[Deck] ANT (Ad Nauseam Tendrils)

[Valdez]

Please learn to spell?
Spelling nazi...?

More importantly, while Krosan Grip is good against Counterbalance, especially when you can Mystical Tutor it up in response, winning with Doomsday and Emrakul is just plain better. When in doubt, choose to win.
DD/Isle/Emrakul has only one advantage: Its better as long, as they don't have Counterbalance, cuz its easier to doge Pierce/Daze.
But I wasn't able to resolve DD in the first 2-3 Turns with protection vs. Daze/Pierce/Fow/Canonist.
I would never cut Grips for Isle/Emrakul especially since I'm plying no Duress, wich means, that I would have zero answers to CB.
I also don't want to sacrifice additional SB slots to CBT, wich isn't that popular in NRW contrary to Fish and Combo.

My first comment was maybe to polemical and Emrakul/Isle is qute good but I think its inferior to Grip.

[Mr.Happy]

Another question: do you guys tend to save your zero mana artifacts until the last moment (i.e. when about to go off for storm) to build up the storm count, or do you dump them as quickly as possible to avoid hate like discard effects or lock pieces like Chalice, Thorn of Amethyst, etc. that might get dropped? What situations would steer you towards one direction versus the other?

You should dump your LEDs as soon as possible, if you know that your opponent plays discard, lock decks or Dredge (sometimes even vs Counterbalance).

LED + Top is great vs discard decks.

Use Lotus Petal and Chrome Mox to avoid Daze.

In most other situations, it's better to keep them in your hand. You need the artifacts to build Storm, or should wait for a Brainstorm to shuffle them away. 0 mana artifacts are also a nice way to "test" a blind Counterbalance.

[Rune]

Spelling nazi...?

DD/Isle/Emrakul has only one advantage: Its better as long, as they don't have Counterbalance, cuz its easier to doge Pierce/Daze.
But I wasn't able to resolve DD in the first 2-3 Turns with protection vs. Daze/Pierce/Fow/Canonist.
I would never cut Grips for Isle/Emrakul especially since I'm plying no Duress, wich means, that I would have zero answers to CB.
I also don't want to sacrifice additional SB slots to CBT, wich isn't that popular in NRW contrary to Fish and Combo.

My first comment was maybe to polemical and Emrakul/Isle is qute good but I think its inferior to Grip.

The problem with Grip is that you are far from done when you have destroyed their CB. You have most likely time walked yourself by Mystical Tutoring for the it and now you also need to win through their counterspells, and if they also have other forms of hate in form of Meddling Mage/Canonist, winning becomes impossible. With Doomsday + Emrakul you can ignore everything they have, except their counterspells, and you only have to resolve 1 spell to win.

[Valdez]

The problem with Grip is that you are far from done when you have destroyed their CB. You have most likely time walked yourself by Mystical Tutoring for the it and now you also need to win through their counterspells, and if they also have other forms of hate in form of Meddling Mage/Canonist, winning becomes impossible.
Thats the reason, why I play 3 Grips and you also have to win through MM/Canonist + Counterspells with DD into Isle/Emrakul, but i admit, that it is easier to win vs. Canonist, as long as they dont have any counterspells left in their hand.

With Doomsday + Emrakul you can ignore everything they have, except their counterspells, and you only have to resolve 1 spell to win.
And you don't have any options v.s. a resolved CB.

[rsaunder]

Except that you don't care? Unless they flip a 3cc the game's over when you cast doomsday.

[Dia_Bot]

The main advantage of isle/emrakul is that most CB players just dont expect it. Normally CB decks can just let the dd resolve and counter the card drawing spell. If they do that in case of an isle/emrakul DD pile they have just given the game away.

[junkdiver]

I like the idea of Shellmakrul, but don't a lot of CB decks play swords? Am I missing something obvious? (it is totally possible I am missing something obvious ;) )

[Lego]

I like the idea of Shellmakrul, but don't a lot of CB decks play swords? Am I missing something obvious? (it is totally possible I am missing something obvious ;) )

What you're missing: Emrakul has protection from colored spells.

[Piceli89]

Can Emrakul played via Shelldock Isle be prevented by Gaddock Teeg?

[whienot]

Can Emrakul played via Shelldock Isle be prevented by Gaddock Teeg?


Don't think so. Teeg specifically says noncreature spells.

[junkdiver]

What you're missing: Emrakul has protection from colored spells.

That's crazy, I read the card at least a few times, and just couldn't see that... thanks...

[Piceli89]

Don't think so. Teeg specifically says noncreature spells.

Ouch. Owned.

[BantFTW]

Would this really work lol?
Woudn't they always wasteland it??
What then?

[Nidd]

Would this really work lol?
Woudn't they always wasteland it??
What then?

Since when does CounterTop play Wasteland?

[urdjur]

Hi! I'm just learning the ropes on ANT/TES/NLS and still have a few questions after having read the last 5-10 pages or so of this thread. I'll use emidln's curent list as a basis for the discussion:


Engine and Win (4)
1 Tendrils of Agony
1 Ad Nauseam
1 Doomsday
1 Meditate

Tutors and Draw (16)
4 Brainstorm
4 Sensei's Divining Top
4 Burning Wish
4 Mystical Tutor

Protection (7)
4 Duress
3 Thoughtseize

Acceleration (18)
4 Dark Ritual
4 Simian Spirit Guide
4 Lion's Eye Diamond
4 Lotus Petal
2 Chrome Mox

Land (15)
4 Polluted Delta
2 Bloodstained Mire
2 Scalding Tarn
2 Underground Sea
2 Volcanic Island
1 Badlands
1 Island
1 Swamp

//SB (15)
Engine, Win and Draw (9)
1 Tendrils of Agony
1 Empty the Warrens
1 Grape Shot
1 Infernal Tutor
1 Ill Gotten Gains
1 Doomsday
1 Infernal Contract
1 Diminishing Returns
1 Balance of Power
//Hate (6)
1 Telemin Performance
1 Thoughtseize
1 Pulverize
1 Chain of Vapor
1 Firespout
1 Echoing Truth

I'm happy to see that it's possible to cut Ponder and only run Brainstorm and SDT as cantrips. No MD Infernal Tutor/IGG seemed strange at first, but when I thought about it, you might as well go Mystical -> Burning Wish -> IGG as you can go Mystical -> IT -> IGG. Since you probably only want IT as a Mystical target to get IGG as you crack LED, it seems very tight and reasonable to go with IT/IGG in the SB. I love tight and reasonable, so this makes me entirely happy with the first 20 cards of the list.

The 7 discard effect seems like a natural result of cutting white, and perhaps that Counterbalance is a bigger threat to the deck than a hand with multiple counters. Since I have no actual play experience with the deck, I reserve judgement if precisely 7 protection cards is optimal, and if it's optimal for all of them to be 1-for-1 discard. Thoughtseize does seem bad MD though, what with AdN, and DD not exactly being the picture of health either. I guess you simply try to cram in as much protection as you can, and optimize the slots for your meta.

The acceleration department gives me the most twitches. I'd like to cut Chrome Mox entirely. I also note with some surprise that neither Rite of Flame nor Cabal Ritual is in there, but SSG is. I get that SSG has the whole no mana investment thing going for it, but it doesn't build storm and is 3cc for AdN. Cabal Ritual does indeed seem antisynergistic with Mox and SSG not building threshold, but I guess what I'm basically asking is: Could you simply replace the 6 slots of Mox + SSG with a combination of Rite and Cabal? I think I'd prefer that more, but I suppose I'm missing some hidden tech here.

Next I wonder about mana ratios. How was it determined that precisely 15 lands and 18 acceleration was optimal? Play experience and general consensus? Does the 15/18 ratio vary depending on what lands and acceleration you decide to run? Assuming you want to maximize the number of fetches to abuse SDT, going with a 8/7 split of fetches and targets seems unnecessarily "secure". A 10/5 split with 1 each of the duals + island + swamp should be sufficient, no? How often do you need to fetch more than 5 land in a game? If exactly 8 fetches is optimal for another reason, I'd like to know what the rationale is.

Finally some questions re: the sideboard. How much does the lack of green and white hurt when it comes to sideboard choices like Xantid Swarm etc? I assume that it would be simple to change around a couple of the MD duals if it was a big issue.

The "spare engine parts" in the SB seems overly redundant. How important is the extra copy of Tendrils when you could just wish for Infernal Tutor to grab (or IGG to recur) the MD copy, or go for an early EtW instead? How important is Grapeshot as an extra wincon - or is it simply the prefered creature hate over something like Deathmark? Why would you EVER want to run something like Infernal Contract over Meditate? Worrying about REB seems silly when loosing half your life twice against a deck packing red isn't a bit more attractive (the IGG engine seems a better option here) - especially since the deck is obviously not very afriad of throngs of more common blue counters either. Finally, how useful is Diminishing Returns when you could simple IT for the MD AdN instead? Having the opp draw 7 seems more problematic than producing the extra 2 mana for the IT route, when you don't want the IGG/DD engines instead. I also wonder how often one really uses Balance of Power.

A tighter SB engine obviously leaves more room for more situational hate like Sadistic Sacrament etc. that could be really useful on occasion. I have to ask though, why is Pulverize prefered over Shattering Spree, and what's the use of Firespout at all? Doesn't this deck stomp aggro already? Not running a single bounce spell MD seems risky - wouldn't a singe Wipe Away be at least as useful as discard #7 against CounterTop, and more versatile in general too?

[Dia_Bot]

The acceleration department gives me the most twitches. I'd like to cut Chrome Mox entirely. I also note with some surprise that neither Rite of Flame nor Cabal Ritual is in there, but SSG is. I get that SSG has the whole no mana investment thing going for it, but it doesn't build storm and is 3cc for AdN.
Cabal Ritual does indeed seem antisynergistic with Mox and SSG not building threshold, but I guess what I'm basically asking is: Could you simply replace the 6 slots of Mox + SSG with a combination of Rite and Cabal? I think I'd prefer that more, but I suppose I'm missing some hidden tech here.

Personally I would never cut chrome mox. For the simple reason that it's really ideal when you go for AD nauseam, its requires no mana investment, makes any color you want (most of the time) and adds an extra storm.
I agree when you don't go for ad nauseam it's alot worse, but I still see it as a must. SSG is an awsome card against daze, instant speed mana, can't be countered, no mana investment required, etc. But I agree that somethimes the +4 cards with CC 3 can hurt your ability to succesfully Ad Nauseam.
That's why personally I somethimes play a 2-2 or 3-1 split with cabal. I wouldn't recommend rite of flame in NLS because you need to play atleast 3 of them because of its synergetic effect with copies and it only makes red mana (I would recommend them if you play TES though).


Finally some questions re: the sideboard. How much does the lack of green and white hurt when it comes to sideboard choices like Xantid Swarm etc? I assume that it would be simple to change around a couple of the MD duals if it was a big issue.

The "spare engine parts" in the SB seems overly redundant. How important is the extra copy of Tendrils when you could just wish for Infernal Tutor to grab (or IGG to recur) the MD copy, or go for an early EtW instead? How important is Grapeshot as an extra wincon - or is it simply the prefered creature hate over something like Deathmark? Why would you EVER want to run something like Infernal Contract over Meditate? Worrying about REB seems silly when loosing half your life twice against a deck packing red isn't a bit more attractive (the IGG engine seems a better option here) - especially since the deck is obviously not very afriad of throngs of more common blue counters either. Finally, how useful is Diminishing Returns when you could simple IT for the MD AdN instead? Having the opp draw 7 seems more problematic than producing the extra 2 mana for the IT route, when you don't want the IGG/DD engines instead. I also wonder how often one really uses Balance of Power.


Personally I think the extra copy of tendrils is quite important. It allows you to get to tendrils either by mystical tutoring for it or burning wishing for it.
I've also had situations before where I could win by removing one tendrils for chrome mox and still have a tendrils left to win. But those situation come up less frequently.

The nice thing about grapeshot is that it can't be countered and kills hatebears (it can also reduce the amount of storm needed) .Nevertheless I think it's a card that could be removed from the sideboard to make room for other options.

DReturns is the "last out" option, the reason why it's played is because it cost alot less then the IT>AdNauseam option. If you have to burning wish for IT, then IT for Ad Nauseam it will cost you 9 mana 2 for BW, 2 for IT, 5 for AN. you can still win if you only have 6 mana open (and for instance facing lethal damage next turn) going for BW > DReturns. As for Infernal contract, I do believe it's optional. It has it's uses, for instance when you only have black/red mana available you can go for DD>IC, or when like you said you're facing REB. I think it's really up to you if you believe that's worth a sideboard slot or not.

[citanul]

you might as well go Mystical -> Burning Wish -> IGG as you can go Mystical -> IT -> IGG


Keep in mind that Burning Wish removes itself from the game. So going through the Igg-Pile with Burning Wish is different than with an Infernal Tutor and the IGG maindeck.



The acceleration department gives me the most twitches. I'd like to cut Chrome Mox entirely. I also note with some surprise that neither Rite of Flame nor Cabal Ritual is in there, but SSG is. I get that SSG has the whole no mana investment thing going for it, but it doesn't build storm and is 3cc for AdN. Cabal Ritual does indeed seem antisynergistic with Mox and SSG not building threshold, but I guess what I'm basically asking is: Could you simply replace the 6 slots of Mox + SSG with a combination of Rite and Cabal? I think I'd prefer that more, but I suppose I'm missing some hidden tech here.

It's not about mana acceleration, it's about having initial mana. What's the use of Rite and cabal if you'll never be able to produce R or B. That's why Chrome Mox and SSG are chosen. Emidln actually ran a list with 4 Rite before and changed it.



Next I wonder about mana ratios. How was it determined that precisely 15 lands and 18 acceleration was optimal? Play experience and general consensus? Does the 15/18 ratio vary depending on what lands and acceleration you decide to run? Assuming you want to maximize the number of fetches to abuse SDT, going with a 8/7 split of fetches and targets seems unnecessarily "secure". A 10/5 split with 1 each of the duals + island + swamp should be sufficient, no? How often do you need to fetch more than 5 land in a game? If exactly 8 fetches is optimal for another reason, I'd like to know what the rationale is.


All I know is that people originally ran 14 lands and 3 Chrome Mox. The 15th land got added and the 3rd Chrome Mox got shipped.
As for fetches. There's no real consensus. I run 9 while other run 7. But seeing that there are a lot of Wastelands I wouldn't count on having 1 dual of each being sufficient.



The "spare engine parts" in the SB seems overly redundant. How important is the extra copy of Tendrils when you could just wish for Infernal Tutor to grab (or IGG to recur) the MD copy, or go for an early EtW instead? How important is Grapeshot as an extra wincon - or is it simply the prefered creature hate over something like Deathmark? Why would you EVER want to run something like Infernal Contract over Meditate? Worrying about REB seems silly when loosing half your life twice against a deck packing red isn't a bit more attractive (the IGG engine seems a better option here) - especially since the deck is obviously not very afriad of throngs of more common blue counters either. Finally, how useful is Diminishing Returns when you could simple IT for the MD AdN instead? Having the opp draw 7 seems more problematic than producing the extra 2 mana for the IT route, when you don't want the IGG/DD engines instead. I also wonder how often one really uses Balance of Power.

Tendrils can be Wished for. Sometimes you just don't have the mana for the Wish - Infernal - Tendrils.
Grapeshot is used to kill hatebears by Wish -> Grapeshot. But it adds another benefit. With Helm of Awakening you can go infinite with a Doomsday pile which can win you games against life gain combos.
I've never played with Diminishing returns so can't tell.

[urdjur]

Thanks for the informative replies.


Keep in mind that Burning Wish removes itself from the game. So going through the Igg-Pile with Burning Wish is different than with an Infernal Tutor and the IGG maindeck.

Ouch! Didn't realize that. This makes me think that IGG should be MD anyway. Or rather, it awakens a bigger questions: what engines to run.

Doomsday: This seems to be the Soviet tank of engines. It's resilient against blue, useable against most aggro scenarios and you can build piles to defeat pretty much anything. You'd probably want to abuse SDT anyway, so I'm not counting that as an opportunity cost. The only downside seems to be that it can be a tad slow.

IGG: Costs no life at all but relies on the GY and bad against blue. Still so versatile as to deserve its slot IMO.

Ad Nauseam: My general impression from reading storm threads is that AdN is the default option in MUs that aren't actually that difficult. If you're pressed for life against non-blue, better to IGG. If you're up against blue, better to Doomsday. So when does AdN actually trump the other engines? Because if the tight spots can be won without it, it seems like the easy games could be won as well. And of course, the gain of cutting it would be much greater than freeing up a slot - it would mean never worrying about the cmc of a card, and being able to optimize the other engines accordingly instead.

Diminishing Returns: If this is used much in the same way as AdN, with similar effectiveness, no life cost, without taking up any space MD, and most importantly with no deck building opportunity cost, why use AdN at all? If it's not anywhere near as good as AdN, aren't people just kidding themselves devoting a precious SB slot to it then?

No "engine": Many of the lists I've seen are perfectly capable of just playing out some acceleration, cantrips and fetching EtW, Belcher-style. That's yet another option that sometimes presents itself. How many do we realistically need?

Maybe I'm being to hard on Ad Nauseam. After all, it seems AdN Tendrils has made a bigger impact on the meta than IGG and DD-FT did in their day. I'm not sure that necessarily signifies that Ad Nauseam is a better engine. I also get a feeling that it's easy to get carried away, wanting a storm list to able to "do everything", rather than having a solid plan against everything (another amibition entirely). Does Ad Nauseam really bring that much to the table here? Because the opportunity cost of running it sure is something to consider.


It's not about mana acceleration, it's about having initial mana. What's the use of Rite and cabal if you'll never be able to produce R or B. That's why Chrome Mox and SSG are chosen.

I can understand this need when you only have 5 mana and use AdN, having dropped land for the turn. And I assume 4 Lotus Petal aren't enough in that situation, and that LEDs are sometimes hard to use if you AdN? Without AdN, it seems just having a couple of lands on the board would be sufficient to get the ritual effects going, especially with LEDs and petals.

How much initial mana is enough though? Because I've seen lists with no SSG and 2 Chrome Mox, as well as lists with 4 SSG (4 petals and leds in all of course). ALL your acceleration certainly doesn't have to be initial mana, and you can't play Dark Ritual of an SSG either. 2x Chrome Mox only seems useful as Petals #5-6 when you AdN - is it really that necessary to run them?

[theintangiblefatman]

In my experience Ad Nauseam is the best engine against decks packing heavy discard and against random hate other than Chalice/Canonist/Teeg. It needs the least setup amongst all engines, essentially only requiring five mana to win, and drawing you into the bounce to hit that Meddling Mage or Runed Halo or what have you.

You don't really have to run Chrome Mox, but foregoing it makes Ad Nauseam quite a bit worse. You either have to go in with mana floating or accept that a decent percentage of the time you won't hit enough initial sources to win that turn. I'm with you on the Chrome Mox sucks bandwagon, but there's really not anything else to play there.



