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Thread: Neil Armstrong, aka AstroNought

  1. #1
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    Neil Armstrong, aka AstroNought

    For the longest time the main problem with being an AstroNought is that you never had a spaceship to take you to the moon, but with the printing of Cosmic Intervention we now have our passport to the stars! If Dogecoin can make it to the moon then so can we dammit!

    Lands 18
    Snow Mountain x5
    Snow Plains x1
    Plateau x1 (aka the pillar of the format)
    Vista x4
    Arid Mesa x4 (a RW Fetch actually exists, though I had my doubts)
    Wasteland x3

    Dudes 13
    Dreadnought x2
    Welder x4
    Goblin Engi x2
    Magmatic Channeler x2
    Planebound Accomplice x3

    Spells 10
    Bolt x4
    Pyroblast x4
    REB x2

    PWs 6
    Karn x3
    Ugin, who cannot be Eff'd x1
    Ugin, the big one x1
    Super Chandra x1 (the uncounterable one)

    Artifacts 10
    Astrolabe x2
    Painter x3
    Grindstone x1
    Scroll of Fate x2
    Sundial of the Infinite x1
    Pithing Needle x1

    Spaceships 3
    Cosmic Intervention x3
    ---
    Lutri-approved SB
    Engineered Explosives x1
    Powder Keg x1
    Scroll of Fate x1
    Torpor Orb x1
    Sundial of the Infinite x1
    Dreadnought x1
    Painter x1
    Grindstone x1
    Liquimetal Coating x1
    Super Chandra x1
    Chandra, ToD x1
    Tormod's Crypt x1
    Relic of Progenitus x1
    Ensnaring Bridge x1
    Pithing Needle x1

    You are ofc encouraged to run 61 cards main for max style points [this would be the 4th Wasteland, though a Karakas is also acceptable] . Depending on meta, Canonist can be added to SB; this probably goes in place of Bridge or a Chandra.

    A less-polished version of the deck can be seen in action on Legacy_Council's twitch VoDs from earlier today. The first 4 rounds are pretty interesting, and we almost got the 3-2! Start should have been a 3-0 but we were a little short-sighted in match 2. There was a decision fork on Torpor Orb and an Engi activation that came back to haunt us. Round 4 vs Sneak and Show was hilarious.

    The idea of the deck, and the reason we run Wasteland over Tomb (and Lattice) comes down to the mechanics of Cosmic Intervention, and how it plays nicely with Scroll of Fate cheating PWs. Once you play Scroll, you're a Dreadnought deck, and this becomes all the more true when you're maximizing on Sundial and Planebound Accomplice. This makes for a fun deck with a lot of play to it, but it is built on the assumption that Valki is changed to cmc 9 in deck, or is bound up registered to a challenge.

    Sleeve it up, give it a try, and become a space viking today!
    Ad Astera per Phyrexia!!

  2. #2

    Re: Neil Armstrong, aka AstroNought

    I really like this deck. A bunch of overlapping silly fast wins, and top decks well.

    When is sundial better than more dreadnoughts or scrolls?

    Replacement effect Rules question: does welder plus cosmic intervention work? Can you exchange with welder if there is leyline out?

    What is the reason to not run etutor?

    Why are we not maxing out on each of the effects?

    Imo you got to pick 2 out of the three combos in this deck so you can run more copies. One of stiflenought, painter or cheat planeswalkers has to go. Probably painter since it doesn’t have the scroll of fate overlap.

    If you are not taking advantage of the fact it affects multiple permanents too often, you may want to try Brought Back or Malalir RebirthOver cosmic intervention as more efficient options.

  3. #3

    Re: Neil Armstrong, aka AstroNought

    Why is magmatic channeler in here?
    Quote Originally Posted by Laser Brains View Post
    With the printing of Gigantosaurus, Thrashing Brontodon and Steel Leaf Champion the deck has evolved from good to very competitive. Anyway, give it a few play tests if you are interested and let me know what you think.

