There is a lot of different points you are making.
1. You want more things that hate on draws. I agree, but other than ugxxx chaliceand 3ball already hate out all draw effects, while protecting curses from interaction and more relevant in other mus.
2. You don’t want too much hate on the same thing. Yah that’s why I don’t want these cards in addition to 3ball md. Additionally it makes hate with different angles of attack (agent instead of Hullbreacher) better.
3. You would like to have a mini combo with your hate pieces. My point about was redundancy was assuming you wanted to make a dedicated chalice combo deck.if you just want a small synergy to raise the floor of the effect in mus where it is not relevant, wheel and deal plus Hullbreacher seems worse than field of ruin plus agent. Better mana, more relevant hatepiece by itself (vs 12post/depths/delver), and an untapped land is a much better floor than a 3 mana can trip.
Trinisphere can be bad in certain mus, but its the reason our good matchups are good. Its the best thing to be doing against gaak, elves, storm, doomsday (other than agent), and still great vs most blue hands as a defense grid with upside. I feel like a large portion of our free wins are 3ball into karn.
If you want a synergic combo hate piece, I would go with a single Maralen replacing a single Helm (or replacing an eliminate). Its an instant win combo if they dont have an answer already in hand,similar to Helm. It combos with any of the 4 Agents in the deck similar to how Helm combos with any of the 4 Leylines in the deck. It can even tutor up Opposition agent if you dont already have one in hand and it doest require a color splash/more nonbasics like Wheel and Deal does.
The occasional chrome mox + any land + ritual + ritual + agent + maralen opening play has got to be satisfying.
Maralen is a pretty great combo with vial; but without it it is incredibly fragile by itself. Losing to oko in hand, on the battlefield or in their deck is rough.
To be fair, Opposition Agent combos extremely well with Trinisphere for attacking the opponent on that angle. Even better if you can manage to run Wasteland to further pinch manabases. There is certainly an argument for running Field of Ruin instead, but that might be too slow; I don't know.
Karn also seems pretty sweet at attacking Astrolabe and artifact mana, while tutoring for strong artifacts to either kill or lockout the opponent.
So in short, I don't see what you gain by splashing blue. At the point where you start splashing blue, you're better off building an Echo deck, I think.
I registered field of the dead instead of field of ruin, and played horribly, but got 4-3 anyways :D.
Chains performed significantly better than I remember the last time I tried them, but sylvan library and uro are considerably more played now than last spring I think.
_____
In other news someone 5-0'd with a hybrid of curses and eldrazi post:
Even though field of ruin in a vacuum is considerably worse than wasteland, I had a few arguments for it:
- Against the vast majority of opponents, you are considerably more mana hungry than your opponent so setting both people back lands is detrimental.
- Related to the above, field of ruin can be an excellent curve filler between say a t1 chalice and a t3 curse/karn, whereas wasteland obviously doesn't curve into 4 drops nicely.
- Field of Ruin is a black source in a pinch, so it is less painful in a mana base which already has 8 colourless lands.
- Forced shuffle is a very nice combo with opposition agent, turning it into essentially a 3 mana uncounterable mwonvuli acid-moss stapled to a lay of the land.
_____
In other news, one of the more prolific rector fit pilots made a sweet video/gif for me. I added the gif version to the primer.
I went 0-4-bye in the Saturday challenge and 3-4 in the Sunday challenge with a md 4x Agent 2x field list. The meta was incredibly blue, with 7/11 mus being wasteland daze decks.
Even after many matches, I am having a lots of difficulty evaluating if agent is good or not.
Pros:
- Against almost any deck a few games it just straight up wins by stealing their first fetches.
With field you can get some pretty great mana advantage/denial.
It is an insanely good hate Piece vs all the non brainstorm bad mus. Titanpost/depths/maverick.
A real clock has been helpful in some matchups or if you never draw a payoff.
It’s very good in matchups where removal is mediocre or bad (doomsday/elves/storm/gaakk)
Having a threat that can’t be fon’d is nice.
Cons:
- With no other mana denial the stealing a land was often irrelevant.
- It’s a flash 3/2 vs Urza echo, the most popular chalice deck.
- Having creatures G1 turns on the opponents bolts and plows.
- It cuts into your oko and delver answers.
- It requires you to cut urborg, making your delver mu and 1BB cards worse.
- Holding it up can make sequencing awkward.
- Field of ruin cuts into your t1 black sources
Last edited by Reeplcheep; 12-21-2020 at 11:34 AM.