How do you guys handle Reanimator? I seem to have no luck against the deck. When I have fast hands, they have a fist full of disruption for it; when I have slow hands with Duress effects and bounce, they drop Iona turn two with Force backup through it. It is very similar to Counterbalance decks, in that it plays Force and Daze (and Thoughtseize) and can lock you out of the game as early as turn two. I tried running TES instead of NLS in an effort to race it in a tournament this afternoon, and got crushed by back to back turn two Iona. Is it worth running Faerie Macabre or going with a more extreme transformational board to Helm/Leyline?

[sirisaacnuton]

Hi all. I'm getting back into Legacy (and Magic in general) after a bit of an absence and I'm looking to find myself a new Legacy deck. I'm really liking the look of this kind of deck, but I've been tinkering with it some and for the life of me can't figure out what the deck is trying to do sometimes.

I've played Iggy Pop in Legacy a decent bit, enough to be familiar with the interactions among LED, IGG, and Infernal Tutor (though more with IGG chains than a singleton in that deck), and I'm familiar with some of the other more obvious strengths of this deck (interaction of Brainstorm/Ponder/Top with Fetches and the general I-win-ness of Ad Nauseam).

But I cannot for the life of me figure out what makes Doomsday such a win card. Could someone give me a couple pointers on what the deck wants to set up with DD for the win? I've been pouring over the cards and honestly I just feel like I'm missing something with the interactions.

For reference, this is the build I was tinkering with (lifted from about 2 pages back):

1 Flooded Strand
4 Polluted Delta
3 Underground Sea
1 Island
1 Swamp
1 Tropical Island
1 Verdant Catacombs
1 Misty Rainforest
1 Scalding Tarn

3 Cabal Ritual
3 Infernal Tutor
1 Ad Nauseam
1 Ill-Gotten Gains
2 Ponder
4 Brainstorm
3 Chrome Mox
4 Lion's Eye Diamond
1 Tendrils of Agony
1 Meditate
1 Doomsday
1 Wipe Away
4 Duress
2 Thoughtseize
4 Mystical Tutor
3 Sensei's Divining Top
4 Dark Ritual
4 Lotus Petal

Sideboard
2 Doomsday
1 Chain of Vapor
1 Echoing Truth
1 Krosan Grip
3 Xantid Swarm
1 Bayou
1 Extirpate
2 Hurkyl's Recall
1 Emrakul, the Aeons Torn
1 Shelldock Isle
1 Deathmark

So for something like this, what does a winning DD pile look like? What are the situations where you want to fire off the one IGG (other than the obvious one where the Tendrils ends up in the yard or something)? What is the one random Meditate for? My guess on Meditate is that it's to be the top card of the DD stack, but again, I'm just having trouble picturing what the DD stack looks like.

And finally, a question more about the playstyle of the deck. Given the following opening hand, what the opening play look like?

Brainstorm
Top
Lotus Petal
Duress
Underground Sea
Polluted Delta
Dark Ritual

Does the deck want to drop the Top turn one to go ahead and get it online? If so, does it activate the Top before the next draw? Do you wait to pop the fetch land until after the Brainstorm? Do you just hit them with Duress? Do you blow the Rit to drop Duress followed by Top with activation, possibly using the Petal to Brainstorm depending on what you find? I'm trying to figure out how the deck likes to balance out efficiency with explosiveness.

I realize it's a lot of big questions, but thanks to anyone who responds! I'm really looking forward to trying to get into the intricacies of the deck.

[emidln]

I'm happy to see that it's possible to cut Ponder and only run Brainstorm and SDT as cantrips. No MD Infernal Tutor/IGG seemed strange at first, but when I thought about it, you might as well go Mystical -> Burning Wish -> IGG as you can go Mystical -> IT -> IGG. Since you probably only want IT as a Mystical target to get IGG as you crack LED, it seems very tight and reasonable to go with IT/IGG in the SB. I love tight and reasonable, so this makes me entirely happy with the first 20 cards of the list.

The real reason you want IT 90% of the time is that it's the third most efficient way of casting Ad Nauseam (behind Ad Nauseam and Mystical->Ad Nauseam). That it sometimes destroys decks that otherwise couldn't beat you anyway with little thought is just a bonus. That said, I'm not impressed by it as a third option and found myself in situations where I couldn't AdN but didn't want to IGG either. This made Wish->Doomsday very attractive, and Wish provides alternate benefits in protection, removal, additional win conditions, and varying bombs.


The 7 discard effect seems like a natural result of cutting white, and perhaps that Counterbalance is a bigger threat to the deck than a hand with multiple counters. Since I have no actual play experience with the deck, I reserve judgement if precisely 7 protection cards is optimal, and if it's optimal for all of them to be 1-for-1 discard. Thoughtseize does seem bad MD though, what with AdN, and DD not exactly being the picture of health either. I guess you simply try to cram in as much protection as you can, and optimize the slots for your meta.

This doesn't make sense. Why is losing two life bad with Ad Nauseam in the deck? There is nothing that forces you to win with Ad Nauseam and given so many initial mana sources and win conditions you often don't need as much life to win the game. Doomsday requires 2 life to combo off with. It is completely orthogonal to Doomsday since anytime you need protection after Doomsday you use Duress in your pile.

Discard providing hand information, the ability to punish mulligans, and the ability to remove permanent-based threats is far more important than dealing with decks that run multiple hard counters (given that they largely don't exist besides Landstill, which you can't lose to anyway unless they side in 8+ cards that are Mages plus Counterbalances). Tempo Thresh is on a large decline, and UW Tempo and Merfolk are both extremely vulnerable to discard effects. Not splashing into a 4th or 5th color is a further benefit to the 7-8 discard.



The acceleration department gives me the most twitches. I'd like to cut Chrome Mox entirely. I also note with some surprise that neither Rite of Flame nor Cabal Ritual is in there, but SSG is. I get that SSG has the whole no mana investment thing going for it, but it doesn't build storm and is 3cc for AdN. Cabal Ritual does indeed seem antisynergistic with Mox and SSG not building threshold, but I guess what I'm basically asking is: Could you simply replace the 6 slots of Mox + SSG with a combination of Rite and Cabal? I think I'd prefer that more, but I suppose I'm missing some hidden tech here.

Rite of Flame and Cabal Ritual, at least 80% of the time, provide a net mana of one. Rite of Flame causes an initial mana investment of R (an off color) and Cabal Ritual requires an initial investment of two but in the primary combo color. Neither are good off Ad Nauseam without first seeing initial mana sources. Further, Cabal Ritual providing 5 mana is something that is required more by UB ANT since it lacks most of the ability to properly abuse LED vs discard strategies by way of 4 SDT. SSG provides most of what Rite of Flame and Cabal Ritual do while acting as an initial mana source and helping to combat Daze and Spell Pierce.

In regards to the issue of it costing three, count the total CMC of the deck and subtract 5. Now compare to the Grand Prix lists. Note where NLS has more and cheaper win conditions while providing more initial mana and a comparable average mana cost (avg mana cost = (total CMC - 5)/59). I have never lost a game soley due to flipping a lot of Simian Spirit Guides. I've lost a lot of games where I didn't run SSG and didn't hit enough initial mana to win that turn.


Next I wonder about mana ratios. How was it determined that precisely 15 lands and 18 acceleration was optimal? Play experience and general consensus? Does the 15/18 ratio vary depending on what lands and acceleration you decide to run? Assuming you want to maximize the number of fetches to abuse SDT, going with a 8/7 split of fetches and targets seems unnecessarily "secure". A 10/5 split with 1 each of the duals + island + swamp should be sufficient, no? How often do you need to fetch more than 5 land in a game? If exactly 8 fetches is optimal for another reason, I'd like to know what the rationale is.

Fewer than 3 red duals completely rules out Pulverize. To be honest, Pulverize really wants 4 red duals, but the value of shuffle effects and basics is greater to me than the games I lost because I can't cast Pulverize due to double waste. I've played 7, 8, and 9 fetches. I feel that I like 7 or 8 the best.


Finally some questions re: the sideboard. How much does the lack of green and white hurt when it comes to sideboard choices like Xantid Swarm etc? I assume that it would be simple to change around a couple of the MD duals if it was a big issue.

If you want to, you can replace a fetchland or an underground sea with a Tropical Island and/or Bayou. Green gives you Xantid Swarm and to a lesser extent (due to Shelldock Isle+Emrakul) Krosan Grip. If you feel like 8 duress isn't enough and pyroblast isn't good enough, by all means play Swarm. I don't.

White is awful. If you want a chant effect, play Xantid Swarm. Chant is bad vs Counterbalance and significantly worse than Xantid Swarm vs Merfolk. The only place where it's notably better is vs Dredge, but you don't really need much help in that matchup, and anything you play is worse than a Ravenous Trap. Vs Storm, you can't side enough chants to turn into the control player and you don't want to really ruin your engine. It's better to use Duresses as necessary to play offense and defense and setup eot Ad Naus or wish->combo bullet.


The "spare engine parts" in the SB seems overly redundant. How important is the extra copy of Tendrils when you could just wish for Infernal Tutor to grab (or IGG to recur) the MD copy, or go for an early EtW instead? How important is Grapeshot as an extra wincon - or is it simply the prefered creature hate over something like Deathmark? Why would you EVER want to run something like Infernal Contract over Meditate? Worrying about REB seems silly when loosing half your life twice against a deck packing red isn't a bit more attractive (the IGG engine seems a better option here) - especially since the deck is obviously not very afriad of throngs of more common blue counters either. Finally, how useful is Diminishing Returns when you could simple IT for the MD AdN instead? Having the opp draw 7 seems more problematic than producing the extra 2 mana for the IT route, when you don't want the IGG/DD engines instead. I also wonder how often one really uses Balance of Power.

Your reasoning here shows you have never even sleeved up the deck/goldfished it on MWS.

Wish->Tendrils is extremely common and one of the reasons NLS has better Ad Nauseams than anything besides TES (which, incidentally, also runs Wish->Tendrils). It's useful in LED Doomsday piles to add storm for free and serves as an out to increasingly common hate like Sad Sac.

Grapeshot is only necessary if you're playing Helm of Awakening. It's rare that you'll wish for it if you have Deathmark in your sideboard since Deathmark requires less setup to kill hate bears and is cheaper (doesn't tend to require burning accel). Wish->Grapeshot then play Tendrils is extremely rare and not something I've encountered since play some of the original TES builds.

If you examine the list, I'm playing Meditate. Infernal Contract is a wish target that lets you turn Burning Wish into a draw4, particularly efficient when paired with Doomsday. I use Wish->Draw4 constantly and would posit that anyone who doesn't do it with NLS is missing turns where they could win had they thought through their situation. Further, the black draw4 is sided in vs blue/red tempo decks (Tempo Thresh and Dreadstill) so that it doesn't get REB'd. These decks will rarely keep in many Lightning Bolts vs you since they have so many other, far more effective cards and REB is not something that you can afford to waste Duress effects on.

Diminishing Returns is extremely useful for pushing the goldfish speed vs aggro. You can't simply IT->AdN because that costs a total of 9 mana. Wish->DReturns costs 6 mana for a crapshot and 7-8 mana for a nearly guaranteed win. If you have 9 mana, go for the Ad Nauseam, but making 9 mana doesn't always happen, especially in the early turns where it would be useful vs aggro (decks that largely cannot punish you for a failed DReturns anyway).

Nobody will play Balance of Power now that Recurring Insight is legal. Balance of Power never realy came up for me since anytime I wanted that card (only vs control), I could either afford to wait to get to a total of 6 with SDT in play(for Doomsday), cast ETW (because it's early), or cast DReturns (again because it's early). If it's mid to late game, you probably have SDT and even without it, Doomsday or Infernal Contract are both likely to be better for you. If it's early, DReturns can screw them out of a hand that was good enough to keep without a way to counter your Wish->Bomb or ETW can put you in a good position vs non-EE blue. Recurring Insight fits into the strategy as it's a mana cheaper than Wish->IT->Ad Nauseam, and doesn't penalize you if you fail (although if you fail with 10+ cards, you probably deserve to).




A tighter SB engine obviously leaves more room for more situational hate like Sadistic Sacrament etc. that could be really useful on occasion. I have to ask though, why is Pulverize prefered over Shattering Spree, and what's the use of Firespout at all? Doesn't this deck stomp aggro already? Not running a single bounce spell MD seems risky - wouldn't a singe Wipe Away be at least as useful as discard #7 against CounterTop, and more versatile in general too?


Why do you need a bounce spell? If they resolve Counterbalance you have a one turn window to Mystical Tutor and hope it doesn't get countered. Further, if they do it on turn two, you have to hope they don't have some sort of manip (say, SDT), to just hang a 3cc on top during their end step each turn (since upkeep Wipe Away to avoid the 3 isn't practical (they just replay CB that turn). Your plan vs Counterbalance is to Duress them or go all-in on ETW/Ad Nauseam very fast. Game 2 you side in Shelldock Isle/Emrakul/additional Doomsdays and hope they don't have a lot of threes. The counterbalance matchup is about 50/50 preboard (vs Pro Bant) and favorable postboard with the Shelldrazi plan.

Wipe Away isn't more versatile than discard. All maindeck played permanent-based hate (with the exception of Enchantress stuff) is removable game one via Burning Wish. If you play Pulp_Fiction or Vroman's list (aka include the UU sorcery bounce spell), even enchantments are answerable. Discard lets you resolve your bombs. If you can resolve your bombs, you can deal with any permanent-hate except for Counterbalance, which you might not even be able to deal with effectively if you do have Wipe Away (you have to find Wipe Away, have to assemble a kill, and do this before they land a SDT and find a 3 to camp out on top of their deck). You're better off trying to setup bait for them to tap out of a 2 so you can Wish->ETW, and if you can't do that fast, better off scooping in game one to save time in your match.

Again, to play this deck you need to do math. Do the math on the mana cost of Pulverize, Shattering Spree, and then compare the two. Now, if you still don't understand, you probably will want to find another deck to play because NLS isn't it for you.

Firespout, as explained in the pages you claimed to have read, was due to Breathweapon (and myself) not having better cards to play in the sideboard.

@ Ad Nauseam

It's the most efficient storm engine. Nothing is cheaper than 3BB, as reliable, and only one card. Doomsday is close, but has a lot of conditionals and ends up costing either extra mana or extra cards/permanents to setup. IGG costs a lot of extra mana and imposes a graveyard condition and needs a way to find Tendrils (IT, extra Burning Wish, Mystical + draw spell). DReturns appears cheaper, but to be reliable to kill that turn will require additional mana floating (1-2) to get the win. Further, DReturns is generally played the turn it is found via Burning Wish, making its actual cost 3UUR (although there are some scenarios where it's correct to Wish->Returns, pass to set it up for next turn). ETW is vulnerable to other combo decks and cheap sweepers (the major one being EE) and is highly dependent on your opening hand. If ETW is not playe early, it opens itself up to a myriad of hate.

The reason we play the other stuff is that you don't always open up Duress + Mystical/AdN + 5 mana. There are games (even without SDT in the deck, say in a UB Saito list) where you spend a couple turns playing Cantrips/Mystical Tutor to assemble the combo. These games can end up diasterous in a lot of matchups and you quickly find yourself playing really shitty backup plans like double Tendrils (+ a healthy dose of prayer), mini tendrils Tendrils into 5 more mana for Adn, or losing. DReturns helps vs aggro. Doomsday helps vs randomness and attrition. ETW helps in certain blue matchups, and as an opportunity plan, is still effective. IGG comes in vs the heavy discard decks and allows Doomsday to be more effective in game ones vs certain hate (Chalice @ 1, heavy discard).

[sirisaacnuton]

So I just noticed the link in emidln's sig about Doomsday piles. This has answered a large majority of my questions already. Oops. :smile:

[urdjur]

Your reasoning here shows you have never even sleeved up the deck/goldfished it on MWS.

That's correct, and I hope I never have to. However, I want to have a fundamental understanding of storm archetypes and their card choices - partly to be able to SB better against them, and partly as a purely theoretical exercise.


Again, to play this deck you need to do math. Do the math on the mana cost of Pulverize, Shattering Spree, and then compare the two. Now, if you still don't understand, you probably will want to find another deck to play because NLS isn't it for you.

The benefits of Pulverize are obvious of course, but since some lists run SS as a fetch target and others run Pulverize, it's difficult for a non storm player to understand if uncounterability or being free is more important. Especially since there seems to be no concensus on bounce cmcs either - by your reasoning, it would seem best to avoid the 3cc ones. Since I have no real interest in playing the deck in a near future, and more experienced people have already done the math and considered every card choice carefully (I hope), I thought it more efficient to simply ask away. Might help a few other lurkers that hesitate to ask stupid questions in the process too.

To be more precise, I'm not questioning if this or that wish target , build strategy or engine has its uses or not. Obviously it does. If it didn't, it wouldn't be played. I'm just trying to wrap my head around why so many options are needed (apart from satisfying the need to stroke one's genius, as it were, in solving the puzzles that present themselves). For example, let's return to the engines:


@ Ad Nauseam
It's the most efficient storm engine. Nothing is cheaper than 3BB, as reliable, and only one card. Doomsday is close, but has a lot of conditionals and ends up costing either extra mana or extra cards/permanents to setup.
[...]
The reason we play the other stuff is that you don't always open up Duress + Mystical/AdN + 5 mana.

It seems to me that your initial argument to run Ad Nauseam is that it's so cheap and efficient. Then you say that you play the other stuff because you don't always get 5 mana. Why would a more costly engine help if you have a lack of mana?

theintangiblefatman commented on the tactical worth of Ad Nauseam like so:


In my experience Ad Nauseam is the best engine against decks packing heavy discard and against random hate other than Chalice/Canonist/Teeg.

So I go "OK", but then you say:


IGG comes in vs the heavy discard decks and allows Doomsday to be more effective in game ones vs certain hate (Chalice @ 1, heavy discard).

So then it seems that IGG and Doomsday - not AdN - are your prefered methods of fighting heavy discard?

To me, this implies that you can fight heavy discard in a number of ways (to be expected in a deck packing 347 or so different options), using any of the three engines, but theintangiblefatman prefers the AdN route. That's still not a strong argument for the "need" to run AdN.

That leaves cheap and effective, but you mentioned the other options were good when you didn't have enough mana to even AdN, so that makes me confused as to the worth of a particularly cheap engine (obviously, other storm decks in the past have managed to make ends meet without it). As for effective, I guess my lazy ass will simply have to trust the combined math and experience of the pilots posting here, but it seems the other two engines let you elimate any random factor (such as what you happen to flip) on your part at least. For example:


It needs the least setup amongst all engines, essentially only requiring five mana to win, and drawing you into the bounce to hit that Meddling Mage or Runed Halo or what have you.

But with Doomsday, you have absolute certainty of drawing that bounce. And it's no more expensive, as you'll realistically have to Mystical Tutor for that bounce unless you plan on flipping a lot.

Could somebody explain to me, in a rational and non-anecdotal fashion (so that a 5 year old could understand it) why an AdN hybrid build is more effective than throwing AdN out the window and optimizing you build for DDay, IGG, Burning Wish and friends? Having no experience with storm, I find it hard to wrap myself around that it's worth going to all the trouble just because it's 1 mana cheaper.

