Not too sure, for now I'm reading what people initially think about and compare them. There seem to be 3 branches I'm following/willing to playtest more heavily:Originally Posted by FTW
- All-in URg: Veil, Gamble
- All-in URb: discard, entomb, Infernal Tutor
- Grindier artifact-based URw: Opal, Emry, baubles, Echo, Narset, Reclamation, Mentor
Agreed. Once I tested it, I found it slows us down too much and the benefit wasn't worth it.
Thanks for sharing the result. Another tutor that almost gets there but not quite.On another note, I was working on the following list for fun. Despite my eventual conclusion posting it in case someone wants to work of this list in case they see potential in it.
Conclusion: Do not think Scheming Symmetry is worth it. The end result of 30 goldfishing games is largely similar to other lists previously posted. Playing with symmetry often felt like playing a 2 card combo (Symmetry plus draw/mill/grid) to get a three card combo. . .
Yeah, that was also my feel after testing many different shells. Underworld Breach & the combo are so strong that they can pull wins out of a bad shell, so it gets hard to tell, especially goldfishing. A lot of different directions all work.I feel the only reason it worked out as well as it did was that Underworld Breach is powerful enough, and the underling combo is powerful enough to enable the above results almost regardless of shell . . .
For a good competitive list, we need to maximize resilience against what the opponent is doing. Alternate win conditions, protection for the combo, answers to hate, ways to recover from disruption, consistent card selection, or just raw speed to race them.
Even as far as colors go, I think whatever colors give us the best tools for that will lead to a strong deck.
All 3 have goldfished well for me. The core combo is strong. All 3 have different ways to support it. I think it will come down to which is the most resilient against disruptive opponents (protection, answers to hate, recovering and finding pieces again, etc.). That needs some heavy playtesting against opponents.
What do others think?
The more I try to make this work the less I like the Brain Freeze combo. Sure it can be explosive at times and the shell for it is flexible enough to be built in many ways. I really think this card shines when you get to "play magic" with your opponent, by either casting a bunch of cantrips, or discard/proactive disruption, or forcing them to counter our rituals. I have been part of a deck building group for a while now that was basically "mono black belcher". If anyone is familiar with the Spanish Inquisition deck you probably have a pretty good idea of where I am about to go with this. Here is where the group is at with the deck so far:
Sorceries (20)
4 Cabal Therapy
4 Cruel Bargain
2 Dark Petition
1 Empty the Warrens
4 Infernal Contract
4 Infernal Tutor
1 Tendrils of Agony
Artifacts (16)
3 Chrome Mox
1 Goblin Charbelcher
4 Lion's Eye Diamond
4 Lotus Petal
4 Mox Opal
Creatures (10)
2 Hope of Ghirapur
4 Phyrexian Walker
4 Shield Sphere
Instants (8)
4 Culling the Weak
4 Dark Ritual
Lands (4)
4 Badlands
Enchantments (2)
2 The Flame of Keld
Sideboard (1)
1 Grapeshot
This deck does it all. It has the disruption. It has the explosiveness, and it has the recovery/rebuilding (Draw 4's and Breach). It is really fast......like REALLY FAST! It has a high % of T1 kills without protection, and is consistently a T2 or T3 with protection. While there are some cards that give this deck problems (as with any combo deck) the speed it offers usually means you can get under those problem cards. I don't know what the rules are for linking to external sites (Facebook in this case) but if you want to search for the deck on Facebook just look for "Blitzkrieg: The Fastest and Most Powerful Storm in Legacy". Come join in the discussion and get to know how the deck operates.
While I know that the list I posted is not a BF deck, I do hope that it helps to stimulate some discussion around making the BF deck more explosive and consistent - 2 issues I have found with previously posted lists. There is a list with BF here somewhere and I look forward to helping create it!
Out of curiosity, why green here over white? All I see it giving us Veil of Summer and Reverent Silence. While white gives us Silence (better than Veil of Summer since it protects the yard from surgicals), Sevinne's Reclamation, and Hall of Heliod's Generosity which provide some recursion for grindy games. Reverent Silence is the biggest lost imo, but I can also see running a 1 of trop to keep it in our wishboard.
EDIT: To avoid double posting.