    Winter Maze
    Quote Originally Posted by CptHaddock View Post
    With veteran explorer I know that I 100% will not enjoy a 30 minute grindfest against someone who can barely afford dual lands and believes that their deck can cast a 10 mana 8/8.

  4. #4
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    Re: Neil Armstrong, aka AstroNought

    @Reeplcheep Sundial perms PWs for Accomplice, makes Dreadnoughts, keeps us from dying to mill/Smokestack/Cruel Reality types, and tells opponent to stop playing on our turn.

    Yes on Welder + Cosmic. All he needs is the 2 perms in the right place as activation resolves. Welder doesn't care where they end up.

    E-Tutor takes space, and it's a white card, and we really aren't looking for white early. Also can't really count on a hand having white.

    The thing about cutting Welder/Painter/REBs is that you're losing most of your interaction, turn 1 plays, removal magnets, and latent power. Sure you get to add Brainstorm/Stifle/FoW/FoN-types, but you're no longer winning the game proactively, nor are you forcing opponents to engage in play patterns we dictate. The 6 REB effects add comparable levels of interaction, and while you lose Stifle you're driving up access [and reliability] to Sundial & Scroll (yard tutoring with Engineer and Welder shenanigans).

    The other thing to quickly note is that we're never going to be interested in playing 3c with a manabase like this, so we'd be cutting all the white for blue. If we're not playing Cosmic, there's really no point to playing Planebound or Wasteland. In this case you would revert deck to straight Painter with Tombs. Once you get to pure Welder, you're absolutely losing to everything RUG Delver is currently doing, which makes this a poor deck selection decision.

    @kinda no one is allowed to play Welder without Mag Channeler, otherwise you've built the deck incorrectly. Now a pure Welder deck begins with 4x Welder and 4x Mag Channeler, but in this deck it's important to have cards touch the hand (to foretell, Planebound, or Scroll) so we can only afford to play 2 of the draw 3 per turn magus. It's a card whose selection enables consistent hand fixing and velocity, especially in a midgame. There is nothing reasonable about this card with anything graveyard'y. It's a way better card than Arcanist *if* you are doing a very specific thing, and Welder ticks that box.
    ---
    So the thing that makes this work despite all the nonsense is that everything is generally sharing tools to drive a gameplan forward. The thing we really care about here though is whether or not Cosmic can be the center of the wheel which all the spokes connect to. It would obviously be better if it was blue, b/c we could drop Forces and just have Stifles, but it's pretty dang close to ideal; but yes, the color restrictions dictate we must grab the REB/Painter stuff for interaction.

    Edit: as magical christmaslandy as the deck looks, Cosmic Intervention is a very problematic card that turns every Waste or Fetch into 3 activations. As derpy as the PWs are, if an opponent leaves us alone on turn 3 or 4 this deck can ramp to ridiculous heights or machine gun a manabase to oblivion. It is not particularly challenging to ramp out Ugins through Daze.

  5. #5
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    Re: Neil Armstrong, aka AstroNought

    What if Painter was running BEB (Blue Elemental Blast) instead of REB? It's a card that happens to counter or destroy Valki, God of Lies before activations and cannot be answered with Misdirection or FoN. It also destroys Arcanist, counters REBs, and pitches to Force.

    The red version looks a bit short on card selection and graveyard-enabling. 6 Welder, but only 2 graveyard tutors and 2 discard outlets. Faithless Looting?

  6. #6
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    Re: Neil Armstrong, aka AstroNought

    BEB has the problem of being the 3rd color, so no longer allowed to run Cosmic. This begins the cascade where Planebound has to go, and then all the Sundials & Scrolls & Dreadnoughts. What you're left with is straight UR Painter, at which point you can't really afford to be letting SnT/Oko/Delver/FoW resolve unchallenged b/c you didn't have a Painter down; it's also pretty miserable to target a spell like a painted-Oko and then die b/c they Bolt'd your 1/3.

