~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~Originally Posted by peter_rotten
It is time now, my friends,
To take a stand,
To proudly proclaim what it is that you are fighting for.
Join with us, in the bonds of fellowship and proudly yell:
For Love.
For Peace.
For Honor.
For None of the Above.
For Pony.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Founder, Freshly Baked Crayons
Okay, I am going to weigh in. I find the Thresh MU to be skewed and if it concerns me more I will test it myself. As I have not tested it I cannot be certain, but Meta-Analysis is my only real talent in MTG, so I am going with my intuition.
Personally I don't like you Anusien, but don't take that against you, this deck still packs Lightning Angel and therefore rocks. All who disagree will be shot.
Mad Zur hit it on the dead. I want this sort of feedback, because it helps guide me. Obviously, posts like "hahaha j00 suxxor" are kind of useless, but part of what I use MTS and TMD for is to get feedback and analysis from other people with different experience, because my personal testing isn't omnipotent. Like more properly examining the use of Daze and the role of tempo in the aggro-control mirror.
That said, armchair logic can only go so far.
If criticism remains basically constructive, cool. If not, personal attacks will be dealt with as needed. I don't think this is an issue yet, but I don't want the thread to deteriorate. This is a pretty good discussion, let's keep it that way.
When in doubt, mumble.
When in trouble, delegate.
Off topic stuff deleted.
Kevin Im also curious what builds of the top 3, aside from Solidarity, that you were testing against. You said most of your testing was done on MWS, does this mean against multiple random opponents or is this with one skilled buddy playing one very up to date goblin deck? It should be known from the last thresh vs gobs debate that we arent keen on seeing Machinus's build represent goblins on a regular basis. Its also fallen out of favor as the prefered build. Were you playing Green Goblin, the build Ive been advocating? It has a much different win ratio against your deck as Ive already learned playing against it. The hooligans are very difficult for you since you rely on vials and equipment to mainstay against goblins. Running vials of your own means your not needling mine. Jotun Grunt and Avenger are a gemplam away from solved and Pyroclasm only needs to show its face once before the opponent learns from their mistakes and plays accordingly. More people are giving Green Goblin more attention for the better mirror and stompy matchups, I suggest you run your deck against it sometime.
Have you played against Chalice of the Void? Pyrostatic Pillar?
Last edited by Zilla; 02-11-2007 at 08:48 PM.
Now playing real formats.
Since the title of this thread is testing Pyroclasm.dec lets start there. You done some testing against the top tier, established your view that this deck can effectivly compete vs. Tier 1. Others have made a point that based on your own words, both in this thread and in your article, that testing vs. Thresh is invalid due to inconsistencies in the way grow was piloted. So I for one am willing to help you test it. I will see if its possible to do it either this weekend or the next.
Methods that will be used:
1. Alternating
2. Keeping hands based on not knowing the matchup
3. Ten game set
The deck could very well have potential as a metagame choice. And it may require some tweaking before it can "hit the streats" so to speak. I just wish you article was a little more informative on this matchup. Testing it against what I know of Thresh doesn't make any sense. And I want to add my voice to the bandwagon "what did you do to make them play the beatdown?" I've been playing grow since the Big Arse 2 and I can only remember a couple of decks where I was the beatdown deck from turn 1 (Wombat, Rifter, U-control, landstill and thats about it).
Is it just me, or does this deck have ridiculously few things to pitch to Force?
This whole thing seems pretty much like jank to me. Questionable combo matchups, questionable against other aggro-control, and questionable control matchups. It probably beats goblins, but other than that? I can't point at a deck I own where I wouldn't be delighted to have this matchup.
yea, its on the low side. But I've seen ATS run with less lol. To be honest I liked the middle list in his article the most, the one with Efreets. It has 20 blue cards which should be enough. I also like the evasion that it has.
The Serra Avengers are pretty much better on all accounts, and they directly swapped for Efreets.
Honestly, to my critics, just test the deck. It's very easy to say "In theory, A seems a lot better than B." And I did that with the development of the deck a lot. And then I tested and found out how wrong I was.
Edit: I thought this was made clear in the article, but I guess not. Goldfishing was done against MWS randoms; testing was done against players I know and respect with established builds of the decks. Threshold was, I believe, Mad Zur's last SCG Day 1 list, and Goblins was Machinus's, both because I feel it tests the deck more (Tinkerer can punish Vial and Jitte draws), but it's the more high-profile and I know it saw a lot of play at Pasttime's Legacy a few months ago.
OH SHIT THERES A HORSE IN THE HOSPITAL
Team Slay and Lego: Slay your a tool and your glasses are almost as GAY as your retarded snitch of a boyfriend Lego. Lego focus on your own game you are a fucking clown and should have heard the rediculous amount of people saying how much of a dick you were being and what kind of a fool you are. I laugh at you two. Seriously you both need attitude adjustments. I have never encountered a larger pair of pussy bitches in my whole life.
Rich and I played some games last night, some of them were with this. The manabase was a serious problem*, and he did run into the too-few-blue problem on several occasions.
