I still think you are dead wrong about writing 14 dredgers. It is 12 dredgers and 2 shambling shells. But I fully disagree that shell reduces mulligan that much as I tried shell, and with it as the only dredger in my opening hand, I mulliganed a third of the hands. Depending on the MU I sometimes mull hands with Golgari Thug in it. I have cut shells couple of years ago, and did not look into playing them again anytime soon. I would play 1-2 serum powder before that for sure.Originally Posted by Final Fortune
Last WE, on the 20 matches we played with the exact same list Julien and me (I played manaless only at the friday trial, not the bom event), we won 19 game one (not statistically relevant, but well). We won a fair share of our games one thanks to FoW and/or CotA (we played 6 combo decks and 2 infect). With a shell there, it would have been losses. I don't see what is "superfluous" in having disruption, knowing that roughly one fifth of the decks are faster than us, one third play DRS. You say mulliganing is bad because it is a time walk? I say the disruption often gives you a time walk as well.
To go back to your land analogy, Shambling shells come into play tapped. In most decks I would rather play one less land rather than replace one with a comes into play tapped effect.
Running combo creature in the Chancellors of the Annex slots does not make much sense. First because against most decks, a reanimated CotA equates a win, second because revealing a merfolk never did anything. It is funny you speak about unmask instead of FoW MD and then insist on not getting timewalk'ed by mulliganing to 6: FoW is much better tempo-wise than unmask will ever be.
For someone who doesn't want to get time walked by mulliganning to 6, doesn't Unmask make sense because you can Unmask yourself instead of relying on the Cleanup step to get things done? If you're playing the full set of Chancellors it sounds like you would gain a lot of tempo if you were put on the play, revealed a Chancellor, and just put a dredger in the graveyard on your first turn.
I would be more comfortable here by just discard at cleanup and having a fow to save me from whatever my opponent has which is really threatening. Best thing is to win with fow & pitch in hand.
Tempowise, you are not necesserily better either. Your opponent will get what he paid for.
For me personally, I've never liked Unmask in that capacity, even though I understand and respect the fact that it can enable faster dredging and protection against a turn-one Deathrite Shaman. However, if I were playing Unmask, I would want either more Shells or a full set of Phantasmagorian. The potential is there to whiff while triple-Time Walking your opponent, which is extremely bad. Granted, there are some card combinations that could get you out of that scenario (like Therapy and a Narcomoeba or hitting a Phantasmagorian), but is it really worth the risk to use it in that capacity?
I'd much rather personally stick with Chancellor and play Street Wraith and some number of Phantasmagorian. Force doesn't have to be main, but it certainly helps in the flex slots main to alleviate sideboard space. I kind of keep being haunted by Serum Powder, because I want to believe this card was just made for a deck like this. There's just so much redundancy in there that I'm not sold that it (Powder) being something else is better than some other card it would theoretically be replacing, because its effect is incredibly unique.
I've shelved the card multiple times to try different combinations, but I'm beginning to wonder if playing a pair is optimal.
Serum Powder is a reasonable substiution for Shambling Shell on the mulligan, but for the rest of the game you're losing density for Nether Shadow and a target for Ichorid, so it does't necessarily make the deck any more consistent.
If you mulligan every hand with Shambling Shell, then that's your player error and not the deck's fault, as Dredge 3 is preferable to Dredge 5 and a Time Walk vs a lot of match ups game 1. Also the problem of 12 Dredgers just compounds itself mulligan after mulligan, because you have less odds to draw a Dredger on your first mulligan and will have to double Time Walk your opponent i.e. concede vs anything that isn't Miracles.
I think you're kidding yourself if you believe that Force of Will is going to save you vs. combo when they have at least 4 Gitaxian Probe, 4 Cabal Therapy and 2 Duress to bypass your disruption, and while Force of Will is better vs Deathrite Shaman it requires you to play blue reanimation targets and/or Gitaxian Probes for a blue count that is no where as consistent as the black count is for Unmask. Where Unmask is better than Force of Will is that it's never a dead card in your hand and it doesn't dictate that you have to keep those blue creatures and spells in your deck to support it, so you can either more easily SB in other answers for combo or SB in Unmask as one of those answers to combo if you MD the combo creatures and the Chancellor of the Annex in the 4 flex slots.