    I think the best shot UR Painter has right now comes from EoT Hibernation derping (Painter on Green). You're probably never winning vs Valki, even if you had 6 BEB effects, but there is something funny about bouncing it to hand with painted-Hibernation, since they can't play Brainstorm. While Hibernation is no 8cmc Ugin, it is one of the only cards that can 1-for-1 Oko and the elk he makes. Coming back to Valki for a second, there will be a rules change, so it's not really worth your time to bend over backwards to fight it. If you really wanted to try to win with UR Painter vs Valki, you probably need Trickbind and SSG. This is obviously terrible vs the rest of the format, so you're going to need to get really creative with the backup plan, and that almost certainly means cheating Lotus Fields into play [so like, I guess you're playing an amount if Expedition Map?] - this all seems suspect.

    On the Looting Stuff, if you had the slots you could maybe do it. I don't like that it rewards opponents for playing yard hate. As built, I actively want opponents to bring in yard hate; I'm just as happy to send in the 1/1 and 1/2 beats with Bolts and 12/12s in my deck; and if I haven't cast them yet, I'm even happier to upgrade them to face-down 2/2s. Now if you're pure UR Painter [this time avoiding the SSG/Trickbind/Lotus stuff], I think what you're doing is staying on red blasts, using Looting & Channeler, and packing Rite of Undoing, which really hoses Valki, and is straight-up immune to Misdirection in multiple ways.

    In terms of getting artifacts to the yard, Dreadnought can always jump right in (and take a Painter down with him if necessary), but other than Astrolabe there aren't any artifacts/artifact creatures in here that opponents will tolerate resolving (and this is where the Welders start demanding their attention).
    ---
    So a lot of bouncing around between UR Painter vs AstroNought. Very different ways of playing the game; Painter has to play a very specific way towards what will always be an all-in. AstroNought is built to trade, until the opponent runs out and dies to anything that we're not even all-in with. This is more about lighting a bag full of feces on fire, ringing their doorbell over and over while we hide in the bushes. The main point of this is that they eventually will forget to take off their shoes and will end up with sh*t all over their RUG....Delver.

  7. #7
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    Re: Neil Armstrong, aka AstroNought

    Quote Originally Posted by Fox View Post
    BEB has the problem of being the 3rd color, so no longer allowed to run Cosmic.
    The implication was to play UW PainterNought, keeping Cosmic and getting to run Force + Brainstorm + Stifle.

    Your reason against adding blue for Stifle/good stuff was that you'd either be 3 colors or lose the early interaction of REB and Painter (cut red). If you take the blue version of Painter, you could still keep much of that early interaction but get the benefit of blue cards.

    The BEBs are worse against generic stuff like SnT and Oko, but you have regular blue cards to shore that up and Stifle to make the Nought plan a lot better, letting Nought be a 4x. Planebound would go (along with Welders), but you keep Scrolls and Dreadnoughts and lose graveyard vulnerability.

    With Painter on red and added protection/consistency from blue, you can justify a SB slot on garbage like Celestial Purge to hate on Valki (dodges FoN, Dispute, and Misdirection if you don't have Painter yet).

    Quote Originally Posted by Fox View Post
    AstroNought is built to trade, until the opponent runs out and dies to anything that we're not even all-in with. This is more about lighting a bag full of feces on fire, ringing their doorbell over and over while we hide in the bushes. The main point of this is that they eventually will forget to take off their shoes and will end up with sh*t all over their RUG....Delver.
    The many different lines of proactive threats do look really fun to play. But will this be an attrition format of trading? Not till the rules change anyway.

    The current version seems prone to draw variance, with multiple intersecting combos but lacking card selection. That's why I thought Looting would help. What do you do with 2 planeswalkers in hand if you don't have Scroll or Planebound? Play with 2 dead cards and hope to topdeck? How do you find 1-of Grindstone unless you draw 1 of 2 Engineers?

