Sweet. Be nice to see that list.Originally Posted by jbone2016
Beat dark maverick. 4-2.
Beat enchantress. 5-2.
Lost to punishing jund. 5-3
The bug pod won round 8. Maybe top 8'ing? Just checked. David was 3rd going into this round.
Last edited by jbone2016; 10-13-2013 at 09:15 PM.
Beat rug delver. 6-3. Should money.
Funny story: I had someone today say "Nic Fit isnt a deck anymore." With Pod Fit Top 8'ing, I'll just say that the results say it still can show up and do well.
So I guess Pod is a thing now. Top8 but lost to Sneak and Tell. Some of his choices make me think he read this thread and I would be glad to hear from him about the tournament.
Here is the list for reference.
3 Forest
1 Island
2 Swamp
2 Bayou
4 Misty Rainforest
1 Polluted Delta
3 Tropical Island
1 Underground Sea
3 Verdant Catacombs
1 Phyrexian Tower
3 Deathrite Shaman
4 Veteran Explorer
4 Baleful Strix
1 Scavenging Ooze
1 Phantasmal Image
1 Bone Shredder
1 Wood Elves
1 Eternal Witness
1 Kitchen Finks
1 Murderous Redcap
1 Glen Elendra Archmage
1 Acidic Slime
1 Thragtusk
1 Shriekmaw
1 Grave Titan
4 Cabal Therapy
3 Birthing Pod
2 Pernicious Deed
2 Recurring Nightmare
2 Abrupt Decay
2 Brainstorm
1 Green Sun's Zenith
Sideboard
1 Notion Thief
1 Sadistic Hypnotist
1 Pernicious Deed
2 Golgari Charm
3 Mindbreak Trap
3 Swan Song
1 Umezawa's Jitte
3 Thoughtseize
Why doesn't the deck play MElira? It seems handy to have recurable life/damage/negate effects.
Sorry, if this has been answered already.
Melira is also really good with the phyrexian tower. I think it would be a good idea, if only as a 1-of gsz target.
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Two brief reports from Saturday Jupiter, and Sunday local. I was going to do one for my Thursday local, as well, but decided that there really wasn't anything interesting that happened other than the Scape mirror, which isn't even really all that interesting -- it's entirely draw-dependent.
I'm bolding the sections of this post so people can skim through what they want to skim through and skip the rest.
Jupiter:
Round 1: UWR Delver
I get the impression upon sitting down that this is someone who wants to grind SCG points, and put him on something in the RUG, UWR, Shardless quadrant. I blind Therapy Brainstorm, and miss -- but see UWR cards. I proceed to ignore everything he does for the rest of the game while on the way to angry mountains. The turn I Scapeshift, I blind Therapy calling Stifle and hit one, then proceed to the kill phase. I don't think he was pleased.
Game two I continue to ignore his deck and he goes down without much of a fight.
Round 2: UW Miracles
Game one I can't assemble basically anything. I wish for a Slaughter and nuke his Entreats, but he still has Jace and RIP/Helm. I've got a Top going the whole game and can't find a Decay or a Deed (or a Witness, GSZ, another Wish, or a Scapeshift). That's a whole lot of outs, but he still gets there before I do, and RIP/Helms me.
Game two I keep pressuring him with Huntmasters and Thragtusks that he can't just remove easily. He eventually dies to a Shift. He doesn't do a whole lot this game.
Game three he goes for the classic "turn 4 Jace, fateseal" plan. I have double Shift in hand, so I'm actually okay with this -- all I need to do is make land drops, since I'm reasonably sure that he boarded out at least two of his Forces. At some point I Therapy him, seeing a second Jace and a Back to Basics. I use my basic lands for a few turns to keep doing little stuff, hoping that I would get the 8th land to kill him (he was at more than 18, so 7 wouldn't finish the job). I had the line where I could've Shifted, dropped him and Jace a bit both, and then Shifted again to kill him -- but the Back to Basics, ironically, ended up really sucking -- I knew that if I shifted and it wasn't lethal, he would slam B2B, and I would basically lose on the spot (basic Forest isn't a Mountain, and my 3 were in play already anyway).
