What I've found is that once the Enchantress player gets to 5 mana they are going to build their hand and then sequence their plays in a way that you just can't adequately control the situation.Originally Posted by Einherjer
You're primarily a Miracles player and so you will approach the matchup very differently than most lists since you have Counterbalance to potentially offset their inevitability. If you let them get their ramp going while playing RUG Canadian you're going to run into the problem that all RUG Tempo lists have, which is once the opponent has gotten past your primary disruption and developed a stable mana position their spells are just much better than yours.
This is correct. Any sensible Enchantress player is going to play around Daze when casting key spells and will probably play around Pierce with Presence if you let them, so your Forces and any Snares have to be fully committed to stopping Argothian, Presence, and GSZ.
The only real argument for Forcing the first ramp piece on the draw is if you have something like Mongoose, Daze, Goyf, 2 fetches, Force + Blue card AND are confident that that hand is all you need to get there AND you're on the draw. Unless this is game 2 or 3 and you're very familiar with the opponent and the list I wouldn't bank on that line being good. If they get a single Argothian into play and aren't up against the wall already, they're like going to bury you in CA and slow your offense down to a crawl with Elephant Grass. Many lists now are also running Swords out of the board.
As for Ein mostly playing Miracles - I'm sure he'll agree that CounterTop is just ok against Enchantress. If it comes down quickly and you have 2s and 3s on top to hit their enchantresses and tutors they didn't have Guile or ramp, it's good, but otherwise it doesn't shift the inevitability or anything. Most Enchantress lists still run Emrakul and can ramp into him fairly quickly, often just by playing pseudo draw-go and spamming do-nothing enchantments. Miracles' best shot is usually to go for a quick Entreat and stop them from being able to set up Confinement lock before they're dead.
Anyway, this is turning into a discussion about Enchantress rather than RUG, though I'd be happy to continue this discussion in another thread.
Just focus their draw engine.
Matt Bevenour in real life
this wasnt very constructive.
i assume youre playing the matchup wrong. if you know which elves/insects to target, and you have a proper sideboard, elves really is a pretty easy match unless they get the nuts or you get no removal. almost all of your creatures are better and come out about the same time, we have wasteland for their cradle and counterspells for their combo, every creature in their deck (aside from the combo ones) die to our removal, and forked bolt is often a 2 for 1.
I have played against elves a hundred times against good pilots, ones who average 7-3 at SCG opens, and Elves is NOT an easy matchup. Saying we have removal for their creatures doesn't mean it is easy by any stretch of the imagination. The fact of the matter is that unless we have immense pressure early on (usually double delver) most RUG lists have 5 pieces of removal, maybe six if your list runs 2 forked bolts. On average you will be able to find 2 pieces of removal in the first 3-4 turns, which is often just not enough. Good elves pilots will blank all of our counters except force and wasting cradle doesn't come up as often as you think, by the time they have used cradle (which really breaks through our soft permission) they have an overwhelming board position.
After board the matchup is a bit more manageable, but oftentimes It is usually draw into rough/tumble and get them to over commit or its bust.
Just report it and move on. I did just that.
FWIW There are certainly a lot of things RUG can do to disrupt elves, but I'd prefer to be the elves pilot. It gets trickier with multiple forked bolts, submerges, rough/tumbles, cages but that's more having a heavyhanded sideboard approach
Matt Bevenour in real life
From my experience with RUG, it isn't really a question of removal or counters, as there is no way that you are going to be able to remove each and every single elf with these 4-7 removal spells. Yes, Wasteland answers Cradle and Force of Will somewhat neuters Natural Order but I think we are moving towards magical christmas land here, assuming we have everything while Elves plays their basic plan without any good draws or strategic nuances.
The focus shouldn't be at your amount of Bolts or your quality of countermagic. It should be on the creature you have in your opening hand. This MU changes drastically when you have a Delver of Secrets or any other of your green monstrosities. When you have Delver of Secrets, suddenly your Bolts matter, suddenly it's a good move to Wasteland Cradle and suddenly FoW is actually enough to stop their big spell. Suddenly the MU is somewhat positive.
But if you don't have Delver you are forced into trying to control the elvish menace, and this doesn't work. Not without turn-around spells like Rough//Tumble or anything in this category. If you are stuck with Mongooses(yes, not Mongeese) and Goyfs you are facing a seriously negative MU, as you have no buisness in outgrinding their deck.
That's my experience, let me know what you think.
