated myself for running Top at GP SeaTac, so there's that. I like what Preordain does in the slot, but I dislike how heavily we're in blue. Sometimes you have no choice but to fetch the second Island, but the second Island mostly sucks. Maybe I should just run more business / mana instead. It's nice to have that many cantrips against non-Wasteland decks though.
It mostly does what Chain does, only it hits Chalice at one as well. Maybe Chain is better; I'm not convinced either way. It's not impossible that those should be Decays either.
I almost always want to have two copies in my deck, at least against decks with graveyard hate. Also against Miracles, you want to be able to double Tendrils them, especially with my current setup.
I had Rain in place of the fourth Cabal Ritual today and didn't like it all that much. Basically, when I had CRit I lost because it wasn't Rain and when I had Rain I lost because it wasn't CRit. Unfortunate. I haven't made up my mind regarding that, but I like Mox. It's pretty good with Ad Nauseam.
As mentioned before, I might try cutting them for extra business/mana. Maybe 2/2/2 between Petition/Tendrils/Past and nine rituals is the way to go. I plan on trying out stuff more regularly again.
No problem. I like rambling and feeling important! haha
Edit: Forgot the decklist.
Last edited by Jonathan Alexander; 07-14-2016 at 09:05 AM.
Don't mind me, i'm just writing about Pauper these days: theweeklywars.wordpress.com
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Rodrigo Togores is in the house! I talk to the Grand Prix Prague champion about winning the biggest event of his life, the dark art of storm, past mastery in other card games, and lots more.
https://soundcloud.com/humansofmagic...odrigo-togores
A book about the dark side of Legacy: "Magic: The Addiction" // Conversations with Magic players: "Humans of Magic"
Great! This immediately has priority despite my growing list of podcasts I have not yet listened to.
Went out with the UBR Daze list today, but didn't face any decks I wanted to Daze!
1-2 UB Reanimator
2-0 RUG Delver
2-0 Elves
2-1 UR Delver
3-1 and first place off really weird breakers. Lost to a ridiculous turn 1 Griselbrand with FOW for my Surgical Extraction in game 3. Got to T1 on the draw off a Probe and Brainstorm against Elves though.
Re: Eldritch Moon and Emrakul
Hello everybody,
Would this be a good place to post my list for opinion/critique?
Thanks in advance.
Its a good place to read the last 20 pages to see what lists and (more important) why people run them. You will also see some of your questions answered on the way
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Thanks for the reply!
I have been reading up for some time.
I will just go ahead and post the list.
http://deckstats.net/decks/69541/533077-storm/en
I've been playing storm exclusively in paper and modo for some time now and this build is largely affected by my paper meta (~50% chalice decks, so maybe storm not a good meta choice lol)
Basically it is a pretty stock ANT list, but I've opted to move into a 5th color for Serenity.
Current SB is:
2 Flusterstorm
2 Serenity
3 Abrupt Decay
1 Krosan Grip
2 Dark Confidant
1 Empty the Warrens
1 Carpet of Flowers
1 City of Solitude
1 Chain of Vapor
1 Scrubland
I've found that a lot of my poorer matches involve Chalice or Thorn in some way and chalice is not usually cast on 2, but instead of opting for hurkyl's or echoing truth, Serenity permanently takes care of the problem. A lot of the bigger problem has come up when chalice and thorn are in play. Especially when your plan is to hurkyls or abrupt decay or echoing truth at their EoT and you only have enough mana for 1 in a turn and your opponent casts another of the problem cards that would prevent the effectiveness of the aforementioned cards in some way.
What serenity on your turn can then do is effectively act as a silence for the problem artifacts until your turn that you go off (if you wait to cast it until the turn before the storm turn).
This has been my experience so far. It also can be okay against miracles, although I still need more testing for this.
What are your thoughts, anybody else has experimented with this?
So you board Serenity and Abrupt Decays against Chalice and need access to UWRBG postboard with Duals against Wastelands. For real? I can't imagine this was properly tested.
P.S.: Dark Confidant isn't up to date
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Thanks for replying.
