How do you guys sideboard versus Miracles?
I've had a difficult time against this deck.
Top 8'd the Legacy Challenge today with Turbo Dark Depths. List will be going up on the Mothership and MTGGoldfish within the next few days, but I will type it out for you now:
3 Bayou
1 Bojuka Bog
4 Dark Depths
1 Ghost Quarter
1 Sejiri Steppe
1 Snow-Covered Forest
1 Snow-Covered Swamp
4 Thespian's Stage
3 Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth
4 Verdant Catacombs
4 Lotus Petal
4 Elvish Spirit Guide
2 Duress
2 Inquisition of Kozilek
4 Thoughtseize
4 Crop Rotation
3 Pithing Needle
4 Vampire Hexmage
4 Sylvan Scrying
3 Into the North
3 Not of This World
Sideboard:
4 Surgical Extraction
4 Abrupt Decay
1 Karakas
1 Maze of Ith
4 Chalice of the Void
1 Pithing Needle
I was very impressed with the performance of Dark Depths in general in the Legacy Festival Championships, with 3 decks posted online including one top 8, all slightly different configurations. As an advocate for non-blue combo decks in Legacy, I decided to build the turbo BG version and try it out. I confess that the first build I tried was directly netdecked, but then I made a few adjustments:
1) I saw no advantage in playing Duress and Inquisition over Thoughtseize, so I cut two of each to make room for 4 real Legacy cards.
2) The 4th Urborg seemed unnecessary and got replaced with another Snow Land so that Into the North could find mana in the face of taxing effects or color screw.
3) The Spirit Guides are very unexpected, which leads to free wins when the opponent taps out for Counterbalance or Knight of the Reliquary. Added a 4th.
After playing half a dozen matches in the Tournament Practice Room and going 4-1 in my first league with the deck, I was naturally completely locked into playing it for the Legacy Challenge. I had *zero* expectations. Note of Inclusivity: I mean no insult by using male personal pronouns throughout.
R1: Grixis Delver
I expect I'm not the only one who thinks this is the best way to start a tournament with this deck. A quick 2-0.
R2: Miracles
G1: I Needle his Top. He plays Explosives, getting ready to kill it. At the end of his 3rd turn I combo. He quickly casts Swords. I use a Spirit Guide for Crop Rotation. He Brainstorms for Force, misses, dies.
G2: I Needle Top. I have to play a slow game after that because I'm missing on black mana, just playing out combo lands slowly while he cantrips. I then of course draw Urborg to activate my hand of 3 discard spells. He Forces the first one, but his hand gets ripped apart that same turn by another discard spell. Surgical Extraction in his draw step reveals that he is dead.
R3: Michael Bonde on Abzan Stoneblade
G1 I mulligan and draw all three Into the norths, so its very slow. However, I do manage to combo on the end of his turn 4. I attack...and then he flashes in Scryb Ranger to combo with his Mother of Runes. I die shortly after even though I had plenty of live draws.
G2 I cast two Sylvan Scryings finding Bayou and Depths, Decay his turn 3 Knight of the Reliquary. He has Karakas, Mom, and Qasali Pridemage. I've drawn into Not of This World to deal with his Karakas and we're going to another game.
G3 He taps out for Knight of the Reliquary on turn 2 facing down a Hexmage. Spirit Guide -> crop Rotation -> Depths. I'm not not proud of it :D
R4: Eldrazi (won event)
G1 I keep a great turn 2 Hexmage combo hand and Duress. Opponent has Eldrazi Temple, Ancient Tomb, Chalice of the Void, Dismember, Matter Reshaper, Jitte, and Warping Wail. I take Chalice so that i can turn 2 combo him off my Crop Rotation. He draws and plays Mimic. I combo on my turn. He draws, plays, and activates Karakas. I carry on, but I'm on massive tilt and lose because I can't draw out of this spot... I will make a video of this game and put it on youtube if people want, I seriously cannot believe the topdeck there. I will have to wait for decklists to be posted to see how many Karakas he has.
G2 I keep an iffy 7. Maze, Stage, Spirit Guide, Petal, Scrying, Crop Rotation, Not of This World. I play Maze and Petal, he has a Thorn of Amethyst. I play Stage and Rotate Maze into Depths in response to Chalice on one. All I need is a mana. I don't draw any mana, and he draws Wasteland, Reality Smasher, Wasteland. I could make a video of that game too...
