Problem is that naming 1 shuts off your plows and paths; also what are you really shutting off there: bstorm, berserk, bdefense (if they are playing it), and vines. Certainly good items... but shutting off bdefense/vines is only useful to open your removal which you are shutting off via the same called number: 1.Originally Posted by Secretly.A.Bee
Infect is like sub 5% of the meta; they are a creature deck and we are playing jitte and 4 plows main.. I dont' know.. I just don't find myself worrying too much about the match-up.
Removal spells, Jitte and Ethersworn Canonist are what matter in the matchup. THC and Prelate are both 'okay' late game disruption. Prelate is probably a little better (almost always on 3), since their creatures ETBing tapped doesn't particularly matter and they play a really tight curve / have their mana set up before t3.
I don't think you can ever name Prelate on 1 unless you're really desperate. "I don't have removal" is what they want to hear. I sideboard out Thalia 1.0 now and have had a lot of success with this plan. Similar to Prelate, Thalia 1.0 helps freeze out your own STPs/Paths and doesn't hamper them as much as you'd hope.
It's annoying to face the deck, since you never know if you'll just get unlucky and be turn 2'd. But it is one of the few unfavored matchups that can be turned into slightly favored with your sideboard.
@iatee
I'm unsure about sideboarding out Thalia in the Infect matchup; I've been trying that out as well. Now that we're pretty consistently running two Paths in the sb, it's probably good. It's odd though, as Thalia is a great card in the matchup; it both slows down their cantrip usage and ability to combo kill.
I don't think I would board out Thalia against Infect. I think when you play against Infect, you've got to realize that they only have one real threat: Blighted Agent. Mother of Runes and Thalia (or any other creature to a lesser extent) are great against Glistener Elf and we've got Wasteland and Port to stop Inkmoth Nexus. Only use your removal on those cards in an emergency, otherwise hold out for Blighted Agent. Just try to make high percentage plays and accept you might lose to Berserk once in a while. For builds with 3 or more Path SB, Infect is matchup I'm reasonably happy to see.
Infect plays a really tight curve and 50% of their games start off with a ramp card. Making Invigorates cost 1 mana instead of 0 affects them less than STPs costing 2 mana affects us. Holding up Wasteland/Port for Nexus also 'costs mana', as does using SfM, equipping a Jitte, etc. We're the mana-hungry deck here.
I think while Thalia seems like she's a good stalling tool, she often helps Infect get away with a quick combo kill since it's really hard for us to keep 2 mana up at all times. Sometimes Thalia/Wasteland hands might be really good, and I'm sure we've all won some games off Infect with it, but I don't think putting all our resources into mana denial is a reliable strategy when they can win so fast and with relatively little mana.
You can't reasonably take Thalia out against Infect. The matchup is largely about surprises. You having StP at the right time can set them back to the point that they will try to slow roll you if they even suspect it (rather than going for their combo). Them having Berserk is their big trick.
Ethersworn Canonist is brilliant in the role of preventing their surprises. In this deck of mana denial, Thalia does the same thing. And she is a first striker. Ask the Infect guys how they feel about it. They HATE Thalia.
"Anyone who is capable of getting themselves made President should on no account be allowed to do the job."
"Politicians are like diapers. They should be changed often and for the same reason."
"Governing is too important to be left to people as silly as politicians."
"Politicians were mostly people who'd had too little morals and ethics to stay lawyers."
Infect players HATE her! One weird trick for making their Invigorates cost 1 mana.
Ethersworn is fantastic because it naturally limits their combo wins, but just as importantly synergizes with your best card so their protection spells are turned off. No matter what they attempt to do, you can now STP in response and you can't get blown out. Whereas Thalia limits their early combo wins a bit - they still have lots of combo wins with only 2-3 mana with a Thalia in play. But unlike Ethersworn, she's a nonbo with STP. I agree that potential STPs sometimes means that they're forced to play cautiously - my point is that with a Thalia in play, often they don't have to anymore. Her first strike is fine, but not super relevant since a Elf attacking into almost all of our creatures without a pump spell is going to die, and with a pump spell is going to eat anything that isn't pro-green.
