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Thread: Fantastic Mr. Fox (Zirda/Monoliths combo)

  1. #41

    Re: Fantastic Mr. Fox (Zirda/Monoliths combo)

    Just for the sake of the discussion, the newly spoiled Kinnan, Bonder Prodigy also makes infinite mana with Basalt Monolith.

  2. #42
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    Re: Fantastic Mr. Fox (Zirda/Monoliths combo)

    Quote Originally Posted by aedemiel View Post
    Just for the sake of the discussion, the newly spoiled Kinnan, Bonder Prodigy also makes infinite mana with Basalt Monolith.


    Temur could work with minimal effort. Things like Astrolabe and Mox diamond work well with this as well as enabling the splash.

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    Re: Fantastic Mr. Fox (Zirda/Monoliths combo)

    Kinnan does combo with Basalt Monolith. The question is if Kinnan does anything to make the deck any better?

    The 2-card A+B combo here is Basalt Monolith + Walking Ballista. (Zirda is a free card due to Companion). Kinnan doesn't replace either combo piece, so it doesn't help you from a card perspective. You still need to find A+B. It replaces a card in your Companion zone.

    Zirda still costs mana (1WW) and the mana cost can be prohibitive. Does Kinnan save you mana? That's where it might help. But because it also costs 2 colored mana (UG) and colored mana is usually the constraint, it may not speed anything up.

    It's worth testing. From my goldfishing I just don't see it solving any of the deck's problems.

  4. #44

    Re: Fantastic Mr. Fox (Zirda/Monoliths combo)

    I think you're right. It probably should be a different deck.
    That way we wouldn't be under Zirda companion restriction either.

  5. #45
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    Re: Fantastic Mr. Fox (Zirda/Monoliths combo)

    Quote Originally Posted by FTW View Post
    Kinnan does combo with Basalt Monolith. The question is if Kinnan does anything to make the deck any better?

    The 2-card A+B combo here is Basalt Monolith + Walking Ballista. (Zirda is a free card due to Companion). Kinnan doesn't replace either combo piece, so it doesn't help you from a card perspective. You still need to find A+B. It replaces a card in your Companion zone.

    Zirda still costs mana (1WW) and the mana cost can be prohibitive. Does Kinnan save you mana? That's where it might help. But because it also costs 2 colored mana (UG) and colored mana is usually the constraint, it may not speed anything up.
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    Re: Fantastic Mr. Fox (Zirda/Monoliths combo)


    Glad you're coming around. This fits neatly into the shell I proposed (amended with some of your edits). I am trying to replicated the work we did with breach where we sort of zeroed in on a good broad shell and then slowly started narrowing it.

    0-8 Moxes
    0-4 Petal
    0-8 Sol Lands
    7-20 Non-Sol Lands

    0-4 Arcum's Astrolabe

    4 Grim Monolith
    4 Karn
    2-3 Basalt Monolith
    3 Hangerback Walker

    4 Brainstorm
    4 FOW
    3-4 Ponder
    0-6 Preordain/Impulse
    4 FOW
    0-14 Additional Protection
    -- Daze
    -- Pact of Negation
    -- Spell Pierce
    -- Orim's Chant
    -- Teferi, Time Raveler
    -- Sword's to Plowshares

    So very broad, but some more theory:

    Looking at lines I posted previously one could see that the deck can go off turn 3 pretty well without the help of sol lands. Lines of play could perhaps look like this:

    Turn 1 - Land + Cantrip
    Turn 2 - Land + Grim Monolith
    Turn 3 - Land + 1 mana protection spell (Chant/Counter) + Zidra from companion + Win Con + Free Counter + Blue for FOW.

    That hand should be pretty doable I think and it looks crazy. You can go off reliably turn 3 with 2 protection spells. The bare minimum for the above should be:

    20 Lands
    10 Cantrips
    4 Grim Monolith
    4 Karn
    3 Basalt Monolith
    3 Hangerback Walker
    4 Fow
    4 Pact of Negation
    4 Chant (or STP)
    4 [Other 1 Blue CMC Protection Spell]

    Then look at the mana requirements above.

    Turn 1 - U
    Turn 2 - 2 Generic
    Turn 3 - (w/u)(r/w)(r/w)

    This is not that difficult to achieve with just regular lands, but if we want to speed up - especially if we want to be able to cast Basalt Monolith on turn 2 - this will become a little difficult.

