[Deck] Food Chain Combo

[Esper3k]

Just a heads up, check out the SCG Houston 5k results when they go up, guys. *flex*

[lordofthepit]

Just a heads up, check out the SCG Houston 5k results when they go up, guys. *flex*

I assume that's you? Congrats!

[kombatkiwi]

1st Place at StarCityGames.com Premier IQ on 2/15/2015

4 Baleful Strix
1 Birds of Paradise
4 Deathrite Shaman
2 Genesis Hydra
4 Misthollow Griffin
1 Tidespout Tyrant
2 Vendilion Clique

Lands (20)
1 Forest
1 Island
1 Swamp
1 Bayou
4 Misty Rainforest
2 Polluted Delta
3 Tropical Island
3 Underground Sea
4 Verdant Catacombs

Spells (22)
4 Food Chain
3 Abrupt Decay
4 Brainstorm
2 Dig Through Time
1 Dimir Charm
4 Force of Will
1 Misdirection
3 Manipulate Fate

Sideboard
2 Grafdigger's Cage
2 Relic of Progenitus
1 Abrupt Decay
2 Disfigure
2 Golgari Charm
2 Umezawa's Jitte
1 Venser, Shaper Savant
3 Duress

[nevilshute]

Awesome Kiwi!

Many congratulations. How did the Dimir Charm perform? I'm running the 4th decay in that slot)

I've been playing a list very similar to yours lately. A thing I'd like to touch on though is how, lately, I've been getting punished by my basic lands. I've been running one of each and then the last few outings just a forest and an island. Running so many Bx spells (I run 4 strix and 4 decay) having an opening hand with a basic in it is usually not great. In fact, I only really find them good against the odd Blood Moon deck, and I don't think we should be building our deck with that deck in mind specifically.

So yeah I'm seriously considering cutting the basics and just going full retard on duals and fetches. I don't think playing 2 basics in a 3-color deck with a lot of dual colored spells will protect you against wastelands. Most of the time it will just make you worse against wastelands as having a basic and a dual out and wasted = cry.

What do ya'll think?

PS: going to have a look at updating the primer one of these days. Will probably be an ongoing process for while. The current primer is very combo centric and does not really encompass the grind part of the deck in a satisfactory way.

[kombatkiwi]

Oh I just copied the list from the SCG website, it's not mine
I agree that Dimir Charm seems pretty odd

WRT to basics I think Gerry T made a good argument against playing basics in his Shardless Bug primer last year (similar kind of 3-colour quite colour-intensive deck with DRS)

The Mana Base

Most people seem to take offense at my use of two Wasteland, one or two Creeping Tar Pit, and no basic land. I would prefer to not play Wasteland, but it's the best out to something like Maze of Ith, Creeping Tar Pit, and Grove of the Burnwillows. It's rare that I use my Wasteland aggressively, as your land in play is generally more important to you than theirs is for them. I basically use it to kill utility lands and that's it.

Creeping Tar Pit is a fine card, especially for fighting planeswalkers and control decks. If you want to play 23 land, I'd recommend a second Creeping Tar Pit, but as is, 22 land with Creeping Tar Pit is where I'm going to stay for now.

Some say that basic lands fight cards like Wasteland, Back to Basics, and Blood Moon, but that's not entirely true. If you have a two-lander against RUG Delver, you fetch a basic and a dual, and they Wasteland you, you are more mana screwed than if you had simply fetched two duals. If you fetched two basics, you'd be mana screwed even in the face of a Wasteland.

Against Blood Moon and Back to Basics, the same principle applies, as you don't have nearly enough basics to fight those cards. A reconfiguration of the deck could be used to fight those cards, but if you plan on playing Hymn to Tourach (and you should), then it's nearly impossible.

There is some merit to Swamp, Deathrite Shaman fighting those cards, but do you really need the Swamp in those scenarios?

A difference is that this deck isn't trying to play cards that cost BB but a similar line of thought probably applies

[litenkatt]

OK im gonna build this deck. It just looks too awesome.

However, looking at the list that won the SCG I don't quite understand how he actually wins. I guess by casting a huge genesis hydra, but why not just play an emrakul?

[kombatkiwi]

OK im gonna build this deck. It just looks too awesome.

However, looking at the list that won the SCG I don't quite understand how he actually wins. I guess by casting a huge genesis hydra, but why not just play an emrakul?

