[Deck] ANT (Ad Nauseam Tendrils) Storm Combo

[Jonathan Alexander]

I will reply to your post in full, but first answer my question: Do you want to get better with the deck long-term or do you want to win more short-term?

[ScottW]

I will reply to your post in full, but first answer my question: Do you want to get better with the deck long-term or do you want to win more short-term?

I want the long term answer.

@Croatoan,
I'm the guy who was able to borrow a Grim Tutor. I've invested heavily in the deck this past year (buying / trading for FBB duals and such) but never invested in a Grim Tutor because I was exploring a different list for some time. I'm waiting for Eternal Masters to be spoiled before I buy a copy.

[Croatoan]

I will reply to your post in full, but first answer my question: Do you want to get better with the deck long-term or do you want to win more short-term?

Long-term, I guess, though I am not sure how this can affect the answers to my questions.

I want the long term answer.

@Croatoan,
I'm the guy who was able to borrow a Grim Tutor. I've invested heavily in the deck this past year (buying / trading for FBB duals and such) but never invested in a Grim Tutor because I was exploring a different list for some time. I'm waiting for Eternal Masters to be spoiled before I buy a copy.

Yeah, I get that. So how was your experience with Grim? I thought the combination of three mana and life loss really hurt, especially since it is a sorcery to boot. I would love a good tutor that does not require emptying my hand but Grim has not convinced me in my limited testing. Dark Petition seems better to me at the moment (and does not cost 170€)

[Jonathan Alexander]

I want the long term answer.

Long-term, I guess, though I am not sure how this can affect the answers to my questions.

Long term answer is to play 2 Past in Flames 3 Tendrils a lot. A lot. It's likely not the best list right now, but it's the one that helps you develop the best habits. It forces you to be able to play without Ad Nauseam (more relevant for real beginners). It forces you to get used to drawing Tendrils, shows you the strengths of drawing Past in Flames and the benefits of having more than one copy of Tendrils.

From there, you can expand your horizons. You can start with either Empty the Warrens or Ad Nauseam, but preferably not both at the same time. You will almost always want at least one of them somewhere in your 75, so if you have the opportunity to play the deck a lot outside of tournaments, try to get a testing partner who's willing to jam countless games in a matchup where you actually want to be on 2/3. Non-black Delver decks and Miracles before sideboarding are matchups where this is true.

The number one benefit you get from learning this way is that you will develop very strong matchup understanding, which is the most important part of playing Storm. You can spend countless hours teching out discard, tutor or removal splits, but what really counts is your business setup. If you play against Elves, for example it's not overly important to figure out if you want Duress, Thoughtseize or Cabal Therapy after sideboarding. But the difference between Empty the Warrens or Ad Nauseam is huge. This might be an obvious example, but against Team America, the decision between Empty and Ad Nauseam is already much harder.

(Short term answer is to play the 2 Petition list because it's the easiest to play on a basic level and the hardest to mess up with strategically.)

As for your questions regarding specific cards, please allow me to link to my primer: The Storm Box

(And thank you for making me look that thing up and realise it's a year old already. I hope I can manage to update it before Prague.)

Multiples of Past in Flames and Tendrils are actually good in the same matchups, more or less. They both interact favourably with countermagic, given that you have enough mana. The second Tendrils also opens up double Tendrils kills and Tendrils is a great card to draw against Griselbrands, Dark Confidants and Ancient Tombs. Past in Flames is an engine spell that, in contrast to Ad Nauseam, does not care about your deck configuration. Drawing Past in Flames is also similar to drawing a discard spell because of flashback. A common line is Infernal Tutor, crack Lion's Eye Diamond, discard Past in Flames and either have your opponent counter the tutor or let it resolve and get hit by a discard spell.
Drawing both Past in Flames and Tendrils also opens up some lines not involving tutor effects.

Please let me know if you feel I have left out something between this post and my primer.

[Togores]

I will start with some card questions, any comments on the list are of course welcome:

• Past in Flames
  Awesome business, but I am not sure what the reasoning behind running more than one is. It felt clunky when I tested it and seems dangerous with Ad Nauseam
• Grim Tutor
  Is this card played in any serious list? I gave it a try and it seemed really expensive to me (in mana, life and money). I saw some guy a couple of pages back borrowing one from the shop, though, and he seemed happy with it
• D-Top
  I gave it a try and it seemed very slow (and I rarely drew the one copy). What is the reasoning running it over Preordain? While Pre is not great, to me it seems to fit the game plan better
• Tendrils
  I play one main and never felt like I needed more but it is a staple in many sideboards. When might I want to play more than one copy? I have it in the side but I have yet to board it
• Xantid Swarm
  I am not sure this card is good enough. I saw one list running City of Solitude instead but had no time to test it yet. Thoughts?