Alex McKinley posted an article on theepticstorm.com about the card. Although I disagree with his assessment of the card, he does bring up some good points that I think we should start considering with the different builds. Mainly that of a plan B. What can we add to the deck so that a surgical on UB isn't the end of the world (pun intended). I've been thinking on it for a bit for the jeskai build I'm working with, and am considering the merits of Monastery Mentor and\or using 1-2 PiF as backup.
McKinley also brings up an interesting argument about the power of ANT and TES being in their tutor package more so than their payoffs. With this in mind, how can we adjust our decks so that our core combo takes less slots? I don't know the answer to this one, but I suspect we can probably afford to go down to 3 BF since we can wish for it in the form of Tome Scour. Seems like something that should go hand-in-hand with making room for a plan B\plan C.
I was a big fan of SI back when it was more prominent. How good is Breach in it?
Does SI have a higher turn 1 rate than Belcher (the red one)? I thought Belcher replaced it as the best glass cannon deck. Belcher still puts up tournament results but I never see SI anymore.
https://www.mtgtop8.com/archetype?a=83&meta=39&f=LE
mistercakes posted a Belcher-ish list earlier using Underworld Breach. Don't know if he tested it.
I tried out UB in Belcher when it was first spoiled (replacing Pyretic Ritual, usually considered the weakest slot). It was bad. Belcher doesn't put enough cards in the graveyard to get value from Escape. SI burns through more cards so maybe UB would be good there.
Do we want to go that direction? Decks like SI and Belcher are very fast but lose to Force of Will and variance, putting up worse tournament results than slower but resilient decks like ANT and TES.While I know that the list I posted is not a BF deck, I do hope that it helps to stimulate some discussion around making the BF deck more explosive and consistent - 2 issues I have found with previously posted lists. There is a list with BF here somewhere and I look forward to helping create it!
If you want an explosive fun turn 1 BF list, check out Pdingo's list a few pages back.
Last edited by FTW; 01-07-2020 at 07:47 AM.
One more experiment, this one with more promising results. As constantly discussed the combo is strong and the main gating issue is getting Breach into your hand. One avenue that we haven't looked at is Serum Powder. Unlike Vintage Bazaar you can't just mulligan to 1 to find Breach (as discussed previously you need at minimum to combo off 2 mana sources, Breach, LED/search, Brainfreeze/Mill/Search, so 5 cards). But, unlike vintage you can mulligan into tutor OR Breach, so 8 cards instead of 4. Trying to find math on Mulligan was hard since i only found python codes and am not sure how to even run them or even how to edit them. In essence instead of mulliganing down to 1 to find Bazaar I wanted to find out the percentage of mulliganing down to 5 to find tutor OR breach.
The deck that I ran was the following with the intention of maximizing 4 off's due to the exile of serum powder:
16 lands
4 Underworld Breach
4 Lotus Petal
4 LED
4 Serum Powder
4 Brain Freeze
4 Tome Scour
4 Brainstorm
4 Enlightened Tutor
4 Gamble
4 Burning Wish
4 Pact of Negation
My criteria for keeping a hand was whether I had the following in my hand:
2 Mana sources
1 LED/Gamble
1 Brainfreeze/Tome Scour
1 Tutor/Breach
Without mulliganing a rough calculation (using https://www.andrew.cmu.edu/user/kmli...alculator.html, so roughly .654^5 for the above) is that you will have exactly that mix around 12% of the time in your opening hand. We have all seen how the probability of going off turn 2-3 is much higher with draws/tutoring and especially mulliganing (in testing we all have seen how we have about 50% chance of going off turn 2 with or without protection depending on build - the above calculation doesn't take that into account as it's only interested in getting the "perfect" opening hand"). Again, I'm not capable of editing the bazaar mulligan python script so I leave it to others (https://github.com/Dritte/VintageDre...ganToBazaar.py (moreover the math would be very different and harder since you aren't trying to find the total probability of mulliganing down to 1 card, but the probability of mulliganing to a certain combination of cards)). After 30 goldfishing with aggressive mulligans and Powder I have found that I was able to get the above cards in 7 of my 30 games which is about 23%, much higher than the percentage with mulliganing at all. Without powder I was able to get it 5 games which is about 17%, so this insufficient testing (30 games is not a large sample size) shows that powder can add about 5% consistency to having the cards you need in opening hand. Don't know yet how that compares to the turn 2 win probabilities (with or without protection) as this test was just to find out the opening hand probabilities.
