Formatting just took a long time of lists within lists. Don't bother, your's is easier to quote and copy. Also yours looks more correct. Just want to note that in Grixis it's probably incorrect to list 4 Infernal Tutor as people run tutor in the wishboard.
Originally Posted by Mr. Safety
Good tricks. Yeah, Chaining your own Breach is a cheap way to bail out. It beats Abrupt Decay too.
In URW we also have Orim's Chant/Silence to stop Decays and Crop Rotations, or can escape ETutor into another Breach for next turn in response to Decay.
Some more tips and strategy ideas:
If missing LED or Petal, EOT Brain Freeze can get a lot of cards in the yard (counts opponent's storm), especially if you had a counter war or played any instants on their turn.
Grinding Station triggers on its own ETB, so you can sacrifice a Petal or LED already in play and untap it immediately. You don't have to sandbag them and cast them after Station.
Against decks that might have Chalice, 3sphere, Thalias or discard I play out Lotus Petals and LEDs early to make sure they resolve.
An early Petal enables Spell Pierce / Silence / ETutor on the opponent's turn, even if you used all your lands to cantrip. That helps if you desperately need to respond to something opponent did without affecting mana optimization.
If you mess up and can't go off, you can pay for Pact of Negation with LED mana.
Teferi's second ability can bounce hate or recycle Breach
1RR + Burning Wish + LED (BBB) is enough to get Underworld Breach in play via Infernal Tutor without any swamps
Playing around decks with a lot of permanent hate, try to get Serenity in play the turn before you want to go off. That way it blows up on your upkeep and you go off that same main phase, not letting them cast any more hate. Along the same lines, EOT Chain of Vapor is good.
ETutor can be cast on upkeep to get Breach, draw it, and go off that turn by surprise and dodging discard. Just needs 2 lands in play (with 1 more source in hand).
While going off, leave blue mana floating when possible. I try to leave at least U (e.g. crack LED for UUU, escape LED, escape Brain Freeze with U floating, crack for UUU, escape LED, escape Brain Freeze, crack for UUU, escape LED, escape Brain Freeze, etc..). That does a couple things. You avoid passing priority with LED in the GY to dodge hate. Whenever LED is on the stack you also have mana to cast Brain Freeze in response (to Surgical, Faerie Macabre, Bog, Abrupt Decay). The extra mana floating also leaves up Spell Pierce and Chain of Vapor for tricks. I've seen some players go LED -> BF -> LED -> BF -> BF again (using up the last UU). There's no reason to deplete your mana like that if you don't need to, especially if you would need to cast and resolve an LED/Petal before you can get more mana.
Facing Bojuka Bog when you have an answer in the graveyard (e.g. Pithing Needle for Knight or Reclaimer, Silence for Crop Rotation), they will probably Bog you with Breach on the stack before you can escape the answer. You can beat that by digging for another Brain Freeze in hand before trying to go off. Let their Bog hit, lose your initial graveyard, Brain Freeze yourself for more cards, then go off. They might have multiple Crop Rotations and Knight untaps, but they only have 1 Bog!
Against storm, Silence/Chant in response to Burning Wish/Infernal Tutor cracking LED should be GG. They might go off with Veil and not expect to get Silence slapped.
Against slow control decks with too much hate to fight through but no clock (e.g. Lands, Miracles, Karn), Double Brain Freeze @ opponent can win lategame without the graveyard. If you sandbag a few mana rocks or have a counter war, that could be 11-15 copies of Brain Freeze. Grinding Station can add more mill.
If you need to build storm without Breach (for GY fuel, or Brain Freeze on hard mode), you can Chain your own Petals/LEDs (sacrificing the Island you used to cast it) and something of the opponent's, then replay the Petal/LEDs. You can bounce multiples. Just float mana for Brain Freeze first.
Little nitpick: This will get breach and tutor up BF. Just need R if you already have BF.
Also you can keep targeting your 0 mana artifacts with Chain by sacrificing your own lands. So 2 lands + Chain + 3 LED = 7 storm + 1 floating mana. The owner of Chain's target gets to decide to copy, so you just keep targeting your own things.
How?
