Came for quality Legacy content. Was not disappointed.Originally Posted by iatee
I'd like your opinions on Prelate number in a specific matchup: I keep running into High Tide on MTGO. I'm playing Chalices and Prelates.
When I have a Chalice on 1, my instinct is to try to protect the Chalice. In that case, the relevant opposing spells are: Rebuild, Hurkyl's Recall, Echoing Truth, Wipe Away, Snap, and Cunning Wish. I have been naming 3 since I feel like it is a tie between all the 2s and 3s listed above, and because when I name 2, sometimes they bounce my Chalice and I can't replay it for X = 1. But I don't really know.
The other option would be to just name 1 so they have to answer two things before casting High Tide itself, and the cantrips. Maybe that simple answer is the best. Should I be naming 1?
Wow and you scumbagged your opponent with your 1 off naturally drawn Vryn Wingmare.
What is the issue? Rite of Flame is a busted card.
Sure.
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Just to make this thread slightly less confusing...CptHaddock was my Big Red opponent.
Congrats iatee!
Yes I did not get the opportunity earlier, but congratulations! I may not be a fan of the splash versions, but you clearly have a mastery and understanding of the version and it showed!
I also played EE7 on Monowhite D&T. 2 crusader, 2 avenger, 3 revoker, 1 prelate, 2 recruiter in the flex spots. zero cavern, 2 flagstone, 1 cataclysm in the board. I feel like this is a super standard setup.
I dropped at x-3 after the losing in the 8th round to, of all decks, lands. Where I beat him game 1 in 5 minutes, then game two i drew 15 total lands (playing 23), while being wasteland/loam/molten vortex locked, and game 3 where I saw 3 total lands, all non-basic and got locked by the same again. I saw 0 sideboard cards in both games. I was just done on the bads beats after this one. My other loses included a super close 3 game stint against czech pile where my revoker naming liliana of the veil, did not stop liliana the last hope, and a storm player coming down to game 3 and having to shuffle on a ponder and topdeck infernal tutor or lose. Needless to say he top decked an infernal tutor.
I believe I only had 2 potential play mistakes in my loses that had potential to change the outcome.
I beat: Czech pile, U/B standstill, D&T, B/R reanimator, and Grxis Delver.
The only thing i took from this tournament that hasn't been discussed ad nasueam in this forum is a 1 of Sword of Light and Shadow in the board for Czech pile and for the mirror. It was amazing all day.
I searched it up first in every game against czech pile/rock/D&T and it was overwhelmingly awesome. I search it first against Pile because it is the equipmentI feel we can most afford to lose to discard/early koligan's command as it is also a non-bo with the best sideboard card: RIP.
Against Czech pile it put Deathrite on creature removal duty, fouling his and slowing his clock. Racing a true name or angler was never easier, deluge doesn't matter when bring back stoneforge and go get more equipment. Flying past strix is also huge, they rely on that more than i thought. It also gave me time to draw into a RIP in 3 of 4 sideboarded games. which feels awesome to play after they deal with the sword.
In the D&T mirror being able to swing attacks where you will trade creatures while threatening to bring them back with SoLS feels very strong.
Also the rock/bug/etc decks having to choose to shoot your sword with abrupt decay instead of the creatures or vial was very relevant.
I'm not saying Sword of Light and Shadow is "the answer", but it was great for me in this event.
I believe I will also be moving up to 3 RIP in the board from 2, as revoker feels worse every day and RIP splashes against so many decks right now.
Yeah, I've also felt that Revoker is not at its best these days, RiP is just a more reliable way to beat Deathrite. My default is 2, however, and I don't think you can really go below that since Revoker is often our way of dealing with random legacy nonsense cards.
One thing I really liked in my SB that I think is probably an under-explored option was the extra Recruiter. Pre-Conspiracy 2 I was playing 3-4 Imperial Recruiters main and I've been missing some of the long-game consistency that came with that. That was also Miracles era and the card is obviously amazing vs them - but I think it is great vs Czech Pile too and pretty much comes in vs every non-Wasteland deck in the format + even some Wasteland decks e.g. the mirror, where a good % of my games seem to come down to who finds a Recruiter first. Recruiter is generally more powerful for the splash builds because they have a wider variety of targets, but I think mono-W could still consider it too.
I noticed you played 24 lands too. Was that good for you all day? Did you get flooded at all? I'm trying out a more tutor heavy mono white list and wanted to ask since I am considering cutting a revoker since it's been pretty mediocre as of late. Did you play the extra land for the 11 3+ drops or to counter wasteland decks?
I've been seeing a way larger percentage of snapcaster then i ever remember seeing in the past.
24 lands was for a few reasons:
- If you're playing Pia/Kiran main, you have more incentive to play double Plateau, since g1 it's in your deck vs Wasteland decks.
- I was playing 2 4 drops in the main and one in the board
- 24 lands both lets you play 3 Caverns and 13 pure white sources, which lets you play a million caverns + a splash manabase without actually having fewer pure white sources than a typical DnT deck
I found myself hoping to draw lands more often than I was flooded. I actually really liked this manabase, I feel like it fixes a lot of problems at once and allows you to play more powerful haymakers. Against decks where you're not going to play the 4 drops, e.g. Storm, you can side out one land easily, or even two - you're only stuck with 24 lands game one. It's nice to have an easy side-out option.