Brad Nelson preaching hate today:
http://www.starcitygames.com/article...ut-Legacy.html
Under the premise of a surge in US popularity in D&T following C2...
Advocating for running Sulfur elementals, Massacres and Dreads of Night in S/B
as well as calling an uptick in Elves.
The last time I was playing against Infect my opponent feared THC more than TGT for some reason. Thalia is great in the early game but they can afford to durdle around enough to be able to pay Thalia tax on two spells to kill you, or at worst chip away at you for a few turns.
In my experience against Infect with D&T, Ethersworn Canonist is the best sideboard creature; it's incredibly good and buys you a ton of time to find removal.
Prelate should always be set on 3, not only because it prevents Invigorate (which causes 90% of the blowouts) but also stops Krosan Grip, which can wreck us - particularly when we have a Jitte with counters we haven't used yet. You never want to set on 1, as it shuts off our only removal that's not Jitte.
Heya, I've got a new article for you all. This one is actually a guest post by Curby from MtG:S. If you are interested in probability and what adding a 61st card does to your percentages, this is right up your alley. you can find it here.
I loved that article. Every Magic player should read it.
Back when I was leading the charge for Merfolk, I took a similar position to what Kirby has done here. My limited knowledge of statistics prevented me from making any such well-formed point, but I was unable to get anyone A.N.Y.O.N.E. to entertain the possibility of 61 cards being the right choice. The entire argument is in the Merfolk thread somewhere.
61 cards is particularly attractive these days as we have two different tutor effects and I play another in the board. Tutors screw with deck numbers more than just about anything else.
"Anyone who is capable of getting themselves made President should on no account be allowed to do the job."
"Politicians are like diapers. They should be changed often and for the same reason."
"Governing is too important to be left to people as silly as politicians."
"Politicians were mostly people who'd had too little morals and ethics to stay lawyers."
Anyone willing to argue about it on the Internet, maybe. In real life, there are a lot of people able to perfectly understand how and why the 60 card goal, although a sensible objective, is completely moronic as an impassable totem. I'l pretty sure most of them simply also know better than to try discussing probabilities with people on the Internet. I would say that in Europe at least you "somewhat commonly" see 61 card lists. Not that that means that this was a valid choice in each and every case, but at least people are far more open to the idea.
Wow, thank you a lot. Even if I was already often playing with 61 cards in non-combo decks (in R/G lands and occasionally D&T), it feels great to read the statistical argumentation! Very nice and usefull for every MtG player!
I made day two of SCGBalt with a 61 card main! I finished the day in....61st place! I unfortunately couldn't physically make day 2 (had to watch my son, etc.)
4 Thalia 4 Swords 4 Wasteland
4 Mom 4 Vial 4 Port
4 SFM 1 Batterskull 3 Karakas
4 Wisp 1 Sword of Fire 3 CAVERNS :)
3 Recruiter 1 Jitte 9 Plains
3 Revoker
2 Serra Avenger
1 Mirran Crusader
1 Thalia 2.0
1 Prelate
Sideboard
1 Enlightened Tutor
2 Ethersworn Canonist
2 Rest in Peace
2 Leonin Relic-Warder
1 Mirran Crusader
1 Graf Cage
1 Sanctum Prelate
1 Sword of War and Peace
1 Containment Priest
1 Mangara
1 Ratchet Bomb
1 Wilt Leaf
Here is a brief report of my matches
Round 1- Kiran on Eldrazi Aggro.(1-0) So disappointed to see that my first match is Eldrazi. I lose game one in 4 minutes. I land timely wastelands and swords game 2 and 3. Very lucky to leave with a win.
Round 2- Michael on Eldrazi and Taxes.(2-0) I win a quick game one by taxes his mana. I never see any sign of it being eldrazi so I leave mother of runes in. Lose game 2 and side out all 4 moms quickly. Leon Relic Warder did work on Mox Diamond and Smuglers Copter.
