against sneak and show my deck has 1-4 stop, 1 supreme verdict, 1 EE, 1island, 1 jace, 3sfm, 2 equipments which i could sideboard. Do you rather sb in flusters and hatebears and not anything that speeds up your dmg?
SFM starts to deal damage in two turns while monastery mentor stars to deal damage the next turn and usually more than batterskull.
After 2 mentors there are still plenty of cards to side in which involve hatebears and counters.
Is this wrong?
Half a year ago or so I piloted a UW stoneblade list which involved 2 TNN + SFM package and 2 Mentors main without any addition in form of Probes or so and moved 4:1 in a local tournament with it. Against Combo MUs I usually sideboarded out SFM, the equipments, JTMS, STPs and so on for additionals hate; Mentors kicked their ass that day. You can close out that games really fast with him. Just my 2 cents.
When Probe was legal and Mentor was actually good, there was barely any interest. Now that Probe is banned and Mentor is way worse outside of Miracles, now people want to discuss Mentor in Stoneblade? lol...
Without Probe/Therapy, you're much better off sticking to Thoughtseize and TNN.
Wow dude, congrats! I have gone 3-0-1 with a 4 chrome mox DGA list at a local if we're humbly bragging. If I had to guess it's because whatever configuration of the deck is good and not because any configuration of a deck can do well at a casual small tournament.
What does this even mean? Unlike miracles blade doesn't have any "hard" CA engines, you have to spew to the board; that is how you get ahead. Miracles can often drop a CB and then rely on cantrips to control the stack although a lot less without top. I'm still failing to understand how mentor is a faster clock than skull or sofai. You don't play the same number of cantrips/predict to just mass up an army of monk tokens.
If you put SFM t2 and t3 spit batterskull, then yes, mentor isn't as fast. But against combo i rather keep all or some of my mana up for first turns so i don't die t2 or t3.
But when you stabilize and the combo has to find his/her next wincon you can either: keep SFM which etb fetches an equip -> next turn put equip to play -> attack with it.
In the same situation you can play mentor and sometimes go ponder/brainstorm -> attack next turn for 3 or 5 damage or more. and even more damage next turn if you net more non-creature, non-lands. This is the turn where batterskull would hit 4 damage where mentor has dealt at minimum 4 damage but most likely more than that.
But instead of going for mentors i could also go clique x2 and hatebears and attack a little slower, but also harm the combo in some way while at it.
And i was saying that having 2 mentors in the SB doesn't mean that it's my only way to combat combo decks in general. It's just adding more pressure so i win faster.
When the format had Probe, Mentor was great. I actually killed an Elves opponent on turn 3 on the play in an REL competitive match by going turn 1 DRS into turn 2 Mentor + Probe (and FoW on his 2nd turn), turn 3 cantrip + double Therapy double flashback.
Mentor can be very fast. The problem is that it requires significant resources to go off. Without the Probe/Therapy engine, you lose too much gas. In order for it to work now, you need more cantrips. At the point where you're playing that many cantrips, why wouldn't you just play Miracles?
There was a time when Mentor in Stoneblade was a powerful deck. I made Top 8 of the last US Eternal Weekend with it. That deck could have easily survived just a DRS ban. That deck is unplayable without Probe.
Thoughtseize + TNN is just much better postban for Stoneblade than Therapy + Mentor, unfortunately.
Actually have time in my schedule to play tonight - 3rd time I've been able to play all year; last time I played Enchantress and the time before that I played 4c Loam. I just put together a UW blade deck because I felt like playing cantrips. Here's what I've sleeved up:
4 delta
4 strand
2 marsh flats
6 island
2 plains
2 tundra
1 karakas
4 snapcaster
4 stoneforge
2 true name
1 vendilion
2 jace
1 gideon4
1 elspeth4
1 batterskull
1 jitte
4 brainstorm
4 ponder
4 force
4 swords
2 spell pierce
1 counterspell
1 spell snare
1 supreme verdict
1 council's judgment
SB
2 canonist
2 containment priest
2 surgical
2 RIP
2 B2B
2 flusterstorm
1 humility
1 disenchant
1 blessed alliance
I haven't played any kind of SFM or control deck since last year, but looked around at some lists to figure things out. If anyone has any thoughts on the SB in the next few hours I can make changes before I go to play. Similarly if there is a convincing argument for a splash, I have the relevant duals to play B or R. Last time I played this deck I was splashing for maindeck Thoughtseize but then this was back when you wanted to play t1 DRS anyway, so wasn't sure how relevant it would be now. Otherwise I'll be back with a brief report tomorrow!
The main thing I am considering is to maybe change the Elspeth for a Volcanic Island (and switch to Arid Mesas) and then I can play REBs and weartears and moon. Does anyone have strong feelings on the red splash?
edit: decided to try the splash. went:
MB:
-2 marsh, -1 island
+1 mesa, +2 volc
SB:
-2 b2b, -1 rip, -1 humility
+2 moon, +2 pyroblast
Last edited by cdnza; 07-31-2018 at 06:26 PM.
