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Thread: [Deck] Strawberry Shortcake

  1. #41
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    Re: [Deck] Strawberry Shortcake

    @Dan- Thanks that was a perfect start. I really do agree that the Hangerback probably is an all star in the grindy match ups. I think the testing would be in those match ups is he just better than the typical Recruiter Chain for value that we do. I think if you can get him with 2 counters to start, that would probably be better. He also does have some cool interactions hiding behind the Bridge against Show and Tell decks. His ability to just give you ten dudes will be able to stomp over Eldrazi, but still loses to Bargain on a stick.

    I have weakly tried out the Ballista in the spot of Lavaman, with mixed results. I think having some artifact that grows in the deck is reasonable as there are times when I wish E tutor just could get me a dude that does more than Painter. I do think that will be something we need to really test out now that we know the meta is going to be unchanged for the next couple months.

    Seth
    …no matter how much you think you love somebody, you’ll step back when the pool of their blood edges up too close.

  2. #42

    Re: [Deck] Strawberry Shortcake

    Quote Originally Posted by NormalGuy View Post
    You are thinking of Rummaging Goblin, he doesn't have haste though. Etched Champion is another possibility if you want a hard to deal with body that can't be blocked.
    If you are going to run a looter as an Imperial Recruiter target, Deal Broker is 3 CMC also, colorless, a 2/3, and an artifact for welder.

  3. #43
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    Re: [Deck] Strawberry Shortcake

    I was brainstorming an idea tonight and threw together a very rough list. I jammed some matches and it was only 3-2, but I think that it was working well enough and has the potential to really work well enough that it is worth posting about. So the idea was to jam a full playset of Ethersworn Canonist into the maindeck. Why? It is the best hatebear we have access to, and resets the game towards a standstill for these cantrip decks. Canonist demands removal as well, otherwise it severely hinders almost every deck while being at most a minor nuisance to some recruiter chains. It's also probably makes us an insane favorite vs Storm and Omnitell game 1. Lastly, it obviously fits into our Copter plan and is a weldable artifact creature.

    The biggest upside is certainly its cantrip tax and is part of the reason I started thinking down the canonist path. Magus of the Moon was by far the best creature we could power out, which is why mono-red back in the day was running something like a 4 Magus to 0-4 Blood Moon. As the meta shifted, Blood Moon became the premier hate piece, which is also why shifting Imperial Painter towards Shortcake became a much better idea. With how much Deathrite is around fixing mana and how much everyone knows to play around Blood Moon, I really can't remember the last time it just outright won the game by itself. It is still very powerful for sure, but I think that Canonist has surpassed Blood Moon as of right now for what we might want to be doing.

    The list I ran was this:

    4 Ancient Tomb
    3 City of Traitors
    2 Plateau
    1 Great Furnace
    2 Bloodstained Mire
    3 Wooded Foothills
    4 Mountain

    3 Lotus Petal
    2 Simian Spirit Guide

    4 Imperial Recruiter
    4 Painter's Servant
    4 Ethersworn Canonist
    2 Goblin Welder
    2 Grim Lavamancer

    4 Grindstone
    1 Ensnaring Bridge
    1 Engineered Explosives
    4 Smuggler's Copter

    3 Blood Moon
    3 Enlightened Tutor
    4 Pyroblast

    Sideboard:
    1 Grim Lavamancer
    1 Goblin Welder
    2 Rest in Peace
    1 Tormod's Crypt
    2 Abrade
    2 Pyroclasm
    1 Viashino Heretic
    1 Blood Moon
    1 Magus of the Moon
    2 Red Elemental Blast
    Something




    That was my starting point. I also want to bring up this list because I was talking with Seth after finishing up my quick set of games and I think that Karn could be very good with the presence of Copters and Canonist. Turn 1 Copter into Turn 2 Karn is already a beating, especially considering the tokens he makes will keep growing and crewing as he creates more, and canonist already contributes to the artifact count in a significant way.