    Instead of Planebound + Planeswalkers, what if it was Sneak Attack + robots? Then there's at least more synergy with the Welder plan.
    Last edited by FTW; 02-10-2021 at 12:13 PM.

  8. #8
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    Re: Neil Armstrong, aka AstroNought

    The thing about Painter+Dreadnought-only is that they don't play nicely together. You're rewinding the clock back to the poor deck construction of classic Dreadstill - that's CB/SDT and Dreadnought/Stifle working in complete isolation, bound together in the loosest way possible by Trinket Mage. Painter + Nought is the exact same thing, but Trinket Mage is called Karn now. Nowadays we combo everything together (as much as is possible), rather than running competing multi-part combos in complete isolation.

    The thing that is different with Welders and Cosmic and Karn is that we have the opportunity to bridge the gap between Painter and Dreadnought tech. Now there is no doubt that Dreadnought and Painter still kinda hate eachother's tech, but the requirement to go red, to find the effects that maximize Cosmic, dictates that we accept higher power for higher variance [covering loss of blue, and the slots blue needs to run Force effects, with the REB-effect spamming].

    If wanted to play UW with Dreadnought, it would be Dreadstill and I'd add a 1x Cosmic; there would be no Painter stuff. I have zero fear of combo with Dreadstill, especially one as all-in as Valki Cannon. I will never feel the need to run BEB main when Stifle exists, and combos with everything my gameplan could ever want. I also don't have to do any work to cheese Cosmic here - foretell means >7 card hand size with Standstill and Teferi is made even more unkillable. It is by far a more-winning deck than AstroNought could ever be, but AstroNought is also drastically different...and might still be good enough to be considered competitive, despite the silliness. The combination of Dreadnought and Painter was never the reason to make this deck, it's just a concession to RW's need for interaction to cover the Planebound Accomplice/Cosmic shenanigans which happen to play really really nicely with Dreadnought's Scroll of Fate and Sundial.

    The piece you're missing about the PWs is that Cosmic will compliment whatever your hand tells you to do, even if it's telling you to turn one Fetchland into 3 activations to hardcast the ridiculousness. That's always been the missing piece with Accomplice, an enabler that also just leads to hardcasting when it's not doing everything else you want. To be clear, the main problem is that Cosmic happened to be white; if that card was blue the deck construction is a way different story.

  9. #9
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    Re: Neil Armstrong, aka AstroNought

    The other piece that I was missing is you meant Karn, the Great Creator.

    I assumed Big Karn Liberated because you're cheating out planeswalkers, but that means 6 uncastable planeswalkers in the deck with essentially no cantrips. That would also mean much less tutoring for all the random 1-ofs.

    With 3x good Karn, that actually looks a lot better. All those singletons make more sense, Grindstone is easier to find, very few of the walkers are uncastable...

    UW Dreadstill does look like a better fit for the card, though there would be no reason to keep Painter in. You play with an 8 card hand, on main phase they crack Standstill to kill Teferi, you intervene...

  10. #10
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    Re: Neil Armstrong, aka AstroNought

    Oh, hahaha, yeah Karn the one that is worth playing is our guy. Even in formats like cube I've never understood the appeal of 7 mana Karn. I'd be a bigger fan of Spine of Ish Sah; cooler card and better vs SnT. If I wanted to exile things with questionable cards I'd have gone with Nicole Bolas, had fun with Apex Predator, or maybe try to maximize Sundial with the 2x 3/1 factory Chandra.

    Looks like we can expect a Valki rule update, and a ban of some sort. It'll be a little tragic for this deck if Oko get banned at same time as Valki problem is fixed, since it's such a profitable trade for the ridiculous REB spam (but Oko is the only card that should get axed). Unless the ban announcement goes off on strange tangents, no changes at this time. Always remember that "optimal" has 7 letters, and if your deck has 61 cards you will see that 6+1 = 7, which is how you know deck is perfect.