    Turn 2 we will either need to cast an accel or a Sol Land, so right off the bat we will probably need to make room for 4 Sol Lands and 4 "Accel".

    Looking at the Sol-land line in that instance you can easily see how powerful it would be if Arcum's Astrolabe is included as a "cantrip". It doesn't dig as far BUT it allows more turn 2 wins and it smooths over the mana over the three turns in that line allowing you to cast those two protection spells.

    So the list at this point looks like:

    10 U fetchs
    2 Snow-covered island
    4 U/W Lands
    4 Ancient Tomb
    4 Brainstorm
    2 Ponder
    4 Arcum's Astrolabe
    4 Grim Monolith
    4 Karn
    3 Basalt Monolith
    3 Hangerback Walker
    4 Fow
    4 Pact of Negation
    4 Chant (or STP)
    4 [Other 1 Blue CMC Protection Spell]
    4 Accel

    At this point the next step is to cut 4 cards for those accel cards. First we need to figure out which card it would be. Chrome mox and Mox diamond both cause card disadvantage which we cannot afford if we want the line above. That leaves Mox Opal and temporary accel like Petal. The thing is we will struggle a lot of get metalcraft for Mox Opal and temporary accel is not that bad - see below:

    Turn 1 - Land + Cantrip
    Turn 2 - Land + Lotus Petal + Basalt Monolith
    Turn 3 - Zidra from companion + Win Con + Free Counter + Blue for FOW.

    True we lose the ability to cast 2 protection spells the turn we go off. Not sure how to fix that.

    As for cards to cut, we can probably cut 1 Negation and 1 chant as well as 1 Karn (we should be able to draw into one of the 6 win cons by the 10th card we draw). We can additionally probably cut 1 land.

    So a starting list within this framework could look like this:

    10 U fetchs
    2 Snow-covered island
    1 Snow-Covered Plains
    2 U/W Lands
    4 Ancient Tomb
    4 Brainstorm
    2 Ponder
    4 Arcum's Astrolabe
    4 Grim Monolith
    3 Karn
    3 Basalt Monolith
    3 Hangerback Walker
    4 Fow
    3 Pact of Negation
    3 Chant (or STP)
    4 [Other 1 Blue CMC Protection Spell]
    4 Lotus Petal
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  7. #47
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    Re: Fantastic Mr. Fox (Zirda/Monoliths combo)

    Yeah that shell looks good.

    The use of the Companion Zone means you don't need that many cards to go off, like Breach. Grim Monolith + 2 Plains is sufficient for infinite mana. From there you just need protection and a win condition, so cantrip sculpting and countermagic seems good. Although it's not as fast, I think it'll lead to a higher win rate due to better card selection, especially postboard.

    A good example shell is MartinMedMitten's Thought Lash + Thassa's Oracle combo deck. That's also an A+B combo that needs Ancient Tomb for mana acceleration. The good 5-0 lists used the full 12 cantrip suite and FoW. Some splashed white for Teferi. I think it also ran redundant combo pieces via Paradigm Shift and Jace, Wielder of Mysteries or Lab Man.


    All-In Strategy
    I tested out the all-in version more. I made a hybrid of the OP list and the Welder list (Goblin Engineer is a really useful tutor, and Astrolabe helps filter Sol/Monolith mana into colored mana).


    //Lands: 20
    4 Ancient Tomb
    4 City of Traitors
    2 Great Furnace
    10 Snow-Covered Mountain

    //Artifacts: 24
    4 Lotus Petal
    4 Mox Opal
    4 Arcum's Astrolabe
    4 Magma Mine
    1 Retrofitter Foundry
    4 Grim Monolith
    3 Basalt Monolith

    //Creatures: 12
    3 Hope of Ghirapur
    4 Goblin Engineer
    4 Simian Spirit Guide
    1 Walking Ballista

    //Planeswalkers: 4
    4 Karn, the Great Creator

    //Sideboard:
    1 Mr. Fox
    1 Basalt Monolith
    1 Walking Ballista
    1 Mycosynth Lattice
    1 Ensnaring Bridge
    1 Lion's Eye Diamond


    When I didn't have A+B in the starting hand, a very common sequence was Turn 1 Astrolabe. Turn 2 Engineer. T3 go off.
    Astrolabe was very good for filtering, turning on Metalcraft, and working as Welder fodder.

    Simian Spirit Guide leads to some explosive plays.
    Goldfishing anyway. It is more all-in card disadvantage, which could be bad against an opponent.

