[Article] Unlocking Legacy - Testing the Pyroclasm Deck

[Phantom]

I can't believe I haven't seen this article before now. First, thanks for mentioning me and posting my build. You didn't have to do either, but I appreciate both. Second, if I ever get a chance to test again I'll definitely test your build and give you my thoughts.

I'm glad to see that the number of equipment has stayed consistent throughout. I got a lot of crap about it, but 1 Sword and 2 Jitte just feels right when you play it. Good luck tuning your build!

P.S. My initial thoughts on Threads of Disloyalty is that it's just too damn narrow. I mean, even when you board it in vs Thresh you have 4 Werebear targets (which aren't exactly fantastic grabbing creatures since you have no guarantee of Threshold, especially running 4 Grunts) and X crappy Mage targets.

Are there any other decks you have in mind for this card? You don't board it against Goblins or almost any other aggro deck. It takes care of almost no creatures that clasm and Legionnaire don't handle. Plus, it'd UU so dedicated LD (like, say Homebrew) can keep you off the mana to cast it. Basically, I can see it being slightly better than StP in some situations and vastly worse in the majority of matchups.

[Anusien]

I don't get it. Why did you board that way? I specifically laid out sideboarding for that matchup (more specifically because that's the build I tested the most against). In this case, you go -4 Counterspell, -2 Force of Will, +4 Blue Elemental Blast, +2 Swords to Plowshares

-4 Counterspell +4 Blue Elemental Blast: BEB is strictly superior to Counterspell here, since it does basically all the functions and more for half the mana
-2 Force of Will +2 Swords to Plowshares: I didn't like this at first, but Rich Shay convinced me to try it and it turns out to be right. Force of Will really sucks in this matchup; the only reason you pull Counterspell first is because you're literally never going to have UU ready, and everytime you try to counter something you're going to walk into Wasteland. StP is just randomly more useful than FoW here.

The fact that your playtest partner is pulling Grunts post-board tells me that he's not playing them right, and most likely isn't approaching the matchup optimally. And that's ignoring the fact that he basically boarded out a land at first (2 cantrips = 1 land). In other words, I was excited every time I saw Jotun Grunt, and I was winning in testing pre-board. Jotun Grunt is usually not the first creature to come down, simply because Goblins puts fewer cards in their graveyard than other builds. The purpose of Grunt is basically to be enormous. You dump him out end step and untap and start attacking, or occasionally you play him into a ground stall. He's also one of your best bets for picking up equipment because he's much more difficult to Incinerate than Serra Avenger (playing out 4 goblins is begging for a Pyroclasm).

Generally you want to start fetching Islands with Polluted Delta and Plains out of Flooded Strand, keeping any fetchlands you don't need back to give you Rishadan Port/Wasteland immunity. You never fetch Volcanic Island until you need to cast Pyroclasm or shock with Legionnaire.

Yes, preboard should be good for this deck, 65% sounds about right (maybe 70, but that's sort of extreme), but we're working with a small size. I do however seriously doubt the post-board testing results for the reasons stated above. It's certainly not a 25-75 matchup. Like, Red Blast is barely relevant in the matchup; for targets you have 7 cantrips and my 4 Blue Elemental Blasts, 2 Force of Will. Please hold mana open for that instead of attacking.

In other words, thank you for the results, but I don't put a lot of weight to your testing results since your opponent of unknown skill boarded incorrectly and probably played the matchup incorrectly. It's a fairly easy matchup to play once you get the hang of it.


When approaching sideboarding versus Threshold, I basically stole as much as I could from T1 decks fighting Fish. Threshold has somewhere between 10-14 creatures:
0/4 Meddling Mage
4 Nimble Mongoose
4 Werebear
1-2 Mystic Enforcer

StP is excellent versus Mystic Enforcer, good versus Werebear, and decent against Meddling Mage.
Threads of Disloyalty is worthless versus Mystic Enforcer, excellent versus Werebear, and mediocre versus Meddling Mage.

There really aren't any other matchups that went into consideration here, so we'll just focus on these two.

Mystic Enforcer isn't the real threat in the matchup, Werebear is. Everytime I played the matchup, Threshold had either gotten 2-3 creatures online and beat my face in before I could stabilize, or I got a defense going and wrecked them, using Grunt to take Mystic Enforcer offline. The theory behind Threads of Disloyalty is that it solves the first situation much better than the second situation. I went with a 2/2 split because A) I'm not 100% sure how those slots should be split, B) Sometimes Mystic Enforcer does hit the table, and C) for random decks like Reanimator.

[Anusien]

Slight Necro, but it's congruent with the original aims of the thread.
Hi-Val found this link, wherein the deck takes 6th in a 75 person event.
Maindeck changes are -1 Plains, +1 Snow-Covered Plains, -1 Polluted Delta, +1 Plateau (which makes some sense)
Slightly modified sideboard, which I'd love to discuss.* Thoughts on that SB?

[Finn]

Very cool. Actually, I did some more testing of my own. This time I piloted the deck myself, and I rather like the flow of it. I am going to back down a step from my position. It has potential in a predictable meta.

[Anusien]

Very cool. Actually, I did some more testing of my own. This time I piloted the deck myself, and I rather like the flow of it. I am going to back down a step from my position. It has potential in a predictable meta.

Yeah. Sadly, I will admit that the deck does fair sort of poorly against randomness. It will probably lose consistently to a good pilot with Angel Stompy or Survival of the Fittest (most Survival decks are better at board control than you, and you have trouble stopping Survival from coming down, esp. on the draw). Test results suggest that you're behind against TES because of the difficulty of using Mage, how poor REB is (Chant might be better, unsure at this junction).

I think I'm switching to 3 Serum Visions instead of Sleight. Adriaan's arguments over on SCG are very compelling.

But yeah, this is very exciting stuff.

[MattH]

Chant is wayyyy fucking better than REB against pretty much every combo deck. Unless you're facing, uh, Tog I guess, Chant is the way to go.