  11. #11

    Re: Neil Armstrong, aka AstroNought

    mishra’s Bauble and Urza’s Bauble is such a low cost power upgrade to cosmic intervention it is almost certainly wrong to not play them. Adds +2 cards to cosmic for essentially free, while letting you run mox opal.

    It’s like Lurrus delver playing them. I would imagine you should cut the least favourite combo package for six of them.

  12. #12

    Re: Neil Armstrong, aka AstroNought

    I think the deck has much more promise as a grindy Boros/mardu deck with a painter finish than a bunch of overlapping comboes. The effect is similar to Lurrus so you can get inspiration there. Seal of fire becomes a chandra’s outrage. Kroxa becomes triple blightning. Zuran orb becomes wilderness reclamation. Ravager goes crazy.

  13. #13
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    Re: Neil Armstrong, aka AstroNought

    @Reeplcheep talked about this some on twitch; to catch everyone up we're looking mostly at this concept where Painter and Dreadnought don't really work together. Reep was bringing up cards like the Baubles and Emry. I think the problem with this direction is that you're just brewing a worse deck than Emry Cannon.

    If you want to do the pure Painter stuff [no Planebound or Dreadnought], go ahead and run your Lootings and Emry and the artifacts, but this is a deck that isn't allowed to play Cosmic or Wasteland - you have to play Tomb...and again you have to ask whether or not you're just playing crappy Emry Cannon convincing yourself it's not the same deck with some different card names. You just can't compete with the mulligan rulebreak of LED + Echo = a mull to 2 is a mull to 7 into Hullbreacher + Echo = total hand destruction (which is historically the basis of tier 0 legacy; see also Hymn/Snapcaster and Counterbalance). On the flip side though, Echo is already a card that is inevitably going getting banned as far as I'm concerned; so just like ignoring Valki Cannon's existence is a fine by me, it's fine to begin construction at Emry and Welder.

    The focus of this deck is more an exercise on what has to happen with deck construction to play a card like Accomplice. The missing piece was always bridging the gap between 3 mana [Accomplice] and 6 [PWs], while Dreadnought covered your early game and justified the Sundial-type tech. The aggro artifact bombing approach is not really addressing the fundamental deficit here. While "just draw more cards" can solve many problems, it cannot fix the specific strategy deficit here, whereas Cosmic can [and it might even be competitive, hence the testing]. The other thing is that you'd also be creating more problems for yourself than you could solve b/c you'd be brewing uberhard in auto-loss to Karn and yard hates.

    When it comes to adding cards like Bauble, my experience on UW Landstill is that Lurrus was the most pathetic Delver deck I've ever played against - and it's not particularly close. I am highly skeptical of Bauble-types being playable in non-Sol land themed decks. If you want to test the Bauble stuff, let me know how it goes; I just can't bring myself to ever view this as a serious solution after the Lurrus joke.

  14. #14
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    Re: Neil Armstrong, aka AstroNought

    Interesting discussion. I see merit to cutting or changing one of the combos for better synergy.

    You have 3 combos here:
    1) Painter
    2) Dreadnought
    3) Planebound + Planeswalker

    #1 and #2 are artifact combos tied together by Karn and Welder
    #2 and #3 are tied together by Cosmic and Sundial

    Cosmic doesn't do anything for Painter. It does for Welder, which is loosely connected, but it has no relevant interaction with Painter pieces. If this deck is to maximize interactions with Cosmic Intervention, Painter combo isn't helping that. It's just another win button for Karn and Engineer. But Karn already has other win buttons (Lattice, Helm, Dreadnought) so the Painter combo is not essential to tie the rest together. It could be cut for better synergy with the rest.

    However you raise a good point that the Painter combo and REB provide more early game interaction, while #3 is a slower lategame engine. You could just replace Painter with good cards that interact in the early game. But another option is to keep Painter and change combo #3 to cards that still abuse Cosmic but have better synergy #1 and #2.

