[Deck] ANT (Ad Nauseam Tendrils) Storm Combo

[ScottW]

Regarding Empty and discard: Planning to Empty gives your opponent more ways to interact, which further taxes your discard. When going for Tendrils, you often have a clear choice to select with Cabal Therapy (blind). With Empty, you might try to play around counter magic and want to strip a Golgari Charm, Explosives, etc. Theoretical but possibly a factor.

[Jonathan Alexander]

Empty actually favours Duress, as does the current meta in general. Cabal Therapy is obviously the more powerful card (it hits multiples, it hits creatures), but Cabal Therapy lives off information. In the past, and in some matchups still, it was/is not only reasonable but beneficial to hold onto your discard spells until later in the game, but currently, you are usually pressured to use them early. It is more important to hit at all than to hit all copies of a single card. Especially against decks like Aggro Loam and Eldrazi, you can't tell which of their hate pieces they have drawn without Gitaxian Probe, so it's better to go with the more reliable option. Empty only amplifies this effect by giving you shorter windows of reasonable combo turns as opposed to additional copies of Tendrils, Past in Flames or even Ad Nauseam.

Unless you're a Jedi Master of course, in which case you should just run Therapy.

[ScottW]

What do you think of my point Jonathan? Your comment is partially meta dependent. I don't play mtgo and almost exclusively at my lgs.

[Jonathan Alexander]

I think what you said falls under "it's important to hit". Empty is susceptible to different forms of interaction than the other business spells, which makes it harder to make proper reads and thus more reliable to go with Duress.

(I kinda feel like this sounds condescending, definitely not intended. Should have put more effort into my earlier post, including quoting yours and making clear what I meant.)

[ScottW]

Not at all. Thanks.

[CabalTherapy]

Back in the Established Decks forum.

/back among classic decks like Oozing, Burn, and Pox

[Ronald Deuce]

Back in the Established Decks forum.

Fiddlesticks and fudgesicles. Time for damage control?

Revamping my sideboard again after a couple of losses to Eldrazi and Reanimator last weekend. Went 1-2 out of three rounds. I won game 2 against the Eldrazi, which was nice, and makes me feel more that the matchup isn't as hideous as it first appeared if we a) prepare for it and b) win the die-roll. I also 2-0'd Infect, which 0-2'd me last time I played the guy, so maybe I'm not totally Bad at Magic. Reanimator was pretty bad, though.

In light of last week's results, I've been thinking more and more that a second Empty the Warrens and the singleton KGrip are dead space in the sideboard, and that I might need either a second Rebuild or some form of graveyard hate. Or both, for that matter.

The only change I've made to my maindeck in a long time—aside from the continued rotation of an Empty and Dark Petition #2—was to replace Preordain #2 with a Chain of Vapor. It hasn't come up once, so no word on how that's affecting things. I'll get back with more info after the next time I take the deck for a spin.

I feel like Preordain is extremely clunky, and like I can't find a discard when I need it most. That's gotten me thinking that it'd be great if we could go up to eight disruption cards, but I don't have the experience with the deck to determine how much that would hamstring our whole gameplan. Bear in mind that I've only recently brought in the seventh piece of disruption again (the Chain of Vapor). Has anyone tried eight lately?

I'm also considering going to a 3-3 split between Therapy and Duress, but I'm still unsure how important that is or whether it'll yield appreciable benefits. I don't feel like I've noticed a problem with 4x Therapy that more Duresses would solve all that often, primarily because I've been firing successful Therapies that revealed redundant hate (e.g., a Chalice and a Thorn or Surgical and Force and [generic blue card]). Our chances of breaking through against either of those (plus a clock) are slim and none, and if our opponent knows what he/she is doing, Slim will have left town. Hatebears are a real problem that Duress can't answer, which was one of the reasons I decided to maindeck the Chain.

Here's hoping we can get back into the DTBs. Let's face it: this deck is a lot of fun, and I'm not interested in seeing it get blown out.

[CabalTherapy]

Fiddlesticks and fudgesicles. Time for damage control?

