But why would hexproof be of any importance here if you are playing new lab Maniac?? Thassa's oracle doesn't target...
So it's a valid plan against either a shrouded / hexproof opponent or an old Eldrazi (the ones that shuffle in the Library).
Grapeshot on the contrary has problems vs a resolved white leyline... just as much as brainfreeze...
Fae of Wishes and just run 1 of each in the sb? dunno if that's better or not. you can at least play it as a guy if you need to and use it from the graveyard later on. it also allows you to cast it multiple times since you exile it, then you can cast it from exile, and if you have some way of cantripping, you can put it back in your hand and do it again.
(it's also a 1/4 that can block a delver. this might be significant in some games.)
-rob
But we don't run Grapeshot main. We run Burning Wish main. Burning Wish does not have problems with Leyline of Sanctity/Solitary Confinement. Wish -> enchantment kill. Then Brain Freeze or Grapeshot (off a 2nd Wish) can kill them. Grapeshot also kills through Veil of Summer hexproof (not blue or black) and Eldrazi. So yes the new Thassa's Oracle works, but our current win cons should already win those games.
Wish->Grapeshot has utility outside the combo (e.g. Thalia, Revoker on LED) so we probably don't want to cut it. Thassa is a dead slot until we go off. If we run Thassa main, it dilutes the consistency of the deck. If we put it in the wishboard (Living Wish + Thassa), that takes up 2 SB slots.
I think the question we need to ask is not "does Thassa win the game for us through hate?" but "can we win those same games other ways without giving up 2 SB slots or 1 MB slot?".
Edit: Fae of Wishes is one way we could grab either win con with 1 card. The problem is it's much worse than Burning Wish pre-combo. Burning Wish answers hate for 1R. Granted costs 3U, which is prohibitive before going off.
If you're to the point where you're going to cast Grapeshot, your whole library is in the yard and you can just Burning Wish for Eye of Nowhere or Reverent Silence to remove that pesky leyline before you try to kill them. However if they cast Veil of Summer in response to your first Brain Freeze (Where you have no hand and not quite enough cards in the yard to escape a counterspell) or they just have a titan in the deck you can't Brain Freeze them for the kill. However Oracle isn't a sorcery, so if you want to go for the oracle win you need to either run Fae of Wishes (twice as expensive as Burning Wish), or run a Living Wish in your sideboard to get Oracle since it's a very dead draw MD and you can't afford to exile it early to escape a crucial spell. Since it needs to be in the sideboard, you end up either taking 2 SB slots to chain Burning Wish -> Living Wish -> Oracle, or you need to run Fae of Wishes MD over Burning Wish, which costs twice as much and easily makes wishing for tomb scour impractical. So while Oracle win is better, it is less practical than Grapeshot which imo is "good enough".
EDIT: FTW got in before me
The only deck I can think of that doesn't die to BF or Grapeshot was a 12 post titan lands brew I saw at FNM where they ran both titans and Crop Rotated for Glacial Chasm. I elected to put an Eye of Nowhere in my SB over a second Echoing Truth to deal with this.Originally Posted by FTW
Also Stifle really blows Oracle out since we can't recast it from the field.
Good points. I like Eye of Nowhere to answer things like Chasm.
Though I am not too worried about Crop Rotation into Chasm. If they resolve Crop Rotation, Bojuka Bog blows us out even more, so I would not want to let them resolve Crop Rotation in the first place. Silence, Grid and counters should help prevent plays like that.
Okay tested Sphinx last night with the idea of "would I rather this be a Ponder" and tallied my results. Treating it like that I found that out of 30 games I would preferred Sphinx to Ponder about 11 games, preferred Ponder to 5 games and didn't see it bout the other 14 games. It was very clearly - in my opening hand wanted Sphinx, top deck hated sphinx. Didn't see it make the "shell" i posted any better or worse and would count it among one the preferences in the "cantrip" section in that shell. One thing to note that sphinx made mulliganing very hard - often didn't know whether to keep a suboptimal hand and use sphinx or to mulligan for a better hand.
