[Primer] Eldrazi Stompy

[Barook]

I wouldn't board out Chalices. They still hurt them alot, even if they die to Deed.

[razvan]

Would you mind breaking down your matches against nic fit? This has been a troublesome match up for me lately although the guy seems to always go t1 veteran Explorer into t2 siege rhino or some such non sense.

Just want to see how others are approaching the match up.

Well, as Barook said, don't board out chalices. As maraxus said, Warping Wail on Veteran Explorers. Don't attack randomly into them either.

As for my matches, I am not quite sure how lucky I have been getting in the 2 rounds. Abrupt Decay not hitting TKS and Reality Smasher is a biggie, and Matter Reshaper is a solid investment. World Breaker and Endbringer have been very solid as well, they are very hard to deal with outside of StP in the Abzan Nic Fit version.

The Punishing Fire version doesn't seem very good against us either. Yes, they can kill Mimics and Reshapers relatively easy, and I did take out Chalice vs. that one, siding in Thorns, Endbringers and All is Dust (took out Mimics too).

The Abzan version I just trimmed Mimics and Displacers and put in All is Dust, that one is very good, it just resets the board.

I also won by Spatial Distortion-ning my attackers, especially TKS and Smasher. A giant growth at a random time is quite good :)

[darkgh0st]

I went 3-1 today for FNM piloting the same list last week.

2-0 vs Lands
2-0 vs Reanimator
0-2 vs mirror (Gerry Thompson's list) lost due to bad draws both games
2-1 vs Miracles

Highlights today were:
- Endbringer stopping Marit Lage
- Metamorph copying a Marit Lage token
- copying an Iona vs Reanimator G1
- copying a Blazing Archon vs Reanimator G2
- Endbringer ending the game in a stalled board of two Blazing Archons
- Mull to 4 and win vs Reanimator (opening with a Leyline as well)
- Ratchet Bomb blowing up Moat and Jace vs Miracles G2 (I still lost due to Humility)
- Wastes avoiding Blood Moon Miracles G3

[Barook]

Call me crazy, but I've never noticed it before: We can, theoretically, run Birthing Pod. I'm well aware that it would cost a shitton of life and some tempo and thus it might be quite terrible, but hear me out while I'm still trying to wrap my head around this discovery:

We do have something like an actual chain:
Mimic --> Displacer or Reshaper (extra value!) --> TKS (probably only sacced for lethal alpha strikes) --> Smasher --> Endbringer (optional)

That alone isn't really mind-blowing. The more interesting aspect is the colorless tutoring for silver bullets aside from Displacer/TKS, e.g. for Reclamation Sage, Phyrexian Metamorph, Wasteland Stranger, etc.

Now the questions are:
a) What can we fetch to make the trouble worth it?
b) How do we stay alive between Ancient Tombs and lots of phyrexian mana payments?
c) Is there any legit 1-drop to bridge the gap?

[razvan]

Hmmm... interesting.

Well, to answer your questions:

a) The high-end chain of Eldrazi is pretty damn strong, although it's hard to envision sacrificing Reality Smasher, and World Breaker triggers on cast. So meh.
b) You can tutor for life gaining cards. I have used Pelakka Wurm in Lands before (with Living Wish).
c) Probably nothing we'd want. We have a ton of creatures, and Endbringer can be cast for one. Also, Hangarback Walker is a solid little thing?

I don't know how good it'll be but it definitely is impactful enough to warrant testing! Also, not to mention that Matter Reshaper sacrifice is neat.

[darkgh0st]

Birthing Pod seems like a different deck on its own. The best 1 drop I can think of for that is Veteran Explorer.

[Secretly.A.Bee]

Anyone plan on trying out the new Thalia? I think it would go amazing in an Eldrazi and Taxes list with SFM. Anyone thought about this at all?