Goblin Legionairre in particular was spectacularly bad, being harsh on the mana AND rather ineffective on the board (maybe he's the bomb against goblins and threshold, but elsewhere he's lackluster). Serra Avenger performed admirably. The equipment was powerful but slow (no surprises there) and I have to wonder if it's really all that. It just feels wrong to spend four or five mana and get that little out of it, though maybe I've been playing combo too long.
I might be able to see this beating the big three but it seems to have serious problems* with the "50% random" part of the metagame**. In this, it actually reminded me a LOT of my 3c Loam/Stax deck, which also put up good numbers against the top three but struggled against other strategies.
*Which is not to say "insurmountable", just some issues that I would want to address before I taking it to a big tournament.
**By which I mean the decent "Other" decks, not the 12 year old's draft leavings. Stuff like Ichorid or Aluren, etc. - tier 2 stuff.
Rich was playing UWR deck, I was playing Toad's Aluren deck. Not the most relevant of matchups, but whatever, we were just choosing semi-random lists and throwing them against each other, nothing too serious.
Legionaiire did almost nothing. Serra Avenger was strong ebcause my walls couldn't block it. Pyroclasm was not strong, obviously. Grunt did basically nothing. Jitte was all right but Sword was not - the most relevant ability was the pro:blue so I couldn't chump avenger with Ravens. The mana was not flowing right. One Therapy usually let me not worry about any counters.
This is all from the opponent's POV and talking with Rich afterward. I have not played as the URW deck myself.
Isnt it easy enough to improve the blue source problem by swapping 4 goblin legionnaire or 4 silver knight for 4x galina's knight? I would personally rather play galina's knight over goblin on account of the anti-synergy with pyroclasm. If you really need to trade with a threshed bear then u can swap the silver knights and all you lose is first strike but I suppose that then it becomes a problem that galina cant block piledriver so it is probably better to take out goblin if u need more blue. I dont know if this is the deck to do it, but I like the idea of vial + avenger and think it will find a home somewhere. Yes, I know it only speeds it up by one turn but a free 3/3 flying vigilance on turn 3 for free sounds pretty good to me.
My logic is predicated on a few things:
A) If you'll notice, I address Galina's Knight in the article. At the moment, I feel like having Goblin Legionnaire to stop the end of turn Goblin Warchief, untap and play Matron, Piledriver, Piledriver and swing for lethal is rather significant. I've also found it useful to kill Goblin King which was letting my opponent try and landwalk through.
B) The thing is that Silver Knight and Goblin Legionnaire are both better against Threshold than Galina's Knight. Silver Knight is obviously better against Goblins than Galina's Knight, and I maintain that Goblin Legionnaire is better against Goblins than Galina's Knight as well. So it becomes a question of whether having 19 blue spells is important to make the deck run better. I maintain that the blue card count is not an objective indicator of goodness of the deck (especially since I frequently sideboard Force of Will out in fish-style mirrors). I think you'll find if you test the deck that the blue count is low, but would you really want to throw away a creature anyway? It's possible Force of Will is the wrong card anyway, but that feels like a rather dramatic move.
Interesting, Matt. I think you have pointed out how much the deck's performance drops off against non-Tier 1 decks. I do think you understand Jotun Grunt's ability there as a beater, but Aluren really doesn't put a lot of cards in its graveyard anyway.
Help a dummy out here - why? This seems like a really good place to improve the blue count.Silver Knight is obviously better against Goblins than Galina's Knight
Ahh. This is true. And therefor can not be red blasted either. Hmm. That is a hard choice then.
EDIT:
I want to mention that I tried this deck out, Anusien. It plays very well against counterspells and Fish-sized goblins and such. But, when the Goblin player gets a defensive hand, it makes the matchup much harder. I was playing RwGoblins, and for a while I was consistently able to keep my opponent from managing two white during his main phase. It forced him into a corner when he was finally able to escape my hold. And I overwhelmed him in three strait games. Of course, those were not the first or only three games we played (I disenchanted Aether Vials several times). The preboard matchups, interestingly were better for your deck than after sb. He won most of those.
Gobs: 2-4 preboard
Gobs: 3-1 postboard
He did not complain about lack of blue cards to pitch to FoW. But of course, the Wastes and Ports were an issue.
What was the Goblins maindeck like, and how did each player board? Can you elaborate more on each player's approach to the matchup: what starting hands were kept, who was beatdown/control, how often equipment came up, etc.
Edit: What does a defensive Goblin hand look like?
I used Coppola's monored Goblins with 4 Tinkerers.What was the Goblins maindeck like, and how did each player board?
I boarded
+4 Red Blasts
-4 Fanatic
He did
-2 Grunts
-2 Sleight
at first, but then changed when he lost the first game with Grunts in hand and no way to support them.
-4 Grunts
+4 Blue Blast
which worked a little better
Sorry I don't have this level of detail about my playtesting partner. I am only telling you this for the sake of reporting info. I'm not writing report. :) Though, I will tell you that I was able to keep his equipment from ever touching me thanks to all the Tinkerers. And on the games where I kept him from white mana, I Red Blasted Brainstorm several times to keep it that way. So you could say that I was pulling answers when I needed them.Can you elaborate more on each player's approach to the matchup: what starting hands were kept, who was beatdown/control, how often equipment came up, etc.
I hope this helps
Last edited by Finn; 02-22-2007 at 04:04 PM. Reason: Duhh, me.
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