I delay at long as humanly possible to try to find the 8th land. We're in turns, and Jace is at 12. I decide that it's now or never, so I unload a Shift, kill Jace, and nug him for 6. He has a Rest in Peace in play already, and a pile of lands (some of which were nonbasic). He has 3 lines of play. Two of them involve him losing, the third ends in a draw. He could go for Helm and play it, but wouldn't have enough mana to activate it and kill me this turn -- he would have had to wait for turn 5. He could play Jace (his worst option, for sure), or he could play Back to Basics, and guarantee that the match ends in a draw (he didn't have enough basic lands to play and activate Helm). Either of the other two options see me play my second Scapeshift and win on the spot.
Unfortunately, he takes the Back to Basics line. He then proceeds to try to get me to scoop to him, showing me the Helm + Jace in his hand (he would've had the land to play + activate next turn). I refuse to scoop him, because 1. he's playing Miracles; 2. he was taking forever on all of his top decisions; 3. I didn't feel he deserved the win; and 4. he was a random person I didn't know.
Round 3: Evan (Architect) with Esperblade
We're both in the draw bracket thanks to Miracles (his was a different player, though). We commiserate a bit, and get to work. Game one and two are a blur for me -- he may have more insight. I can't even actually remember which one of them I won. I think it was game two. Either way, the one that I won, I Shifted to wrath him + kill Jace (or damage him, one or the other), then a turn or two later I shifted for the rest of the mountains to actually kill him. The one I lost, he was flying by the seat of his pants, but managed to have just enough countermagic at just the exact right moments to get there.
Game three wasn't even a game of magic. I kept a reasonable 4-land, 3-spell hand, and proceeded to draw 2 non-land cards between my first step and then point at which Jace sculpted my mind. Really disappointing.
Round 4: Bryant Cook with TES
I knew Bryant was on TES going in, which made my mood all the better. Game one I mull to 5 looking for interaction. Therapy on LED, miss. He draws the card he needs and kills me immediately.
Game two I Therapy LED on the play, and hit. My hand isn't super amazing, but it at least has a Therapy + Explorer, and then I think a Slaughter Games to curve into. He draws an Infernal Tutor for his turn, which provided him with the last mana (via Chrome Mox) that he needed to cast the Ad Nauseum that was in his opening hand.
Welp.
Round 5: Adam with BUG
Adam scoops me, because he wants to play vintage.
Round 6: no idea
The round starts while I'm playing in a Vintage side event, and I decide that 1 SCG point for top 16 isn't worth me getting up. Especially since my BUG Fish opponent with t1 Bob, flip Decay, Decay your Oath, triple Wasteland you while playing a Trygon Predator.
Yeah. That was the kind of day my Saturday was.
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Sunday local:
Round 1: Jund
He keeps a "discard your hand" hand, and gets into a topdeck war with me. You know, topdeck war. Against Nic Fit. That's smart, right?
Game two he opens t1 DRS, t2 Hymn you (hits both of my green sources) + Grafdigger's Cage (nullifying the Zenith in my hand even if I do draw a green source AND the Therapy in my graveyard) -> t3 Liliana + Thoughtseize -> t4 Bob + Goyf. Or something equally absurd. Either way, I never even had a chance this game.
Game three I casually ramp into Primeval Titan and kill him. He can't do anything to stop me.
Round 2: Miracles
This is vengeance for Saturday (different player, obviously, but I was angry at the deck in general still). The Decays were Abrupt, my Deeds were Pernicious, and my mountains were fucking livid.
Round 3: ID with Omni into top 4 (it was an 8-man event)
Top 4: 4-color Deathrite.dec
I have a really hard time deciding if he has Force of Will or not, after how he was playing game 1. A timely Clique g1 saves him from a craggy assault, and I end up succumbing to Batterskull + Jitte + Goyf + Jace.
Game two he never does anything of relevance, and I curve into a combo kill after he's forced to bottom / discard 2 Pernicious Deeds. This leads me to the (correct) conclusion that he doesn't have Force of Will in his list, and I just jam the kill.
Game three: See also Game 2.
Finals: Omni
Unfortunately the Miracles player from r2 was not victorious, and I have to deal with the fruits of his failure.
Game one my opponent goes Ancient Tomb, pass. I'd mulled to 5, and kept a bad/dumb hand of double Therapy, Explorer, and no black source. I play my guy, and pass the turn after not drawing a black source. He passes his turn without doing anything, telling me that he kept a 1-lander which means that I'm dead the moment he draws an island. I fail to draw a black source, poke, and pass. He rips Island, Show and Tell, spaghetti. I still have potential outs in Burning Wish for Blood, but I don't draw a Wish either, and I just die to the Tentacular Spectacular.
