Intro/Explanation
Steel Stompy was a deck built by a friend (Metalwalker) a long time ago. This one is a bit of a callback in some ways, although it owes a lot to Vintage in cards and concept. Anyways, I'd been pondering whether it was possible to port the Vintage Workshop deck to Legacy for quite a while. The manabase is far worse as everyone knows, but we get to play all the non-mana toys without being burdened by the restricted list, which counts for something. I had a discussion with a buddy who doesn't post on here, where I played the part of the skeptic due to the aforementioned issues with the manabase. He thought the issue had merit but I kind of shelved it for a while due to not believing in the heart of the cards. Recently, I came around to trying it out when I considered the synergy between Arcbound Ravager and Walking Ballista/Hangarback Walker. I like all of these cards but hadn't played them in Legacy outside of Ballista in Bomberman, a very different deck with different reasons for playing the card. The +1/+1 counter theme, and remembering Metalwalker's old stompy deck, pointed me to Steel Overseer which is fantastic with these kind of things. Manlands, as in Modern Affinity, go great with Ravager + Overseer. My favorite card - Chalice - is not restricted in this format, and the one drops the Modern deck plays are far too underpowered to be an alternative. For once I find myself actually playing Thorn of Amethyst, since pretty much the whole deck costs 2, Trinisphere actually messes with the curve a lot. Lodestone Golem stacks well with Thorn and can be protected from removal by Chalice, Ravager, and Overseer. After that all came together, I filled in the other nonland slots with Moxen and a couple of flex slots. With the creative process out of the way, the first list:
4 Hangarback Walker
4 Walking Ballista
4 Arcbound Ravager
4 Steel Overseer
4 Lodestone Golem
3 Mox Diamond
3 Mox Opal
4 Chalice of the Void
4 Thorn of Amethyst
2 Crucible of Worlds
4 Ancient Tomb
4 Blinkmoth Nexus
4 Cavern of Souls
4 City of Traitors
4 Inkmoth Nexus
4 Wasteland
Sideboard
3 Phyrexian Revoker
1 Powder Keg
2 Ratchet Bomb
3 Etched Champion
4 Faerie Macabre
2 Spine of Ish Sah
The sideboard is a bit of a mess but the main felt very solid at the first local event. As expected from a Chalice deck, any game where you are on the play feels extremely strong, but the presence of Thorn and potential turn 2 Golems makes this even more noticeable than normal. Turn one Deathrite when you're on the draw of course feels bad, but can be played around. I will likely make the following changes the next time I play the deck (which won't be for a while as our local event is Monday which falls on Christmas/New Year's).
-3 Mox Opal
-2 Cavern of Souls
+1 Mox Diamond
+4 Mishra's Factory
Mox Opal was underwhelming because it's next to impossible to activate it turn one unless your hand is already bonkers. More lands is likely better. Cavern is a mixed bag because of the variety of creature types in the 75, and I found myself wishing it was just another manland. More manlands makes Ravager and Overseer even better and ensures you just don't run out of dudes. Also, despite the relatively low curve you really don't want to miss land drops, and the 8 dudes with "XX" in their cost really soften the impact of any potential mana flood. I almost want to play a couple copies of Wastes because of the multiple Veteran Explorer decks in my meta right now, but that might be a little much. Side note: this deck is deceptively strong against the Rector/Enchantments VE deck due to the combination of taxing effects and +1/+1 counters. My first event went like this:
Round 1: WGB Rector/Veteran Explorer
Game one I win the roll and have turn 1 Thorn, turn 2 Golem, turn 3 Golem. Not much to say about this one as he really didn't cast anything at all. Game 2 is more of the same but slower, which allowed him to GSZ for Explorer to slow the offense. Two Golems, Ravager, and I think a Hangarback Walker made appearances. 2-0
Round 2: Casual Mono-Red Goblins
Pretty sure this was basically a starter deck, but he won round one so who am I to judge. Game one I'm on the play with Chalice and Lodestone Golem, which slows him down enough for me to get there. Game two I die to a bunch of hasty Goblins as my draw is insufficiently explosive. Game three I have Chalice and we trade removal on things (Bomb and Keg for me, various burn spells for him). Eventually a decently sized Ravager gets there. 2-1
Round 3: Grixis Delver
I once again win the die roll (I usually lose them all when playing Chalice so this is awesome). I open with turn one Walking Ballista off of land, Mox Diamond. He plays Delver which dies to Ballista, and then I have double Wasteland. I draw Crucible while he durdles and he scoops to impending Wastelock. Game two I awkwardly play Mox Diamond into Daze and then get my Wasteland both Wastelanded and Surgically Extracted. I'm stuck on two lands and my first couple things get countered or killed by Ancient Grudge, but he lacks pressure with just a Deathrite. Eventually I started sticking dudes with "x" in their cost and I think a Ravager, while he floods out. 2-0
Not a bad showing for a first test run, although winning all the die rolls definitely made things easier than they probably should have been. Anyways, pick up the deck, play it, tell me I'm terrible at magic, whatever. It's fun to play and might have potential.