[metronome2charisma]

Call me crazy, but I've never noticed it before: We can, theoretically, run Birthing Pod. I'm well aware that it would cost a shitton of life and some tempo and thus it might be quite terrible, but hear me out while I'm still trying to wrap my head around this discovery:

We do have something like an actual chain:
Mimic --> Displacer or Reshaper (extra value!) --> TKS (probably only sacced for lethal alpha strikes) --> Smasher --> Endbringer (optional)

That alone isn't really mind-blowing. The more interesting aspect is the colorless tutoring for silver bullets aside from Displacer/TKS, e.g. for Reclamation Sage, Phyrexian Metamorph, Wasteland Stranger, etc.

Now the questions are:
a) What can we fetch to make the trouble worth it?
b) How do we stay alive between Ancient Tombs and lots of phyrexian mana payments?
c) Is there any legit 1-drop to bridge the gap?

This was an idea i had months ago and its not really worth it in a pure eldrazi deck. I get the appeal though.

[iostream]

Anyone plan on trying out the new Thalia? I think it would go amazing in an Eldrazi and Taxes list with SFM. Anyone thought about this at all?

Here are my thoughts about how new Thalia might fit into some kind of Eldrazi deck. This is longwinded, and all theorycraft, but I think we gotta start somewhere.

First, I'd like to make a couple comments about what we've learned about white splashes from the last few months. The biggest obstruction to "true" (i.e. splashing for more than just Displacer) W/x Eldrazi lists is the mana. Consider Michael Majors's list from GP Columbus. He doesn't really run enough white sources (14, generously counting each Cavern as a full W source), and the ones he does run came at the expense of the Sol land count, which makes the deck much less explosive and calls into question the basic idea of the deck. Mimic/Endless One/TKS/Smasher is strong because it's an unbeatable curve when you get to make 2 mana a turn. But he has only 11 sol lands instead of 13-14 and surely opens tons of hands where turn 1 Mox Diamond would mess up the later part of the curve out because he has to pitch a Sol Land to it or because his hand simply doesn't contain enough lands. I mention the second thing because I actually saw Mox Diamond screw him over in this way at GP Columbus when he played one of my friends in Day 1.

Honestly, one gets the sense that the Wx versions of the deck are just "Eldrazi with some white cards that fill the curve better than the colorless alternatives", which might be true, but it does so at an unacceptable cost to the consistency of the deck. If one doubts this effect, perhaps one should consider why Colorless Eldrazi is the only version of the deck that ever seems to put up results, in paper or online.

So why might New Thalia actually help this sad situation? It is because it suggests a different, coherent gameplan for Eldrazi and Taxes. Consider the following statements, which at first glance seem to be true (but I have not verified myself from testing):

1) It synergizes very well with Old Thalia, which makes it seems like you're "supposed to" play even more white cards than Majors does.

2) It is a good three-drop, which has always been lacking in Eldrazi. Few people actually love Matter Reshaper, and indeed one of the main motivations for the Wx lists in the first place was to have a less crappy thing to do in that slot.

3) Finally, it "buys tempo" the same way Reality Smasher does. If you're even a little ahead on board, you are going to get damage in. Young Pyromancer tokens, Monastery Mentor tokens, and random creatures your opponent might try to cast in the hopes of slowing you down are always going to be late.

So perhaps what you're supposed to do is stop trying to execute the "unbeatable curve-out" and instead leverage the Thalia pair in order to be more controlling - be more like D+T than Eldrazi. You should run Thought-Knot and Displacer because (a) they are not expensive to cast and (b) they are disruption. Mimic, Endless One, and Reality Smasher are just fat beaters and not on plan.

This is potentially better than D+T because (a) your stuff doesn't just roll over and die to Shrivel effects, (b) you get to play Ancient Tomb and Chalice of the Void and thereby land your taxes earlier and (c) TKS is an extremely powerful Magic card. Also, this is a deck that will not have to pray to get a turn 2 versus ANT like D+T does. It will get to land something good on turn 1.