R5: Miracles
G1 was an experience and took forever. Preboard we don't have all our tricks and he was floating a Terminus forever so I was waiting until I could try to combo two turns in a row. He eventually took over the game with a Jace despite me attacking with a 2/1 and a 2/2.
G2 I scry Hexmage to the top and cheese him in response to his Counterbalance on his turn 2 by Rotating into Depths. Feels good man.
G3 I needle Top but he kills it with Wear/Tear. On my turn 4 I double Thoughtseize him and take some slightly relevant cards, leaving him with Surgical and Terminus. He cantrips, then I combo on his end step. On my turn, he looks for Terminus, Surgicals himself to shuffle, find Swords, and dies to Not of This World.
R6: BR Reanimator
G1 I know what I'm up against, which is good for me. I'm on the play, also good for me. I have Lotus Petal to get rid of 2 Chancellor of the Annex triggers, also good for me. I then Duress away his Animate Dead, leaving him with a hand of lands and fatties. I have Bog in hand, which was almost a trigger for me to mulligan, but I decided that G1 this hand was probably my best chance. Of course, he draws Entomb -> Exhume right away, getting Griselbrand, drawing 14, misses on making a second fatty. I play Stage from hand, holding up combo. He casts Faithless Looting but is forced to pass in the face of the mighty Marit Lage. I combo endstep and luckily draw a Crop Rotation to end the game immediately with Sejiri Steppe. Into top 8!
Top 8: RUG Delver
G1 I keep a pretty good hand and combo him out after he taps out for some creatures.
G2 I keep a pretty loose hand with double Pithing Needle and Chalice on one, trying to get'em. He has Mongoose on one so that won't work as well. I Needle Wasteland and eventually play Chalice on one but my hand is too slow to beat Nimble Mongoose into two Goyfs (even though they started as 1/2s).
G3 I get Chalice on one and Chalice on two. I think I'm all set, just need to draw into good stuff. He's holding up Wasteland, so I search up Ghost Quarter. Unfortunatley, my opponent apparently decided to include a copy of Jace, the Mind Sculptor in his deck, and plays that, starts plusing. I Ghost Quarter his Wasteland and desperately try to combo, but I locked myself out of my tutors with Chalice on one and two. I eventually Decay Chalice on two, cast a Sylvan Scrying for a combo piece, but still die to Jace ultimate.
I made pretty obvious sideboarding choices (by this I mean I figured them out based on ~10 matches with the deck :D) so I won't bore anyone with those after posting this giant tournament report. Deck seems great.
Congrats on the finish!
1 - That is my exact configuration for discard spells too. Thoughtseize is by far the best discard spell for this type of deck. Duress and IOK both miss several important targets and the life loss from Thoughtseize is not relevant very often.
2 - Your version is on 15 black sources (4 of which are 1 shots in Petals). This will lead to the occasional game where you can't double up on black on turn two or get cut off from mana denial. I'm a fan of maximizing the number of natural turn 2's with Urborg/Depths/Hex. Urborg also has similarities to Eye of Ugin in Eldrazi in that it often gets wasted on the spot on turn 1 which sometimes offsets the downside of drawing two. Let me know how three works out for you going forward if you continue to run the deck.
Couple questions:
On the Duress/IoK split, do you often find yourself in the situation of having Duress and wishing it was IoK, or the other way round?
Is 3 Not of this World enough to have it when you need it to protect your token, especially since you do not have dig to find it in this version?
I'm curious about the inquisition/duress split as well. Duress seems better from my initial reps mostly due to being able to hit FoW but I'm open to inquisition if there are good reasons.
@Zooligan 3 Not of this world seems fine to me. It's not something you need to have and crop rotation into sejiri gives you plenty more copies of the basic effect. You're also protecting with the discard and needles so there is plenty to clear the way in my experience.
There are very relevant cards that Duress misses that IOK hits and vice versa. Off the top of my head, IOK misses key cards like Force, Sneak Attack, Ad Naus, and Natural Order. In fact, I lost a game in league play tonight to Julian23 via Natural Order because I drew IOK. Cutting the other way, Duress is pretty miserable in certain match-ups and I've outright bricked with it on many occasions against Eldrazi especially. It misses key cards like Snapcaster (Snap into swords, etc), Flickerwisp, Eldrazi Displacer, among others. Sometimes a game can be won by just taking the opponents lone early threat with IOK and giving yourself a ton of time to set up. After playing with the deck for well over a year, I still don't know for sure what the right mix is. The only thing I'm 100% sure of is that the first 4 discard spells should be Thoughtseize.