If Czech Pile is the deck to beat, maybe Imperial is just better right now.
24 lands totally makes sense with a maindeck cmc 4.
Yeah, if the deck-to-beat has a greedy manabase, doesn't punish your manabase and tries to grind you out with 2 for 1s, I think Blood Moon and infinite copies of Lingering Souls are a good place to be.
Sorcerous Spyglass is an interesting new card that I think could see main deck play. It has powerful mana denial application against hands full of fetchlands (not exactly uncommon), the hand information is quite useful for sequencing our plays, and it can hit lands unlike Revoker. I don't know if a non-ancient-tomb build can afford to play it but with ancient tomb, it's a playable turn 1 disruption.
Congrats on your placing.
Infinite copies of Lingering Souls seems like a super optimistic way of viewing Pia and Kia.
Not to address you in particular, but I also see this perpetual reasoning of "oh I flooded with only 23 lands" or "I keep getting mana screwed at 23 lands. I should go up to 24" when in reality, there is just no way to psychologically establish a clear difference between the two because the statistical difference between them are so insignificant. Playing an extra source of land because one needs the color fix (e.g an extra Plateau) is completely reasonable but in most cases, the difference between 23 and 24 (or even say, 21 and 22 which are not standard) are not perceptible and mostly confirmation bias when someone feels there is a notable difference. It's an inherent limitation of the deck that this deck sometimes floods and sometimes gets stuck. The only real 'solution' to alleviate this problem is to lower the curve of the deck significantly so that the deck can function off of 2 lands, on top of Port + Wasteland. Not saying this is the way to go, but after the conspiracy set, the deck became significantly more clunky.
Overall, this deck is just extremely mana hungry. On top of Wasteland+Port activation, getting equipments (especially under Thalia) is pretty damn difficult. I've seen too many games thrown away because equipments didn't hit the field quickly enough, which are easily 4-5 mana investments.
Last edited by grayryker; 09-21-2017 at 05:47 AM.
- If the game goes long enough, you will have Pia/Kiran, a lot of lands, and a Karakas - eventually you get your infinite Lingering Souls, which is a very strong late game. DnT's normal late game is SfM and busted equipment, which is usually enough to outclass any fair deck that isn't playing TNN+Jitte. But the current deck to beat's end game is Snapcaster+Kolaghan's Command, which ends up being a pretty good answer to SfM. I don't think you can just rely on the equipment package to always get you there, even game 1 (usually the freebie, since people don't tend to play artifact destruction main.)
- I think your argument about 22/23/24 is true when it's in reference to observations over a small sample set. But over a long set of matches with 'generic DnT curve' I've been short mana more often than I've flooded with 23, which is why I think normal DnT wants something like 23.5 and a deck with an especially high curve should sit comfortably at 24. Likewise I've felt generally fine with 13 pure white sources and a tiny bit short on white when I have 12 pure white sources in my deck.
The statistical differences in both cases might be marginal - e.g. someone just won a GP with 22 lands and 12 white sources, clearly it's not unplayable - but if you play and test any deck enough, you do observe patterns, even from marginal differences, so it's not like we should just shrug and conclude that only a higher power could know the truth about our manabase. You test and make changes based on long-term patterns you see.
- I agree that Sorcerous Spyglass is probably better than people give it credit for, and I expect it to be played a decent amount. For Eldrazi it might be close to a strictly-better Pithing Needle, since it isn't a non-bo with Chalice.
I have a few different 'endgame' combos that are pretty neat, but I'm still testing them. I'd like one of my friends to pick up or proxy a Czech list, but whatever. I've been testing an off-color humans type of list, with Pontiff, Meddling Mage, Kambal, and Harsh Mentor out of the board for various things. 4 Caverns main.
Mangara & Karakas needs no introduction. He's only a one-of in my list due to being slow.
Hokori, Dust Drinker and Sword of Feast and Famine is pretty nifty later on. Throw in either Thalia for more fun.
I've also been testing Daxos of Meletis and he's decent for stealing removal they were going to draw, or other things. Built in evasion, and great with a sword of any kind.
Not to mention the usual Batterskull things, or Mirran Crusader.
This sounds closer to 5c humans than a true D&T list (still a good deck, just a different one).
As for Hokori, I've been running it online with some great success. I think it helps shore up the matchups with mana hungry decks like Grixis Control or Czech Pile.Plus it makes lands players cry deeply. Didn't think of adding Sword of Feast and Famine, but seems legit (I had just been abusing Karaks, went up to four copies).
I find it interesting that the DnT that made Top 8 at the Moxen Event here in Baltimore a couple weeks ago took a strategy somewhat like iatee's in Mono-white, logically speaking: 1 GQ and an Aven Mindcensor main to stress greedy databases, a different way to get to the same place as maindeck Magus of the Moon, and 2 Brimaz, King of Oreskos, a legendary that makes tokens. Now, Brimaz has to attack or block, but that's gonna happen, and the kitty cat parade can get out of hand. Brimaz also has a fat butt, making it resilient to Bolt but it dies to Abrupt decay. PaKNdies to Bolt, but evades Abrupt Decay.
Yeah he didn’t run mindcensor or ghost quarter. I believe you’re getting your lists confused. Here’s the list that top 8’d with brimaz: http://mtgtop8.com/event?e=16824&d=304086&f=LE
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