Last edited by Admiral_Arzar; 12-19-2017 at 10:32 PM.
Lord of the Chalice
Originally Posted by Julian23
Stompy Discord: https://discord.gg/6cesvkz
When you say more manlands, what exactly were you thinking? In terms of guys that become artifact creatures (aside from what u r playing already) all i could find are Dread Sanctuary and Stalking Stones. I guess you could run mutavault but that doesn't interact with Ravager or Overseer.
I'd probably just run a Ghost Quarter or 2 to go along with your Crucible of Worlds. Most decks don't play many basics anyway. Or maybe Inventor's Fair and/or Buried Ruin.
Seems janky, but what about Tezzeret's Gambit? Card draw that proliferates your army.
Why Spine of Ish Sah over All Is Dust? You have no metalworker or workshop that profits it being an artifact. I guess there's the ravager-synergy, but this seems kind of slow. Against decks that swarm the board with TNN or Mentor I'm pretty sure you want the Eldrazi spell over the artifact, even if that's a flavor-fail
I'm guessing Spine is for Show and Tell strategies and Ratchet Bomb/Powder Keg is for swarm decks.Why Spine of Ish Sah over All Is Dust? You have no metalworker or workshop that profits it being an artifact. I guess there's the ravager-synergy, but this seems kind of slow. Against decks that swarm the board with TNN or Mentor I'm pretty sure you want the Eldrazi spell over the artifact, even if that's a flavor-fail
That is correct. Show and Tell is a fixture in my meta, and All is Dust is difficult to cast without Eldrazi lands or mana rocks like Monolith/Dynamo.
Mishra's Factory was what I meant by extra manlands. It wasn't in the first draft although I did think about including it. All the other lands are definitely possible, not sure if any of them is better than keeping on a couple of Caverns though. I'm not sure there's room for proliferate shenanigans in here, I have another deck idea for that ;).
Lord of the Chalice
Stompy Discord: https://discord.gg/6cesvkz
Oh wow Factory. Completely forgot that one.
Hmm.....yeah Inventor's Fair is great for me when I've played MUD but your deck has a ton of redundant pieces so I'm not sure it's as good in your deck. However, with Crucible of Worlds it's pretty much Demonic Tutor every turn....
The recurring tutor part is attractive for sure, it just costs a ton of mana to pull off. The redundancy is by design - it doesn't matter much what you draw in this deck as long as it's lands and spells, outside of combo matchups where you need to draw lock pieces of course. Part of the reason I don't play MUD anymore is because the high-cost cards force you to draw large amounts of mana in order to do anything, which adds to the inherent instability of the stompy shell even more. Stompy decks with lower curves tend to be more consistent as you end up unable to cast your business spells much less often.