I don't think you understood my point but you supported it with your reply, the blue combo creatures aren't really necessary for anything other than supporting Force of Will because reanimating Chancellor of the Annex is just as good as Whirlpool Rider/Flayer of the Hatebound at ending the game, so why not remove the combo creatures for Chancellor of the Annex for utility, keep the Shambling Shells for consistency, play Unmask for disruption and just SB in Mindbreak Trap for Storm? You have maximum redundancy for Deathrite Shaman and keep your outside chance vs combo by cutting Force of Will and blue combo creatures and can keep the SB space for other options vs Reanimator or whatever.
Sure, there will be games where your opponent chooses to play first, draws a turn 1 hand and decides to take the coin flip vs Force of Will, but really what the disruption slot does is make the opponent spend B first in order to go off safely. So it's not that Force of Will isn't a better card than Unmask, it's that Force of Will costs you else where to play it and they sort of accomplish the same thing regardless vs combo.
In case the list I'm talking about isn't clear from the context of the argument, I mean something like;
MD
4 Golgari Grave Troll
4 Stinkweed Imp
4 Golgari Thug
4 Shambling Shell
4 Phantasmagorian
4 Street Wraith
4 Narcomoeba
4 Nether Spirit
4 Ichorid
4 Prized Amalgram
4 Bridge from Below
4 Dread Return
4 Cabal Therapy
4 Unmask
4 Chancellor of the Annex
SB
4 Mindbreak Trap
I have played storm and I have played against storm more than a couple of time with manaless.
FoW is an excellent card. It is by no means a bullet-proof solution, but needing to play a discard quite often requires storm to lose a turn. I have won games only because my opponent sees FoW being dredged, and play a cabal naming it instead of trying to go off. Next turn I can win and/or therapy him.
We are a very fast deck, especially considering at which speed we fire our therapies, which are the important cards in the combo MU. Putting them in the position to chose between going off and risking to die to FoW or waiting and risking the therapy is a very sound approach.
I wrote a third, not every. If you keep every hand with shambling shell, then it is your player error. :)
I definitely prefer an average 6 cards hand with a dredge 5 in it than a full grip with shell but no action (SW, probe, CotA, FoW).
Actually I would run a whirlpool target even if I wasn't playing FoW. It is arguably the best possible reanimation target. Probe is a free draw, I run it too because of its power, not for FoW.
It seems that you believe that storm is everywhere. FoW is just an excellent card against 90% of the field, not just storm. I FoW plenty of other cards ranging from thalia, BS, some DRS, Young pyro, bolt, terminus, invigorate, NO, glimpse, daze, Fow,...
Regarding your list, you play 16 creatures that come back from your Gy and 12+4 dredgers. Yes, no doubt it is very consistent. Much more than anything I would play. But not very able to do anything else than hoping this plan works. Manaless is a very consistent deck, with strong weaknesses. Why try to increase the consistency?
Indulge me to draw a parallel to another deck that I master better. For me, elves is the deck I played with the most. Your list looks like the one which are playing 4 heritage druid, 4 nettle and 2-3 birchlore, while I always favoured lists containing Ooze, sage and WR packmaster MD.
There's no point in using a blue dread return target over a black dread return target if you aren't playing Foce of Will, and while Gitaxian Probe is a good card for gold fishing I think it makes the deck vulnerable to counters which reduce the hand size below 8 for draw, discard, dredge.
Ofcourse you Force of Will other targets, the same as you Unmask other targets. The only difference is Force of Will is better vs combo, Deathrite Shaman and Thalia, Guardian of Thraben than Unmask at the cost of being less consistent in terms of the total number of cards you have to pitch to it and more restrictive in terms of the cards you have to play to pitch to it. Unmask makes up ground by being more consistent in terms of the total number of cards you have to pitch to it and the fact that you can remove otherwise worthless, blue creatures from the deck in favour of a card that does something when drawn.
The entire point of playing Manaless Dredge is the consistency, the less consistent people have made the deck for whatever reason the worse it has faired, and considering no one plays hate that would punish Manaless Dredge for relying on the combat phase as opposed to the combo to win the game I don't see any reason to play blanks in the deck just for Force of Will when Chancellor of the Annex can cap the point vs Storm and you can just keep turning creatures side ways.
Regardless of how you stack the deck, cutting Force of Will and relying on Unmask and Mind Break trap vs the Storm match up lets you fit in 4 more anti-storm cards by switching out the blue creatures that support Force of Will for disruption of any kind. And keeping the blue count for Force of Will, be it by blue having blue creatures or cutting Shambling Shell eventually costs you in terms of total disruption and overall consistency.
I don't think Storm is every where, I bring up Storm a lot because it's one of the only archetypes that are faster than us and that we can SB for. Being as consistent as possible with 16 Dredgers, as resistent as possible vs Deathrite Shaman and having a card that keeps the opponent off of a T3 gold fish is just as important to me and why I'm looking at Unmask over Force of Will, Chancellor of the Annex over combo creatures and not cutting Shambling Shell.
