So I see lots of players playing Eva Green with a white splash for Vindicate to supplement the land destruction package. I couldn't help but think of how strong instead supplementing the land destruction package with the much cheaper and easier to cast Stifle and Daze would be, especially with all the new fetchlands floating around. Adding that blue splash made me realize how weak Hypontic Specter and Nantuko Shade are, as far as threats are concerned, especially compared to Goyf and Tombstalker. Hypnotic Specter and Nantuko Shade take a ridiculously long time to kill your opponent, and Shade ties up all your mana in the process of doing so. Even Goyf and Tombstalker aren't very quick as far as finishers go. Dreadnought by comparison wins games with just two hits max. This inevitably led me to this build...
4 Phyrexian Dreadnought
4 Tarmogoyf
4 Tombstalker
4 Brainstorm
4 Stifle
3 Vision Charm
4 Thoughtseize
4 Hymn to Tourach
4 Daze
4 Sinkhole
4 Wasteland
4 Polluted Delta
4 Verdant Catacombs
3 Misty Rainforest
3 Underground Sea
1 Tropical Island
1 Bayou
1 Swamp
I am also intermittently testing Force of Will in the deck and it works well in the deck. I would play it if there was room, but all the cards the deck already plays are mighty powerful on their own, and while you will always have a blue card in hand to pitch for FoW, it's almost always a blue card that you actually want to keep. You rarely end up wanting to pitch Stifle, Vision Charm, Brainstorm or Daze because each of those cards just works really well in the deck and serves many functions. You are probably questioning my assertion that you rarely want to pitch Vision Charm, but if you try the deck, you will know what I mean. I explain the numerous functions that Vision Charm serves below. The deck does play many of the same cards as Team America. Nevertheless, I am absolutely convinced that Phyrexian Dreadnought and Vision Charm, two of the key differences are both worth playing. Eight threats are just too few in this format, and nothing quite matches the brokenness of Dreadnought and it's ability to win a game with just 1-2 attacks thanks to trample damage.
I know that Transformational Sideboards rarely work. But I have been trying it and believe this is one of the few cases where they do. Because this is one of those rare instances where you don't have to use the transformational sideboard as a transformational sideboard. Every card in the board is good enough to be in the board on it's own merits. By running a sideboard consisting of...
4 Spell Pierce/Spell Snare
4 Snuff Out
4 Force of Will
3 Trygon Predator
You give yourself additional answers to creatures, to artifacts/enchantments, and eight additional counters to use versus combo matchups and such. You can simply board in which ever specific function that you feel the maindeck most needs or is lacking. But if you know that your opponent got scared by the Dreadnought and plays artifact removal in the board, then it's safe to assume that they'll be siding in all of their artifact destruction game two just because of the sheer scariness of Dreadnought. And you respond by siding out all of the artifacts and enchantments from your main deck, rendering all those cards they brought in moot, and replacing the Dreadnoughts and Vision Charms with cards that transform the deck into Team America.
Vision Charm is easily the most versatile card in the whole deck. It reduces Tombstalker's casting cost by 5, serving as a far better Dark Ritual and frequently enabling turn two Tombstalkers. It combos with Dreadnought to get you a 12/12 trampler on the second turn after a first turn Thoughtseize. It protects Dreadnought from every removal spell in the format, by phasing it out until your next upkeep. It acts as a Giant Growth for your Tarmogoyf, by instantly pumping your Goyf from a 1/2 to a 4/5 in response to an attacking Wild Nacatl or Jotun Grunt and such, and those cards you put in the yard later feed Tombstalker's casting cost. And if all that weren't enough, it even pitches to FoW and Time Walks/Abeyance's your opponent for the turn by shutting them from all colored mana during their upkeep. I have repeatedly considered playing 4 Vision Charm because the card is just that good, but ultimately, I just don't think the fourth one is neccesary.