Game two we both sit there for forever. I Therapy away a Show and Tell, but fail to find any further hate through Top + ~6-8 shuffle effects. No REBs, no Seizes, no more Therapies, no Slaughter Games, no Wishes, nothing. I die. Super disappointing.
I'm still second seed in the FTV draft, but that's kind of meh since first seed is a $120 bill and second is like.....$20. I pick up the Hymn, the Wall of Blossoms, and the Gilded Lotus for trade bait, and walk away a little sad. At least I didn't get the Char.
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Scapewish thoughts:
I'm increasingly starting to think that the correct blind call against Storm (ANT and TES both) is not LED, but is in fact Dark Ritual. Dark Ritual seems to determine hands that they keep more often than not, and for LED to actually do a damn thing, they need to have the rituals to actually get the storm started. LED is strong once you're rolling, but if they can't get that initial kick, LED is dead. Furthermore, not calling LED might actually pave the way for some periodic blowouts from Decay / Deed, at least in game 1 scenarios (obviously), because it would encourage the Storm player to play their LED or lose it.
Interested if people agree or disagree with this.
The Decays were lackluster on Saturday, but I think that's mostly because I didn't draw them. On Sunday I did, and they were great there.
I finally tried out Evan's suggested -1 Mountain +1 fetch, which ironically ended up slightly screwing me over when I played against him -- I had a Tribe Elder with an active Valakut which I could've used to kill an attacker if I had more than 2 basic Mountains. Other than this incident, the 2 basics vs 3 fetches never came up.
I will say that I am fully on board with the 2-of (at least) fetchland in Scapewish at this point. There are times where I want the 3rd Bayou in particular, but Primeval Titan into double fetchland with an active Top basically guarantees a Scapeshift (or whatever else you want) next turn. It gives a massive burst of card quality exactly when you want it. The smoothing out of the mana base in general is pretty nice, too.
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Pod Thoughts@SCG
Deck is way too cube-like, and needs some healthy trimming. Bone Shredder in particular is offensive.
That being said, I'm not surprised that it's got a top 8 under its belt, now. I felt that Caleb gave up on the idea way too easily, and even if I disagree with some of the card choices (like the 2nd Nightmare), I think that the version is a solid idea.
Things I don't like specifically:
- No Tops
- 2nd Nightmare
- Bone Shredder
- Grave Titan
- Wood Elves (what role does it serve in this list, when you have 4 Vet 3 DRS)
- Basic split (3/1/2? wtf)
- Only 21 lands
- Singleton Jitte in the board
- Not sure that the 4th Strix is necessary -- 3 is probably sufficient
I'm really starting to wonder if a 4-color Pod list is actually the solution to the Pod problem and the Thune problem simultaneously. Expect another post from me later today after I've pondered the issue.
Regarding therapy vs. Combo:
For TES, having an LED isn't quite as important as it is in ANT due to Burning Wish. Given enough mana they can just go off with Ad Nauseam. However they need double black to cast it, which is hard to do without rituals. So maybe dark ritual is the correct call on the play. They should anticipate you bringing in additional discard, so they really should be playing out their artifacts as soon as possible. Once they do, it becomes a no brainer to name ritual.
ANT really needs LED to go off, especially with a PIF kill. Sure they can rit, rit, cabal rit, volcanic island, but for that they need threshold, which takes time. Also if there's a land or cantrip stuck in their hand, it's gonna be difficult.
tl:dr In my opinion, perhaps you should only name LED against ANT on the play, otherwise Dark Ritual is correct.
ANT and TES (correctly) play out all of their artifact mana on turn 1 if they are against discard. They will keep chrome mox in hand, and sometimes, if they are fine on rainbow lands, they keep a petal in their hand for later storm count. I still think LED is right on the play, rit on the draw seems good. Dont forget, they also have rite of flame, and ANT also has cabal ritual. They don't need ritual necessarily, but it is definitely their best mana spell besides LED.
Game one was the one where I kept drawing exactly enough countermagic to stop your shenanigans and I won. G2, you had a lot of pressure with huntmaster but I stablized with a EE for zero and then SFM+bskull. But it didnt matter because a few turns later you shifted me for leathal while I had no countermagic. G3, the first 3 turns I think I cast 4 discard spells between IoK, 2 thoughtsieze and Snapcaster, then turn 4 jace and just sealed out of the game. At one point you were able to GSZ for prime titan, but I just bounced it with jace and therapied you. To say the least, the games were fun and I think those games drew more of crowd than any other game that happened that day (that I saw).
