Two ANT decks in the Top 16 of yesterdays SCG Classic. Both without the green splash, almost identical maindecks; 14 lands with 1 Empty the Warrens, 1 Dark Petition, and 1 Past in Flames. One cuts the fourth Duress for Rain of Filth. Different sideboards though:
The one with Rain of Filth: 3 Chrome Mox, 1 Tormod's Crypt, 2 Chain of Vapor, 2 Echoing Truth, 2 Fatal Push, 2 Hurkyl's Recall, 1 Cabal Therapy, 1 Tendrils of Agony, 1 Thoughtseize.
The one without: 1 Chain of Vapor, 2 Fatal Push, 1 Flusterstorm, 3 Hurkyl's Recall, 1 Perilous Voyage, 2 Hope of Ghirapur, 1 Cabal Therapy, 1 Empty the Warrens, 1 Massacre, 2 Pyroclasm.
"I'm willing to imagine a TES where Past in Flames replaces Ill-Gotten Gains entirely, and we just don't play Diminishing Returns." - me, 29/09/2011
Founding member of Team Scrubbad: Legacy Legends
I wasn't really ranting, but whatever. As a caveat, I'm pretty bad at math, so I'm forced to speak in generalities.
My principal reason for adding the land and not cutting anything is that I've been dissatisfied with 14 lands' lack of consistency, but I flood out every single time I maindeck a fifteenth land in 60. So far 15/61 has felt better than either prior setup, but again, I'm still testing. To address the issue of consistency in other cards, a number of factors influenced my decision.
—In testing 1x Petition 2x PiF again, I started to notice that I was flooding on business more frequently than I'd remembered doing before.
—I like running an extra ritual (Rain of Filth), though I'll concede it's probably not essential. Fwiw, 9/61 is still greater than 8/60.
—I've felt for a long time that 14 cantrips was just a bit too many, but 13/60 doesn't cut it.
—Great as it is to start with a discard in game 1, having multiples usually only slows me down, and I don't like drawing into discards when they aren't necessary.
So yes, for those cards, consistency goes down. But I think the risk might be worth it for the above reasons. (Discards might be an exception, but there are a ton of rather thorny factors involved in that judgment, and I run an extra discard in the sideboard anyway.) Our mana rocks are the place where there might be a catch. I'm not bothered about Lotus Petal; it's great at what it does, but what it does is rarely make-or-break. So the only crucial card for which there's a decrease in consistency and no substitute or ersatz fifth copy is Lion's Eye Diamond, and that is the reason I'm not sold on 61 yet. Again, I'm going off of data from one local tournament (in which I didn't do well), so I'm not claiming to be an authority. I just found it surprising that I didn't have the consistency problems I fully anticipated and my manabase was as smooth as Tone Lōc.
[EDIT: I'm realizing now I forgot to cover sideboard cards. That's another potential problem spot if we go to 61.
Excited to hear analysis of the Grixis finishes!]
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Quick question to anyone. What, in your opinion, do this deck's percentages look like vs. Eldrazi? I always felt like the matchup wasn't that lobsided and depended a lot on who gets to be on the play and what the opening hands look like, but apparently the storm players on reddit think that it's hugely in Eldrazi's favor.
What is your opinion on Pices of the puzzle?
It fills the graveyard and does card advantage/filtering... ould it be playable in some grindy mu?
Bryant Cook
Originally Posted by Aggro_zombies
Isn't the point of the EDH format to be fun for everyone involved? One player masturbating for twenty minutes while the others are bored out of their minds seems to go against that...
I enjoy doing broken stuff. I don't care if you're having fun as long as I am.
If you want cards for grindy matchups, a pick that shows up now and again is Night's Whisper. Pieces seems a bit lackluster given the high cost, it also can't pick up artifacts/enchantments, which can come up if you're trying to land artifacts to dodge discard or get to useful enchantments like Ground Seal.
That was me on the rain of filth list. Could have made top 8 by stalling another turn against UR delver by changing up one decision I made on turn 2 of time. I realized afterwards, but I wasn't too mad about it. The only other deck I lost to was the eldrazi post list. He just turn 1 trinisphered me and then G2 I took his first warping wail and then he drew another off the top the turn before I comboed. Pretty unlucky, but it is what it is and he was an excellent pilot of the deck so I don't feel bad at all.
First of all, congratulations! I'm glad to see Grixis pilots really cracking some heads even though I'm still on green for now.
This might be a bit digressive, but your experience with Eldrazi pretty much mirrors every match I've played against the deck. Eldrazi's so packed with hate for us that I genuinely think it's our worst matchup. I don't think I've ever won a round against it—big Eldrazi or, uh, regular Eldrazi—though coming from a small Legacy community, I'm under the gun in G1 because everyone has a pretty good idea of what everyone is playing. I can't say that about Reanimator, which is much softer to accessible hate (and T1 lethal Tendrils for 12 feels awesome).
