[Deck] Fetchland Tendrils

[rsaunder]

*bump*

There are some choices that don't exactly apply to ANT, so let's get this bad boy back up to speed.

The more I work with the deck, the more I'm tempted to reintroduce dark confident to the SB. I haven't been a fan of how much space is taken up in the board by boarding in AdN and more acceloration, and bob is boardable in more matchups than black-based aggro-control. I'm running 3 copies right now and thus far, it's a godsend against anything that likes tapping lands to produce black or blue mana.

Also, how many chant effects is everyone running? I'm running exactly zero right now, but I feel like one or two copies might be a valuable asset, perhaps even worth splashing the 5th color. I don't know what I'd cur for them though.

[emidln]

Working Draft - "On Storm Combo Versus Blue-Based Aggro Control"


Edit: I'm not going to lie. The chances of me cleaning this up and finishing it moves closer to zero with each passing day. I'm just going to release it in this form and answer questions if anyone has them. There are still half-thoughts and probably sections marked "needs to be fixed" or something. Consider this a large reply to Bahamut from the ANT thread, not a real article.


This should be discussing the merits of FT/ANT. It still needs a lot of clarification and fleshing out with a good deal more editing to be done.


---------



Question #1 - Why is Sensei's Divining Top better than Ponder against Blue Control?


Question #2 - Why is Doomsday better than Ad Nauseam against Blue Control?


These are separate but related questions. I'll try to answer them separately, although some overlap might occur.


Sensei's Divining Top (SDT) provides card quality. Ponder provides card quality. What makes one better than the other? Time frame. In storm combo, there exists a very clear concept of early, mid, and late game that some people misinterpret because they tend to think of only what they are doing.
The early game is the time frame in which you have to go off against minimal or no disruption. against aggro decks this is usually from the beginning of the game until turn 2-3 before the discard really starts kicking in, the hate bears come down, or they've hit you with a ton of damage from creatures/burn/etc.

The mid game is the period where you can go off, but you're expecting to see 1-2 pieces of good disruption. This might be Force of Will + blue card + stifle or Spell Snare + Counterspell. This could also be something like Thoughtseize + Hymn to Tourach or a Trinisphere.

The late game is when you know your opponent has 2+ disruption spells and your opponent knows you know this. It's readily apparent when your opponent has put you on a clock (say a Tarmogoyf).

The transitions from state to state aren't always easily recognizable to the storm combo player, but I've found some signs that tip me off that the transition is in progress: cards seen by my opponent, cards in my hand, and active threats on the table. Against blue-based control and aggro-control decks, cards seen by my opponent followed up by his active threats are my main indicators. The longer the game goes, the more cantrips Thresh plays to optimize its own card quality and the more disruption they assemble and threats they put fourth. Against non-black aggro, I tend to gauge the progress of the game by the threats my opponent has on board. Aggro can't really disrupt me very much, so their only real threat to me is damage. (This isn't entirely true because they can play artifacts, enchantments, and hate bears, but a properly built storm combo deck can usually ignore these things or is at least equipped to quickly deal with them.) Against black-aggro and black-based aggro-control, I tend to use my mana sources in play and cards in hand as the indicator of game progress as what they do to me only really matters on their turn (discard spells, land destruction, attacking me).

My concept of the different states of the game (early, mid, and late) is what leads me to Sensei's Divining Top and away from Ad Nauseam. I posit that the only way Ad Nauseam wins against blue-based aggro control is when they can force an early game situation through use of disruption or speed. The hard part of forcing an early game is that Threshold's first land drop moves them into the mid game. From that point forward they have online, at least Force of Will and Daze with a very strong chance that at least one of either (possibly more than one) Stifle, Spell Snare, or Thoughtseize come online as well. Brainstorm and Ponder (and to a point, Sensei's Divining Top) bring their odds of finding relevant hate even higher and your restriction on cards seen (particularly mana) means its unlikely for you to be able to play through a hard counter (Daze (at this point) or Force of Will) as well as either another counter or a mana-costing card like Stifle/Thoughtseize/Spell Snare. Worse, Counterbalance resolving will immediately move them into the late game at which point they accumulate more and more hate for you. Luckily, not all blue-based control packs all of the hate I've mentioned, but Team America, UGbw Counterbalance Thresh, Dreadstill, and UGR Thrash play large portions of the mentioned hate cards and these decks are seeing heavy play.

