Waterfalls (RUG Cascade!)

[.Ix]

Rip is not a big problem. The most unfair things we do don't need the yard + we have abrupt decay. Side out goyfs and reduce deathrites - bring in more decay and discard. Terminus is much more of a concern.

I agree, I don't see RIP as a problem either. I just said that because that's what he was asking about.

This is strange thinking. The deck does not need to close out games quickly. It has mostly inevitably (played some grindy games against goblins and nic fit - not even they can usually keep up with all that card advantage). But also the statement "not closing out quickly" is wrong. Sure the goldfish is not like a delver deck but once a goyf, shardless and deathrite out you hit so heavy + there is burn and haste. The deck kills very quickly and this is actually one of the big advantages. You pressure the life total but if they stabilize the board there is an ancestral and what not waiting.

I've been facing Merfolk and this happens quite a bit in that matchup. Floating an Ancestral means litte if the opponent vials in two lords and suddenly threatens lethal.

Jace is definitely good in this deck, but I really don't think you can knock Garruk before you try him. It's like Tezz AOB in affinity: play, +1 to do something, then -4 for huge damage. That's not bad at all. My meta is very different, though. People are still playing lots of Reanimator and Affinity, both of which are decks that can realistically topdeck stuff that can kill me in a few turns even if I draw 3. Inevitability doesn't matter quite as much in these matchups. I would play Jace if I faced a lot of grindy decks, but I wouldn't play him in my meta.

[Qweerios]

Merchant scroll is very interesting. Cascading into tutors is pretty scary and would allow us a lot of flexibility with our sideboard optons such as having a singleton Surgical or KGrip availlable through 2 scrolls for Batterskull and other cards. Scrolling a FoW or a Decay seems like a great option as well. Hell, maybe even for Izzet Charm or the new Dimir Charm.

EDIT: Oh nvm, blue instant card. Well, it still works with charms...

[Telperion]

Merchant scroll is very interesting. Cascading into tutors is pretty scary and would allow us a lot of flexibility with our sideboard optons such as having a singleton Surgical or KGrip availlable through 2 scrolls for Batterskull and other cards. Scrolling a FoW or a Decay seems like a great option as well. Hell, maybe even for Izzet Charm or the new Dimir Charm.

Scroll only gets blue instants, sadly.

[catmint]

Tutoring in a midrange deck like this has to be either super flexible (aka demonic - i.e: goblin matron) or give some additional value like stoneforge mystics body & utility as the most common and synergistic 2:1 "tutor". Cascading into something is one thing because you do get the 2 for 1 and put something on the board, but it is also important to make every card worth casting by itself. A turn 2 or 3 sorcery speed tutor can make you fall behind in tempo since you are neither advancing your board position nor disrupting the opponent. Hence spending "tempo" for a tutor is best if the follow-up is very strong like high-tide killing you.

I am thinking about trying a 3/3 split of shardless agent and BBE along 2 Jace (& 2 vendilion clique as additional strong 3 drops). 1 mana for a 3/2 haste compared to a 2/2 vanilla sounds fair. I'll check how often I end up with too much uncastable clunk in my hand.

[MaximumC]

Merchant scroll is very interesting. Cascading into tutors is pretty scary and would allow us a lot of flexibility with our sideboard optons such as having a singleton Surgical or KGrip availlable through 2 scrolls for Batterskull and other cards. Scrolling a FoW or a Decay seems like a great option as well. Hell, maybe even for Izzet Charm or the new Dimir Charm.

EDIT: Oh nvm, blue instant card. Well, it still works with charms...

Yeah, you can run Mechant's Scroll, but you then have to include singleton blue instants to deal with the same problem. Things like Chain of Vapor, Echoing Decay, etc. These things are not terrible with Cascade creatures, either.