One observation is that if your curve stops at Thought-Knot Seer, Mox Diamond might actually become amazing. A good analogy for this point is 4-color Loam. It plays 4 Mox Diamonds and 26 lands and it does this with only two Loams and plays lots of games where it never dredges Loam even once. It is ok playing games where it has 2 lands in play and a Mox Diamond. That's because it is not trying to cast things that cost five. In the same way, we should endeavor to build a deck that can run the fast mana and will have nut draws that involve Ancient Tomb, but it's not utterly reliant on it.

I want to mention that the Stoneforge Mystic idea Secretly.A.Bee had fits perfectly into this plan because it gives the deck something powerful to do for not a lot of mana.

To summarize, I hope there is a Legacy equivalent of TKS Workshops in Vintage. You don't run any Eldrazi except for TKS, because that's the best one by far. The rest is all hate.

A grotesque first draft of these ideas is as follows:

3 Eldrazi Displacer
4 Phyrexian Revoker
4 Stoneforge Mystic
3 Thalia, Heretic Cathar
4 Thalia, Guardian of Thraben
4 Thought-Knot Seer

4 Chalice of the Void
4 Mox Diamond
1 Batterskull
1 Umezawa's Jitte
2 Dismember

4 Ancient Tomb
4 Cavern of Souls
4 Caves of Koilos
4 Eldrazi Temple
3 Karakas
3 Plains
4 Wasteland

[bonkotsu]

Here are my thoughts about how new Thalia might fit into some kind of Eldrazi deck. This is longwinded, and all theorycraft, but I think we gotta start somewhere.

First, I'd like to make a couple comments about what we've learned about white splashes from the last few months. The biggest obstruction to "true" (i.e. splashing for more than just Displacer) W/x Eldrazi lists is the mana. Consider Michael Majors's list from GP Columbus. He doesn't really run enough white sources (14, generously counting each Cavern as a full W source), and the ones he does run came at the expense of the Sol land count, which makes the deck much less explosive and calls into question the basic idea of the deck. Mimic/Endless One/TKS/Smasher is strong because it's an unbeatable curve when you get to make 2 mana a turn. But he has only 11 sol lands instead of 13-14 and surely opens tons of hands where turn 1 Mox Diamond would mess up the later part of the curve out because he has to pitch a Sol Land to it or because his hand simply doesn't contain enough lands. I mention the second thing because I actually saw Mox Diamond screw him over in this way at GP Columbus when he played one of my friends in Day 1.

Honestly, one gets the sense that the Wx versions of the deck are just "Eldrazi with some white cards that fill the curve better than the colorless alternatives", which might be true, but it does so at an unacceptable cost to the consistency of the deck. If one doubts this effect, perhaps one should consider why Colorless Eldrazi is the only version of the deck that ever seems to put up results, in paper or online.

So why might New Thalia actually help this sad situation? It is because it suggests a different, coherent gameplan for Eldrazi and Taxes. Consider the following statements, which at first glance seem to be true (but I have not verified myself from testing):

1) It synergizes very well with Old Thalia, which makes it seems like you're "supposed to" play even more white cards than Majors does.

2) It is a good three-drop, which has always been lacking in Eldrazi. Few people actually love Matter Reshaper, and indeed one of the main motivations for the Wx lists in the first place was to have a less crappy thing to do in that slot.

3) Finally, it "buys tempo" the same way Reality Smasher does. If you're even a little ahead on board, you are going to get damage in. Young Pyromancer tokens, Monastery Mentor tokens, and random creatures your opponent might try to cast in the hopes of slowing you down are always going to be late.

So perhaps what you're supposed to do is stop trying to execute the "unbeatable curve-out" and instead leverage the Thalia pair in order to be more controlling - be more like D+T than Eldrazi. You should run Thought-Knot and Displacer because (a) they are not expensive to cast and (b) they are disruption. Mimic, Endless One, and Reality Smasher are just fat beaters and not on plan.

This is potentially better than D+T because (a) your stuff doesn't just roll over and die to Shrivel effects, (b) you get to play Ancient Tomb and Chalice of the Void and thereby land your taxes earlier and (c) TKS is an extremely powerful Magic card. Also, this is a deck that will not have to pray to get a turn 2 versus ANT like D+T does. It will get to land something good on turn 1.

