[Deck] Death and Taxes

[IRS]

THC is great when powered out a turn early, but on turn three (or turn 4 off Vial), it often feels a bit too slow (especially on the draw). THC shines against Eldrazi and Elves in particular, and is still pretty good against 3-4 color decks as well. It is synergistic with the overall goals of the deck, and it's nice to have another threat you can protect with Karakas for the attrition matchups. When THC is bad though, it is abysmal. Against an opposing Karakas or an opponent who is ahead on board, it just often feels like too low of an impact card.

Also, Mirran Crusader wins so many games on its own. Unchecked with equipment, the game ends in two turns. Against green decks, it is really like a hatebear. It stabilizes the board against threats like Goyf or Gurmag Angler, attacks through a board of Elves, and trades with big bodies like Thought-Knot Seer.

I agree with Medea's thoughts here. I have been advocating including THC in the splash lists because of her being W2 instead of WW1 like Flickerwisp, Crusader et al. However, in actual use she has been very lackluster. The fact she is weak to Karakas is often very relevant, especially when you are running OG Thalia, and when a lot of decks play crop rotation and can access Karakas at instant speed. On the other hand, Mirran Crusader is very powerful in a lot of BUG matchups, who almost invariably use Decay and Push as the removal of choice. As Medea pointed out, an equipped Crusader is just game over. The fact you can have crusader attacking with Jitte Turn 4 for 4 counters is disgusting. Crusader can also block Angler and Goyf for days. Overall, Crusader is a more impactful card in the right matchups and is a better ''role player'' than THC in the slot. My personal dilemma with that slot is between Crusader and Avenger because I find myself wishing for the vigilance 3/3 flier more often than not. The WW cost, turn requirement, and not being human is the reason why I play Crusader over Avenger but I wish there was some more discussion on this specific choice to see the point of view of other more experience and skilled players.

Just some irrelevant anecdotal evidence, but I won a game 2 against Eldrazi yesterday with Crusader because he prevented TKS from attacking and gave me enough time to find Magus + P+K. I ended up winning 2-1 (First game he stomped me with the usual eye of ugin into mimics into Reality Smasher.I did not know what he was playing and I kept a Chalice + Thalia+ Mom + Vial hand. The third game I played vial into wasteland him into Magus which ended the game. But Crusader was the key card which held the boat together.

[Medea_]

Alesha seems a bit odd to me, as we don't actually want many of our creatures entering attacking, but I commend trying out a new card.

The GW list looks pretty sketchy to me. I played that deck in Modern. I'm not convinced that it ports over well.

[iatee]

Yeah I'd be interested in hearing from the Alesha player if they read The Source. I can't think of a matchup that that card would seem reliably good in.

I top 8'd a GPT yesterday before scooping to my bye-less friend on ANT in the quarterfinals. This was my list: http://mtgtop8.com/event?e=15677&d=295840&f=LE

I didn't really learn anything since I played against too much random stuff - UB Control (win), Jeskai Painter (win), RB Reanimator twice (wins), DnT (loss) and drew in.

Still pretty undecided about Serra Avengers. They've been pretty constantly okay. My goal is to build a list before the GP that reliably wrecks Delver variants + has a 40+% match-up vs Elves. So probably give up some SB spots for more fast creature removal.

[Bahra]

So I just finished a bunch of leagues with this decklist:





My record so far is 21-4 across the 5 leagues with this configuration

These were my matchups:

5-0:
2-1 UR Delver
2-0 Dark Maverick
2-0 Portent Miracles
2-1 Sneak and Show
2-1 Goblin Stompy

4-1:
1-2 Hex Depths
2-1 4c (Grixis) Control
2-0 RUG Delver
2-1 Portent Miracles
2-1 Shardless BUG

4-1:
2-0 UR Delver
2-0 UR Delver
2-1 Goblins
2-1 ANT
0-2 ANT

4-1:
2-1 ANT
2-0 Bant Deathblade
2-1 ANT
2-0 Portent Miracles
1-2 Elves

4-1:
2-0 Grixis Delver
2-0 D&T
2-0 UB Reanimator
1-2 Burn
2-0 Goblin Stompy

I'm feeling really good about the deck but I'm honestly a bit bored. I wanna try out some now cards which is why I'm coming here, any suggestions? Maybe completely new approaches even? I need something to mix it up.

[Medea_]

@Bahra

I've been running something about 5 cards off from your build. I also think it is very good, and I feel favored in a good portion of my matchups. Have you tried Blessed Alliance in the Dismember slot? I found that Dismember can be a little underwhelming against some of the aggressive matchups (e.g. Burn, Delver). Blessed Alliance is notably worse against Young Pyromancer and DRS, but has some upside against things like TNN and Marit Lage tokens.