The deck is not Dreadstalker, or Dreadstill. It's actually Eva Green with a blue splash. It's focus is on attacking your opponent's manabase, making the deck closer to Tempo Thresh in terms of how it operates. And while it shares quite a few similarities with Team America, it's not quite that either. Team America makes the mistake of playing a mere eight threats in a format absolutely packed to the brim with removal, which means that the deck always has to save some of it's countermagic to protect it's own threats, rather than using them to go after the opponent's game plan, secure in the knowledge that if it's threat gets killed, it'll easily draw into another one in just a few turns at most. This is further exacerbated by the fact that when you play only eight of something, some games you won't even see one of those threats until well into the midgame, by which time all the tempo you gained by using Stifle, Sinkhole and Wasteland is rendered meaningless. LD is a lot more powerful when you can plop down a threat very early on, while your opponent is most vulnerable due to their stifled mana development. LD becomes more and more meaningless if you can't immediately follow it up with a threat, and the game drags on into the fifth or sixth turn before you even draw a threat to cast, by which time your opponent's mana development has made a full recovery.
In addition, every other Dreadnought deck out there (Team America, Dreadstill, Dreadstalker etc) is built around Force of Will. Force of Will is a great card. But I think playing the full discard and land destruction suite that characterizes Eva Green is stronger overall. These cards either give you card advantage or a tremendous amount of tempo (unlike Force of Will which is ultimately card disadvantage).
So don't think of this deck as Dreadstalker. Think of this deck as Eva Green. Because that's exactly what this deck is in terms of how it functions...
If you want to make a direct comparison between this deck and Eva Green and see just how similar they are, you simply go...
Stifle --------------------> Snuff Out (Stifle's LD ability is better than Snuff Out's creature kill imo)
Daze---------------------> Seal of Cleansing (Both protect you, but Daze can hit more things and doesn't cost you any mana)
Brainstorm ---------------> Hypnotic Specter (Brainstorm is basically an Ancestral Recall thanks to all the fetches. Hippe generates less card quality advantage usually).
Phyrexian Dreadnought ---> Nantuko Shade (Dreadnought is the far better threat. Nantuko Shade is just a 2/1 that gets slightly bigger if you have spare mana)
Vision Charm--------------> Dark Ritual (Vision charm reduces Tombstalkers casting cost by 5!, plus it combos with Dreadnought, protects Dreadnought from removal, acts as a mini but permanent Giant Growth for your Goyf, and can even time walk your opponent for a turn by letting you shut off your opponent from all of his colored mana during his untap step.)
Just revert those changes above, and you transform this deck back into a completely standard list of Eva Green, which is why I claim that these two decks are so similar. And looking at the explanations above, you can easily see why I feel that almost every blue option is better than it's alternative option in Eva Green.
Last edited by Jon Stewart; 11-22-2009 at 09:38 PM.
I would recommend reading the Team America thread in this forum.
Yeah but Team America plays a bunch of blue cards to support Force of Will which in turn is card disadvantage. This deck plays black cards like Hymn that give you card advantage. And it plays a lot more land destruction.
Oops, I just realized what the Established Deck thing means. Mods can please feel free to move it to New and Developmental. My bad, sorry guys.
This deck is called Dreadstalker and there is a thread for it already.
Didn't playtest this, but looks like turn 1 Goblin Lackey will give you a lot of troubles...
Also, Daze seems out of place 'cuz your Island count is low...
Beware of the man who works hard to learn something, learns it, and finds himself no wiser than before. He is full of murderous resentment of people who are ignorant without having come by their ignorance the hard way.
Why would a turn one Lackey give you a lot of trouble? Lackey or no lackey, goblins cant race a turn two Dreadnought or a turn two Tombstalker (Vision Charm first turn reduces Tombstalker's casting cost by 5). Especially when you're playing so much discard and land destruction to protect these threats.
Dreadstalker doesn't play Hymn to Tourach, Wasteland, Sinkhole, Goyf, basicially, the strongest aspects of Eva Green.Originally Posted by leander?
Dreadstalker instead plays blue cards like Ponder to support Force of Will. Force of Will is a great card. But I think playing the full discard and land destruction suite of Eva Green is a lot stronger. These cards give you either card advantage of tremendous tempo (unlike Force of Will which is ultimately card disadvantage).
