Can you tell us, what did you test so many times? Did you test it with Vengevine, too? Did you test with LftL (It seems crucial to the LED plan to refill your hand with cycle lands).Originally Posted by Vacrix
Did you test Anurid Brushhopper vs Aquamoeba?
Appearently the deck behind the link I posted had some success 3 years ago.
I don't think you are going all in with LED, since you can rebuild your hand with Loam and Colisseum, replay Vengevine and play the rest with madness or flashback.
Unfortunately I haven't had time to build and playtest a LED variant yet.
Moeba is blue
Moeba costs 2
Moeba can discard 1 card
Ergo, Brushhopper sucks hairy balls.
If there is such a thing as too much power, I have not discovered it.” —Volrath
Founding father of Team Moosebite, the team that really bites.
So what?
Blue doesn't matter, since no FoW in the LED version.
3/4 is better than 1/3, which justifies the additional mana.
Discarding 2 cards may be bad, but on the other hand its ability is basically shroud and vigilance in one and with Loam you should have enough extra cards to discard.
Make seperate thread then and discuss your little pet deck there.
If there is such a thing as too much power, I have not discovered it.” —Volrath
Founding father of Team Moosebite, the team that really bites.
Hey all,
I played UG madness for the first time a couple days ago, going 3-1 in a small local tournament. Unfortunately, I got a bye (no testing there...), then beat UW Enlightnened Tutor/Stax/Control 2-1, lost two VERY tight games against merfolk 0-2, and beat CounterTop easily 2-0.
After doing some initial testing with Jak's list, I felt that the Stifles weren't necessary at all: anytime I kept blue/fetch up, my opponent (admittedly, knowing the list I was playing) easily played around Stifle, leaving it mostly as Fodder for FoW. That prompted me to move 3 Spell Pierce to the Maindeck, which were Awesome. Definitely very synergistic w/ the Waste/Daze plan.
Total changes (after preliminary testing, ofc) were:
-4 Stifle, -1 Daze (for some reason the list kept coming out to 61 cards), -1 Trygon Predator
+3 Spell Pierce, +2 Vendillion Clique
After playing, I definitely wanted the Trygon main, so I'd switch back 1 Clique for T Pred. The cliques were good against merfolk, letting me drop an EoT flyer that punches the last bit of damage through once he has established blockers/reegeries, which is also especially deadly when combined with 2 or more hierarchs.
Packed the NO transformation in the sideboard... It rarely came up but when I did have NO in hand I would have won if not for needing a 4th land drop... It could just be bad luck but I'm not sure if its entirely necessary. At a bigger tournament with more omipresent graveyard hate, I'd be more inclined to run it. What was great, on the other hand, was a single Venser in the SB for the control matchup; it's not unlikely to get to 4 in the countertop/landstill match and timewalking your opponent on a Firespout or Jace (if they leave him in) FTW is just so spicy. For now, no one will see it coming. Give it a try.
That's all for now, I'm going to keep testing this beast ;)
Still testing it but I am really happy with it. You'll find below some numbers. These are probabilities of opening 7 on the play :
First some definition :
- Survival hand : 1 Survival + 1 Land (excluding Wastelands) + 1 Land/1cc mana creature/1 Wasteland
- T2 Vengevine : every non "Survival" hands that allow a T2 vengevine (this includes T1 vengevine)
Caleb's list
No mulligan
- Survival hand : 31,7%
- T2 Vengevine : 4,0%
Mulligan to 6
- Survival hand : 24,2%
- T2 Vengevine : 2,1%
Mulligan to 5 :
- Survival hand : 16,5%
- T2 Vengevine : 0,6%
Odds for having one of these 2 hands as opening 7 : 35,7%
Reward for mulliganing up to 6 if you don't have any of these 2 hands : 52,6%
Reward for mulliganing up to 5 if you don't have any of these 2 hands : 60,7%
Caleb's list switching 2 non "Land-Waste-Vengevine-Survival-Rootwalla-Discard outlet-1cc mana creature" cards (ex : Jitte) for 2 E. Tutor
No mulligan
- Survival hand : 43,4%
- T2 Vengevine : 3,5%
Mulligan to 6
- Survival hand : 33,9%
- T2 Vengevine : 1,9%
Mulligan to 5 :
- Survival hand : 23,6%
- T2 Vengevine : 0,6%
Odds for having one of these 2 hands as opening 7 : 46,9%
Reward for mulliganing up to 6 if you don't have any of these 2 hands : 65,9%
Reward for mulliganing up to 5 if you don't have any of these 2 hands : 74,2%
Sidenote : this one was done quite rapidly without differenciating W-Land from the others Lands. So the real odds should be a little lower.