[Leonides]

Hi all, I am not a big fun of w/r varition. dont like to much the magus overall. I am more into the b/w variton whats youre opinion on 3 confidants in the main ? I tried it and i can say its not really bad, bob can find you the solution Ou need and the speed that can metter in certain situations ... also the pontifs in side is also agood mass removal to have against dnt tnn and elves...

[Medea_]

If you like the WB build, here's a fun list.

[rostov]

bahra's list made visibility in CFB's article today. It'll be really interesting to see it appear on paper in Vegas :)

[ChrisCunningham]

Hi fellow taxers,

I've been working on a little python script to calculate how bad our splashes are. For example, it is common knowledge that 8 sources (4 cavern, 4 vial) is enough to splash a Human. But I just wanted the actual numbers, using the same kind of calculations done in the old Frank Analysis article https://www.channelfireball.com/arti...t-your-spells/, customized to our specific (vial-based) situation.

It takes as input the parameters of your decklist and the CMC of the card you are trying to splash, and calculates (as opposed to approximating by simulation) the probability that you will have the mana to put the card into play on each turn. It assumes:

* You are on the play, and your lands don't get destroyed or sacrificed
* You play your vial ASAP and tick it up every turn
* Your splash card only costs one mana of the appropriate color (so this script does not handle P&K)
* You mulligan hands based on a simple but reasonable mulligan strategy like in the Karsten article

I'm still not 100% confident in the math because since it is the summer, I don't have any colleagues easily available to check on my probability. But I've done a few reasonable sanity checks and the source is commented. Maybe one of you would be interested in talking through it with me sometime to check my work. I do plan to improve the code over time if there is interest in the project.

Some example numbers:

Given a 24-land, 4 vial deck splashing Orzhov Pontiff and mulliganing based only on # of lands and vials, you will naturally have the mana or vial ready to put Pontiff into play with the following probability:

Turn	4 Caverns	3 Caverns	2 Caverns
Turn 3	0.4945	0.3965	0.2827
Turn 4	0.7371	0.6742	0.5986
Turn 5	0.7778	0.7181	0.6447
Turn 10	0.9094	0.8698	0.8147

The script also calculates what is going on if you try to splash noncreature spells, but since that just means it is ignoring AEther Vial, you can also just use Karsten's article. Most of us already understand that you can't play Sudden Demise or Zealous Persecution with 6 splash sources anyway.

You can use the script here: https://repl.it/IXTG/29; you don't need an account to run it. Feel free to mess with the settings and hit "run" to get different data. If you are curious about what is going on under the hood, you can turn on debugoutput (also in the settings) to see how it is being calculated. Ask any questions you like.

[Curby]

Nice work! I haven't dug through the source to try to make sense of it yet, but are you using multivariate hypergeometric distributions? If not, I think you should. It's what I had to do for some of my "60-max" article on thrabenuniversity.com, and is unfortunately not directly supported by things like Google Docs (afaik).

Refs taken from my google doc:
http://community.ist.utl.pt/hypergeometric-distribution
http://www.math.uah.edu/stat/urn/Mul...geometric.html

(The spreadsheet itself: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets...#gid=710061108 )

[iatee]

Chris, this is great, thank you.

[ChrisCunningham]

Nice work! I haven't dug through the source to try to make sense of it yet, but are you using multivariate hypergeometric distributions? If not, I think you should. It's what I had to do for some of my "60-max" article on thrabenuniversity.com, and is unfortunately not directly supported by things like Google Docs (afaik).

Refs taken from my google doc:
http://community.ist.utl.pt/hypergeometric-distribution
http://www.math.uah.edu/stat/urn/Mul...geometric.html

(The spreadsheet itself: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets...#gid=710061108 )

I am sad that I seem to have re-derived multivariate hypergeometric distributions, because I didn't know the name of it. Thanks for this. I'll probably try to find an implementation of them in python and just rewrite the thing using the right method, then if the numbers come out the same, I'll be more confident in the numbers. I'll work on it a bit tomorrow.

[Medea_]

@ChrisCunningham

This is really neat. Once you have it in a place you are happy with it (and you are confident in the math), I'd love to share this via my site if that's fine with you.

[Cringe]

Played at a local tournament tonight with 6 rounds

LAND
2 Cavern of Souls
4 Rishadan Port
4 Wasteland
3 Plains
4 Marshflats
2 Windswept Heath
2 scrubland
3 Karakas

CREATURES
4 Thalia Guardian
4 Flicker wisp
4 Stoneforge
4 Mother of Runes
2 Recruiter of the guard
2 Mirrian Crusader
1 Sanctum Prelate
1 Aven Mindscensor
1 Pontiff
1 aethersworn canonist

SPELLS
4 StPS
4 Vial
1 Zealous Persecution
1 Sword of Fire and Ice
1 Jitte
1 Batterskull

SIDEBOARD
2 Kor Firewalker
2 Containment Priest
2 Blessed Alliance
2 Pithing Needle
2 Council's Judgement
2 Path to Exile
1 Pontiff
1 Zealous
1 Rest In Peace

I went 3-3 but I felt extremely good about my playing. Two of my losses can be chalked up to terrible draw but that's almost always the case right?