[Wave]

Could somebody explain to me, in a rational and non-anecdotal fashion (so that a 5 year old could understand it) why an AdN hybrid build is more effective than throwing AdN out the window and optimizing you build for DDay, IGG, Burning Wish and friends? Having no experience with storm, I find it hard to wrap myself around that it's worth going to all the trouble just because it's 1 mana cheaper.

Actually that one mana makes all the difference in the world, here are some examples

Some Common plays

Land - > Ritual -> Ritual = 5 Mana

Land - > Land - > Threshold Cabal Ritual - > Ad Nauseam = 5 Mana

Land - > Land - > Dark Ritual - > Cabal Ritual - > Ad Nauseam = 5 Mana

Land - >Land - > Ritual - > Lion's Eye Diamond - > Infernal Tutor - > Ad Nauseam = 7 Mana

If it was 6 mana it would either take one turn more to play another land or it takes another mana accelerator. To simple it down the Ad Nauseam is there for the early wins, and the unconditional wins as long as you are over 11-13 life, although it is possible to win with lesser life it greatly increases your chances of death. It is good against discard because those decks are often slow, and it only takes an Ad Nauseam to win, the most unconditional win there is.
Positive - Requires only 5 mana, and no further requirements except life
Negative - It requires at least 11-13 life

The Doomsday is there for the long games where you want to wait a couple of turns and set up a good hand, this is where Ad Nauseam don't work since the longer you wait the lesser life you get. The downside of Ad Nauseam is it's requrements. You almost always need an draw spel when playing it, unless you want to go for the pass the turn pilse, although then you open yourself up to a world of difficulties.
Positive - you Can wait longer than Ad Nauseam, there are a world of possibilities with the right setup
Negative - It requires some setup to win - hence not being as unconditional as Ad Nauseam

Ill-Gotten Gains This is mainly here since the old Ad Nauseam days although it has some practical usefullness. It is good against all non blue decks providing at least 3 extra storm. It brings back Tendrils that have been discarded and other useful cards that might be needed to win and it plays well with multiple ritaul or LED effects together with Infernal Tutor -> tap 2 land play LED play Ritual play Infernal Tutor pop led discard hand search for Ill-Gotten Gains and play it bring back LED Ritual and infernal tutor -> play ritual LED and infernal tutor into Tendrils - together with an extra ritual or LED it is possible to search with infernal tutor 2 times bringing the storm up high enough for a kill. It utilizes LED and Infernal Tutor in an effective way and can discard the opponents hand if played first turn ;)
Positive - it generates extra storm from the sources that you already have access to, utilizes LED and Infernal Tutor very well
Negative - it is really bad against decks that can return FoW blue card and Spell pierce

Diminishing Return - It is an Ooooh shit button as someone pointed out, only requiering a few mana after an Burning Wish - that can't Fetch AD Nauseam or when you are low on life. In my personal opinion it is not needed together with Doomsday so I've cut it from the board


Edit
forgot to ask, how has the Shelldock Emrakul worked out so far? How much does it improve your CB matchup?
And on the reanimate matchup, maybe you should try Telemin performance in the board and one sorcery bounce to fetch with Burning wish, the Telemin Performance is also good against the mirror and Solidarity. Although the match is hard anyway it might better it slightly.

[emidln]

The "don't always have 5 mana for Ad Nauseam" has an implied "early" attached to it that most people should be able to figure out. As the game goes longer, your life total lessens (sometimes very quickly), and you end up not being able to use Ad Nauseam. In this mid to late games situations, Doomsday costing 4 mana but needing extra cards in hand or cantrips, or playing DReturns not needing life start to look very attractive.

AdN, Doomsday, and IT->IGG are all tactical options against discard that I would not want to be without. Ad Nauseam requires an discard deck to hit you with early targeted discard and won't abuse LED very well (one of your best plays against discard decks is to dump artifact mana and wait for the ability to use a mystical tutor or topdecked bomb). Doomsday and IT->IGG both allow you to win the game using LED mana + lands, something that is not usually possible without SDT for AdN if you pass turn 2.

[urdjur]

Thanks a lot Wave, that really sorts out the pros and cons for me. Go Sweden!

[JonBarber]

Well well, look what won Atlanta SSG... http://sales.starcitygames.com//deckdatabase/displaydeck.php?DeckID=32454

[Nidd]

Well well, look what won Atlanta SSG... http://sales.starcitygames.com//deckdatabase/displaydeck.php?DeckID=32454
That list looks like some delicious copy pasta.

*sigh*

[JonBarber]

That list looks like some delicious copy pasta.

*sigh*

Why fix whats not broken? (Actually, its super broken, but requires no fixing ;D)

[cdr]

He did add an IGG sideboard, which is far from a terrible idea.

[JonBarber]

He did add an IGG sideboard, which is far from a terrible idea.

Yeah, I'm actually a big fan of that idea.

[Ursus]

Emidln-> Can you tell us what your current sideboard is pls? I will try to play NLS at a local tournament, but I have some problems with my sideboard.

How does NLS win against dragon stompy and stax? I can see that neither BreathWeapon or Emidln have Hurkyl's Recall in the sideboard (even before Emrakul). Is it just good enough to play Burning Wish->Shattering Spree? I don't think Pulverize looks very good against trinisphere. Echoing Truth helps a bit in those matchups of course.

[Dia_Bot]

If you want a card tho win against stacks/stompy decks you can always add 1 Rebuild to your sideboard. I've always found rebuild the most effective answer against those decks. But it's an instant ofcourse.A lot of people removed it from the sideboard because those decks are just to rare to waste SB slots on.

[emidln]

My current sideboard is:

1 Extirpate
4 Spell Pierce
3 Misdirection
2 Emrakul, the Aeons Torn
2 Blazing Archon
1 Chain of Vapor
1 Deathmark
1 Show and Tell

Of course, this is for a different deck as I no longer play this deck due to thinking UB combo-control with Forces, Doomsdays, and Show and Tells is a better call.

More importantly, sideboarding is a metagame decision that the pilot needs to make themselves. My sideboard for NLS wouldn't help you. If I ran NLS, I'd try to fit in a mix of the cards below. The cuts would probably be at Eye of Nowhere, 3rd Doomsday, and either Infernal Tutor or Recurring Insight (but keep one of them).

1 Tendrils of Agony
1 Empty the Warrens
1 Ill-Gotten Gains
3 Doomsday
1 Diminishing Returns
1 Recurring Insight
1 Infernal Tutor
1 Infernal Contract
1 Thoughtseize
1 Pulverize
1 Eye of Nowhere
1 Deathmark
1 Shelldock Isle
1 Emrakul, the Aeons Torn
1 Chain of Vapor

I don't feel the need for more than 8 discard vs blue. Some people like/want Xantid Swarms, Pyroblasts or Vexing Shusher. I think the Discard + Doomsday plan into Emrakul is the best thing ANT has vs CB and definitely would include it. Your choices in these matters might vary. Further, you might enjoy a different bounce spell rather than Chain of Vapor, but I like that one.

Look at how much Shattering Spree costs under Trinisphere:

2R or RRR (depending on whether or not Chalice at 1 is in play).

Look at how much Pulverize costs with Trinisphere in play:

3

Here's a question for you: are you willing to pass the turn after blowing up their artifacts? I'm not. I won't do it until I'm sure I can combo off afterwards. That makes the lands I'd sac to Pulverize already used to pay for Pulverize.

Here's another question: what happens to your Shattering Spree if they have Chalice @ 1, Trinisphere and something else (maybe another Trinisphere, a diff Chalice, etc)? Pulverize doesn't care.

[xTrainx]

What do you guys think about this list - it's more of a target list for me. I like Chant in the deck just as additional protection. Let me know what you think.

3 Flooded Strand
4 Polluted Delta
3 Scalding Tarn
1 Tropical Island
3 Underground Sea
1 Tundra
1 Scrubland

3 Orim's Chant
2 Thoughtseize
4 Duress

3 Sensei's Divining Top
4 Mystical Tutor
3 Infernal Tutor

2 Ad Nauseam
2 Tendrils of Agony

4 Cabal Ritual
4 Dark Ritual
4 Lotus Petal
4 Lion's Eye Diamond
3 Chrome Mox

I also recently picked up a Meditate for ~2$, so I'm tinkering with the idea of DDANT, with the following changes:

Out:

1 Chrome Mox
2 Orim's Chant

1 Sensei's Divining Top
1 Meditate
1 Doomsday

----------------------

With Top on the board...pile would be:

Meditate, Dark Ritual, Dark Ritual, Tendrils of Agony, Ponder(could be placed farther up to garner one additional storm).

Have BBBU on the board: Flip top, meditate, ritual, ritual, agony - with an additional mana you can add 1-2 storm, depending on if it's one or two mana, and if any is blue.

Thanks for the help.

[nodahero]

What is your current list Emidlin? You can PM it to me if it is more appropriate.

[JonBarber]

I feel like B/U(w) ANT and NLS need different threads. They perform pretty differently and most NLS players don't care too much for the B/U list and vice versa. I'd also be curious to see the difference in finishes between both lists. Maybe its just me, but I don't tend to hear about NLS placing as often as the more stand ad nauseam list.

[lordofthepit]

Here's a pretty trivial logistical question: how do you guys keep track of mana and storm count? I'm thinking of using dice the next time I play, but I don't want to give away that I'm playing storm. Do you just keep everything away until you're ready to "go off"? Or do people already know you guys as "the combo guy"?

[BreathWeapon]

If you're making cuts to Emidln's SB, I find the Infernal Contract and Eye of Nowhere are the least used cards FWIW - altho' Infernal Tutor is a very close 3rd.

[citanul]

Here's a pretty trivial logistical question: how do you guys keep track of mana and storm count? I'm thinking of using dice the next time I play, but I don't want to give away that I'm playing storm. Do you just keep everything away until you're ready to "go off"? Or do people already know you guys as "the combo guy"?


Most people know me as a combo guy.
But if I'm facing strangers I keep my dice in my bag. Then when I am going off I grab them and start using my dice.
Not everyone with dice is a combo player though. An Ichorid player around here has a bunch of Zombie tokens with several Goblin tokens on top of them. So if the opponent ever catches a glimpse of it they'll think he's a Goblin player. You got to ignore such things from good players.

[chokin]

Most people know me as a combo guy.
But if I'm facing strangers I keep my dice in my bag. Then when I am going off I grab them and start using my dice.
Not everyone with dice is a combo player though. An Ichorid player around here has a bunch of Zombie tokens with several Goblin tokens on top of them. So if the opponent ever catches a glimpse of it they'll think he's a Goblin player. You got to ignore such things from good players.

I've done the Goblin token thing. Mind tricks in general are pretty funny. I know there was a player with a white deck who had one Mana Tithe in his sideboard and left that on top to "accidentally" show it to his opponents. All of his opponents played game two as if he had Mana Tithe. But let's get back on track.

@lordofthepit - I bought one of those blocks of mini dice (like 36 of them?). They can be used for tons of stuff like Vial, Jitte, etc. And often I share them with my opponent. I've found that pencil and paper work best for storm though. You can very quickly jot down mana by color and tally up storm. It just takes a lot of room. I do most of it in my head now though, and once you get more experience in Magic, I'm sure you can too.

@xTrainx - There are a ton of DD stacks that you can do depending on what you have. And actually, emidlin has the link for it on his sig. It's pretty useful.

[Rune]

Here's a pretty trivial logistical question: how do you guys keep track of mana and storm count? I'm thinking of using dice the next time I play, but I don't want to give away that I'm playing storm. Do you just keep everything away until you're ready to "go off"? Or do people already know you guys as "the combo guy"?

You shouldn't show your dice until they have already figured out what you are playing. There aren't many decks that play Polluted Delta/Flooded Strand into Underground Sea, but you might as well make your opponent think you are playing Reanimator, Faeries or some Counterbalance deck. When comboing off the dice is mostly to help the opponent understand what's going on, since you should think your line of play through in your head before doing anything. The storm count/mana you achieve in the end should come as no surprise.

When it comes to Jedi mind tricks, my playmat now features illustrations of Counterbalance + Top!

[emidln]

I only bring blank pads of paper, a pen, my playmat, and cards with me to each round. Unfortunately for me, my playmat is a giant artist-drawn Street Wraith with pink highlights with the letters E M I D L N at the top of my playmatt facing my opponent. Most people I've played against in the last year know me from that or from the fact that I haven't shown up to a 30+ player event without combo in legacy or vintage in a long time.

Further, when comboing, I keep track of mana in pool with one B, U, R, G, W, or C per mana of that type on my page of paper and cross them out when I've used them. I use hash marks grouped into fives to count my storm.

[DerFern]

Do those "tricks" really work oput for you? Maybe I´m just the worst combo player on earth but I need quite some time to determine the best line of play and count my storm/mana before actually comboeing off. Most of the time, people realize what I´m playing way before I even start the combo.
And for the question itself: I don´t use dice to keep track of the storm count, I usually write it down. There have been some times where my opponent asked in the middle of my combo, how many spells it have been so far. It really is important to have a sheet where you can review it, not a dice which could easily be misplaced/switched/whatever...

[sigfig8]

Do those "tricks" really work oput for you? Maybe I´m just the worst combo player on earth but I need quite some time to determine the best line of play and count my storm/mana before actually comboeing off. Most of the time, people realize what I´m playing way before I even start the combo.
And for the question itself: I don´t use dice to keep track of the storm count, I usually write it down. There have been some times where my opponent asked in the middle of my combo, how many spells it have been so far. It really is important to have a sheet where you can review it, not a dice which could easily be misplaced/switched/whatever...

I am in the same boat as you. I use pen and paper always. And I so often have to stop and count in my head and that definitely may tip off the opponent. The good news is, usually by the time you're doing that sort of counting, that means you're already awfully close to going off.

Here's a thought. Has anyone tried counting storm and mana on games 2 and 3 to give the illusion of "going off" without actually having the key puzzle pieces? For example, could I try playing a spell, write down the storm count, and then play LED or Top with the hopes they waste a counter on it? Do you think it's feasible?

Another question: has anyone ever faked having a Tendrils left in their deck (after revealing one through AN, for example), but did so convincingly enough so that the opponent scooped and you didn't have to show the Tendrils? I've heard stories of this kind of stuff. Seems really loose to me, but does it actually work?

[citanul]

Another question: has anyone ever faked having a Tendrils left in their deck (after revealing one through AN, for example), but did so convincingly enough so that the opponent scooped and you didn't have to show the Tendrils? I've heard stories of this kind of stuff. Seems really loose to me, but does it actually work?


I even got so far to get someone to scoop to me resolving Infernal Tutor even though I was still holding a card in my hand. Believe me, people can be convinced of anything, just don't cheat.



I am in the same boat as you. I use pen and paper always. And I so often have to stop and count in my head and that definitely may tip off the opponent. The good news is, usually by the time you're doing that sort of counting, that means you're already awfully close to going off.


It's practice I guess. If you play your deck enough you'll know what you need to do things and don't even have to count anymore.
Using Pen and Paper looks good but I usually just use Dice to indicate it to my opponent. Also make sure that for the next match you use a blank piece of paper instead of a paper with BBBUUW written all over it.

[JonBarber]

Here's a pretty trivial logistical question: how do you guys keep track of mana and storm count? I'm thinking of using dice the next time I play, but I don't want to give away that I'm playing storm. Do you just keep everything away until you're ready to "go off"? Or do people already know you guys as "the combo guy"?

I play a variety of decks so that no one can ever know immediately what I'm playing. I just grab a handful of assorted dice at the beginning of every match. But I usually don't use dice for storm and mana. I've usually spent so long planning it out in my head that I don't need to. I make it clear to my opponent, but I don't waste mental energy on changing dice that I already know in my head.

[Dilettante]

To reply to lordofthe pit:

I don't typically keep track, but I do watch my opponent. If I am trying to go off, I ask if they want to keep notes if they don't seem used to the decktype. Just break down your cards to an easy reverse mental count. Unless they're flashing life gain at you, count down from 10 with every 2 life they lose. Add if you think a copy can get countered. I think it's easier to count storm down than up as the game goes mentally... but when you go off, go up instead of down. Organize your mana sources in hand by amount of net mana generated (1 for petal, 3 for LED, 1 for Infernal Tutor (into LED). When you think Cabal can make net 3 instead of net 1 mana, just shift it in your hand. Do a check if you have threshold before casting Cabal. And go step by step procedurally whenever you pass priority so that they can interject if they have something. The only time I've ever gone to time playing a storm deck was playing against a Rock deck that made me discard my hand... and somehow, his Dark Confidant was unlucky and Bob, Thoughtseizes, and fetchlands outraced him faster than Bob raced me (Orim's Chant kept him from attacking/casting a flipped Tombstalker).

The only time I would write storm count/mana down is when I cast Diminishing Returns. I actually write names of spells cast/sources of mana rather than just storm count when I do that to avoid issues with an opponent if they think I'm cheating.

[Lego]

Another question: has anyone ever faked having a Tendrils left in their deck (after revealing one through AN, for example), but did so convincingly enough so that the opponent scooped and you didn't have to show the Tendrils? I've heard stories of this kind of stuff. Seems really loose to me, but does it actually work?

This does work, more often than you'd think. I've never done it with ANT, as I've never played it, but I've done it with Enchantress before, and with Solidarity. With Enchantress, I've convinced my opponent to scoop to a Confinement lock when I had no actual win conditions left in the deck because of his maindeck Relic. With Solidarity, I've had my opponent scoop several times after I make ungodly amounts of mana, but with no actual card draw left in my hand. They just see you doing lots of stuff and assume you're going to win.

[Adan]

Here's a pretty trivial logistical question: how do you guys keep track of mana and storm count? I'm thinking of using dice the next time I play, but I don't want to give away that I'm playing storm. Do you just keep everything away until you're ready to "go off"? Or do people already know you guys as "the combo guy"?

I usually have a sheet of paper with me to protocol the lifetotals. And, you know, there's enough space to note your manapool and stormcount as well. it's pretty easy, just write it down. :-)

[sirisaacnuton]

So looking at the ANT that took home the gold in Atlanta this weekend (and the other ANT in the top 16), they both seemed much more focused and one-dimensional than I expected. After reading all through this thread, I was expecting them to have 1 AdN, a Doomsday package, maybe even Burning Wishes and/or a transformative sideboard. Instead there was just streamlining and redundancy...2 AdN, 2 Tendrils, 3-4 of all the rest. Nothing even remotely approaching the more complicated decks on here placed in the top 16 (and no other versions of a storm deck).

Is this a sign that ANT with a focus on the AN win is better/more consistent than DDANT? Is it just that regular ANT is more prevalent than DDANT so it's more likely to get a someone in the top? Does this result change anyone's opinions about the right way to build ANT?

Just looking for what significance, if any, the vets here find in the results.

