Lemnear, if you would like to add to the discussion, I ask you to test the deck rather than just theorycrafting. The points that Garritano brings up are all true and, while counterintuitive when you're looking at the list are all things you find when you play the deck. If you'd like to have a discussion, give the deck a fair shot first. I admit it looks like an awkward deck when compared to something that's had, literally, years of development, but it does us no good to have you say "this is clearly suboptimal so I won't even try it."
I agree about the Chrome Mox, I just think that the deck needs something, anything to keep it from falling too far behind. Getting a Chrome Mox down on turn 1 or 2 leads to much more cantripping and much easier casting of Gifts and Grim Tutor a turn ahead of schedule, which is, I think, a net positive for the deck. I really don't mind pitching a spare cantrip or a spare discard spell (or a spare tutor since we have so many) to make Chrome Mox work, though multiples is rough. Maybe 2 is the correct number. I've played the deck with them as fetchlands and I like it a little more with Chrome Mox than I do without.
After playing with Diminishing Returns for years before we cutted it for a reason, I don't have to use this particular deck to know why draw7s in Legacy are in a tough spot and it has a lot to do with the average +2 mana compared to Wheel of Fortune and friends (aka playable turn 1) and the manasources you use to play those. In addition the current structure of Legacy is toxic for those kind of spells for reasons mentioned in previous posts.Originally Posted by benthetenor
I dunno if you can demand people giving the deck a fair shot after simply dodging every question asked in regards to card choices, strategic approach & potential problems. I've outlined my thoughts and critique on certain points several times throughout this thread and still miss productive reactions. If you label ideas like suggesting Thoughtseize against Burn.dec and others "all true", I doubt I have to test this deck to see the obvious flaws made in building.
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I personally don't care if you, or anyone, tests and plays this deck, but if you feel no need to test it, then kindly stop trying to discuss it. This deck is not TES, it is a late-game combo deck, and it has no interest in firing off a Draw-7 on turn 1 or 2. I have no interest in having a discussion with someone who won't test something because they think they are above it.
As I said above, if you have a card you would like me to discuss, I will, but I need you to bring it up or I will have no idea what cards you'd like to see in the deck. But if you want to have a discussion about the deck, I need you to test it.
Why does Ad Nauseam suck? Why does Chrome Mox not suck? Why does Reforge the Soul not suck? Why does Gifts Ungiven not suck? So on. So forth.
Also, "this deck is rly rly good against BUG. seriously." is not a tournament report. An actual tournament report would display thought process and lines of play. We don't want to test the deck. Common sense says that it looks like a pile of shit and therefore we have no reason to test this deck over the thousands of other decks that have been posted in the last year. What we want, what we need, and what we probably won't get, is a reason.
The tournament I started is over. You should join the next one.
I'm not going to play the deck for you. I'm sorry if that's what you're expecting. If you can play ANT, you can play this deck.
Ad Nauseam sucks because, past turn three or four you are going to not have enough life to reliably win with it. As ANT is a slower deck, and this deck is a slower deck, the odds of going off on turn one or two is drastically smaller than it is with TES, making Ad Nauseam a liability in ANT and an unnecessary restriction in deck construction. ANT is a Past in Flames deck with a poor backup plan. This deck is an even stronger Past in Flames deck with a weaker, but still viable, backup plan. It strengthens the strength of ANT and makes a PiF kill faster and more consistent, and the deck will not fail to find a tutor in time to set up the chain to kill the opponent. If that's unbelievable to you, test the deck.
Chrome Mox is on the fence. It is in place of lands currently, and it speeds the deck up slightly. The deck is already roughly as fast, if MAYBE a bit less consistent (due to fewer cantrips), as ANT, so the addition of Chrome Mox would theoretically make it a touch faster than ANT. The card disadvantage is irrelevant. Again, I can spout theory at you, but until you test the deck you won't see what I'm talking about.