G/B list posted above
No mulligan
- Survival hand : 33,2%
- T2 Vengevine : 16,3%
Mulligan to 6
- Survival hand : 26,0%
- T2 Vengevine : 9,2%
Mulligan to 5 :
- Survival hand : 18,2%
- T2 Vengevine : 3,3%
Odds for having one of these 2 hands as opening 7 : 50,0%
Reward for mulliganing up to 6 if you don't have any of these 2 hands : 67,3%
Reward for mulliganing up to 5 if you don't have any of these 2 hands : 74,3%
Thanks for the idea, that looks really great. It fills both the wall (Tarmogoyf I wanted to include) and mana creature (2cc but no summoning sickness) I'm looking for. I'm goona try it and do the maths to see if it improves the odds.
On a sidenote, I will also try Buried alive : with 7 mana creatures, the odds of a Vengevine x3 on turn 3 should be fine (I'll do the maths).
As a 2 of this could act as Survival #5 and 6.
Actually, except if you already have a Vengevine (or a Rootwalla in hand and you are in your big turn), it is 1 and a half survival activation as the Vengevine will be put directly in the graveyard. This is why it's so rarely a dead card.
I began splashing white adding E. Tutor because :
- Survival is plan A
- Odds of having a survival hand are way bigger than Vengevine T2 hands
But I didn't like it as :
- You become even more Survival dependant
- You weaken the manabase (then Wasteland should be removed but it is not a good thing)
As I said, not playing Intuition is dumb. It acts like the Survival #5-#8, searchs for Survival and NO on SB, is blue and, with 7+ discard outlets (Mongrel and Aquamoeba), it "buries alive" your Vines.
I can see myself not running FoW, but i'll never play less than 3 Intuitions.
@Waste/Stifle discussion: My list is more tunned to combo out and play some hasted elementals. Wasteland makes my opening hands much less combo oriented and don't play well with Survival, so I replaced then with 2 Canopys and 2 other lands I can't remember. If I'm not playing with Wastes, Stifles looks even worse, so i'm not playing then either.
Don't know yet if it's the best move, but now they're working very well for me.
Last edited by Fuzzy; 09-09-2010 at 03:44 PM. Reason: Quote
Stifle has been so-so in my testing, i only use it as fow fodder.
Replacing it with Spell pierce opens up 4 SB slots.
Thing is, waste becomes less impressive but it can still generate massive ammounts of tempo.
Clique is the beesknees as an extra kill con for when your elementals finnaly bites the dust.
If there is such a thing as too much power, I have not discovered it.” —Volrath
Founding father of Team Moosebite, the team that really bites.
From Scars:
Memnite
0
Artifact Creature - Construct
1/1
These are an awesome way of getting extra 'Basking Rootwallas' without using crap like Ornithopter. Add one of these to the deck, and we can regrow an extra Vengevine when playing out our Survival plan A. Add more, and we significantly increase the number of ways we have of getting the infamous turn 2 Vengevine draw. I'd start out by testing 4 just to see what happens (IMO it's probably not worth it, but you have to test it just to be sure), then cut down to 1 if that's too many.
Without Memnite:
T1: Land, Noble Hierarch
T2: Land, Survival, eot Survival random dude into Vengevine.
T3: Land, Survival Vengevine -> Vengevine -> Basking Rootwalla -> Basking Rootwalla -> Vengevine, regrow 2 Vengevines, swing for 8.
With Memnite:
T1: Land, Noble Hierarch
T2: Land, Survival, eot Survival random dude into Vengevine.
T3: Land, Survival Vengevine -> Vengevine -> Vengevine -> Basking Rootwalla -> Memnite, play Memnite, regrow 3 Vengevines, swing for 12.
Just one Memnite in the deck gets us 4 extra points of damage on the deck's standard line of play.
Nazdakka
That's if you draw the Memnite, and Rootwalla actually nets you 'card advantage' when using Survival whereas tutoring for Memnite would not do this and would waste activations/mana/turns
I'm not following you.
The constraint when Survivalling is often mana, green mana specifically. To regrow Vengevines, you need to cast two creature spells, and the fact that Rootwalla needs to be discarded to something in order to cast it via madness frequently means that you end up with one less Vengevine in play than you would if you could Survival for a 0 mana creature, because Survival is typically your only discard outlet in play when you have a fast start. Adding a 0 mana creature to Survival for lets you get around the fact that you have to pay G to discard a Rootwalla to Survival.
Yes, the Memnite line of play misses out on one search with Survival, and that's a reason why you might not want to go for this plan, especially if you would be left with 0 creatures in hand after casting Memnite. On the other hand, you get an extra 4/3 hasty creature into play, which is pretty damn good. Remember, this is an aggressive deck. Sometimes you might want to go for the more conservative play where you get one less Vengevine and end with an extra creature in hand... but sometimes you might simply want to smash with as many Vengevines as possible as quickly as possible. Do you think the fact that you miss out on one search when going for the Memnite line of play kills the idea entirely?
