Thanks a lot for sharing your list!
1) Question: you play the EE package AND Drop of Honey. How would you replace the Drop in your list?
I went for:
-2 Drop
+1 EE
+1 Tracker
2) I tested your list (modified as mentionned above) yesterday against a friend of mine who was playing DnT (with black splash for Bob/Orzhov), and I went 0-2, 0-2, 0-2, 0-1 into friendly rage quit.
I didn't play the deck for month, and I certainly were a bit rusty, but still, it didn't expect the matchup to be that hard. Does it feel the same to you these days? i.e. that the matchup became significantly harder that it use to be? Or was it just a mixture between poor plays from me and bad luck?
I sided as followed: +3 Trackers, +1 EE, +4 KGrip // -1 Bojuka, -1 Karakas, -2 Maze, -1 Glacial Chasm, -2 Gamble, -1 Ghost Quarter. Maybe the problem was also my boarding choice (should I have kept the 2 Gamble?), please feel free to write what you think about that too. Thanks!
Before Drop I was running board wipes in that slot. Kozilek's Return before Leo and Heaven//Earth after.
I feel like you went for all the things you wanted but not all the things you could afford. 4 Grip I like, more removal I like too, but Trackers I think while they have their place you might have been better off leaving them in the side to keep Gamble and Maze. Gamble against DnT is really important. Forget about it getting Loam in this match, your often going for Grip. To either take out an RIP, an Equipment or an early Vial. Target the Vials with your grips too if you can. Make them spend their mana casting things and that takes away a lot of their early interaction. If they need 3 mana, they often can't be as liberal with their Wastelands. Maze is great here, because you can stop whatever overly equipped thing they want to beat you with.
The other thing is cut Quarters more. Against a deck with more than 6 Basics, its just fine to go down 2 GQ. They are not Wastelands here, they are tempo negative and only help if you are locking them down hard. Note that with hard control this is not as true, in the case of Miracles its best to try and run them out of White and GQ help with that.
I'm busy with preparing for MKM Barcelona at the moment and after some poor showings at my weekly with Storm I decided to run RGu lands instead. I've been very content with my list so far, but could use some tips and tricks with respect to sideboarding. Here's the list I'm currently testing:
4 Life from the Loam
4 Gamble
4 Crop Rotation
4 Exploration
4 Mox Diamond
3 Punishing Fire
1 Molten Vortex
1 Engineered Explosives
4 Wasteland
4 Ghost Quarter
3 Dark Depths
3 Thespian's Stage
3 Maze of Ith
3 Grove of the Burnwillows
2 Taiga
1 Tropical Island
1 Forest
1 Misty Rainforest
1 Windswept Heath
1 Verdant Catacombs
1 The Tabernacle at Pendrell Vale
1 Tranquil Thicket
1 Sheltered Thicket
1 Academy Ruins
1 Bojuka Bog
1 Karakas
1 Barbarian Ring
1 Glacial Chasm
Sideboard:
4 Sphere of Resistance
2 Chalice of the Void
3 Krosan Grip
2 Tireless Tracker
1 Ancient Tomb
2 Heaven // Earth
1 Crucible of Worlds
My main question about the mainboard is whether I have enough colored mana sources. So far it hasn't been a problem, but maybe people with more experience have some ideas about this. I used to run 61 cards with 4 fetch, but I often saw too many fetchlands without targets and I wanted to play 60 cards, so I cut a fetch. Now I've got 16 green sources and 14 red sources in the list. In general I'm very happy with how the maindeck feels. I'm more of a control player than fast combo player, so this suits my style better than straight R/G combo (then I prefer Turbo Depths actually). I've previously played a RGb version with 4x Molten Vortex and no Punishing Fire and after some games now with this build I really feel that the P-Fire suite is superior to Molten Vortex only, especially in G1 when there's little graveyard hate to worry about.