So don't think of this deck as Dreadstalker. Think of this deck as Eva Green but splashing blue instead of white like some decks opt to.
I heard Goblins play Warren Wierding and Sting Scourger ESPECIALLY to deal with beef and go nutz before you could drop another beef.
Also, you run 1 basic and they run 4 Waste (+ x Ports), so they can just screw your mana.
Beware of the man who works hard to learn something, learns it, and finds himself no wiser than before. He is full of murderous resentment of people who are ignorant without having come by their ignorance the hard way.
Which is why the deck plays 4 Thoughtseize, 1 Duress, 3 Daze, 3 Vision Charm (which protect Dreadnought by phasing it out in response to removal), and 4 Stifle (which counter comes into play abilities like Stingscourer and Warren Wierding) to deal with your opponents removal. And it even runs land destruction and Hymn to throw your opponent's gameplan completely off balance and often force them to discard a critical land, threat, or removal piece they were counting on.
If you count them up, this deck plays many more ways to protect it's 12 megasized threats than decks like Countertop, Dreadstill and Team Amerca to protect their fewer number of threats. The only card it doesn't play is Force of Will (it can't support the card disadvantage, and have to forego cutting fantastic black cards like Hymn, Thoughtseize, Sinkhole etc just to run more blue for FoW just isn't worth it). But it more than handily makes up for not playing FoW by playing Duress, Thoughtseize, Stifle and Vision Charm.
Plus if goblins is using a black/white splash for it's removal color, this deck has enough land destruction that it has little difficulty in cutting goblins off from it's splash color very consistently.
Or simply put, if a deck is using up their turn just to deal with your threat, and you can't protect it, you play enough threats that only have to hit with 2-3 times to win you the game that you can easily recover.
It's not a full proof plan (no deck has a full proof plan), but it works far more often than not.
Nought isn't very good unless you have a reliable way to protect it. While discard is a decent defensive play, it's not nearly as reliable as CounterTop or Force. Moreover, without a way to generate real card advantage, you'll find yourself running out of steam even quicker than Eva usually does.
See my post directly above. You do play more than enough ways to reliably protect it. You play more ways to protect it than do every other Dreadnought based deck out there. On top of that, if anything, Countertop is an unreliable way to protect your threats since you need to draw and successfully resolve and keep on the board two different pieces for Countertop to be able to reliably protect them from anything.
Also what way to generate real card advantage do Eva Green, Team America and Tempo Thresh etc run that this deck doesn't?
Dreadstill plays 4 Counterbalance, 4 Force, 3 Spell Snare, 2 Daze, and 3+ Standstill to make up for the card disadvantage. That's a different story than Thoughtseize and Vision Charm, plus Daze (and 3 islands).
Did you see me mention Dreadstill (other than to state that indeed this deck is nothing like Dreadstill)? I was comparing this deck to Eva Green and Tempo Thresh. Those are tempo decks just like what I posted. Dreadstill is not a tempo deck. And compared to other tempo decks, this deck plays just as many ways to generate card advantage, and often, more ways to reliably protect it's threats than those decks (even if you count Counterbalance despite it being a two card combo that you have no way of reliably or consistently seeing both pieces of early on).
Edit: Just 3 Islands huh? You seem to be implying that there's no way for any of the other lands get these islands.
I'm not distorting anything. I said 3 Islands. But I concede, you probably are able to play daze more reliably that I implied with that statement.
You're still missing my point, which has nothing to do with your comparisons to Eva, Team America, and Tempo Thresh. My point was that the decks that play Dreadnought successfully have a lot of powerful ways to protect it from removal, as well as card advantage to make up for the 2-for-1. Your deck is lacking both.
Your claim was "[I] play more ways to protect it than do every other Dreadnought based deck out there," which is false.
edit: you gotta stop editing your posts after I respond lol...
Count them up. They don't.
4 Counterbalance, 4 Force, 3 Spell Snare, 2 Daze is not more ways to protect Dreadnought than 4 Thoughtseize, 1 Duress, 4 Hymn, 3 Vision Charm and 3 Daze.