Reforge the Soul sucks. But it is necessary to not just scoop to Past in Flames. The advantage to playing with Reforge the Soul over Ad Nauseam is that you get to play with Treasure Cruise and Thoughtseize and Gifts Ungiven and Grim Tutor. The card itself is not good, but what not playing with Ad Nauseam does is frees up deckbuilding constraints so you can play with other powerful cards and diversify your gameplan so you're less easily hated out.
Gifts Ungiven is an extremely powerful setup spell for Past in Flames. It ensures that, no matter what, when you cast it, you win the game. It is different from other tutors in that you can cast an Infernal Tutor in the same situation and still not win because you don't have enough rituals or other cards in the graveyard to not make it go. It is card advantage against even decks with active graveyard hate. It is restricted in Vintage. I do not feel I need to explain why it is a powerful card.
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Wasteland is not nearly that much of a concern for this deck given that the manabase is designed to function perfectly using nothing but basics. There will be situations where you have to fetch out a non-basic, but by and large that's something that's unavoidable given that there are only 4 Polluted Delta. The red splash is only necessary on the turn you are going off, so having a Volcanic in there to fetch out on exactly that turn is worth it. The ability to thrive on basics, in addition to the late-game power of the deck and the extreme number of discard spells makes the tempo matchups viable. I'd say positive, but I can't really comment on how good or bad certain matchups are until people who aren't me and my friends are playing the deck in the open metagame.
The reason why Gifts is a superior setup card is because it always gets you exactly what you want, both in the hand and in the graveyard. For instance, one line which is obscenely common for me is to have something like two rituals, a Lotus Petal and a Gifts Ungiven in hand with three or four lands and having already torn apart the opponent's hand over previous turns. I will use the first ritual to power out Gifts, giving them 2 rituals (or a ritual and a LED), a tutor and Past in Flames. If I get all rituals, I flashback Past in Flames and win. If I get no rituals, I still have enough mana with the ritual in hand to cast Past in Flames and win from there. If I get a weird split, I'm there anyway. The reason why it's superior to just having more cantrips is that sometimes, even with all the cantripping in the world, you will still not draw an Infernal Tutor to get the chain moving, or you will have some difficulty setting up a good Past in Flames. It doesn't happen all the time, but it is not so rare as to not be a consideration. So far in the close to 350 games I've played with this particular build, I have never failed to draw a tutor or business spell. That's not a small sample size, and it's enough that I feel comfortable saying "never" and not having it be much of an exaggeration. It is absolutely possible that it will happen sometimes, but it's never happened to me yet.
Treasure Cruise DOES NOT mess with threshold and/or Past in Flames. It doesn't make sense from a theoretical perspective, but while playing with the cards it's actually irrelevant. This is perhaps partly due to only playing two of them, but also when you cast Treasure Cruise you get three new cards and odds are you can put those cards right back into the graveyard. Between Fetchlands, Lotus Petals, Lion's Eye Diamonds (with or without spare lands in hand), cantrips, discard spells and rituals, the graveyard is always full, even after taxing it with Treasure Cruise. It's also not uncommon to burn a Dark Ritual on Treasure Cruise, as that makes a turn 2 Treasure Cruise very easy to do, given that Dark Ritual is virtually 4 of the 8 mana required. So Dark Ritual plus 3 cards in the graveyard plus two lands is a full Treasure Cruise right there, and if I have a spare card like a Lotus Petal or something in the graveyard, I even get to keep the Dark Ritual for later Past in Flames. It's usually a good thing to trade 2 fetchlands, a discard spell and a Dark Ritual to cast Ancestral Recall on turn 2, and that's to say nothing of LEDs and Lotus Petals sitting in the graveyard later that cannot interact with Past in Flames.
Thoughtseize is the best discard spell we have available to us. It gets everything. Cabal Therapy is strong too when you are running Gitaxian Probe, and it's strong enough that I will still run it as one of a medley of other discard spells (and I am also personally a fan of being good enough to run Therapy out there blind, a la Dredge), but Thoughtseize requires no additional setup to be good and it gets hatebears in addition to Force of Will. It is not impossible to play combo without it (clearly), but it would be silly to say that being able to support Thoughtseize isn't an advantage for a combo deck.