You cast a genesis hydra for X = 100 and go through your whole deck to find Tidespout Tyrant. You keep looping the Griffins in and out of exile to get Tyrant triggers to bounce all your opponent's permanents. You can use Tyrant triggers to rebuy the Hydra and find any permanent in your deck. If you're playing Vendilion Clique you can find that to leave your opponent with a hand full of lands in addition to having no permanents in play, and also clique yourself into drawing some Force of Wills to stop whatever your opponent can do with 1 land drop and 1 topdeck. With the list just posted (no Clique) you can still load up on Forces by drawing your deck through bouncing Baleful Strix a bunch of times.

If your opponent has a Swords to Plowshares or other instant speed removal in hand when your Tyrant resolves then it might be better to find an Emrakul with the Hydra, but if you put it into play with the trigger you don't get the extra turn and this doesn't disrupt the opponent at all, there are plenty of decks in legacy that can shrug at your 15/15 and just untap and kill you.

Even if your Tyrant is about to get Terminated then you can counter that with a Force or cast any instant in response to get a Tyrant trigger and bounce itself (you still have infinite mana so you can just replay it again).

If you play Emrakul AND Tyrant you can use Tyrant to bounce the Emrakul you found from the Hydra trigger and then replay it from your hand for the extra turn, but in the last few pages the thread kind of reached the consensus that this is overkill and isn't worth wasting a slot on an uncastable card.

There are a bunch of other possible kill cards/combinations but this "gets the job done" and only takes up 3 slots in the deck (2 Hydra 1 Tyrant). You could certainly argue that Hydra is crap without infinite mana and that you might as well have an Emrakul or something else in these slots, but I haven't played the deck much. I'm sure more experienced pilots can say how good the card is just casting it normally. In theory you can set up the top of your deck with Brainstorm and then cast it with X = 3 for uncounterable Food Chain, as well as just getting Strix or DRS for a value play.

Also even without the combo kill there are a lot of decks that can't realistically beat infinite recurring griffins

[nevilshute]

Moving from Emrakul to Tidepout Tyrant is bound to the decision to leave Fierce Empath behind in favor of Genesis Hydra. With Empath, we got to find Emrakul and cast him triggering the extra turn and in a very high percentage of the time meaning a win.

The problem with the Empath is just how bad of a card it is on its own. When you don't have a Food Chain out it just gets to sit in your hand until you do. A 1/1 for 3 is just horrible. The Hydra will sometimes just sit there as a dead card but even cast for X = 2 (not recommended most times) can be infinitely more valuable than the empath if you can hit a strix or deathrite. Even without hitting you still get a 2/2, 3/3 or 4/4 most of the time which your opponent can't just ignore.

Having moved to the hydra it means we no longer get the extra turn from emrakul and that means that both Emrakul and Tyrant both give your opponent another turn to live in. With that being the case it becomes a toss up over what is actually best once in play. Emrakul doesn't get hit by a swords to plowshares which is pretty big. But then Emrakul will get bounced by jace. Emrakul also doesn't handle stuff like Ensnaring Bridge.

More importantly, perhaps, is to look at which card is best (or, actually, worst) before we get them into play (aka, before we go infinite). Here, Emrakul is the loser in all but one situation, namely when getting milled by Grindstone. In all other cases (readies himself to be told about the cases he didn't consider), being 8 mana CMC and blue means Tyrant is leaps and bounds infront of his 15mana CMC, colorless cousin. Back when playing with Emrakul, there are few worse things to stare down in your opening hand than Emrakul, it often feels like an effective mull to six.

[yugular]

Nevilshute, did I just play against you in modo? I was playing Esper Thoptersword and lost 2-0.

Never played against this deck before and had to look how it's build. Great primer! Though I have questions. What are the cards that you are afraid after sideboarding?

[Obould]

Never played against this deck before and had to look how it's build. Great primer! Though I have questions. What are the cards that you are afraid after sideboarding?

Hello fellow finnish player! If I have to choose one card that I think is quite hard to deal with, it is Humility. Last time I had one Krosan grip in sideboard if I need to deal with that.

[Esper3k]

Yup, that was me that won it :)

To address a few questions:

So as you can tell, my list is almost exactly like Jonathan Job's list from GP New Jersey (1 card different in the maindeck, a few sideboard changes). He's generally regarded as the expert on this deck and being relatively new to the deck, I always believe it's best to follow experts until I've played the deck enough to get a more educated opinion on it.