[honestabe]

Honestly, I think the straight ad nauseam build is quicker, and more broken, which results in a better deck. The only matchup I've found Doomsday to be worth running was Countertop, and they won most of the time anyway

[Piceli89]

So looking at the ANT that took home the gold in Atlanta this weekend (and the other ANT in the top 16), they both seemed much more focused and one-dimensional than I expected. After reading all through this thread, I was expecting them to have 1 AdN, a Doomsday package, maybe even Burning Wishes and/or a transformative sideboard. Instead there was just streamlining and redundancy...2 AdN, 2 Tendrils, 3-4 of all the rest. Nothing even remotely approaching the more complicated decks on here placed in the top 16 (and no other versions of a storm deck).

Is this a sign that ANT with a focus on the AN win is better/more consistent than DDANT? Is it just that regular ANT is more prevalent than DDANT so it's more likely to get a someone in the top? Does this result change anyone's opinions about the right way to build ANT?

Just looking for what significance, if any, the vets here find in the results.

As many before me pointed out, winning a tournament, despites how big it is, does not qualify version X o a certain archetype better than version Y. This emerged from several discussions, and can be applied in here too.
In this case, all I can say is that Doomsday ANT is far more difficult to pilot, because it involves a decision tree that's far wider than the Saitoish's one. The lack of results in big tournaments may be caused by the fact that most of the people are not very confident with it and so they prefer to bring the "simple" version, or just that the usual netdeckers see that a Pro built that and so they think it is the ultimate shit. Or maybe, just for a coincidence, no one of the good Doomsday Storm Combo players in here or there in the world attended a great event (even if i recall 2 DDANT being in top of a 100+ dutch tournament, it was Matelm and Bahamuth, weren't they?).
On a personal note, I think you can win a tournament just going Ad Nauseam-style, seeing the tremendous number of people who do not know how to fight this deck.

[IsThisACatInAHat?]

As many before me pointed out, winning a tournament, despites how big it is, does not qualify version X o a certain archetype better than version Y. This emerged from several discussions, and can be applied in here too.
In this case, all I can say is that Doomsday ANT is far more difficult to pilot, because it involves a decision tree that's far wider than the Saitoish's one. The lack of results in big tournaments may be caused by the fact that most of the people are not very confident with it and so they prefer to bring the "simple" version, or just that the usual netdeckers see that a Pro built that and so they think it is the ultimate shit. Or maybe, just for a coincidence, no one of the good Doomsday Storm Combo players in here or there in the world attended a great event (even if i recall 2 DDANT being in top of a 100+ dutch tournament, it was Matelm and Bahamuth, weren't they?).
On a personal note, I think you can win a tournament just going Ad Nauseam-style, seeing the tremendous number of people who do not know how to fight this deck.
I think you (and by extension everyone who agrees with your sentiment) is looking at it the wrong way. Zoo wins games, matches and tournaments because it's brutally consistent. 90% of the time, your starting 6 or 7 will goldfish by turn 5. Even against countermagic, discard, removal or whatever, Zoo delivers by dropping threat after threat quickly and consistently. Saito ANT is the Zoo of storm combo. Doomsday builds are insanely difficult to pilot, have a decision tree more complicated than a doctoral thesis and are typically built to be meta-dependent. A deck that exhausts its pilot and gets too wrapped up in its own complexity can't reasonably expect to win more than the occasional tournament here or there.

When 4 or 5 color ANT-something hybrids were in vogue and Orim's Chant was the protection of choice, storm combo was tough but beatable. It seems abundantly clear that storm combo got too complicated for its own good. Saito ANT says, "I'm going to resolve Ad Nauseam and I'm going to do it turn 2 or 3 with Duress backup" and most of the time, it does. I get that DD piles can fight through triple force Force, quadruple Pierce, active countertop and six Mindbreak Traps played after a resolved Counterspell-Fork-Twincast, given perfect play and a little bit of luck, but Saito ANT just sticks to its plan of using the fastest, most brutal engine since Necropotence and it does it well. I think there's a lot to be said for a deck that can very quickly, very consistently land a game-winning bomb through 1-2 hate pieces. It doesn't take nearly as much thought or effort to pilot, it usually goes off before your opponent can do anything about it (barring a truly perfect hand) and if you stop it, you've probably spent your entire hand doing so, except the entire ANT deck is programmed to go off again, while you've only got 5 or 6 relevant counters left in the 50 cards you haven't seen yet.

Yes, if Deep Blue was programmed for Magic, it could probably win every tournament with some ultra-techy DD pile. That said, Magic is played by people who over time get tired and make mistakes against opponents who do the same. Saito ANT removes a lot of the difficulty of DD piles, hybrid storm and NLS shenanigans for just the stone-cold nuts with a handful of in-color protection. That kind of absolutely brutal consistency (the Zoo kind, that could put a monkey in the top 8) combined with the power of legacy-legal Ad Nauseam storm combo (unrestricted BS, LED & Lotus Petal) makes it in my opinion the undisupted best combo in Legacy right now. Maybe the results are just a byproduct of the fact, rather than any kind of proof in the first place.

[lordofthepit]

Among straight ANT builds (not Doomsday hybrids), why is the Saito version considered superior to a more traditional build like Do Anh's, who actually beat him head to head?

The main differences I see are 1) dropping the white splash, replacing Chants with Thoughtseize, 2) replacing the IGG with a second Ad Nauseam, and 3) including a second copy of Tendrils of Agony. It seems that it's better geared towards control decks for these reasons, while having worse Ad Nauseams (due to the higher average casting cost), but it loses the Chants against the mirror and IGG against aggro. It seems more of a metagame call to me, but why is his deck getting discussed so much more? Is it inherently superior in some way, or is it just more interesting/revolutionary?

[ColeM]

I normally don't bother posting, but I'll toss in my two cents.

@lordofthepit:

The builds packing 7-8 Duress effects are stronger against most of the blue based decks in the format right now. The strategy of quickly stripping hard counters then pushing for the win is better against CounterTop/most tempo decks than tryng to resolve a Chant (which also stretches the manabase). Discard is also stronger vs. Reanimator. A list playing Chant would really only be better against the mirror and maybe some slow control deck (Landstill, perhaps).

@the DD hybrid discussion

I have extensively (thousands of games) tested Tendrils based combo over the last two years. While I'm currently no longer playing ANT (Ive moved on to what I feel is a stronger combo deck) I will say that if I had to bring a list to a tournament it would be very similar to Saito's build (different sideboard and maybe maindeck pyroblasts). This isn't becuase of the rediculous complexity of the DD hybrids, but becuase I feel straight ANT is a better choice in the current metagame.

The Doomsday hybrids are without doubt more versatile and more powerful. They are better against decks not playing Islands and have mostly even to favorable match ups against the blue decks. However, I have not had any significant trouble beating non-blue (80% in my favor isn't much different from 95%) and I generally beat most of the blue decks just the same.

I admit that I'd rather have DD against Tempo thresh, but that deck isn't common enough anymore for me to care. I feel that a tuned straight ANT list performs better against CounterTop and about the same against the non-Canadian Thresh tempo decks (unfortunately, it is fairly difficult to generate any real win percentage as games hinge greatly upon exact deck lists and play skill of the opponent). Now, the Doomsday builds do have the option of bringing in extra Doomsdays + removal + whatever else, but I find this taking up a lot of sideboard space just to get a better match up percentage than straight ANT lists. (note: including Emrakul could change my overall opinion, but Im no longer playing ANT)

In the end, both decks beat most of the metagame fairly easily when run correctly. I think I perform better against CounterTop with my own straight ANT list than with DD hybrids - and this is enough for me as I feel confident beating anything else in Legacy.

[BreathWeapon]

People win with ANT for the same reason they lose with Dredge, a strong, consistent deck that doesn't require critical thinking is easier to play than a strong, consistent deck that requires critical thinking and mediocre players will prefer a deck that prevents them from losing from their own mistakes instead of rewards them for their own skill. I'd say DDANT has appr. 5% better match up vs. CB, but the number of people who can realize it while not reducing their over all match up % vs. the rest of the field thru' screwing up the basics is a hand full of people

[GrooGrux]

I normally don't bother posting, but I'll toss in my two cents.

@lordofthepit:

The builds packing 7-8 Duress effects are stronger against most of the blue based decks in the format right now. The strategy of quickly stripping hard counters then pushing for the win is better against CounterTop/most tempo decks than tryng to resolve a Chant (which also stretches the manabase). Discard is also stronger vs. Reanimator. A list playing Chant would really only be better against the mirror and maybe some slow control deck (Landstill, perhaps).

@the DD hybrid discussion

I have extensively (thousands of games) tested Tendrils based combo over the last two years. While I'm currently no longer playing ANT (Ive moved on to what I feel is a stronger combo deck) I will say that if I had to bring a list to a tournament it would be very similar to Saito's build (different sideboard and maybe maindeck pyroblasts). This isn't becuase of the rediculous complexity of the DD hybrids, but becuase I feel straight ANT is a better choice in the current metagame.

The Doomsday hybrids are without doubt more versatile and more powerful. They are better against decks not playing Islands and have mostly even to favorable match ups against the blue decks. However, I have not had any significant trouble beating non-blue (80% in my favor isn't much different from 95%) and I generally beat most of the blue decks just the same.

I admit that I'd rather have DD against Tempo thresh, but that deck isn't common enough anymore for me to care. I feel that a tuned straight ANT list performs better against CounterTop and about the same against the non-Canadian Thresh tempo decks (unfortunately, it is fairly difficult to generate any real win percentage as games hinge greatly upon exact deck lists and play skill of the opponent). Now, the Doomsday builds do have the option of bringing in extra Doomsdays + removal + whatever else, but I find this taking up a lot of sideboard space just to get a better match up percentage than straight ANT lists. (note: including Emrakul could change my overall opinion, but Im no longer playing ANT)

In the end, both decks beat most of the metagame fairly easily when run correctly. I think I perform better against CounterTop with my own straight ANT list than with DD hybrids - and this is enough for me as I feel confident beating anything else in Legacy.


Im considering move to a combo deck, I was considering ANT, however you mention a more powerful deck. Might I ask what you believe it to be?

[mchainmail]

What are the critical life totals for this deck in terms of opponents? As in, "Ad Naus from 17 I've never failed, but Ad Naus from 8 never wins."

[emidln]

Life Total alone is an awful metric. I've lost from 20 and won from 4 with Ad Nauseam. What actually matters is how likely you are to see the initial mana and/or rituals and/or win conditions you need given your present resources including your ability to survive another turn at a high enough life with the chance they might draw relevant disruption.

Going off at 20 with no Lotus Petals left in the deck because you cast Ad Nauseam off land drop + 4 petals turn one is sketchy at best with 3 Chrome Mox left in the deck.

What you should be asking is how many initial mana sources, rituals, win conditions, and life points do I need to be left in my deck to win the game at least X% of the time with Y mana floating.

[mchainmail]

Life Total alone is an awful metric. I've lost from 20 and won from 4 with Ad Nauseam. What actually matters is how likely you are to see the initial mana and/or rituals and/or win conditions you need given your present resources including your ability to survive another turn at a high enough life with the chance they might draw relevant disruption.

Going off at 20 with no Lotus Petals left in the deck because you cast Ad Nauseam off land drop + 4 petals turn one is sketchy at best with 3 Chrome Mox left in the deck.

What you should be asking is how many initial mana sources, rituals, win conditions, and life points do I need to be left in my deck to win the game at least X% of the time with Y mana floating.

My question was from a non-combo player, from a tactical perspective of "should I use knight of the reliquary to fetch a wasteland or does taking you from 15 to 11 matter more" (or general rules for this situation.

[Dia_Bot]

My question was from a non-combo player, from a tactical perspective of "should I use knight of the reliquary to fetch a wasteland or does taking you from 15 to 11 matter more" (or general rules for this situation.

I'm afraid there is no 'right' answer for your question because it's actually very dependant on the situation the combo player is in.
For instance let's say you play against saito AnT where life equals card draw. And Let's say the combo player is at 15 life with 2X Underground sea in play.
If you waste one of them and he has ritual, treshed Crit + AN in his hand you just gave him a perfect opportunity to win the game easily. But if he had for instance the same hand without the ritual you might just have given yourself a huge advantage by making the same play.
My point is: to make the right choice you need to use every piece of information you have about your opponent's hand (for instance: mystical tutor found card x, infernal card y, etc). Without any of that information i'm afraid you'll need to take a guess.

[alderon666]

I think you (and by extension everyone who agrees with your sentiment) is looking at it the wrong way. Zoo wins games, matches and tournaments because it's brutally consistent. 90% of the time, your starting 6 or 7 will goldfish by turn 5. Even against countermagic, discard, removal or whatever, Zoo delivers by dropping threat after threat quickly and consistently. Saito ANT is the Zoo of storm combo. Doomsday builds are insanely difficult to pilot, have a decision tree more complicated than a doctoral thesis and are typically built to be meta-dependent. A deck that exhausts its pilot and gets too wrapped up in its own complexity can't reasonably expect to win more than the occasional tournament here or there.

When 4 or 5 color ANT-something hybrids were in vogue and Orim's Chant was the protection of choice, storm combo was tough but beatable. It seems abundantly clear that storm combo got too complicated for its own good. Saito ANT says, "I'm going to resolve Ad Nauseam and I'm going to do it turn 2 or 3 with Duress backup" and most of the time, it does. I get that DD piles can fight through triple force Force, quadruple Pierce, active countertop and six Mindbreak Traps played after a resolved Counterspell-Fork-Twincast, given perfect play and a little bit of luck, but Saito ANT just sticks to its plan of using the fastest, most brutal engine since Necropotence and it does it well. I think there's a lot to be said for a deck that can very quickly, very consistently land a game-winning bomb through 1-2 hate pieces. It doesn't take nearly as much thought or effort to pilot, it usually goes off before your opponent can do anything about it (barring a truly perfect hand) and if you stop it, you've probably spent your entire hand doing so, except the entire ANT deck is programmed to go off again, while you've only got 5 or 6 relevant counters left in the 50 cards you haven't seen yet.

Yes, if Deep Blue was programmed for Magic, it could probably win every tournament with some ultra-techy DD pile. That said, Magic is played by people who over time get tired and make mistakes against opponents who do the same. Saito ANT removes a lot of the difficulty of DD piles, hybrid storm and NLS shenanigans for just the stone-cold nuts with a handful of in-color protection. That kind of absolutely brutal consistency (the Zoo kind, that could put a monkey in the top 8) combined with the power of legacy-legal Ad Nauseam storm combo (unrestricted BS, LED & Lotus Petal) makes it in my opinion the undisupted best combo in Legacy right now. Maybe the results are just a byproduct of the fact, rather than any kind of proof in the first place.

Saying DDANT is a worse deck because it's harder to play is just stupid. If you're not up to the challenge of memorizing all it takes, just go play mono red burn.

But I do agree that against the current metagame DDANT might not be the better choice. Discard is better against CB and Reanimator, and that's a big deal. With straight AdN you probably don't have to worry about Stifle and Spell Snare, so that makes chant a little worse. Reanimator and CB put permanents in play that disrupt your game, that stops DDANT from taking advantage of the "no life needed" making Ad Nauseam look better.

I really like DDANT, but in the current meta speed matters. Taking it slow and grinding it out is not gonna get you anywhere with Ionas and Counterbalances flying everywhere.

[Pot Pie Man]

So I'm sleeving up ANT for a cash tournament in Cleveland tomorrow, and I haven't played it since the last larger tournement I went to In Ann Arbor. I'm going to post my list for everyone to be snarky about, but my real question is for those who have extensively tested the Saito list: Does the deck get slowed down a turn by targeted Discard? I expect the ANT mirror, and I'd like some scouting on the Saito list. Anyway, here's my list, that has always been great for me, but with an Edict in the board, as a second MD out to Reanimator.

4 Underground Sea
4 Polluted Delta
2 Bloodstained Mire
1 Scalding Tarn
1 Island
1 Swamp
1 Volcanic Island
1 Badlands
=15 Lands

4 Dark Ritual
4 Mystical Tutor
4 Brainstorm
2 Ad Nauseam
1 Chain of Vapor
3 Cabal Ritual
=18 Instants

4 Duress
3 Thoughtseize
2 Ponder
3 Burning Wish
3 Infernal Tutor
1 Tendrils of Agony
=16 Sorcery

4 Lion's Eye Diamond
4 Lotus Petal
3 Chrome Mox
=11 Artifacts


2 Echoing Truth
1 Chain of Vapor
2 Extirpate
1 Infernal Tutor
1 Thoughtseize
1 Ill-Gotten Gains
1 Chainer's Edict
1 Ad Nauseam
1 Empty the Warrens
4 Pact of Negation

[honestabe]

I'd cut the burning wishes for 2 tops and another tendrils.

Top is an auto-win against discard, which you seem worried about. Like burning wish, top also plays well with Lions eye diamond. Cutting red will also stabilize your mana base, and allow you to run city of traitors, which has been the MVP of my manabase during testing

[Pot Pie Man]

I'd cut the burning wishes for 2 tops and another tendrils.

Top is an auto-win against discard, which you seem worried about. Like burning wish, top also plays well with Lions eye diamond. Cutting red will also stabilize your mana base, and allow you to run city of traitors, which has been the MVP of my manabase during testing

With all due respect, you are suggesting playing a different deck. I understand the arguments people make for top, but I do care for it. It's a matter of preference, but the flexibility and ability to generate a faster clock is something I prefer. The matches top is good against, it's not enough, and the matches it's bad against, well, I simply prefer pushing the deck from 80%-90% against zoo. I do not feel that removing the wishes for top adds percentage in any match-ups more than it takes away from others.

My question was more so to bring in the fourth thoughtseize against combo, or attempt to race with the other ad nauseam.

[magicplaya10]

Hey guys, so I have just recently picked this deck up.
I am playing the straight Ad Nas version that just won the SCG.
It is great fun to play, and seeing as I played TPS in Vintage for a while, it was an easy switch.
The deck does play a lot differently, and I had a few questions...

Is this deck more ballsy? As in I have 5 Mana and Ad Nas just go all in? Or should you be waiting for tutor/Duress effects?

Also, what turn should this deck be winning? I have found it winning like turn 3-4 ish. Maybe I just need practice.

What do you guys think of a maindeck Ill Gotten Gains? I really think its awesome, a mini Yawg Will. I find myself trying to combo and finding Ad Nas Ftw, and not having enough mana to just straight combo without Ad Nas. I think one IGG can maybe help the deck win without Ad Nas?

I think I will test it.

The only deck I played against was Pox, and he beat me a few times, though I got him a majority of the time. Discard + Life loss is hard to beat.


Thank you guys for the insight, and I will continue to play and test the deck.

[honestabe]

If you have the 1st turn combo, go for it. No matter what you're against.

Iggy is bad amindeck, because if your opponent is on blue, they can return counters back to thier hand.

[Piceli89]

Hey guys, so I have just recently picked this deck up.
I am playing the straight Ad Nas version that just won the SCG.
It is great fun to play, and seeing as I played TPS in Vintage for a while, it was an easy switch.
The deck does play a lot differently, and I had a few questions...

Is this deck more ballsy? As in I have 5 Mana and Ad Nas just go all in? Or should you be waiting for tutor/Duress effects?

Also, what turn should this deck be winning? I have found it winning like turn 3-4 ish. Maybe I just need practice.