The only reliable way to negate the huge advantage blue-based disruption packages brings to the table is to make land drops and match their card quality. This has quite a few implications. As we all know, cantrips like Brainstorm and Ponder, along with Sensei's Divining Top, and Mystical Tutor are common ways of generating card quality and making land drops. Our basic premise (of storm combo) is that an opponent's deck is so full of useless cards (mostly dealing with creatures) that our initial virtual card advantage can see us to a point where we can generate storm and play a win condition. Our basic assumption fails against most blue-based aggro control decks. Where we are at a huge advantage against aggro, our quick wins based off a few powerful cards fall right into blue-based aggro-control's comfort zone. Simply put, their initial hands are better than ours.

There is hope though. At some point, the control player must actually beat us. This means they will be committing resources that aren't going to disrupting us. Moreover, most of their disruption becomes worse as the game progresses. Daze becomes worthless against an opponent who has a lot of lands. Force of Will becomes a liability (often worse than Counterspell) on a combo player's turn when raw card count in the blue player's hand matters, the five mana is prohibitive, and storm is at a premium. Even more so, Spell Snare and Stifle's applicability on our combo turn can be eliminated through careful spell selection (specifically that of protection) and naturally tuning the deck to have more protection in order to resolve the far reaching protection cards like Orim's Chant, Xantid Swarm, and Abeyance.

As the game progresses, there reaches a point where Threshold's cards are getting worse while our protection and bombs maintain value. Our card quality engine is working (we play the same Ponders, Brainstorms, and Tops that blue-based control does) to find us relevant cards while our opponents' are not. This is the point in the late game where storm combo can go for the throat. By resolving a bomb like Orim's Chant through the help of cards like Duress, Pyroblast, and Extirpate we eliminate large classes of disruption an opponent has. Even by casting such a spell, we render the opponent's stack-based hate into hard counters, chant effects, and irrelevant. Most blue-based control decks don't run chant effects and many will only run Force of Will, possibly with Counterspell, as a hard counter. This puts all of the cards that we were so afraid of early on into the irrelevant pile essentially bringing me back to the early game.

Now, this isn't a free scenario. There are things that happen in the meantime. Of huge significance is that your opponent will try to kill you. They will cast a creature and try to attack you to death. You can use this time to try to move further and further along our gamestate circle try to reach the other early game. This basic strategy, that of using your life total as a buffer to stall the game, isn't possible when you need your life total to draw cards to hit a certain storm count. When you merely need 2 life and 2 cards in your hand to win, this is much more doable. Threshold tends to complicate this scenario because their undercosted creatures can beat harder, faster forcing us to go off while an opponent's cards are still relevant. This is the nature of the matchup that I've found, but it is the one that generates the most wins and the most wins consistently. The more protection you load up on the easier this becomes and the more you can send decks like Threshold and Dreadstill packing.

Unfortunately, presetting yourself for this scenario is costly. To make room for the extra hate spells and to overload on card quality so as to give yourself a consistent positive game against blue, some slots must pay the price. With Doomsday as the storm engine of choice, your mana requirements are greatly reduced (5-6 mana with all of it possible from lands). I've found that 4 Dark Ritual, 4 LED, 1 Cabal Ritual, and 1 Lotus Petal provide me the ability to combo at will against control and around turn 3-4 against aggro (sometimes sooner). I increase the amount of lands in the deck to make up for this, usually playing 16-18 maindeck with potentially 1-3 more in the sideboard (depending on how few or many lands I have main). This slowing down against aggro is dangerous in a field of black-based aggro-control and aggro decks playing burn. Competent aggro players will hold their burn spells and you will need perfect decisions and flawless plays to defeat once laughable matchups (though you are still favored).