Re: Dimir Charm - I always felt like the Emrakul was an overkill. The beauty of Genesis Hydra is that it allows you to minimize the cards that are terrible without going Food Chain infinite. With only 1 Tidespout Tyrant, you are now down to just 1 card that's bad. As kombatkiwi pointed out, once you've gone full combo, you can just repeatedly bounce Clique until they have only lands, then stack your own hand with Strixes. I'm willing to take the risk that my opponent can't win with no board / 1 land drop. In all fairness, I will say that I have actually lost before to a TNN when I was at 3 life, but I feel the benefit of not drawing a dead Emrakul has paid off more over the long term.

So back to Dimir Charm. I was experimenting with different cards in that 1 slot (Misdirection, Spell Pierce) and was looking for something to help with the combo matchup (fast combo can be difficult, in my experience). I've previously played Envelop in the sideboard of my BUG Delver lists and looked at Dimir Charm again and decided to give it a try (if you're playing this deck anyways, you've got to have a love for bad cards!). Dimir Charm has been pretty solid for me. The removal aspect kills almost anything small in Legacy with the sadly notable exception of an Insectile Aberration. Still, being able to kill a DRS, unflipped Delver, Dark Confidant, etc. is nothing to sneeze at. The Envelop mode gets a lot of play and does the most work for me, countering all the tutors of the Storm decks as well as countering Miracles (which can be a very tricky matchup). Sadly, you'll almost never get to use the third mode, so I can only say the card has been solid, not amazing. I could definitely see playing the 4th Abrupt Decay in the slot, which also frees up another spot in your sideboard.

Re: Basic Lands: At least for me, I'm sold on Basics. Blood Moon and Burn are real threats to BUG decks. Every single match vs Burn that I won, I would've handily lost without basics due to PoP just wrecking you. Generally vs burn, I will just try and get out all 3 basics (if I can - the list runs 10 fetches, so it's actually not as hard as you think), play a fetch land, then never play anymore lands the rest of the game until I absolutely have to. Vs Blood Moon, just fetching a basic Swamp or Forest (I actually hate the Forest the most in the deck) can often be enough since we have DRS/Hierarch/BoP. Even against the Wasteland decks, I find that getting a basic Island out is very strong since our cantrips and 2 mana spells just cost 1 blue mana. Get out the Swamp and now you can start cycling with Strixes and Manipulate Fate to look for more lands.

@litenkatt: The way I actually win most games is not full comboing (Hydra + Tyrant) out, but actually just grinding out opponents. I usually play the control role until I can try and resolve a Manipulate Fate. Doing a mini-combo with Food Chain to cast all your exiled Griffins then is usually too much for most decks to handle. Even without Food Chain, as long as you've stabilized the board, you can go onto the "cast a Griffin every turn" plan until your opponent dies.

[nevilshute]

Nevilshute, did I just play against you in modo? I was playing Esper Thoptersword and lost 2-0.

Never played against this deck before and had to look how it's build. Great primer! Though I have questions. What are the cards that you are afraid after sideboarding?

Heya Yug, yeah that was me

Would say that of specific cards to fear, like it was mentioned already, Humility is quite difficult to beat. Though with Food Chain up you can still exile and play your griffins from exile. So they need to be doing something else as well, but yeah, that card is hard to beat.

Other than that I'd say that, over all, delver decks with access to red can be quite the pain. Bolts are effective against us as are pyroblasts/red blasts. Pure tempo strategies with stifle/waste/daze can be problematic as well imo.

[yugular]

Heya Yug, yeah that was me

Thanks for the reply! The lines you took in the game showcased that you have played the deck and become a competent pilot. Unlike my terrible play with the deck that I have played less than 10 times. :)

[jedi_gof]

Grats on the win, well done mate!

Key to the current agreed upon list (minus a few tweeks) is to no longer consider us a combo deck as such, bug a bug control that gives up a few control elements to have that boom i win factor.
Turns out max 40% of the wins are from pure bounce wins, most often you just out grind or out value your opponents.
Many times you can stabilise quite easily against fair decks and draw out their answers until you assemble the combo or have the griffins online.

Agree that manadenial/tempo decks along with red decks can be trouble some, along with combo. So thats where the emphasis in our board must be.

I am like Nevilshute on the basics screw us more than they gain us at the moment, but the jury is still out on that call as i have only 1 tourney without basics under the belt and that went horrendously! Not due to lands but to my deck screwing me over :D

The deck is gaining enough traction unfortunately that the amount of free wins are diminishing drastically in our local meta. This has always been a key factor in the performances I think, because when you on average can collect 1 free win on opp. not understanding your deck or what to fight, your odds of top 4/8ing with a deck close to T1 drastically increases.