What do you guys think of a maindeck Ill Gotten Gains? I really think its awesome, a mini Yawg Will. I find myself trying to combo and finding Ad Nas Ftw, and not having enough mana to just straight combo without Ad Nas. I think one IGG can maybe help the deck win without Ad Nas?

I think I will test it.

The only deck I played against was Pox, and he beat me a few times, though I got him a majority of the time. Discard + Life loss is hard to beat.


Thank you guys for the insight, and I will continue to play and test the deck.

I wish I was playing against Pox all the time. It's a really easy matchup: drop Sensei's Divining Top, hide your business spells, bear their discards a bit and then win.

[Pinder]

If you have the 1st turn combo, go for it. No matter what you're against.


I disagree. Perhaps in Game 1, if you're on the play and you have no idea what you're up against, it might be a reasonable risk to take, but if you know that you're up against anything with Force of Will or other free/cheap countermagic, especially post-sideboard, it's much more reasonable to wait and make sure you can go off protected. If you can go off with protection on the first turn, however, then by all means do so.

[deviant]

I'll take my turn one on the play "got force?" all day every day.

Roughly 60% chance to win now not good enough for you? You prefer to be able to play a duress/chant first and let them get daze, spell pierce, cursecatcher, brainstorm mana etc online?

Though, the lazy bastard I am, I'm on saito list right now - with something like ddayhybrid, I'd be more inclined to wait.

[B.C.]

I'll take my turn one on the play "got force?" all day every day.

Roughly 60% chance to win now not good enough for you? You prefer to be able to play a duress/chant first and let them get daze, spell pierce, cursecatcher, brainstorm mana etc online?

Word. They have ~40% chance of having FOW in their opening hand ASSUMING they are playing 4x FOW. There is always a good chance they're not even playing a blue deck. I will pretty much always go for a turn 1 kill if I have it. If you're playing combo, sometimes you have to put your balls out there. If you want to slow play, go play control.

[emidln]

Word. They have ~40% chance of having FOW in their opening hand ASSUMING they are playing 4x FOW. There is always a good chance they're not even playing a blue deck. I will pretty much always go for a turn 1 kill if I have it. If you're playing combo, sometimes you have to put your balls out there. If you want to slow play, go play control.

I agree with this, but I'll also note that I lost 5 game ones to Force of Will on turn one en-route to barely missing day 2 at GP Chicago with this strategy. Had I played a bit more conservatively, I probably make day two.

[magicplaya10]

Thanks for the replies guys. So Igg is bad against blue, but really good against everything else?

Also, can someone explain to me the Dday list and how it works? Is it even worth running?

Thanks!

[Fishbone]

Basically the Dday list offers you a bunch of possibilities as the Doomsday piles can help you in much situations.
The Basic pile consists of (in correct order)

1. Meditate
2. Dark Ritual
3. Dark Ritual
4. Utility Slot
5. Tendrils

To use this pile you need at least 3 mana for the Meditate and a Top.
This pile creates 6 Storm (+2 Storm for Dday and Rit to cast it) you only need two Storm more. (For me this spell are often a Chant and a LED)

Start this pile with 4 Mana (at least one blue) and 2 Storm. Play your Rit (6 mana/3 Storm) --> Dday for the pile above (3 mana/4 Storm) --> Draw the meditate with your Top --> Play Meditate, draw Top,Rit,Rit,Petal (0 mana/5 Storm) -->Play Petal (1 mana/6 Storm) --> Play 2xRit (5 mana/8 Storm) --> Play Top (4 mana/9 Storm) --> Draw the Tendrils with the Top --> Play Tendrils (0 mana/10 Storm)

emidln has posted a fantastic document with many Dday pile over there at Teamstormboards (http://teamstormboards.proboards.com/index.cgi?board=stormcombo&action=display&thread=111)

In my opinion it's worth running the Dday list because it offers you more ways to win even if you're on low life.

[Rico Suave]

I played at the Philly Open VI Legacy portion earlier today (yesterday) to a top 4 split. I played this list:

Land - 15
4 Polluted Delta
3 Misty Rainforest
2 Flooded Strand
3 Underground Sea
2 Island
1 Swamp

Acceleration - 18
4 Dark Ritual
3 Cabal Ritual
4 Lion's Eye Diamond
4 Lotus Petal
3 Chrome Mox

Action - 4
2 Ad Nauseam
2 Tendrils of Agony

Disruption - 7
4 Duress
3 Thoughtseize

Manipulation - 16
4 Brainstorm
3 Ponder
2 Sensei's Divining Top
4 Mystical Tutor
3 Infernal Tutor

SB:
1 Tropical Island
1 Chain of Vapor
1 Echoing Truth
1 Hurkyl's Recall
1 Rebuild
1 Slaughter Pact
3 Krosan Grip
1 Extirpate
4 Dark Confidant
1 Ill-Gotten Gains

If you want to read a more detailed report, you can go here (though you have to scroll down a bit):

http://www.themanadrain.com/index.php?topic=40437.0

There were a lot less players than anticipated here, but the skill level was high and there were a lot of ringers too. This only meant that there was less chaff to feed off of so each round was pretty grueling.

I went as follows:
Rd 1 = 2-0 vs. Bant
Rd 2 = 2-1 vs. UBGR CB/Top
Rd 3 = 1-2 vs. Goblins
Rd 4 = 2-1 vs. New Horizons
Rd 5 = ID

Yea, I somehow managed to beat all the blue decks and lose to the non-blue deck. Don't ask.

Top 8 had another ANT deck, but I don't have a list. It was pretty close to Saito's version from what I heard, and it used City of Traitors main. The whole top 8 was:
ANT > Zoo
Goblins > Goblins
Bant > ANT
CB/Top > B/G (Eva Green I suppose? I'm terrible with Legacy deck names)

Quarterfinals I beat Zoo 2-1. Despite losing game 1, I won the following games 2 and 3 before my opponent reached a 2nd land in either one.

Top 4 was:
Goblins vs. ANT
CB/Top vs. Bant

But we agreed to a 4 way split.

--------------------------------------------------------------

As for the deck, it once again performed quite well for me against blue decks or I wouldn't have a reason to be posting this. The 3 blue decks I played against were of different varieties.

The first was Bant. You can read the exact list here:
http://www.mtgthesource.com/forums/showthread.php?17508-Top-4-split-at-Philly-Open-with-Excalibur

Duress was really important giving me information in game 1. In fact, Duress is really awesome game 1 for a number of reasons:
1) You get to clear the way for your important spells
2) You can't always draw conclusions from "Polluted Delta, go". Duress lets you know exactly what they are up to.
3) You don't just get information about what cards they are playing, but what hands they are willing to keep. Sooo many times I see players keep extremely loose hands in game 1 or 2, even if they know I'm playing combo, and if things go to game 3 it gives me additional information regarding what they're willing to do.

For example, when playing against Dave Price at the last Vestal tournament I had a first turn Duress in game 2. After watching him mull to 5, I wasn't surprised to see him mull just to find Force of Will. In game 3, when I watched him mull to 5 again, I already knew he was looking for Force and found it at 5.

Anyway, going back to the tournament at hand Thoughtseize was really nice taking Spellstutter Sprite in game 2.

/////

The second blue deck I played against was UBGR CB/Top. It had Bob, Thoughtseize, Daze, and random aggro-control dudes maindeck. He boarded in Stifle and Extirpate on top of that, which made for an interesting and difficult match.

Game 1 hinged on his Dazes just not being able to stop me. His relevant spell was Duressed, at which point he had to start Dazing mana sources which just isn't going to cut it.

Game 2 he got a Bob down on turn 2, and I was unable to capitalize before he started to stabilize drawing cards. I knew he was on Extirpate/Stifle from a Duress, so at least I had information on how to play game 3 better. Seriously though, playing around CB/Top and Stifle and Extirpate and Thoughtseize too? Pretty brutal.

Game 3 wasn't decided by the die roll. Basically, Bob is a great card but not against a deck with Tendrils. His own Bob ended up taking him to 10, and a Duress cleared the way for Stifle on a critical turn to get a lethal Tendrils at his low life total.

/////

The 3rd blue deck was New Horizons, which has apparently been growing in popularity or at least on the internet. It's got Force, Daze, Stifle, and Wastelands as relevant disruption but its beaters are 3cc dorks that are slow. Teeg from the SB wasn't really a surprise, but I would expect it would catch at least 90% of other ANT players with their pants down and steal a post-SB game.

Games 1 and 3 were basically mirrors of each other. Slow play lands, don't die to Stifle, Duress him to clear the way, ANT when ready. When in doubt, go for it because they aren't going to have Force.

Game 2 I just got blown out by his hand of Teeg, Teeg, Force, Force, land, Goyf, Goyf. He missed his 2nd land drop, but made it on turn 3 had extra blue cards to spare after removing the first Teeg. I guess I could have played a little more aggressive with my 2 M.Tutor hand but I'm pretty sure I was boned either way.

After playing against it here and against Dave Price at the Vestal tournament, I'm pretty sure this deck is just really poorly suited to fighting combo. If you can avoid dying to Stifle/Wasteland, and still manage to play around Daze, they are a really slow-clocking deck who has 4 Force of Will and little else. It feels like an easier match-up than Merfolk, because Merfolk's clock is a lot faster not to mention they have actual card draw in Standstill to complicate things.

/////

On the whole, I still advocate that ANT is a wrecking ball against blue decks if played well. =)

Also, I'm still of the opinion that Doomsday only makes the deck as a whole worse.

[Dia_Bot]

Thanks for the replies guys. So Igg is bad against blue, but really good against everything else?


Pre-side: I would say yes. But after sideboarding you'll have to watch out for cards like mindbreak trap or extirpate.

[lordofthepit]

Hey Rico, I've been looking at your decklists and your tournament reports for a while. I'm thinking of taking ANT to a local tournament for the first time, and as a beginner, I prefer the sheer speed and relative simplicity of the U/B build (compared to Doomsday versions). I wanted to ask some questions about your card choices so that I could better determine what I want to include.

I notice your maindeck is very similar to Saito's, except with the following differences:

1) fewer total lands (15 vs. 16), with an extra Ponder taking the place of the 16th land
2) an extra Thoughtseize instead of a Wipe Away, which I also find more useful Game 1 (the Thoughtseize)
3) an extra fetchland for more shuffling effects
4) more basics for better mana stability at the expense of the explosiveness of City of Traitors

My main question concerns point #4: do you ever wish you had City of Traitors instead (or Crystal Vein, which has also been discussed in the thread)? And in what types of metagames would you prefer those City of Traitors?

If you were to go with City of Traitors (for instance, in a combo-heavy metagame where you might desire the extra speed), would that cause you to go up to 16 lands?

[Piceli89]

@Rico: how do you side against Countertop and Merfolks with your list. I'm playing it for fun with maindeck -1 Tendrils and +Igg, and although it's near to autopilot (no flame intended, but i'm used to play DDANT), it's comfortable to win on turn3 without making esoteric calculations.
How many grips do you side in against CT? I assume you side out an AdN to not get the curve too high. Do you also brig in the Confidants? Actually I'm playing Xantid Swarm instead of them , because i'm used to the green bees and they're autowin against merfolk as well as being useful against other stuff. But perhaps, sincer Merfolk is really easy with this list (as long as you don't open a slow hand and they go ultra-beatdown mode), I can try to cut them for something else.

[Nidd]

I figured my local Meta was better suited for ANT than DDANT, so I just looked up the latest Saito-esque list, goldfished it a bit, made some tweaks and designed a SB for my meta.

I'll write a small report later, but I must say, the deck is fun and easier to pilot.

[Rico Suave]

Hey Rico, I've been looking at your decklists and your tournament reports for a while. I'm thinking of taking ANT to a local tournament for the first time, and as a beginner, I prefer the sheer speed and relative simplicity of the U/B build (compared to Doomsday versions). I wanted to ask some questions about your card choices so that I could better determine what I want to include.

I notice your maindeck is very similar to Saito's, except with the following differences:

1) fewer total lands (15 vs. 16), with an extra Ponder taking the place of the 16th land
2) an extra Thoughtseize instead of a Wipe Away, which I also find more useful Game 1 (the Thoughtseize)
3) an extra fetchland for more shuffling effects
4) more basics for better mana stability at the expense of the explosiveness of City of Traitors

My main question concerns point #4: do you ever wish you had City of Traitors instead (or Crystal Vein, which has also been discussed in the thread)? And in what types of metagames would you prefer those City of Traitors?

If you were to go with City of Traitors (for instance, in a combo-heavy metagame where you might desire the extra speed), would that cause you to go up to 16 lands?

City of Traitors is really good. It's more than just a way to speed up the deck, but also a way to easily play around Daze effects. It's really strong against Merfolk in particular.

But yes, if I played City of Traitors I'd likely play 2, and if I played 2 of them I would run 16 land maindeck and then run a complete 15 card SB with no lands in it (meaning I'd stuff the Trop Isle maindeck too).

I personally prefer it the way I have it, but there's nothing wrong with City at all.


@Rico: how do you side against Countertop and Merfolks with your list. I'm playing it for fun with maindeck -1 Tendrils and +Igg, and although it's near to autopilot (no flame intended, but i'm used to play DDANT), it's comfortable to win on turn3 without making esoteric calculations.
How many grips do you side in against CT? I assume you side out an AdN to not get the curve too high. Do you also brig in the Confidants? Actually I'm playing Xantid Swarm instead of them , because i'm used to the green bees and they're autowin against merfolk as well as being useful against other stuff. But perhaps, sincer Merfolk is really easy with this list (as long as you don't open a slow hand and they go ultra-beatdown mode), I can try to cut them for something else.

Against Merfolk, I SB very little. Maybe a land comes in for a Ponder.

Against CB/Top it very much depends. A good guideline is as follows:

-3 Cabal Ritual
-3 Ponder
-1 Chrome Mox
-1 Island
+1 Trop Isle
+4 Dark Confidant
+3 Krosan Grip

If I expect Meddling Mage or Teeg, I board in a Slaughter Pact or Chain of Vapor for the 2nd AN.

Xantid Swarm is entirely unnecessary. This deck is already pretty good at winning through a stacked hand of permission, even if it takes a while sometimes. Bob is really, really good and a lot better against every blue deck except Merfolk. But I already feel great against Merfolk.

[mchainmail]

The 3rd blue deck was New Horizons, which has apparently been growing in popularity or at least on the internet. It's got Force, Daze, Stifle, and Wastelands as relevant disruption but its beaters are 3cc dorks that are slow. Teeg from the SB wasn't really a surprise, but I would expect it would catch at least 90% of other ANT players with their pants down and steal a post-SB game.

Games 1 and 3 were basically mirrors of each other. Slow play lands, don't die to Stifle, Duress him to clear the way, ANT when ready. When in doubt, go for it because they aren't going to have Force.

Game 2 I just got blown out by his hand of Teeg, Teeg, Force, Force, land, Goyf, Goyf. He missed his 2nd land drop, but made it on turn 3 had extra blue cards to spare after removing the first Teeg. I guess I could have played a little more aggressive with my 2 M.Tutor hand but I'm pretty sure I was boned either way.

After playing against it here and against Dave Price at the Vestal tournament, I'm pretty sure this deck is just really poorly suited to fighting combo. If you can avoid dying to Stifle/Wasteland, and still manage to play around Daze, they are a really slow-clocking deck who has 4 Force of Will and little else. It feels like an easier match-up than Merfolk, because Merfolk's clock is a lot faster not to mention they have actual card draw in Standstill to complicate things.


I'm roommates with the New Horizons player (I was playing U lands) and in testing, Horizons rarely had a chance. He just added Teeg before the tournament, but it's probably one of the better blue matchups for Ad Naus. (It's still a good deck for Vestal because of a lack of Combo in the meta)

[Tammit67]

Hey Rico. I was the one beating New Horizons with your Ad Nausem list, which i have picked up seeing that disappointing 9th finish in vestal last month (damn guy conceding rion in). The biggest thing you have to worry about is quick goyf hands with disruption. Post board he added 3 spell pierce which made it harder, though the added duress effects really helped.
A quick question: When do the bob's come in? I've initailly brought them in against discard and against New Horizons, not to mention CB top decks, but have found them a bit underwhelming.

[JonBarber]

Bob is really, really good and a lot better against every blue deck except Merfolk. But I already feel great against Merfolk.

Howw?? It seems to be AT BEST for me a 50/50. I've been playtesting the hell out of this matchup. I must be doing something wrong. They have disruption and a really fast clock. thats all around bad news for ant.

[Rico Suave]

Howw?? It seems to be AT BEST for me a 50/50. I've been playtesting the hell out of this matchup. I must be doing something wrong. They have disruption and a really fast clock. thats all around bad news for ant.

I always thought it was ANT that had a really fast clock.

To me, it seems there is little Merfolk can do if its Force gets Duressed, since it doesn't have enough relevant cards to prevent Ad Nauseam from resolving. And I'm pretty sure that even with their most aggressive beatdown draws on the play, they aren't doing nearly enough damage to make an average turn 3 Ad Nauseam fizzle.

[emidln]

They can 8 you with double lords by turn 3 if they're on the play (t1 cursecatcher, t2 lord of atlantis, attack for 2, t3 another lord guy, attack with two 3/3s). I'm not saying that you auto-fizzle from 12 (although it's far from guaranteed), but that's not counting fetches/thoughtseize.

That said, Merfolk has a really hard time recovering from Duress/Thoughtseize to take their Force.

[Ozymandias]

So I'm probably going to run this deck in my Sunday tourney, with Saito's MD, and almost the same SB. Here is my rationale/SB plan for each card:

Sideboard

1 Chain of Vapor-Iona on Black, Meddling Mage, random flexibility
4 Dark Confidant-the mirror, control in general, and CB/Top. Also vs decks with discard.
1 Echoing Truth-token swarms, but really anything
1 Extirpate-race Dredge by clearing narc or something, but also for Iona or even to kill some FoWs.
1 Hurkyl's Recall-Chalice decks
1 Rebuild-Chalice decks. I have a spread of diversified mana costs on my artifact bounce
1 Reverent Silence-CB, Enchantress I guess
2 Krosan Grip-CB, other decks with noncreature combo hate, some chalice decks
1 Sadistic Sacrament-the mirror, other decks with few win cons.
1 Slaughter Pact-teeg, canonist, mage
1 Thoughtseize-vs. opposing combo, mostly, and if I suspect Trap.

If I wanted anything else, it would probably be Kgrip #3 followed by IGG for aggro matchups. (what would I cut for them?)

It kinds of looks shotgunny, but I realize a) you have tutors to make many viirtual copies and b) a lot of the cards either have identical functions/overlap.

Also, my MD cuts are always some combination of Thoughtseize, Duress(only for swapping with seize). Cabal Rit, Trop, Chrome Mox, and Ponder, and generally no more than 7 of those. So for instance vs. Zoo, where I fear Teeg, Canonist, and maybe MB trap, I woud just cut 2 ponder for pact and chain and swap a duress for thoughtseize. Vs Belcher, where I need to race/disrupt lightly, I would cut trop/ponders for, etruth (ETW), and Seize--maybe shave something fofr a Kgrip. vs reanimator, I want extirpate, chain, and probably etruth or slaughter pact (rebuild stops inkwell and sphinx, so maybe), and I cut 2 ponder and 1-2 chrome mox. for the mirror, I go -3 crit, -2 ponder, -1 Trop, +4 Confidant, +1seize, +1 Sacrament. I find that I cut Trop when I have no grips, but it's good in G1 because it's an amazing bluff card. Misty->trop->ponder or brainstorm or top makes them think Thresh or CB all day. Does the stuff I wrote seem reasonable?

