[Deck] ANT (Ad Nauseam Tendrils) Storm Combo

[Jonathan Alexander]

What exactly happened here? I see you cast Cabal Ritual, in response surgical, what is petal casting?

Past in Flames. You have to actually select the copy of Past in Flames in the graveyard when using Surgical. It is a legal play to leave it there (same goes for copies in the library). Togores' opponent simply failed to do that.

[rlesko]

Past in Flames. You have to actually select the copy of Past in Flames in the graveyard when using Surgical. It is a legal play to leave it there (same goes for copies in the library). Togores' opponent simply failed to do that.

Oh ok. Thanks for clearing that up.

[ScottW]

Link to SCG article on ANT:

http://www.starcitygames.com/article...acy-Storm.html

[Jonathan Alexander]

Link to SCG article on ANT:

http://www.starcitygames.com/article...acy-Storm.html

Do not read that article, it will do more harm than good. Literally everything he says about Storm (and, quite frankly, Legacy) is wrong.

[CabalTherapy]

Do not read that article, it will do more harm than good. Literally everything he says about Storm (and, quite frankly, Legacy) is wrong.

I agree 100%. It seems like he clearly doesn't know what he is talking about.

[Stoyrm]

So, at this point, every time I go to a GP I end up losing to BUG decks in any shape or form. What do you guys sideboard in vs Shardless, Bug Delver etc? I won't provide a sideboard, I'm interested in your plan, to see several plans against the decks. It'd be nice if you guys could add some information about how you feel the matchup plays out. There's extremely few BUG decks in my local meta and it's the one deck I'm not able to practice against very often.

[ScottW]

Do not read that article, it will do more harm than good. Literally everything he says about Storm (and, quite frankly, Legacy) is wrong.

Yes, thought it was an interesting piece of misinformation.

[Jay_Gatz]

Do not read that article, it will do more harm than good. Literally everything he says about Storm (and, quite frankly, Legacy) is wrong.

Closed it as soon as I saw the author

[Jonathan Alexander]

I agree 100%. It seems like he clearly doesn't know what he is talking about.

Well, the first thing he says is that he never plays Legacy, he then goes on to say how he's terrible with Storm. Then he writes an article about how the deck should change without explaining a single one of his choices. I don't get how this can ever get published.

So, at this point, every time I go to a GP I end up losing to BUG decks in any shape or form. What do you guys sideboard in vs Shardless, Bug Delver etc? I won't provide a sideboard, I'm interested in your plan, to see several plans against the decks. It'd be nice if you guys could add some information about how you feel the matchup plays out. There's extremely few BUG decks in my local meta and it's the one deck I'm not able to practice against very often.

This was actually me in the past. Nobody ever plays Team America in my area but literally all but one of my losses in the two European Grand Prix I played Storm in came to blue Deathrite decks.

Against Shradless, I board into Ad Nauseam Tendrils in case I don't have Ad Nauseam maindeck. If I don't have my two copies of Dark Petition, I'm boarding two copies of Abrupt Decay. If I'm on 2 Petition / 1 Ad Nauseam, I don't sideboard at all. I don't like Empty against them because their deck is all creatures that block tokens profitably and they basically have to board removal.

Against Team America and Grixis Delver, I try to be as close to this after boarding as possible:

4 Lion's Eye Diamond
4 Lotus Petal

4 Brainstorm
4 Cabal Ritual
4 Dark Ritual

2 Island
1 Swamp
1 Badlands
4 Polluted Delta
4 Scalding Tarn
2 Underground Sea
1 Volcanic Island

4 Duress
3 Empty the Warrens
4 Gitaxian Probe
4 Infernal Tutor
1 Past in Flames
4 Ponder
2 Preordain
1 Tendrils of Agony
2 Thoughtseize

[nevilshute]

You guys' reaction to Meriam's article made me think of a Simpsons episode where a group of Itchy and Scratchy fans are invited to Q&A the creators:

In episode 2F09, when Itchy plays Scratchy's skeleton like a xylophone, he strikes the same rib in succession, yet he produces two clearly different tones. I mean, what are we to believe, that this is a magic xylophone, or something? Ha ha, boy, I really hope somebody got fired for that blunder.

Remember that this article is aimed at your avarage standard/modern player with an interest in or curiousity about Legacy. Not deeply enfranchised Legacy pledges.