[anwei]

I played 4C Cascade at a little event today, which usually draws 20-40 but only had 11 (fairly competitive folks) show up. I played this:

4 Misty Rainforest
4 Scalding Tarn
2 Polluted Delta
3 Trop
2 U Sea
1 Volc
1 Taiga
1 Badlands
1 Island
1 Forest
2 Wasteland
=22

4 Brainstorm
4 Visions
4 FoW
2 Thoughtseize
=14

4 Bolt
3 Decay
=7

4 Shardless Agent
4 Deathrite Shaman
4 Goyf
1 Clique
2 BBE
2 JTMS
1 Jitte
=18
=61

Sideboard:
3 Duress (only have access to 2 Thoughtseize)
2 Mindbreak Trap (lots of storm often present)
2 Pyroblast
2 Maelstrom Pulse
1 Lily
1 Loam
2 E Plague
2 Surgical Extraction

I ran 61 cards because I couldn't decide between 21 and 22 land, and 21/61 = 21.66/60, plus I didn't want to cut anything.
Went 3-0-1 (ID) but lost in T4. Beat 4C Blade, Deadguy, and Merfolk; lost to Hypergenesis. Feels unbeatable in grindy matches. Obviously cascade is ridiculous - Once I untapped empty-handed on 5 life against Lily@4, Bob, and 2x Spirits (at 17) life and played BBE->Agent->DRS, swung at Lily, stabilize, win. Miser jitte was great. Bolt is an incredible upgrade moving from Shardless Bug, as a faster removal spell than decay which handles planeswalkers.
But, definitely not the side I want to be on in combo games, especially things like Hypergenesis (redundancy>discard; Bolt+Decay<monsters). If I kept playing this, I would want access to more discard - need to pick up more Thoughtseize/Lily and think about whether Hymn could work.

[The Treefolk Master]

In case you haven't seen it, RUGw Cascade Top 15th at the SCG Open this Sunday. Here's the deck tech: http://www.starcitygames.com/events/...cade_with.html

As he says on the video, the deck crushes all fair strategies, but has faces trouble against combo decks. Storm based and graveyard baseds strategies should be adressed by Countertop and Rest in Peace post board, respectively. However, there's still no answer for Sneak and Tell (and Reanimator, Omniscience, etc), which are the deck's biggest problems. I think that if we can build an effective SB strategy vs them this deck can really be a contender in the metagame, with all the BUG vs Jund vs Junk paraphernalia going on. My ideas are:

Venser, Shaper's Savant (off Show and Tell)
Detention Sphere/Oblivion Ring (the former has more utlity, the latter is inmune to REBs, which could be a huge upside)
Pithing Needle (Sneak Attack/Griselbrand).

Any thoughts?

[anwei]

However, there's still no answer for Sneak and Tell (and Reanimator, Omniscience, etc), which are the deck's biggest problems. I think that if we can build an effective SB strategy vs them this deck can really be a contender in the metagame, with all the BUG vs Jund vs Junk paraphernalia going on. My ideas are:

Venser, Shaper's Savant (off Show and Tell)
Detention Sphere/Oblivion Ring (the former has more utlity, the latter is inmune to REBs, which could be a huge upside)
Pithing Needle (Sneak Attack/Griselbrand).

Any thoughts?

His inclusion of Counterbalance was certainly interesting - as he noted, cascade means permanent answers are better out of those colors. Unfortunately, as you point out, Counterbalance is not fantastic against Show and Tell. It also catches hate aimed at the card itself, as it's a widespread strategy in its own right (though often that will be game 3), so Storm has Abrupt Decay, etc.

Clique mainboard seems pretty good for both combo and fair matches. Many fair matches turn into slugfests with many small bodies and ground stalls. The "evasion" of DRS is obviously huge here, and having other evasive guys while Tarmogoyfs stare each other down is very good.
Another maindeck option is Izzet and Dimir charms, hard-cast-able counters which aren't dead when you hit them off cascade (both are okay as removal in the current meta and have a 3rd mode which is often better than just cantripping).

I really like black over white, so sphere/ring are out, but Venser is decent. If the SnT decks keep drifting back toward Sneak Attack, Sower might be more powerful in more match-ups, though obviously Showing Sower vs. Sneak Attack is awkward.
Pithing Needle can be a fine card in some matches and might be okay if you fear Terminus, but there are enough ways that it's dead against Sneak/Show that it's probably not my silver bullet of choice. Using a card to turn their giant lifelink bargain demon into a giant lifelink demon is not much closer to winning.

