I'll weigh in with that, because I don't necessarily agree.Originally Posted by Mirrislegend
Back when we had Top, I would have classified Shortcake as a Prison/Combo deck that just so happened to have a dual silver bullet package between Recruiter and E-tutor.
Although the deck contained some weenies, they weren't really the focus of your gameplan.
That is indeed the impression I got! Especially when reading the history of the deck.
Without Top, we've recently found other ways to filter and dig. Copter requires attacks and Light Up the Stage both requires damaging the opponent. That naturally evolves the deck towards attacking. Also, in my opinion, Blood Moon's effectiveness is on the downswing between the success of Dragon Stompy and Miracles using Back to Basics (which is also spreading to StoneBlade Control). With our best Prison element losing power, I feel like we're left with combo and aggro to work with.
If we're going to attack, might as well pick good candidates for the job. What combat creatures are worth considering? I think the best choice is Pia and Kiran Nalaar, but at 4cmc with double red its definitely a stretch. Next one I would consider would be Hope of Ghirapur, which would allow us to protect our combo turn, but is not particularly aggressive. Dauntless Bodyguard has 2 power, but doesn't protect against Swords to Plowshares. Anyone got any suggestions?
Referring to the art on Stasis:
Sorry dude, I've got work and kids and they kind of keep me busy.
We have differing opinions of slight intricacies of how the deck is defined. It's a Painter's Servant deck with Grindstone and creatures that do things. That has always been its core fabric. I focus on playing it a different way than some people, and I've taken big-tournament hits on risks to see how they'd play out. I'm basing my list on my own experiences, which I've shared.
On the topic of protection, Samite Elder becomes Super Mom with a Painter in play.
Elder is cute, but Mom is just superior, comes down on turn one and unconditional without needing a Painter in play.
well, with a painter in play, earnest fellowship beats samite elder too; makes all swords fall off everyone and really messes with everyone's heads with what has protection from whatever else!
But mr keller is right on. it's not about how effective a card is when it hits play, it's also about the sequencing to how you get to that point. It's easy to point at that marit lage token and say that it was the 20/20 that killed me, but in reality, it's the entire sequencing up to that point that actually killed me.
When i lose to DnT, it's almost always on the back of a mom. Not being able to kill it is a massive pain, especially since naming the painter's colour basically prohibits anything i can possibly cast/do to get it. The only thing is a non-targeted -x/-x, stack manipulation, or an actual sweeper that can get it. and all of those things (sulfur elemental aside) are very resource-draining for RW painter decks.
i currently don't run mom, but i probably really should. but the pain on my manabase is pretty nutty as it is, i'm not sure if i can afford more bends. I can only afford 1 arid mesa and 4 other mountain fetches for my 1 plateau, 2 basic plains and 1 white artifact land (forget the name) + 4 petals. anyone have any idea how to squeeze them in? or am i basically boned as it is? transformational sideboard?
If Mom is a problem, Ballista is a hell of a card
It sure is, if Painter isn’t already in play. And if painters in play, our own moms are amazing!
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Legacy decks: mono U painter, strawberry shortcake, imperial painter, solidarity, burn
EDH decks: zedruu voltron, rakdos the defiler, persistent petitioners, blind seer
I've been consistently unimpressed by Ballista. Maybe its because I haven't been playing against Death and Taxes? I've talked to 1 other person who felt it was a dud, and 2 who felt it was amazing. 2/2 split, nothing conclusive. I cut Ballista for Mom and I'm happy so far.
Referring to the art on Stasis:
4x Cannonist's makes Storm a bye, it also puts in major work against cantrip decks and all this phoenix nonsense. This is a lock angle that goes under the radar but yes I think you are right about moon's decline. Besides card filtering, the copters served an important role as a plan b (creature beats). Do we really want to play a painter deck that scoops if grindstone or painter gets surgical'd? I feel like that is what this deck is if we don't have a creature angle. I think if we take copter's out we should look to better creatures as well. What do you think about jamming -4x copter 3xStoneforge/1xBatterskull package?
Last edited by Fallen_Empire; 03-26-2019 at 01:32 AM.
So it didn't go too well for me last night at the local; I won so number of games, but lost every match. My assumption is that I mis-diagnosed the beatdown/control roles in some of the games.