This looks very promising: https://deckbox.org/sets/2557853
- Couple testing and moving slots: Faithless Looting, 3rd Emry, Defense Grid (I don't own a 3rd Teferi)
- Shattering Spree is/should be Shenanigans
- Sideboard is not tuned, will have a proper man-plan when the list crystallizes and I get to the sideboard tables
- If I ever get to 16 lands, I'll add a Hall of Heliod's Generosity, especially if more enchantments make it to the sideboard with that many copies of Enlightened Tutor
- Might replace the basic Plains with a Plateau
- I will try out Experimental Frenzy
Interesting! Emry looks strong.
One of the top 2 builds I've been testing the last few days is similar (the other is URw and very close to what Cire and Lemon have). Your Enlightened Tutors and Brainstorms look stronger than my high variance cards.
//Lands: 17
4 Ancient Tomb
2 City of Traitors
4 Scalding Tarn
2 Polluted Delta
3 Volcanic Island
2 Island
//Artifacts: 18
4 Lotus Petal
4 Lion's Eye Diamond
4 Mox Opal
3 Grim Monolith
3 Defense Grid
//Creatures: 4
4 Emry, Lurker of the Loch
//Enchantments: 4
4 Underworld Breach
//Planeswalker: 3
3 Narset, Parter of Veils
//Spells: 14
3 Gamble
2 Burning Wish
3 Brain Freeze
3 Paradoxical Outcome
3 Echo of Eons
//Wishboard: 4
1 Grapeshot
1 Sevinne's Reclamation
1 Tome Scour
1 Echo of Eons
//TransformBoard: 11
4 Chalice of the Void
4 Lodestone Golem
3 Thought-Knot Seer
Pros:
- Can be explosive. More turn 1-2 wins.
- Multiple lines to victory (Echo + Narset, PO into lethal storm without using the GY)
- High synergy between pieces (Narset digs for all Breach combo pieces; Narset has its own combo with Echo; Narset resets off PO; PO draws cards and builds storm with mana rocks; PO recycles Underworld Breach; Brain Freeze gives Emry more tools; LED+Echo builds storm)
- Mulligans very well. You can mull to oblivion and have LED+Echo refresh your hand.
Cons:
- Minimal card selection. (you have +4 tutors + 8 cantrips over me)
- High variance. I had turns where I drew 14 cards and built Storm 8-15 only to do nothing and pass.
- Less room for protection slots. If I try to run more, it dilutes the explosiveness a lot.
- Goldfishes well, but does it play as well around the opponent?
- Minimal card selection tools to find SB answers, so Man Plan seemed better than hoping to luck into an answer
It's fun to goldfish, but maybe Paradoxical Outcome + Grim Monolith is too cute.
If I cut those, Brainstorm + ETutor would add a lot of consistency. Maindeck Sevinne seems good. Often I can double Echo into a hand that has nothing but Brain Freeze. I can self-mill 21-30 but can't kill the opponent or set up a win combo. Reclamation lets you sac LED to play Breach + LED and win.
For reference, my current URw list is this:
//Lands: 15
4 Scalding Tarn
4 Flooded Strand
3 Volcanic Island
2 Tundra
1 Island
1 Hall of Heliod's Generosity
//Artifacts: 11
4 Lotus Petal
4 Lion's Eye Diamond
3 Defense Grid
//Enchantments: 4
4 Underworld Breach
//Spells: 26
4 Enlightened Tutor
4 Brainstorm
4 Ponder
3 Silence
3 Pact of Negation
4 Burning Wish
4 Brain Freeze
//Flex Slots: 4
4 Preordain
//Wishboard: 7
1 Grapeshot
1 Tome Scour
1 Sevinne's Reclamation
1 Pyroclasm
1 Fragmentize
1 Empty the Warrens
1 Echo of Eons
//Sideboard: 8
3 Silent Gravestone
2 Serenity
1 Pithing Needle
1 Red Elemental Blast
1 Echoing Truth
Preordains are placeholders, but Preordain often felt like the worst card in the deck. It never dug deep enough. I hated hands with multiples. 0-2 Preordain is probably better.