The only thing I will say about Gifts Ungiven is that, when it resolves, I win the game, on the spot, often with no other setup required. I recognize that this is not Vintage, but that is not a statement I can even make about something like Ad Nauseam in ANY deck that runs it.
Drastically smaller? By how much of a percentage is drastically? Do you have the numbers, or are we just spouting off? Is TES faster? Yes. Drastically? Wut? Ad Naus being a liability in its own namesake deck is a preposterous statement. The back up plan being why those variants are widely more played and successful than other storm variants. Mainly the ease of executing Ad Naus for a relatively low life payment. Strengthening PiF at the cost of weakening the back up plan is a poor choice. PiF is as strong in TES and ANT as it is in your list. Possibly even stronger due to having a legit real back up plan that doesnt hinge on drawing a random 7 for 5 mana. One which opponents cannot allow to resolve. Your deck is based on Diminishing Returns as a back up plan. ANT/TES have Ad naus as a back up plan. How foolish to think that hose 2 cards are even comparable in a game where they also play PiF as an equally if not more so powerful win condition.
Restricted in Vintage for none of the reasons it is not in Legacy.
This statement is nonsense. The strength of the backup plan has nothing to do with the strength of casting Past in Flames.
It's statements like that that make me wonder if you've ever actually played ANT and TES. There is a noticeable difference between how those two decks function, how they use Ad Nauseam and Past in Flames, etc. Since the printing of Past in Flames ANT has been much, much more comfortable going off with that card over Ad Nauseam due to a very legitimate speed difference between the two decks. TES casts Ad Nauseam/Past in Flames maybe 70/30, ANT is 30/70. This is not speculation on my part, and I'm sure anyone else who plays either of these decks can back me up on that.
Thoughtseize is very good against burn.
I think that because you play TES, you don't know how bad ANT / Doomsday's win percentage against post-Eidolon burn is.
If you had played ANT post-Eidolon, you'd have seen the matchup is much closer to 60/40 than its historic near-autowin for ANT. If they dedicate enough sideboard space to you, I believe they can drop that percentage below 55%, which is totally remarkable considering that we're playing combo against aggro. (good sideboard cards would obv be stuff like Pyrostatic Pillar, Relic of Progenitus)
If you Thoughtseize and don't see Eidolon, you were going to win the game anyway (unless they hit their ~4/51 and kill you)
If you Thoughtseize and see one Eidolon, you are now going to win the game unless on their exact next turn they hit their ~3/51 and kill you. Congrats.
If you Thoughtseize and see two Eidolons, well, sorry. You could have only one the game if you had drawn Therapy instead of Thoughtseize.
IMO, storm should be running 4x Cabal Therapy before running Thoughtseize, so I don't approve of this lists's 3/3/2 split, but that isn't the point.
As 4x CT is what makes sense, meaningful analysis compares Thoughtseize to Duress, and Duress loses when they 1 or 2 Eidolons. Thoughtseize beats the 1 Eidolon case. I think a lot of Storm players underestimate how often a 4 of shows up in their opening grip b/c they don't factor in their opponents mulligans. Regardless, the "he opened with Eidolon so now I lose" event happens very frequently.
Boarding and then drawing Chain of Vapor / Abrupt Decay (which you can only do game 2-3) doesn't solve the problem. Abrupt Decay usually leaves you with 1-2 nonbasics, which turns on PoP, and both plays are tempo loses. To add insult to injury, those spells even trigger Eidolon, meaning they have the same lifepoint loss compared to Thoughtseize.
Thoughtseize is so good against burn, that when I ran Doomsday w/ a Thoughseize in the board, I would sideboard it in to increase the number of ways of stopping the game-ending Eidolon.