So for people who don't think Eldrazi is all that horrendous, what's your strategy? I've just been siding out Therapies, a Preordain, and a Past in Flames for 2x Hurkyl's, 2x Decay, and an Empty the Warrens. Can't say I'm thrilled with that strategy, but I don't really know what else to do. Feels like they're good answers to Chalice (if we don't get steamrolled right away), but Thorn of Amethyst and Trinisphere often put them out of reach until it's too late.
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I think your boarding is fine. I still don't feel like the matchup is that bad, and I believe it's closer to even than players make it out to be, but I find it can depend on factors that are out of your control. For instance, being on the play is huge, and often times Duressing their lockpiece puts you in a fine spot to win the game. I also think it's really dependent on the opening hands and how they match up against each other. There are games where they nut you with T1 Chalice into T2 thought-knot and just crush you from there, but in my experience, games like that happen about as frequently as games where you Duress their Chalice into a kill or kill them with a fast Empty (it's in the main if I play ANT).
FWIW I think that the decks worst matchup is Thalia Stompy, but I've even been able to navigate that matchup through the use of Hurkyls and Decay, though it's certainly a lot harder than Eldrazi imo. I want to hear others opinions though, it seems I'm in the minority that thinks Eldrazi isn't that bad.
I finally got my Trop and Bayou to play the Green splash. I'm playing a fairly standard 60 with 1 PiF and MD Empty and the following land base:
8 Fetches
2 USea
1 Volc
2 island
1 Swamp
1 Green dual
I was planning on siding the other green dual. My question is this: should I be main decking the Bayou or the Trop?
"If you're playing Storm in Legacy, you need to believe that what your deck does is better than what their deck does."
Conventional wisdom is that you'll need blue mana more than black mana prior to your combo turn, but you're already running two basic Islands. I think in this case it probably depends on what your fetchland setup is. You might try cutting Island #2 to run both green duals in the main; Wasteland will be more of a problem, but you'll be running 15 lands anyway.
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It's ok, I have been 50/50 for most of the time, dropped to 28W in 60 matches, the deck isn't that scary like the first incarnations with Revokers and Thorns, the Big variant is even more playable, generally the deck is a random pile of crap half of the time accompanied by bad players who want easy life, it gets much worse once they know what you're on, games are boring but not a unwinnable
It's been a while since Phazonmutant suggested it, I've played it for a while and it wasn't very convincing, feel free to search this thread, it's U, sorcery and expensive card having just 2 of these characteristics needs to be damn good to be playable, I dont think it has place in the current form of the deck and Im on the slower side of things
I don't think you should SB out discard against any of the Stompy decks, their deck is high variance high reward and I try to adjust to a compressed "subgame" of the first turns, the mid/lategame lottery is superior due to cantrips, same with BR (I trim CR to 1 to have space), in case of eldrazi I board out preordains, CR and 1 ponder if need be, and additional PIF ... my post SB is usually 7discard, 3AD and 2 of KG, Echoing Truth or Deed, 1EtW, 1 AdN, 2 ToA
What about not playing 2 Basic Islands?
I mean, I like my 2 basic islands to insulate against Wasteland, but I can definitely see cutting one for the other dual. I've also not played a 15 land version before so I'm probably overestimating the potential impact of wasteland.
edit: fetches are 4 Delta 4 Misty
"If you're playing Storm in Legacy, you need to believe that what your deck does is better than what their deck does."
Beat a Miracles guy in the finals at the local yesterday with a double-Tendrils through a resolved Counterbalance. My Dark Rits and Brainstorms had been SExtracted. I boarded in zero Abrupt Decays and was playing 61 cards.
Just sayin'.
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I'm just starting to wonder whether conventional wisdom about some of our card choices and build ideas is really accurate. I've heard—and until recently subscribed fully to—the arguments in favor of cards like Abrupt Decay, and I've also been extremely skeptical of the 61-card thing until very recently. But it seems like those things aren't necessarily as set-in-stone as I'd once thought. It's just got me thinking, really; I'm more tempted now than I have been in a long time to cut green. I was only running it for Decay for some time, then I started using Ground Seal (as much to see what would happen as because I thought it would work), and now we've got Silent Gravestone and Decay didn't matter in the last match in which I'd started kicking myself for not using it, only to get there.
Maybe we're all just talking in circles when we're actually just piloting a rad-as-hell deck that scoffs at the competition.
I also tested Flusterstorm for the first time, against Show and Tell. I won without needing it.
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There are always gonna be games where you win without your sideboard cards, but there are also going to be games that are unwinnable without them. Data like this takes way more than one night of playing to obtain, and you're drawing quite a lot of conclusions from one favorable result. Storm is a deck where if you're running hot, you just destroy your opponents. Small tweaks and big changes like cutting green won't always be noticeable, but eventually you'll lose games that would have been winnable with other configurations.
I agree with everything you've said; I'm just pointing out that I feel like all our green cards are pretty clunky, and even in matchups in which they're most useful, they're still a headache to implement. Been considering going over to Grixis for a long time, and this feels like further confirmation of my conclusions.
Yeah, it's one (small) tournament, but it's by no means the first.
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