    I think we should also look at Karn vs Chandra. When we had tops, I definitely think the 1 of Chandra was a great tool to have for any game that stalled out as she was a guaranteed win and we had the means to find her reliably with grindstone/top/fetches/etc. Considering her in Shortcake, I think the abilities are not synergistic enough with what we want to be doing. Her +1 abilities force us to be casting the exiled spell right away, which many times isn't as ideal as we would like and the two mana being double red having to spend right away is slightly weird as well. We aren't trying to hide behind a bridge as much as something like mono-red is, so i feel that chandra is just a weird spot we probably don't really want to be at. Compare all of this to Karn. He puts the Tutors/Blasts/Lands into our hand, which also helps out Lavamancer vs Chandra's exile. I think he'll be very good and will probably try 2 out in the board when he becomes legal. That leads me to this proposed list:

    4 Ancient Tomb
    3 City of Traitors
    2 Plateau
    1 Great Furnace
    2 Wooded Foothills
    3 Bloodstained Mire
    4 Mountain

    4 Lotus Petal
    1 Simian's Spirit Guide

    4 Imperial Recruiter
    4 Painter's Servant
    4 Ethersworn Canonist
    2 Goblin Welder
    2 Grim Lavamancer
    1 Viashino Heretic

    4 Grindstone
    4 Smuggler's Copter
    1 Ensnaring Bridge
    1 Engineered Explosives
    1 Blood Moon

    3 Enlightened Tutor
    4 Pyroblast
    1 Red Elemental Blast

    Sideboard:
    1 Goblin Welder
    1 Walking Ballista
    3 Grave Hate
    2 Pyroclasm
    2 Abrade
    3 Blood Moon
    1 Red Elemental Blast
    2 Karn, Scion of Urza



    Some additional thoughts. Canonist really slants the stack back towards our favor. Having Canonist+Painter+Blast means that we fully control the stack and can maneuver the combo worry free from this position, so maybe finding room for the 6th blast could be optimal. Blood Moon being a 1 of in the main is also completely uncharted but makes it a more a turn 3 play usually to be made with backup if possible. The hope is that Blood Moon isn't really winning as many games as it has before, and this style of build would best minimize the potential deadness running multiples did before. This could all be horribly wrong as well.

    Thoughts on some of the other card choices are the Walking Ballista in the board over the 3rd Lavaman as it is more versatile probably and plus I think having additional artifacts for Karn can't hurt most likely. 4th petal for the extra white mana with canonists vs the 2nd simian for copter should be watched as well. Maybe 3rd Plateau as well. 4 Enlightened Tutors also has to be tested with the easier access to white mana we'll have and eot t1 e-tutor is still a really strong play. With Heretic and EE main, I think it is a big statement that we should try to be ready to beat chalices if we want to advance in tournaments and having those two gives us 3 E-tutors and 4 recruiters to go find them. Having the 3 moons sideboard at least lets you get a game on the play with 4 where it's good.

    Take all of this with a grain of salt as none of this is tested. I just really liked the idea and wanted to get it out there. Maybe some of you guys will like it and want to explore it further.
    Strawberry Shortcake

    http://www.mtgthesource.com/forums/s...erry-Shortcake

    What a brainstorm do? Draw card and activate on draw effects fix hand, removing woods
    #FreeNedleeds

  4. #44

    Re: [Deck] Strawberry Shortcake

    Anyone test Dire Fleet Daredevil? Seems like he would put in work against a lot of decks.

  5. #45

    Re: [Deck] Strawberry Shortcake

    so I built the deck (took a list more or less straight from the primer) and took it to our little weekly. went 2-1 overall, beating Grixis Delver and Storm, losing to Omnishow. took a game off Omnishow due to him forgetting Emrakul, and a game off Delver thanks to him forgetting to DRS my Painter when I welded it. But still, wins are wins. I'd never played a painter deck before this, so i feel pretty good. the deck requires you to think a lot in advance and do a lot of tricky maneuvering while managing limited resources, which is the kind of magic i'm into.

    I actually really like the canonist plan mentioned above. MD canonist already won me a game against storm, and it is a beating against all the cantrip bois. Moon isn't the house it once was, but I'm a little hesitant to go all the way down to 1 in the MD. I think I'd run something closer to your first list, with 4 petals and 1 SSG to better ensure white mana is available.

    Also excited for Karn, will definitely be picking up a pair of them for this and other decks.

    @direfleet daredevil - i picked up a copy. might be worth messing with. seems maybe just too cute; what do you want to steal with him? tutoring him up to snag a brainstorm seems week, and just playing him as a value creature seems mediocre when you could be doing other things... worth trying I guess, and of course I'm super new to the deck so take what I say with some salt.
    Don't recall, Don't imagine, Don't think, Don't examine, Don't control, Rest

  6. #46

    Re: [Deck] Strawberry Shortcake

    Kap'n Cook : i think more cannoniste is not a bad idea. Just change some gameplay. The new Karn will offer an other option because the token can easy a 4/4 or 5/5. I am really curious to test it.