I don't think Dredge needs a plan B like Elves, it has near infinite resource generation in comparison, but if Moat (or whatever) were to become an issue then a combo kill could take up 3 slots in the SB. It basically only makes us vulnerable vs lands game 1, which is really rare to see across the table. And considering we picked up Amalgram to add to the beats clock, I don't think the combo is really necessary for speed as opposed to just sphereing the opponent.
River kelpie was played before FoW. I would still run a blue target without FoW, most probably whirlpool drake. It instantly wins the game. What black target can beat the whirlpools?
Forget about the pitch consistency. It is a non issue. You have a lot of pitches, largely enough. Presideboard I play 17 U card, it is close to what infect, shardless, reanimator are playing. Try it, you'll see that the no pitch situation happen, but is quite uncommon (less than 10% of cases).
I don't know with what you are backing your first assertion. On the no one is playing a hate that would punish the use of main phase damage, I fully disagree. At least half of the legacy decks can use the additional turn you give them to either kill you or prevent you to kill them.
If you start to put 4 cards in your 75 that are good against a single MU, represented in the 5-10% range, and not a bad one at that, I do believe that you have a deckbuilding problem.
Pray tell me, why are you even listing only 4 cards in SB, and these four cards happen to be Mindbreak Trap then?
The thing is you can write 16 dredgers as much as you want and claim consistency, it is simply not true. Shambling shell is nowhere close to the first 12 dredgers.
It is like saying that you added 4 sleight of hands to your 4 brainstorm and 4 ponder, and so with 12 cantrips you have more consistency.
Only vulnerable to lands? ?
While I agree CotA is excellent vs most decks, there is a good reason why Maverick & DT (thalia) or Mud (Lodestone) are not the uncontested DTBs. It is not a gg by any means.
Especially if there is already a threatening board state across the table.
This deck took 6th at a 232-person Legacy side event during GP Kyoto.
Thoughts on the list?
Some notables:
- 3x MD Chancellor
- 4x SB Force of Will
- 2x SB Whirlpool Rider
- 3x SB Sickening Shoal and no Contagion
http://www.hareruyamtg.com/jp/k/kD15374S/
The finish is impressive. Not really understanding anything beyond the decklist- it looks like that happy place of inclusion with both disruption and protection. Not surprised it's a Spy list. I'm not as big on spy as other choices, but it's worth trying out. I'd be interested in hearing the rationale between swapping from the Spy to Rider option, maybe if it's just a straight - is this person playing storm, or going to make a T1 play that needs countering (which could almost include anything with cage or a quick RiP).
Last edited by ahg113; 09-16-2016 at 10:22 AM.
B/c it increases the number of times you manage to win on T2. Speed is as dangerous as any counter. You force your opponent to "have it", if they don't they die the following turn.
Well... Balustrade Spy > Drake as long as you don't play lands (obviously). And Griselbrand is pretty badass too. DR'ing Griselbrand can be enough to take over a game without executing the rest of your combo. It can also draw into your precious counters, be it FoW or Mindbreak Trap. Try doing that with a Drake in response to something being cast.
Spy is the shit, dude.
Anyways, how much longer are we going to bitch about Shambling Shell? It's a shitty dredger, but probably a necessary evil. Games where you start out with any other dredger have a better chance of ending well than those you start with Shell, but games where you start with Shell are by no means lost from the get go. Alrighty? Moving on.
In other things - I might be piloting Manaless tomorrow. Now, I'm on a Spy-list but can't for the life of me figure out where to cram in a set of Chancellors across the 75. Here's the 75 I'm on right now:
4 Golgari Grave-Troll
4 Stinkweed Imp
4 Golgari Thug
3 Shambling Shell
4 Ichorid
4 Prized Amalgam
4 Nether Shadow
4 Narcomoeba
3 Balustrade Spy
1 Flayer of the Hatebound
1 Progenitus
4 Phantasmagorian
4 Street Wraith
4 Gitaxian Probe
4 Cabal Therapy
4 Dread Return
4 Bridge from Below
SB:
3 Vengeful Pharaoh
4 Contagion
4 Unmask
4 Mindbreak Trap
Thing is, I both want to be able to kill creatures and improve my Storm MU. Seriously, watching an opponent trying to squirm their way out of Vengeful Pharaoh is fucking hilarious.
Anywho, anybody got any suggestions on what 4 cards to cut?