    I'm skeptical how good Planebound Accomplice is in Legacy. Using a 3-mana card to cheat out Karn, the Great Creator next turn is like playing a Mountain that dies to Bolt and needs more enabling. You really have 3 fat planeswalkers that are worth cheating out, but also 0 way to find them. No cantrips. Karn and Engineer cannot find them. A good amount of the time Planebound is worse than Horned Turtle with no text. Sometimes you get lucky and it does things. Once it does, the Planeswalker card types still has minimal interaction with the rest of the deck.

    Consider Sneak Attack. It is a 4-mana Planebound Accomplice for creatures instead of Planeswalkers, and it's much harder to remove. If you use it to cheat out Welder robots (Sundering Titan, Wurmcoil Engine, Myr Battlesphere), you now have a Planebound-like combo with Cosmic that also has much more interaction with the rest of the deck. Engineer/Welder can use these robots. Karn can tutor one out of the board. Cosmic + Welder can abuse the enters/leaves triggers. It seems a lot more synergistic than cheating out Ugin.


    Edit: Another option is to just make this UW Dreadnought Emry Cannon, cutting both Painter and Planebound for more broken stuff
    Emry fills a Welder-type role. Except now you're blue for Stifle.
    Emry + LED/Echo + Hull + Karn + Baubles + Stifle + Dreadnought + Cosmic.
    Lion's Eye Diamond can cast Cosmic Intervention or be cracked without losing Cosmic in your "hand", or can be recycled with Cosmic. Another new card LED can abuse. So why not just play Black Lotus, Timetwister and Mind Twist?

  15. #15
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    Re: Neil Armstrong, aka AstroNought

    So thing is that to do stupid stuff in legacy you need to distract your opponent with tangential trading of resources/interaction. I could go super hard on doing the Dreadnought & Planebound thing, but I'm just going to die every time because I can't tamper with my opponent's strategy. This is a common deckbuilding mistake where people make these modern-type engines that are too focused on goldfishing. This is legacy, if you want to do something weird, your deck construction begins with throwing wrenches at other decks' engines - if you can't derail an opponent, you don't have a deck.

    The one nice thing about the 1/3 brothers in this deck is that legacy decks really can't afford to let these things sit on the table. You leave a Painter alone and I can Weld it out for a piece the opponent countered, or more likely I can threaten to destroy your basics...while Cosmic/Wasteland annihilates your nonbasics...while Karn hits the off switch on the Astrolabes. If I'm dictating the the only color spells my 4c opponent is able to cast, they're beyond dead - I assure you their mono-U plan is horrible. Alternatively, if they leave a Planebound alone I can use on their end step to get a walker in and untap. This predicament does not get better if I have the Cosmic primed and ready. That's the thing about Cosmic and Planebound; you just pick a spot where the opponent's only option is to discard blue cards to Planebound b/c those cards certainly won't counter the activated ability...once an opponent starts dumping blue cards all kinds of bad things will start happening to them, and that can very easily include ramping into hardcasting some of the most terrifying PWs that have ever been printed.

    You play Sneak Attack and you need Sol Lands rather than Wastlands, so you're turning Delvers into 5/2s and you can't profitably use Cosmic nearly as well (you lose 3 hits, and the ability to go up mana by comparatively taking opponent down lands). You keep Wasteland with Sneak and you're signing up for losses to Daze, and you're cheating out the easiest permanent type to kill (and the guys you'd cheat out probably harder to cast than 6cmc, and probably don't have uncounterable clause).

    It's really not a question of whether or not this deck push legacy decks beyond their breaking point, it all comes down to whether or not you can get to turns 3/4/5. It's mostly a question about whether or not the early plays are good/correct enough to trade plays with opponents.

  16. #16

    Re: Neil Armstrong, aka AstroNought

    Accomplice is a mana cheaper than sneak attack but dies to bolt or plow or oko, so it’s effectively a 4 drop anyways.