    I will not playing painter for the main event at Birmingham, but i will play the deck for the side event. I will probably try to play Karn.

  7. #47

    Re: [Deck] Strawberry Shortcake

    Quote Originally Posted by aslidsiksoraksi View Post
    @direfleet daredevil - i picked up a copy. might be worth messing with. seems maybe just too cute; what do you want to steal with him? tutoring him up to snag a brainstorm seems week, and just playing him as a value creature seems mediocre when you could be doing other things... worth trying I guess, and of course I'm super new to the deck so take what I say with some salt.
    Yea I just built it and am new to painter stone so i never played with SDT, but it does seem to be lacking consistency when i play it i feel. It also mulls really bad, at least in my limited experience with the deck. Some way to fix that and smooht out the draws would definitely raise this deck though, I feel.

    As far as the new Karn, I feel like he's going to be way too slow for card advantage.

  8. #48

  9. #49
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    Re: [Deck] Strawberry Shortcake

    Hollywood- I have no idea how to judge that but any deck that tries to run Sands of Time and Equipoise is really interesting to me. (Mirage block sands of time is my favorite block deck of all time and I usually play it in all our block party events) How has testing been? I would be concerned that the large toolbox might make consistency hard to achieve. And maybe go all in on the E tutor with 4 maindeck to really maximize your tool box.

    Seth
    …no matter how much you think you love somebody, you’ll step back when the pool of their blood edges up too close.

  10. #50
    Bob Ross
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    Re: [Deck] Strawberry Shortcake

    Quote Originally Posted by Bichon_Blitz View Post
    Yea I just built it and am new to painter stone so i never played with SDT, but it does seem to be lacking consistency when i play it i feel. It also mulls really bad, at least in my limited experience with the deck. Some way to fix that and smooht out the draws would definitely raise this deck though, I feel.

    As far as the new Karn, I feel like he's going to be way too slow for card advantage.

    This is to be expected if you are new to the deck. Not having crutchstorm to lean on in your opening hands makes everything harder and the only way to overcome this handicap is to play the deck a ton, read old threads, and just absorb as much content as possible. It mulls poorly if you don't know what you are looking for and aren't yet versed in how hands will play out based on probabilities of finding what is left in your deck. The Smuggler's Copters are there for the dual purpose of pressuring the opponents life totals while also helping to filter. We already run a lot of bad creatures, and Copter has really helped to elevate our creature floor. We are all still figuring out the best configuration of Shortcake to ensure it is the most consistent it can be, which could take some time.

    As for Karn, he is the fastest planeswalker we have ever had access too. Everything else we have played beyond the testing phase has had two colored mana symbols, making it usually a turn 3 play assuming no fast mana of course. We are also not usually looking for raw card advantage from a walker (see Koth/Ajani/Chandra), rather just a broad board impact. My initial take is that Karn will have to be answered, otherwise he will be too hard to take out in one turn given that he starts with an ass of 5 and can create crewable artifact dudes.
    Strawberry Shortcake

    http://www.mtgthesource.com/forums/s...erry-Shortcake

    What a brainstorm do? Draw card and activate on draw effects fix hand, removing woods
    #FreeNedleeds

  11. #51

    Re: [Deck] Strawberry Shortcake

    Took the deck to another weekly, this time with 2 MD Canonist (would have done more but the shop was out). They performed well, winning counter wars and just beating face. Went 3-1 in all, beating Death and Taxes, Infect, and BUG Control, and losing to Jeskai blade. Death and Taxes was a cool matchup - lost game 1 to triple mom and double revoker but the other games were also intricate and interesting. played some more games against Infect and just won all of them kind of easily (one game was a little close); 4-0 in all. Everything in our deck is good against them - moons, lavamancers, canonist, and they have to counter the combo as well cuz it's just as fast as they are. The BUG games were closer and tbh i think I should have lost but it was the last match and we were pretty casual with it, having already decided to split the prize. There were a couple occasions where it was hard to find white, so if we go harder on canonist i think i'd like the 4th petal for sure, and maybe up to 6 fetches or a 3rd plateau.