One observation is that if your curve stops at Thought-Knot Seer, Mox Diamond might actually become amazing. A good analogy for this point is 4-color Loam. It plays 4 Mox Diamonds and 26 lands and it does this with only two Loams and plays lots of games where it never dredges Loam even once. It is ok playing games where it has 2 lands in play and a Mox Diamond. That's because it is not trying to cast things that cost five. In the same way, we should endeavor to build a deck that can run the fast mana and will have nut draws that involve Ancient Tomb, but it's not utterly reliant on it.

I want to mention that the Stoneforge Mystic idea Secretly.A.Bee had fits perfectly into this plan because it gives the deck something powerful to do for not a lot of mana.

To summarize, I hope there is a Legacy equivalent of TKS Workshops in Vintage. You don't run any Eldrazi except for TKS, because that's the best one by far. The rest is all hate.

A grotesque first draft of these ideas is as follows:

3 Eldrazi Displacer
4 Phyrexian Revoker
4 Stoneforge Mystic
3 Thalia, Heretic Cathar
4 Thalia, Guardian of Thraben
4 Thought-Knot Seer

4 Chalice of the Void
4 Mox Diamond
1 Batterskull
1 Umezawa's Jitte
2 Dismember

4 Ancient Tomb
4 Cavern of Souls
4 Caves of Koilos
4 Eldrazi Temple
3 Karakas
3 Plains
4 Wasteland

Very good read. Obviously there would be changes and tweaks but it is a start. I have been tinkering with some thoughts on it too and your thought process is very correct. I think it isn't without reason to have maindeck crucible or two. I would probably put in some number of metamorph also, testing with the card has been glorious. Its pretty hard to fit everything you want into maindeck.

[iostream]

Very good read. Obviously there would be changes and tweaks but it is a start. I have been tinkering with some thoughts on it too and your thought process is very correct. I think it isn't without reason to have maindeck crucible or two. I would probably put in some number of metamorph also, testing with the card has been glorious. Its pretty hard to fit everything you want into maindeck.

I agree, both Metamorph and Crucible seem like great ideas!

[Cire]

@ iostream: excellent post! My only comment at the moment is that I don't think one should dismiss Smasher that readily. I understand that its not on plan, but it is such an efficent beater that i almost think it doesn't matter. For example vintage white eldrazi still runs it. Even the most recent succesful eldrazi shop vintage list ran it (http://www.mtggoldfish.com/articles/...ly-extravagant)

[Secretly.A.Bee]

I agree that Smasher shouldn't be left out. So turn 1 you Ancient Tomb and diamond. Play Thalia 2.0. They play tapped land, say go. Now you can quite literally play out your Eldrazi Temple or any other sol land and cast and swing with Smasher and Thalia on Turn 2 with disruption in play for 8. If it's a TKS, any land gets it cast in that scenario. It's far too powerful to exclude based just on being too high of a "high end" cmc, especially when it acts as disruption when it gets removed.

[iostream]

I agree that Smasher shouldn't be left out. So turn 1 you Ancient Tomb and diamond. Play Thalia 2.0. They play tapped land, say go. Now you can quite literally play out your Eldrazi Temple or any other sol land and cast and swing with Smasher and Thalia on Turn 2 with disruption in play for 8. If it's a TKS, any land gets it cast in that scenario.

It's certainly possible that Smasher is good enough to get in there, but with the reduced Sol land count and reliance on Mox Diamond that I'm suggesting, it will certainly be harder to cast. Your situation is the ideal one if you get lucky. Sometimes, you will keep a 3-lander with no Sol lands or only one Sol land and go non-Sol land, Mox Diamond, pitch a land, cast Thalia 1.0 or Chalice. Then you will need to topdeck a land in order to cast Smasher, which may or may not happen, and that's assuming you're not playing against Wastelands!.

I can imagine more than zero is correct since the effect really is strong, but I think if you run the full four, you will find them stranded in your hand pretty often. This is the kind of question that testing should resolve!