I tested a 1-of Search for Azcanta, but that card is way too slow. Sphinx of Foresight might be good in that slot.
Otherwise it could be creature removal (Swords to Plowshares) or fast mana (Rite of Flame into Wish/Breach) or some other interaction like Teferi.
It's very consistent at going off turn 3 with protection, sometimes on turn 2, worst case turn 4 if I had to cast 4 cantrips plus Wish/tutor to find the right cards.
I'm trying to figure out if I can replace Preordain with something that will either speed it up more or protect it better, consistently enough to be worth the slot. Most changes I've tried don't really change the critical turn without some major loss to card selection.
If you want to try out a 4 mana card draw engine, Mystic Forge and Paradoxical Outcome deserve consideration. Frenzy shutting off cards in hand hurts and could do nothing with many lands and little control of the topdeck. Narset might be better card draw than all of the above, especially with the Echo combo.
Those don't come close to Frenzy. I have played it an extensive amount in Doomsday so I am kinda familiar with it ^^ Frenzy lets you play the 59 other cards unlike Forge. Paradoxical Outcome I think needs a dedicated shell to work. So I was thinking about Frenzy because of the obvious synergies with Enlightened Tutor and Brain Freeze on self (you could even play instants between each copy), but mostly because of the CA it provides against control matchups. In Doomsday, you basically try and resolve one, and then you grind them out or just nut out. Here it would function similarly. In Doomsday we use it as a kill and mana is an actual concern so we can't really play Burning Wish with it. But here, the moment we typically cast Burning Wish is to finish them, where we definitely can afford to destroy the Frenzy. Plus you can get it with Enlightened Tutor.
Though I have some sort of itching will to resolve Paradoxical Outcome in Legacy so I might try your list out see how it plays out ;-)
Edit: Too bad it's out of range for Sevinne's Reclamation however
Good points. Frenzy could be very strong. Would you just play a 1-of to grab with tutors?
Paradoxical Outcome is cute but it's win-more in that list. I just wanted to play PO in Legacy, but it doesn't speed up the combo turn, and it doesn't do much until you already have a strong position but nothing to do with it (in which case a tutor is better than paying 3U to draw some cards). PO might work with more cheap artifacts like Arcum's Astrolabe or Mishra's Bauble, but I have a feeling those other cards just make the Breach combo worse.
I've changed it to this. I still like Narset. Chrome Mox is less bad with Echos to refresh the hand.
//Lands: 14
4 Scalding Tarn
4 Polluted Delta
4 Volcanic Island
2 Island
//Artifacts: 18
4 Lotus Petal
4 Lion's Eye Diamond
4 Mox Opal
3 Chrome Mox
3 Defense Grid
//Enchantments: 4
4 Underworld Breach
//Planeswalkers: 4
4 Narset, Parter of Veils
//Creatures: 4
4 Emry, Lurker of the Loch
//Spells: 16
4 Gamble
4 Brainstorm
3 Brain Freeze
2 Burning Wish
3 Echo of Eons
It can goldfish explosively but lacks the protection of the other lists we had.
A few goldfishes (luck helps):
T1 win: 4
T2 win: 3
T3 with Grid: 2
Slower with no Grid: 1
1) Nut draw
T1 Petal Volc. Breach. LED. Escape Brain Freeze. Win.
2) Lucky Echo
T1 Petal Opal LED. Emry, mill into Echo. Echo. Petal. LED. Breach. Escape Brain Freeze. Win.