    So far I'm 12-6 in games with the deck, not a bad showing, and makes me feel like this deck has legs

    Some questions for the more experienced players:

    1 - more advice on how to evaluate hands would be nice? I often open hands with all the mojo but only 1 sol land (ex: painter, stone, city, copter, pyro, tutor, lavaman)... or with tutors and a copter and nothing else... or with a turn 2 win but no protection (ex: 2 sol lands, 3 mountains, painter, grindstone)... i know it's hard to say since so matchup dependent and so much of it is just learning to play, but a little advice on this would be helpful

    2 - sideboarding, what do we take out? I've been subbing out welders against decks with swords and DRS decks, but that's virtually every fair deck. do we take out lavamancer in control matchups, or keep him to snipe a few creatures and be an alternative threat? i've been taking out moons against decks with basics, at least on the draw, but maybe i should try to be more aggressive with them. more general advice, maybe a worst cards/best cards for common matchups would be also helpful (though to some extent that's already in the primer).

    on the whole i'm loving the deck and can't wait to play more. copter is really sweet, and the deck attacks from a lot of angles. I've won a good number of games where I just beat them down with flying 3/3 filterboxes, but then when they revoker copter I drop grindstone and win. maindeck pyroblast is also delicious. Viashino Heretic, however, I don't understand. He seems so slow and has to survive to get value. I definitely will switch to Maniac Vandal when I have a chance. EE in the deck would be a nice random out as well.


    kinda wanna say free ned leeds since that seems to be the thing here but to be honest I have no clue who he is. so i'll just say keep on painting!
    - 'slid
    Don't recall, Don't imagine, Don't think, Don't examine, Don't control, Rest

  12. #52
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    Re: [Deck] Strawberry Shortcake

    Quote Originally Posted by aslidsiksoraksi View Post
    1 - more advice on how to evaluate hands would be nice? I often open hands with all the mojo but only 1 sol land (ex: painter, stone, city, copter, pyro, tutor, lavaman)... or with tutors and a copter and nothing else... or with a turn 2 win but no protection (ex: 2 sol lands, 3 mountains, painter, grindstone)... i know it's hard to say since so matchup dependent and so much of it is just learning to play, but a little advice on this would be helpful
    I almost will never mulligan barring either 2 things: a no lander or a hand with all red spells and a sol land. In the dark i'd always keep a turn 2 combo hand. I think the hand you gave as an example is very much keepable, it's basically 1 sol land away from killing your opponent and even if you don't draw it you have the option of looting with the copter. Sometimes you gamble and don't end up drawing the red source or other sol land that you need, but that is bound to happen given that we have no cantrips to smooth out our draws.

    Quote Originally Posted by aslidsiksoraksi View Post
    2 - sideboarding, what do we take out? I've been subbing out welders against decks with swords and DRS decks, but that's virtually every fair deck. do we take out lavamancer in control matchups, or keep him to snipe a few creatures and be an alternative threat? i've been taking out moons against decks with basics, at least on the draw, but maybe i should try to be more aggressive with them. more general advice, maybe a worst cards/best cards for common matchups would be also helpful (though to some extent that's already in the primer).
    This is very matchup/personality dependent. Normally the first thing to go in fair matchups is usually enlightened tutor (especially against delver). Past that it's boarding out the bad cards and putting in good ones. I wouldn't take out welder vs swords deck with the exception of D&T since they play revokers. Welder is a very good way to negate counterspells.
    Quote Originally Posted by ThatDeleuzeGuy View Post
    I want to play as close to possible a 100% reactive deck that also approached 0% variance in how it played. I want to play magic with as little variance as possible. Also had a foiled out miracles deck that was an investment of about 6 grand that is now nearly worthless.
    Quote Originally Posted by Secretly.A.Bee View Post
    My original post did that.

    I'd love to have a battle of wits with you but I see you lack the necessary equipment.

    Good day.