    I agree that just make a synergy pile with no interaction is bad, but you would have more room for interaction if you didn’t have 4 different comboes going at once.

    Consider this list which is just strawberry shortcake + cosmic intervention package. Welder/engineer & general artifact synergies is the cross talk.

    12 pieces of interaction, 7 tutors for either half of the combo, and intervention is consistently a must answer. You avoid being just bad Emry due to more protection, lower curve, more consistency tools, and no “all-in” moments.



    Shortcake package:
    4 Painter
    4 Grindstone
    3 Pyroblast
    2 Red Elemental Blast

    Intervention value package:
    3 Cosmic Intervention
    4 Mishra’s Bauble
    4 Wasteland
    4 Arid Mesa
    2 Prismatic Vista
    3 Hope of Giraphur

    Artifact Cross-talk
    3 Astrolabe
    4 Mox Opal
    4 Goblin Welder
    4 Goblin Engineer
    3 E-tutor
    1 Ethersworn Canonist

    2 Ancient Tomb
    2 Plateau
    3 Snow-Covered Mountain
    1 Snow-Covered Plains



    If you wanted to make an accomplice deck, then the above is irrelevant. But if you wanted to make a cosmic intervention deck I feel the above is a good shot.

    If you have 4 pieces that aren’t direct combo pieces, my deck will perform better and do that less (more 4 ofs). I propose that dreadnought, planebound accomplice, REB, cosmic, is a worse hand than grindstone, reb, bauble, etutor.

    This deck probably wants a couple urza’s baubles but not sure what to cut.

  17. #17
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    Re: Neil Armstrong, aka AstroNought

    Really gotta be careful about omitting Mag Channeler. Pretty poor form to have 3 E-Tutor anyways, but choosing to have the inability to get the card immediately [that is to say omitting Channeler], is doubly hard position to defend.

    On Accomplice, it doesn't die to removal at 4+ mana, meaning it will always destroy blue cards in opponent's hand.

    On Cosmic it's pretty important to change the mana state in two directions, based on what the gamestate/matchup and your hand demands. Looking at the ideas in the list @Reeplcheep, the deck can't really capitalize on modifying the mana state, so this is something of a wasted currency.

  18. #18

    Re: Neil Armstrong, aka AstroNought

    Quote Originally Posted by Fox View Post
    Really gotta be careful about omitting Mag Channeler. Pretty poor form to have 3 E-Tutor anyways, but choosing to have the inability to get the card immediately [that is to say omitting Channeler], is doubly hard position to defend.

    On Accomplice, it doesn't die to removal at 4+ mana, meaning it will always destroy blue cards in opponent's hand.

    On Cosmic it's pretty important to change the mana state in two directions, based on what the gamestate/matchup and your hand demands. Looking at the ideas in the list @Reeplcheep, the deck can't really capitalize on modifying the mana state, so this is something of a wasted currency.
    Baubles gives you the card immediately if needed. Why do I need to loot targets into the gy when all my cards cost 1 or 2? If I have something in my hand I can just cast it. If I need something in the gy to switch it I have 7 cards that do that for 1 mana or free (bauble and hope)

    Yes, but my point is that if you wait till 4+ mana the cost advantage vs sneak is irrelevant.

    I have more wastelands and a few less fetches than you. I am not sure how I am changing the mana state less than you. With tomb over vista #4 I can cast cosmic on t2 when the mana actually matters instead of t4. Time walking with hope or getting to keep 2 things with engineer is more of a tempo swing than getting a 1 mana discount and some extra loyalty on your karn TGC.

  19. #19
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    Re: Neil Armstrong, aka AstroNought

    I like the Shortcake idea. Some slots could be adjusted, but overall it allows you to play more value and be less dependent on combos. Would be nice to fit in Karn there. Hope looks like great tech.