There are also two match-ups that drive me insane (apart from Eldrazi, I mean ). The first one is Miracles which just seems to be able to lock me out of the game all the time. I need both discard against Force and Abrupt Decay against the super-annoying Counterbalance which also steals game ones like a pro. Really don't know how to reliably beat this one. I thought it was a good matchup at first (at least better than back when I was playing Death & Taxes) but now I am not so sure anymore.

Burn is also suprisingly dangerous, thanks to Eidolon of the Great Revel. They are blazing fast and with Eidolon in play I can't cast anything without taking a lot of damage. And like a resolved counterbalance, I can't handle it in turn 1 (and handling it in game 2 also has me taking damage). I guess I could use some help with this match-up as well.

I really like the feel of the deck, though, and would love to play it more. Any help is really appreciated.

Also multiple tendrills in sb makes just the miracles and burn matchup a los better. Like with 3 toa in sb I have almost never lost to burn. And also makes my miracles matchup wins over 50%

[Stoyrm]

The thing with two Past in Flames is that you will draw it more often (duh), which is really great for certain matchups. First it allows you to play through several counterspells, by playing enough mana you can often play through a hard counter because you can most often cast PiF and flashback it, while if you have a tutor they'll get you. Secondly, drawing often allows you to combo faster. You can spend your infernal tutor getting another ritual and then go off that turn instead of maybe having to wait for more mana. It's also very good against deck with a lot of discard. If your graveyard is full of spells and you draw PiF more often it'll allow you to sneak wins where you have zero cards in hand.

For the moment I have an Empty in the main, but if it wasn't the card I'd add would 100% be the second PiF, it was great for me for a good year.

[Ronald Deuce]

Not sure how much I'll be able to add to the current discussion, but I went 3-0 at the local on Sunday. Beat American Stoneblade, Show and Tell, and Doomsday. Not a whole lot to report, except that this marks the second time I've eked out a win against the guy playing Stoneblade, and last time I managed it I lucked into two turn-1 Empties. Doomsday felt like it was my match to win (with no big-breeches nonsense or offense to the opponent intended); he pointed out, and I agreed, that we're doing pretty much the same thing, only AnT does it faster.

Memorable moments include dumping a handful of Dark Rituals and comboing in response to Surgical Extraction on Dark Ritual, Ad Nauseam FTW down to virtually nothing (I think 3 life in one game and 1 in another) twice, and recovering from a complete hand-stripping from Doomsday.

I was running the standard setup, only with 1 Preordain, Chrome Mox, Rain of Filth, AdN, Petition, Tendrils. 2 Past in Flames, 6 discards on a 3-3 split. Still on 14 lands main and still preferring it to 15, even when I never draw a second land. The more I play with this list, the more I feel like it's probably the best setup I've tried to date. I've not been missing the second Petition much at all, but I only rarely feel like additional copies of Tendrils would do anything better than either a fifth tutor or a second PiF. I haven't missed the second Preordain. Not even a little bit. If I could find a replacement for the singleton, I'd use it in a heartbeat. Speaking of such replacements, anybody run Impulse lately? Gives us a shot at getting around Chalice, for what it's worth...

I've started to feel like Jonathan Alexander's suggestion regarding additional sideboard discard to be a really good idea. I'm not sure I want to cut out so much to make room for a full 10 post-board, but I'm going to start testing with 7-8 discards for the time being (I've still got flex spots). I feel like extra discards and extra PiF are the best ways we can beat five-counterspell hands (except, maybe, for Defense Grid), and this is the third tournament in a row in which my opponent has been able to beat me that way. Last week and this week I still won the round, but I really hate throwing away games to hands like that. It's the same as losing to a guy who mulligans to three to find Leyline when you're playing Dredge, and I don't play Dredge as much as I used to because opponents do that A LOT.