  13. #53
    Bob Ross
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    Re: [Deck] Strawberry Shortcake

    Went 4-1 last night missing out on the 5-0 to a topdecked Force of Will g3 against Pile. Beat Lands, 4c Loam?, Maverick, Red Stompy (hoogland)

    I was running 4 MD canonists like the list I posted above (No Ballista/Karn yet obviously), but slotted the 6th blast in over the MD Heretic. I dropped the Heretic back to the side just so I could get a feel for having more blasts around and how often I would set up Canonist-Painter-Blast. Moving forward I'm not sure this is the best since EE by itself probably isn't enough to beat Chalice and there are still plenty of matchups where Canonist isn't great. Back when we had top there was a good chance that we would have Welder/Grindstone/Top/Tutor in our opener to be able to mitigate chalice or dig out of it with Top to find the explosives naturally. Now, while we still have Stone/Welder/Tutor, we can't find EE as reliably, which leans me towards wanting to have EE in the main as a catch-all as well as a tutorable artifact piece. I think if you want both, then you can run Heretic as the compliment to EE. Explosives could very well be in the side as well with just a artifact bear in the main but I want to see how EE performs still and I think if you go with just the solitary dude then you probably would want it to be a comes into play guy so that you for sure get the chalice.

    Second, with a few more games played, I think Canonist and Blood Moon fall on the same spectrum of what numbers we want. I think I am comfortable with having all 8 copies in the 75, with some combination of 5 main 3 side based on metagame preference. Finding the solitary maindeck moon wasn't really that big of a problem with the tutors, and it was certainly dead at times in the matchups I've had, but Canonist has been partly as well. And while moon is nowhere near game over anymore in a lot of matches (almost died to 2 pyromancers and tokens after t1 moon on the play against pile), having a backup copy probably makes the most sense for game 1.

    Lastly, I really wish I could play more blasts main, but I think our new deck constraints make them worse. Shortcake before was running I think only 11 or 12 creatures by the end, whereas we should be running around 16 to adequately fuel copter. I would like the 6th, but I don't know what I would cut. Canonist will also help make the blasts higher impact.

    That leads me to this list which I will start jamming a lot more games with. I don't think anything will pop out as much as quick as it did like the Canonist-Moon split or the artifact hate, so getting a feel for the list will be more my goal. Still, things I am paying extra close attention to are: 1) 4th Mountain vs 3rd Plateau, 2) 4th petal vs 2nd Monkey, and 3) Where to fit the 6th blast/if we want it


    Shortcake

    4 Ancient Tomb
    3 City of Traitors
    2 Plateau
    1 Great Furnace
    2 Wooded Foothills
    3 Bloodstained Mire
    4 Mountain

    4 Lotus Petal
    1 Simian Spirit Guide

    4 Imperial Recruiter
    4 Painter's Servant
    3 Ethersworn Canonist
    2 Goblin Welder
    2 Grim Lavamancer
    1 Viashino Heretic

    4 Grindstone
    1 Ensnaring Bridge
    1 Engineered Explosives
    4 Smuggler's Copter

    2 Blood Moon

    4 Pyroblast
    1 Red Elemental Blast
    3 Enlightened Tutor

    Sideboard:
    2 Blood Moon
    1 Ethersworn Canonist
    1 Goblin Welder
    1 Grim Lavamancer (Ballista?)
    2 Red Elemental Blast
    2 Abrade
    2 Pyroclasm
    2 Rest in Peace
    1 Tormod's Crypt


    That's 74 right now. More games will reveal what is safe to chop for the 2 Karns I want to test out.
    Strawberry Shortcake

    http://www.mtgthesource.com/forums/s...erry-Shortcake

    What a brainstorm do? Draw card and activate on draw effects fix hand, removing woods
    #FreeNedleeds

  14. #54
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    Re: [Deck] Strawberry Shortcake

    Why so many fetchlands, is it to feed lavaman? It's not like we are using them in conjunction with brainstorm. Seems like auto 4x plateau would be ideal. This deck seems sweet I look forward to playing this soon. I will definitely be doing some brewing.

  15. #55
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    Re: [Deck] Strawberry Shortcake

    Quote Originally Posted by Fallen_Empire View Post
    Why so many fetchlands, is it to feed lavaman? It's not like we are using them in conjunction with brainstorm. Seems like auto 4x plateau would be ideal. This deck seems sweet I look forward to playing this soon. I will definitely be doing some brewing.
    Don't really have a great answer as to why, mainly it was the old manabase we used a lot and it's always felt very solid. Yes, fetches have noticeably helped fuel lavaman but they also help with stuff like wasteland protection until you need the plateau or even smaller things like shuffling after a jace fateseal. Obviously the tradeoff is extra lands for deathrite, stifle, and life loss. The fetch/plateau/mountain split could certainly be looked at in more detail, I've just always been comfortable with it and wanted to worry about the other 56 cards first