Conclusion: Uncertain. If the math actually holds out in more testing, it is unclear if 5% is worth it to add powders, essentially dead cards, to the deck. On the other hand it is also unclear if we need to run 4 offs of everything or can make due with less cards and thus more space for more accel/draw/tutors or protection. Clearly the above mulliganing guideline isn't the most accurate - for example lots of hands with brainstorm are more than keepable.
Reverent Silence is the big one. Originally we had black, so green offered Abrupt Decay.
Losing Reverent Silence hurts. In white Fragmentize can work, but it's 1 cmc. Leyline shows up a lot in the SB of Chalice decks, so it's nice to have an answer that works through Chalice @ 1. White has stuff like Disenchant and Wear // Tear, but they're not Wishable and don't answer multiples. I've seen other combo decks use Serenity. It could work for us (kills Chalice, Leyline, Blood Moon, 3sphere, Solitary Confinements, etc). It kills our Defense Grid, but I doubt we need Grid in those matchups.
Otherwise I agree. White has more tools. Silence is better for us than Veil of Summer.
Agree. That's why I keep pushing Wishes and Tutors. They may take away tempo from turn 1 goldfishes, but the flexibility to find the card you need when you need it is powerful.McKinley also brings up an interesting argument about the power of ANT and TES being in their tutor package more so than their payoffs.
In white I think Enlightened Tutor is worth it. It finds the core combo, but also postboard it finds Silent Gravestone (Surgical, Faerie Macabre, Scooze), Pithing Needle (Crypt, Relic, Spellbomb), Serenity (Leylines, Spheres, Moons, Chalice @ 0, etc), Engineered Explosives, etc. Between Burning Wish and ETutor, we can run 1-ofs and 2-ofs in the SB instead of needing 4 copies. That frees up a ton of space to have diverse answers to different hate. Otherwise we would need 4-5x enchantment kill to not scoop to Leyline (like Dredge does). The power of tutor packages!
Do we need the core to take less slots?With this in mind, how can we adjust our decks so that our core combo takes less slots? I don't know the answer to this one, but I suspect we can probably afford to go down to 3 BF since we can wish for it in the form of Tome Scour. Seems like something that should go hand-in-hand with making room for a plan B\plan C.
Edit for more thought-out answer:
ANT and TES are fundamentally a different strategy. They need to chain ANY 5-9 spells together, then grab a win condition. They only need their engine pieces (Ad Naus, Past in Flames, etc) once they have a critical mass of other spells to start the chain. Then they only need Tendrils/Empty when they're ready to finish the chain. The tutor package lets them control that timing, only seeing the cards when they're ready. They want those cards to take fewer slots because they don't need them until the end. They don't need them to start the chain.
A+B (or A+B+C) combos are different (e.g. Painter + Grindstone, SnT + Omniscience + kill). They're not trying to chain any old spells. They need to assemble specific pieces to do anything. A+B decks usually run 4 copies of A and B to maximize the chance of drawing them naturally.
Although we're storm, we're more of an A+B+C deck. We need to assemble Underworld Breach + LED + Brain Freeze to start the chain, so don't we want to see them as often as possible?
In ANT and TES a better analogy is rituals and mana rocks. That's their kindling. They need a critical mass of those to start their chain, just like we need Breach+LED+mill to start ours. Could you imagine ANT and TES cutting rituals and Moxen to make space and using tutors to find them? More copies means it's easier for them to start. The slots they want to reduce are the cards they only need near the end.
For us, Grapeshot and Empty the Warrens are the cards we don't need until the end. They're hidden in the Wishboard. Our other weak/conditional slots are backup plans (Echo of Eons, Tome Scour), which are also in the board! Burning Wish is already freeing up space in the same kind of way. Burning Wish / some tutor could also be used to find a plan B / C.