3) Lucky Brainstorm
T1 Fetch Volc. Brainstorm (.. into gas, seriously??). Petal. Chrome Mox imprint Burning Wish. LED. Breach. Escape BF. Win.
4) Lucky Brain Freeze
T1 Petal. Chrome Mox imprint Gamble. Opal. Could play Defense Grid, otherwise BF self for 12... into LED.
T2 Underworld Breach. Escape LED. Escape Brain Freeze. Win.
5) Echo misses
T1 Volc. LED. Petal. Petal. Chrome Mox imprint nothing. Gamble into Echo. Echo... brick. Defense Grid and pass.
T2 Fetch Volc. LED. Narset. -2: get Brainstorm. Brainstorm. Emry, mill 4.
T3 Fetch Island. -2: get Brain Freeze. Underworld Breach. LED. Cast Brain Freeze. Escape Brain Freeze. Win
(I missed the line of T2 Narset into Echo, discarding opponent's hand, probably a win).
6) Mull to 5
T1 Petal. Petal. Opal. Brainstorm. Fetch Volc. Narset. -2: get Breach.
T2 -2: get Petal. Brainstorm. Island.
T3 Petal. 2nd Narset. -2: get LED.
T4 Fetch Volc. -2: get Petal. Petal. LED. Burning Wish for Tome Scour. Tome Scour. Underworld Breach. Escape Scour x3. Win
7) Lucky topdeck
T1 Island. Petal. LED. Emry, mill 4
T2 Opal. Defense Grid. Tap Emry: return Petal.
T3 Gamble for Echo. Crack LED. Return LED with Emry. Echo. LED. Opal. Breach. Emry#2. Gamble for Brain Freeze. Win
8) Lucky Brainstrom
T1 Island Brainstorm.
T2 Volc. Breach. Opal. LED. Brain Freeze
9) Double Echo
T1 Petal. Opal. LED. LED. Chrome imprint Narset. Gamble into Echo. Echo. (crack both LEDs, floating UUR). Volc. Opal, tap for R. Opal. LED. Gamble into Echo. Echo (UUR floating). Petal. Emry. Underworld Breach. Brain Freeze 16 copies.... Win
10) Mull to 6
T1 Fetch Volc. Petal. Opal. LED. Narset. -2: into Echo. Echo. Petal. Gamble for LED, discard BF. LED. Opal. Chrome imprint nothing. Echo. LED. Opal. Brainstorm. Opal. Emry, mill 4.
T2 -2: into Brainstorm. Brainstorm. Island. Petal. Underworld Breach. Tap Emry: Mox. Brain Freeze, crack LED, win.
Yup but likely in the sideboard.
Yeah I also agree with this, though it might prove too difficult to replay the
Astrolabe over and over. Bauble are good with Emry as well pre-combo for card
advantage. I've played Echo Stompy a couple weeks and it was definitely a
strength of the deck.
The list looks powerful indeed. Have you considered Circular
Logic? You can play it with LED. It's very bad otherwise however but I
suspect you don't actually need protection unless you're going off and having
access to a LED seems pretty easy looking at your numbers. Otherwise go up with
the grids perhaps?
Wait some more thoughts on thoughscour . . .
We already know that Gamble/Entomb (for the purposes of this post I will assume that Gamble works like Entomb) + Breach is a winning line if you have a lot of cards in the grave (you need about 12 cards in grave/hand which isn't really possible without a lot of set up already . . . ):
1R for Breach
(B/R) for Gamble/Entomb --> LED
LED + 3 cards to exile --> create B or R
Gamble/Entomb + 3 cards to exile --> BF
LED + 3 cards to exile --> create U
BF + 3 cards to exile --> Win
BUT . . . tomescour might actually be better since it Breach + Petal + Tomescour is a winning line as well for way less cards in exile . . . The assumption for petal is that LED is obviously better, but for the below consider it Petal 5-8!