    Quote Originally Posted by aslidsiksoraksi View Post
    kinda wanna say free ned leeds since that seems to be the thing here but to be honest I have no clue who he is. so i'll just say keep on painting!
    - 'slid
    Always. Always, friend
    Strawberry Shortcake

    http://www.mtgthesource.com/forums/s...erry-Shortcake

    What a brainstorm do? Draw card and activate on draw effects fix hand, removing woods
    #FreeNedleeds

  16. #56
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    Re: [Deck] Strawberry Shortcake

    The fetch land count sort of came out of testing to have one white mana when you needed it while also decreases exposure to wasteland. That was why we never ran a full playset of Rw duals. With the increased amount of Canonist it may be worth looking at increasing the count. Although I think that by cutting down the Moons you are going to basically fetch more, making the 3 dual lands easier to find in general. Along with making Lavaman a tad bit stronger.

    @ 3-4 Canonist main- I think this is a very viable idea. I have been a huge fan of the card for a while now. It's ability to positively interact with most of the format now is really nice. Along with adding disruption in the form of a body that can crew I think may be playing more to the strong points of the current build of Shortcake. When we were skyping through that league the card continued to perform well across all the games you drew it.

    I have routinely been slow rolling or not playing Blood Moon early as the risk of a FoW could be a real blow out. With its decreased ability to affect Miracles, and Lands anymore I do think we should continue to evaluate how Blood Moon fits into the deck moving forward.

    With respect to sideboard, I think we will have a list and framework up in maybe two weeks. I had a rough sketch that was held up due to the possibility of a banning along with the general newness of the deck. I plan on running a list with 3-4 Canonist for the next week and taking notes. From there I think we should have a general sense of what the optimal maindeck configuration should be. From there the rest os fairly easy as a lot of previous side boarding strategies can just be ported over. Sample hands are a lot harder to map out. In general a hand that can start crewing on turn 2 or a turn 2 combo are the best. In general I probably go for the crewing over the combo against a blind opponent, bc it has a higher floor for sequencing. It's usually better to combo with protection or after fighting a war of attrition. Most decks play at least 6-8 removal spells, that coupled with FoW make a fairly good chance your first attempt will be disrupted somehow. SI have found hands that play into the longer game to be stronger in general. While the format is faster now than in the past, cantrips have sort of also made it more grindy. Much like Vault/Key in Vintage, we have an incredibly easy to cast, mana efficient combo that can just win the game on the spot. The key is setting up when to activate it, and often times that is not on turn 2 but more turn five.

    Overall its nice to see the input. I hope others are testing the deck and I would love to get some more input. I do think that it will take a lot of games(>50 games) to get a feel to what the deck should feel like.

    Seth
    …no matter how much you think you love somebody, you’ll step back when the pool of their blood edges up too close.

  17. #57
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    Re: [Deck] Strawberry Shortcake

    I'm glad to see you guys are willing to test with less than 4 moons now after advising against it. I've been running 1 moon/1 magus for a few weeks now and been perfectly happy with it, with the 3 additional moons in the board. Instead of going up to 3 cononists I've been running an extra lavaman and a relic of progenitus. I think 3 canonist is probably a better plan though.

  18. #58
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    Re: [Deck] Strawberry Shortcake

    @Normalguy- Yeah I mean I think it is a couple factors that led to considering less moons. First we really had to be comfortable with the way Copter worked within the deck. Then it was a matter of looking at the meta and how the deck worked. I would say that the switch back could happen again, but at this point I think for shortcake at least, it is very reasonable to consider dropping the total Moon count.

    Seth
    …no matter how much you think you love somebody, you’ll step back when the pool of their blood edges up too close.

  19. #59

    Re: [Deck] Strawberry Shortcake

    just some a general observations on the idea with lowering moon count...

    @normalguy - i like the idea of including magus, that way you're running an effective 9 moons, if you count tutors. though as usual in important moon matches you want it turn 1, and really you only have 2 ways to do that. of course, the matches where moon is that important are fewer these days, and I think that's why overall going down a bit has been good

    more overall, it's interesting that this iteration is so much less focused on the lock pieces. imperial painter and even the shortcake lists of old seemed to always include 2-4 bridge and 4 moon, plus some number of magus. but we're down to, in some cases, 1 of each. i think this speaks a lot to how different this deck is vs imperial painter (and, to some extent, better - if moon is the worst lock piece, chalice is probably the best lock piece in big red's arsenal, and imperial painter has to give that up for the combo). without the emphasis on locking people, it's all about assembling the combo and navigating the game to make it work, with the backup plan of beating down or tutoring for silver bullets/lock pieces (could we even run our own 1x Chalice? we have welder to get around it...). i feel like we're a lot better at playing the aggro game than previous versions (and current monored versions) thanks to copter and the higher creature count. a decent chunk of games seem to play out with them expending a lot of resources to stop me from comboing out and then me just attacking while i lavamancer/pyroblast the last few things they have. anyway just some thoughts.

