I've been digging for more and more obscure cards from the past to help address various matchups, and I think I stumbled on something that is worth tinkering with:
Volcanic Spray
Here we have half of a Rough // Tumble that has the relevant advantage of being able to be Flashed Back. There are admittedly some instances where that extra 1 damage is important (e.g. against opposing Deathrite Shamans and other 2-toughness creatures), but against many of our most difficult creature-centric enemies, having the option of casting the card twice outweighs the disadvantage of dealing less damage. Furthermore, in the later game you can flash it back on the same turn if you have 4 mana handy and get the same result. Note that it also deals damage to players, which might be relevant on occasion.
An easy way of testing this card would be to slot it in as a 1/1 split with R//T, and see if the variation is worth it, and also test how helpful the Flashback ends up being. I figure that against Elves, Goblins and D&T, this card is often going to be superior. But there are a few cases where it is worse, especially against Merfolk -- so it is a bit of a metagame gamble.
Hey guys!
I played a legacy tournment last sunday with this list:
____________
Main deck
4 Scalding Tarn
4 Flooded Strand
4 Wasteland
3 Tropical Island
3 Volcanic Island
18 terrenos
4 Delver of Secrets
4 Nimble Mongoose
4 Tarmogoyf
12 criaturas
4 Stifle
1 Dismember
4 Force of Will
4 Daze
3 Spell Pierce
4 Ponder
4 Lightning Bolt
2 Forked Bolt
4 Brainstorm
30 outras mágicas
Sideboard
1 Pithing Needle
1 Null Rod
1 Invasive Surgery
2 Rough (Rough/Tumble)
1 Divert
2 Pyroblast
1 Surgical Extraction
1 Flusterstorm
1 Grafdigger's Cage
1 Destructive Revelry
1 Ancient Grudge
2 Submerge
__________
I made 5-2, here my matches:
2x1 Grixis Delver
1x2 BUG Delver
2x0 Lands
2x0 Grixis Delver
0x2 Eldrazi
2x0 BUG Delver
2x1 BG Pox
-------
5v-2d
I was in fifth place, a good result, with the same points of the third place.
I really enjoy this list, but I've faced huge problems against Eldrazi.
Hey, I'm new to the deck and to this thread so I was running through some of the recent discussion and came across echofish's report with a list running hooting mandrils and stubborn denial. After trying it out a little I definitely was more impressed with mandrils than I expected. Has anyone else been trying this configuration? If so what has been your impression?
It's interesting. You gain and lose percentages in different aspects of the match so I'm not sure. My main gripe with it is that it blanks to Mirrian Crusader and stoneforge. That aside you get to kill wisp and wingmare. I honestly think it depends on the opposing dnt last whether or not it's good. Not hitting drs against elves is kind of a problem but they can usually bounce him anyways so you're losing another creature there. It's also bad vs merfolk.Originally Posted by wcm8
I think if you've tested or know the dnt players in your meta well enough that they're for sure on Thalia + wingmare and there aren't any elves or merfolk then go for it.
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Two more bizarro sideboard suggestions:
Desert - kills small creatures at end of combat while also providing some mana buffer. Stacks in multiples. Main down-side is that it only triggers at end of combat, but the advantage is that very few creatures can avoid the damage it deals. Also only costs you a land drop.
Circle of Flame - to be honest, I'm a bit surprised that this card hasn't been tested yet. It makes it so X/1 creatures can't really attack you, and the effect stacks in multiples. This would be a great deterrent against Elves, most DnT creatures, various creatures including Young Pyro and his elementals, etc. The only downside is that it's only a deterrent, not hard removal and it costs 1R. But I think this card probably has more potential than desert since it effects ALL attacking creatures, not just 1 per turn. DnT could ignore it though with the help of a Mother of Runes, but then that would leave the creatures open to an instant-speed Bolt.