Revamping my sideboard again after a couple of losses to Eldrazi and Reanimator last weekend. Went 1-2 out of three rounds. I won game 2 against the Eldrazi, which was nice, and makes me feel more that the matchup isn't as hideous as it first appeared if we a) prepare for it and b) win the die-roll. I also 2-0'd Infect, which 0-2'd me last time I played the guy, so maybe I'm not totally Bad at Magic. Reanimator was pretty bad, though.

In light of last week's results, I've been thinking more and more that a second Empty the Warrens and the singleton KGrip are dead space in the sideboard, and that I might need either a second Rebuild or some form of graveyard hate. Or both, for that matter.

The only change I've made to my maindeck in a long time—aside from the continued rotation of an Empty and Dark Petition #2—was to replace Preordain #2 with a Chain of Vapor. It hasn't come up once, so no word on how that's affecting things. I'll get back with more info after the next time I take the deck for a spin.

I feel like Preordain is extremely clunky, and like I can't find a discard when I need it most. That's gotten me thinking that it'd be great if we could go up to eight disruption cards, but I don't have the experience with the deck to determine how much that would hamstring our whole gameplan. Bear in mind that I've only recently brought in the seventh piece of disruption again (the Chain of Vapor). Has anyone tried eight lately?

I'm also considering going to a 3-3 split between Therapy and Duress, but I'm still unsure how important that is or whether it'll yield appreciable benefits. I don't feel like I've noticed a problem with 4x Therapy that more Duresses would solve all that often, primarily because I've been firing successful Therapies that revealed redundant hate (e.g., a Chalice and a Thorn or Surgical and Force and [generic blue card]). Our chances of breaking through against either of those (plus a clock) are slim and none, and if our opponent knows what he/she is doing, Slim will have left town. Hatebears are a real problem that Duress can't answer, which was one of the reasons I decided to maindeck the Chain.

Here's hoping we can get back into the DTBs. Let's face it: this deck is a lot of fun, and I'm not interested in seeing it get blown out.

I feel like Chain main is a miserable move. Wasn't it already discussed some pages ago that is has so many obvious downsides and doesn't support the game plan at all. I guess there is a little step left for someone to ask about Izzet Charm and friends. Chances are high that you'll draw it and not need it more often than really searching for it.
I don't see how Preordain is "clunky". It's a cc1 cantrip that is faster than SDT and comparable to Ponder but selects better: you should find you discard spells easily. 6 are enough right now and I see your point on the Therapy vs. Duress problem. I have been playing with a 3-3 for quite a while before replacing one Duress with Thoughtseize, which is the best discard spell. Regarding counterspells, it's important to hit safely and presumably you might win after one hit in the current state of the format. Duress also takes down Eldrazi better than a blind CT.

Ah, and I of course, hope we stay here in this forum. We don't need to be in the DTB section to know that ANT is still the best deck.

[Alakhai84]

The only change I've made to my maindeck in a long time—aside from the continued rotation of an Empty and Dark Petition #2—was to replace Preordain #2 with a Chain of Vapor. It hasn't come up once, so no word on how that's affecting things. I'll get back with more info after the next time I take the deck for a spin.

I feel like Preordain is extremely clunky, and like I can't find a discard when I need it most. That's gotten me thinking that it'd be great if we could go up to eight disruption cards, but I don't have the experience with the deck to determine how much that would hamstring our whole gameplan. Bear in mind that I've only recently brought in the seventh piece of disruption again (the Chain of Vapor). Has anyone tried eight lately?

So why not cutting Preordain for Abrupt Decay...will solve our worst problem : Counterbalance and Chalice Of The Void.

Just top8'ed a tournament of 47 people, pretty standard decklist : 2 Pif 1 ToA 1 EtW maindeck...lost during swiss Eldrazi, top 8 lost against Eldrazi one more time (4x Decay and 2x Hurkyl's is not enough!!). 4 Eldrazi in top8....LOL! Time to ban Chalice? In vintage is restricted...

[Ronald Deuce]

I feel like Chain main is a miserable move. Wasn't it already discussed some pages ago that is has so many obvious downsides and doesn't support the game plan at all. . . . Chances are high that you'll draw it and not need it more often than really searching for it.

