Discard or attack with Xantid Swarm ;)Originally Posted by owerbart
Just deal with it the same way you would deal with a normal counterspell. In fact, it's even easier than a normal counterspell to deal with, as it only interacts with the storm trigger. This leads to interesting interaction like this one: if you need to beat a single Stifle only, you can make a LOT of rituals, PiF loop, cast Tendrils, and then when Tendrils is Stifled you can Flash the Pif and replay the Tendrils (note this is ridiculously mana intensive and assumes some world where you don't have a discard spell to flashback, but the lesson here is that Stifle is just a weird terrible counterspell when its not pointed at your lands)
Typically on your combo turn you can flashback a discard spell before casting Tendrils.
Usualy the reason I see most ppl missplaying with storm is not being able to get the maximum value of cantrips.
Ponder shuffling not enought.
Casting cantrips wrong order
Missplaying on bs on his own turn so you could fetch and find and cast a ponder.
And so on.
Can you elaborate some more? especially since playing preordain I never know which order to cast it with ponder and brainstorm. Any more info that you can supply would be fantastic.
Its imposible to make it short. Playing cantrips is a world.
But in a perfect world i think if u have time and mana like infinite and ur searching for 1 card. The best aproach is
Preordain
Ponder
Brainstorm
Some ppl disagre on the last 2. Also if u could have a fetch in between every efect of ponder and brainstorm it would be better.
I recommend the person who originally wrote the question on cantrips to check out Carsten's articles on the topic as well as Prosak's primer on ANT. In the latter article, he also advocates the above order of cantrips without a shuffle effect. I believe with an effect, the order it probably the opposite given you have a blank or two to throw back.
It's a lot easier to look at specific examples than to make broad claims about exactly when to use each cantrip.
This.
It's mostly dependent on the situation and the deck you face. If you have doubts, just mention the exact situation here: your hand, your board, the matchup, opposing board and number of cards in hand, any "reads" you may have had that made you suspect he has a certain card in hand and of course life totals. This gives the stronger players all they need to evaluate and explain how to cantrip and why.
Let me give and example I had once during testing, with my perhaps incorrect decision tree.
Game one, my 15 cantrip ANT vs. Miracles (it was testing so I knew what he was on), I am on the play.
Start of the game, both 20 life and both 7 cards in hand. He thought about 20 seconds on his keep, and looks calm, no tell tale signs. My hand: Delta, Rainforest, Preordain, Ponder, Brainstorm, Dark Rit, Therapy.
My considerations: Therapy blind seems bad. Most dangerous cards are FoW, Counterbalance and Top. No way to know which one he has yet. Worst case scenario is he manages to drop Counterbalance on turn two and lock me out. My hand is slow so going off before Counterbalance hits the board is highly unlikely. So I need to find Duress or Probe ASAP. That's 7 cards out of 53. How should I cantrip?
There is no reason to play Brainstorm over Preordain, since both see three cards, right now I have no cards in hand that are so bad I want them gone, and Brainstorm gains value the longer I hold on to it. There are also no discard spells coming. So best seems to play Preordain and Ponder before casting Brainstorm. But in which order?
I have U this turn, and U next turn before I fetch to a B source and hopefully cast Probe into Therapy, or a Duress, and take his dangerous card. Leading off with Preordain seems fine, but leading with Ponder could be better, since it sees four cards, and there's an advantage to being able to cast both Duress and Therapy on our second turn. If he Forces the Duress, he's probably defending Counterbalance, which we can then blind Therapy. The disadvantage of starting with Ponder is that if we see two very good cards that aren't Probe or Duress, and one bad card, we will need to use Preordain or our fetch to ditch the bad card, which is sort of a waste.
I decided to play it safe and lead with Misty, fetch Sea, cast Preordain. Was this correct (A)?
Follow-up: I saw Swamp and LED. I ditched the Swamp but decided to keep the LED, since drawing an Infernal plus an accellerant should be enough for the win, so there's now a chance to race turn two Counterbalance. Was this correct (B)?
He draws, plays a Tarn and says "go".