Hello, can I ask you about your sidebord plan against ANT? Yesterday I lost a match losing the 2 postboard games. I did this:
+ REB, + Pyroblast
+ Grafdigger's cge
+ Vendilion Clique
+ Surgical Extraction
+ Flusterstorm
+2 Rough//Tumble
On the draw:
-4 Dazes
-2 Tarmogoyf
-1 Dismember
- Forked Bolt
On the play I added 2 dazes and removed a bolt and the cage.
The first game I lost to turn 1 xantid swarm, turn 2 combo. I had a good hand but without fows nor bolt. The second game I mulligan to 6 keeping this: wasteland, delver, goose, rough/rumble, daze, brainstorm. I scried surgical to the bottom, drew land but he comboed me turn 3. Do you think my SB plan was good and I just had bad luck?
By the way the other cards in my sideboard are 2 submerge, ancient grudge, destructive revelry, winter orb, sulfur elemental, pithing needle. And I play the usual 54 + 2 pierce + 2 snare +1 forked +1 dismember.
Cheers
Hello my friend, how are you?
In my opinion, you commited a lot of mistakes. REB and Pyroblast are not good cards against ANT. You cannot side out 4 daze, is much better side out lightning bolt.
I usually made this:
+1 cage
+1 null rod
+1 flusterstorm
+1 Invasive Surgery
+1 surgical exctraction
+2 rough
-1 dismember
-2 forked bolt
-2 lightning bolt
-1 goyf
-1 daze
I used to win more than lose this match, it requires a lot of skill to counter the right spell and don´t fall in the traps. I think this match is 55/45 for us.
My usual board against them is something like this:
+2 flusterstorm, clique, surgical, null rod // - goyf, goose, 2 secondary removal, 1 bolt
The first sb game was bad luck. You can't really let them resolve or untap with xantid swarm. You can hold a delver back to give them one window and buy time to hopefully find removal. Another possibility is to hold delver back they attack you stifle the trigger eat the xantid. This will usually stop them dead in their tracks since they will probably have boarded some discard spells for the swam.
Game 2 you should have kept the surgical. It allows you more interaction. That spell more than any other except maybe flusterstorm will scare a storm player. The ability to completely cut off their PIF lines and stop them from cycling IT -> rituals/mana rocks is really good.
I also think that hand you draw surgical that turn then brainstorm turn 2 for more interaction. If they played a dual then waste obviously. If not you kind of need your brainstorm to be fetch, counter, x. It sounds like a lot but with that many bricks I don't think you're winning any other way.
The match up is good or at least 50/50. Daze loses value quickly so trading it fast with a cantrip or even a petal is usually the best (ie they play land petal ponder then daze ponder and force them to crack the petal). Having played both sides of the match up daze isn't the best but it keeps the storm player honest and that 1 mana tax usually sets them back some sequencing.
You don't need rough it's bad. It's too situational to have the out to empty and have them play into it blind or you magically find it right after they play it.
Don't save stifle for storm trigger. Any self respecting storm player can sequence to take stifle last on the back swing of a PIF line. It's always better to stifle early fetches unless something seems fishy that they're trying to bait you into tapping out to stifle their fetch. Trust me force is child's play to play through for storm.
If they therapy you, have somewhat known information and you have brainstorm then crack the brainstorm. The deck only has 6 discard usually. It can't play through spell pierce, snare or flusterstorm. This is a bit risky and takes some knowledge of storm's combo turn.
Essentially if you have multiple targets for them and 2 mana then brainstorm. Make them over think it and brick. If you draw an unknown force then you just get off scotch free and get to hide the important stuff. It's counter intuitive since 99% of the time this deck needs to hold brainstorm as long as possible. That aside therapy is as much of a mind game for them as it is for us.
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Last edited by Contract Killer; 07-02-2016 at 03:08 AM.
Hey guys,
played again at the eternal sunday in Frankfurt today.