I think some of his analyses are off: his evaluation of Rain of Filth as a ritual that will help you combo off faster during the early game seems off, as Rain needs three lands to mirror Dark Ritual in output and four lands to exceed. He's talking about how it can often "add two or three mana" and at the same time talks about how it can help us combo on turns two and three. Anyway, not a biggie. I also think he's focusing too much on how to beat Eldrazi, like moving up to 16 lands to have a better shot at winning through a sphere-effect... forget it. Just forget it.

All in all, whatever. But the cattiness of enfranchised (storm) players gets to me at times

[ScottW]

Agreed that the article has a different audience but here it is subject to a different analysis and the responses here seem aimed at readers of this forum with positive intentions.

I was surprised at his list of "core" storm cards.

[Togores]

Amazing how much crap he says. 16 lands and so... I bet he was about to cut Gitaxian for just more discard, because it does the "same".

[Jonathan Alexander]

-snip

I don't want him to tell me something new, I want him to not give wrong information to players who have no choice but to believe him. I didn't say reading his article was a waste of time, I said it would actively do harm.

And I really don't like to be that guy, but this article is very bad in both content and structure.

[Sloshthedark]

I'm so hyped to read it, once I saw the "Defense grid>Xantid swarm" comment I prefered an earlier departure from home > choking on breakfast ...

EDIT: unimpressed and unaffected

[Izor]

To be honest, the list from the article is just about the worst configuration possible against Eldrazi. I also kinda stopped reading after the 16 land thing.


Against BUG decks I generally try to win as fast as possible, often via Ad Nauseam. An active DRS with discard plus counter backup is practically unbeatable in a long game. Even thoug technically not a BUG deck, my friend who I often test against plays Deathblade, which is similar in that it attacks Storm from literally every possible angle (graveyard hate, counters, discard, good clock that makes EtW obsolete, plus Meddling Mage and similar nonsense). Busting out a fast AN after hopefully clearing the way with some discard as been the most reliable way to win that matchup for me.

Lists without Ad Nauseam in the main deck are massively disadvantaged in those DRS+discard+counters matchups imo, and the frequency of those decks in my local meta is the main reason why I'm not playing Grinding Station/Sloshstorm/whatever at the moment.

[rlesko]

I'll start by saying I'm a RUG player. I want to ask you guys, how effective is Tormod's Crypt vs you? I'm trying some different builds to get delirium for invasive surgery.

[Ronald Deuce]

So we all seem to agree that the article linked above doesn't really give any answers for the Eldrazi matchup (or much else). What, then, is the best strategy for the matchup? I'm not looking for a panacea (there doesn't seem to be one); it just seems like the predominant trains of thought in the thread are a) hope your opponent doesn't play Eldrazi or b) use your existing board to try to push through their hate (or c] both).

I'm not going to pretend to be an expert, and I haven't got a ton of experience in the matchup generally (there are now a whole two people who play Eldrazi in my metagame), but there's got to be a better approach. Pessimistically, I'm on the side of choice a, but I feel like we're doing ourselves a disservice not to try to test more things in the matchup. We're devoting 4-6 slots to Miracles, and that's a pretty big chunk of our 'board, but this matchup seems even worse, and I don't see many advocates of a broader plan for fighting the Menace.

The best argument to be made against extensive sideboarding is that, simply, Chalices and Thorns are so devastating against the way our entire deck works that there's nothing to be done without entirely restructuring our deck. But nearly the same is true for CounterTop, yet people have found a (marginally effective) workaround that's become the standard for Storm sideboards. Chalk it up to my lack of experience, but I've still got dead slots in my sideboard.

Another problem is that the staple AnT sideboard cards don't really do much against Eldrazi. The best choice, as Ross pointed out, is Abrupt Decay, but that's pretty poor against multiple threats, esp. multiple copies of Thorn of Amethyst. Echoing Truth is also a contender, but it doesn't help us if the opponent lands multiple threats with different names (or a single Chalice on 2).

I've been running Hurkyl's Recall by default because of the bang-for-buck ratio, but in games in which either it doesn't show up or the opponent lands one Thorn too many, it's a dead card. Rebuild is too expensive, and our 1-cmc cards are also dead if they aren't live on T1 (e.g., discards).

Multiple copies of Empty the Warrens seems to be the other predominant strategy, but that's got a host of problems on its own. It's only better than our usual plan (or a singleton Empty) if we can land it on T1, and running multiple copies leads to saturation rather than quicker solutions in my experience. (As an aside, I've found that playing Empty from our hand is significantly less effective than tutoring for it—to a greater degree than one would expect—producing typically 6-8 Goblins rather than the 10-14 a tutored Empty usually yields. Maybe I'm just doing it wrong.)