    Other random ideas -

    anyone tried fiery confluence? I had 1x in the board these last few matches and every time i drew it was very happy. it's like Abrade but bigger, with an additional Pyroclasm mode. also radically changes the clock if we find ourselves in beatdown mode. mana to cast it wasn't too big a deal. might be worth trying a 1-1 abrade/confluence split, or maybe 1 pryoclasm, 2 confluence, 1 abrade in the board.

    also I'm sure this is an old idea but what are our thoughts on Jitte? we play enough creatures, and we have a tutor for it. it's an absolute house against a ton of decks. it may be just another version of lavamancer, but the life gain is nice too and it's colorless so can kill mom. maybe on the board, but i was also thinking it would be good to have an enlightened tutor target in the MD for when we are switching gears away from the combo to just trying to beat them down (ideally something that does both would be great; maybe Ballista since we can play it as a 2/2 and just keep making it bigger if the game is stalled).
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  20. #60
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    Re: [Deck] Strawberry Shortcake

    @aslidsiksoraksi-Shortcake always sort of focused on two things, those being finding the combo, and/or using Blood Moon. But even in that situation you still had to actually win once Moon resolved, which sometimes involved beating down, but you still wanted to combo as fast as possible in an ideal world. In the past Blood Moon was just stronger against the field, and much better against earlier Lands lists. The Bridge count was more a hedge against a meta where Show and Tell approached close to 20 percent, and the count came down. I think as best I can tell we were running a singleton in the deck at the time of the SDT banning, with an additional 1 in the board. Now the mono red list ran more bc they lacked the card selection that E tutor provided. After the SDT banning Mono red has really taken on more cards from Dragon Stompy lists. While I think this helped them, in the end it was sort of not enough I think. The issue is two fold, one the mana needs to be reworked and two, without using Chalice the end cards or Chandra, Bridge, and Conflux arent as good. I think this does allow that deck to combat the meta a little better, but probably plays worse at all those aspects, which could cause some real problems.

    What Jack realized was that Canonist may very well be better as a speed bump in the current meta than Blood Moon is. Again the key is to not think of it as a lock piece but a tempo play buying you time, whether that is eating a removal spell, slowing down the cantrip chain, or crewing a copter, which allows you to successfully assemble and activate the combo.

    Fiery Conflux and 4 mana spells in general are really not where we want to be. (I say this without testing the new Karn, but he is cast able off 2 sol lands which is a totally different situation) Our deck is designed to operate on one red mana and adding too many cards that violate that will make it less consistent. In what match ups was the Conflux really strong? What did you cut from your board to fit it in? In general I would say that if you are paying 4 mana for a spell you want it to basically win the game like JTMS does. Karn may be that power level, but removal probably isnt there. I know against Elves and Death and Taxes its a tad slow as they are either putting more pressure on you(Elves), or messing with your mana(D and T). Pyroclasm and Abrade just are better here bc they allow you to interact with your opponents board on a more efficient mana ratio while also allowing you to develop your board on the same turn.

    Jitte is similar I think. I mean in the grindy match ups it probably is pretty good. The issue comes in the general space category. We can't adjust the creature count much lower, you want combo pieces in those match ups, and I think just ensuring the looting every turn is just better as the card selection really helps you keep up with cantrips. The earliest you can reasonably hit with the jitte is turn 3.

    I would advise against ever keeping a hand that from the start just wants to beat down. Yes you want to be crewing and attacking with Copter, but that is more about card selection and resource denial(life). So while the Copter allows for easier wins through the red zone that should really not be your focus. It should be develop board and improve hand leading to eventual combo. If you do that you will find that the development of board and hand will sometimes kill the opponent as they have to interact now with this phase of your plan or ensure they can disrupt the combo.

    Seth
    …no matter how much you think you love somebody, you’ll step back when the pool of their blood edges up too close.

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