[Esper3k]

Grats on the win, well done mate!

Key to the current agreed upon list (minus a few tweeks) is to no longer consider us a combo deck as such, bug a bug control that gives up a few control elements to have that boom i win factor.
Turns out max 40% of the wins are from pure bounce wins, most often you just out grind or out value your opponents.
Many times you can stabilise quite easily against fair decks and draw out their answers until you assemble the combo or have the griffins online.

Agree that manadenial/tempo decks along with red decks can be trouble some, along with combo. So thats where the emphasis in our board must be.

I am like Nevilshute on the basics screw us more than they gain us at the moment, but the jury is still out on that call as i have only 1 tourney without basics under the belt and that went horrendously! Not due to lands but to my deck screwing me over :D

The deck is gaining enough traction unfortunately that the amount of free wins are diminishing drastically in our local meta. This has always been a key factor in the performances I think, because when you on average can collect 1 free win on opp. not understanding your deck or what to fight, your odds of top 4/8ing with a deck close to T1 drastically increases.

Thanks!

I agree with most of the above post (other than than the part about the basics, but I think that can be a meta call).

I think the correct way to view the deck is as a midrange/control deck first that has a combo kill option. Control/Combo, if you will.

RUG was my only loss in the Swiss and I just got RUG'd hard with no lube. It was brutal, heh.

I'm curious if this deck picks up steam/popularity, how things will go. I definitely picked up a few wins yesterday over my opponents not knowing how the deck worked (Pithing Needle on Food Chain? Snap let it resolve! StP Griffin? Sure thing!) before it was too late. We look very similar to Shardless BUG early on, so it can be deceptive (other BG decks tap out so don't have Abrupt Decay mana up thinking they're safe) and we kill them out of nowhere.

On the other hand, I think even if your opponent knows what you're on, it's still difficult to sideboard properly against the deck since things that are good against both gameplans (grinding you out vs comboing out) are rare.

[litenkatt]

Congrats Esper3k!

What other decks did you face during the swiss and top8? Is there any deck in particular that's very hard for us?

[Esper3k]

Congrats Esper3k!

What other decks did you face during the swiss and top8? Is there any deck in particular that's very hard for us?

I played against:

R1: Esper Stoneblade (with Lingering Souls - haven't faced that in a long time!). W 2-0
R2: Shardless BUG. W 2-0
R3: RUG Delver. L 0-2
R4: Burn. W 2-1
R5: BUG Delver (Looked like Jim Davis' list). W 2-1
R6: UG Cloudpost. W 2-0
R7: UWr Stoneblade. W 2-0
R8: ID

T8: UWR Delver. W 2-0
T4: Opponent conceded. We split in the T4 and my opponent didn't care about the points or plaque. This one would've been rough because he was on AnT.
T2: UWr Miracles. W 2-1

I'll have a tournament report up in a few days if anyone is interested in a more in depth recap.

I think Burn and fast combo are tough matchups. RUG Delver is also tougher than the other Delver decks because of how fast and disruptive they can be. Stifle + Wasteland + Daze + cheap removal + potentially fast clock = problem.

I consider other grindy or midrange decks as positive matchups for us. We have plenty of card advantage as well but we also have the combo kill option that they have to worry about.

[Holden1669]

Congrats on the great finish. I haven't played this deck in a few months. The last time was blue-green with Shardless but BUG does seem strong. I tried a BUG build over a year ago but I there was too much awkwardness (read: Fierce Empath) and prioritized combo over value. This makes me want to pick Food Chain back up again.

[Esper3k]

Congrats on the great finish. I haven't played this deck in a few months. The last time was blue-green with Shardless but BUG does seem strong. I tried a BUG build over a year ago but I there was too much awkwardness (read: Fierce Empath) and prioritized combo over value. This makes me want to pick Food Chain back up again.

Thanks! I had goldfished the deck years ago when it was still running Empath, Aethersnipe, etc but Genesis Hydra and Dig Through Time are two great additions that seem to allow the deck to streamline the combo and gain some serious card quality.

[ivanpei]

Congrats on the win! I find it infinitely hilarious that beating midrange decks with Misthollow Griffins is a thing! I would love making people rage that they are losing to a jank creature!

I'm extremely intrigued and may pick up this deck due to the lol factor. Great job and solid list. This deck bears some resemblance to Vengevine survival where you can either combo kill someone or grind them out with Vengevines. Of course Survival is a bloody 1 card combo while Misthollow, Food Chain and Hydra is a 3 card combo. The similarities are there though.