Now, I'd be a liar if I told you that this is the only way. It is possible to attempt to battle Threshold et al in the mid game and some people even get lucky doing so. In my testing, I never found the matchup to be favorable when I was forcing the issue of comboing out early against the blue-based aggro-control decks. The major issue you run into is that they start in the mid game. If you don't have a really good hand to start out with, you have no chance. When you're forcing yourself to combo early you load up on additional acceleration and try to mask your protection needs and odds of seeing them by simply playing more and hoping to see the right mix of initial mana sources, rituals, bombs, and protection. This means you're not playing as much land or as many card quality-producing cards. In making that decision, your ability to slow down is diminished to a point where you are losing the card quality war with blue if you do, but usually lose the disruption battle if you combo early. Lucky draws where you happen into a bunch of land let you masquerade as a more prepared combo deck, but I've found that I can't rely on drawing 3-4 lands when I'm only playing 14. Even when you sideboard in your additional protection or lands, you are now playing a game 1 situation from a more prepared deck against your enemy's now optimized (sideboarded) list. ###EDIT###Thinking that you'll consistently win 2 out of 3 when you're down in odds game 1 and short on mana to operate in games 2 and 3 sounds delusional. # This should talk about the possibility of going all in early and how TES is a better suited shell to do it in because of the extra acceleration and their better earlygame manabase stability (Stifle isn't an issue). ###

Back to the original question, if the game against control plays out like I claim it does, the additional card quality generated from fetchland activations and multiple uses over the course of several turns Sensei's Divining Top into a far better choice than Ponder against control. If you are intent on simply winning before the hate goes online, I wish you luck and will tell you that Ponder is a better choice for your intended, if wrong, playstyle.

[thefreakaccident]

^ Quoted for truth...


It is strange, but I always milked the game for as long as my thresh opponent would give me, and I was usually able to win in those circumstances.

What is you newest list for FT?

Does it play Ad nausem?

I always felt that AN was designed for a quicker combo, not a perfectly set-up combo.

I keep seeing players saccing LEDs in the upkeep unprotected and it terrifies me.

[Dark_Cynic87]

I loved my FDDT list, and ever since AdN came out I have been freaking out (Thx for the list, rsaunder, over in the ANT thread) because it's just so damn random. I liked just having to know my stacks. I understand it's a great card, and I even use it appropriately (although sub-optimally since my lists keep sucking) and winning with it, but I always feel better with Doomsday. Half your life is scary enough. 16 is nuts and very scary. Not to mention I've never had problems going off turn 3/4, which is more than acceptable and is still considered early game agianst most decks in the current meta (I realize it often makes CB more relevant than ANT, but I don't really ever care since Pyroblasts and K. Grips are easier to play since 17 lands are involved).

I guess what I'm saying is that while AdN has it's plus sides, I'm glad this deck isn't going away as it still has many reasons to play it instead of ANT. I'm going to get an optimal list of ANT and just carry both lists around so I have more time to scout and decide which I'm going to play instead of carrying around both TES and FDDT and having to make even bigger decisions.

Btw, Bryant should be thanking me for hounding his entire thread to retest Mystical Tutor in his list. He won't, but he should.

I think Chants belong somewhere in the list, but maybe as a 1-2 of, and possibly just in the SB. I really do like Serenity, and I'd like a reason to run white again so I can use them again.

[GreenOne]

going off turn 3/4, which is more than acceptable and is still considered early game agianst most decks in the current meta (I realize it often makes CB more relevant than ANT, but I don't really ever care since Pyroblasts and K. Grips are easier to play since 17 lands are involved).

The main reason to play something faster than DDFT is that, well, you have a faster kill. This can be relevant against aggro (but don't matter most of the time), but it also raises the problem of CB+top. Giving them more time to assemble the combo could be deadly, especially with the good amount of draw both decks are playing. Discard is also better in a faster deck, due to the fact that can't do nothing on a topdecked counterbalance, and topdecking is quite easy with blue's cantrip package.

Yeah, CB is the only card that actually increases its power as time goes by. In my testing, DDFT did better against everything with discard and counterspells (FT totally ignores Spell Snare and it's insanely resilent to Daze and Stifle) BUT decks with also counterbalance (and sometimes hippie). Note that I tested the deck with the Chant/Duress configuration, so the pyroblasts MD should be golden here.

Btw, Bryant should be thanking me for hounding his entire thread to retest Mystical Tutor in his list. He won't, but he should.

Hey, I did some of the work too I was about posting an almost exact list of bryant's list a couple of days before. Changes was something like -1 chain of vapor -1 Mystical +2 Duress, so yeah, I guess the general feeling was that SSG sucked and Mystical should have a chance.

[Dark_Cynic87]

True story, GreenOne. I don't know why I pressured them as hard as I did. They never freakin' listen to me. I've stopped reading that thread, and probably won't ever post there again as what I have to say is masterfully ignored.

On a different note...