Ross is taking a lot of flak for suggesting 16 lands, but he's onto something: 14 lands postboard is too few because we really, really need to hit land drops in case our opponent casts Thorn. That's why I'm boarding in the Tropical, even if I don't intend to run more than one Decay postboard in this matchup. I still think 15 lands is too many for most matchups (and results I've seen for both high-level and league play seem to confirm this by a slight margin), but in this case, it feels like a better setup, especially if we can't make the Magic happen on our first turn.

I've seen suggestions and lists that favor running either quad(?) Young Pyromancer or >1 copies of Chrome Mox. Pyro doesn't feel like a great fit (Smasher can trample over a bunch of tokens), but I won't rule it out yet. Has anyone tried two or more copies of Chrome Mox lately? For people running 15 lands main, anybody tried a Mox Diamond? A few contributors have said that they've managed to break even (or come close) against Eldrazi. What have you all been doing to achieve these results? How much is your performance dependent on the Eldrazi player's decision to (or not to) mull to Chalice/Thorn?

Rlesko, I don't think you need Surgery against us. You've got a toolbox of choices that's already big enough to handle our deck if you 'board in the right things and mulligan well. But to answer your question, Crypt (like RiP, Leyline, et al.) relies on your keeping us under the gun. It doesn't help if we land Ad Nauseam or Empty the Warrens quickly, and both cards are excellent for us in the matchup. So if you're able to keep pressure on a Storm player (knocking out AdN and making Empty riskier than it normally is), I guess Crypt works, but I can't imagine it's an optimal choice. You're only really bringing down Past in Flames, and though you're making Cabal Ritual worse (and making Dark Petition nearly useless), those aren't crucial cards for us either if we're quick to hit Ad Nauseam or Empty, or if we're able to make you break Crypt at an inopportune time (I'll leave determining what those times are to you! :D ). I board out Petition to board in Empty most of the time, and if we're on the Goes-Fast plan, making Cabal Rituals only ("only") net us one mana doesn't do a whole lot of good.

I hope that helps, Frienemy!

[Togores]

Trying to beat eldrazi is nonsense. I hace tried with a lot of aproaches but they have:
A good counter
A good clock
A really good permanent disruption
A hated card named Thought not seer
A soft mana denial plan (but good with the permnent hate)
Sometimes anti graveyard and anti goblin cards


And the card you have to play for it are usualy only good for this.


Miracles is played double as much as eldrazi and its still a better matchup. And the card for it are not as specifip.


Grips are also good vs cloudpost and so
Decay is a cath all
More tendrills is good in a lot of matchups
Extirpate also useful against combo
Pyro also useful in a lot of matchups

And this can be aplied to almost every miracles card.

I want the carda of my sb to be useful against a lot of decks. Not just one. And not one than im not gonna beat anyway.

[Burnplayer]

you need lucky to win Eldrazi, doesn't exist a solution.

In my point of view the best way is play 2 Dark Petitions in main deck, to be more faster in turn 1 or 2.

Hurkil's Recall is a very good card vs lands. Isn't a waste slot. Play 2 seems good.


To become obsessive with the eldrazi matchup is a bad idea.

[CabalTherapy]

Rlesko, I don't think you need Surgery against us. You've got a toolbox of choices that's already big enough to handle our deck if you 'board in the right things and mulligan well. But to answer your question, Crypt (like RiP, Leyline, et al.) relies on your keeping us under the gun. It doesn't help if we land Ad Nauseam or Empty the Warrens quickly, and both cards are excellent for us in the matchup. So if you're able to keep pressure on a Storm player (knocking out AdN and making Empty riskier than it normally is), I guess Crypt works, but I can't imagine it's an optimal choice. You're only really bringing down Past in Flames, and though you're making Cabal Ritual worse (and making Dark Petition nearly useless), those aren't crucial cards for us either if we're quick to hit Ad Nauseam or Empty, or if we're able to make you break Crypt at an inopportune time (I'll leave determining what those times are to you! :D ). I board out Petition to board in Empty most of the time, and if we're on the Goes-Fast plan, making Cabal Rituals only ("only") net us one mana doesn't do a whole lot of good.

I hope you don't leave AdN in against Rug Delver postboard. It becomes very bad quickly because usually you won't to have some time to deal with their hand while Delver/Goose/(Goyf, Clique) go for the beatdown. ToA from hand is the best medicine.