[alekill]

I got second at a small tournament yesterday playing RUG with no splash, I'll try and write a small report this evening but I'll give what I played now.

Round 1: Dredge 2-0
Round 2: Bant 0-2
Round 3: BUG Delver 2-1
Round 4: Deadguy Ale splashing green for abrupt decay. 2-1.
Round 5: Dredge (different player) 2-1.
Round 6: UR Stiflenought 0-2.

[anwei]

I 3-0'd a small local event with GRUB, didn't drop a game (only played fair decks). Similar list to above.

Another GRUB list, with punishing fire, just showed up as 3rd/? on TC Decks: http://www.thecouncil.es/tcdecks/dec...0&iddeck=73247
For permission, he has 4 Force, 2 Clique main; 3 Red blast in the board. How does that deck ever beat combo? The top 8 is all fair (except scapeshift, which won), so maybe he just dodged it, but ??

[hyggli]

Hi! This is my list atm, crushes esperblade but has some weakness to punishing fire

3 Tropical Island
3 Volcanic island
1 Taiga
4 Misty rainforest
4 Wooded foothills
1 Dryad Arbor
3 Forest
3 Island

4 Tarmogoyf
4 Noble hierarch
4 Shardless Agent
3 Bloodbraid Elf
4 Noble hierarch
1 Progenitus
2 Vendilion clique

4 Ancestral Vision
3 Brainstorm
3 Natural Order
2 Force of will
2 Misdirection
2 Jace, the mind sculptor

sb
2 Venser Shaper savant
3 Mindbreak Trap
2 Misdirection
3 Blood moon
2 Jace Beleren
3 tormod's crypt

The deck is all about bombs, and the plan is to make 10 damage in the first few turns landing a lot of pieces so that your opponent can't deal with all of em and cast a natural order to deal the last ones, keeping ur hand full of goodies. 3 brainstorms is just for value. It's a great card but usually you just don't have the time to cast it and really most of the time you don't want to flip it with a bloodbraid elf. Anyway you need 'em for progenitus.
The problems here are
1)combo. I really can't imagine to win a pre-sided match vs ant, so I just want a better jund matchup and be it. Show and tell is still a nightmare as it was
2)Vindicate-waste effects just pwn us. 6 basics are a must I believe with this version.
3)I need to find a good 2-drop in-color. Did even think about Viridian Zealot because all our problems come from omniscence/jitte. And sometimes are great even vs Sylvan library,vials or counterbalance.
4)Can't decide between misdirection or force of will. In this metagame, abrupt decay and such are a big deal, so I think I can spit em.

Just tell me what you think because I really enjoy playing with this deck and want to improve its matchups.
Thanks in advance

[.Ix]

I don't think this deck can survive in RUG colors when the format speeds up again. It's going to have to run quite a bit of discard maindeck. This is going to be hard because mana dorks are typically bad cascades.

How about running Elvish Spirit Guides to speed up? Cascading into them is pretty decent and only happens with BBE in the first place. They are better topdecks than Birds of Paradise in the mid-late game, as well, but they are still horrible against combo. They enable some pretty sick lines such as the following:

Turn 1 Thoughtseize/Brainstorm, Turn 2 Shardless
Turn 1 Thoughtseize/Brainstorm AND DRS, Turn 2 Shardless
Turn 1 DRS, Turn 2 Shardless, Wasteland
Turn 1 DRS, Turn 2 Thoughtseize/Brainstorm, Shardless
Turn 1 DRS, Turn 2 BBE
Turn 1 DRS, Turn 2 Garruk Wildspeaker, +1, Hymn/Wasteland/Thoughtseize/Decay

All of these potentially with FOW backup. These lines can wreck people pretty hard, but I'm not sure if they're worth running otherwise bad cards for.

Against Show and Tell, Aethersnipe seems like a great card to Show. It's not as good as Venser, but it's much easier to find.