You play TES, which has Empty, which is a way of making Eidolon a joke. Empty into as little as 8 goblins and now you WANT them to cast Eidolon so that they commit suicide when they
Where Thoughtseize is bad, is:
1) You play Doomsday and your combo causes you to lose half your life
2) You play Ad Nauseum and your combo causes you to a significant amount of life
3) The two points is relevant to the clock.
Case 3 occurs SPECIFICALLY against Delver, where Thoughtseize is worse than Duress.
My post was SPECIFICALLY about burn, and I stand by the claim that Thoughtseize is a good discard spell against burn. I implore people who think otherwise to just play a game of ANT on MTGO. When your opening 7 against burn has therapy, you win unless they 1) topdeck Eidolon or 2) topdeck a sideboarded anti-graveyard spell. Allowing Thoughtseize to become Therapy #5 slightly increases that win percentage.
I think this characterization of ANT is perhaps the strongest reason to consider this decklist.
I would go so far to say that Ad Nauseum is < 15% of a typical ANT player's win. We almost exclusively go for IT chains and PiF loops.
Ad Nauseum enables the turn one kills and its an instant-speed threat against Miracles, but the card is a liability in a huge percentage of matchups. If you played ANT and started AN in the sideboard, I would not think you're crazy.
Although this probably should be discussed elsewhere, it's plausible that ANT should be renamed, as TES is the better Ad Nauseum-deck by far. ANT is really a slow discard PiF loop deck. (note, slow means "slow relative to decks that support Empty the Warrens").
I don't think we should compare this deck to TES. We should compare it to ANT*.
TES's solution to heatbears / counterbalance is to win before they matter.
ANT is so slow that many excellent players experiment with stuff like 2x SDT maindeck, or quasi-transformational sideboards against Miracles to fight the resolved Counterbalance (e.g., "2 pithing needle to kill SDT + 3 Abrupt Decay" or "2 tops, 3 Abrupt Decays, 2 Krosan Grips to turn into Grinding Station"). For a similar reason, you often see things like 3x Dread of Nights in the board.
(don't win before Mother of Runes / Thalia lock hits, instead dig for DoN and win afterwards)
This list may provide a better game against Miracles and BUG Delver than ANT. (not saying anything about TES here).
I personally believe this list is worse against UR / RUG Delver than ANT, but I don't have sufficient data to back that up. I also don't have sufficient data to back up my Miracles claim. However, if this variant is similar to ANT while trading match-win % from red Delver and increasing the match win against Burn /Miracles/BUG Delver, then this deck has to be examined seriously.
Now, it's conceivable that TES has a good matchup has such a good Miracles/BUG Delver matchup that the solution to beating those decks is to throw away ANT and pick up TES, but if that's the case, the discussion shouldn't be limited to this thread.
*(I would suggest we compare this deck to TNT, but there is almost no discussion about TNT development on this forum and from what I can tell, almost no one plays it.)
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I 100% agree with you, and baring some sort of strange Doomsday-control deck, I can't imagine playing any legacy Storm list without 4x Gitaxian Probe maindeck.
These are very good points, and I definitely agree with you. You make a compelling case for EtW belonging in at minimum somewhere in the 75, possibly maindeck.
This is an extremely good point.
The original list should have at minimum one in the 75, as Gifts doesn't offer the turn one I win button. The turn 1-2 "I win" event happens so often that 1 Empty should really improve the match win % against a variety of decks.
I personally don't approve of the Chrome Moxen, but they actually increase the value of Empty.
I actually still board in CoV / Abrupt Decay against Burn, and my post was a bit inaccurate. I was just pointing out that Thoughtseize helps answer Eidolon without some of the problems associated with those sideboard cards. I normally play a fairly normal ANT list and use a fairly standard CoV / Abrupt Decay response.
This is a really good point, and we should definitely bring this up in the ANT thread.
I was thinking about this exact card a few weeks ago when thinking about how it helps the "natural tendrils" plan, but hadn't seriously considered it.