First of all the List
54 standard
2 Pierce
2 Snare
2 Dismember
I really liked the list the previous month (got 1st) but I disliked the SB, so I did register this:
2 Winter Orb
2 Submerge
1 Rough // Tumble
1 Electricery (Split for testing never brought it in)
1 True Name
1 Null Rod
1 Ancient Grudge
1 Destructive Revelry
1 Flusterstorm
1 Invasive Surgery (also a Test, I always liked Envelope so this seems fine to me)
1 Pyroblast
1 Red Blast
1 Surgical Extraction
We were only 15 Players so we had 4 rounds of Swiss without Top 8.
First Round Infect (OTD)
Game 1: I draw the hand with only goose and goyfs, his only critter is an lone agent -.-
Game 2: I triple goose him with all the removal (2 Bolt 1 Dismember 1 Wasteland)
Game 3: It goes back and forth but I manage to win after I submerge his nexus after his berserk.
1-0
Second Round Shardless OTP
Game 1: Fast beats while I screw him get there. He never had green for more than one turn.
Game 2: He grinds me out.
Game 3: I beat him down too fast while he cant stick relevant threads.
2-0
Third Round Eldrazi OTP
Game 1: I counter his chalice and start throwing goyfs like crazy.
Game 2: He tries to get there with 2 endless one (2/2 and 4/4) now its time for TNN to stop them and goyf beat him.
3-0
Fourth Round Omnishow
My buddy and I draw to get 1st and 2nd :)
After the tournament 8 wanted to play some more legacy so we started an eight man.
Played the same list with the same board as I didnt know all people playing. We had in this tournament: Miracle, Omnishow, Death and Taxes, 2 Lands, Aggro Loam, Shardless one unknown).
First Round Lands
Game 1: I open with Tropical Delver. He starts with Mox Diamond into Exploration -> Wasteland Tabernacle... great lucky me I had a second land and passed. He tries to gamble wich I force. I cast a Goyf and he never finds a Loam so the Goyf kills him with the help of a Goose and one more Delver.
Game 2: He starts with an exploration out of a mox but only one land drop. I play land pass. He tries loam which I pierce. In my turn I cast Goyf. In his next 4-5 turns his loam gets snared, flustered, dazed, forced and finally extracted....
1-0
Second Round Miracle
Game 1:Close games but I cant stick my goose and my only critter is a tarmo but he cant get rid of it. After 2 swings of my goyf he casts mentor, which I cant stop so I get overruned :(
Game 2: I keep one land (Tropical) never draw the second land :(
1-1
Third Round Shardless
Game 1: I rush him pretty fast he cant to anything.
Game 2: I keep a one lander and open with delver. He starts with Deathrite and wastes in his second turn, never find a land -.-
Game 3: He goes for turn one thoughtseize (discard orb) second turn goyf. I submerge his goyf waste his tropical....for the rest of the game his whole board is a swamp.
2-1
Got second because of good breakers :)
Have to say the Deck was great again the only thing I really didnt like was the Electricery (I brought in Rough against Drazi but Electricery is not good enough I think). Instant sweeper is good but its so relevant that it doesnt kill Reshaper or stoneforge so maybe its not worth it.
Speaking of fringe sideboard cards heres a good one: Compost
Great against shardless and also fine against storm, dredge and pox.
Kind regards,
MTB
Nice!!! I don't like spell snare, but is a good card. I like to use
2 forked bolt
1 dismember
3 pierce
But is nice to test other kind of formatation.
Next sunday I have a tournment, but I guess I'll will play with grixis. Last tournment I played with canadian and got 5v-2l, 5th place.
I've been testing a few more obscure cards in my RUG list:
Caltrops - this is a colorless, slightly more expensive version of Circle of Flame. I think Circle is probably better simply by virtue of costingless, but perhaps the colorless aspect of Caltrops (in addition to the fact that it amusingly affects Flying creatures) can be relevant. What I really like about these cards is that they provide some much appreciated breathing room against decks like D&T, Elves, Goblins and even Young Pyromancer by staving off attacks from the smaller creatures, thus buying you extra time to find more definitive answers to your opponent's growing army while also allowing you the opportunity to begin launching your own counter-offensive.