In short, in one game in each of the last three (small) tournaments, I've found myself praying to topdeck a discard spell, and I haven't been able to find it. I've also lost two games because my opponent had hate I didn't expect, but I didn't have a discard or Probe to reveal it to me. Now there were numerous games when I was on 7 discards in which I found a discard instead of something I needed to seal the deal, but having the option in our sideboard seems more useful than not having it when it's needed.

Empty only came down once, versus Doomsday, but I like it because it's so fast and it goes so well with Therapy. I'm keeping two Empties in the 'board for the time being.

I've been considering cutting back my anti-creature cards to just one Disfigure (next to two Chains of Vapor). Maybe it's that the meta's been light on hatebears lately, but there was only one game I really needed one of those cards to save me, and I was pretty screwed already; I think I had a poor draw against two Stoneforge Mystics, a Jitte (maybe? I'd swiped the Skull already), a Canonist, a Meddling Mage on Massacre(?!?), and a handful of blue raspberries (the "PTHTHTPHPTHTHPTHTHPHHHPP—" kind. Yeah; that joke kinda sucked).

Croatoan, one thing jumps out to me about the list you were running: you seem to be a tad light on high-cost business. I can understand the fear that Ad Nauseam will just knife you in the gut when you otherwise have the game under control, but that's not happened to me a single time in months, and I've been winning off of AdN more frequently in the past month or so. Try out a fifth piece of business; I think you'll be pleasantly surprised. And if you're really worried, exchange a land for a Mox. I still feel like 15 lands mainboard is too many.

Still not planning to run Grim Tutor. I'll admit that I have NOT tested it, but I can't imagine how its advantages could outweigh all its problems in a large statistical sample (e.g., numerous players running it over numerous tournaments). Feels to me like best case, you've got one in hand, but you don't need to use it, and worst case, you have to use it. Again, though, in Ad Nauseam-less builds, I think it's probably worth a try.

[Dr_D]

he pointed out, and I agreed, that we're doing pretty much the same thing, only AnT does it faster.

ANT isn't that much faster than DDFT if the pilot is competent. If both players are proficient, they have a very similar goldfish speed. DDFT and ANT are closer in speed than ANT and TES. If you play the matchup more against good opponents, you'll see it's not nearly as lopsided towards ANT as it seems at first glance.

[Ronald Deuce]

ANT isn't that much faster than DDFT if the pilot is competent. If both players are proficient, they have a very similar goldfish speed. DDFT and ANT are closer in speed than ANT and TES. If you play the matchup more against good opponents, you'll see it's not nearly as lopsided towards ANT as it seems at first glance.

Oh, don't get me wrong; it's not all that lopsided, and I think I was getting lucky draws, but Doomsday's got a lot of engine pieces that are difficult to use on their own, and it relies a lot more heavily on Sensei's Top. He didn't have bad hands, either; maybe light on one of the components, but he had deck manipulation and/or business in both games, IIRC. The targeted discards also slowed me down, but I think he kept Topping and finding stuff that didn't really work with what he had in hand. It may not be all that common an occurrence (or it may be something that seasoned pilots have less trouble addressing), but I got the impression that if he'd had another turn or two in either game he would've made it.

I also think the speed of AnT depends a good deal on the setup. (I don't mean that one build is inherently faster than the others every time, but that you've got better odds of a T1-T2 with certain business configurations than you have with others.) I've been getting a lot of really fast combos lately on my configuration, and I think the extra Ritual and the extra Petal (Rain and Mox) are largely responsible. The mana density is noticeably higher than it was before, and I think I'm able to grind better than I could on 7 discards-1 PiF, 6 discards-1 Petition-1 Empty, or 6 discards-2 Petition setups.

[Jonathan Alexander]

The 2 Petition list is a lot faster than 2 Past in Flames 3 Storm spell builds when goldfishing. You have a lot more unprotected turn two kills, but you're only slightly faster against one piece of countermagic and actually slower against multiple counterspells.

[Togores]

ANT isn't that much faster than DDFT if the pilot is competent. If both players are proficient, they have a very similar goldfish speed. DDFT and ANT are closer in speed than ANT and TES. If you play the matchup more against good opponents, you'll see it's not nearly as lopsided towards ANT as it seems at first glance.

Usualy tes is a t1-2 deck, while ant a t2-3 and doomsday a t3-4 one. Doomsday realying on 3 black mana males them have to make 3 landrops or find a dark ritual. Also needing to find doomsday, cantrip and led or so. All this while investing time into top and not better cantrips.