The sideboard is decent. I added an ancient tomb instead of Grip nr. 4, but I haven't gotten to test much again combo decks sadly (limited to cockatrice and my playgroup at the moment). Heaven/Earth has been tech I took from Dice_Box and they've been overperforming a lot. Really happy with those. I'm considering changing one Chalice for a Thorn of Amethyst if I can get my hands on one at the tournament. I'll still be making a sideboard guide for myself, but for this input is welcome. Basically I got the standard issue of what to take out. Typically against blue decks with many counterspells I take out 2-4 of a combination of Gamble and Crop Rotation because it's so horrible to those countered. Ghost Quarter is also often boarded out by 1-3 in almost every matchup and then Bojuka Bog, Karakas, Barbarian Ring, Maze of Ith and Academy Ruins/EE for those matchups that they are not relevant for. What I'd like to know is if people ever take out Explorations, Life from the Loams or Mox Diamonds? I sometimes take out a single Loam when I expect a lot of extraction effects.
Speaking of extraction effects, how do people play against these? Ideally, you want a cycle land or other instant draw effect to protect your loam, but with only 2 of those effects often in the deck, I experience that this is more of a luxury than a regular situation. Do you sandbag your loams? I used to play rather aggressively with my loams and P-Fires and that opened me up to some severe punishments a couple of times. Since then I'm more careful, but it is a difficult balance between waiting too long and dying before the engine works and slamming the engine too early so that you get disrupted all over the place. Getting my loams so regularly extracted is one of the reasons for me to run a Crucible in the board now.
In short, if anyone has a sideboard guide or other tips, all are welcome. I know Dice_Box is too busy to update the primer, but it would be really nice if we could get an up-to-date version of it. I have the time to write it, but not the experience yet with the deck. If it is of interest, I could write a draft based on info that is submitted through this topic.
Split CFB’s $4k with my usual RGu list.
1 Academy Ruins
1 Barbarian Ring
1 Bojuka Bog
3 Dark Depths
1 Forest
4 Ghost Quarter
1 Glacial Chasm
3 Grove of the Burnwillows
3 Maze of Ith
1 Misty Rainforest
1 Sheltered Thicket
2 Taiga
1 The Tabernacle at Pendrell Vale
3 Thespian's Stage
1 Tranquil Thicket
1 Tropical Island
1 Verdant Catacombs
4 Wasteland
1 Windswept Heath
4 Crop Rotation
1 Crucible of Worlds
2 Engineered Explosives
4 Exploration
4 Gamble
4 Life from the Loam
1 Molten Vortex
4 Mox Diamond
3 Punishing Fire
Sideboard:
1 Ancient Tomb
1 Chalice of the Void
1 Karakas
3 Krosan Grip
3 Sphere of Resistance
2 Surgical Extraction
2 Thorn of Amethyst
2 Tireless Tracker
Matchups:
R1: Elves 2-1
R2: Junk 2-0
R3: Nic Fit 2-0
R4: ANT 0-2
R5: BUG Delver 2-0
R6: BUG Delver 2-1
R7: BG pox 1-1-1 -> friend conceded to me
Quarters: Eldrazi and Taxes 2-0
Will probably write a small report later. I last minute switched my Needle to the chalice but wasn’t insanely impressed. Not sure what it’ll be. Karakas in the board was fine, I like having an additional cycle land Main.
Did anyone really tried Solemnity as a sideboard option for specific matchups and abuse of Glacial? Or was it left unchecked since the last time we've mentioned it here (so right after spoiler, if I am no wrong) and that was it? I'm curious if it's even worth testing in competitive meta, or is is just a wasted slot and effort.
EE has always been good. If they weren’t good I would play RG.
Molten vortex is a beast. Czech can’t usually beat it as they play one decay in the 75 and it’s nice insurance against decks packing blood moon. I would highly recommend a 3-1 split on fires and vortex.
The ANT MU was sort of expected, G1 he found the right mix of cards to play around an EE0 stopping double LED before I stripped him of basics. G2 I had a sphere of resistance + Chalice @0, but he found the Singleton By Force and killed me shortly after. I think the MU is still find postboard, I just kind of durdled with lock pieces in play without finding action.
"I hope someone clipped that, so I can watch myself getting punched in the dick. Repeatedly."
"I think my opponent is taking so long to reserve here cause they are smoking a cigarette after they just railed us in the anus."
Still not sure if I should include the vortex. I'm still on two tropical for my loving TW and still don't like those non-4-ofs which are dead when dead. How do you play it? Do you draw instead of loaming or just hope for it in your first hand or do you gamble for it...?
I'm thinking about a third EE right now... How can you bring me to the right path?