    But just how explosive can it get?

    30 Goldfishes
    Turn 1: 0
    Turn 2: 10
    Turn 3: 17
    Turn 4: 1
    Turn 5: 1
    Fizzled: 1

    The extra mana accel leads to a few more turn 2 wins than the White build I goldfished earlier, but most wins are still on turn 3.

    What about protection? There's only room for Hope and often not enough mana or tempo to deploy it without losing a turn.
    Protected: 8
    Unprotected: 22

    The explosive mana helped goldfish a little faster, but still not enough to enter turn 1 win territory or even consistent turn 2 wins. I think All-In is not viable for turn 3 or later. Once you become a turn 3 combo deck you face all sorts of hate like Thalia and Collector Ouphe and Phyrexian Revoker. The benchmark for all-in combo are decks like Oops All Spells, Belcher, Echo of Eons. For comparison, even the Echo of Eons / Song of Creation list I posted in the other thread was goldfishing turn 1-2 wins regularly.

    This either needs to go even more all-in (LEDs to cast Fox 1 turn earlier) or run more disruption (and less card disadvantage).

    Because of that I agree with Cire. The Xerox shell looks more promising. But if anyone else gets better results with all-in versions, please share!

  8. #48
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    Re: Fantastic Mr. Fox (Zirda/Monoliths combo)

    Quote Originally Posted by FTW View Post
    30 Goldfishes
    Turn 1: 0 (0%)
    Turn 2: 10 (33%)
    Turn 3: 17 (56%)
    Turn 4: 1 (3.3%)
    Turn 5: 1 (3.3%)
    Fizzled: 1 (3.3%)

    What about protection? There's only room for Hope and often not enough mana or tempo to deploy it without losing a turn.
    Protected: 8 (26.7%)
    Unprotected: 22 (73.3%)
    (I added percentages to the above for easier comparison)

    I just ran 40 goldfishes of the exact "all-in" list currently in the OP, which makes room for Hope, Pyroblast, and Cavern of Souls. Cavern is an interesting case: the way I'm thinking about it, since there is redundancy between 7 monoliths and 4 Karn to go get another, I consider going off with Mr. Fox safe from countermagic to be "protected", even though, yes, they could counter/destroy a monolith, etc. Although Cavern is only a form of quasi-protection, it's protection of the most important piece. Obviously the importance of cavern's form of protection is debatable. Anyways, as to the results of my goldfishing, our turn % numbers are similar, but the list I'm on is going off "protected" much more often.

    40 Goldfishes
    Turn 1: 2 (5%)
    Turn 2: 11 (27.5%)
    Turn 3: 18 (45%)
    Turn 4: 5 (12.5%)
    Turn 5: 2 (5%)
    Fizzle: 2 (5%)

    Protection:
    Protected: 24 (60%)
    Unprotected: 16 (40%)

    One additional note: 83% of the turn 3 wins were protected, with an average of 1 piece of protection per turn 3 win. That seems decent right? How does this compare to other decks y'all have looked at the numbers for?

  9. #49
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    Re: Fantastic Mr. Fox (Zirda/Monoliths combo)

    Great to see more results!

    Yeah the speed seems consistent with my results. I eventually got a turn 1 after some more tests, but they're rare (e.g. Ancient Tomb, Grim Monolith, Lotus Petal, SSG, win con). It's a turn 2-3 deck tilting towards turn 3.

    Seething Song adds a few more turn 1s (Sol Land, SSG/Petal, Seething Song, either Monolith, any win con).


    Yeah Cavern seems like an improvement.

    Though if they have FoW they can just counter your Monolith or the wincon instead. Yeah there are more Monoliths and Karns in the deck, but the all-in version has so much card disadvantage and so little card selection that you're really far behind in resources if anything gets countered. I wouldn't count on recovering. The topdecks are terrible. The Xerox builds can recover more easily.

    Another risk is that they Lightning Bolt or Abrupt Decay Zirda in response to one of the Monolith untap triggers. If your only copy of Zirda dies, the deck does nothing.

    Hope/Orim's Chant is stronger protection. If they stick then you're protected to go off. With Cavern and even REB, you can still be blown out. They make the stats look better, but in real games the protection may not be that good... I'll try testing that build against Delver.