Anyway, do we need to cut Brain Freezes? They're not just the kill, they're also a core engine piece. Pre-combo they're still good. Game 1 Brain Freeze fills your yard with escape fodder and digs into LED. G2/3 self-mill gets worse, so we could board out 1-2 copies and still have Burning Wish if we need Tome Scour.
Last edited by FTW; 01-06-2020 at 08:32 PM.
If you have a 7/8 chance to miss, then the chance to miss three times in a row is (7/8)^3 = 343/512 or roughly 2/3
Adding one more mulligan for the serum powders (as a quick-and-dirty estimate) brings that up to 3/5. It's not great either way.
That matches up with my rough calculations actually right? The difference is about 5-6% (in your case without Powder 66% chance to wiff, with Powder 60% chance). The question is if that makes running the card worth it and if the percentage isn't actually better if you consider other hands keepable and/or you allow yourself to reduce some of the 4 ofs (for example Gamble could look for BF as well, ET could look for LED, etc).
Where's the Python code? I could run/edit/customize it later tonight.
I found the following for mulliganing into Bazaar: https://github.com/Dritte/VintageDre...ganToBazaar.py. But again our problem is trickier in we want to figure out (1) probability of mulliganning into a certain hand state, (2) only mulligan to 5 "allowed", (3) figuring out which handstate (for example, I was very explicit in my goldfishing over which cards to count - but Gamble could look for BF as well, ET could look for LED, etc. Moveover, lots of hands with brainstorm are keepable regardless).
Edit - Not sure this takes into account London mulligan . . .
Is there anything else like Doom Whisperer that can grind cards into the GY in exchange for life?
I disagree and it would seem I'm of the minority here. I prefer veil over silence effects because it has clear advantages over a 1 mana silence. Sure Silence can function as a timewalk in the earlier stages of a game or work around most things Veil of Summer can answer but there are some exceptions in permanent-based permission like Chalice and Counterbalance.
Veil is also strictly better than Silence against discard. At the very least veil cantrips at the end of their turn.
If I were to play silence effects I would play Abeyance over Silence without hesitation. That was the case in my other Storm or combo lists in general when I was already splashing white.
It is true however that white has very good sideboard cards:
Serenity
Monastery Mentor
Abeyance
Equipoise
Teferi, Time Raveler
It now even has its own Beast Within in Generous Gift, but mostly it's about Serenity for me.
Trying a Hedron Crab list https://deckbox.org/sets/2556171, slots still moving around here is the last iteration:
With no Teferi, Veil nor Silence I think the one-of Echo in this list would be a bad idea however.
Good points. Veil is better in the pre-combo turns against discard. It can even cantrip if they played a Brainstorm or something.
I was thinking more narrowly about on the combo turn. On the combo turn, Veil of Summer protects us from counterspells and Abrupt Decay/Hydroblast on Underworld Breach. But it doesn't protect us from Surgical Extraction on LED/Brain Freeze, Wear//Tear/Disenchant/Force of Vigor on Underworld Breach, Crop Rotation into Bojuka Bog, Mindbreak Trap (if anyone still plays that), or their own Veil of Summer (hexproof from Brain Freeze!). Silence stops all of those. It even stops them from trying to Brainstorm into an answer or use any new cards from Echo of Eons.
You're right that Veil beats Silence in protecting us from permament-based counters like Counterbalance or Chalice @ 0 (or rare Chalice @ 2), but only if it resolves. If they have Chalice @ 1 or can set up a 1 cmc spell with Counterbalance then Veil won't resolve (at least Top is banned!). We could play around permanent-based hate by digging for an answer and destroying it. We can see it coming. They're on the battlefield. The instants we can't.
Good point. Abeyance covers everything above that Silence does, cantrips, and also stops activated abilities of GY hate (or Vial into Thalia or Flickerwisp on Breach etc). It protects us from more. It just also costs more. Paying for Silence already slows down the combo turn a bit. How hard would it be to cast Abeyance in our low-land deck?If I were to play silence effects I would play Abeyance over Silence without hesitation. That was the case in my other Storm or combo lists in general when I was already splashing white.
Hedron Crab looks good and reduces the need for extra Brain Freezes! How do you play around Scheming Symmetry? Do you wait till you have Hedron Crab out? Or try to cantrip into the card immediately and hope they can't do the same?