[.Ix]

Sorry about the double post, but I thought this was worth a bump. This is the highest finish yet for this deck: 3rd place out of 384! Pretty incredible performance for this deck, I'd say.

http://tcdecks.net/deck.php?id=10317&iddeck=75203

1 Forest
1 Island
2 Swamp
1 Tower of the Magistrate
1 Underground Sea
1 Badlands
1 Creeping Tar Pit
1 Treetop Village
2 Tropical Island
2 Bayou
1 Volcanic Island
1 Taiga
2 Misty Rainforest
3 Polluted Delta
4 Verdant Catacombs
4 Bloodbraid Elf
3 Baleful Strix
4 Deathrite Shaman
4 Shardless Agent
3 Tarmogoyf
1 Scavenging Ooze
3 Abrupt Decay
4 Brainstorm
3 Lightning Bolt
1 Sensei's Divining Top
1 Umezawa's Jitte
1 Sylvan Library
3 Liliana of the Veil
1 Garruk Relentless
SB: 2 Thorn of Amethyst
SB: 2 Pithing Needle
SB: 1 Relic of Progenitus
SB: 1 Grafdigger's Cage
SB: 2 Surgical Extraction
SB: 2 Vendilion Clique
SB: 1 Seal of Removal
SB: 1 Seal of Primordium
SB: 2 Engineered Plague
SB: 1 Venser, Shaper Savant


It's basically blue Jund. Doesn't run FOW, has 3 Lilianas, and no Ancestral Vision. The last part is understandable if FOW is cut, and his meta is full of fair decks so I can see why he'd cut the FOWs and runs Strixes.

[Piceli89]

3 Brainstorm

[ironclad8690]

Now this is what I'm talkin' bout!

http://sales.starcitygames.com//deck...p?DeckID=54137

Creatures (20)

4 Shardless Agent
4 Bloodbraid Elf
4 Deathrite Shaman
2 Grim Lavamancer
2 Scavenging Ooze
4 Tarmogoyf
Planeswalkers (1)

1 Domri Rade
Lands (21)

1 Forest
1 Bayou
4 Grove of the Burnwillows
3 Misty Rainforest
2 Scalding Tarn
3 Taiga
2 Tropical Island
1 Volcanic Island
4 Wooded Foothills
Spells (18)

1 Sylvan Library
4 Brainstorm
4 Lightning Bolt
3 Punishing Fire
1 Umezawa's Jitte
3 Ancestral Vision
2 Boom / Bust
Sideboard

SB:
2 Tormod's Crypt
2 Sower of Temptation
4 Force of Will
3 Krosan Grip
4 Mindbreak Trap

[phazonmutant]

Top8'd a 20-person local last night with a Waterfalls-like brew. The list I played was almost certainly suboptimal, but I wanted to have some fun with cascading into Counterbalance.

4 Ancestral Vision
4 Brainstorm
4 Deathrite Shaman
2 Sensei's Divining Top
3 Lightning Bolt
2 Baleful Strix
3 Abrupt Decay
2 Vendilion Clique
4 Shardless Agent
3 Jace, the Mind Sculptor
3 Bloodbraid Elf
2 Force of Will
1 Creeping Tar Pit
2 Wasteland
1 Island
1 Swamp
1 Forest
2 Underground Sea
2 Tropical Island
2 Volcanic Island
1 Bayou
1 Badlands
3 Polluted delta
3 Misty Rainforest
3 Verdant Catacombs

Sb
2 Counterbalance
1 Mindbreak Trap
2 Thoughtseize
2 Cabal Therapy
2 Force of Will
2 Nihil Spellbomb
1 Lightning Bolt
3 Engineered Plague

The manabase kinda sucked because I forgot Catacombs can't find Volcanic Island. Otherwise it was fine. As expected, I felt glutted on 4-drops and felt like my deck didn't know what it wanted to be doing. Top was also pretty bad - didn't have mana for it usually. It's not like I was expecting anything else though...

Fun deck, but got savaged by Price of Progress out of UR delver. I lost a match to Maverick in the swiss as well, although that was mostly us taking turns being flooded or screwed. He drew out of his screw before I did and was able to Waste me out.

This deck has so much value, but it feels like it's hard to translate cards in hand to a win. We don't have enough mana to affect the board enough with all the cards. Maybe that was just my build though.