Round 3- Bob on Bug Delver.(2-1) Bob seems to be a very good delver player. He has answers to every move I made. Just when I try to stabilize and turn the corner I get dismembered or decayed. I regret not having a magus in the side. I lose two games.
Round 4- Kyle on Lands. (3-1) I win game one by landing revoker on molten vortex and prelate on 2. I win game 2 by getting rid of his green sources early and landing rest in peace.
Round 5- John on Bug Delver. (4-1) I get things going with a quick game one win. I win game two with getting some good luck. With on mirran crusader on board, He allows his liliana of the veil with 2 counters die instead of just letting his delver of secrets die. I follow up with a rest in peace cutting off his DRS and Tarmogoyf
Round 6- Aggro Loam. (5-1) I win a fast game one by getting an early vial and taxing/swording any threats. Game two Sean leads with a mox diamond into a greensun for an dryad arbor. Seeing he misses his land drop, I immediately turn one swords the arbor. I get lucky and top deck 2 swords to kill a confidant and a ooze for the blow out. He asks for the slip because he didn't want to get "ticked off anymore". His signature was a hole in the sheet. This was my first interaction with a very angry and unpleasant opponent. I ignore everything and walk away.
Round 7- Kyle (different kyle) on Lands. (6-1) Very similar outcome to my earlier lands match game one. Recruiter to Prelate is amazing. Game two I mull to 5 and land an opener of plains plains 2 rest in peace and a vial? He blanks a few turns and I win.
Round 8- Ian on Aggro Loam (6-2) I win game one with a traditional start. I lose game two trying to stop liliana, tabernacle, and knight of the rel. I have my first MAJOR error of the day by missing LETHAL. I decided to draw and not pay the tabernacle trigger! How could I melt down like this.
Round 9- Jarvis on Grixis Delver (6-3). Wouldn't it be great to finish the day with a win vs local legacy guru Jarvis Yu. I knew that Jarvis was on Grixis and felt really good going into the match. We were back up feature match. I win a smooth game one. Game two I get blown out by a sulfur elemental. Game 3 I feel like I get a really good start but get destroyed by his timely dismember on avenger, bolt on crusader and 2 sulfur elementals! I wish I had a magus in this match up. I probably should have saved my swords for elemental and wasteland for his red sources. Maybe I tutor for revoker to dodge the white hate? None the less, he played very well.
Final thoughts- I really liked playing with 61 cards. I decided on 61 cards in order to keep Thalia 2.0. I wish I was greedy and put magus of the moon in the board because it would have stuck in many of the matches. I liked recruiter but often sided it out for threats like rest in peace. The mvp of the day was leonin relic warder. It did wonders in many of the sideboard games. 3 Caverns never backfired all day except during my last round when I was already about to die game 2 against Jarvis (wasted both). I will always be more careful vs tabernacle.
Warning: RANT ON
Some of you might have come to recognize my username, since, according to my profile, I have been posting in here since April 2011. I have been playing Legacy since a short while before that, and Death and Taxes has been my first and main deck all along. It is, in fact, the reason I got into Legacy, and the reason why I registered to this website to discuss and learn about it.
Even though I expanded my legacy repertoire to include Delver and Storm, I only played them occasionally, and kept coming back to the archetype I loved most through thick and thin.
Over the years, I have taken it to many local, small tournaments, of which I've won several, and, even though I very rarely get the opportunity to attend large events, I've come within a hair's breath of top8 in one of the few I've been able to participate in (120ish players). Needless to say, I've played countless practice games with it both in real life and on the internet; and, at this point, it's fair to say that I'm a proficient DnT pilot and a fairly knowledgeable legacy player in general.