  10. #50
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    Re: Fantastic Mr. Fox (Zirda/Monoliths combo)

    Quote Originally Posted by FTW View Post
    Another risk is that they Lightning Bolt or Abrupt Decay Zirda in response to one of the Monolith untap triggers. If your only copy of Zirda dies, the deck does nothing.
    If we have enough mana we can just stack another untap trigger in response to bolt/decay on Zirda and still make infinite mana. Sure, Zirda will die the next time we want to do something at sorcery speed, but at the point I'm assuming we're casting a massive ballista and winning. I've noticed a plus to having both types of Monolith in hand: grim casts basalt and basalt costs 1 less to untap, making the "stack another untap in response to your removal" cheaper.

    I did another round of goldfishing with the most balls-to-the-wall-but-still-somewhat-protected list I could think up. (List below the results)

    40 goldfishes:
    Turn 1: 5 (12.5%)
    Turn 2: 13 (32.5%)
    Turn 3: 19 (47.5%)
    Turn 4: 2 (5%)
    Fizzle: 1 (2.5%)

    With protection: 17 (42.5%)
    Without protection: 23 (57.5%)

    Note that I was operating under the rule "you must mulligan if there is no monolith or tutor for monolith in your starting hand (but you can mull a hand with a monolith if it's a bad hand)".

    About the list: maxed out on 1cmc kill conditions so that I could cast them more easily before cracking LED to cast Zirda.

    Combo:
    4 Grim Monolith
    3 Basalt Monolith

    Kill:
    4 Magma Mine
    2 Walking Ballista
    4 Retrofitter Foundry

    Kill/tutor/alternate win:
    3 Karn, the Great Creator

    Protection:
    4 Hope of Ghirapur

    Protection/mana:
    4 Cavern of Souls

    Tutor/mana:
    2 Inventors' Fair

    Mana:
    4 Simian Spirit Guide
    3 Seething Song
    4 Lotus Petal
    2 Mox Opal
    3 Lion's Eye Diamond
    4 Great Furnace
    4 Ancient Tomb
    4 City of Traitors
    2 Mountain

    Sideboard:
    1 Zirda, the Dawnwaker
    1 Basalt Monolith
    1 Lion's Eye Diamond
    1 Defense Grid
    1 Mycosynth Lattice
    1 Ensnaring Bridge
    1 Tormod's Crypt
    1 Sorcerous Spyglass
    1 Walking Ballista
    ...stuff...

    Edit: just took this list for a spin against UR Delver and went 5-1 in game ones (alternating play vs. draw).
    Last edited by Wanderlust; 04-10-2020 at 12:27 AM.

  11. #51
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    Re: Fantastic Mr. Fox (Zirda/Monoliths combo)

    Good work everyone.

    A few points in defense of Wishclaw Talisman:

    @FTW: Those Karn lines are cool, but that's not how Wishclaw works: It sits in play enabling Metalcraft until you pop it in your kill turn for (1). It can also find a Chant (I went down to 1) when already holding the combo but looking to defend it.

    I took out the LEDs, but v soon put a single one back in; it's just too good at casting the Fox under a Hope activation. I'd also recommend anyone running Karn to stick one in the side for the same purpose.

    In general, I'd say that the strongest T2 / T3 kills involve T1 Hope. And yes, T3 is the charm here.

    So I've Goldfished this a lot, but only kept track on the final 20 games. The results confirm my overall feel for the deck though.

    T2: 5
    T3: 11 (maybe half of them Hope- or Chant-protected)
    T4: 4

    The Xerox shell is obviously a strong and proven option, but I really like the artifact theme to facilitate Opal (=mana acceleration w/o card disadvantage) and E Tutor. If Hope and Chant are our main forms of protection you'll want to cast as much of the combo in a single turn, and that means (W/R) (W/R) (3). I think Karn's casting cost is steep there.

    Latest list:

    4x Ancient Tomb
    3x City of Traitors
    3x Cavern of Souls
    1x Inventors' Fair

    4x Marsh Flats
    1x Plains
    4x Scrubland

    1x Lion's Eye Diamond
    3x Lotus Petal
    4x Mox Opal

    4x Grim Monolith
    3x Basalt Monolith
    4x Magma Mine
    3x Walking Ballista
    2x Zirda, the Dawnwaker

    4x Wishclaw Talisman
    3x Enlightened Tutor
    4x Mishra's Bauble

    4x Hope of Ghirapur
    1x Orim's Chant

  12. #52

    Re: Fantastic Mr. Fox (Zirda/Monoliths combo)

    Just a question can you cast mr fox from outside the game like if it was in your hand,

    cause in the list there is not mr fox in the deck, I don't get these new stuff from wizard,

    do you need the restriction from your deck ?