[Croatoan]

good long post

The Box is very interesting, I remember reading it when I was first looking into Storm. A couple of questions though:

If I play the 2 Pif, 3 Tendrils variant, are all five pieces main or do I leave a few tendrils for the sideboard? And I guess that I won't use Ad Nauseum with this setup but should I include a Petition? You mention in the Box that there is an interaction between Top and Flusterstorm. Maybe I'm stupid but I don't see it at the moment.

Also, I would like to know a bit more about sideboarding against the two matchups I mentioned, the box is pretty general in this regard.

Also multiple tendrills in sb makes just the miracles and burn matchup a los better. Like with 3 toa in sb I have almost never lost to burn. And also makes my miracles matchup wins over 50%

Interesting. What exactly do you board in these matchups?

(...)

Croatoan, one thing jumps out to me about the list you were running: you seem to be a tad light on high-cost business. I can understand the fear that Ad Nauseam will just knife you in the gut when you otherwise have the game under control, but that's not happened to me a single time in months, and I've been winning off of AdN more frequently in the past month or so. Try out a fifth piece of business; I think you'll be pleasantly surprised. And if you're really worried, exchange a land for a Mox. I still feel like 15 lands mainboard is too many.

Still not planning to run Grim Tutor. I'll admit that I have NOT tested it, but I can't imagine how its advantages could outweigh all its problems in a large statistical sample (e.g., numerous players running it over numerous tournaments). Feels to me like best case, you've got one in hand, but you don't need to use it, and worst case, you have to use it. Again, though, in Ad Nauseam-less builds, I think it's probably worth a try.

Hm, good point. I might give it a try. Should I put the land into the sideboard then? If yes, which matchups do you usually side it in? Death and Taxes I guess.

The thing with two Past in Flames is that you will draw it more often (duh), which is really great for certain matchups. First it allows you to play through several counterspells, by playing enough mana you can often play through a hard counter because you can most often cast PiF and flashback it, while if you have a tutor they'll get you. Secondly, drawing often allows you to combo faster. You can spend your infernal tutor getting another ritual and then go off that turn instead of maybe having to wait for more mana. It's also very good against deck with a lot of discard. If your graveyard is full of spells and you draw PiF more often it'll allow you to sneak wins where you have zero cards in hand.

For the moment I have an Empty in the main, but if it wasn't the card I'd add would 100% be the second PiF, it was great for me for a good year.

How is Empty treating you? I tried it, it was good against some matchups but fizzled hard against others.

Thanks guys for the help and I am really looking forward to the Storm Box update

[Togores]

usualy against miracles my plan is to put on 2 toa, 2 grip, 4 decay, 1 top and just grind them to dead.


and against burn 2 echoing, 3 decay and 2 toa. just mini toa them even with eidolon and then with de 8+ life just toa them for a bit and win.

[UseLess]

After I read the suggestion here for chrome mox to improve Ad Nauseam I tested it and a single mox has been very good for me during testing and tournaments. I tend to go often for Ad Nauseam and it helps a lot. Also aided a few times in getting hellbent, which is a nice addition. Would never go to two, but hardly ever disappointed when I see my mox.

I actually managed to win the third Source tournament hosted by Jelly with the list posted here: list. Nothing too fancy, 1 chrome mox, 1 preordain, 1 tendrils, 1 PiF, 1 Empty, 1 AdN, 1 Dark Petition and 14 lands mainboard. Not yet sold on the Dark petition, the 14 lands worked well and so did the rest of the mainboard. The meta was really weird (I played 4 times agains Imperial taxes out of 7 rounds...) so my sideboard wasn't really tested a lot. On another note, I scrubbed out after going 2-3 at the Danish Legacy Masters. Sideboard was -1 Xantid, -1 Tendrils, +1 Hurkyl's, +1 Surgical. The three surgical was a meta choice since last time I faced quite a few reanimator decks. Now no reanimator of course and it was pretty bad. Next time I play the deck I'm having at least 1 tendrils in the SB.

The tournament made me rethink my sideboard and I was thinking against which matches do people bring in Abrupt Decay that also attack our land base? I mainly have the card for Miracles but against them the 2nd Green land isn't really necessary. I'm considering to add a few Ingot Chewers to my sb, but then I'd like an extra red land (either volcanic nr. 2 or a badlands). Haven't put too much thought into it, but it dawned on me that I don't really want the abrupt decays against decks that attack my mana as well, since it is so hard to cast it anyways.