Edit: At the moment I'm thinking -1 DR, -1 Spy, -1 Probe and -1 Phantasmagorian in favor of +4 Chancellor of the Annex. Keep in as much business as possible, have Chancellor as backup DR target. DR'ing Chancellor should be sufficient in lieu of Spy vs. Storm. At least to buy the time you need to finish the Storm pilot off.
Last edited by Echelon; 09-16-2016 at 03:25 AM.
I understand that spy and griselbrand can be pitched to ichorid, but fail to understand how that this make them so much better that it overcome their terrible drawbacks. Griselbrand is not that hot once you cannot activate it, which is far from uncommon. In your list, it seems you are playing a progenitus MD, aka one of the worst possible cards for the deck, just to accommodate it. I know it is not necessary MD, but is quite common in SBs. Losing a SB slot only to have your DR target pitch to ichorid looks silly to me. Not to mention that whirlpool is better at playing around hate such as tormod or relic.
Shell, shadow, progenitus?
@dte: Thank you for your suggestions. Perhaps I will cut a Shell so I can keep in Probe no. 4.
Progenitus is one of the best cards in the deck. It says I only need to resolve 1 DR to ensure I win the game. All I have to do is resolve the Spy trigger before I can start pounding my opponent for 30+ combat damage turn after turn (and this is a scenario where I do not get a single token from my Bridges, which I think is a very fair assumption). How many decks out there can power through that? And as long as you can discard Progenitus to handsize you can't deck yourself, now can you.
As for Griselbrand: Yes, a 7/7 flying, lifelinker is a worthless thing to have. If your opponent doesn't have an answer to it, it probably stops them right in their tracks. If they don't, you're probably up anywhere between 7 to 14 life by the end of your next turn. And they're dead a couple of turns later. Sure, you fold to Karakas, but what do you do?
Edit:
You play around Tormod by keeping your hand full, you play around Relic by dumping a few cards in your graveyard at the same time and then keeping your hand full. That has nothing to do with Spies or Whirlpool creatures, that's just making sure you can restart the engine after they pop their GY sweeper.
Whirlpool says exactly the same, but without needing to have a progenitus in your deck. I have reanimated him hundreds of times, and never lost a game where reanimating spy would have won. I won some game where reanimating spy would not have been possible though.
I do not say that grisel is bad. I say it is less good than a creature on which there is written, when it enters the battlefield, win the game.
Yes, you have to keep your hand full but you also have to try to make them crack it ASAP. Waiting a couple of turns because they can afford to wait delay when you'll start to go off for real. And while Reanimating a Spy is impossible (they will say "sure" and remove your gy in response to the narco triggers), you can reanimate whirlpool and decide exactly how many dredge you do, forcing them to crack it while discarding your dredger in the end of the turn with half your library waiting.
Most people are horrible with that. 90% of the time that thing gets cracked right after your first dredge, lol. Bunch of crazies.
The interesting thing about that is that most of the players - very good players - I've ran into don't play Relic in their board. It's always usually Extraction, Cage or Rest in Peace. Relic sees play in non-blue sideboards, so perhaps it's a result of non-blue players not being as skilled as blue players? (Sounds biased I'm sure, but it's just the trend I've seen.)
I can totally see why spy is the best DR target but I wonder how much worse whirlpool drake is, possibly giving you up to 14 dredges. The upside is of course that it ups the blue count for fow. On the other hand phantasmagorian gets worse if your on the whirlpool plan. All of this is just theory however. Can any of you veterans elaborate on how it actually plays out?
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I'm guessing the *shuffle* part of Surgical Extraction etc. helps to disrupt top and brainstorm enough for it to have multiple uses, not just to hate on graveyard decks like dredge. I have to wonder if it worth doing - IE. you're playing black discard, baiting a player to use their brainstorm/top etc. to hide their answers/business/hate, then using Extraction on something of little/no relelvance just to shuffle away what they want to keep.
Quite well, actualy. I've managed to combo off with Drake with just 2 cards in hand. Just kill the Drake off w/ a CT and DR it a second time to keep the party going.
@the hate thing - I don't think it's a blue/non-blue player thing. You either just know how to play against the deck, or you don't. Those that do typically need just the little hate they bring, those that don't fail to use the hate properly.
Anyways - I think I'm dropping the 4 Contagion from my SB in favor of 4 CotA. DRS I can beat are the MUs I usually don't SB for (and where Chancellor is probably better than Contagion anyway) and I rarely see Containment Priest anymore.
That may change given the potential resurgence of Death and Taxes.
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