But after more than five years, I'm ready to throw in the towel: I don't think I'm ever going to bring Death and Taxes to a competitive tournament again, at least not as long as I care about winning. It might be surprising that this decision comes only a short time after the deck got some powerful new additions, but I don't think that is a coincidence. Like a lot of other legacy aficionados, I expected those cards to finally propel the deck from eternal dark horse of the format to one of the rightful top contenders, possibly even undisputed king... Even though most of you will certainly disagree with me, I believe I was wrong. This deck will never be in the same league as something like Miracles, Delver, or Storm/Omni-Sneak. Heck, it might not even be as good as Eldrazi when it's all said and done. It doesn't matter how many powerful new 3-drops they print, those cards will never address the deck's fundamental weaknesses. Heck, they might even compound them:
1) The deck is too reliant on Aether Vial.
When assessing the impact of this card, newer players tend to systematically underestimate it by only considering its capability to sneak your creatures past counterspells, deploy them at instant speed, or empower their abilities (eg Flickerwisp with Vial@3). But the games where you have it are fundamentally different from those where you don't. The difference in efficiency and effectiveness is tremendous: with it, you can accelerate out piece after piece in response to your opponent's plays while using your manabase to constrict their options. Without it, you become slow, clunky and predictable, as you are often forced to tap out on your mainphase, leaving the opponent with plenty of time to respond and adapt to your plays with more mana efficient, instant speed answers.
It's not only your creatures that benefit from it: cards like Rishadan Port suddenly become a lot worse when you are not advancing your board simultaneously. Even Wasteland is not as good as in something like Delver, where you have a significantly lower mana-curve, and in fact I keep seeing inexperienced DnT players being way too trigger-happy with their Wastelands when they don't have an active Vial.
This deck is truly a force to be reckoned with when we can stick an early Aether Vial, but, unfortunately, that is not something we can count on in every game, or even in most games for that matter. Simple probability will tell us that we only have an about 40% chance of having it in our opening hand, and the nature of this deck will not, statistically, allow us to profitably mulligan to it or look for it in any way, so we'll just have to pray that we get an opening hand that contains the coveted artifact, creatures to put in play with it, and possibly a couple of lands. Unfortunately, decks don't become tier1 by always drawing perfect or close to perfect opening 7s. They do so by being able to win even the games where they have to settle for mediocre openers, and this deck is not particularly good at that, since it doesn't have a) manipulation to fix/improve its draws b) huge turn 1-2 haymakers such as Chalice or Blood Moon that can win the game on their own.
Even worse, all of the above assumes that our early Aether Vial will resolve and stick. Forcing this card on turn 1 is almost always the correct play, as is decaying it on turn 2. Post board, most decks will bring in at least a few cheap, hard-to deal with answers to it, so the number of times we can expect to have access to it should be even lower.
In fact, because this card is so powerful, it is usually the correct play to keep an opening hand that includes even two copies of it but is not otherwise able to function without it, such as Vial, Vial, Wasteland, Port, Flickerwisp, Thalia, Prelate. However, that's usually an auto loss if your opponent has something like Pithing Needle or Null Rod. Which brings us to weakness number 2:
2) The deck is too easy to hate on
This one is pretty simple: since this deck is based on synergy rather than a collection of diverse and individually powerful cards, sideboard hate like Dread of Night, Null Rod, Sulfur Elemental, etc. hit it super hard. Harder than most non-combo decks can be hit by sideboard cards. Those cards are brutally effective because they invalidate huge portions of our deck, and we have no panic button such as Force of Will to prevent them from blowing us out. Our only options are to try and minimize their impact with our sideboarding (only possible to a very limited amount before it becomes counterproductive), play around them if and when we can afford it (we rarely can) and suck it up when we can't. None of those options is particularly good, and, in the case of permanents, they are usually hard for us to remove from the battlefield, and even when we can, they will often have done significant damage already. Moreover, these cards are either colorless, or very easy to access to anyone splashing black or red, so most players will have access to them if they so desire, and you'll never know when to expect them. Only last Friday I got completely blown out by Sulfur Elemental out of Painter in a game I was otherwise never ever going to lose. The worst part was that I then had to sit through countless turns where I was dead on board if only he had realized he could use his Goblin Welder to swap my now unprotected Revoker for a Vial in my yard. I kept peeling dead card after dead card and eventually got a glimmer of hope when I found the second Revoker and he allowed it to resolve, but he immediately topdecked another Painter's Servant with which he named white to smoke both of my Revokers (an idea he got from an onlooker commenting a bit too loudly).