Some notes on individual cards:
hanna's custody - It induced many groans when it hit. That being said, locking me out of using welder has been painful, but protecting the combo was better. Every time it landed, it was more beneficial than detrimental, i'd say. abrupt decay is hard to deal with though.
smuggler's copter - when it's good, it's amazing. When it's bad, it's horrendous. It reminds me a lot of moggy flunkies back in the day when i played goblins. The number of times it gets pushed after i tap something else to crew it makes it pretty bad, but more often than not, it just ends up stranded with no pilots.
aethersworn canonist - no combo players here aside from me, and it kept eating removal (like, end of my turn, then main phase of theirs, then they just continue). can occasionally help to eke a win.
goblin cratermaker - usually better than it looks. That being said, it's a one-shot effect, and apparently there are no omni-tell players here. I'm thinking i should switch this to either gorilla shaman or goblin tinkerer. or maybe even vandal.
walking ballista - saw it once, was relevant basically 0% of the time, and it just ate a K.command.
engineered explosives - it was surprisingly good. Nuked a bob, a library and something else that i can't remember. miles better than ratchet bomb!
simian spirit guide - Basically ended up as a win-con more than half of my wins. combo in play with a canonist in play, they try to nuke the grindstone when i only have 1 mana up, then double SSG in response for the win. Also being able to 0-mana blast something has been cute.
thopter/swords - it's too cute here. I think at the end of the day, it's a deck with a bunch of 2-card synergies/combos. I don't think i need even more that aren't sharing pieces with other combos.
light up the stage - I think its good. My deck ran 4 LUTS and 3 copters. the copters drew me some cards and fuelled welders (if they survived), but LutS is real. 3 mana draw 2 isn't the worst, and considering that i always end up low on cards, every little bit helps.
daretti, scrap savant - is surprisingly good. ended up getting me i have no idea how many cards, and then fed the welder. I think daretti is actually better than karn in this deck, but your milage may vary (my build probably has fewer artefacts compared to the norm, i think).
The one card i really don't know what to think of is the enlightened tutor. Against 2 knights, i was able to tutor for a bridge, but that card disadvantage is a bit of a killer. I'm thinking that the deck has a bit too much going on. Or maybe it's my little brain that's struggling to keep up with all the lines that i should be taking.
At the end of the day, i think mr Keller is bang-on; a weenie plan B/C is a good idea. 4 bolts, some number of swords, 1-2 copters, 4 bomats, 4 moms, 4 painters, 3 canonists, 4 welders, 1-2 heretics, and some number of fiery confluence.
In the future though, i'm thinking of testing bomat courier. Anyone else used it? it's a 1 mana 1/1 haste dude that exiles the top of the library. then at the low cost of a red, pitching your hand, you can take all the cards exiled with the courier to your hand. The big downside though is that it's face-down (so you can't see it). it can be offset by recruiter and/or E.tutor (since you can just look through your deck to see what's missing).
Does anyone know of streams/videos of games of shortcake that i can use to study up a bit?
This is mostly a crosspost from the Discord server, with a few additional thoughts in response to things that have been said on the thread in the last few days.
I played a league with LutS last night, in the build at the bottom of the post.
The main deck is fairly similar to the list that Michael Keller played to 59th (?) at the SCG event a while back, the main features of which I see as being: 2 Smuggler's Copter, 3 Light up the Stage, 2 Enlightened Tutor, 2 Canonist, 1 Magus of the Moon.
The changes I made were designed to increase the chances of triggering spectacle, with an extra 1-drop in form of Mother of Runes, which is sort of like a 4th Welder with a slightly different use-case. I cut Spellskite because it plays poorly with both LutS and Smuggler's Copter, cut Manic Vandal because I think Goblin Cratermaker is better as a maindeck card and generally does more, and cut a Bridge because I see it as more of an Enlightened Tutor silver bullet.
The sideboard is fairly radically different, and much closer to what I have been running in other builds of Shortcake. I don't think Lava Dart and Zuran Orb are playable, and I think that Surgical Extraction is the best choice for graveyard hate over something like Faerie Macabre because it's better against Loam decks and also comes in against Miracles for StP.
The other notable difference is that there's the option to go up to four copies of Blood Moon (and one Magus) post-board, which is a concession to depths and because in general having only one more moon post-board felt a bit anaemic. The thinking is that if it's good in a matchup, it would be good to be able to maximise the number of copies. Jury's still out on whether that's optimal, but it 'feels' good; I could also see going down to 2 in the board which still lets you go up to four copies of moon including magus post-board.
Also, no sweepers in the board currently, which could be wrong—I wouldn't mind finding space for a couple of Pyroclasms or Sulfur Elementals.
In any case the league went pretty well, despite finishing 3-2. Lost 1-2 to a couple of very good draws from Depths that would have been beatable but for being on the draw, lost 1-2 to UR Delver in games that were close and felt winnable, and beat 4c Loam (2-0), DnT (2-0) and BR Reanimator (2-1, despite MtGO crashing during sideboarding leaving me unboarded for game 2).