Round 1 Burn (1-2)
I've played burn 4 times total and this is the second time I've played here with a total of 11 rounds. I don't test against it much so I just try and use common sense against it but it has usually prevailed. Game one he takes care of all my creatures and I just lose. Game two I land jitte and he scoops. Game three I get somewhat of a board state but too decking 2 karakas and 3 flickerwisp loses me the game

Round 2 Elves (1-2)
I test against this constantly and I played very well but he hard casted hoof in each loss for the win. Prelate slowed him down but he gets the wins here. Prelate helped slow him down but my recruiter came late so I didn't grab Canonist.

Round 3 Mirror (2-1)
We have a mom fight but I had turn 2 and 3 stone forge while he played Thalia and vials and I won through Mirrian with sword. Game two he wins with revokers and 2 moms and I could get into any of my equipment. Game three I swamp the board with kretchers and get batterskull and jitte for the win. I was nervous because I feel this matchup comes down to knowing when to play control for the turn and when to switch back to aggro.

Round 4 UR Delver (2-1)
Game one I sustain with Jitte after a long battle with a Delver and he takes it out and smacks me for two turns for the win. Games 2 and three I boarded in firewalker and blessed alliance to keep up with true-names and burn spells. Eventually top deck a flickerwisp with a jitte on board and he scoops.

Round 5 4-color Loam (0-2)
I just got absolutely shit on. Never played against it. Turn 2 Lilly hurts. I need to do more reading on this deck but I assume it's a hard matchup for me

Last round gave me the win. I need more practice but I played well tonight. I made good calls and when it came to choosing between a few different plays I generally picked the best and it was rewarding.

[OopsMissedTrigger]

Round 5 4-color Loam (0-2)
I just got absolutely shit on. Never played against it. Turn 2 Lilly hurts. I need to do more reading on this deck but I assume it's a hard matchup for me

I find Prelate on 2 to pretty much win that matchup. Played it three times in the past two weeks and won 6-1 games. Revokers + Prelate MVPs.

[Medea_]

@Cringe

I do have a primer on the burn matchup. Link

I'm also not thrilled to be paired against Aggro Loam.

[Copperhead]

Long time lurker here, but have been playing D&T since 2013 or so. I've been a mono-white player forever, but am trying out the BR splash for real for the first time this weekend. After reading Sean Brown's and Medea's thoughts I've put this together, but have some questions for the group:


4 Mother of Runes
4 Thalia, Guardian of Thraben
4 Stoneforge Mystic
3 Flickerwisp
2 Phyrexian Revoker
2 Recruiter of the Guard
2 Mirran Crusader
2 Magus of the Moon
1 Vryn Wingmare
1 Palace Jailer
1 Pia and Kiran Nalaar

4 Aether Vial
4 Swords to Plowshares
1 Batterskull
1 Sword of Fire and Ice
1 Umezawa's Jitte

4 Plains
4 Wasteland
2 Plateau
1 Scrubland
3 Windswept Heath
3 Flooded Strand
3 Karakas
3 Cavern of Souls

Sideboard
2 Council's Judgment
2 Ethersworn Canonist
2 Containment Priest
2 Pyroblast
2 Rest in Peace
1 Pithing Needle
1 Leonin Relic-Warder
1 Faerie Macabre
1 Orzhov Pontiff
1 Cunning Sparkmage


1. Assuming a wide-open field, would I be better with Pontiff in the main over Wingmare (Thalia #5)? I feel like I'm going to be weaker to combo without Wingmare. Or should I just run 1 Canonist in the main?

2. I want to try 2x Kambal, but I don't have a good feel for the match-ups that he would be good where Canonist wouldn't already be good. Advice?

Thanks in advance.

[iatee]

Kambal is good against all cantrip or bolt decks. He's even better vs the ones that don't also have Wasteland to pressure your colored mana (eg Burn/UR Delver or control decks).

[Medea_]

I'll second what Iatee said about Kambal.

I've been running 1-2 Canonists in the main of just about every D&T build I'm on, no matter what color combination. I do like that over Vryn Winmare.

[solnox]

Hey guys new to the deck and I have a few questions.

How do you ever beat Eldrazi. I've never tilted this hard before in a matchup. I've played vs the same guy in multiple leagues in the past few days and he just plays through multiple wastelands+ports like its nothing. If I SFM, he just plays TKS and strips it.