[Rune]

I would cut Duress instead of Ponder against Zoo. Duress is mostly a blank against them, and Mindbreak Trap isn't that common. Without Ponder you risk randomly losing because you have less control over what you draw.

[honestabe]

Howw?? It seems to be AT BEST for me a 50/50. I've been playtesting the hell out of this matchup. I must be doing something wrong. They have disruption and a really fast clock. thats all around bad news for ant.

I agree their clock is fast, but it seems slightly above 50-50 with the testing I've had against it. Seems like 60-40, maybe 55-45 in ANT's favor

[Nidd]

I agree their clock is fast, but it seems slightly above 50-50 with the testing I've had against it. Seems like 60-40, maybe 55-45 in ANT's favor
Seriously, Merfolk is just a slower Zoo with 4 relevant cards (FoW). Daze is only semi-relevant in my experience.
Play against them as if you would play against Zoo: Go for the T1 win G1, if you can, but don't ever consider IGG. G2/3, always have Duress effects before going off.

[Pelikanudo]

Hello i just wanted to share with you boys my thoutghs, please tell me what do you think, this is what i posted on storm Boards, but not answered...

Hello I'll start with my idea:
Well I've been playing ANT, and TES mainly,
regariding to the ANT archetype I find some issues:
- it's win condition is unidirectional
- Sometimes you can not get the win at 15 lifes
- loses to c.b

regarding to TES:
- Sometimes win and sometimes just can't
- is not stable

So I came up with a buiild which:
- must be capable to win c.b
- is stable
- do not be afraid to die to a casted A.N

So I started to build the deck with this axiomas:
- is it possible to not to play 4cc and 3 cc?
- yes it is
the conclusions is that when you go on showing cards with A.N at 4 lifes (5 if you play 2 AN) is something I scare and can not do, it's not a 100% win, this is the most anoying thing can happen to a magic combo player who is programmer...

So I'll start to build the deck:
- I wanted a solid mana base, so 3 color are the correct: B/R/B
- I wanted orims effects but duress effects seemed more powerfull vs c.b and mirror and in conjunction with the side better in general, the only way you want to cast orims effects is o handle multiple threats or to cast IGG, card I slowly started to stop playing, so Ill start with the MUST cards:

// Lands
1 [A] Badlands
4 [ON] flooded strand
1 [PT] Island
4 [ON] Polluted Delta
2 [A] Underground Sea
2 [B] Volcanic Island

// Spells
1 [ALA] Ad Nauseam
4 [MM] Brainstorm
4 [JU] Burning Wish
4 [MR] Chrome Mox
4 [A] Dark Ritual
4 Rite of flame
4 [MI] Lion's Eye Diamond
4 [TE] Lotus Petal
3 [MI] Mystical Tutor
4 ponder
3 Infernal Tutor

3 [LRW] Thoughtseize
4 [US] Duress


well this seems like a TES deck more stable, the testing demostrated that playig no more than 2 cc, you always can draw more cards, and therefore you really don't mind not to have tendrils because you just need 2 more mana is you do not have them in base, also having rite of flame in base allows us to play around 1 mana needed to cast burning, wich is nuts.

the changes varies between -1 I.T=+1 M.Tutor, however becuase of the card disadvantege playing 4 c.mox 3 seems the good option, but not sure,

about the side I built it focused on handle c.b so vexing susher is absolutly key as well paired with duresses effect from side will make the pairing perfectly winable.

slops: I found that the deck focused only in A.N and next on burning, so I wanted something to bring in 2nd and 3rd games, thats why I played in side 2 copies of tendrils and IGG, but this was something I disliked it, I found the deck as a deck wich would win the 2nd and 3rds games vs sligh archetypes but now its a matter of lonely velocity, I wanted more directions...

and again I found the way to go, because before I didn't know Doomsday card, so great card....

So i decided to go in the same direction of this deck but implementing the DoomsDay direction, I mean I didn't want to play 4 manacosts in the deck and I thing I finally got it:

/ Lands
1 [A] Badlands
4 [ON] flooded strand
1 [PT] Island
4 [ON] Polluted Delta
2 [A] Underground Sea
2 [B] Volcanic Island
1 swamp

// Spells
1 [ALA] Ad Nauseam
4 [MM] Brainstorm
4 [JU] Burning Wish
3 [MR] Chrome Mox
4 [A] Dark Ritual
4 Rite of flame
4 [MI] Lion's Eye Diamond
4 [TE] Lotus Petal
4 [MI] Mystical Tutor
4 Senseis
2 Infernal Tutor
1 Meditate

2 [LRW] Thoughtseize
4 [US] Duress

the major changes I made to the deck were:
- -4 ponder=+4 senseis
-1 I.T=1 mystical
- C.Mox= +1 swamp
-1 Thoutghseize = +1 meditate

we do not need doomsday in main,as the same way as we do not need tendrils and neither IGG, we DO need meditate and senseis, and nothing else.

Thanks to the knowledge on how Doomsday works I now have 2 directions to win with the deck with just 2 lifes, via burning --> DoomsDay.

Well I need you give me advices about this new approach , I'm sure you all boys have at least thinking about this idea, burning wish is a powerfull card wich in my opinion has not been used properly for building ANT decks (except bryant).

I'd like to know if you emidlin agree with this approach, please have in mind that in the begining of the times everybody played 3-4 A.N in base..., maybe its time to let 4 costs away from the statistics...

[Dia_Bot]

Hello i just wanted to share with you boys my thoutghs, please tell me what do you think, this is what i posted on storm Boards, but not answered...

Hello I'll start with my idea:
Well I've been playing ANT, and TES mainly,
regariding to the ANT archetype I find some issues:
- it's win condition is unidirectional
- Sometimes you can not get the win at 15 lifes
- loses to c.b

regarding to TES:
- Sometimes win and sometimes just can't
- is not stable

So I came up with a buiild which:
- must be capable to win c.b
- is stable
- do not be afraid to die to a casted A.N

So I started to build the deck with this axiomas:
- is it possible to not to play 4cc and 3 cc?
- yes it is
the conclusions is that when you go on showing cards with A.N at 4 lifes (5 if you play 2 AN) is something I scare and can not do, it's not a 100% win, this is the most anoying thing can happen to a magic combo player who is programmer...

So I'll start to build the deck:
- I wanted a solid mana base, so 3 color are the correct: B/R/B
- I wanted orims effects but duress effects seemed more powerfull vs c.b and mirror and in conjunction with the side better in general, the only way you want to cast orims effects is o handle multiple threats or to cast IGG, card I slowly started to stop playing, so Ill start with the MUST cards:

// Lands
1 [A] Badlands
4 [ON] flooded strand
1 [PT] Island
4 [ON] Polluted Delta
2 [A] Underground Sea
2 [B] Volcanic Island

// Spells
1 [ALA] Ad Nauseam
4 [MM] Brainstorm
4 [JU] Burning Wish
4 [MR] Chrome Mox
4 [A] Dark Ritual
4 Rite of flame
4 [MI] Lion's Eye Diamond
4 [TE] Lotus Petal
3 [MI] Mystical Tutor
4 ponder
3 Infernal Tutor

3 [LRW] Thoughtseize
4 [US] Duress


well this seems like a TES deck more stable, the testing demostrated that playig no more than 2 cc, you always can draw more cards, and therefore you really don't mind not to have tendrils because you just need 2 more mana is you do not have them in base, also having rite of flame in base allows us to play around 1 mana needed to cast burning, wich is nuts.

the changes varies between -1 I.T=+1 M.Tutor, however becuase of the card disadvantege playing 4 c.mox 3 seems the good option, but not sure,

about the side I built it focused on handle c.b so vexing susher is absolutly key as well paired with duresses effect from side will make the pairing perfectly winable.

slops: I found that the deck focused only in A.N and next on burning, so I wanted something to bring in 2nd and 3rd games, thats why I played in side 2 copies of tendrils and IGG, but this was something I disliked it, I found the deck as a deck wich would win the 2nd and 3rds games vs sligh archetypes but now its a matter of lonely velocity, I wanted more directions...

and again I found the way to go, because before I didn't know Doomsday card, so great card....

So i decided to go in the same direction of this deck but implementing the DoomsDay direction, I mean I didn't want to play 4 manacosts in the deck and I thing I finally got it:

/ Lands
1 [A] Badlands
4 [ON] flooded strand
1 [PT] Island
4 [ON] Polluted Delta
2 [A] Underground Sea
2 [B] Volcanic Island
1 swamp

// Spells
1 [ALA] Ad Nauseam
4 [MM] Brainstorm
4 [JU] Burning Wish
3 [MR] Chrome Mox
4 [A] Dark Ritual
4 Rite of flame
4 [MI] Lion's Eye Diamond
4 [TE] Lotus Petal
4 [MI] Mystical Tutor
4 Senseis
2 Infernal Tutor
1 Meditate

2 [LRW] Thoughtseize
4 [US] Duress

the major changes I made to the deck were:
- -4 ponder=+4 senseis
-1 I.T=1 mystical
- C.Mox= +1 swamp
-1 Thoutghseize = +1 meditate

we do not need doomsday in main,as the same way as we do not need tendrils and neither IGG, we DO need meditate and senseis, and nothing else.

Thanks to the knowledge on how Doomsday works I now have 2 directions to win with the deck with just 2 lifes, via burning --> DoomsDay.

Well I need you give me advices about this new approach , I'm sure you all boys have at least thinking about this idea, burning wish is a powerfull card wich in my opinion has not been used properly for building ANT decks (except bryant).

I'd like to know if you emidlin agree with this approach, please have in mind that in the begining of the times everybody played 3-4 A.N in base..., maybe its time to let 4 costs away from the statistics...
As much as I like to see new innovations I must disagree with the no tendrils or doomsday MD opinion.
The problem with your appoach to NLS is the fact that you MUST burning wish to whatever engine you want to go with. Sadly this means you will either have to wait a turn with your (only) doomsday in hand. making discards spells very dangerous or you'll have to pay 2 more mana the turn you want to combo. In the turn you want to combo with doomsday more mana equals more options equals more storm.
I think the same reasoning is true for ad nauseam. Somethimes you will just have one top in play, mystical tutor and 4 mana left.
with burning wish> tendrils you will always need 6 mana (not to mention one of those will have to be red).
Don't get me wrong I absolutely love burning wish in NLS but I think not playing doomsday and ToA maindeck will seriously reduce the number of options available in certain situations.

[Ozymandias]

Having zero answers to Meddling Mage chanting Bwish seems like it will cost you games as well. If you really want to be flexible, I think you wan1x IGG, 1x Tendrils, and 1x DDay in your maindeck, so you can win from all kinds of crazy situations. Run Grapeshot+Helm in your SB as your spare kill.

[Pulp_Fiction]

@Pelikanudo: There is a reason no one is responding to you on the storm boards, this has been discussed in depth in every combo deck thread that runs Burning Wish, read ANY of them and you get ur answer. In short:

Not running IGG in TES is stupid because you give up free wins (exceptions are if you run 2 AdN which ... is rarely good.) And personally I think not running IGG at all is dumb as hell, but thats just me, personally I like cheap and easy wins on turns 1-3 that only require 1 life point.

Not running Tendrils in ANY STORM DECK is ignorant because you rely on Burning Wish to win which is ridiculous.

All you have done is cut important cards and make the decks even less versatile and more vulnerable to hate.

Read some of the threads and catch up with where storm combo is today. And if you want the newest and best TES lists, read that thread on the storm boards, Yesmilord and I have played some solid lists to great results. So if you actually read this post, take note, reading up on decks that are difficult to play and even harder to play in tournaments .... is good.

EDIT: Please stop quoting Rico Suave, he is on my ignore list and I actually have to read 3-4 words of one of his posts everytime I scroll down.

[Pelikanudo]

well I have to say that this weekend I got a 4-0 getting the second position in a 25 people tournament
I found the deck near perfect I made to the deck just 1 change I definately wanted to play DoomsDay main,
I have to say also that I did not run Tendrils main
I won to thopter -foundry with spell pierce form side
I won to Armagedon stax
I won to Enchantreess (near bye alhoutg I lostr the first game due to a auras silence from 2nd turn and 3rd turn and ajani mainly)
I won to dont remember

I do not miss tenrdrils from main the only thing it is relevant is because is -2 mana when you star howing cards with AN, but nothing else
just playing 1 infernal tutor as a way to get A.N via m.tutor--> i.tutor in case LED is in hand

I regret playing the sorcery from 1 green which destroys enchantment, because does not make targets, I changed to Hull breach.
I play 2 tendrils in side because in second games I can make possible the pile with deathmarks.
Vexing Shuser was key even it helped to hadle a possible chalice 2 from e.truth.

I have to say I love DoomsDay , now its my 3rd magic favouritte card ¡¡¡

@Dia_Bot I have to say I agree with you that not playing DoomsDay main is a mistake I definately changed it to main, but Tendrils is another history, you can make perfect DoomsDay piles with 3 mana left and senseis in play and NO tendrils main, vs expected gaddok or m.mages I move 1 tendrils and 1 death mark to main due to the posibilities it offer, but in 1st game is absolutly not neccessary the Tendrils.

[emidln]

Not running Tendrils forces you to either have SDT or an additional mana + the normal cost to win with Doomsday. For example, the minimum to win with Brainstorm in hand and no additional cards becomes: 2UUBR or 4UUB. This isn't acceptable. If you want Doomsday to be useful, Tendrils main is not optional.

[Bryant Cook]

@Pelikanudo: There is a reason no one is responding to you on the storm boards, this has been discussed in depth in every combo deck thread that runs Burning Wish, read ANY of them and you get ur answer. In short:

Not running IGG in TES is stupid because you give up free wins (exceptions are if you run 2 AdN which ... is rarely good.) And personally I think not running IGG at all is dumb as hell, but thats just me, personally I like cheap and easy wins on turns 1-3 that only require 1 life point.

Not running Tendrils in ANY STORM DECK is ignorant because you rely on Burning Wish to win which is ridiculous.

All you have done is cut important cards and make the decks even less versatile and more vulnerable to hate.

Read some of the threads and catch up with where storm combo is today. And if you want the newest and best TES lists, read that thread on the storm boards, Yesmilord and I have played some solid lists to great results. So if you actually read this post, take note, reading up on decks that are difficult to play and even harder to play in tournaments .... is good.

EDIT: Please stop quoting Rico Suave, he is on my ignore list and I actually have to read 3-4 words of one of his posts everytime I scroll down.

I cut IGG from my TES list... Although I still have it as a wish target. I'm opting for a maindeck Empty the Warrens instead.

As for Tendrils maindeck? I tried something new in an event yesterday in the combo mirror. Boarding out ETW and Tendrils since they're dead cards if you draw them. It worked out fine, I won.

[Pulp_Fiction]

But you are a lucksack. For the rest of is, its different. By the way, Cook, check out www.fulltiltpoker.net Luck is better abused in other ways than magic.

[Ozymandias]

I went 4-1-1 in the swiss and lost in the semis at Knight ware today with the following list:

2 City of Traitors
3 Flooded Strand
1 Island
3 Misty Rainforest
2 Polluted Delta
1 Tropical Island
4 Underground Sea

2 Ad Nauseam
4 Brainstorm
4 Cabal Ritual
3 Chrome Mox
4 Dark Ritual
4 Duress
3 Infernal Tutor
4 Lion's Eye Diamond
4 Lotus Petal
4 Mystical Tutor
2 Ponder
2 Sensei's Divining Top
2 Tendrils of Agony
2 Thoughtseize
44 other spells

Sideboard
1 Chain of Vapor
4 Dark Confidant
1 Echoing Truth
1 Extirpate
1 Hurkyl's Recall
1 Rebuild
1 Reverent Silence
2 Krosan Grip
1 Sadistic Sacrament
1 Slaughter Pact
1 Thoughtseize

The maindeck was card-for-card Saito's, the sideboard was his -1. I boarded in every single card in various matches, and only really missed an IGG for quick and certain wins. I have no idea what I would cut for it. I suppose going up to 4 Delta and being able to fetch 1 Swamp would also have been good vs. wastelands. I beat Stax, Dredge, the mirror, Goblins, and Belcher, and lost to U/W tempo and CB/Top. All in all, it's an incredibly powerful deck, but it's really draining to play.

[honestabe]

EDIT: Please stop quoting Rico Suave, he is on my ignore list and I actually have to read 3-4 words of one of his posts everytime I scroll down.

You heard the man, no more discussion; it's irritating his poor little eyes

[Pelikanudo]

@Emidlin
I focused the deck in the A.N direction and as a second win cond DoomsDay, that's it
I recognize the DD piles are reduced with not tendrils main, however I find that the first 3 turns belong to ANauseam card, and from here the rest of turns belong to DD (if we are at few life) thats why I really do not find the mana numbers for casting a letal DD piles enough, I guarranty that in second games sometimes I side in the Tendrils and utility slot card, but most of the times I find not necessary, at least in 1st game Tendrils,
you all boys have to recognize that the worst card we draw is tendrils, apart from mox. and we DO want to draw Tendrils becuase it will no be shown via AN...

I feel also confident at showing cards via A.N,becuase of not having Tendrils main.

Would you replace Emidlin the single I.T by the Tendrils playing 4 b.wish, 4 m.tutor , 0 I.T?

Anyway I'll test the same deck next tournament, If i go also 4-0 I'll never play Tendrils main, only testing demonstrates this

[Shimi]

I was thinking about the pros/cons of Krosan Grip against Reverent Silenci, could someone say some words about it?(especially about CB Top MU and may be some problems with Adn lifeloss with Reverent and the need to make more storm)

Thank you guys.

[Rune]

I have probably forgotten to add something, but anyways ->

Reverent Silence compared with Krosan Grip:

+:
Has no mana cost.
Destroys multiple Counterbalances
Counterbalance decks don't have many 4 drops, so it's hard for them to counter it using CB
Is good against Enchantress (not relevant)
Can be cast the turn you combo off (very rarely the case with Krosan Grip)

-:
Increases the storm you need for the kill by 2
Is more painful to flip off AdN or Confidant
Can be countered by actual spells
Requires you to have your 1/2--of land in play
Only destroys enchantments, whereas Krosan Grip can also be used against all artifact hate (vs CB decks it kills Canonist)

[xTrainx]

Thinking about trying a deck like this out...