Fair points, and absolutely no offence taken—you were right that I needed to get some games in with it, which is why I kept prefacing my comments with the caveat that I hadn't. So thanks you for giving me the impetus to give it a go.
As far as LutS, which is the main thing I was really testing, I tried a few games with it in a mono-red imperial build and found myself unable to spectacle it enough, hence the changes to the shortcake build to try and facilitate that more. I think that if you're spec'ing it more often than not, it can be pretty good, but when you're having to pay full price for it, it's a fairly big hit to tempo. (That said, sol lands do help with that, of course.) Overall you were right that I liked it better than I thought I would (in shortcake, in the build of imperial it felt not great due to lack of 1- and 2-drops that could get in for damage), so will carry on testing.
I definitely take your point about the pros of not adding the cards against discard and for Bridge. I can also definitely see the 3/3 Smuggler/LutS split being correct, and will keep tweaking numbers. To clarify my point about not affecting the board, I meant that in terms of playing it as a 3-mana card. It remains problematic in my view to spend 3-mana to not affect the board, hence my discussion of card advantage engines in other decks. Brainstorm and Ponder are good because they are cheap—at 3 mana, they are awful (and even at 2 they would be poor). That's why I tweaked the build to facilitate triggering spectacle more reliably, and indeed I think it could be further tweaked in that direction (say by adding another copter). Walking Ballista is another card I'd like to find space for, either in the main or side. I could see, for example, -1 Cratermaker +1 Ballista in the main, with a second Cratermaker in the side.
A word on Cratermaker: I do think the card is very good, dissynergy with Painter notwithstanding. Again, it's a question of flexibility and the multiple roles in can play within the deck. It's like a Manic Vandal/Walking Ballista split card that also happens to be a 2/2 for 2. The impact of not being able to blow up artifacts with a Painter in play doesn't come up that often, and when it does there are almost always ways of playing around it. For instance, you can use your blast effects instead, or weld out Painter in order to be able to destroy an artifact and then weld Painter back in again. The only time neither of those are an option is when your opponent has a Chalice on 1 and you have a Painter but no welder in play. These situations are fairly easy to mitigate with careful sequencing—if Chalice is a threat, don't play your Painter out prematurely. Failing that, Chalice decks mostly win with creatures on the ground (Thought-Knot Seer, Goblin Rabblemaster, Knight of the Reliquary) and you can chump with Painter to unlock your Cratermaker.
4 Lotus Petal
4 Grindstone
2 Smuggler’s Copter
1 Ensnaring Bridge
4 Pyroblast
3 Light up the Stage
2 Red Elemental Blast
2 Enlightened Tutor
1 Blood Moon
3 Goblin Welder
1 Mother of Runes
1 Grim Lavamancer
4 Painter’s Servant
2 Ethersworn Canonist
2 Goblin Cratermaker
4 Imperial Recruiter
1 Magus of the Moon
4 Ancient Tomb
3 City of Traitors
4 Arid Mesa
1 Wooded Foothills
3 Mountain
3 Plateau
1 Great Furnace
Sideboard
1 Enlightened Tutor
1 Containment Priest
1 Ethersworn Canonist
2 Phyrexian Revoker
4 Surgical Extraction
1 Tormod’s Crypt
1 Red Elemental Blast
3 Blood Moon
1 Engineered Explosives
Last edited by jasper; 04-01-2019 at 05:49 AM.
I'm trying to gauge the strength of Canonist against Xerox decks. Most such decks are on 4 Brainstorm and 4 Ponder, with the occasional Preordain. Is that enough for Canonist to have a significant impact? If yes, is it worth Recruiting for? Is it worth siding in extra copies? I'm down to 2 Canonist maindeck and 1 SB. If it takes a mere 8 cantrips for Canonist to severely rattle someone's gameplan then I'd definitely find space for a 3rd MD and keep a 4th in the SB that comes in vs Xerox, in addition to Storm and the like.
Miracles has at least 4 more cantrips/draw spells on top of those usual 8, so it is pretty clear that Canonist will do a lot of work there.
Referring to the art on Stasis:
Don't forget against snapcaster it's really good too
That's pretty spicy. Snapcaster is almost exclusively in Xerox decks. So that brings the total number of cards hit by Canonist in any given Xerox deck from 8 to 10-12 (with Miracles now at 14-16). Though UR Xerox tends to skip Snapcaster.
Referring to the art on Stasis:
In my experience, the actual value of Ethersworn Canonist primarily depends on two things: First, if the opponent has removal for it right away (as opposed to having to dig for it, which *will* take time - I can't tell how many times I've heard myself saying something along the lines of "you can't cast that, you already $cantripped this turn" while pointing at the Canonist on board), and second, if they've actually played against the card already, and know how much it will grind their gears. It's stellar or close-to-stellar against any deck that has some kind of spell-based setup phase, that culminates in a big payoff, because it can delay that payoff by so much. If your hand enables a T2 Canonist, that alone puts it in very solid "blind keep" territory in my book. If you can go on to protect it - celebrate!