As for proper testing, it is certainly still in the testing phase.
The manabase is a stretch but I fetch what I need based on what I draw, not hoping to cast both abrupt decay and serenity all the time. If I fetch for serenity, often I don't need abrupt decay. Usually it goes something like:
Either wait to fetch unless I know the wasteland coast is clear for now, then:
For Serenity:
First fetch Island to cantrip, then scrubland
Abrupt Decay:
can be Island, swamp, trop or some combination, duals if I feel lucky or know the way is clear for now
Both can be obtained with Scrubland and Trop but too risky usually
Also I'm curious as to why popular opinion is no Dark Confidant, can be very good in certain situations I've found. It's certainly a flex spot for me but I'm not sure what I'd like more. Maybe D&T answers like massacre and dread of night?
New Decklist
A few build notes:
I'm playing this deck online exclusively. It's not the best deck, but games only last about half as long as with Miracles, so I get to play more matches. Profit.
I'm unsure about Empty/Petition; I keep swapping them. It rarely matters which one I have and when I go for Empty, I usually go off with Past in Flames one or two turns later. I defnitely want one each in the 75, but either can be in the maindeck.
Preordain is not impressive, but it does some work. Since I have Carpets again, I kinda want Top though.
Carpet is very good right now, I like it a lot. In the past, it wasn't great against Delver, but Grixis needs way more lands than other versions, which makes Carpet much better.
Daze is great - until you lose to Cavern of Souls and Simian Spirit Guide. But seriously, Daze wins a lot of games and I'm going to keep playing them. If the non-blue slot was more defined, I would probably play something like Dread of Night instead.
Echoing Truth is not really worse than Abrupt Decay as long as you don't face Counterbalance - in fact, I have won because of how much easier it is to cast and because it hits Leylines. I think I have lost one game because I couldn't actually kill my opponents hatebear (a Canonist when my opponent had Vial on two, but you also have to draw badly for that to happen in the first place).
Badlands is neat but not needed without the heavy red. Could be pretty much any other land as well.
10 discard can be very tilt-inducing. Postboard games with this setup can be super high variance where you are definitely a big favourite, at least on the play, but your opponents can wreck you with topdecks. I do like the flexibility though. Sometimes you want Decay or Flusterstorm instead, depending on matchups.
I do not miss the second Island. You never want to fetch that thing anyway.
Because I haven't addressed this before: Since I'm playing online, I'm not playing 4 Therapy maindeck. It's much harder to use them online.
I want to find out if Petition or Chrome Mox makes for better Ad Nauseams. That takes sooo much time though.
Feel free to ask questions I haven't answered before.
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Would you bring carpet in against any other decks besides delver variants?
I see lists on TC Decks including Dark Confidant. I don't include it but screw popular opinion. I prefer decks that aren't tuned to 74 or 75 cards and allow you to play to your strengths. If something is working for you, then seems good.
I feel the same way. I have heard many players disagree with Dark Confidant and granted creatures aren't what storm is really trying to do but if you board it against a deck with no removal drawing 2 cards a turn with an ANT deck can be absurdly good.
You are missing that Dark Confidant costs 1B, cantrips the turn after and two turns later it nets you the first card. Thats three turns the 2/1 has to survive before doing something valuable in a deck which opts to kill by turn 3. Its not that Confidant sticks around for 5+ turns against control decks either.
If you want to play a creature to gain cardadvantage, I'd rather pick Snapcaster Mage as Thiago at least can get you foreard by flashbacking Decays, Ponder, Discard and works with Cabal Therapy for even more value.
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I also bring them against Show & Tell variants and Miracles.
Edit:
The one time I had it against Miracles, it was a situation where Empty, Tendrils and Petition all would have won (Grapeshot as well, I think, for whatever it's worth). It's probably good to be able to make 10+ Goblins turn one, but usually I'd rather kill my opponents. I think Empty is what people make Tendrils out to be in that you basically never want to draw it but want to be able to Tutor for it.