1 Meditate
1 Doomsday
2 Ad Nauseam

3-4 Sensei's Divining Top
1-2 Chromatic Star

4 Brainstorm
4 Cabal Ritual
2 Chrome Mox
4 Dark Ritual
4 Duress
3 Infernal Tutor
4 Lion's Eye Diamond
4 Lotus Petal
4 Mystical Tutor
2 Tendrils of Agony
2 Thoughtseize

3 Flooded Strand
1 Tundra
3 Misty Rainforest
2 Polluted Delta
1 Tropical Island
4 Underground Sea
-----------

I realize that cutting the City of Traitors loses a lot of speed in the deck, but I feel that the resiliency of the Doomsday can make up for it, allowing the deck to combo out later in the game, against faster decks.
A card that I would really like to put in here, but can't find space for, is Silence. Help would be appreciated.
Also, I feel that 14 land is a little bit too few(more than a little bit, and would like to find space for that as well.

About the Chromatic Star - because of the Doomsday combo in the deck, I feel like having 5 draw effects(needed on the board to kick off the combo), is a good choice, and I like Star over Top in that situation alone because it enables me to get all five cards out the deck(of course, with additional mana, Top can do the same, but the Star can do so with the same mana requirement).

Feedback and constructive criticism and deck help would be wonderful, thanks in advance.

[emidln]

Chromatic anything is worse than SDT. Played on the same turn, it makes one less storm (you don't get to replay SDT). Played before the Doomsday turn, you're still a storm less. You also don't get to use this for filtering.

In terms of usefulness for Doomsday:

SDT and BS are required as 4-ofs
Ponder
everything else

[Nidd]

If you want to include Silence, I would cut the Thoughtseizes, 1 Cabal Ritual and 1 Ad Nauseam.
You could also cut the Chromatic Stars, play 4 SDT and play 1 IGG MD.
I think the CMC of DDANT is too high to run a second Ad Nauseam and the bomb density is high enough.
You could even cut 1 Tendrils for a 15th land.

Do you have any consistency issues? If so, I would go with the cutting of 1 Tendrils for land #15.

[xTrainx]

Chromatic anything is worse than SDT. Played on the same turn, it makes one less storm (you don't get to replay SDT). Played before the Doomsday turn, you're still a storm less. You also don't get to use this for filtering.

In terms of usefulness for Doomsday:

SDT and BS are required as 4-ofs
Ponder
everything else

In terms of the filtering, you actually can with Mystical Tutor, but that's about it, because you can stick the draw trigger on the stack while you use the flipped mana to pay for it. But yeah, I see your reasoning.

Cutting the second ADN sounds good in theory, but I like having the second in the deck because it allows for a much faster deck, because a fourth of the times I draw a starting seven, the ADN is already sitting in my hand. Cutting a Tendrils down seems half decent, but again, it has its uses - If I have no mana, just enough to cast Doomsday while they have lethal on the board, I can grab Rit Rit Tendrils Tendrils with Meditate, which, unless the deck did horribly, I should have three more open mana(led or some other rituals), and then, even if I'm really 1-2 storm short, I can double Tendrils if need be. Also allows me to do miniTendrils to pull out of a tight spot, and have enough room to combo off with ADN the next turn.

1 Meditate
1 Doomsday
2 Ad Nauseam
2 Tendrils of Agony

4 Sensei's Divining Top
4 Brainstorm

4 Duress
3 Silence

3 Cabal Ritual
2 Chrome Mox
4 Dark Ritual
4 Lion's Eye Diamond
4 Lotus Petal

3 Infernal Tutor
4 Mystical Tutor

3 Flooded Strand
1 Tundra
3 Misty Rainforest
2 Polluted Delta
1 Tropical Island
1 Scrubland
3 Underground Sea

The deck as it is now can go off pretty quickly, because oftentimes it's easier to just drop Silence, and if they have the doubleforce in their hand...well - you were in trouble anyway. If you drop Silence, they have to FoW it, and the chances of more countermagic are slim. Also, Silence rapes Mindbreak Trap.

The mana issues shouldn't turn out to be too bad(this new edit is untested), even though I really like Cabal Ritual, LED's can cover the loss of one mana accelerator. I'm still having issues about cuts for land #15, when the math is done @ 14; about every 1 of four/five cards should be a land, meaning I should get 1-2 land hands; which could lead to potential problems against Wasteland.

And the final thing that I could do is chuck the DDANT, which opens up a slot for the fifteenth land, and for Cabal Ritual, and put it in the sideboard against faster decks(cough Zoo, Sligh, ect)

[Nidd]

Cutting the second ADN sounds good in theory, but I like having the second in the deck because it allows for a much faster deck, because a fourth of the times I draw a starting seven, the ADN is already sitting in my hand. Cutting a Tendrils down seems half decent, but again, it has its uses - If I have no mana, just enough to cast Doomsday while they have lethal on the board, I can grab Rit Rit Tendrils Tendrils with Meditate, which, unless the deck did horribly, I should have three more open mana(led or some other rituals), and then, even if I'm really 1-2 storm short, I can double Tendrils if need be. Also allows me to do miniTendrils to pull out of a tight spot, and have enough room to combo off with ADN the next turn.
So, all you're saying is "could be... might be... maybe...". Yes, a second AdN can be good, yes, a second ToA can be useful - but how often will you shuffle it back or reveal 1 with AdN or w/e else. Yes, you might end up winning a few games because of these cute things you can pull off, but at the end of the day, your threat densitiy is high enough and you already have been concerned about including Chants, so why not just try what I suggested and sleeve it up?

Unless you're playing ANT without DD, 1 AdN is enough.

Btw, why aren't you playing IGG?

[piZZero]

Hi boys! (and girls of course)

Some of you might know me as I've already played combo for really long time with certain success (nothing spectacular compared to what some people here has achieved), and I felt I might contribute somehow to this awesome post.

So, last weekend I played a small tournament (25 players) at the Black Lotus store in Barcelona and achieved a top4 split using this list

Main deck: 4c ANT by Jordi Amat
4 Dark Ritual
4 Cabal Ritual
4 Lotus Petal
4 Lion’s Eye Diamond
4 Brainstorm
4 Mystical Tutor
4 Infernal Tutor
4 Polluted Delta
3 Underground Sea
3 Ponder
3 Duress
3 Orim’s Chant
2 Flooded Strand
2 City of Traitors
2 Chrome Mox
2 Sensei’s Divining Top
1 Ad Nauseam
1 Tendrils of Agony
1 Ill-Gotten Gains
1 Chain of Vapor
1 Tundra
1 Scrubland
1 Tropical Island
1 Island

Sideboard:
4 Carpet of Flowers
3 Path to Exile
2 Nature’s Claim
1 Reverent Silence
1 Krosan Grip
1 Angel’s Grace
1 Slaughter Pact
1 Tendrils of Agony
1 Tropical Island

The deck was designed for a specific metagame. You can read more about the deck choices and a brief report of the tournament at:

http://www.team-pataners.com/report-top4-split-at-legacy-black-lotus-220510/

Cheers!

piZZero - Jordi Amat

[alderon666]

Split Top 4 in a 20 person tournment this weekend. The matches were pretty lame, I got just one blue opponent and got nuts hands all day long. I tested the Emrakul Isle thing and it did ok, when me enough games against CB but passing the turn with 7 life was very awkward. Never got to use it in the tournment though.

MD:
Spells
4 Mystical Tutor
4 Brainstorm
4 Orim's Chant
4 Sensei's Divining Top
3 Infernal Tutor
1 Meditate
1 Doomsday
1 Ill-Gotten Gains
1 Ad Nauseam
1 Tendrils of Agony
4 Lotus Petal
4 Lion's Eye Diamond
4 Dark Ritual
2 Cabal Ritual
3 Duress
2 Chrome Mox
1 Ponder
1 Wipe Away

Lands
4 Polluted Delta
1 Scrubland
4 Flooded Strand
2 Underground Sea
1 Tundra
1 Tropical Island
1 Island
1 Swamp

SB:
2 Krosan Grip
1 Deathmark
2 Doomsday
1 Chain of Vapor
1 Echoing Truth
1 Hurkyl's Recall
1 Bayou
1 Shelldock Isle
1 Emrakul, the Aeons Torn
1 Extirpate
3 Carpet of Flowers

[matelml]

The maindeck was card-for-card Saito's, the sideboard was his -1. I boarded in every single card in various matches, and only really missed an IGG for quick and certain wins. I have no idea what I would cut for it.

I do. The deck becomes strictly better if you cut the 2nd Tendrils for an IGG.

[JonBarber]

I do. The deck becomes strictly better if you cut the 2nd Tendrils for an IGG.

Not necessarily true. Without the chants, IGG becomes a lot worse against any deck running counterspells. Sure adding a IGG in place of the tendrils in a aggro meta will make the deck a lot better, but your aggro matchup is already amazing. When trying to mini tendrils them, the 2nd tendrils is a god send.

[scott_limoges]

This is the best deck in the format. Nothing comes close even post board, if built properly. It has the same power level as a vintage deck, but plays against legacy decks.

[JonBarber]

This is the best deck in the format. Nothing comes close even post board, if built properly. It has the same power level as a vintage deck, but plays against legacy decks.

Its certainly a good deck, but like everything in legacy, it has its weaknesses. Reanimator and countertop will still give you hell.

[Ozymandias]

This deck has issues against Dragon Stompy, not that that's much of the metagame. I guess I would actually cut an Ad Nauseum for IGG.

[Dia_Bot]

TT can also give you a hard time (if you play a non chant version that is).
the statement:
This is the best deck in the format. Nothing comes close even post board, if built properly. It has the same power level as a vintage deck, but plays against legacy decks. I find a bit exaggerated. No doubt about it's a very good deck and a good pilot will get almost flawless results with it. But I guess the same is true for every (T1) deck out there.

[GoldenCid]

I have troubles for understanding the inclusion of silence / chant...isn't 4 duress + 2 Thoughtseize enouhgt for disrruption?

[Dark Ritual]

Silence is good against decks packing only countermagic and not CB/Top. Silence allows you to use IGG against decks like those without CB/Top and only countermagic because once chant resolves you can go combo off and use IGG to build storm if need be. Duress and thoughtseize are good against decks with permanent based hate aka CB/Top, canonist, meddling mage....

Yeah I would never play 14 land in here I'd rather play 15. 2 Ad nauseam seems iffy to me; I started using DD and cut an ad nauseam for 1 DD and have never looked back. 2 Ad nauseam gives you too many chances to flip some high CMC card when you ad nauseam and I don't like to fizzle when I play ad nauseam thank you.

I like k grip over reverent silence because it can deal with artifacts. And is rarely countered by CB.

[GoldenCid]

Silence is good against decks packing only countermagic and not CB/Top. Silence allows you to use IGG against decks like those without CB/Top and only countermagic because once chant resolves you can go combo off and use IGG to build storm if need be. Duress and thoughtseize are good against decks with permanent based hate aka CB/Top, canonist, meddling mage....



Yeah, but is thare any significant deck that runs just countermagic?

[Dia_Bot]

Yeah, but is thare any significant deck that runs just countermagic?
Landstill and TT (and aggro bant w/o CB).
Personaly I believe these decks aren't played enough anymore to include chants/silence although they do grant other benefits (like IGG ofc).

[GoldenCid]

Landstill and TT (and aggro bant w/o CB).
Personaly I believe these decks aren't played enough anymore to include chants/silence although they do grant other benefits (like IGG ofc).

IGG + extirpate to their counters in resp is a solutions?

[JonBarber]

IGG + extirpate to their counters in resp is a solutions?

Seems a little extreme. Chant/discard is two different styles of play. Discard tends to be a little faster and more consistent (you can duress them the turn before and then go off the next turn whereas you need to chant the same turn you go off) but more susceptibal to being shut down (they can hide a force with top).

[BantFTW]

Just play 3 chant 3 duress or something...
that's what I like the most, if you need chant you get it..
And sideboard extra discard/chant :P

[Nelis]

In the Goblin thread we are discussing what to name with Cabal Therapy vs ANT. You're the experts, what should we say?

[Aleksandr]

In the Goblin thread we are discussing what to name with Cabal Therapy vs ANT. You're the experts, what should we say?

http://images1.wikia.nocookie.net/yugioh/images/9/9a/PandaborgABPF-JP-R.jpg

Pandaborg. It has att 1700, def 1400 so it kills in one turn, no shit.

Ok, so assuming it is blind Therapy, Iď go for Brainstorm, the next one (hope you have a spare critter...) I'd take anything dangerous. If there are two or more BS in yard, I'd name Mystical/LED.

:really:

[oxeimon]

So from reading these forums and some personal testing, it seems like reanimator is a terrible matchup for ANT (here I'm referring to the version with DDay and burning wishes and no chant effects). It seems like every card in their deck is either land, search, or something that directly interfere's with your plan, be it discard, permission, or reanimation parts -> iona(black). This is esp bad with the versions of reanimator packing discard in the mainboard.

Given that it's probably impossible to do well with this deck at a large tournament without having a solid gameplan against reanimator, I'd be curious to hear what you guys have tried to this end.

Currently I'm running in the board as reanimator-hate:
1x Eye of Nowhere (wishable iona-removal)
1x Wipe Away (for g2/g3)

[Dia_Bot]

So from reading these forums and some personal testing, it seems like reanimator is a terrible matchup for ANT (here I'm referring to the version with DDay and burning wishes and no chant effects). It seems like every card in their deck is either land, search, or something that directly interfere's with your plan, be it discard, permission, or reanimation parts -> iona(black). This is esp bad with the versions of reanimator packing discard in the mainboard.

Given that it's probably impossible to do well with this deck at a large tournament without having a solid gameplan against reanimator, I'd be curious to hear what you guys have tried to this end.

Currently I'm running in the board as reanimator-hate:
1x Eye of Nowhere (wishable iona-removal)
1x Wipe Away (for g2/g3)

I played quite a lot vs reanimator with NLS and never thought the matchup was all that horrible.
Pre-side it's hard but if you can hide the fact you're playing combo the reanimator player will often reanimate something else then Iona or worst case put her on blue (In which case it should still be doable to win). Admittedly, if they playing discard maindeck it's harder.
Pre side I would say a well informed opponent will probably be able to make this matchup quite in his favor.
After side with 3 bounce spells and 8 discard effect your matchup should be atleast 50-50.
If you have a lot of trouble playing vs reanimator you could also include telemin performance or extirpate in your sideboard. Personally I'm not a big fan of T.performance because it's quite narrow and it's blue (reanimator player will play iona on blue most of the time G2). Nonetheless It could improve G1 against them.
Extirpate is imo one of the best cards to side in vs reanimator (aside from bounce spells ofc). Responding on reanimate with mystical and switching top to remove iona's is a great way to win this MU.
At the moment my sideboarding plan vs reanimator is +1 Thoughtseize + 1 eye of nowhere + 1 echoing truth + 1 chain of vapor. In an reanimator heavy environment all I would do is add 1 extirpate to this plan.

[GoboLord]

Here another question from Goblins to ANT experts:
We had a discussion about combo-hate. We took the following cards into consideration:
Cabal Therapy/Thoughtseize alongside with:

Thorn of Amethyst
Pyrostatic Pillar
Chalice of the Void

Which one hurts you most?
The oppinion so far was that Thorn slows you down but doesnt defeat you compleatly since you still have enough time to search for your Bounce.
Pyrostatic Pillar doesnt slow you a bit but gives you at least 4 damage while trying to remove it.
Chalice is flexible. It can be set on 0 or on 1, but either way you are still able to go off (even without bounce).

Any suggestions? You could post that in the Goblin thread btw.
Thanks!

[Bahamuth]

Here another question from Goblins to ANT experts:
We had a discussion about combo-hate. We took the following cards into consideration:
Cabal Therapy/Thoughtseize alongside with:

Thorn of Amethyst
Pyrostatic Pillar
Chalice of the Void

Which one hurts you most?
The oppinion so far was that Thorn slows you down but doesnt defeat you compleatly since you still have enough time to search for your Bounce.
Pyrostatic Pillar doesnt slow you a bit but gives you at least 4 damage while trying to remove it.
Chalice is flexible. It can be set on 0 or on 1, but either way you are still able to go off (even without bounce).

Any suggestions? You could post that in the Goblin thread btw.
Thanks!

Thorn is the best hate piece you have available. We can win through both Chalice and Pillar, but winning through Thorn, if it comes with a reasonable clock, is quite difficult. An early Thorn also hinders our cantripping (Chalice does too though). However, even with Thorn, against good ANT players, you're not going to get a positive matchup post-board. If you have other options to board against other decks, I'd consider not running any combo hate at all.

Concerning the Reanimator matchup, I run 3 Doomsday, 1 Shelldock Isle and 1 Emrakul sideboard, and my postboard matchup is favorable. Their deck can't really beat an early Doomsday, and any creature after that is irrelevant.

[practical joke]

I'd gladly test that a few times against you.

I've no experience with that blowing up in my face while playing reanimate, but a resolved doomsday into that is definately game against reanimate. A very few lists run an edict effect.

Also a good ANT player will be able to win both post-board games against reanimate even though they are tricky, bounce and slaughter pact combined with a simple chant does everything you want. as long as they don't have an extract or sadistic up theirs ( which will be a dead card against NLS, since they can either tendrils or emrakul) they'll be fine.

[oxeimon]

Thorn is the best hate piece you have available. We can win through both Chalice and Pillar, but winning through Thorn, if it comes with a reasonable clock, is quite difficult. An early Thorn also hinders our cantripping (Chalice does too though). However, even with Thorn, against good ANT players, you're not going to get a positive matchup post-board. If you have other options to board against other decks, I'd consider not running any combo hate at all.

Concerning the Reanimator matchup, I run 3 Doomsday, 1 Shelldock Isle and 1 Emrakul sideboard, and my postboard matchup is favorable. Their deck can't really beat an early Doomsday, and any creature after that is irrelevant.

Hmm, that's a 5 card package for the sideboard, only one of which is used in traditional sideboards...

what'd you have to take out? Or, perhaps more relevantly, what's your current sideboard running that package?

[Pulp_Fiction]

@gobolord: The absolute best hate you can have is Null Rod. Well, when running the terrible version with no IGG and 2 Tendrils, Chalice @0 really hurts them. But for EVERYTHING, play Null Rod. With DD, Chalice is whatever, you can play around it. There is no playing around Null Rod ... ever (unless Goblins gives us about 4-7 turns to setup threshed Cabal Rituals + IT assuming we can't find answers for it).

Thorn is also good, but if I had the choice of having Thorn/Sphere in play or Null Rod, I would MUCH rather see the Thorn/Sphere since it allows me to use Top to find an answer and doesn't shut off my artifact mana if I stall on 2 lands or something early on. Although, I will tell you one thing, out of all the hate cards I want to see played, I HOPE to see Mindbreak Trap the most. The card is so worthless against combo its ridiculous. It may steal A game ... but it sucks against anyone who knows what they are doing and usually you mull to 5-6 trying to find it and keep shitty hands.

In short, Null Rod is THE BEST way to stall combo out for the longest period of time because it MUST be answered if your deck can only win VIA storm.

[JonBarber]

@gobolord: The absolute best hate you can have is Null Rod. Well, when running the terrible version with no IGG and 2 Tendrils, Chalice @0 really hurts them. But for EVERYTHING, play Null Rod. With DD, Chalice is whatever, you can play around it. There is no playing around Null Rod ... ever (unless Goblins gives us about 4-7 turns to setup threshed Cabal Rituals + IT assuming we can't find answers for it).