The biggest problem i've had with canonist is that my opponents always have the exact right answer for it every single time. a K.command really sets us back to 0-land pretty quick, and it has 2 modes that can hit canonist. the really irritating thing about K.command is that it's not blue without a painter in play, so only spellskite works against it. Maybe i'm just too impatient and end up jamming them in before i'm ready, and i can definitely appreciate that i'm not nearly as good a painter as y'all are (and definitely can't hold a bristle up against mr keller or even bob ross).
Then again, i just re-read the post, and it's specifically about xerox decks. I'm not 100% familiar with these, but they're basically a family of deck archetypes that cheat on lands, right? so any deck using from say 10-19 lands main deck? I think in those cases, i can see canonist being extremely good, since they're not going to be able to both guarantee land-drop AND find removal. It would also be a pain against high tide, since it's both a clock and a hoser.
oh and sulfur elemental is a BOSS (as in when it's relevant). I'm guessing my opponent had no idea what was going on when i landed painter naming white, but it nukes pretty much all token strategies (outside of marit lage), and to an extent, DnT.
Just curious, outside of hosing swords by naming whatever colour protection that sword gives, is there any other reason to name another colour outside of blue or white? Also, i think there's probably a reasonable argument to up the number of moms here. i think a split of 3 welders and 3-4 moms might even be appropriate. In my somewhat limited experience, i've found that protecting my board is a heck of a lot harder to do than the master painters make it look. Just having silver bullet answers means that we're significantly more likely to lock the game down (a bit), but it also means that if they get removed, we're pretty boned. Most of the time, each plow or push or edict or k.command they point at us can be flashed back again, so we're dealing with what i'd consider to be a heck of a lot. More moms means we can blank more of their removal. a mom + canonist means they can only chuck one at us every turn. but if they manage to sword our one-of mom early enough, it's a pretty tough hill to climb from there.
Or what do you guys think? I was tempted to even put in a cheeky one-of Akroma's Memorial as a copter-pitch target to weld into play (i get that it's not good!).
Xerox decks are the decks that "cheat on lands", as you put it, due to playing many cantrips.
I've found myself naming odd colors with Painter when I don't want to risk enabling my opponent's Force of Wills. However, this is a fairly narrow situation. I need to be fairly close to Grindstoning for the win, such that their counterspelling effects are my primary hurdle and Blasts can handle those without Painter naming Blue.
More Mom could be strong, but it definitely needs testing first. I'm not sure about my 1x Mother of Runes yet!
If you want to include Welder spice, I think Sundering Titan is probably the best bet.
Referring to the art on Stasis:
So I've been doing quite a bit of testing as I'm going to go play in the LaL tourney next weekend. I've been running with 3 x tutors, 3 x recruiters, 3x light up the stage, 2 x copters and 3 x moms and have really liked this configuration. However, do to limited space I am only running 1 bridge in the main, 1 canonist and 4 blasts. For people on the mom bandwagon what do you think would be best in the board, a second bridge or a peacekeeper? Benefit of bridge is you can weld it and you can get it with tutor. Benefit of peacekeeper is you can recruit it and pepper it with Mom, but you do have to pay 1W every turn.
Also, for SB I have a few other open slots. What do you guys think?
Slot 1: second canonist (down to 1 main) or 3sphere?
Slot 2-3: 2 x of dead/gone, abrade, pyrite spellbomb (like these cause they are tuterable and weldable and cantrip), or sudden shock?
3 more slots:. Things I'm considering...
Pithing needle/revoker
Jitte
2nd blood moon/magus (have 1 main and 1 SB for sure)
Board sweep like engineered plague (I'm splashing black), toxic deluge, pyroclasm, etc.
Sphere of law (would probably run this or jitte in 1 slot)
Second Karn (1 in SB now)
Palace jailer (although I'm running 2 x chains of meph in board)
Slaughter games/lost legacy (good for combo or as a graveyard hate piece for things like loam, phoenix, etc)
More blasts?
Current slots are:
1 x Karn
1 x containment priest
1 x blood moon
1 x e.e
2 x chains
2 x surgical
1 x canonist vs 3 sphere
1 x bridge vs peacekeeper
2 x spot removal (see above)
1 x jitte vs sphere of law (maybe?)
2 other slots
I do have a nihil spellbomb main.
Open to suggestions.
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I'm curious as to what your manabase looks like if you're running 3x Mothers.
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