[Jonathan Alexander]

The Box is very interesting, I remember reading it when I was first looking into Storm. A couple of questions though:

If I play the 2 Pif, 3 Tendrils variant, are all five pieces main or do I leave a few tendrils for the sideboard? And I guess that I won't use Ad Nauseum with this setup but should I include a Petition? You mention in the Box that there is an interaction between Top and Flusterstorm. Maybe I'm stupid but I don't see it at the moment.

Also, I would like to know a bit more about sideboarding against the two matchups I mentioned, the box is pretty general in this regard.

I recommend you play with something similar to my SeaTac list:

4 Lion's Eye Diamond
4 Lotus Petal

4 Brainstorm
3 Cabal Ritual
4 Dark Ritual
1 Rain of Filth

1 Island
1 Swamp
1 Bayou
4 Misty Rainforest
4 Polluted Delta
1 Tropical Island
2 Underground Sea
1 Volcanic Island

4 Cabal Therapy
1 Duress
4 Gitaxian Probe
4 Infernal Tutor
2 Past in Flames
4 Ponder
2 Preordain
3 Tendrils of Agony
1 Thoughtseize

(I played Tops over Preordains, that was a terrible decision.)

Sideboard at the time:
2 Carpet of Flowers
2 Dread of Night
3 Abrupt Decay
1 Ad Nauseam
2 Flusterstorm
2 Krosan Grip
3 Empty the Warrens

Against Burn (and UR Delver) you just bring in some Decays and board out some discard. Beating Eidolon is super simple with 3 Tendrils, I actually had a game at GP SeaTac where my UR Delver opponent had Eidolon turn two on the play and I locked him under the Eidolon with mini-Tendrils.

Against Miracles, I boarded out all Infernals and LEDs and some other card for the green cards and Flusterstorms with the above list, but I wasn't super happy with the matchup against good opponents. Miracles vs. Storm is very good for Storm if the Miracles player doesn't really know how Storm works, but is extremely bad for Storm if they do.

I'm "currently" (haven't taken Storm to a tournament in almost three months) on this:

2 Petition List

Plan against Miracles is boarding out Petals and Mox for Badlands and the four discard spells. I alternate between Ad Nauseam and Empty. If I expect Leyline of Sanctity, I bring in a Chain, but you basically can't beat that card with this plan anyway.


One thing I forgot to mention earlier is that I strongly suggest you start playing with 4 Cabal Therapy. Being able to use the card is vital to playing Storm well. Also recommend you play matchups where you don't sideboard or sideboarding doesn't matter much (basically, play against Canadian Threshold or UR Delver). 2/3 is not great currently, but it's the best list to learn playing with.

[Croatoan]

Wow, lot's of good imput. Thanks everyone, I will give the 2 Past / 3 Tendrils list a go and start testing like crazy :)

[Ronald Deuce]

Hm, good point. I might give it a try. Should I put the land into the sideboard then? If yes, which matchups do you usually side it in? Death and Taxes I guess.

The tournament made me rethink my sideboard and I was thinking against which matches do people bring in Abrupt Decay that also attack our land base? . . . Haven't put too much thought into it, but it dawned on me that I don't really want the abrupt decays against decks that attack my mana as well, since it is so hard to cast it anyways.

I've been running a Tropical Island in my sideboard. I don't actually bring it in all that often; the two matches I've started bringing it in every time are against Eldrazi and Miracles. In the Miracles matchup, I board out a basic Island and some other stuff for the Trop and four Decays. In the Eldrazi matchup, their Chalices and (especially) Thorns make me feel like we really need to hit land drops if we can't just go off on turn 1-2. This is the only matchup so far in which I've been going to 15 lands, but I don't usually board in more than one Abrupt Decay. Several times I've been unable to cast Rebuild because there's a Thorn on the table and Rebuild ends up costing 4. That's also one reason I've switched out Rebuild for another Empty the Warrens.