Had some fun and close matches.
R1 - Storm
G1 is predictable. My opponent discards my force and then kills me.
G2 he plays a duress on t3 with the intent of comboing off, but sees that I have clique. I clique away his tutor and then untap and cantrip into a canonist.
G3 is close. My opponent cantrips while I hold up interaction. Eventually he casts some spells and then plays empty, which I didn't really expect. I untap and cast SFM, and can actually stabilise by blocking with Batterskill, but he untaps and topdecks tutor to get duress to take my batterskull.
R2 - Lands
My opponent was brand new to legacy. It was fun to talk about some of the plays during the game and how to think about the format and stuff afterwards. I hope that this opponent continues to play and keeps learning (the hard way) about all the things people will do to stop his strategy.
G1 goes on for a long time. I swords an early marit lage and then my opponent gets to sit behind a glacial chasm for a long time. Fortunately my opponent never finds loam so isn't really able to lock me. Eventually I finally find my jace to end the game.
G2 i just chain cantrips off basic islands for a few turns, searching for sideboard cards. Eventually I find blood moon and resolve it to find my opponent didn't board in an answer.
R3 - UR Delver
All these games were super close.
G1 I force a t1 delver which gets dazed. I resolve a stoneforge but it gets bolted and I never find a swords so the delver goes the distance.
G2 I manage to stick a jitte and a creature and manage to reassert control of the game.
G3 I make a big misplay involving flusterstorm on my opponent's flusterstorm - that's what I get for not playing regularly! I play to my outs and spend a jace as an unsummon to have a double brainstorm turn where I'm able to live for one more turn, and my opponent flips a thunderous wrath off the top of their deck. Haven't had that card played against me before haha.
All in all was fun to play again. Probably not going to play the deck regularly but it was refreshing to play a cantrip deck again!
Is there a Discord Channel for Blade Decks?
Here you go:
https://discord.gg/yYNfUxJ
Thank you
Cool to see Blade back in the DTB section! Been a while, I would imagine.
I'm a little higher on Miracles right now but nevertheless it's cool to see Blade doing well, what versions have you all been most successful with lately?
Nobody plays Legacy anymore, the tournaments are all too crowded
Good to see this deck here because I am considering an Esper Miracle with Stoneforge, equipments and Bitterblossom.
I see you are doing something similar with Elspeth and Gideon. isn’t Blossom just better?
Also, in an equipment+token generator deck (be it PWs or Blossom) wouldn’t Terminus perfectly fit?
I am trying to size a list. Do you want to help?
Zzzzzz
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I recently returned to bitterblossom after a DRS ban, I figured the card might have some more life to it since we aren’t constantly getting drained for 2 and AD is much less relevant than it was.
The Good:
1. Once resolved, it’s basically impossible for some decks to deal with
2. Cheaper than a planeswalker, and therefore easier to resolve
3. Tokens have evasion
4. Resilient vs sweepers
5. Chump blockers for days
6. Protects our TNN from sacrifice effects
7. A great clock in the early game
8. Can’t be REB
The Bad:
1. Life can be tricky, especially in a deck with thoughtseize and snapcaster
2. Can be a mediocre to bad draw in the mid/late game.
3. It’s another X/1 creature in a deck already packed with X/1s
The Ugly:
1. It’s just so slow. Even if you resolve it on curve you aren’t pushing a single point of damage until T4.
2. At low life totals this card can either kill you or becomes an absolutely dead draw
Even figuring out how many bitterblossom to play is tricky. I definitely want it in my opening hand or within a turn or two as I feel its power degrades significantly over time. That suggests it’s probably a 3-4 of. But at the same time bitterblossom is a card you REALLY only want one of. Drawing multiple bitterblossoms is pretty terrible. Keep in mind stoneblade already has some “dead” draws in the form of equipment. In the end I settled on 2, I’m not entirely happy with it, but I can’t justify 3 either.
Regarding terminus. It’s possible? I hadn’t considered that option before. In a standard stoneblade shell the plan is usually just winning with a fast batterskull or gluing an equipment to TNN at some point. Terminus doesn’t seem to play well with this plan. Stoneblade also may not have the cantrip density to support a terminus build. You could probably cut the usual TNNs/baleful strixes to try and go from there. I suspect that the 5-6 slots required for the SFM package just end up taking too many slots from the miracles engine.
I'm on just straight U/W, and I've gotten a lot of mileage out of 2 Terminus in the SB. I have 3 Jace in the main, so it's not too hard to set up. I also usually have 2 Gideons or a 1/1 Gideon/Teferi (Teferi is kind of my pet card) split in the board, so I don't care as much about wiping my creatures. As far as Esper builds go, I don't think Terminus would work as well. Mainboard Terminus sounds terrible.
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