Here's another radical idea (and makes Abeyance easier to cast).
Our combo involves looping LED over and over from the graveyard. What other deck wants to do that? Could we add redundancy by playing multiple combos?
//Artifacts: 27
4 Lotus Petal
4 Lion's Eye Diamond
4 Mox Opal
4 Mishra's Bauble
4 Urza's Bauble
4 Chalice of the Void
3 Defense Grid
//Enchanments: 4
4 Underworld Breach
//Creatures: 4
4 Auriok Salvagers
//Spells: 7
3 Brain Freeze
3 Abeyance
1 Burning Wish
//Lands: 18
4 Ancient Tomb
2 City of Traitors
4 Flooded Strand
2 Scalding Tarn
3 Plateau
2 Tundra
1 Volcanic Island
//Sideboard: 15
4 Monastery Mentor
4 Thought-Knot Seer
4 Lodestone Golem
1 Grapeshot
1 Echo of Eons
1 Sevinne's Reclamation
With Salvagers, once you have infinite mana, the kill is to just Bauble through your deck until you hit Brain Freeze/Wish and Storm kill them.
The 0cc artifacts also synergize with Brain Freeze, building Storm to self-mill a lot to dig into escape fuel and LED. Maybe maindeck Sevinne's Reclamation makes sense to support the self-mill plan.
Against gravehate, we board out:
-4 Breach
-3 Brain Freeze
-1 Wish
-4 other cards (maybe Salavagers or maybe leave it in with 1-2 kill cons)
+12 beatdown
I think knowing the weaknesses in advance is enough to play around them. Those are all examples of cards that specifically (or not) hose a veil protection. And you should be able to expect them the moment they become relevant. For instance, Faerie Macabre is only stopped by Abeyance and discard (that are relevant to have in our deck), and if you suspect they might be holding one, you should play around it and never yield priority without a Brain Freeze on the stack right? I'm having the same reasoning about those other cards that veil doesn't properly handle. Silence is great in a all-in approach where you want to go off as fast as possible and be the least interactive possible.
Yeah that's why I'll always have a secondary kill for veil matchups Grapeshot in my case.
Chalice on 1 is very bad against us I'd say. And it's fine to assume that the only things we should be worried about when seeing a Chalice on 1 during game 1 are:
- Abrupt Decay, Assassin's Trophy
- Warping Wail
- Trinisphere
Let me know if I forget any, but for my meta this sounds about right. And if they do have both a Chalice on 1 and one of those 4 cards as well you should aim at playing around it and/or go again later. In those matchups their "mistake" of making a Chalice on 1 might be what saves them if they have Decay or a second Chalice on 0 however!
Yeah definitely be worried about that. Brain Freeze is an uncounterable (sort of) way of breaking a Counterbalance lock however. Burning Wish helps there as well. The new Whirlwind Denial could help here as well (counters both the Counterbalance trigger and the Brainstorm trying to set it up for instance) but it's on the expensive side. Hedron Crab is a solution too, if it resolved earlier. Do keep in mind that Silence won't resolve either here. If you do test the waters see if you can go off that turn, it means they have another CMC on top (which might be just worse actually).
Actually most of the time you can, it's just a guessing game (see my comment above) :D Count their out depending on their mana, deduce from the way they played their cantrip the turn before, ... There are many indicators it's just very difficult to absorb the meaningful bits I'll give you that.
Very I think, it slots well in a slower shell however, one that has a sideboard man-plan for instance ;-)
Symmetry can be abused when you have a cantrip and they don't (3 Manamorphose for that reason by the way), Brain Freeze helps too. Overall I think the idea is a little too cute to be effective. This approach would gain a lot from maindeck veils or silence effects.
You lose the Storm count when you draw the cards on the next upkeep :p
Lol good point. I guess I would have to stack enough draws to draw most of my deck and pass. When I untap, I could repeat the LED loop to Storm kill (and would have Underworld Breach to get back Brain Freeze/Wish). If Salvagers gets killed first, I probably have enough 0cc artifacts in hand to generate lethal storm. It's awkward but should still work.
Bomberman has to do the same thing if they need to Bauble into Walking Ballista.
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