    EDIT : ok i get it though doesn't it lose to bolt ?

  13. #53
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    Re: Fantastic Mr. Fox (Zirda/Monoliths combo)

    Quote Originally Posted by adrieng View Post
    Just a question can you cast mr fox from outside the game like if it was in your hand,

    cause in the list there is not mr fox in the deck, I don't get these new stuff from wizard,

    do you need the restriction from your deck ?

    EDIT : ok i get it though doesn't it lose to bolt ?
    It's the new Companion rule.

    Think of it like Zirda starting in the Command Zone. You can cast it from there once, but then it doesn't go back there again. You can use Zirda as your Companion as long as every permanent in your maindeck has an activated ability (most lands have mana abilities, though The Tabernacle at Pendrell Vale isn't allowed, so you can make your mortgage payment instead).

    Hope of Ghirapur stops Bolt.
    You can also respond to Bolt with a 2nd untap activation (just needs 1-2 more floating) and go off again in response.

    I tested some pre-board games with the all-in build (OP list) against RUG Delver last night to see how viable it was. I beat Bolt! He Stifled my Hope activation, then Dazed me, and I still had just enough mana to untap Monolith a 2nd time in response to Bolt and win.

    Unfortunately I lost most other games to counters on Monolith + Wasteland + additional disruption, since I was behind on cards (card disadvantage). Cavern was a lot less good than I thought. After the first time he saw it, he just always countered the Monolith. Then another game he didn't counter Monolith so I thought I had it and went for it (without Cavern), and he countered Mr. Fox. That's the only copy, that's it, so after that all I could do is shoot Delvers with Ballistas and otherwise lose fast. I lost one game to having my 2nd Monolith Elked the turn before I could draw into a 2nd red source. An Oko meta is not kind to a combo deck that passes the turn with an artifact. I managed to win one game turn 1 OTP (he didn't have Force). I tried it another game but he had Force. I won another game because he attacked with Delver instead of leaving it to block Hope. I only had 1 land, maybe he thought I wasn't a threat. Turned out he had 2x Force + Daze + Bolt in hand but couldn't use any of it. He didn't make that mistake again.

  14. #54

    Re: Fantastic Mr. Fox (Zirda/Monoliths combo)

    I think one thing that would make scepter chant a more reasonable inclusion, and that people haven't mentioned yet, is that fox plus scepter plus manamorphose is also infinite mana. At extremely minimal cost now your scepter is protection, lock piece and combo piece.

    Also dramatic reversal plus manalith is a ritual, dramatic reversal + scepter + manalith (even without fox) is also infinite.

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    Re: Fantastic Mr. Fox (Zirda/Monoliths combo)

    I like the idea of Scepter-Chant protection.

    In my games against Delver, stopping counters on Fox isn't enough. There are all sorts of ways they can disrupt you:
    -Counter Monolith (FoW, Spell Pierce, Spell Snare)
    -Stifle untap activation to make you pay extra mana.
    -Stifle Mine activation to stop your wincon
    -Stifle Karn -2 to stall a turn (and then kill Karn, or kill you, or kill the Fox)
    -FoW the win condition instead
    -Double Bolt Fox
    -Elk your stuff with Oko if you play it out early

    If you're facing a clock, you can't wait to build up resources to play around everything. The cantrip decks topdeck better than the all-in builds can. More draw steps favor them (their hand will improve faster than ours, due to better card quality). My wins came from speed + bad luck from the opponent. The long games were all losses. You can do silly things like beatdown with Ballista and Spirit Guides, ping their Delvers and try to win with Karn, but Xerox decks will outgrind us if they're halfway decent players.

    Preboard games: 8/20 40%

    Breakdown of the wins:
    - Turn 1 kill OTP. He didn't have Force. (Tomb, Grim Monolith, LED, Opal, Mine)
    - Turn 1 kill OTD. He didn't have Force and I beat Daze + Bolt. (Tomb, Petal, Grim, Basalt, 2xSSG, Karn)
    - Turn 1 kill OTD. He didn't have Force and tapped out for Delver. (Tomb, Petal, Opal, Grim, Mine)
    - Had a turn 1 kill OTP, Monolith got Forced, but T2 had the 2nd Monolith to win through Daze (Monolith, mana rocks, Seething Song, Mine)
    - Turn 1 Grim Monolith OTP got Forced, but still managed T2 Basalt into T3 win
    - After 1st Monolith was countered, opponent burned 2x Bolt on 2 Hopes and had nothing left for Fox.
    - Hope got Stifled, but all he had was Bolt and I beat it with the double untap
    - Delver misplayed. He let me get Hope through. I had been attacking with Hope for several turns just for damage, and I only had a Mountain after getting double Wasted, so he thought it was harmless. Hope let me go off through 2x Force, 2 blue cards, Daze, Bolt... If he kept Delver to block or Bolted Hope I lose this hard.