That's true, but I feel like one has the same problem if one draws Duress/Therapy against a permanent-heavy deck that's already deployed a threat. I've had a whole lot of game 1s in which people run out a Thalia or a Sphere of Resistance while I'm still monkeying around trying to find business, and I don't have an answer. Having something to bounce a hate permanent (or a gamebreaker like Marit Lage) feels like a really important thing, and Chain does some other nasty stuff with mana rocks on the board. This actually came up twice yesterday (worked once; my tutor got countered the second time, which another Duress might've solved). Not sure I'll keep it in (more on that in a minute), but it's a pretty useful trick in a lot of matchups. Obviously not universally good, but I've been yanking the Preordain it replaced in nearly every game 2 for a sideboard card, so I thought I'd replace it with a 1-costed card that comes in a lot of the time and solves much of the problem with game-1 permanent hate (excluding Chalice).

I don't see how Preordain is "clunky". It's a cc1 cantrip that is faster than SDT and comparable to Ponder but selects better: you should find you discard spells easily.

I've been cantripping into a bunch of cantrips quite a bit lately. Oftentimes we either need to deal with a problem that'll zero us within a couple of turns or get the combo going right away; Preordain does neither of these things well. This has led me to believe that we're running too many cantrips, but there's no way I'm cutting a copy of Brainstorm or Ponder from the maindeck. Probe is useful for different reasons, and I don't think that's a card to cut either. The bang-for-buck factor on Preordain is the lowest out of all the cantrips in the deck, and I find that when I draw it after the first two turns, I'd rather have either business (five spells here already), mana (nine rituals and eight artifacts), or disruption.

So when I say it's clunky, I don't mean that it's overcosted or that it's inherently slow; I mean that, of all the cards we use to find business/mana/disruption, it does the least, and I feel like we'd be better served to shore up one of those three components of the deck than to keep 2x Preordain.

I may not be approaching this properly, but again, I've sided out the Preordains for virtually all my G2s and G3s, and rarely has it been useful in G1.

6 are enough right now and I see your point on the Therapy vs. Duress problem. I have been playing with a 3-3 for quite a while before replacing one Duress with Thoughtseize, which is the best discard spell.

I've been kicking around bringing back the third Duress instead of the Chain and going back to seven discards. I'm curious: do you feel like seven pieces of disruption in the maindeck has been a setup that's led to flooding? I used to think that because there were times when it would happen, but I feel like we're in an environment in which there are decks that'll just shut us out of the game immediately if we can't land a discard right away. Chain obviously doesn't solve this problem, but I felt like testing maindeck anti-permanent stuff.

I'm definitely keeping two Chains in the 75, whether split between main and sideboard or both in the side. It's so crushing when it works (which has been often, in my experience) and so versatile against a variety of matchups that I definitely think we need to keep two around. The fact that it builds storm count and removes problem permanents (Canonist, Germ tokens wielding Batterskulls, Reanimate targets) at the same time is superb.

CabalTherapy, thanks a lot for your input. I'm interested to hear what you think about adding discards at the moment/why we shouldn't, and I'll probably put Chain back in the 'board after its underperformance yesterday. Felt too narrow for the matchups I faced, though it would've been great in the matchups I had last week (barring Eldrazi).

So why not cutting Preordain for Abrupt Decay...will solve our worst problem : Counterbalance and Chalice Of The Void.

Just top8'ed a tournament of 47 people, pretty standard decklist : 2 Pif 1 ToA 1 EtW maindeck...lost during swiss Eldrazi, top 8 lost against Eldrazi one more time (4x Decay and 2x Hurkyl's is not enough!!). 4 Eldrazi in top8....LOL! Time to ban Chalice? In vintage is restricted...

First of all, well done!

To answer your question, I'm not a fan of Abrupt Decay in very many matchups at all. Green mana is a real choke that we won't be able to solve in the face of a number of decks, and unless we're in a slower matchup I think it'll really slow us down to have one in our opener.

It might be a necessity against Eldrazi because it can't be countered, but I don't think we should be putting in more than one or two. The Eldrazi player yesterday won game 2 by playing Chalice on 0, Chalice on 1, Chalice on 2, and Rest in Peace over the first three turns.