Lord of the Chalice
Stompy Discord: https://discord.gg/6cesvkz
How are none of these lists running The Abyss? Card is nuts in Affinity shells.
Sent from my PH-1 using Tapatalk
Paging Vintage Greg! He did fairly well at EW playing Affinity with a full set of The Abyss.
Tusk up.
I like the idea of moving Revoker to the side for Hangerback and Golem.
It is better to ask and look stupid then keep your mouth shut and remain so.
I hope your afterlife is filled with eternal torment.
Fuck. Which one of my quotes do I drop for this?
I played a few hours with the new MKM list. Revokers were nuts. Can't imagine cutting them.
This is my experience playing various Stompy-decks too. Revokers usually do some very good stuff, pulling you out of matches you weren't winning otherwise and interacting with many difficult-to-interact-with things (DRS, LED, Heritage Druid, Sneak Attack, Jace, Vial, Grim Monolith, etc.) and in the worst case, they're still 2/1 artifact creatures in a deck with Ravager, Steel Overseer and some equipment. They particularly help with many of the more difficult/coinflippy G1s, which is really nice. Sadly they aren't amazing vs. Lands or Eldrazi, but you can still nail the occasional artifact from Lands and there are various uses that range from extremely important to niche vs. Eldrazi. Maindecking them is probably a metagame call but with how prevalent DRS is, I don't think it's a bad call at all.
Comparing my testing with the MKM list, you definitely want 4 Hangarback. It is probably the best card you have against Czech Pile. The most cuttable cards to fit in the final two are the SoFI and 1 Vault Skirge in my opinion. I don't like random one offs in these shells (for my dislike of using Inventor's Fair as a tutor, see the next point). Vault Skirge is the least impactful of the creatures and offers the least amount of utility. Don't cut Revokers. They are very rarely dead and often invaluable as has been pointed out.
I've cut Inventor's Fair from my list. I had 1-2 for the longest time and have never used it's effect (much too expensive for the mana base, the deck is not MUD or Tezzeret) and can't recall the life gain ever mattering. I've been much more happy with some number of Cavern of Souls or even Blinkmoth Nexi.
As for Golem, it's a meta call. I love the card and where I'm playing there are a lot of Storm players. But the deck can struggle to hit four mana, especially in a version using Lotus Petal. If you want to play the full playset, you probably have to slightly up the land count and exchange some Petals for Mox Diamonds. The MKM list runs 20 lands and 7 Petals/Opals, in some of my versions aiming to run 3-4 Lodestone I ran a mana base of 22-23 lands and 4-5 Opals/Diamonds sometimes +1 Petal for 27-28 mana sources total, making the deck slightly less explosive but more likely to hit 4 mana in time for Lodestone to be effective.
Cutting sofi is nuts.
Oh my gosh golly what a thoughtful and in depths analysis. The deck does not have SFM to increase the chance of finding the card. Running a one off without any tutor gives you 11% to see it in your opening hand, 20% to see it by turn 5 and only 28% to hit before turn 10. Not having access to SFM also means that you can't cheat in onto the board. So the % of games the card is actually relevant in, is even smaller than the percentages given as you also need the opponent to not have a counterspell. So taking into account that the card only is drawn in approximately 1 out of 5 games in time to be even possibly relevant, which is pretty low, the only scenario where it is indeed nuts to consider cutting the card would be if it wins those 20% of games pretty much on its own, as the card would have to significantly overperform given the low amount of times it comes up. And while the card is good, it is not that good.
As for using Inventor's Fair as a tutor, you need to have five mana to activate plus Fair itself, so we are talking about tutoring on turn 3 at best, more probably turn 4. That means you give up one of these turns not doing anything else to advance your board position. Continuing the secenario you will have to spend your next turn to play and equip the sword, requiring not only an additional land to get up to five mana again but also there not being a Thorn of Amethyst on the board, otherwise the time you're wasting is even more.
If you want to run 1-2 cards to add card selection and more evasion against TNN, play Smuggler's Copter.