[iostream]

@ iostream: excellent post! My only comment at the moment is that I don't think one should dismiss Smasher that readily. I understand that its not on plan, but it is such an efficent beater that i almost think it doesn't matter. For example vintage white eldrazi still runs it. Even the most recent succesful eldrazi shop vintage list ran it (http://www.mtggoldfish.com/articles/...ly-extravagant)

I should note that I was the 8th place non-TKS Workshop pilot in that tournament, and I didn't run TKS because I found even that too hard to cast. As this illustrates, my approach to mana is extremely conservative. I prefer to cut powerful cards if I'm not 100% sure I can cast them reliably. This is just a playstyle thing and maybe other people are less risk-averse than I am and will make different choices!

[Cire]

I should note that I was the 8th place non-TKS Workshop pilot in that tournament, and I didn't run TKS because I found even that too hard to cast. As this illustrates, my approach to mana is extremely conservative. I prefer to cut powerful cards if I'm not 100% sure I can cast them reliably. This is just a playstyle thing and maybe other people are less risk-averse than I am and will make different choices!

Completely fair - but using that tournaments white Eldrazi list as a base the following mana base apparently worked: 8 white sources, 4 of which were Caverns (and 1 of them was a black lotus ), for 3 Eldrazi Displacers and 9(!) non-Eldrazi cards (of which only 6 shared a creature type). Now obviously we don't have a black lotus - but it seems that even running around 8-10 white sources, including caverns, should be enough to support up to 12 white cards. Compare to your list where you run up to 18(!) white sources for 14 cards. Now obviously risk-aversion is a fair point, but I think that the vintage tournament shows that 18 sources may be past risk aversion and more paranoia. 2 extra cards shouldn't require 8-10 additional mana sources.

Taking your list and building off from it - I would go back to Smasher over SFM, as I think smasher is just a more powerful card and it further reduces the need for white mana. This also opens you up to running up to two metamorphs. Additionally, using the above theory of running less white sources - we can go back to running more Sol lands which only increases your chances of landing turn 2 TKS.

ET - Eldrazi & Thalia

4 Phyrexian Revoker
4 Thalia, Guardian of Thraben
4 Thought-Knot Seer
3 Reality Smasher
3 Thalia, Heretic Cathar
3 Eldrazi Displacer
2 Phyrexian Metamorph

4 Chalice of the Void
4 Mox Diamond
2 Dismember
2 Umezawa's Jitte

4 Ancient Tomb
4 Cavern of Souls
4 Wasteland
4 Eldrazi Temple
2 Karakas
2 Plains
2 Caves of Koilos
2 City of Traitors
1 Eye of Ugin

Again, just like you - there has been no testing on this - this is pure theory craft at this point.

[metronome2charisma]

Isn't the new thalia legendary? the only version I've seen is in Italian. Here are my thoughts . white sources being of a premium because you obviously want a good amount of sol lands i would play lotus petal over the mox just to keep my land drops. i would imagine the smasher count gong down to 3 just because getting to 5 mana will be slightly harder but i think will be a non issue most games . As was already stated i think metamorph is really good here as is sprit of the labyrinth .

[darkgh0st]

The Eldrazi core is so aggressive and I believe should always be included in the list. I agree Matter Reshaper is still replacable.

I would start with (as my skeleton)
16 Eldrazi core
X Displacer
3/4 old Thalia
3/4 new Thalia
4 Chalice
2 Mox
25 lands

Wastelands are an auto-include for me as well. Now you have a lot of both suppresive and aggressive elements.

I have a liking for Suppression Field as well, but may end up in the SB.

[Cire]

@ darkgh0st: what are you considering Eldrazi Core?

[drude1]

WhT do you mean by new Thalia?

Also, I've been playing a version of this deck online for a while now and have noticed some trends. So far I am undefeated against miracles, death&taxes, and storm; but I haven't won a match against Grixis delver, and that deck is very popular right now. Any recommendations for that MU?


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