On an unrelated note, I just saw this list today: http://mtgtop8.com/event?e=12113&d=269470&f=LE

Your thoughts, everyone?

[Sloshthedark]

btw. how is it going in this department? anyone actually tried to build it?

[GoldenCid]

That's true, but I feel like one has the same problem if one draws Duress/Therapy against a permanent-heavy deck that's already deployed a threat. I've had a whole lot of game 1s in which people run out a Thalia or a Sphere of Resistance while I'm still monkeying around trying to find business, and I don't have an answer. Having something to bounce a hate permanent (or a gamebreaker like Marit Lage) feels like a really important thing, and Chain does some other nasty stuff with mana rocks on the board. This actually came up twice yesterday (worked once; my tutor got countered the second time, which another Duress might've solved). Not sure I'll keep it in (more on that in a minute), but it's a pretty useful trick in a lot of matchups. Obviously not universally good, but I've been yanking the Preordain it replaced in nearly every game 2 for a sideboard card, so I thought I'd replace it with a 1-costed card that comes in a lot of the time and solves much of the problem with game-1 permanent hate (excluding Chalice).



I've been cantripping into a bunch of cantrips quite a bit lately. Oftentimes we either need to deal with a problem that'll zero us within a couple of turns or get the combo going right away; Preordain does neither of these things well. This has led me to believe that we're running too many cantrips, but there's no way I'm cutting a copy of Brainstorm or Ponder from the maindeck. Probe is useful for different reasons, and I don't think that's a card to cut either. The bang-for-buck factor on Preordain is the lowest out of all the cantrips in the deck, and I find that when I draw it after the first two turns, I'd rather have either business (five spells here already), mana (nine rituals and eight artifacts), or disruption.

So when I say it's clunky, I don't mean that it's overcosted or that it's inherently slow; I mean that, of all the cards we use to find business/mana/disruption, it does the least, and I feel like we'd be better served to shore up one of those three components of the deck than to keep 2x Preordain.

I may not be approaching this properly, but again, I've sided out the Preordains for virtually all my G2s and G3s, and rarely has it been useful in G1.



I've been kicking around bringing back the third Duress instead of the Chain and going back to seven discards. I'm curious: do you feel like seven pieces of disruption in the maindeck has been a setup that's led to flooding? I used to think that because there were times when it would happen, but I feel like we're in an environment in which there are decks that'll just shut us out of the game immediately if we can't land a discard right away. Chain obviously doesn't solve this problem, but I felt like testing maindeck anti-permanent stuff.

I'm definitely keeping two Chains in the 75, whether split between main and sideboard or both in the side. It's so crushing when it works (which has been often, in my experience) and so versatile against a variety of matchups that I definitely think we need to keep two around. The fact that it builds storm count and removes problem permanents (Canonist, Germ tokens wielding Batterskulls, Reanimate targets) at the same time is superb.

CabalTherapy, thanks a lot for your input. I'm interested to hear what you think about adding discards at the moment/why we shouldn't, and I'll probably put Chain back in the 'board after its underperformance yesterday. Felt too narrow for the matchups I faced, though it would've been great in the matchups I had last week (barring Eldrazi).

First of all, well done!

To answer your question, I'm not a fan of Abrupt Decay in very many matchups at all. Green mana is a real choke that we won't be able to solve in the face of a number of decks, and unless we're in a slower matchup I think it'll really slow us down to have one in our opener.

It might be a necessity against Eldrazi because it can't be countered, but I don't think we should be putting in more than one or two. The Eldrazi player yesterday won game 2 by playing Chalice on 0, Chalice on 1, Chalice on 2, and Rest in Peace over the first three turns.

On an unrelated note, I just saw this list today: http://mtgtop8.com/event?e=12113&d=269470&f=LE

Your thoughts, everyone?

Man plan????

[Jonathan Alexander]

btw. how is it going in this department? anyone actually tried to build it?

I've had some success with it on Magic Online. In Limited.

[phazonmutant]

Pieces of the Puzzle

btw. how is it going in this department? anyone actually tried to build it?

I'm going to play a list with 4 tonight in a weekly tournament. I'll report back with results. In testing it's been good.