After further mulling, I think agent is not quite good enough to maindeck. Having eliminate for the first threat is just so important and I undervalued the utility of urborg and being creatureless g1.
Agent is still so good vs green decks and combo that it deserves multiple sideboard slots.
I think I need a bit more gas from my lands and chains to beat fair blue, which is everywhere.
I think I will stick with the below list for a while, and concentrate my brewing juices on making court poxless pox ie monarch MBC work.
4 ancient tomb
4 City of Traitors l
2 Ifnir Deadlands
2 Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth
6 Swamps
4 Pelakka Predation // Pelakka Caverns
4 Dark Ritual
4 Chalice of the Void
1 Sorcerous Spyglass
4 Trinisphere
4 Eliminate
4 Leyline of the Void
2 Helm of Obedience
4 Karn, the Great Creator
4 Curse of Misfortunes
1 Curse of Death’s Hold
1 Cruel Reality
1 Overwhelming Splendor
3 Plague Engineer
3 Opposition Agent
3 Chains of Mephistopheles
1 Vault of Whispers
1 Sorcerous Spyglass
1 Helm of Obedience
1 Mycrosynth Lattice
1 Ensnaring Bridge
1 Liquimettal Coating
3rd chains vs 4th Plague engineer is personal preference. It depends on how popular you think UGxxx durdle is vs elves/gaak to punish the durdle. Imo the pe maps out cleaner (you don’t really have enough cuts vs durdle) but durdle mus are more common. 1 Liliana the last hope or dystopia can be a middle ground (sort of ok vs both decks)
Played in the Sunday challenge. Went 3-0 non oko fair blue, 0-3 oko blue, 1-0 everything else. All the losses were close 1-2s so I think the deck only needs small changes to be great.
Meta is incredibly durdle heavy; even delver is mostly gone. All the blue hate in peoples’ sideboards means they r less equipped for us. I just need a plan to beat the fow, fow oko playstyle.
I really need something that can cheaply deal with their counter magic; I have tried Everything 3 cmc and they were lacklustre. Options I have been considering:
Thoughtseize:
fastest way to deal with their answers but has the chalice and ancient tomb problem. One of the best black cards for a reason.
Defense grid: great with tombs and dark ritual. In the past I have had issues where it doesn’t synergise well with trinisphere. However I was usually slowing down after board for oko removal. If instead I cut all the removal vs durdle grid could be quite good in an all in t1 protection t2 win build.
Draft list if I take the “go fasta” approach recommended earlier by kinda and FTW.
Because of all the durdle I thought a little shakier mana was worth more oko answers: split the extra utility lands into a basic and a spyglass
4 ancient tomb
4 City of Traitors
2 Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth
7 Swamp
4 Pelakka Predation // Pelakka Caverns
4 Dark Ritual
4 Chalice of the Void
2 Sorcerous Spyglass
4 Trinisphere
4 Eliminate
4 Leyline of the Void
2 Helm of Obedience
4 Karn, the Great Creator
4 Curse of Misfortunes
1 Curse of Death’s Hold
1 Cruel Reality
1 Overwhelming Splendor
4 Plague Engineer
3 Opposition Agent
2 Defense Grid
1 Vault of Whispers
1 Sorcerous Spyglass
1 Helm of Obedience
1 Mycrosynth Lattice
1 Ensnaring Bridge
1 Liquimettal Coating
Boarding would be:
Vs Ugxx
Plus helm, grids, agents
Minus eliminates, urborgs (b/c agent)
Vs RUG
Plus helm, spyglass, grids
Minus Karns.
This is a large departure from my previous plans of cutting drit for oko removal/chains/dreamstealer and Karn for oko removal/plague engineer respectively.
I'd consider just not running the stompy package right now and leaning into Cavern of Souls. Something like this.
Edit: might want some lilly walkers too.
4 ancient tomb
1 City of Traitors
2 Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth
4 Swamp
4 Scrubland
4 Marsh Flats
3 Cavern of Souls
1 Phyrexian Tower
4 Dark Ritual
4 Cabal Therapy
3 Chains of Mephistopheles
2 Pithing Needle
4 Eliminate
3 Bloodchief's Thirst
2 Opposition Agent
4 Academy Rector
4 Plague Engineer
4 Curse of Misfortunes
1 Curse of Death’s Hold
1 Cruel Reality
1 Overwhelming Splendor
There are currently 1 users browsing this thread. (0 members and 1 guests)