Tap 3 lands for 1RR
Cast Burning Wish for 1R (R floating)
HOLD PRIORITY. Crack LED for BBB. (BBBR floating)
Wish for Infernal Tutor
Cast Infernal Tutor paying BB (BR floating)
Hellbent - tutor for Underworld Breach
Cast Underworld Breach paying BR
With an extra 2 mana, yes you can escape the tutor to get Brain Freeze without escaping LED (saves 3 cards). Otherwise you can escape LED -> escape Tutor for Brain Freeze (saves 2 mana but costs 3 more cards in GY). If you already have Brain Freeze you can avoid both (saves cards and mana). Also remember to escape LED for UUU first before doing any of that, or you'll have to discard the Brain Freeze you tutored for and waste more cards to escape it.
Yeah sorry, I had an s there but it wasn't obvious I meant plural. You can bounce all your own Petals + LEDs, then shoot the last one at the opponent's board... if you're comfortable losing that many lands. I'll edit that.Also you can keep targeting your 0 mana artifacts with Chain by sacrificing your own lands. So 2 lands + Chain + 3 LED = 7 storm + 1 floating mana. The owner of Chain's target gets to decide to copy, so you just keep targeting your own things.
Ah, you're correct.
Fiiiiinally got my Breaches (they were hung up in the mail room) and started testing this beast yesterday with a friend. It's a beast.
Anyone on the RUG version tried Stream of Thought instead of Thought Scour? I keep finding Thought Scour a bit underwhelming, especially when I hit a Breach and need to dig up a Burning Wish for Sevinne's Reclamation to get it back or I need to fill my graveyard to complete the combo (which Thought Scour doesn't do because it only mills 2). Also interested in how often an aggressive Thought Scour has cracked an opponent after they've done some hand-rearranging. I'm on a split right now. I've also considered Commune with the Gods, though I have a feeling it's as bad as it sounds.
What about permanent-hate in the main? It may be corner-case in a tournament (the guy I was testing with yesterday plays a lot of prison), but I found myself wanting Echoing Truth or maybe Hurkyll's Recall pretty regularly.
Pulverize out of the sideboard cracked my Red Stamps opponent hard yesterday, and I'm thinking I want all four Burning Wishes in the main. I'm really liking this deck's resilience against varied hate. Out of curiosity, why are people running Grapeshot but not Tendrils? Is it just all the Veils running around? Tendrils requires a stunningly low spell count to go off if we've got the trifecta assembled.
Also curious as to whether anyone's working with a Grixis build. I'm beginning to think some discard might be more useful than a bunch of non-Force, non-Pact counterspells. Not sure about discard versus Veil. Anybody have input?
All Spells Primer under construction: https://docs.google.com/document/d/e...Tl7utWpLo0/pub
PM me if you want to contribute!
That was my experience with Thought Scour too. It was mediocre at digging (no card selection) and mediocre at filling the yard. It's does a little of both in between. I prefer Preordain. JBlinder has great results with Thought Scour though! Maybe he can add some insight to how and when he uses it.
Burning Wish finds answers to permanent hate in game 1. It's amazing in prison matchups. Force of Will answers the hate before it lands. Some run Chain of Vapors main. In UWR MentalMisstep runs an ETutor package with 1 Seal of Cleansing and 1 Seal of Removal main.What about permanent-hate in the main? It may be corner-case in a tournament (the guy I was testing with yesterday plays a lot of prison), but I found myself wanting Echoing Truth or maybe Hurkyll's Recall pretty regularly.
Nice. I'm leaning towards switching to Pulverize just for the tempo it has over other tools like By Force and Shenanigans.Pulverize out of the sideboard cracked my Red Stamps opponent hard yesterday,
Burning Wish is amazing in prison and control matchups. In racing matches (combo, Burn, UR Delver), Wish can be slow and clunky. Jblinder and I both started at 4 and cut back to 3. He runs a 4th in the SB. UWR also has ETutor to find answers, RUG doesn't, so the 4th Wish is probably stronger in RUG.I'm thinking I want all four Burning Wishes in the main.
Grapeshot requires a low storm count too. Wish -> Grapeshot -> escape Grapeshot -> ...Out of curiosity, why are people running Grapeshot but not Tendrils? Is it just all the Veils running around? Tendrils requires a stunningly low spell count to go off if we've got the trifecta assembled.