I still don't bring in more than one Abrupt Decay unless I'm going against Miracles. Delver decks seem like they're prey to Decay (ugh; the rhymes don't stop), but the combination of Wasteland and monocolored removal that's cheaper (Disfigure, Chain of Vapor) feels like it makes Decay a bad fit. They're not running hatebears anyway, and their creatures usually cost less than (or the same as) Decay, so I'd prefer to stick to cheap hand-destruction and point-kills. I think it's okay to play Decay (NOT AGAIN...) against anybody who isn't running land destruction, but it makes our plan a lot more dependent on finding that green source and I think that for a lot of those matchups (the mirror, Eldrazi, Reanimator, S&T[?]) Decay doesn't do much.

As an aside, I find that it's a lot more important to find a green source when I'm running Decay than it is to find reusable red sources for PiF or Empty pretty much anytime. I'm still not having problems running Badlands instead of Volcanic, but I think we really need to protect the green lands in any matchups in which we're trying to use Decay. So I don't think we want to board in Decay very often because there are plenty of times in which we're banking on holding onto our one reusable green source in the face of land destruction, though we don't have that problem with "combo-turn" spells like Past in Flames or Empty the Warrens. In short, I don't think we want to run Decay all that often, though it's crucial against Miracles.

Death and Taxes is a bit of an odd matchup to me because we've got a silver bullet for it (Massacre) that's significantly less effective in every other matchup. Mav boards into more Gaddocks to shut it out, and other creaturey strategies (Gobbos, Elves, Merfolk, and to some extent Stoneblade) don't play many Plains (if any). As with Eldrazi, I don't think we should be going far—if at all—into a fourth color in the D&T matchup because we've got plenty of hate for their deck already (Cabal Therapy, Chain, Disfigure).

With all that said, the combo of Port, Wasteland, and Thalia make getting off the ground after the first few turns rather difficult if we miss land drops. I think there's a case to be made for boarding up to 15 lands (with no Decays) here, but I haven't played against D&T in some time. Small meta, etc. One other thing: for some time people were running Plateaus, Mesas, and Thalia in Goblins, making it a pretty similar matchup in most respects. Not sure whether that's still a thing, but something to keep in mind.

How is Empty treating you? I tried it, it was good against some matchups but fizzled hard against others.

I really like Empty a lot, but it's definitely a weaker card than Tendrils. While we're on the subject of D&T, that's a good matchup to bring in Empty. They have a lot of trouble racing it if they don't land a quick Batterskull.

Bad matchups for Empty are Stoneblade (Batterskull and a ton of mass removal like Echoing Truth and Engineered Explosives), Jund (even more mass removal in their 'board), Elves (they'll race it), and occasionally decks like Goblins (machinegun-man) and Belcher (they play it faster and often get more goblins).

I've vacillated between running Empty in the main and the sideboard, and I think that for the time being I prefer to have it in the side. It's an atrocious topdeck and it often doesn't come down appreciably faster than Ad Nauseam. With that said, I would always, always, always board out AdN against Burn, and depending on what they've boarded, Empty might be a better card here. I think a second Tendrils would be better than either, and there's a good chance just cutting one business card for spot removal (damnable Eidolons) is better than all of the above. Anybody have input on that matchup?

One other thought occurred to me regarding the discussion of Grim Tutor: if we're hoping to use it for a fast Empty, is it appreciably better than running Burning Wish instead? Obviously it's harder to use in a Tendrils chain, but it feels like Wish synergizes at least as well with Empty without shooting us in the foot when we draw it off of Ad Nauseam.

Last thought: Croatoan, I think the more experienced players on this board are right that you should test with 3 Tendrils, 2 PiF (a build I still don't have the cojones to try). Keep in mind, though, that you're going to want to test at least as much with the build you'll be running in tournaments (if that build differs). The various configurations play differently enough that you'll want to have a lot of practice with the setup you'll be running competitively so you don't make goofy errors like forgetting whether you've got Empty in your deck (I'm guilty) or how many tutors you can chain before running out (I'm even guiltier).

[ScottW]

http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Ca...iverseid=29827

Has anyone ever tried this in the sideboard? Is this not castable under a chalice and too Sorcery and U. Let the pie throwing begin.

[Jonathan Alexander]

So I want to write a sideboarding guide because it's probably the thing new players ask about the most. Which matchups should I cover? Obviously all the decks to beat, the mirror, Show and Tell strategies, Elves... But what else?

[Zombie]

Elves

Advise people to board in goblins against us >:)

I'd say Blade, Maverick (though D&T prob. covers that already), Dredge (Manaless/LED) and, as said, Lands.