@the guy who said that I'm primarily a Miracles player: Yes, this is true. But I've been trying to work on RUG for a (short) time now and plan on doing so in the future as well, because I want to innovate here as well, as I believe to be like 100% finished with Miracles, concerning the 75 and how to play it. So I want to learn something new and landed at RUG. Please let me know whenever you strongly disagree with something I say, because I just want to learn. If I get time I'll also stream my learning/getting-pounded-by-Poxx process somewhen soon. :)
Greetings
This is what I appreciate from the SourceIt would be great to see you stream and get a fresh perspective on how to pilot this deck!
this is a fallacy. it may be tempting, but you cant try to remove ALL of their threats. your creatures are better than theirs, so you really only need to kill the engine cards and deathrite shaman. if you confine your removal to wirewood symbiote, deathrite, and the elves that can produce large amounts of green (which you can actually ignore a lot of the time if you have some counter back up), youve basically neutered their deck down to bad beatdown with a clunky combo. some games, a forked bolt and lightning bolt will give you enough time to steal a win with delver (which they basically cant do anything about game 1) or control the board the board with goyf, which will probably require a 3 for 1 for them to deal with.
i agree, there area lot of games you dont draw enough removal, or even any removal, and elves gets out of hand. there are also, however, a lot of games that can be won in the manner i described above. in my, what i consider reasonably robust, experience, winnable games come more than the unwinnable ones.
i agree with most of this. our creatures are very important because we are trying to turn the game into a fast midrange (RUG) vs. a mediocre aggro (elves) match. goose is pretty poor at this. goyf can be huge against elves, though. if the game gets slowed down, his presence on the board will move the game in your favor with each additional turn.
haha, yes!Mongooses(yes, not Mongeese)
ive had success with the ELVES matchup with my current 7burn built (4bolts/1fice/1tarfire/1forked) and our sideboard offers alot of help still with roughs, submerges, grafs..
i also believe that an early DELVER is key here, as goose and goyf, though big, will have minimal effect vs an army.. brainstorms and ponders are key in sculpting our hands, glimpse shld be countered, always bear in mind that dreaded 4mana spell too, so reserve FOWs here.
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My plan versus elves is just to try to keep the board as clean as possible, and kill them asap. Hands with delver are almost an auto keep in game 1. If playing the probe build, I can be conservative on what I counter; otherwise, I just counter and kill anything on sight.
Cheers
In regards to the elves match up I agree with most of what's being said here. The match up drastically relies on if you have Delver. Our green threats are much worse against them because they have 8 different ways to chum block them. Good elf pilots sequence which creatures to play out and bait out removal so that they can establish the "best friend" team and block our ground threats forever. In addition to this when they have a "mini" combo like that going if you draw forked bolt you just have to accept that forked bolt won't be a two for one since you aim one at wirewood and the other creature will get bounced. All that aside as for boarding I actually like taking goose out here. He is horribly slow and if they're on the play and Deathrite tables they can have something like 2 or more activations with it each turn making goose very bad.
Now one specific card that I don't think many people have on their radar or board for that matter is Envelop which I find very good especially in the elves match up. Blue counter 12 of their combo/win spells yes please. In addition how do you guys board against elves? I've essentially boiled it down to daze, stifle, some number of geese and pierce are all horrible cards. Daze is an auto out OTD and pierce is horrible so that's -6 and we want to probably take out stifles if we have better stuff in board. Pierce is more or less just upgraded to flusterstorm there's no reason to not do this unless you think they'll bring in meekstone which I think is a real small margin to hinge against. This is -12 cards and hopefully we can board something like 2 rough, 2 submerege, 2 envelop, 2 flusterstorm, 1 Vendilion Clique (slow but still better than goose), 2 grafdigger's cage, 1 _____. Am I wrong for boarding out stifle otd? Daze is obviously bad and even though stifle is one of the easier ways to win by limiting the actual amount of forests they have since they actually only run 14 real lands similar to us, but I still think stifle is horrible OTD. At best stifle otd gives us an out to craterhoof but even then a 5/5 pretty much beats us lols. I'm curious what you're guys thoughts are on this take of boarding against Elves instead of trying to tempo them out (especially otd otp it's a different scenario and actually possible) and just maxing out on as much removal as possible. This is also similar to how I board against infect just trying to max out on removal.
If anyone is curious on my reasoning for Envelop outside of the elves match up it's because it hits a key card in each of the following decks:
Miracles
ANT
SnT variants (only hits show and tell, but that's still their best combo piece dream halls or sneak and show are much easier to deal with)
Elves
This is a very good approach I think. We need to stop them from getting to critical mass and keeping as many threats off the board as possible.
+1, these are the cards i side out vs elves, daze are just worse vs them, even stifles.. by the time we stifle craterhoof, we still are dealing with an army next turn..
- 4 dazes / - 3 stifles / - 1 mongoose
+ 2 rough / + 1 grafdiggers, + 1 needle (wirewood or drs), + 1 vendilion clique, + 2 submerges + 1 dismember
some number of pierces stay, as fow fodder and counters early attempts of glimpse.. they also might put in cabal therapies games 2 or three..
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My personal experience with the Elves! matchup has not been so great. The ability for the deck to just overwhelm you quickly makes it hard to contain. Even if you Bolt the T1 DRS they still can produce an obscene amount of mana by T3 and beyond. Not to mention a machine gunning DRS or Scooze backed up by Cradle and annihilate our graveyard. I have had games where these two together have emptied by graveyard of 9+ cards in one turn. Goyf can do a good job stone walling ground threats, but eventually they just go around the dumb beater somehow. It's worth mentioning that Ruric Thar is played in a lot Elves! lists and is a total beating. He blocks all of our creatures and makes it really painful to play half of our deck. Just like how Symbiote causes us to make unfavorable trades, Ruric does the same thing.