Once you have storm 6 and a bunch of cards in grave (2-3 Brain Freezes is enough), that's already enough to win. Escape LED -> Escape LED -> crack for RRRRRR -> escape Burning Wish -> Grapeshot -> escape Grapeshot (21 copies)
Grapeshot has additional utility before the combo turn (killing Thalia and other hatebears) so it's more efficient use of Wishboard space.
Some of the lists I linked on the previous page splash black for discard. Check them out. Thoughtseize is good. The main drawback is having a less stable manabase. They're usually 4 colors, splashing green or white for SB answers Grixis doesn't have. Grixis on its own lacks Silence/Veil effects and answers to enchantments.Also curious as to whether anyone's working with a Grixis build. I'm beginning to think some discard might be more useful than a bunch of non-Force, non-Pact counterspells. Not sure about discard versus Veil. Anybody have input?
Yeah, I'd love to hear back about it. Jblinder's list is what I was using as a baseline. I've been testing 4x Commune with the Gods today (only goldfishing at the moment, unfortunately). Costs twice as much but does twice as much, and it ostensibly helps find Breach.
Yeah, it might just be that most of my testing was against a prison deck that's made me think it's so important to have anti-permanent mainboard stuff. One important caveat: Chain of Vapor is probably my MVP sideboard card in Storm, except in artifact-based prison matchups, where it's been almost universally useless.
I'm running a somewhat expanded wishboard for Burning Wish. Might not be worth it, but I'm still seeing how everything performs. My sideboard's an omnishambles right now, but I'll post it below. How concerned are people about hatebears?
You don't even need that high a storm count with Tendrils, though. Might be a bit of a Christmasland scenario, but I'm trying to figure out whether we can go off with a limited 'yard size because it sounds like that's been a stumbling block occasionally.
Yeah, I saw them, and I like the look of them. I just wondered whether anyone had done further testing. One problem is that I've always had misgivings about maindecking Veil of Summer. It's great as long as we're in matchups in which it's great, if that makes sense.
All Spells Primer under construction: https://docs.google.com/document/d/e...Tl7utWpLo0/pub
PM me if you want to contribute!
[EDIT: Notes added.]
My list. As I said, I'm not really sure whether the sideboard's any good right now. I know it needs grave-hate (probs Surgical because we can crack combo decks with Brain Freeze-Surgical) and more answers to Leyline of Sanctity. Roast me:
4x Lotus Petal
4x Lion's Eye Diamond
4x Underworld Breach
4x Burning Wish
4x Commune with the Gods (I'm really not sure about this, but I wonder whether other people have thought about it. Finds Breach and sideboard cards or fuels two Escapes.)
3x Veil of Summer
4x Brain Freeze
4x Brainstorm
4x Ponder
4x Force of Will
2x Spell Pierce
2x Pact of Negation
1x Flusterstorm (I might want a second one over the second Pierce.)
3x Scalding Tarn
3x Misty Rainforest
3x Wooded Foothills
2x Snowy Island*
1x Snowy Mountain*
2x Volcanic Island
1x Tropical Island
1x Taiga
SB:
1x Grapeshot
1x Empty the Warrens (not sure this is necessary, in retrospect; might prefer Tendrils or Telemin Performance)
1x Sevinne's Reclamation
1x Infernal Tutor
1x Pulverize
1x Cave-In (maybe Anarchy? Not sure about this one)
2x Echoing Truth
1x Chain of Vapor
1x Shenanigans
1x Veil of Summer
1x Brazen Borrower (for Commune)
1x Seal of Removal (for Commune)
1x Ground Seal (also for Commune)
1x Mystic Remora (...)
*I've never been one to bluff, but seriously, we're running Brain Freeze. It's a cold day in Hell, after all.
All Spells Primer under construction: https://docs.google.com/document/d/e...Tl7utWpLo0/pub
PM me if you want to contribute!
Thalia, Guardian of Thraben, Collector Ouphe and Sanctum Prelate are the big threats. There's also Eidolon of the Great Revel, Phyrexian Revoker, Scavenging Ooze, Elvish Reclaimer (getting Bojuka Bog) and some other stuff.
Some we can ignore. With Revoker on LED, we can just win with Breach + Petal + Brain Freeze loop. With Eidolon, you can cast a few spells and dig into Burning Wish/bounce to remove it. With Scooze, you can control the stack so they can't target your LED (never have priority) and you can respond to activations on Brain Freeze by casting Brain Freeze. Others must be answered. We definitely need some way to interact with creatures.
