I think we'll have to wait and see tbh. There are a handful of decks we'll be happy to see have a resurgence such as S&T, storm, and SFM decks. On the other hand, I think we'll be seeing more lightning bolts being cast - which I've found to be absolutely abominable for this deck. Likewise with elves which should see an increase in play. Grixis delver will definitely be a DTB and I'd put that matchup at about 50/50.
I won't be dropping any revokers because of the ban. I'd wager that revoker will be even better in the new meta.
On another note, I switched from mox diamonds to lotus petals. I started by asking myself every time I drew a diamond if I'd rather have a petal and it was always yes. It's a huge difference, and it's made the deck so much more fluid. I found myself always regretting dropping a land to diamond, only to later miss a crucial land drop and subsequently feeding that damned elf shaman. Just ask yourself next time you draw a diamond - wouldn't you rather have a petal? I know it's a contentious topic, and I used to be on the other side of the fence, but I think playing 3 cities helps mitigate the "loss" of permanent mana diamond sometimes provided.
25 Land
4 Ancient Tomb
4 Eldrazi Temple
3 Cavern of Souls
3 Wasteland
3 Karakas
3 City of Traitors
5 Plains
11 Artifact
4 Chalice of the Void
1 Batterskull
1 Umezawa's Jitte
4 Lotus Petal
1 Sword of Fire and Ice
24 Creature
4 Stoneforge Mystic
4 Thought-Knot Seer
4 Thalia, Guardian of Thraben
4 Eldrazi Displacer
3 Reality Smasher
3 Phyrexian Revoker
2 Thalia, Heretic Cathar
SIDEBOARD
2 Thorn of Amethyst
2 Containment Priest
2 Mirran Crusader
2 Rest in Peace
2 Seal of Cleansing
3 Swords to Plowshares
2 Blessed Alliance
One thing crossing my mind is now that Counterbalance is dead do we need Cavern of Souls? It's obviously still great versus Delver, but there are going to be a lot more Wastelands running around and this deck is particularly vulnerable to mana denial. If we cut the Caverns we can have 8-9 Plains or start running some number of Wastes (which also shores up Blood Moon).
I personally know that for all the times I've dropped an uncounterable threat vs Delver, I've had other matches where I was just wastelanded out of the game. More basics would also help vs D&T where Cavern basically is just a dual land.
I'm also considering adding Sanctum Prelate back to the mainboard. With no Miracles and less Decay Prelate on 1 should be as back-breaking as ever.
I like cavern because besides the old Miracles you will see enough other blue decks and you want humans+eldrazi stick, getting something important daze feels bad...
I may be the only one but Pontiff gets really better now (Elves/TNN/more fast Combo: Goblintoken) and Cavern works good to splash it. I currently run 6 Plains and 3 Moxes so even Blood Moon isn't so good vs this deck.
I tinker around with Mindcensor and C.Priest Main - aiming against Elves&Meta Shift
TEAM MtG Berlin
Note my suggestion was just as much predicated on an increase in Wasteland as it was a decrease in softlocks like counterbalance.
I'm not saying permission is dead. I'm saying there's going to be more wastelands out there, which I have lost to just as much as counterspells.
Given all the mana acceleration in this deck I have never had aproblem playing around Daze. If my opp. wants to 2-1 themselves with Force I'm also fine with that.
edit: Thraben University/D&T players are also considering cutting Cavern -- to quote:
I’m not actually sure that Cavern of Souls is good anymore; trading creatures one for one with counterspells is fine, it was just the fear of getting locked out by a Counterbalance that pushed players to try two or three copies of the card. If I were to play mono-white, I’d try other lands in this slot for a little while. Horizon Canopy, Mishra’s Factory,
and Ghost Quarter all seem like reasonable inclusions. Cavern sort of functions as a dual land with upside in the splash builds, so it might still be fine there.
Last edited by Kaono; 04-26-2017 at 02:16 PM.
Cavern is much different in our deck than in DnT. They have vial to combat counters and more threats than we do. Trading '2-1' a la FOW is not a winning proposition for us and while our mana ramp often allows us to play around daze by say - playing a sfm off a tomb and plain as opposed to that 3 drop, it's obviously just much better to power out that 3 drop with a cavern.
I personally don't think there will be more land hate than usual... lots of people will be playing super greedy land bases. Also we have mega game against all the bloodmoon decks (see big red, painter)
If I do make any changes it'll be -1 city +1 wasteland
4 Ancient Tomb
4 Eldrazi Temple
3 Cavern of Souls
3 Wasteland
3 Karakas
3 City of Traitors
5 Plains
Having more basics doesn't help as much versus Wasteland as you might think. Our "fair game", where we don't cast TKS until turn 4 or whatever, is not even remotely powerful enough for Legacy. That means two things:
1) Any decent player isn't going to blow an early Wasteland on a non-Sol land.
2) We need to run out our Sol lands early almost always, even if it means that we aren't playing around Wasteland.
Cutting Caverns for basics therefore doesn't really improve your resiliency against Wasteland while making you softer to things like Daze and increasing how often you get mana screwed since Cavern often needs to tap for both W and C.
Thalia Stompy has more game against mana denial compared to Colorless Eldrazi because it has more impactful things like the two Thalias that it can cast off of 1-2 lands + possibly a Mox. If you are truly afraid of Wasteland, I think you ought to play a lower curve filled with easy to cast, cheap Humans or cheap colorless cards like Copter, not really-hard-to-cast cards like Prelate.