This is certainly worth a try, in my book. It's an option that only needs to take up 1 slot and can easily accelerate our kill.
Nazdakka
For what its worth, memnite makes ethersworn cannonist useless against you.
The same is true for cards like Phyrexian Walker or Ornithopter, which were already tried in this deck. I saw some lists containing Orni as a 1-of some weeks ago.
Conan, what is best in life? - To crush your enemies, see them driven before you... and to hear the lamentation of their women!
The issue with memnite is that it can be another attacker on a subsequent turn and its 1/1 status makes it less likely to be blocked and lets it push that extra point of damage through when lethal can be attained. Neither walker nor thopter allows for that. Maybe I'm just being the devil's advocate but I can see a reason for memnite, but not really over rootwalla necessarily even though the casting is much easier.
a 1of Memnite might not be that bad, actualy.
You can now return all your vines voor only one G.
And since zoo runs Ethersworn, and will board it in against us, it helps us negate that hatebear and trample over them.
I suspect that D&T wil rise in popularity with the printing of that Leonin Arbiter, and they play Ethersworn as well.
If there is such a thing as too much power, I have not discovered it.” —Volrath
Founding father of Team Moosebite, the team that really bites.
Leonin Arbiter 1W
Creature - Cat Cleric
Players can't search libraries. Any player may pay 2 for that player to ignore this effect until end of turn.
"Our people are torn by infighting. Until the two sides reconcile, our laws can carry no meaning."
Illus. Shelly Wan #14/249 2/2
How we can solve this problem? GW Survival can StP it, but for us, what to do if it resolves?
Also, any help for the Zoo matchup?
I don't think it will show up that much.
It's abbility, while powerfull, also puts to many constraints on your own deck.
Only D&T will play this thingy.
But then again, i might be wrong, if so Spell snare might be worth while to look at, since it also takes care of Cannonist and Pride mage against zoo.
If there is such a thing as too much power, I have not discovered it.” —Volrath
Founding father of Team Moosebite, the team that really bites.
My problem isn't finding a reactive answer, with Blue it's easy. My problem is finding any reactive way to take care him.
D&T and Stax will play it FOR SURE, but we don't know what else can appear.
Sure, it's annoying, but...
1) We can play through it. This card doesn't defeat us single-handed, because paying 2 mana lets us search for an entire turn. So just use any basic islands to pay for the ability and use the remaining green to Survival our heart out. This is annoying to see in play, but it's certainly not terminal. Yes, it makes our fetchlands a bit worse, but that's a problem every deck is going to have to deal with.
2) How many people will actually play this card? AFAIK, nobody plays Aven Mindcensor, which is far more problematic. White decks have a crazy number of disruptive 2-drops to fit in anyway, and even if this the one they choose, how many decks do you actually see at a tournament that can easily use this? Remember, the ability is symmetrical, so you want to minimise the number of fetchlands, and hence colours, you put in a deck with it.
This is a card that we don't want to see on the other side of the table, but it's not the end of the world either.
Nazdakka
Whew, at first I thought arbiter worked like suppression field, making every search basically come with a cost of +2 mana. But then I read it again, noticed it said you ignore the effect until end of turn, and stopped worrying about the little bro so much. All it does is slow you down, while not really being too much of a threat on its own. All your creatures hold him off, and all you need to do is wait a few turns to get the engine set up and killing your opponent. I'd be much more concerned about canonist seeing more play, but that's a different story, possibly requiring memenite in order to solve it. Dunno yet.
On the other hand, after playing the deck for the second tournament in a row (with the first being the first time I ever played this monster), I top 8'd another tournament (~55 people), beating zoo, landstill, next level thresh, and then trainwreck before I double drew into top 8. Unfortunately lost to goblins in the top 8 when I drew like crap game 1 and screwed up a tight game 2 that would be been won with perfect play, but then again I ain't perfect (yet). So that means I've gone X-0 during the swiss portion of both legacy tournaments, and only have lost matches to bad draws and one game of mistakes. Suffice it to say I never thought this deck would do so well, but the results speak for themselves. This deck has some serious power, and players just boarding in crypt isn't going to stop it. The one thing I want to say is that after playing without and then with brainstorm, there is no way I could not play this deck again without that savage little 1 mana blue instant. There was plenty of chaff in the initial lists that were being played, and replacing them with brainstorm makes the deck much more efficient and deadly. There were several games I played where brainstorm made my draw much much better, and other instances where a topdecked brainstorm allowed me to go from zero to 60 in no time at all. On a slightly different note, intuition proved to be very strong, but not something I would want more than 1 or 2 of. It was great at being able to do whatever the situation called for (usually either 3 vv's for quick beats, or 3 survivals to kill them a turn slower), but I wouldn't of ever wanted to draw more than 1 in any particular situation. It's something I'll have to keep testing out to see what the right number is.
You can't pull out the RUG from under me, CUZ I AM THE RUG!
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