This is a REALLY good idea.
Thank you for your analysis.
When I'm not running ANT, I'm experimenting with a hybrid of this / ANT (with 4 Cabal Therapy / Gitaxian Probes, more lands, and 2 preordains), and I absolutely will try Empty the Warrens and experiment with a bolt sideboard + extra red source in the main.
Full credit for ANT with EtW over Ad Nauseam in MB plus Lightning Bolts (also in the MB) goes to SloshTheDark. I just remembered it as he uses this setup locally afaik
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Updated the first post with a new decklist and added in potential sideboard cards. The main changes were converting Chrome Mox to fetchlands and shaving a few cards to bring in some Gitaxian Probe, and then tweaking the disruption suite and manabase to accept the changes. I am not as yet fully convinced that these changes are correct, but they felt natural and have been testing fine. The speed difference without Chrome Mox is evident, but not so drastic as to make me want to go back just yet.
There's a desire to add in a fourth Gitaxian Probe, but I do not want to go below 30 mana sources which is where we're at right now. Granted, there is not a large difference between 30 and 29 (particularly with a full four Probes) but that is the reasoning as to why there are currently only three. With a fourth Gitaxian Probe, I would likely reverse the split between Thoughtseize and Cabal Therapy.
I still doubt this deck deserves a seperate thread as it basically only switched the usual slots occupied in ANT by either LDV/Grim Tutor/Ad Nauseam/Burning Wishes/Preordains/2nd PIF/EtW/SDT/etc. out for Gifts/TC/CoV/Reforge. We are talking about the same slots people rotate now for years forth and back. :/
I feel this topic would have had a much easier time, if brought up in the ANT thread with the question "what about Gifts Ungiven instead of the Preordains in this deck?"
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If he posted it in the ANT thread, people might have just told him to eat shit because the deck is "not ANT". I think the deck is better with its own thread. It is different enough that any serious discussion about it in the ANT thread could completely derail the thread. However, this is clearly a moderator's call.
I'd love to contribute to the actual deck discussion but I've only goldfished a few games so anything I can say about it is going to be useless. A little less useless than the opinions of people who played zero games, but still useless.
Re: Eldritch Moon and Emrakul
Its 5/60 cards off from ANT (I'm not hairsplitting because of the selection of Lands), for gods sake! Shall we force a new RUG Delver thread just because some people try Hooting Mandrills over Goose and claim its a totally different deck now and players who are used to Goose have no clue about the new deck and how it works?? Take the UR Delver thread as an example, as they dropped staples like Wasteland and Stifle for Treasure Cruise and Swiftspear without starting a new thread and I hope we can agree that those changes were more significant than switching LimDuls Vault for Gifts Ungiven.
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The differences between the list now in the OP and ANT:
(2nd Island over another land)
-1 Land
-1 Probe
-2 Cantrip (Preordain/Sdt)
-1 AdN/EtW
+2 Tcruise
+1 Gifts
+1 Reforge
+1 Chain of V
- 14 lands.
You become even slower so you play less lands, I don't get this. It seems you used to have Moxen, maybe that's why?
- Less cantrips, more business:
This depends on personal taste, I really don't like reforge though.
- Regarding more graveyard dependency:
How about playing more gy-related stuff g1 and boarding to less gy? This could be aiming for AdN/EtW g2, this could be going for Doomsday g2 (with tops main) etc.
- MD bounce
I'm not sure an answer is needed, but you might want to go down to 6 discard + 1 answer if you do.
What I suggest:
Test both Gifts and TC in the existing ANT shell (without Chain, Reforge the Soul etc) and see if they add anything. Gifts seem mana-intensive to me, but it might be okay. I'd also test Dig Through Time in similar fashion (and Lim-Dul's Vault, although it has been tested). I do think this discussion has a better place in the ANT thread. The earlier idea involving moxen seemed to have inconsistent ideas.
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