Until a few years ago, we could count on a lot of players not expecting or respecting this deck, not knowing how to play against it, and not really having a sideboard for it. But those days are over. Only yesterday, I saw Jim Davis running 2 DoN in the sideboard of his BUG Delver w/Confidant deck. That was not an especially easy matchup when they "only" played Golgari charm. I would hate to face it now. Which brings us to the next problem the deck has:
3)It is not really favored against the decks it's supposed to beat
This deck is built to prey on the top dogs of the format, those 3-colors, blue-based decks filled with cantrips and noncreature spells such as Miracles and Delver. However, that's where most of my losses have been coming from recently. And it's not an isolated case. Check the reports on here and you'll see tons and tons of losses against supposedly good matchups such as Delver and Miracles. Part of it is that those decks are just the strongest all around, and therefore always stand a reasonable chance even against decks that are well set up against them. And part of it is that they are the ones against which we are most reliant on Aether Vial.
Fast Delver draws will easily out tempo us without it, and post board, the matchup can become almost nightmarish since they can bring in a deadly assortment of hate ranging from the previously mentioned -1-1 effects to artifact hate/destruction to problematic creatures such as Grim Lavamancer or True Name Nemesis. I regularly play Grixis Delver and I can't even remember the last time I lost to DnT unless they had one of those broken Vial/Port/Thalia/Wasteland starts where I just don't get to play magic. And I don't even play any specific DnT hate in my SB, just stuff that is primarily there for Eldrazi such as Explosives, Kolaghan's Command, and Ancient Grudge. Prelate will occasionally win games by completely locking out their draws, but just as often they'll have or find a different cost removal spell for it (something players will start valuing more and more, and there are plenty of good options out there such as dismember, decay, murderous cut, or explosives) or be too far ahead on board already by the time it resolves.
I have already written in length about the Miracles matchup so I'll avoid repeating myself, but suffice to say that I don't feel particularly favored in that one unless I have an active Vial (refer to weakness n.1).
As other people have pointed out, the currently most prominent non-blue matchup of the format, colorless Eldrazi, is mostly a toss-up where the outcome is largely pre-determined by who's on the play and how explosive the Eldrazi player's start is. As bad as it Chalice is against us when we're on the play, it can completely wreck us when we're on the draw, because it invalidates our best hands against Eldrazi, namely those with a lot of Plows/Paths or Aether Vial + Ports and Wastelands. And by the time you flicker it to unlock your removal, it will already be too late more often than not.
So all things considered, I believe this deck falls short precisely on what has long been its main selling point: being a tier 1 killer. Which, considering the deck's other considerable weaknesses, means there's really not much of a (competitive) reason not to play an actual tier1 deck instead.
In other words:
4)A non-blue reactive deck is a losing proposition
Yes, not playing Brainstorm, Ponder, and Force of Will is a huge problem when you're trying to control what your opponent is trying to do, except you don't know what it is they are actually trying to do until after the games starts. Blue decks can shuffle away their bad cards or pitch them to Force of Will. Non blue decks tend to be proactive, such as Eldrazi which will only stop to land a Chalice on 1 (if even) before they try to smash the opponent's head in as quickly as possible, before the impact of drawing random cards off the top of their deck puts them at a disadvantage. But we get the worst of both worlds. Most of our games will go long, and we have no way to ensure we don't just draw the wrong half of our deck.
This is both a difficult and a frustrating deck to master, which is probably why so few prominent players have devoted themselves to it: it requires you to learn a huge repertoire of interactions, tricks and to know the inner workings of most other legacy decks, while at the same time giving you so little control over the tools you have at your disposal during the game. You hone all the finer details of your piloting skills knowing that, most of the times, you won't have as much of a chance to convert those skills into an advantage compared to other decks. This is why someone like Joe Lossett or Angelo Cadei can show up with the same Miracles list over and over again and consistently make top8 in a way no Death and Taxes pilot ever could, even though I've seen them make plenty more minor mistakes than someone like Thomas Enevoldsen or Marc Konig ever did. A great Miracles pilot will rarely lose to an opponent of clearly inferior skill. A great DnT pilot will do so all the time. That to me is the sign of a truly inferior deck.