The relevant hatebears are X/2 or X/1, so wishboard answers like Pyroclasm and Massacre work. Cave-In is great in some decks like Belcher but I think we lack the red count to have a card in hand to pitch. Seems bad.
SB bounce and spot removal also work.
Commune seems slow. It does a lot of useful things, but there's a big difference between 2 mana and 1 mana, especially in games against decks with fast clocks or mana denial.
Last edited by FTW; 02-02-2020 at 07:42 AM.
Hey everybody. I was talking with jtl005, who has been streaming a bit with jeskai about some of the advantages and drawbacks of my build vs jeskai. Many of the points I’ve made elsewhere in this thread. A lot of it is about thought scour and how I think about it from both a play and deck construction standpoint. I tend to ramble a bit, and this was just written steam of consciousness as ideas popped in, but I thought copy and pasting it is enough to get the main ideas across so here goes:
Scour is a very innocuous card. At first read, it looks like “replace itself with a random and fuel the graveyard a little for breach”. That’s cool, but it’s so much better in practice. First, it allows spell piece, veil, (and/or flusterstorm) to shine. Preordain wants to be cast t1, shutting off having those effects up short of lotus petal.
T1 fetch or island, with option to veil/pierce/fluster vs thoughtseize, or pierce a Chalice but with the option to scour instead if they lead on a creature/other. It also lets us sandbag for force of will (can’t pitch a preordain if we already cast it). From a deckbuilding standpoint this pushes us towards such cards and is why my version has 2pierce 1 fluster compared to just 1 pierce in jeskai.
if we mill an led or brain freeze not already in our hand we’ve effectively drawn 2 cards. Those cards are often necessary to combo off, but conveniently not needed in our *hand.* This same effect leads to some strategic options that the UWr builds lack. In matchups where it’s all about setting up a fundamental turn, we can sculpt much more airtight hands by using brainstorm and ponder along with scour to put led and brain freeze on top of library, then self mill, freeing up space in hand for protection. Not only is force of will already better in my deck (that has I believe four extra blue cards), it’s compounded by this space-freeing mechanism. Scour is much closer to ancestral recall in these situations.
Finally, non deterministic kills become very reliable. If you think breaching and chaining ponders is cool, try chaining thought scours. It’s insane since we draw effectively 3 cards each iteration, and draw fresh cards without replacement on the next. And if it’s 3 blanks, the scour pays for its own escape cost! It’s like an absolutely turbo-charged preordain.
Finally, thought scour can be used targeting the opponent (we still draw). This is actually one nice trick we have up our sleeve vs enlightened tutor builds. this can be especially devastating post board with 2 surgical extractions.
The biggest drawbacks to thought scour (especially when compared to preordain): finding breach is more difficult (compounded by lack of e tutor). Goldfish rate will likely decrease since the main cause of a failed goldfish is likely simply not finding underworld breach. They are a liability in many matchups post board (surgical exposure). It does make for some easy sideboarding choices vs surgical decks like delver (-4 scour, +3 chain +1 flusterstorm) but that argument is awfully similar to “storm crow pitches to force of will.”
Veil of summer is mostly better than silence. (EDIT: I no longer think this is true even though it is a better card in theory). There is a reason ppl are calling for its ban and orims chant/silence have seen virtually no play until breach was printed. But I will concede silence effects are better vs tes and the mirror. Much better, in fact. Still, thoughtseize is a card. And veil cantrips in a pinch rather often.
Both silence and veil work vs abrupt decay against green decks, though silence also stops crop rotation while veil does nothing.
Burning wish has more raw power and no card disadvantage when compared to e tutor. It allows us to cut thassa’s oracle since now we grapeshot from the board. Access to tome scour allows wish to act as brain freeze 5-7 (with slight extra setup) and insulates against something like Thoughtseize>extract brain freeze post board. It offers lines where we veil, then do stuff like wish, crack led, get infernal tutor...breach. Or even empty the warrens, especially post board. Those lines get blown out by silence though, so burning wish is again awkward in the pseudo-mirror.