Also, my next round opponent was the same miracles player who also drew with me. Fun. I am pretty sure he did not actually have winning as a goal because at one point I resolved a jace on my empty board/hand, to his board of Back to basics, top, CB, jace and 3+ cards in hand. And won without ever resolving another spell because I just started fatesealing and he did nothing for 10 turns.
Coiling Oracle at 2? Only 2 fours seem a little low. Maybe a metamorph?
You probably thought as much but I approve of these changes :)
- We had a guy in this thread who played this deck in tournaments and he said Shredder was amazing and now someone Top8s with it. There also is no other 3 Mana kill creature in these colors, only bounce, and killing stuff might be an important thing to do at 3 mana. On the other hand, Echo creatures and Pod just seem awful together and there are quite a lot of good black/artifact creatures in the format. I am thinking of good old Man'o'War.
- I agree that Wood Elves should be a land. I don't think that a deck with 4 Strix, 3 Forest and a Tower can consistently get away with playing 21 lands.
- Grave Titan seems fine as a finisher. Great against BUG and Jund. Not so much vs white decks but you have the Nightmares for those decks.
- I would like a third Deed. The card seems amazing against pretty much everything and it doesn't kill Pod.
Buh? He's running 4 Strix, 1 Ooze, 1 P.Image (only counts as half of a 2-). I think that shaving out 1 Strix (probably for the 22nd land, I think that's the most important of my gripes) is reasonable -- shouldn't hurt the pod chains significantly.
Can someone explain to me which role plays Mourderous Redcap in the BUG Pod list? I thought Redcap was good for comboing with Melira. But the list is missing a reusable sac outlet and Melira itself. I'm confused...
Redcap's been generally accepted among Pod lists as just a generically good guy. He comes in off of Pod, kills a Deathrite Shaman or a Bob, or pokes down a planeswalker, and then sticks around to turn into a Thragtusk or a Shriekmaw or something later. He doesn't need to actually combo with anything to just be a solid critter.
My list from this weekend. 6-3 (50th)
Creatures-14
4 Veteran Explorer- Boarded one as a wish target at times.
1 Gaddock Teeg-Awesome as usual.
1 Sylvan Ranger-Helped smooth the mana base. Good addition
1 Scavenging Ooze
2 Eternal Witness-Went up to 2. boarded one out sometimes as a wish target
1 Kitchen Finks
1 Thrun, the Last Troll
1 Sigarda
1 Baneslayer Angel
1 Thragtusk
1 Sun Titan
Spells-24
4 Cabal Therapy
4 Green sun's Zenith
2 Thoughtseize-Seems like a good number.
1 Swords to Plowshares-Kept in list for Dark Depths and random duders
3 Sensei's Diving Top
3 Living Wish
1 Diabolic Intent-Was awesome as usual.
2 Abrupt Decay
3 Deed
1 Maelstrom Pulse
Lands-22-I'm pretty set on this. I wouldn't mind a stronghold but not sure what to cut.
3 Windswept Heath
3 Verdnant Catacombs
2 Phyrexian Tower
1 Karakas
2 Bayou
2 Savannah
1 Scrubland
3 Forest
3 Plains
2 Swamp
Sideboard
2 Carpet of Flowers-Solid as usual.
2 Mindbreak Trap-No storm, brought in against enchantress.
1 Nether Void-Same as traps.
1 Primeval Bounty-Was a dissapointment. Probably want a batterskull instead.
1 Ashen Rider-Killed hypergenesis/show&tell
1 Surgical Extraction
1 Extripate- Did work vs show&tell
Wishboard
1 Faerie Macbre-Never used. probably will replace with a Bojuka Bog
1 Karakas-hitting a land drop is big sometimes.
1 Fleshbag Marauder-Never used but would have vs show and tell with progentius
1 Qasali Pridemage-Sided in a few times
1 Phyrexian Revoker-Never used. Only saw a few planeswalkers. Considering a hexmage.
1 Ethersworn Canonist-did work vs enchantress
Last edited by jbone2016; 10-15-2013 at 12:01 AM.
Quick question, would you keep this hand on the play vs ANT?
Scrubland
Plains
Veteran Explorer
Cabal Therapy
Leyline of Sanctity
Gaddock Teeg
Green Sun's Zenith
Yup.
You have Leyline protection on turn 1, a Cabal Therapy for a relevant card like Infernal Tutor, and a decent chance of drawing a G/x land
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