And if you don't want to count Hymn since it's not reliable, you shouldn't count Spell Snare (since all of the main and popular removal spells for artifacts/creatures in the format are all either 1 casting cost, 3 casting cost, or 4 casting cost), and shouldn't count Counterbalance either (since it needs a seperate combo piece to function and you have less than 25% chance that you'll see both pieces of the combo early on).
So if you're only counting consistent ways to protect Dreadnought, Dreadstill only plays 6 cards that reliably protect Dreadnought from removal, and this deck plays 11 ways to reliably protect Dreadnought (4 Thoughtseize, 1 Duress, 3 Vision Charm and 3 Daze).
And even if you're talking card advantage. Hymn to Tourach generates only one less card advantage than Standstill. To make up for this, Thoughtseize actually generates one more card advantage than Force of Will. So they're almost even in that respect.
Besides, this deck plays Tombstalker which is almost just as menacing as Dreadnought. So it's quite not as big deal if this deck loses a Dreadnought as it is if Dreadstill loses a Dreadnought.
Quality over quantity... Force >> any amount of discard. Your opponent can Brainstorm in response to Thoughtseize, and hide their Swords. You're also relying on luck that he/she won't just topdeck what he needs.
FYI, Spell Snare hits Pridemage, Stingscourger, Echoing Truth, Smother... just to name a few.
I disagree. If you want to count the pros of Force. You can't ignore the cons. Thoughtseize/Duress show your everything in your opponents hand, lets you hand pick how best to hurt them, and what exactly their game plan will be, and how best to counteract it. A first turn Thoughtseize usually tells pretty much every move that your opponent will be making for the next few turns. It will tell you how much you can hurt them by focusing on LD, what color to cut them off from, and whether to play your threat now, or later. And this is all on top of letting you rob your opponent of their very best card. That's insanely helpful information in every possible setting. Plus FoW often means that you'll be dumping another awesome blue card like Brainstorm just to play it. That's usually quite a setback for yourself as well.
Eva Green proves that discard can be every bit as potent a weapon as countermagic.
Edit:Yes, but are those really anywhere near as prominent as StP, Path, Oblivion Ring, Krosan Grip, Snuff Out, Wrath etc? Pridemage maybe. But the rest you named are very niche cards that maybe one deck in the whole format plays. 90%+ of the artifact/creature kill played in the format doesn't have a 2cc. I would say that more than 50% of the removal played in the format consists of StP by itself.
Anyways, I've spend too much time on this site today rather than working. I'm going to try to take a break from posting here for the rest of the day. I hope you guys understand.
It was fun going back and forth with you keys. You made some good points. :)
Really.
They're more prominent than Oblivion Ring and Wrath.
Add Diabolic Edict, Warren Weirding, Smash to Smithereens, Disenchant, and Naturalize to my list.
what decent decks play those ? even if they brainstormed their swords away or cast it. swordsing a nought is going to give your opponent 12 life. seems like that would equal out to enough turns for them to recover.
you should call this deck noughty eva.
Keys is alright, i also tried to play stifle/nought in my tempo ThreshThreshThreshThreshThresh, also team america is quiet most same agressive but has no way to safe the dreadnought so any artifact/creature removal will resolve and handle the dreadnought.
Quiete for this reason they play goofy+stalker and are able to play stifle for disruption instead of keeping it for a dreadnought.
So keys is pretty correct, notice that dradstill is the only good package for dreadnoughts as it regenerates card disadvantage by countertop/standstill stalling.
You are wrong, keys is right. This deck cannot protect a Dreadnought.
To protect a Dreadnought one must use CounterTop to be able to consistantly stop every possible threat that comes at it. Your deck cannot do this. Discard is not a viable way to protect a Dreadnought for THREE turns. Also Pridemage is about as common as Path, which is very common since the deck to beat right now is Zoo.
Now this point of moot since I believe Dreadnought to be a terrible choice for a meta packed with so much hate.
Lastly, Vision Charm... seriously?? How would Force/Trickbind not just be better?
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