Against some of these small creature decks, RUG is often forced into assuming the control role instead of being the beat-down/aggressor (yes, even despite playing Delver, Goyf and Bolts), and so having RUG playing its own miniaturized Moat similarly to how Miracles.dec does it can actually be quite powerful. These effects also stack in multiples, so it's even possible with enough active Circles of Flame to completely lock an opponent out of the attack step (especially if they lack access to enchantment removal, and let's be serious here, who sides that in against their Delver opponent unless they know for sure to expect Sylvan Library and/or Sulfuric Vortex?) Even so, it's likely that these cards still served a purpose by acting as a one-sided Fog for several turns before the opponent finally managed to find and resolve their enchantment removal.
One more thing worth noting about Caltrops is that it damages *all* creatures that attack, so you need to take some care so as to avoid accidentally killing your own dudes.
Cursed Scroll and Isochron Scepter - these cards deserve a thorough explanation and justification for how I've arrived at the conclusion that both artifacts are legitimate considerations for inclusion in a competitive RUG Delver list.
And so I'll start at the beginning: I was jealous of BUG and Grixis' access to Darkblast as a method of recursive removal, especially since most RUG builds tend to struggle against decks leaning heavily on 1-toughness utility creatures such as Death and Taxes and Elves. This was a card that I wish were available as a color-shifted Red variant due to its extremely high power level and specifically devastating effects on Elves and D&T. Let me expound a bit on that previous statement:
I personally consider Darkblast to be perhaps the most underrated 1-mana removal spell in the format. Maindeck copies of Darkblast are seldom (if ever) seen, which I think is actually a major oversight of competitive deck builders. Consider how so many of the most commonly encountered Tier 1 & 2 deck archetypes are playing creatures with only 1-toughness and could have major problems dealing with an early barrage of Darkblast casting.
The format probably hasn't been this soft to the spell since the time when GW Maverick and RUG Natural Order (with Mental Misstep) were the format's main Tier 1 Decks to Beat. Those decks struggled against the continuous stream of removal directed at their Dryad Arbors, Noble Hierarchs, Vendilion Cliques, Mother of Runes, Scryb Rangers and other various weenies. DB was also capable of killing off the various 2-toughness creatures such as Stoneforge Mystic before she could cheat a Batterskull into play, and of course it was an effective answer to a turn 1 Goblin Lackey which was more frequently encountered at the time. Dark Confidant was similarly more prevalent. DB was also useful for winning a Goyf ground stall, as you could shrink the opponent's lhurgof just enough for your own critter to finish it off and emerge victorious.
It's not just the Aether Vial and tribal creature decks that are weak to DB. Plenty of competitive creatures being played in the Legacy format of 2016 have only 1 toughness: Snapcaster Mage, Vendilion Clique, Young Pyromancer and his elementals, pre-flipped Delver of Secrets, Dark Confidant, Grim Lavamancer, Baleful Strix, various creature tokens such as those generated by Lingering Souls (there always seems to be at least one dude still jamming Esperblade), every single creature in the UGx Infect deck... I could continue on and then perhaps start listing the ones with 2-toughness that just as easily succumb to a double-casting of the spell, but I'm sure by now you get the point. I wanted something like this for RUG.
Unfortunately, there's no color-shifted version of Darkblast at the moment, but Red has some decent variations on the theme of repeatable removal that can provide a somewhat similar function while being perhaps a bit more clunky or slow.
If you're willing to spend the additional slots on the Lands and Spell, there's the Punishing Fire + Grove of the Burnwillows combo. Unfortunately this doesn't fit my criteria of being singularly contained and the life-gain aspect also runs counter to RUG's goal of dealing 20 damage. I suppose this would be fine in a RUG midrange cousin deck, but doesn't really fit in RUG Delver.