Burning wish is quite slow and clunky if we’re not taking an led line. this is why one is in the board g1 when it’s less necessary. The fourth comes in matchups we really want max access to rev silence and/or shenanigans, both of which are incredibly powerful at stopping every hate card of those types. Shenanigans is stupidly good against even protected grafdiggers cage and rev silence is so powerful it basically forces the deck into green even if orims chant is better than veil in the meta.
I wasn’t happy drawing enlightened tutor most of the time in jeskai. My build gets to fetch island/island as lands 1 and 2 with little cost the vast majority of games. And when it isn’t it’s usually winning or doing something fundamentally game changing like casting veil vs a thoughtseize. In the end, I believe playstyle could have a large impact on which version is better for each individual pilot, and where the metagame shifts from here will have an even bigger impact on which build is a better choice. Certainly, I suspect the jeskai will remain the popular choice no matter which is actually better
That was the end of the post. I will add since Shenanigans was mentioned as a possible cut, my experience has been overwhelmingly positive because a lot of decks that use cage can also protect it. Shenanigans mows it down. Pulverize might be a good addition but I’m not sure it should be in place of the shenanigans. Sevinnes reclamation is the one card I’ve actually never used. The idea was to return a breach you self mill with freeze or scour, but usually at that point infernal tutor works just as well.
I’m toying with playing 0 e tutor jeskai that’s basically my deck with orims chant over veil. If so, fragmentize or something similar is a steep downgrade from rev silence, and also from serenity that e tutor jeskai has accesss to. A sneaky option might be to run a taiga in the board to bring in for matchups where you want to rev. Or play taiga as land 17 main.
My very first day testing in the tournament practice room on modo before shortly heading to real leagues, my one loss was to the mirror with commune! I wonder if it was you...
Now, commune is powerful for sure, but has some big drawbacks over scour that can be understood more fully when you read the post I made above this.
The things scour does that commune doesn’t: pitch to fow. Instant speed to better serve spell pierce and veil effects (probably damning that commune shuts off access to those on an even more critical turn). Also sorcery speed means no access to the “hand sculpting” tricks. A common line for instance. T1 ponder, draw x, put brain freeze and land on top. Upkeep t2 thought scour self. And finally it forces fetching green many early, which is wasteland exposure. And of course most importantly, costing two is vastly different to costing one as FTW points out above
The actual most important question in all of this is probably this: is the reason we lose games with breach often because we don’t find the namesake to the deck? If so, that is a compelling argument to every card typically considered over scour (preordain, e tutor, and commune). In my experience I very reliably have access to breach itself, but my sample size is 45 games, and I could be running hotter than the face of the sun over that small sample, so who knows. I think what loses games (at least pre board) is the opponent enacting their proactive plan before you do (which a deck better suited to have things like pierce up is good at preventing), or opponent having enough protection to stop you from resolving breach in the first place—here the hand sculpting effect AND definitely that extra card, random though it is (comparing to tome scour or stream of thought as alternate suggestions) help to fight against. Every land drop and every extra piece of interaction matter in a lot of games.
Good points Jblinder. Your deck gets more value out of FoW and Spell Pierce than the Jeskai build does, which helps play an interactive game.
ETutor can let you leave up Spell Pierce the same way Thought Scour would. Not as easily, but still often. You play an uncracked fetch and then on the opponent's turn you can crack it for Plains (ETutor, Silence, StP), Island (Brainstorm, Spell Pierce, Chain of Vapor), Tundra (Spell Pierce now and setting up for upkeep ETutor) or a red source (preparing to combo next turn) depending on what fetch it is and what else you have in hand. You can wait to fetch after deciding what you need to react to. That's why I keep saying sequencing fetches matters in the Jeskai build. In RUG you can probably play any old fetches and get T1 Island T2 Island most games without thinking too much. In Jeskai, you need to think about whether you play that Prismatic Vista or Flooded Strand turn 1 and which you save for turn 2, based on the cantrips and tutors in your hand and the possible responses you may want to leave open on each turn. If you sequence well you can still leave open a lot of interaction.
So Jeskai can leave up Spell Pierce or other tricks. The drawbacks are ETutor isn't blue and it doesn't replace itself. Both make FoW harder to leave open than in your build, I will acknowledge that. In grindy matches I will board out some FoWs for 1-for-1s, but I lean on them to stop things like turn 1 hate pieces.