I used a list given to me by rsaunder over on the ANT list and I've decided I don't like Ad Nauseam as much as I like the straight D-Day list I used to play and am therefore going back to this. Too bad for my foil Jap. AdN and my altered art Jap. AdN...Oh well. Into the binder of the unplayed.

Pce,

--DC

[rsaunder]

I'm really tempted to re-introduce chant into the list but I have no idea where to fit them, let alone if it's worth going up to 5 color to do so. I have enough trouble with the manabase as it is (which isn't much, but playing another color is just bound to mess with it). I'm not sure if serenity is worth the slots when compared to ancient grudge. Sure, it kills enchantments but grudge is just brutally efficent and tutorable.

[emidln]

I play 1-3 Chant between main and sb. Never less than 1 Chant main, but I haven't played the full 3-4 in awhile. I'm still playing 5c with 4 Duress and 4 Pyroblast maindeck. The manabase seems fine to me.

[kicks_422]

What's your manabase like? And what engines do you run (Ad Nauseam, IGG, and Doomsday)?

I'm liking the stability of my UWB Hybrid FT, with G in the SB for Grip. I could see the merits of going 5 color, but I'm not too sure how the manabase could hold up.

[rsaunder]

I play 1-3 Chant between main and sb. Never less than 1 Chant main, but I haven't played the full 3-4 in awhile. I'm still playing 5c with 4 Duress and 4 Pyroblast maindeck. The manabase seems fine to me.

My mana troubles have mostly happened against dreadstill and TA. The latter isn't as important as you dont have to get G to handle balance, but Dreadstill's been a bitch a few times. What did you cut for MB chant? My list is tighter than your average nun right now.

4 DDay
4 MTutor
4 Dark Rit
4 LED
1 Petal
1 C. Rit
4 SDT
4 Ponder
4 Brainstorm
4 Duress
4 Pyroblast
1 Wipe Away
1 Krosan Grip
1 Meditate
1 IGG
1 ToA
4 Delta
4 Mire
1 island
1 swamp
1 badlands
2 u. sea
2 volc
1 bayu
1 trop

I guess -1 wipe away, +1 chant is the obvious solution, but I've loved the 2x permanent hate recently.

And I bet emidln's manabase looks like mine without the duplicate lands; with scrubland and tundra instead.

[emidln]

My manabase has been bouncing from:

4 Delta
4 Mire
1 U Sea
1 Volc Island
1 Badlands
1 Trop Island
1 Bayou
1 Scrub
1 SC Swamp
1 SC Island
3 Petal

(3 Ponder, 1 SSRemoval, 1 Chant, 4 Duress, 4 Pyroblast, 16 Lands to fit in the extra Petals)

with 1 SC Mountain, 1 Petal, 1 CRit, 2 Infernal Tutor, 1 Ad Nauseam in the sb (maindeck only Doomsdays and IGG)

to

4 Delta
4 Mire
1 U Sea
1-2 Volc Island
1 Badlands
1 Trop Island
1 Bayou
1-2 Scrubland
1 SC Swamp
1 SC Island
1 Petal

How many white lands I play depends on how lucky I feel. Going down to a single white source is super-risky, but I'm usually greedy enough to try it to get another fetchable blue source off Mire. For that matter, Tundra is terrible with Mire and I haven't been playing it in the Pyroblast builds.

The second manabase makes it harder to go into speed tendrils postboard (you have to keep at least 3 Petal, 1 Cabal Rit off the bat) and I'm currently evaluating how much I value the ability to have either extra sb slots or Infernal Tutor AND Ad Nauseam against aggro.

[Dark_Cynic87]

I like the first manabase other than 3x Petal and only 2x basix. I like 2x Islands for Wipe Away against Moon effects. DS is a bastard that I hate.

How do you side with AdN? That sounds like a lot better plan than straight ANT, at least for me. I'm guessing at least -1 D-Day...

Rsaunder: 2x removal pieces are necessary for you? I'd rather go straight grip with 'Pate if Balance is a big deal (sounds like it is).

I also have been wanting at least one chant, and at one point tried 2 in the SB along with a Scrub also SB. It wasn't the best but it went better than no chant.

off-topic

BTW, what's the most "pimp" version of Pyroblast? Just Japanese signed? Is there anything more pimp?

Also, I'm looking for Jap. LED's. I know they run 45-55 each and I'm more than happy to pay that, but I can't find them. Michael French has some on MOTL, but he closed his list and I can't get in touch with him. Anyone know of any others available for trade/purchase?