Perhaps the most obvious choice is Grim Lavamancer. However, I found Grim Lavamancer to be too fragile for my purposes simply by being a 1/1 creature instead of being a Spell or non-creature permanent to dodge removal. Furthermore, he suffers from RestInPeace-itis as do many of our other threats... And simultaneously he ends up competing with Mongoose and occasionally Goyf for resources.
Then there's Izzet Staticaster, a slightly jazzier (and more expensively costed) variant on the Grim Lavamancer theme. While I do appreciate the power that Izzie has against certain decks and have run her to good effect in previous tournaments, she unfortunately only serves a single function, whereas Lavamancer can start pinging your opponent if there aren't any creatures for him to go after.
This was about the time when I suddenly remembered what card it was that old Tempest-era Sligh decks used to run to supplement their Burn spells and provide late-game reach.
When I started testing these oft-forgotten artifacts, I found both to be quite amazing in their own unique ways, both with their respective advantage and disadvantages. So it's actually hard for me to definitively say that one is clearly superior to the other, though perhaps it's fair to say that Scepter has the potential for greater versatility.
I even started considering fitting a copy of one of them into the main 60 (perhaps by replacing a Forked Bolt or one of the creatures). I found this to frequently work out just fine, as aside from GBx decks with Abrupt Decay, many Legacy decks lack answers to a resolved non-creature artifact in game 1. This made it so that both cards were quite incredible in long, grindy games, functioning similarly to how a planeswalker might grant late-game inevitability.
In the worst case, if they get countered/destroyed, they grow our Tarmogoyfs to an even more threatening size.
What's the plan against R/G Lands? Is Tormod's Crypt still a good sideboard card? Or do we really have to play surgical?
Cheers
Depends on your list:
- If you play Mongoose:
Your tempo tools are usually enough. Countering a few spells is key here. Don't be afraid to counter some Life from the Loam and tutors.
Mongoose will usually blank their Maze of Ith.
Spell Snare is pretty good, here.
Price of Progress is outstanding, obviously.
- If you don't play Mongoose:
The matchup is harder. Maze of Ith can be a real issue, here.
The top 8 list from Prague solved the issue (somehow) by playing 2 Price of Progress in the Side + 1 Surgical.
I guess the best is to make a bunch of tests and see by yourself how much sideboard space you wanna commit against RG Lands.
Legacy & Homebrew **ONLY**
Brown Stax
Rainbow SWAT
Dimir Mill
Morph my Ride
Wally Wallah
Corona Syndrome
Don't mind me, i'm just writing about Pauper these days: theweeklywars.wordpress.com
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Frostbringer > Winter Orb!
No need to tell me! My deck is all German nonfoil. (=
Just couldn't find a proper picture the last time I looked so I didn't even bother this time.
Don't mind me, i'm just writing about Pauper these days: theweeklywars.wordpress.com
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Got my league 5-0 last night on my second attempt, woo hoo! That gives me an invite to the Legacy Festival finals at the end of the month and a sweet foil Ponder promo.
Really glad to just get this out of the way at the beginngin of the Conquer phase., i figured i would be grinding for this all week, but I got really lucky with some easy matches and opponent stumbles. Also, my 5th match opponent scooped to me, hooking up the 5-0 like a boss. We didnt agree to this or anything, he was just being an awesome guy, because he knew i was 4-0.
I did it on stream, which i'll reluctantly share with you guys, if you have 2.5 hours and feel like watching. I say reluctantly, because i watched some of it again and man, i make a lot of misplays. Match 1, I was rusty as fuck, then i settled in, but still im recognizing some bad play in my games. Its funny how oblivious you can be to some of this while playing, but can easily recognize it watching a replay. Word of advice, record some of your own matches, its an eye opener.
https://www.twitch.tv/lewiscbr/v/76829336
Which foil ponder promo?
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You get a non-foil if you go 4-1, for the next couple weeks.
Have they printed it in foil now?
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