I do like to try and keep Stifle in post board though. I have had games where I just stop them from playing Forests. It's also another way to prevent Dryad Arbor from getting into play (stopping the fetch for it). I do agree that a 5/5 behemoth is still a problem, but it's better then an 9/9, 5/5, 5/5, 5/5 with trample swinging though
Largely, I try to cut the Elves player off mana with Stifle, Wasteland, and Bolts. I will often turn bolts towards Arbors on T1. Mongoose isn't great in this matchup, but he is a creature. Cutting a Stifle or two is correct in my mind though.
Like has been mentioned my strategy attempts to contain the Elves! player as much as possible and Delver is the best way to end the game quickly.
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I know this has topic has probably been beaten to death and there are usually a pro and against camp...but....what are peoples opinion on Gitaxian Probe in this deck over say more burn or the spell snare / more pierce packages?
I have felt a few times that spell snare and pierce have been awkward draws, or I only need a single card for threshold.
Unless you are in meta where you know everyone and what they usually play, you would have to be a crazy person to not run Gitaxian Probe. The card is like a Force of Will that doesn't have any card disadvantage in that FoW is often a security measure that let's be sure we will be able to execute our game plan by countering whatever our opponent would be doing to ruin our game plan for zero mana and an additional card. Probe does basically the same thing by informing us what our opponent is on and letting play around it. It won't actually answer problem but it informs you how to use your available answers/threats to deal with your opponents game plan.
Probe may also have your opening confused for that of storm or another combo deck. The old probe, play a fetch, and pass holding up stifle can blow out a lot of opponents not entirely in the loop.
Personally I think both are correct depending on how you want to play the deck. Probe versions vs non probe versions run very differently IMO.
See I personally think that probeless versions are better even if you don't know what they are on. I've had a lot of times where probe essentially showed me a hand I couldn't beat and then I cantrip which shows weakness trying to play to my outs and find force or something and then they just jam and it's over. Probe really only helps on deciding to hold up stifle turn 1 which I find to be very sub par in comparison to either playing out a threat or cantripping for a threat. It's definitely not force of will and one of the disadvantages is you run less actual gas in the deck and when the opponent plays around daze our only counters become force and maybe a pierce or 2.
Essentially from what I've learned after playing many games with both versions is probe versions can have very potent stifle openers and allow you to play perfectly. This does though require you to play very tight and accept the fact that sometimes they top deck something that makes known information irrelevant or they just have a hand we can't beat. The other problem is we don't have as many answers to stuff so it requires more calculations as to what is absolutely necessary to deal with vs saving counter/bolt for something worse (usually we just have to jam and hope they don't draw another drs or something).
Now running a split of something like 2/2/2 forked bolt, snare, pierce plays differently because you have a lot more outs to everything. On top of that I've found that this build slightly better IMO since more people play badly against it. Here's the people play badly against the core of our deck alone fore example: they try to play around daze and then we have force or we have daze + stifle and they just give us more tempo. Running both snare and pierce increases this the best way I've found to describe it phenomena as well. I find more people going into the tank trying to figure out what's in my hand and what they can play around and they usually misjudge what they can afford to play around if I have a clock out.
I think that both have their advantages and disadvantages, but I think something like 2 forked, 2 snare, 2 pierce offers more advantageous plays. You get to play overall more outs to everything and the opponents tend to play worse stepping around daze/pierce (soft permission) and then run into snare/force (hard permission) or vice versa. I also don't like how if you ponder/brainstorm into probe you effectively see less cards and having it any other time than our opener is very sub par for why we want to run it.
Anyone who thinks you're on storm because they see probe tarn/delta pass is a very bad magic player lol. Storm almost always fires off what 1 of their 10 cantrips turn 1 or 1 of their 7 or 8 disruption spells (not actually sure how many of these they run). Again if they're smart and think something fishy is up and don't play the fetch you saw in their hand this loses us tempo unless we have like bolt for their turn 1 threat. I just don't think holding up stifle is that advantageous unless it's a known fact that they only have fetches. This could also be me losing out on free wins seeing as I've been playing the deck for 3 years straight (lack of money/motivation to buy a new deck) and everyone knows what I'm on. That aside I think stifle is better when they're forced into it by like a turn 1 delver followed by a turn 2 waste holding up something like daze/force + stifle. Then they have to run into it and we actually gain tempo because we have a clock on the table. Stifling a fetch without a clock is similar to wasteland without a clock it's just negative tempo.
THIS. I actively play RUG Delver for about 2 months and this is one of the truths about piloting this deck correctly and could be more extra mentioned in the primer. Like a "bad Brainstorm" a "bad Tempo play" is also worth to mention. I'm still catching myself too often making this kind of mistakes.
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