Having just the one Trop has not been an issue so far. I think unless you start to board Decays against Wastelands, the fifteenth land can be Badlands, Flooded Strand, Bloodstained Mire; whatever. I play against Grixis a lot, which is the main reason I run Carpet and I have not had problems casting them, although I do have to say that I never need to cast more than one (and after the first, mana is usually a non-issue anyway). They're also notgreat at countering Carpet.
I noticed fairly early on that eight rituals was on the low end for the current metagame. Mostly against Grixis and Miracles, I want to have access to a lot of mana, and those are the most common decks. I had Rain in the sideboard for a bit to brnig additional mana against non-blue, but it's not as important there (because your rituals don't get countered), so I randomly thought maybe Carpet is good in this list. I was sceptical before I tried, but the card quickly convinced me.
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I love the Daze tech, definitely going to try that out. For what it's worth, I can say with fair confidence that a single chrome mox does make AdN better. I have tested it now for some time and I found a clear improvement when I went for AdN (several times I would have fizzled if not for the chrome mox). That said, I opt to go more often than other ANT players for AdN, so if you only use it a limited amount of time the chrome mox may not be worth its slot.
In matches where dark confidant is good, removal isn't common or non existent so sticking around isn't a big deal. Matches with a lot discard he's great. Especially when you consider that ant isn't going off before turn 3 in those matches every game. Sure turn 3 is optimal, but if you're facing an opening with heavy discard and you need to rebuild drawing 2 cards a turn is great.
Granted if you get greedy and cast him t1 of a lotus petal and he gets killed you get 2 for oned but hey greatness at any cost right? Probably shouldn't have brought him in in that match anyway.
Snapcaster Mage will get you one (choice) card but snap + ponder is 3 mana, snap + abrupt decay is 4 so by that time dark confidant could have already drawn you at least a card, not sure I see the advantage there.
Snapcaster is interesting though. Maybe snap + tendrils finisher for the rub ins? 😆
I am curious what matchups you have in mind, because Miracles has creatures and still some Plows and the rest plays Decays. You seem to have the idea that you can lean back after your hand gets stripped and not get slapped by a Tarmogoyf or the like who follows the discard mentioned. Confidant isn't good, because the post 2012 metagame does not give you the time to rebuild with Confidant.
Are we seriously discussing the matter or do you favor quoting flavortexts instead? The point is that given you don't have the time to slowroll/rebuild with Confidant anyways (just watch the metagame structure) and that your two mana play gets killed by ond mana answers (aka horrible tempo play), you turn on removal which is otherwise dead in your opponents hand.
You don't see the advantage of IMMEDIATELY getting additional copies of Decay at instant speed at end of turn against Counterbalance or the option to flachback Ponder + sac SCM for Cabal Therapy for IMMEDIATE cardadvantage compared to a two mana Creature which cantrips A TURN LATER into an unknown card IF IT SURVIVES A FULL TURN?
Bob is worse than a Preordain if you opt to win before turn 4 and ONLY better IF it sticks for at least two turns.
I think the threads Grinding Station pilots have a better idea of if this is an alternative
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One thing I have noticed about playing storm, ant specifically is that I often need to wait and be patient to combo off. Many keepable hands and subsequent cantrips dictate that the combo turn may not be turn 3 or 4. I personally like dark confidant in these situations, and it is in these situations that I would be glad I played a dark confidant turn 2 instead of a preordain.
Sometimes your opponents deck also does not perform the way it was laid out on paper. Dark confidant takes advantage of those stumbles over time greater than a single cantrip could.
Consider also that 2 mana investment is not followed by doing nothing. You're still cantriping or spinning top getting even more value when combined with bob.
I typically bring in DC in the mirror, and sultai decks. Sultai decks usually board out abrupt decay against us and their clock isn't always fast enough because they heavily value hand disruption after you turn 1 them game 1. 😉
Personal preference, I don't think it's nearly as black and white as your describing. But hey that's your preference.
Without the decays how do you respond to a turn 1 chalice? Do you just wait for the echoing truth to pop up? The dazes seem great on the play but how do you fair on the draw? Do you change them out for something else?
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