    4 of those wins were turn 1 hands where the opponent didn't have FoW, so I got lucky getting good hands when he had worse.
    1 was an opponent misplay, which will happen when they see a new combo deck at first.
    4 of those hands had double Monolith, for the redundancy if one got Forced or to have extra untap mana to beat Bolt.

    So most of that is lucksacking into fast explosive hands. Otherwise we need protection.
    Last edited by FTW; 04-10-2020 at 11:38 AM.

  16. #56

    Re: Fantastic Mr. Fox (Zirda/Monoliths combo)

    Do you agree that manamorphose is a very low opportunity cost inclusion for an additional infinite mana combo?

    Also it fixes mana so that you can cast fox off of monolith, and scepter plus manamorphose is just tap draw a card which is pretty great as a fair dig.

    I think this deck really wants 3feri (turns scepter chant into gg, additional protection for main combo, and deals with hate cards)

    Edit: woops glossed over your second sentence so the above doesn't really make sense.

  17. #57

    Re: Fantastic Mr. Fox (Zirda/Monoliths combo)

    I'm probably missing something, but how is Zirda+Scepter+Manamorphose infinite anyway?

  18. #58

    Re: Fantastic Mr. Fox (Zirda/Monoliths combo)

    Quote Originally Posted by aedemiel View Post
    I'm probably missing something, but how is Zirda+Scepter+Manamorphose infinite anyway?
    Your right i'm crazy , manamorphose can't make it untap itself. I was confusing it with dramatic reversal. Its still a ritual that draws a card.

    Scepter + dramatic reversal + fox plus any nonland mana source is infinite untaps, plus 2 is make infinite mana. Not nearly as good as manamorphose.

  19. #59
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    Re: Fantastic Mr. Fox (Zirda/Monoliths combo)

    I think Cavern of Souls and Manamorphose are not worth it. Cavern doesn't protect the entire combo (as been mentioned they will just concentrate on the Monolith) and it messes up the mana base depending on how many snow-lands you need (Astrolab) or SolLands. It's just too hard to include and it doesn't provide that much protection. Manamorphose also takes up valuable spots that can be filtering, accel or more protection. The off chance that you combo off with Scepter is not worth it. Generally, unlike other combo decks you have enough redundancy (and go off late enough (aiming for turn 3) that you do not need to worry about getting the combo into play. Instead you are worried about protection the combo. Running test games I quickly realized, as much of you have, that the real hurdle is OKO. You need to counter or shut OKO down before you cast your monolith OR go off in one turn.

    Going off in one turn you're waiting for turn 3 at least:

    1 - Land
    2 - Land
    3 - Sol Land + Accel + [Grim Monolith AND Chant/1CMC protection spell] OR [Basalt Monolith] --> Zidra + Win Con + Daze or FOW + Blue card ready


    Shutting down OKO should look like this:

    1 - Land
    2 - [Land+Grim Monolith] OR [Sol-Land+Basalt Monolith] - assume opponent is casting OKO, have Daze or FOW + Blue card ready. If that is not enough OKO protection you might want to include Needles in the deck and cast turn 1.
    3 - [Land or Accel]+Chant/1CMC protection spell --> Zidra + Win Con
    Quote Originally Posted by Mr. Safety View Post
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  20. #60
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    Re: Fantastic Mr. Fox (Zirda/Monoliths combo)

    Quote Originally Posted by Cire View Post
    If that is not enough OKO protection you might want to include Needles in the deck and cast turn 1.
    Unfortunately Needle doesn't pass Zirda's activated ability requirement .

    As for your testing against RUG Delver: I'm not surprised that wasn't an easy matchup, especially if they are playing stifle. 8/20 (40% win rate) isn't SO bad for what looks on paper like one of our worst matchups. I think the all-in builds are much better suited to beat the more popular snow control and UR Delver decks.

    Curious to hear how the Xerox shell is working out in goldfishing/testing!

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