Question for those of you playing the 4x ghost quarter build: when playing against a deck with 3 or fewer basics (ANT, czech pile, reanimator... Etc), do you prioritize destroying basics with ghost quarter to minimize the number of times you need to use it before it becomes "stripmine", or do you prioritize destroying duals first to choke someone on colors, then start destroying their basics after?
Current Depths List: http://tappedout.net/mtg-decks/bg-hexmage-depths/
That's deck dependent. Against Combo I don't aim for their Lands with Quarter as I want to give them less access to shuffle effects, that is unless I can Choke them. Against a midrange deck with low basic counts I aim to run them out asap.
This is actually dependent on if I have Exploration as well. If I have an active Exploration I am more likely to aggressively Quarter. If I don't I will judge if I can take the Tempo loss.
I don't understand the question.
If a deck with 3 basics has 1 dual and 1 basic in play, GQ becomes a Strip Mine on the 3rd activation regardless of which land you target 1st. Might as well hit the dual (unless the basic provides a colour that the dual does not).
Edit - The only other reason to hit the basic is if you think you might see a Wasteland before you get your GQ back (eg, no Loam). In this case you might hit the basic with GQ so you'll still have a Wasteland target later.
Supremacy 2020 is the modern era game of nuclear brinksmanship! My blog:
https://fieldmarshalshandbook.wordpress.com
You can play Lands.dec in EDH too! My primer:
http://www.mtgsalvation.com/forums/t...lara-lands-dec
Question about dealing with Leovold.
Yestereday I was facing it in 3rd game, with DRS at his side. I destroyed DRS, then made some quick gimmicks to shut his mana down. Combining Quarter with Wastelands, in single turn I destroyed all his basic and 2 of 3 lands. Unfortunately, he had something like 90 cards in hand by then, that quickly became 4 lands, another DRS and Blood Moon one turn before my Choke.
Is Karakas the only realtively profitable option for us against Leo? Dice mentioned using Heaven // Earth in sideboard against him, yet I find it hard to use it properly with so much threat from DRS's and countermagic, unless you have Boseju in board.
Leovold doesn't effect us too badly because we don't take extra draws very often (we usually replace them). Ways to deal with Leovold:
That's all I've got off the top of my head. Maybe a pumped up Tracker?
- Don't let them get 3 coloured mana in the 1st place (easier in a Port build).
- Engineered Explosives (or SB tech like Drop of Honey or Song of the Dryads).
- Destroy all their Lands and kill it with Tabernacle.
- Glacial Chasm.
- Fly over it with a 20/20.
- Hit it with Karakas, double Vortex, double BRing. or double Punishing fire (gives them cards).
Supremacy 2020 is the modern era game of nuclear brinksmanship! My blog:
https://fieldmarshalshandbook.wordpress.com
You can play Lands.dec in EDH too! My primer:
http://www.mtgsalvation.com/forums/t...lara-lands-dec
Current Depths List: http://tappedout.net/mtg-decks/bg-hexmage-depths/
Here's my strategy:
Tax their mana while destroying their resources! It's the SAME game plan as every other deck. Just because Leovold denies us a draw with Tranquil Thicket doesn't mean we need to lose our shit. We still need to stay alive, we still need to prevent Jace and Blood Moon from happening. Nothing has changed.
Maze their attackers, Tabernacle their creatures, Wasteland/Ghost Quarter lock them out of the game. Use Punishing Fire to kill stragglers.
What good is a million cards if they don't have any mana to use them?
I followed this strategy against a Pile deck (granted, he didn't have Blood Moon) and ended up decking him at Legacy Champs. He took my Trackers, Depths and Wastelands by the time the game was over, but he couldn't stop me from decking him. All of his threats were dealt with by Maze and Tabernacle upkeeps and later Punishing Fire/Barbarian Ring. DRS never lived to untap.
♀
I played one of my worst tournaments ever last Sunday at the MKM Series Barcelona. I’m not sure if the meta was really this hostile towards lands or that it was bad luck, but my matchups were absolutely terrible. Without further ado:
R1: UW Miracles (0-2)
R2: Mono Red Stompy (1-2)
R3: Show and Tell (0-2)
R4: BReanimator (2-1)
R5: Elves! (1-1-1)
R6: BW Smallpox (2-0)
R7: ANT (0-2)
R8: Mono Red Painter (1-2)
Total record: 2-5-1.