/off-topic

Pce,

--DC

[emidln]

I don't play Wipe Away maindeck. I thus see no reason to have two islands. My two manabases are almost identical with the top one having +2 petal, -1 Land compared to the bottom one.

I usually board like this when I bring in AdN (which is against discard-packing aggro):

-4 Pyroblast
-1 Krosan Grip
-1 Doomsday
-3 Duress

+1 Ad Nauseam
+2 Infernal Tutor
+1 Lotus Petal
+1 Cabal Ritual
+1 Grapeshot
+1 Helm of Awakening
+1 Echoing Truth

[rsaunder]

emidln, how much discard do you generally see? I think it's been almost two years since I've had to play against a a deck with more than a playset of thoughtseize like Team America. I've never found the need for more than 2 or so dedicated SB slots, let alone how many AdN takes.

This is the board I've been running recently (in the UBrg 17 land build with wipe away):

2 K Grip
3 Ancient Grudge
3 Dark Confident
1 IT
1 IGG
1 GS
1 HOA
2 Extirpate
1 pyroclasm/sudden shock/hate card

Given the decks I always seem to have to play against, I'm tempted to run xantid swarms in the board over anti-discard.

[emidln]

I've been encountering several Survival, Black-based aggro, and Rock-type decks lately.

I've been building my sideboard out of these slots lately (playing 3 Petal, 9 disruption main). My actual 15 tends to vary based on what I'm feeling before an event. There are 6 extra protection spells that I generally only play about 2 of and will usually throw out one of Shattering Spree, Ancient Grudge, or Krosan Grip.

2 Infernal Tutor
1 Ad Nauseam
1 Lotus Petal
1 Cabal Ritual
2 Orim's Chant
3 Red Elemental Blast
1 Extirpate
1 Mountain
1 Grapeshot
1 Helm of Awakening
1 Echoing Truth
1 Rushing River
1 Wipe Away
1 Krosan Grip
1 Ancient Grudge
1 Shattering Spree

[metalhead]

Sorry if i just missed something, but what is the reason for running the second Infernal tutor in board? was 1 just not enough?

[rsaunder]

Sorry if i just missed something, but what is the reason for running the second Infernal tutor in board? was 1 just not enough?

In my board, IT is there mainly as a MT target against discard so that you can go lethal with no cards in hand as long as you have 2 LED's in play. It also speeds up your goldfish against stuff like goblins a little bit, since hands with just gas are some better. In emidln's list though, it's there to compliment AdN and to increase threat density against the discard decks he's facing. (or at least that's why I've played 2 in the past.)

[emidln]

In my board, IT is there mainly as a MT target against discard so that you can go lethal with no cards in hand as long as you have 2 LED's in play. It also speeds up your goldfish against stuff like goblins a little bit, since hands with just gas are some better. In emidln's list though, it's there to compliment AdN and to increase threat density against the discard decks he's facing. (or at least that's why I've played 2 in the past.)

[rsaunder]

I've been running a little bit of an experimental manabase recently, and I think this might be worthwhile in the right metagame. In the northeast, stifle is some popular between team america and dreadstill (and cappy with tempo thresh) so fetchlands have been a bit of a liability. Cutting them entirely is a terrible plan, because they're just necessary with top, but cutting one and the duplicate lands for 5c lands has yeilded...interesting results.

My experimantal manabase:

4 Polluted Delta
3 Bloodstained Mire
1 Island
1 Swamp
1 Underground Sea
1 Badlands
1 Volcanic Island
1 Bayu
1 Tropical Island
1 Scrubland
1 City of Brass
1 Gemstone Mine/City#2

I run the low accell build (10 pieces), and really had no desire to cut lands for petals to help mana-fix. Now, this manabase doesn't fix ALL of the problems I've had against stifle+wasteland+that sort of card in general, but it is significantly harder to color-screw (ala 5c threshold.) Even with just the two 5c lands added in, I havent had to dig for say, green mana to grip or white mana to chant.

[Dark_Cynic87]

I like the idea and actually was discussing this same idea with a couple teammates a while back. I go extreme too often with my ideas and I thought 4. Two seems to be better, and I like the 1/1 split instead of two cities. The fact that Mine Dies is probably not a big deal, although in those longer games city might be better. Testing and time will tell.

Pce,

--DC