1. This isn't Affinity
2. See 1.
I will have to test Revoker main, but I really don't like it over any of the creatures I am currently running. Definitely agree on Hangarback Walker, that card is nuts against any deck that wants to grind you out. Vault Skirge I am suspicious of - without Cranial Plating and Signal Pest it doesn't seem all that strong, and paying 2 life actually matters in Ancient Tomb-heavy draws. I like a pile of manlands to interact favorably with Ravager/Overseer and ensure you don't run out of threats.
I don't like 1-ofs in decks with no card selection.
Lord of the Chalice
Stompy Discord: https://discord.gg/6cesvkz
It does have card selection, there are two inventor's fairs.
I would go straight with this list:
// 60 Maindeck
// 14 Artifact
3 Mox Diamond
2 Mox Opal
4 Chalice of the Void
3 Thorn of Amethyst
2 Crucible of Worlds
// 22 Creature
4 Hangarback Walker
4 Walking Ballista
4 Arcbound Ravager
4 Steel Overseer
3 Lodestone Golem
3 Phyrexian Revoker
// 24 Land
4 Ancient Tomb
4 Cavern of Souls
4 City of Traitors
4 Wasteland
2 Inventors' Fair
2 Ghost Quarter
4 Mishra's Factory
// 15 Sideboard
SB: 2 Karakas
SB: 3 Sorcerous Spyglass
SB: 2 Umezawa's Jitte
SB: 1 Batterskull
SB: 4 Faerie Macabre
SB: 3 Etched Champion
Maindeck is without many spicy ideas, its simple beatdown and disruption (tax/landdestruction) with grindy options. Sideboard you can adjust but i think Spine/Karakas for Show&Tell, while Spine hits all, Karakas is more flexible and will helps vs DDepths&Reanimate too, Etched Champion+Umezawa's Jitte is for fair Matchups, Batterskull as a 1off Tutortarget (Inventors' Fair) if you need more grindy options, it can be a Sword-Equipment too if needed, but Batterskull works alone and can be hard to remove. Unless nobody runs Null Rod i think Steel Stompy can be good enough at current meta game because it offers a fast, disruptiv shell that can also be used to grind out in various ways (needed vs C.Pile).
TEAM MtG Berlin
Where I am sitting, it looks like the deck that did well is a close to straight port from the Vintage deck. Revoker in Vintage is a land distruction card, killing Moxen. In Legacy it's role is less important. So I looked at editing the deck a little and came up with this:
//Creatures:
4 Arcbound Ravager
4 Hangarback Walker
2 Lodestone Golem
4 Steel Overseer
4 Vault Skirge
4 Walking Ballista
//Artifacts:
4 Chalice of the Void
4 Lotus Petal
3 Mox Opal
3 Smuggler's Copter
4 Thorn of Amethyst
//Lands:
4 Ancient Tomb
4 Blinkmoth Nexus
4 City of Traitors
4 Mishra's Factory
4 Wasteland
//Sideboard:
4 Leyline of the Void
3 Phyrexian Revoker
2 Ratchet Bomb
2 Sorcerous Spyglass
2 Spellskite
2 Equipment
I plan to play it this week.
It is better to ask and look stupid then keep your mouth shut and remain so.
I hope your afterlife is filled with eternal torment.
Fuck. Which one of my quotes do I drop for this?
Revoker affecting DRS and Aether Vial is pretty big in the tempo plan though. I like it more than Vault Skirge based on what I've seen thus far; while Skirge being a 1-drop is sometimes relevant, the deck just doesn't feel like it has enough ways to make it more than a 1/1 lifelink flier, which doesn't influence the game enough to be worth a card. Though of course, Smuggler's Copter might or might not make it a tad better, being a 1/1. I personally also like Inkmoth over Mishra's just for the Ravager oneshot potential. Even with just a Blinkmoth, it's a veritable extra threat. The dissynergy between Thorn and Smuggler's feels like it could be a problem at times.
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