Preordain does replace itself and pitches to FoW, but like you said we play it mainphase and can't leave it in hand for FoW. Because of that I will often Preordain/Ponder drawing a blue card first (to replace the card for FoW), leaving the card I wanted to dig for on top to draw next turn. That supports FoW and also dodges discard, but can get blown out in the pseudo-mirror by an aggressive Thought Scour! Thought Scour can blow out ETutor too.
Good question. We could lose for a variety of reasons, but we will lose for sure if we can't find it! If we can't find the namesake, or it gets discarded or countered or uncounterably destroyed (Decay), 99% of the time we cannot win (until we find another). Breach is the bottleneck, the one piece with no replacement. The card is so powerful we can win with nothing other than Breach in hand, but we can't without it.
Preordain and ETutor do more than find the namesake. They dig for anything. The Jeskai builds are set up so ETutor can find Breach, LED/Petal, mill (Grinding Station), protection (Defense Grid), or removal (Serenity, Seals). I say ETutor gets Breach most of the time, but that's only in games where Breach is the missing card. If you have Breach but are missing something else, it can find that too! A card that could only dig for Breach would be much worse. That's why Idyllic Tutor is not on the table. Commune with the Gods has the same problem of only finding Breach, seems too weak.
So far my losses have all come from opponents pressuring me before I could find the card I needed (combo piece, answer to hate, or interaction to stop them). In general, having a random extra card in hand wouldn't have won those games (unless it was the card I needed, which will happen sometimes by chance, but 90% of the time it won't be). I interpret that to mean that good low cmc card selection will help. Maybe having an extra land, or being able to cast FoW earlier or hold up Spell Pierce would have also won those games, it's hard to say. Like you said, too small sample size so far.
The biggest problem with Commune is it is a 2-mana Tomb Scour more than half the time. Now if only it hit lands and/or artifacts.
On the Sep 2011 Ban List Updates,
I'm just going to throw out two random thoughts, without all to much context, to see what feedback the community provides...
First, for RUG builds specifically, but of relevance for all builds really, wouldn't regrowth be a potent card for wish-boards?
Second, can this deck, based on self-mill as it is, in any way take advantage of visions of beyond?
It was considered earlier. Sevinne's Reclamation or Infernal Tutor are better for what this deck is trying to accomplish. LED and Petal can provide off-color mana.
Win-more. Even G1 you rarely have 20 cards in GY when you're not already going off.Second, can this deck, based on self-mill as it is, in any way take advantage of visions of beyond?
G2/G3 it's dangerous to blind self-mill that much without the combo because you could walk into gravehate.
Thanks for fast feedback, these are good points.
Getting breach is the bottleneck - your clock really depends on how quickly you can get breach into your hand. The quicker you get it into your hand the less time your opponent has in getting enough protection or enacting their own proactive plan. Speed may not be the deck's greatest asset, but speed in getting breach to hand is really important to this deck. That is why I personally find the tutors (Enlightened or Infernal) as the best options over Scour, Etc, as they do the job of getting breach to hand the fastest. Commune is an interesting option since it digs so deep that I haven't tried yet.
Random Thought:
Argivian Find.
Thinking behind this card:
1) It can act like Hall of Heliod's Generosity for cheap (W instead of 1WC), but is not a land
2) Can work with LED
3) Works with Gamble
Gamble + Find = Breach in hand.
Find + LED + Wish is a win like LED + Wish is a win, but with 3 less card requirement to start the combo. So it saves about 2 cards not including itself.
Tap 3 lands for 1RW
Cast Burning Wish for 1R (W floating)
Cast Argivian Find for W (none floating)
Crack LED for BBB. (BBB floating)
Wish should resolve then Argivian find should resolve
Wish for Infernal Tutor
Get back LED
Cast LED
Cast Infernal Tutor paying BB (B floating)
Hellbent - tutor for Underworld Breach
In response crack LED for RRR (BRRR floating)
Get Breach and Cast for RR (BR floating)
Tutor again for BF
So it saves about 2 cards during combo step and it can help get back Breaches and LEDs to recover. It also can interact well with Gamble, but might be too inefficient at that point.
Might be worth trying it out in place of Heliod's in the decks that run that card.
You have to target something with argivian find when you cast it
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