1R for Breach
Petal --> U
U for Tomescour --> (get 5 blank cards in grave)
Petal + 3 cards to exile (2 blank cards in grave) --> U
Tomescour + 3 cards to exile (-1 blank cards in grave (meaning you needed 1 extra card in your grave before going off) --> (get 5 blank cards in grave) - at this point your chance of getting LED in grave is about 75% and if you get LED you just need 2 extra cards in grave before going off.
You're repeating till you get LED and then you just cycle Tome Scour to get BF. Each additional cycle (for 5 cards) is 1 extra card in graveyard before going off. For 99% getting LED you need an additional 5 cards in graveyard to go off.
So . . . .
Breach + Petal + Tomescour + 7 cards in graveyard = Win
If petal is LED instead then you don't need the cards in graveyard - you just win.
If Tomescour is BF then you just need 4 mana and 6 cards in exile to go off:
Petal + BF --> 6 cards in grave
Breach
Petal + 3 cards to exile --> U
Petal + 3 cards to exile --> U
BF --> 30 Cards to grave (you should just be able to win from here)
Compare this to Breach + Petal + Entomb/Gamble in hand
1R Breach
Petal --> B/R
Entomb --> LED
Gamble/Entomb + 3 cards to exile(from the petal) --> BF
LED + 3 cards to exile --> create U
BF + 3 cards to exile --> Win
So . . . .
Breach + Petal + Gamble/Entomb + 9 cards in graveyard = Win
So . . . .
Breach + Petal + Tomescour + 7 cards in graveyard = 99% Win
Breach + Petal + Gamble/Entomb + 9 cards in graveyard = Win
Breach + Gamble/Entomb + 12 cards in graveyard = Win
Breach + LED + Tomescour = WIN
Not sure what to do with this information but going off seems that Tomescour might be better than Gamble/Entomb by requiring 2 less cards in graveyard
could someone put a list with the deck using led
Good thoughts, not meaning to be critical, just not sure it would push the deck in a different direction.
This was raised (by Lemon?) a few pages back. It's why that is not the plan A. There are other ways to assemble the combo that are usually more efficient.
A common line is Brain Freeze + Breach + an interactive game of Magic with an opponent. You can easily BF yourself for 9-12 in a real legacy game (Storm counts both players' spells), which has a high chance of digging you into an LED FTW. If you don't hit LED, Petal can work.
It works, but I see it as a last resort. It's net negative cards in GY each iteration (costs 6 cards, mills 5 cards). Because it's net negative, it makes it harder to have remaining fuel to escape an LED or BF once you hit one, because you've been cannibalizing your GY instead of growing it. It also makes it almost impossible to hold up protection like Spell Pierce or Pact of Negation or win through cards that shrink your graveyard size.
Much better is Breach + Petal + Brain Freeze! That's why I have 4 Petals in all my lists. They're backup LEDs (also acceleration and storm).
I recommend sequencing differently.
Petal
Breach (play after Petal to play around Daze/Pierce)
Hardcast BF (play after for max storm) -> mill 9+ cards
Escape Petal for U
Escape Petal again for U
Escape BF -> mill 30+ cards
You mill 9 cards then exile 9, so it works with 0 cards in GY. Or you can avoid exiling certain cards milled. This avoids net negative plays and leaves flexibility.
That's why we run Tome Scour isn't it? BF is better, but we discovered having Tome Scour was better than running Entombs to Entomb for BF, so a few pages back we added Tome Scour and cut off-color Entomb. I got that idea from you!
Scour might be better than Entomb, but not necessarily Gamble. Gamble's most useful mode is to put Underworld Breach in hand for 1 mana. Getting Breach online is usually the limiting factor. LED has redundancy (Petals or mill into LED). BF has redundancy (Wish for Tome Scour). Both can start off in the GY. Breach is the hardest card to set up.
Last edited by FTW; 01-12-2020 at 09:00 PM.
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