So yes, 6 out of 8 matches had Blood Moon effects either mainboard or sideboard (the Elves! player had a small red splash). The SnT player never needed them out of the board as he had a turn two SnT into Griselbrand in our game 2 after he won game 1 as well, but I have no doubt he boarded them in.
I played the same list as I posted a few posts up. The list performed really well and I was happy with all my slots. I’m not sure if I would change anything. Maybe a second EE mainboard like Sparkii does, but that might just be because of all the Blood Moons that I faced, where it was my only out for a mainboard Blood Moon. I had expected to see a lot of D&T, Czech and Grixis Delver but I saw none of it across me… That just happens sometimes I suppose. I’ll give a summary of each match with some of the ‘highlights’ of my tournament.
Round 1 I started with a mulligan to six which was mediocre, but sadly pretty bad against miracles. I’ve played this match a couple of times now and I feel quite favoured in game 1 if I can get the loam or grove/Pfire engine running, but neither worked out for me. In game 2 he tapped out on turn 3 for a mentor. In my turn I Punishing Fire with Grove as backup against Surgical. He had FoW to keep the mentor alive, which I kind of expected. In his upkeep, I use Grove to get punishing fire back, to which he responds with a surgical on my P-Fire. I have a crop rotation in my hand that I use to respond to the mentor triggers and the surgical to get another Grove that gets my Punishing Fire back into my hand, which I then get to cast on the mentor. He has a Swords to plowshares on his token that he got from the FoW a turn earlier, so his mentor stays alive. In his mainphase he follows with a Snapcaster Mage on the Surgical to get rid of my Punishing Fires and basically wins the game from there on with a hoard of mentor tokens. I feel I played everything correctly here, but that he just had it all in game 2.
Round 2 I knew what I was up against as I saw this guy play next to me in round 1. In game 1, he started with a Chalice on 1, followed by a Blood Moon, a Trinisphere, an Ensnaring Bridge and another Blood Moon, but no pressure. I got a lucky topdeck for my EE, which removed most of the lock pieces. He let me resolve a gamble for Academy Ruins, so that I could get stuff going. I made a mistake to remove his chalice as this also removed my two Mox Diamonds that ensured I could make three colors under a future moon effect. I realized this error and tried to play around it, but I was also very busy establishing a Glacial Chasm lock as my life total was rather low by now. After shipping the turn a couple of turns later I suddenly realized I had to play EE on 3 pre-emptively because another Blood Moon would lock me out, which he found and we were on to game 2. Here I made happily use of the new rules interaction between Blood Moon and Dark Depths, playing it under a moon with a grip in my hand for a turn 4 kill. Game 3 he had turn two Blood Moon, followed by a Chalice on 1, Ensnaring Bridge and Lookout Spyglass on EE. There was nothing I could do here anymore…
Round three my opponent was stuck on a single island, while I was flooding in lands, drawing more and more lands. When he found his second land, a show and telled Omniscience closed the game quickly. Game 2 he had a turn two Show and Tell into Griselbrand to which I had no answer at that moment.
Round four my opponent reanimates a Sire of Insanity on turn 1 on the play of two lotus petals, but no actual lands. I luck out by drawing a land and then a crop rotation for a Tabernacle, which kills his creature as he hadn’t managed to find a land. He then makes a mistake by reanimating Griselbrand, going to 7 life, but not having a land still. Griselbrand dies in his next upkeep without ever drawing any cards and I take the game from there. Game two I get destroyed by an early Griselbrand and Tidespout Tyrant. In game three I keep a god-like hand of the following six cards: Exploration, Mox Diamond, Dark Depths, Thespian’s Stage, Bojuka Bog and Chalice of the Void. I play Diamond (discarding Bog), play chalice on 0 and dump the rest of my hand on the table. He had kept a turn 1 Blood Moon with an Ancient Tomb and either Lotus Petal or Chrome Mox, but couldn’t play this because of the Chalice. I draw a land for my next turn and as he casts the Blood Moon on his second turn, I make a 20/20 flying tentacle lady and kill him.