It's usually best in decks that have Probe and even better in decks that have creatures to sac in order to flash it back. The only cards that will get you perfect info are the Thoughtseizes (assuming you would take out Duress/IoK for the Therapys). IDK, without probe/creatures I think I'd rather have Duress (most of the time, sometimes IoK...)
From my experience thus far cabal therapy and probe are both liabilities. Its hard to evaluate opening hands containing only one of them and it leads to a lot of virtual mulligans. I have previous experience with cabal therapy coming from being on nic fit for the last three years so i think im pretty good about guessing hands and identifing potential hits vs potential relevance, and i can say id rather have duress#1 iok #1 and duress#2 before the first therapy. Im only on six discard 2 needle 2 decay main, currently i have 3 flex slots in the board that ive dedicated to control matchups but i could see having the second duress/iok over what is currently 2 bobs. The two bobs may be better as sylvan libraries tho.
With Hymn you are gambling that they will discard the thing you need them to discard. Generally they will discard dups or extra lands. If you can hit them with targeted discard after then it is great.
There are so few cards that do anything to this deck that Hymn will not do the job most of the time.
Hello all!
I have a doubt about this deck, why in ghost quarter instead of wasteland? I don't understand..
How to you guys think we fare going up against the 2 new D&T cards from conspiracy?
Has anyone put together a list of primary and secondary Needle targets for matchups with poplular decks? For example against D&T if you are going in blind do you name Wasteland first, or Aether Vial?
This deck seems a little more fortunate against DnT's new cards.
Recruiter into Flickerwisp is dangerous still, but Not of This World can still counter that if you're running it - although the chump block hurts. This may simply be too slow.
Prelate of the Void doesn't seem to impact this deck as much as RG Lands. They can put it to 1 to stop discard and Crop, but they shut off their own Swords. It stops Needle, but I imagine Needle would come down much sooner. Putting it on 2 stops Scrying and Into the North, but can still naturally draw or Crop Rotate into necessary lands.
Very strong cards, but not as back breaking as Prelate on 1 or 2 against RG Lands (Gamble and Crop Rotate or Punishing Fire and Loam).
This. Plus it doesn't fit into the decks better draws. The turn 1 discard spell into turn two combo lets you see if the coast is clear, take counters/answers, win. Hymn does not fit there. In a grindier version, Hymn is probably great. In any of the turbo versions, the 1 drop targeted discard spells are better.
The recruiter is an issue if the standard D+T shell ends up going with a super light splash for a one of Magus of the Moon (Cavern on human, etc). It adds another layer that is difficult to play through. Slowing down and winning sideboard games with disruption spells works right now against mono white. Imo, it is the best plan in the match-up currently since trying to kill them fast is so unlikely to work. That plan becomes miserable if they are splashing a blood moon on legs that can be protected by Mother of Runes too.
I would never ever blind name against D+T on an early turn unless you absolutely have to or can play around all the other problem cards but one. T1 name Wasteland, they slam Karakas and vice versa. Plus, depending on the context of our hands, many cards are quality names. Is the game going to drag out a bit, naming Vial to fight tempo and flickerwisp happens. Forcing them to hard cast their threats can open up windows to go for it with a protection spell. Naming Port and even SFM or equipment happens from time to time. You really need to either wait to see the problem card(s) in play or see their hand with discard and know what to name before acting in most cases. Sometimes you get forced into a spot where you have to guess(like you lose to Wasteland on the spot if they have it), but that is really context specific.
The only cards I routinely name in the dark are Top against Miracles and Wasteland against Delver. There are some obvious calls against fringe decks like Goblin Charbelcher in Belcher on t1. If you have them or bring them in for a specific card like Sneak Attack, then that one can be named in the dark too (although Griselbrand is a good name there as well). Did you have any specific match-ups you were thinking about?
No specific situations. I'm just starting to pick up DD and was looking for some general guidelines for Needle targets. It's just kind of the way I process how to play a deck, constructing a general framework and matrix of options and then figuring out the specifics from there.
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