[ThomasDowd]

I'm going to play a list with 4 tonight in a weekly tournament. I'll report back with results. In testing it's been good.

what did you cut?

[phazonmutant]

what did you cut?

Well that depends on what list you start with! How about I just copy my deck?

1 Island
3 Scalding Tarn
1 Bloodstained Mire
4 Polluted Delta
1 Swamp
1 Tropical Island
2 Underground Sea
1 Volcanic Island
1 Badlands

4 Gitaxian Probe
4 Brainstorm
4 Ponder
4 Pieces of the Puzzle

3 Cabal Therapy
3 Duress

4 Dark Ritual
4 Cabal Ritual
4 Lion's Eye Diamond
2 Lotus Petal

4 Infernal Tutor
2 Past in Flames
1 Empty the Warrens
2 Tendrils of Agony

// Sideboard:
1 Bayou
4 Abrupt Decay
1 Hurkyl's Recall
2 Dread of Night
2 Flusterstorm
2 Sensei's Divining Top
2 Surgical Extraction
1 Xantid Swarm

Overall the deck felt solid, but mayyyybe 4 Pieces of the Puzzle was excessive, but it was a solid card to draw one of. It warranted a Force from RUG Delver, and won the other game it resolved. Solid there. Round 2 I played against Miracles where it also warranted a Force once and was a great top-deck later. Round 3 against Painter, game 1 it would have been an insane draw, game 2 I crushed him before it was relevant, and game 3 he had kind of a nut draw against my somewhat slow draw. Round 4 I played against TinFins and it was garbage.

Overall I'd cut 1-2 for a Petal and a Top. But when I cast it, it was amazing. Would recommend.

Bonus! You can see me play it against RUG here: https://www.twitch.tv/cardkingdom/v/61488050 (game starts around 5 minutes)

[Fatal]

So you actually more focused on turn 4 combo out ? Is it sometimes too slow vs for example Elves ? I watched your matches - not great examples:


G1 Free win - opponent keep 5 lander + brainstorm on draw. Turn 1 duress was enough.

G2 He had Zoo hand vs messy hand with Tendrils which you wanted to recast but he topdeck surgical with library (really library... in g2)

G3 opponent side out Spell Snares ==' and keep non lander n/c.

Interesting thing did you tested Chrome Moxes in your build - I like puzzle gives very fast threshold but this 3 cmc is killer. Also not having Ad N is a mistake what if you met other combo where you need to race.

[phazonmutant]

So you actually more focused on turn 4 combo out ? Is it sometimes too slow vs for example Elves ? I watched your matches - not great examples:


G1 Free win - opponent keep 5 lander + brainstorm on draw. Turn 1 duress was enough.

G2 He had Zoo hand vs messy hand with Tendrils which you wanted to recast but he topdeck surgical with library (really library... in g2)

G3 opponent side out Spell Snares ==' and keep non lander n/c.

Interesting thing did you tested Chrome Moxes in your build - I like puzzle gives very fast threshold but this 3 cmc is killer. Also not having Ad N is a mistake what if you met other combo where you need to race.

You're right, the match vs RUG was not very representative. I think that the turn 2 Pieces was a good showcase of how it can be used to set up turn 3, but correct this is a Grinding Station build that can go toe-to-toe in the late game.

Chrome Mox is interesting. Maybe it's better than some Petals?

Not having Ad Naus is definitely not a mistake. I've been hating it even in the combo mirror with a full playset of Lotus Petal because it encourages high-variance plays. You'll notice I have 4-5 combo hate cards in the sideboard (Surgical, Fluster, Xantid), and they have always been consistently better for me than Ad Naus. Ad Naus in the board would require adding in Lotus Petals, which I don't think go well with Grinding Station in general.

[Jonathan Alexander]

"High variance plays" are not necessarily a bad thing, especially in matchups that come down to goldfishing anyway. 80% to win on turn two can be a lot better than 100% to win on turn three. Not having Ad Nauseam definitely hurts in non-Force of Will combo mirrors.

[Megadeus]

Pieces does restock your hand and helps with gaining the CA lost from Chrommox. Sounds interesting. Is a build with ancient tombs too cute...