Round five I play against a local guy from the shop where I play my weeklies, who always plays Elves! I had a decent hand with an exploration and some other gas. He plays turn 1 land, Nettle Sentinel. I waste his land, play a Maze of Ith and prepare for a board position from which I can soon take full control over his board. On his second turn he attacks (untap with Maze) and then he plays Birchlore Ranger off a Gaea’s Cradle. Tap both elves to cast another Nettle Sentinel. Tap both Sentinels for a Glimpse of Nature. Tap both Sentinels for a new elf, draw a card. About twenty minutes later, he could have literally drawn his whole deck, but left a few cards in his library as the next creature he played would be lethal (he had played four Glimpses by this time). Because he already attacked, he couldn’t kill me with the Cradlehoof Behemoth. I top-decked a glacial chasm, but he got a complex loop going with Tasigur, Four Glimpse of Nature, Four Nettle Sentinels, Four Green Sun’s Zenith and a Collective Brutality, to essentially get to play (near) infinite copies of the Collective Brutality, draining all my life. This game took about 30-35 minutes, with me mostly watching as my opponent navigated through some rather complex loops. Game two I got another god hand and killed him the turn before he could Blood Moon me. Game three could have been interesting, but time was called too early and neither of us could win. He was in a better position, but I had a Heaven/Earth to clear his board, so the game was still alive. I scooped because I wanted to give him the chance of at least going 5-3 rather than 4-3-1 (he didn’t want to scoop).
Round six was against a rather strange BW deck with vindicates, smallpox, Liliana of the Veil and [CARDS]Myth Realized[\CARDS] as win condition. I killed him easily in game 1. In game two he put up more of a fight, which ended with him forcing me to make a 20/20 token in his main phase, so he could cast the innocent blood from his hand. As he looked through his deck after fetching for the required mana source, he realized there were no more targets available (the game had been dragging on quite long with a lot of silly draws) and inevitably got killed by my 20/20 in my turn.
Round seven I had the pleasure of getting destroyed by ANT. I didn’t have much pressure on game one as I couldn’t find a Stage to go with my Depths. I gave him too much time to sculpt his hand and kill me once I found the combo. Game two I had an early Sphere of Resistance, followed by another Sphere, hoping that it would prevent him from casting much. Sadly I was chocked a bit on lands and couldn’t cast much myself either (I did have Crop Rotation for Bog open though). He drew a lot of lands, which allowed him to keep casting cantrips and sculpt his hand for his combo turn. He found his Hurkyl’s Recall just by the time I had found gotten my Depths/Stage combo online. The Crop Rotation could not prevent him from going off as his hand was nearly perfect from all the sculpting that he had done. The game effectively revolved about him having to find his Recall before I could kill him, which he did.
Round eight I was paired against a young boy from Poland, who was there with his sister and dad who also played in the tournament. I had seen him play next to me in the previous round and when I saw him, I just laughed out loud. Mono Red Painter, just the perfect way to end my day filled with awkward/bad match ups and tons of Blood Moons. I punted several times in game one, as I was tired and annoyed with another terrible matchup. I have no clue if I could’ve won the game, but my mistakes didn’t help. Game two I opened with a forest, he had a turn 1 Blood Moon. Turn two I played Dark Depths, he played Painter’s Servant. Turn three I played a land and he played Grindstone. In his End Step I play Krosan Grip and kill him before he would mill me out. Game three he had another turn 1 Blood Moon of a SSG and an Ancient Tomb. I kept a hand with a Mox Diamond so I could at least play stuff. His turn two he plays Painter’s Servant on blue. I follow with an EE on 2, so even if he plays Grindstone next turn, he couldn’t activate it before I could blow up his Servant. Not only did he have the Grindstone though, he also had a Red Elemental Blast for my EE. I looked at my hand with a Gamble and Crop Rotation, facing the combo in his turn. I was a bit short on mana (missed a land drop) and there was literally nothing I could do to stop him. He had taken a mulligan into that hand… I’m not sure there was anything I could’ve done about his hand. This slaughter fest experience like the most typical ending of my day, which I felt consisted of an unusual amount of such bad luck moments.
I’ll hopefully be playing another tournament tomorrow with the same list (unless I get some suggestions here) to see if I can turn my luck around!
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