I untap and draw a Petal for my turn. So an Infernal gets me Ad Nauseam from 18 with no land drop right now (two lands, Petal, Dark Rit and LED is 8 mana, enough for Therapy on FoW into Infernal for Ad Nauseam) assuming his only interaction right now is FoW. Ponder sees the most cards, so I cast Ponder. Ponder shows me Delta, Probe, Petal. I draw the Probe, fetch a Sea and cast the Probe (16 life). I see Counterbalance, FoW, Brainstorm, Jace, StP, Strand, Plains. I draw Cabal Rit. How would you play from here (C)?
I decide to cast Petal first, pretending I can go off this turn, and then cast Therapy. I assume he will hide Counterbalance, and hope he keeps FoW. This might allow me to go off through a blindflipping Counterbalance next turn. I assumed wrong, he hid both and I lost because Counterbalance blind-countered my Brainstorm and he soon after found Top. He didn't even need the FoW since I found my Infernal only when it was too late.
If you present your moments of doubt like this, the stronger players will have what they need to explain which decision they would make and why.
(PS. Did you notice my miscalculation? Quite an embarrassing one, actually.)
I don't think I would've gone for it without a business spell here. Probably would've passed the turn, draw and fire off BS to try to find a Tutor.
How do you guys feel about cutting Xantid swarm from the sideboard? It seems like it never works the way I want it to because every one seems prepared for it (this has been my experience online). I have been thinking about cutting it for defense grid or maybe adding some number of pithing needle to the board. Defense grid mainly to give me a good way to push the combo through against decks like RUG or sometimes miracles without having to push through a wall of conditional soft counters (Flusterstorm, etc). They might be able to pay through the grid but I usually just find that my xantid swarms very rarely get to attack, even limiting them to one counter per turn can help if you have a tutor + PiF in hand. Pithing Needle has also been another consideration, it would kind of take the role of a xantid swarm against miracles and griselbrand by preventing them from floating the counter or drawing a bunch of cards in response to the tutor. I'm not sure if either is correct it just seems like either will be better that swarm more often than not.
It sounds like you are not understanding the matchups Xantids are for if you mention RUG or decks which keep in burn (or sweepers in case of EtW). Xantid can beat a Griselbrand; Defense Grid can not. Once your opponent untapped simply because you can't ever get hold of the instant drawn counter your opponent can pay for with his Sol Lands. Spending 2 mana and a card to limit your opponent to "one counterspell a turn" does effectively nothing at all of you think about it.
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I mentioned miracles, which is the one match up where I generally rely most heavily an swarm since I haven't been facing much griselbrand decks lately. Miracles is the one where I generally actually need it to stick because they can just float a flusterstorm or counterspell on top and it is very hard to go off through that. Usually when I play against miracles they have been leaving in some number of plows in anticipation of swarm. RUG delver I mainly bring it in because they side in a shit load of counters and sometimes they can't deal with it, or eats a force (and sometimes another counter if those are the only blue cards). Substituting pithing needle stops the top shenanigans while also stopping griselbrand from drawing 7. Defense grid, while it might not stop them from casting counters it does prevent them from adding to the board, which means no V-cliques for a while, and possibly no counterbalance as they run the risk of eot decay, untap go off.
I never said limiting them to one counter per turn was always relevant, but it does help when you have drawn the past in flames and have a tutor. It might not come up a whole lot but it is relevant occasionally.
I probably would've gone with ponder instead because it sees more cards and you have a fetchland in hand, so if there's a bad card in the top 3, you don't need to draw it.
u cannot rely on xantid swarm too much against miracle, it is correct to side in swarm but swarm is just mediocre in this mu.
Siding swarm in vs RUG is wrong in any case. they will never side out bolt for the sake of tempo, trading one for one is meaningless and exposing yourself to wasteland is really bad.
I don't like needle on top. needle is a narrow sideboard card for us, and I myself play top(one in main and one in sb). Post board games vs miracle usually are grinding, I prefer my top to help me finding those specific cards that I need, for example decay or grip.