As Richard Garfield himself put it, the more competitive a game gets and the more time, money and energy the players invest in it, the less randomness they are willing to accept in it, which is why chess-type games with 0 chance involved will always be the ultimate test of skill when it comes to table games. And the reason why DnT is not an optimal choice for an experienced and competitive player.
Is my current disillusionment with the deck the product of a string of negative results? Yes, definitely. 3 of the last 4 tournaments I've brought it to have been pretty disastrous. Were some of those losses the product of my mistakes? Occasionally, but I hardly ever made any obviously fatal mistake, and in fact I believe I played on average better than a lot of my opponents, who often missed critical plays or made outright comical decisions and still won.
Far from clouding my judgement, I think that this string of bad variance actually made me take a dispassionate look at my accumulated experience with the deck, and at its results through the years in the larger meta (keep in mind this has been a very well represented deck in legacy for a while now), and, in my opinion, that is enough to conclude that, while it is a blast to play and potentially very powerful, it does not have the consistency and reliability to truly be one of the top decks of the format.
RANT OFF
You might be onto something given that there is not a single DnT list in the top 32 at SCG Baltimore.
Hey guys, Turbo Depths player here looking for sideboard input for the upcoming GP.
DnT is a pretty difficult matchup and I'm considering a few cards as a sideboard silver bullet. Our deck already has 4 pithing needles (wasteland/karakas/vial), ghost quarter (karakas), 4 not of this world (STP/Karakas), karakas (thalias), and 3 abrupt decays, but the matchup still feels like an uphill battle. Would you recommend (1) 4th abrupt decay, (2) 1 toxic deluge, (3) 1 dread of night, (4) 1 massacre, or (5) 1 darkblast in the side?
Yeah not going to lie; very disappointed with the results from the Open.
Even some of the semi-pros of the SCG Tour (like Michael Majors or Ben Friedman) who were playing the deck .. took quick losses after their byes and were out of the tournament early.
@ Luca Grease with my own mini rant...
I've been pulling away from this deck for a while now, halfway did in Imperial Taxes (4 Imperial Recruiters and 3 Magus main board works quite well, yes the full set of Recruiters) and now sort of just moving to Aluren. My thing with this deck is that while everything you said is true, was that it was unknown enough and most people weren't prepared for the deck/knew enough what to counter/remove/discard. Ever since the deck started to get more limelight, I've been moving onto another deck. I love the deck and I always will, but I also think it's time to set it down for the time being.
I've played D&T/Imperial Taxes as one of my two go to decks (MUD being the other, still lots of things I can and do do that are unexpected ^_^) since I started playing D&T about 6 years ago. I love decks with a lot of tricks that my opponents don't understand before I do them. I don't get that with this deck very often, if at all anymore... Starting to lose that a little bit with the new Recruiter with Aluren now too actually
I like to think that I've done a lot for this deck, at least I've had several ideas that were first scoffed at, but a few months later became widely accepted when others put up higher profile results with them, and I will always follow this thread as it is one of my favorite decks I've ever played.
Cockatrice: EMFry
Meh, I wouldn't worry about it too much. It sucks if you don't have another deck, but the hate will eventually fade as people stop bringing DnT. As DnT becomes bad, so does t1 and t0 combo as the Delver and Miracles and the T3/T4 combo decks that also play Force become good. This in turn forces our worst matchups: Shardless and Glasscannon.dec either out of the format or to drop their dedicated hate. Before you know it, DnT becomes good again.
As for your rant Luca, there's a reason Brainstorm is the #1 played card in this format and the subject of an entire thread on this forum. No amount of tutors will ever replace "Draw 3 cards, put 2 back". You have to accept that if you play this deck.
There are currently 1 users browsing this thread. (0 members and 1 guests)
Reply With Quote