[.Ix]

Top was also pretty bad - didn't have mana for it usually. It's not like I was expecting anything else though...

This deck has so much value, but it feels like it's hard to translate cards in hand to a win. We don't have enough mana to affect the board enough with all the cards. Maybe that was just my build though.

I agree with both points. I think Top is only good if you want to grind game 2 with a CB/Top lock. Otherwise, it's really awful.

The second point is something I've come to realize recently. I've tried ESG to allow earlier cascades, but I felt it was too risky and the CA-for-tempo trade isn't always worth it. OTOH, I've found playing more free spells is a great way to use cards in hand despite the mana bottleneck. FOW, Pyrokinesis, and Misdirection are great if the deck can support them. I'm trying Lotus Cobra right now with 10 fetches, and it's feeling much better than anything else I've tried as additional acceleration. I'm running RUGW with Stoneforge and Hierarch right now because I never really felt comfortable with the discard spells. With the Cobras, I actually run out of cards in hand now! I will test it more.

Also, the Stoneforge/Cobra build looks hilarious. A huge chunk of the deck is zen-alara standard legal.

[phazonmutant]

I agree with both points. I think Top is only good if you want to grind game 2 with a CB/Top lock. Otherwise, it's really awful.

The second point is something I've come to realize recently. I've tried ESG to allow earlier cascades, but I felt it was too risky and the CA-for-tempo trade isn't always worth it. OTOH, I've found playing more free spells is a great way to use cards in hand despite the mana bottleneck. FOW, Pyrokinesis, and Misdirection are great if the deck can support them. I'm trying Lotus Cobra right now with 10 fetches, and it's feeling much better than anything else I've tried as additional acceleration. I'm running RUGW with Stoneforge and Hierarch right now because I never really felt comfortable with the discard spells. With the Cobras, I actually run out of cards in hand now! I will test it more.

Also, the Stoneforge/Cobra build looks hilarious. A huge chunk of the deck is zen-alara standard legal.

Cobra sounds pretty sweet. Are you splashing one or two B lands for Deathrite? Actually, are you even playing Deathrite?

Edit: reading comprehension! I see you're playing Hierarch over Deathrite. Isn't part of the reason people didn't try RUG cascade before Deathrite was because Hierarch was a miserable cascade?

[.Ix]

Cobra sounds pretty sweet. Are you splashing one or two B lands for Deathrite? Actually, are you even playing Deathrite?

Edit: reading comprehension! I see you're playing Hierarch over Deathrite. Isn't part of the reason people didn't try RUG cascade before Deathrite was because Hierarch was a miserable cascade?

Apparently, this 4th place deck doesn't think so http://www.thecouncil.es/tcdecks/dec...9&iddeck=76887

Hierarch isn't that bad. It turns Cobras, Agents, SFM, and Cliques into stronger attackers -- something this deck really wants. I could very easily run Deathrite, but I just wanted to test a variation of this build and it seems to be working well. I made these changes: -1 Vision -1 Library -1 Bolt -1 Jace -3 Goyf +4 Cobra +2 Vendilion Clique +1 FOW.

[Ayotte]

How does this list look? First attempt - some choices are related to card availability.

3 Underground Sea
2 Tropical Island
1 Volcanic Island
1 Bayou
1 Badlands
1 Taiga
3 Misty Rainforest
3 Polluted Delta
1 Verdant Catacombs
1 Scalding Tarn
4 Grove of the Burnwillows

3 Bloodbraid Elf
4 Shardless Agent
4 Deathrite Shaman
2 Tarmooyf
2 Scavenging Ooze (I only own 2 goyfs)
2 Vendillion Clique (or Liliana, I can't decide)

2 Jace, TMS

4 Force of Will
4 Ancestral Vision
1 Umezawa's Jitte
3 Punishing Fire
4 Brainstorm
3 Abrupt Decay

Sideboard:

3 Pyrostatic Pillar (I saw a deck like this using it in Milwaukee and it seemed good)
1 Maelstrom Pulse
3 Surgical Extraction
1 Jace, TMS
3 Mindbreak Trap
2 Thoughtseize
2 Clique/Liliana, whichever isn't main