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I'm not sold on Top vs. Miracles - it makes you cast spells before your combo turn which you generally don't want to do. I like having 3 Tendrils and 1 Past in Flames against them to grind. Xantid Swarm I wouldn't board if I had, but I'd probably drop one on the table or hold my sideboard in a way they can see Swarm before boarding.
If you're having trouble with the matchup or they're running Leyline of Sanctity, try running a couple Krosan Grips on top of 4 Abrupt Decay. Also, be patient. You have the better lategame.
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Then in what match ups is swarm actually worth it in? Is it just griselbrand decks? if that is the case then it is just as narrow as pithing needle but you just have to sideboard in a fancy island with swarm and you have to untap with it for it to be useful. When I play against sneak and show they usually board in some number of pyroclasm in case of empty anyway and it is still exposed to removal out of a combo deck.
RUG doesn't have much flex slots to sideboard, there is usually the forked bolt/fire ice or whatever other random burn spell they play and lightning bolts. Against combo they can't really afford to side out much, they don't want to touch the creatures, counters and cantrips for pretty obvious reasons and that basically leaves the bolts or other burn spells. It depends on how much the bring in for the match up but usually between grafdiggers cage, red blast, envelop/flusterstorm (maybe even spell snare or a combination of the three), vendilion clique potentially and maybe rough tumbles to hedge for empty there is quite a bit of cards they might want for storm, meaning that bolts are probably the place they skimp. They might shave some goyfs too but them cutting creatures isn't bad as it makes it less likely they will be able to clock you so you have time to push through without swarm. It doesn't always work but they can't usually leave in all of the bolts without harming their consistency in big ways or just not clocking you so you can draw into hate. Given they will probably have at most two bolts it seems reasonable to board it in. I could be wrong but there is a big chance they won't draw the removal for swarm, or just not have it and force the swarm when you cast it. Even if they have a rough tumble to kill it that may tap them out and give you an opening to push through force and daze.
Various delver decks is the main reason I want to play defense grid over swarm since it is harder to kill for most (BUG being the exception) and it pretty much shuts down all of their counters.
If I'm talking about needling top then I obviously don't run it so that isn't a concern for me. It just seems to me that swarm is just as narrow of a card as needle as there are very few match ups where you actually want it. Needle + discard is probably enough to push through against griselbrand decks and it seems similarly effective at being able to get through miracles wall of counters as well. Like I said I could be wrong, I don't play storm much and I'm still relatively new to the deck but these have just been my impressions so far and wanted to see what other opinions were.
@Jona How do we have a better late game than them? If we give them enough time then they can just win the game with V-Clique, snapcasters, or jace. I can't see how storm can have a better late game than the late game deck of the format.
He mentioned his list goes all the way up to 3 ToA after board, that's an incredible amount of inevitability. Plus, there are more than a few Miracles players out there that just try to aggressively stick Counterbalance or float a counter and assume that solves the game. Granted, I would probably want SDT if I was running 3 ToA, but Storm conceptually does have a good lategame against control if you just hit land drops and manage your spells patiently.
1 when I have played the naturalultiple tendrills plan I have always loved sensei. Its like having 9 cards on the combo turn.
2 canadian ***** usualy sides out 1-2 forked and 3 tarmos. Thats for me the best aproach of the matchup. Sidding in 1-2 fluster. 1 vendilion. 1-2 cages. And may be some more. Usualy vs ant they dont side the rought rumble. And tarmogoyf is the shitt vs ant much more on the draw. You could not tap yourself until you have 3 lands.
I'm not saying having Top on the board is not good vs. Miracles. But the downside is that you're casting spells and good players will counter your Top, essentially costing you a card in your combo turn rather than letting you expand your hand size. The way I play the matchup, I never cast spells unless I would otherwise discard them or I'm sure they're not getting countered, at least postboard. Preboard you're obviously always forced to go off asap.
Grinding Station has the better lategame than Miracles because it's the control deck in the matchup. They have to try and lock you out of winning, not the other way round. They have to invest cards both into not losing, as well as winning; i.e. they need both pressure and disruption, whereas we can just wait and assemble a winning hand, sometimes by simply waiting out draw steps.
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