    Quote Originally Posted by Fox View Post
    So thing is that to do stupid stuff in legacy you need to distract your opponent with tangential trading of resources/interaction. I could go super hard on doing the Dreadnought & Planebound thing, but I'm just going to die every time because I can't tamper with my opponent's strategy. This is a common deckbuilding mistake where people make these modern-type engines that are too focused on goldfishing. This is legacy, if you want to do something weird, your deck construction begins with throwing wrenches at other decks' engines - if you can't derail an opponent, you don't have a deck.
    Well yes, my point was not to only be a synergy pile, but to either
    a) replace the Painter package with goodstuff cards that interact (replace combo early interaction with other early interaction)
    b) replace the Planebound package (lategame combo, no early interaction anyway) with Sneak Attack robots (same lack of interaction but better synergy)

    It was about replacing role players with other cards that played similar roles but fit the deck better, instead of tying together all these disparate combos.


    Quote Originally Posted by Fox View Post
    The one nice thing about the 1/3 brothers in this deck is that legacy decks really can't afford to let these things sit on the table.... Alternatively, if they leave a Planebound alone I can use on their end step to get a walker in and untap.
    That relies on the opponent overestimating your deck and not knowing the list. If they see there are exactly 3 relevant planeswalkers to cheat and no ways to find them, Planebound can be ignored most of the time as it has 0 text. Most of the time there will be nothing worth using in hand. It only pays off if the opponent overestimates your hand and trades to be safe. Brewer's advantage can get some wins like that at first, but eventually they catch on to your bluff.

    Now Sneak Attack could represent the same types of threats and same lines of play. The difference is it is much harder to trade with (pulls blue cards out of hand instead of Bolts) and threatens to cheats out things that are easier to find and abuse with the rest of the deck (Welder, Karn) or just good on their own. Sneaking out Sundering Titan is still devastating vs Snowko's basics even if you don't have a way to keep it. If you have Cosmic or Welder it gets even dumber. If they trade with Sneak Attack, you can still discard the robot to Channeler and the Weld it into play. If they trade with Planebound, the 6-8 mana planeswalker in your hand is a missed draw step.

    The point of the synergy is that even if you're disrupted, your draws are still live because each card interacts with more other cards. Otherwise when you run multiple combos and no cantrips you risk having draw sequences like Grindstone+Planebound Accomplice+Red Elemental Blast or Sundial of the Infinite+Painter's Servant+Ugin. There are a lot of pieces that do nothing on their own or are bad if drawn with the wrong cards. The more links you create between cards in the deck (or fewer combos you depend on), the less variance there is in draws.

  20. #20
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    Re: Neil Armstrong, aka AstroNought

    Quote Originally Posted by Reeplcheep View Post
    Yes, but my point is that if you wait till 4+ mana the cost advantage vs sneak is irrelevant.
    Another good point is Sneak Attack is an enchantment and tutorable with ETutor, if you go with your Shortcake plan.

    For example consider a simple swap like this:
    -3 Planebound
    -3 fat planeswalker (keep Karns)
    +2 Enlightened Tutor
    +2 Sneak Attack
    +1 Sundering Titan
    +1 Wurmcoil Engine

    Same impact on deck space. Roughly equivalent curve. Still represents the same types of explosive lategame threats. But now the pieces are tutorable with ETutor, only 4 cards are dead early instead of 6, and now those ETutors help support all the other combos too and allow more early plays.

    Plus Titan and Wurmcoil can do dumb things with Welder, or could be boarded out for interaction and still fetched with Karn.

    Sneak Attack also has random interactions with other creatures in the deck:
    -1-mana haste instant Welder/Engineer activation (then maybe save with Sundial/Cosmic)
    -1-mana haste instant Channeler activation (e.g. in response to discard, or to set up Welder)
    -1-mana instant Painter + REB/Grindstone activation
    -double Nought, sacrificing one to the other

    The deck gains all these new lines of play for free just because more things interact with each other.

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