I've opened multiple hands with cavern, sol land and 3 drop where my opponent has wasted the sol land or cavern as their opening play leaving me mana screwed off of either a color or fast mana. Leading basic plains into sol land has been a very common play of mine.
Maybe it's just my playstyle, but I heavily prefer going basic, basic, small threat, sol land, big threat -- using mox diamond to speed up that line when possible. Maybe it's just my luck, but when I run out a sol land t1 my opponent wastelands it and my large threats get stranded.
I play all the above, and prelate is really not that hard to cast. Regardless, getting stuck on 2-3 lands while TKS and Smasher sit in your hand is not fun.Thalia Stompy has more game against mana denial compared to Colorless Eldrazi because it has more impactful things like the two Thalias that it can cast off of 1-2 lands + possibly a Mox. If you are truly afraid of Wasteland, I think you ought to play a lower curve filled with easy to cast, cheap Humans or cheap colorless cards like Copter, not really-hard-to-cast cards like Prelate.
Anyway, seems you all disagree with me so I won't belabor the point further. I'll test it out and let you know how it goes.
@Kaono
I think playing more plains could be a great idea. I'd say something like the base below could work and would even support a few council's judgements out the side.
25 Land
4 Ancient Tomb
4 Wasteland
4 Eldrazi Temple
3 Karakas
2 City of Traitors
8 Snow-Covered Plains
Just getting back into legacy again. Had this deck put aside. Why did Palace Jailers drop off lists? Wouldn't he be better now with the suggested heavier basic land count?
With the new meta (or for the moment "chaos") we might see a lot of new decks crawling around and fight for the empty throne. Elves, Show&Tell, ANT&Co, Blade Decks, Delver, Lands mixed with the current stuff of DnT and all the BUG decks.
Good news? More Combo is nice for us, but more Lands and Blade (TNN!) isn't so hot and we'll see a lot of random stuff and fair midrange/creature decks (which can be hard for stompy because you can't lock them out easily).
I currently play without SfM (while it is okay vs fair decks its super slow etc.) and brewed around a lot. I currently really like Containment Priest at Main (S&S, Elves, Vial, GW-Zenith etc.) and Mindcensor (Elves, ANT, Manadenial, SfM) and "Flash" is very good because we have now only Sorcery speed Sweepers.
I am unsure with one or two slots at main/side for the current "chaos meta". I want to discuss them or at least a new spot light after SDT-Ban.
Palace Jailer - i loved him at the past, but overall he isn't hot against swarm creature decks, grixis delver or TNN. Some of you already dismissed him and i am sadly unsure about him at main/side. 2WW can also sometimes be bad. Drawing cards is nice but you can fall behind if used wrong (see decks above).
Phyrexian Metamorph - Can copy all the spicy stuff from our Smasher/TKS over targets from Opponent range from BSkull, to Gofy, Big Cheat Fatties till TNN - but is dead on an empty field or if you only can copy thalia. CC"3" colorless is also a nice deal - and can be blinked with Displacer for other targets.
Smuggler's Copter - some like him, but we will see more Artifact Removal (Blade Decks), more Delver/Bolt (only 1:1 trades) and its a bad topdeck in most cases. What is good is that it survives sorcery sweepers and is cc2 colorless so you can nearly cast it every time.
Crucible of Worlds - lines up well with Wastelands, City, Mox, Tax&Manadenial with our Thalia(s) and every Opponent that tries to trow Wastelands at you (rise of delver/land decks?). But can't beat your opponent and might be a useless card in hand or is cc4 under thalia 1.0.
and finally a freak card like Selfless Squire: More or less usless alone (see other cards above) but a real killer if you are behind. Works well against any Swarm (more Empty-Combo-Token around without Terminus), any alpha-Strike, any big beater till (UR)Burn and is a perma-Fog with Displacer. As a 3W-Human is also really perfect manawise and nobody will have it on his radar and as i said above flash is huge too.
Feel free to discuss it :)
TEAM MtG Berlin
I not talked only about the land matchup and overall you are right we have solid solutions against any land.deck and my score against various land decks are positive - but still be carefull lands can also have very broken starts that will crush us (and in this case, neither solution discussed above will really help).
I wished for some brainstorm/feedback for the cards i mentioned - some are discussed here (long ago) but the deck a) changed a lot of stuff (in the early days we had lodestone golem) and b) the miracle/topless meta game is a wild new place and i try to find the last piece of the puzzle (as i mentioned, i currently have C.Priest and Mindcensor MD for various rising decks).
TEAM MtG Berlin
All those cards are good and i would play them all in certain builds as far as copter goes the card has been great. Not a fan of jailer with the rise in bug decks that will probably be going around,i'm currently playing mind censor as a 1 of and liking it. Crucible of worlds is a great card but i think with an expected meta shift towards more creature centric beatdown/ tempo decks and combo its not the place i wanna be right now as it isn't really impactful right away. I think if delver , bug and elves get more popular something like 3 holy light out of the side board may be the move .
On another note i think blood moon gets WAY better and will start to see a lot more sb action. (As if we don't see the card all the time anyway.)
So why are the lists I'm seeing not running any Ballistas? I've seen several people ask on the thread, but I've never seen an answer.
It's good enough for the Vintage variant, so why wouldn't it be good enough for Legacy?
Hey Barook! nice to see you in this thread! I think the main reason we haven't seen a lot of Ballista running around in this deck is because the list is VERY tight as is. I can't really speak for anyone else's list but my list in particular (which i've done VERY well with ) doesn't really need them. In the new meta where top isn't a thing anymore and creatures are a bigger deal maybe the revokers come out for ballistas but before the banning there just wasn't a good reason to run it.
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