Thorn is also good, but if I had the choice of having Thorn/Sphere in play or Null Rod, I would MUCH rather see the Thorn/Sphere since it allows me to use Top to find an answer and doesn't shut off my artifact mana if I stall on 2 lands or something early on. Although, I will tell you one thing, out of all the hate cards I want to see played, I HOPE to see Mindbreak Trap the most. The card is so worthless against combo its ridiculous. It may steal A game ... but it sucks against anyone who knows what they are doing and usually you mull to 5-6 trying to find it and keep shitty hands.

In short, Null Rod is THE BEST way to stall combo out for the longest period of time because it MUST be answered if your deck can only win VIA storm.

Null rod is good once it hit play, but thats the problem. ANT can go off before turn 2, can hit it with discard, or can just go off without worrying about it. Chalice for 0 hits all of the same cards except top, and honestly, if your spending turns spinning top, I'm dealing plenty of damage to your face with gobbos. Plus, null rod shuts off one of our best cards, vial. Vial allows us to double our goblin pumping, allowing us to kill ANT twice as fast. Null Rod also requires two lands in hand, and that we spend our 2nd turn playing it. I'd much rather be dropping piledrivers or winstigators turn 2. Chalice for 0 causes no tempo loss, and allows you to use wastelands that turn. Last but not least, drawing a second null rod isn't going to put you in a significantly better position. Drawing a 2nd or 3rd chalice is never going to be dead. So from an ANT perspecitive, I really don't like chalice. It delays me by at least 2-3 turns, and is quite a pain. As a goblins player, it fits with the strategy of the deck better than any other card. Just my 0.02

[JonBarber]

double trouble

[alderon666]

Null Rod is a pain, and will cause ANT to kill it self more often than not.

Chalice is good and all, it's even good against Zoo. But it's easily played around with Doosmday or regular ANT with the right hand and some luck on flipping Dark Rituals.

The problem with goblins is that it is actually a really slow deck from ANT perspectice. If we were to make and average damage dealt per turn by goblins, we would have turn 1/2/3 close to 0/1/3 damage and them jumping to 10 on turn 4 or something. Cards that slow ANT a bit will be good if you hit fast hands, so I think cards that disrupt completely some aspect of your opponents game are better.

[JonBarber]

Null Rod is a pain, and will cause ANT to kill it self more often than not.

Chalice is good and all, it's even good against Zoo. But it's easily played around with Doosmday or regular ANT with the right hand and some luck on flipping Dark Rituals.

How is Null Rod any different from Chalice here? They have the exact same effect (minus the fact that chalice will actually counter rather than letting them stay in play) and that is shutting off 0 casting cost artifacts. The only benefit null rod offers you in this matchup is shutting off top. Personally, i'm not gonna spend an extra two mana to shut off one card (that can then be shut off next turn with a chalice @1) only to lose vial, one of the best cards in the deck.


The problem with goblins is that it is actually a really slow deck from ANT perspectice. If we were to make and average damage dealt per turn by goblins, we would have turn 1/2/3 close to 0/1/3 damage and them jumping to 10 on turn 4 or something. Cards that slow ANT a bit will be good if you hit fast hands, so I think cards that disrupt completely some aspect of your opponents game are better.

What are you referring to here? I'm pretty sure thats what ALL the hate does lol. Even mindbreak trap. Its there to slow you down enough to find discard (not that I recommend it).

[Aleksandr]

off topic: A local player used RB build of Goblins with maindeck Prospectors and some 5/3 black rogue Goblin that eats three from opponents library. It proved useful - even against Thrash, removing 3/4 of Goyfs... "now kill me with Gooses, lol"
If he plays Burning Wish, he can still go for the SB Tendrils or EtW at least, but it is still better than nothing. And you can play it turn2.

[overpowered]

off topic: A local player used RB build of Goblins with maindeck Prospectors and some 5/3 black rogue Goblin that eats three from opponents library. It proved useful - even against Thrash, removing 3/4 of Goyfs... "now kill me with Gooses, lol"
If he plays Burning Wish, he can still go for the SB Tendrils or EtW at least, but it is still better than nothing. And you can play it turn2.

As a goblin player myself, I must say that Earwig Squad is a definite plus in this match-up. The problem comes with running more than one or two. The deck doesn't have enough slots to dedicate to cards like that so those are mostly fetched up with matron or lucked into play from your opening 7. If you don't have a Frogtosser then you're looking at a 3cc Squad instead of the 2cc version. As far as prospector is concerned: is he or will he ever make the cut over vial or lackey in the one slot? Probably not, so we don't run him.
Since we don't run prospector, Squad doesn't hit the table until turn 3-4 on average and that's far too slow vs. ANT. It's not worth destroying our deck's consistency with Prospector to get a Squad on turn 2. He's mostly run against NOPro variants anyway.
Probably one of the better plays would be turn 1 lackey, turn two Port your land, turn three squad. Even so, I've kept that hand and had ANT blow up on me turn 2. :(

I'd still like to say that chalice is great in this match-up because, while they can still doomsday through it, it costs goblins 0 tempo and forces the ANT deck INTO the doomsday path, which increases our active hindrance of their deck plan. I'd rather see a chalice in play when I lose than a Thorn of Amythest in my hand... The same can be said for Null Rod. Null Rod allows permanents to hit the board, and only shuts off SDTop. Chalice @ 0 does almost the exact same thing, minus Top. It still must be dealt with in the same manner and it costs 0 tempo. Null Rod takes our turn 2 threats, and therefore gives the ANT player a turn to react to the card. Chalice does neither of those things.

[Aleksandr]

Qty Name
// Lands
4 Polluted Delta
3 Flooded Strand
3 Underground Sea
1 Island
1 Tropical Island
1 Swamp
1 Tundra
1 Scrubland
//\\
// Spells
1 Ad Nauseam
1 Tendrils of Agony
3 Infernal Tutor
3 Sensei's Divining Top
4 Mystical Tutor
1 Ill-Gotten Gains
3 Chrome Mox
2 Ponder
4 Brainstorm
3 Cabal Ritual
4 Dark Ritual
4 Lion's Eye Diamond
4 Lotus Petal
3 Duress
4 Orim's Chant
1 Wipe Away
//\\
// Sideboard

1 Slaughter Pact
1 Hurkyl's Recall
1 Bayou
1 Sadistic Sacrament
1 Extirpate
3 Xantid Swarm
1 Deathmark
1 Echoing Truth
1 Rebuild
3 Dark Confidant
1 Angel's Grace


Fared very well (ehm... see below) with this list yesterday.


R1, Bert, Herrings

G1 I slowly sculpted my hand against double Cursecatcher, than when I tried to combo out, I had not enough mana due to double Daze and named CCs. Yeah, I could try it faster, but I had no info on his hand... Maybe he had those Dazes since the game started.
G2 I finished him with Ad Nauseam + Angel's Grace after I blindly draw by Top into land that made me play around Daze on AdN.
G3 I lost.


R2/R3, Tom, Tress

I won the G1 pretty easy, lost G2 somehow and was unable to get through hate in G3, so this match was draw


R3/R2, Bye


R4, Martin, Monobrown Stax

G1 I comboed very fast, while G2 I comboed very fast.


Overall I am happy with the deck, but playing Storm.dec for the first time in my life, it is not that easy with DD. I'll try some easier list next time.

[Eksem]

Things I have learned about this deck:

Doomsday-decks are incredibly hard. Still unsure if the effort is worth it. Tourney results seem to imply it's not.

Ad Nauseam is too good. I have cut IGG from my deck. Much like Doomsday-versions it can save you when AdN would do nothing, but requires a bit more work. Of course, just running 2 AdN instead of AdN+IGG is just easier and wins a lot of games just by the deck being easier to pilot.

2x Tendrils does nothing. I have one extra in the board though. I have no idea why.

Running 4 Chant + 2 Silence made a guy ask if I ride my car with a helmet on. Have been running 3 Duress + 3 Chant since.

I don't like 4 Duress + 2 Thoughtseize-versions. Don't really know why. Made me feel uncomfortable.

Path to Exile in the board is tech.

Against blue, Xantid Swarm goes in game one, and if I for some reason do not win, they go back out game 3. Opponents have a lot of dead cards and scratched heads.

This deck beats Stax as well as Sphere-boarding tribe decks even though it shouldn't. This still surprises me.

City of Traitors is insane. I used to have problems against decks with fast clocks and Daze/Cursecatcher/Spell Pierce. Not anymore I don't.

I hate CB-decks. Especially those that fetch hatebears with Survival of the Fittest.

It's very important to not loose the first match, because then you play against terrible Sui-decks that wreck you with Dark Ritual+Hymn+Thoughtseize for the rest of the tournament. And Sadistic Sacrament. Nothing hurts your self esteem more.

I have no idea what Dark Confidant is supposed to do. Never did in TPS either.

[JKubilis]

For reference, I am running a list that is nearly identical to Saito's while I learn how to play it properly.


Things I have learned about this deck:

2x Tendrils does nothing. I have one extra in the board though. I have no idea why.



In my limited experience with this deck I have found 2x tendrils to be very useful. Sometimes you need to go for a mini tendrils to buy you another turn or two. Especially in the mirror.




I don't like 4 Duress + 2 Thoughtseize-versions. Don't really know why. Made me feel uncomfortable.


The version I run uses these. I absolutely love an opening hand with a thoughtseize in it. I have been considering going 4 TS 2 duress, but unfortunately the life really matters with this deck. The discard just seems better to me than chants in almost all situations since it can affect decks without counterspells. A duress or TS has never been a dead card for me.




I have no idea what Dark Confidant is supposed to do. Never did in TPS either.

I bring in Dark Confidant against the mirror, reanimator, and cb top decks like thopter foundry that don't play a ton of creatures. He acts as a mini ad nauseum. I have actually won a few games just beating down with multiple DCs.



And now a couple questions for the more experienced combo players in the room.

I have one IGG in my board. I bring it in against non blue decks.
Should I board out one of my 2 Ad nauseum for it?

Has anyone cut SDT from their list or dropped it down to 1?
Was thinking about adding a MD answer to hate, such as a chain of vapor, since I have started to see more things like gaddock teeg main. Plus it would be nice to have the chain MD when reanimator gets their Iona and names black game one. Not sure what to cut for it, but a SDT doesn't seem like a bad idea.

Thanks in advance.

[Shimi]

I have one IGG in my board. I bring it in against non blue decks.
Should I board out one of my 2 Ad nauseum for it?


I'm playing with one IGG in SB too, usually I board out one tendrils for the IGG because if I am boarding IGG I want Fast wins(and a open hand with Adn seems very good).

[Rune]

Has anyone cut SDT from their list or dropped it down to 1?
Was thinking about adding a MD answer to hate, such as a chain of vapor, since I have started to see more things like gaddock teeg main. Plus it would be nice to have the chain MD when reanimator gets their Iona and names black game one. Not sure what to cut for it, but a SDT doesn't seem like a bad idea.

Thanks in advance.

SDT is one of the best cards in the deck because of its interactions with LED and Mystical Tutor. Going below 2 isn't ideal since you will not be able to fully abuse LED mana, and it doesn't really make to play 1 of something that you can't tutor for. It's also one of the reason why ANT doesn't really have any problems against discard aggro/Bx suicide. If you took them out, those matchups would be a lot worse.

If you play Saito's list, you could go down to 3 Cabal Rituals if you wanted to add the Chain.

[Azdraël]

H
Was thinking about adding a MD answer to hate, such as a chain of vapor, since I have started to see more things like gaddock teeg main. Plus it would be nice to have the chain MD when reanimator gets their Iona and names black game one. Not sure what to cut for it, but a SDT doesn't seem like a bad idea.

Thanks in advance.

CoV sucks cuz it won't remove Cotv@1 which is the main threat. If you want to deal both with Iona (well, increase your chance, because he can also named black for Slaughter Pact/Deathmark) and with Hate MD, play Echoing Truth. It is the best answer to any random hate, I used to always side it in g2 when it is not in my MD anyway , all the more when I dont know what my opponent is siding against me.

[Eksem]

The mini-tendrils to buy time is only necessary if you run Thoughtseize and have no Chants (Chant-walking also buys you a turn, actually), and even then it's rare. However, this reminds me that the Tendrils in my SB should probably be IGG instead.

I would always run 2 SDT, it does a lot of things.

You should definately make room for a MD Chain of Vapor (my favorite) or Wipe Away (everyone else's favorite). Cut a Tendrils ;)

[videogamer99]

This is the list I am planning on playing at my local's GPT. I need some small cards and an LED. It's a pretty stock list:
Spells
4 Brainstorm
4 Dark Ritual
4 Duress
4 Mystical Tutor
4 Orim's Chant
3 Cabal Ritual
3 Infernal Tutor
2 Ad Nauseam
2 Ponder
1 Ill-Gotten Gains
1 Tendrils of Agony

Artifacts
4 Lion's Eye Diamond
4 Lotus Petal
3 Chrome Mox
2 Sensei's Divining Top

Lands
4 Polluted Delta
3 Flooded Strand
2 Misty Rainforest
2 Underground Sea
1 Island
1 Swamp
1 Tropical Island
1 Tundra

Sideboard
4 Xantid Swarm
2 Krosan Grip
2 Reverent Silence
1 Chain of Vapor
1 Echoing Truth
1 Extirpate
1 Hurkyl's Recall
1 Sadistic Sacrament
1 Slaughter Pact
1 Thoughtseize

My biggest problem is revealing Ad Nauseam when I Ad Nauseam. I never want to hit it, but I seem too way too often.

[ottozoell]

Hitting Ad Nauseam is a necessary evil, over the course of many games it will end up balanced in your favor. The amount of games that having a second Ad Nauseam will win is much greater than the ammount of games you will lose to flipping it over with the first one.

A lot of people complain about hitting the second one, but as long as you are vigilant about what your life total is and how many storm you need to go off it shouldn't be a problem (or at least not as often as internet forums suggest). All you need to do is count and look for lines of play that allow you to flip the least amount of cards.

I've played the mirror match numerous times where my opponent had a clear victory and over flipped/ didnt consider the *best* line of play and complained about how bad his draw was. when he had the right cards if he played them in the right order. The biggest complaint from these players is always that they flip Ad Nauseam. Chances are that if this is a common theme in your games, losing to flipping Ad Nauseam, you are not playing optimally and should gold fish the deck more to get a feel for the minimum amount of cards you need to combo off. I suggest taking notes when you play games and when you goldfish so that you can look back over the situations you couldn't figure out and see what your other options are. This deck has more options that most people give it credit for and if you learn form you losses and really study the workings of the deck you can improve your win percentage greatly. Looking at the games you win in this way will also help improve your win percentage.

For people playing lists similar to Saitou's, what are the most common cards you board out? I have been playing his maindeck with a small change (-1 Ponder, +1 Sensei's Divining Top), and usually found myself boarding out the Ponder (Ponders, when I was playing 2) and the Infernal Tutor/ Lion's Eye Diamond package more than anything else, with the 4th Cabal Ritual being the other card that sits games two and three out.

The other topic I think should be discussed more is sideboard slots, it seems like ANT players are becoming more savvy when boarding in the mirror and that Sadistic Sacrament is losing value, are there cards that could be more useful against more decks while still giving equal value in the mirror?
Currently my board looks like this
4 Dark Confidant
2 Reverent Silence
2 Thoughtseize
1 Slaughter Pact
1 Extirpate
1 Chain of Vapor
1 Echoing Truth
1 Hurkyl's Recall
1 Krosan Grip
1 Sadistic Sacrament
I was thinking or adding a second removal spell, a second Extirpate, or a second Hurkyl's Recall in the place of Sadistic Sacrament, but of those only Extirpate has any possible impact on the mirror and I wouldn't really want to bring it in. Has Inquisition of Kozilek been good for anyone? Maybe a Pithing Needle? These all seem like bad ideas...

[alderon666]

For reference, I am running a list that is nearly identical to Saito's while I learn how to play it properly.




In my limited experience with this deck I have found 2x tendrils to be very useful. Sometimes you need to go for a mini tendrils to buy you another turn or two. Especially in the mirror.



The version I run uses these. I absolutely love an opening hand with a thoughtseize in it. I have been considering going 4 TS 2 duress, but unfortunately the life really matters with this deck. The discard just seems better to me than chants in almost all situations since it can affect decks without counterspells. A duress or TS has never been a dead card for me.



I bring in Dark Confidant against the mirror, reanimator, and cb top decks like thopter foundry that don't play a ton of creatures. He acts as a mini ad nauseum. I have actually won a few games just beating down with multiple DCs.



And now a couple questions for the more experienced combo players in the room.

I have one IGG in my board. I bring it in against non blue decks.
Should I board out one of my 2 Ad nauseum for it?

Has anyone cut SDT from their list or dropped it down to 1?
Was thinking about adding a MD answer to hate, such as a chain of vapor, since I have started to see more things like gaddock teeg main. Plus it would be nice to have the chain MD when reanimator gets their Iona and names black game one. Not sure what to cut for it, but a SDT doesn't seem like a bad idea.

Thanks in advance.

If you're adding bounce MD because of any other reason other than to fight Staxx it should be Chain of Vapor. It just does so much:

- Bounces anything for 1 mana
- Costs just 1
- Good against Reanimator
- Adds storm with 0 mana artifacts

My favourite play with it is, play 2 or 3 zero-mana artifacts and then Chain each one back to your hand sacrificing all your lands. Then with the last copy you bounce their hatebear (works even under Canonist) and then proceed to go off.

[Rico Suave]

The other topic I think should be discussed more is sideboard slots, it seems like ANT players are becoming more savvy when boarding in the mirror and that Sadistic Sacrament is losing value, are there cards that could be more useful against more decks while still giving equal value in the mirror?
Currently my board looks like this
4 Dark Confidant
2 Reverent Silence
2 Thoughtseize
1 Slaughter Pact
1 Extirpate
1 Chain of Vapor
1 Echoing Truth
1 Hurkyl's Recall
1 Krosan Grip
1 Sadistic Sacrament
I was thinking or adding a second removal spell, a second Extirpate, or a second Hurkyl's Recall in the place of Sadistic Sacrament, but of those only Extirpate has any possible impact on the mirror and I wouldn't really want to bring it in. Has Inquisition of Kozilek been good for anyone? Maybe a Pithing Needle? These all seem like bad ideas...

In my testing of the mirror match, I found that Dark Confidant had a greater impact than Sad Sac. Almost without fail, the player who drew and resolved more copies of Dark Confidant would win - even if the opponent cast Sad Sac. This is partly because Bob is a trump to Sad Sac, and also because Bob draws disruption and this pins the opponent down while pecking away at his life total.

Of course if the opponent does not have Bob or doesn't board it in, Sad Sac is much better. But if both players have Bob, I found that not having Sad Sac at all isn't a big deal. Taking Sad Sac out of the board is much easier when considering that the card only has use in one real match.

[gobblor]

Hello all, I plan on playing this deck at a couple tournaments this weekend and although I feel fairly comfortable playing it, I still have no idea how to sideboard (what to take out specifically). I am playing Saito's list from Grand Prix Madrid, could anyone give some general advice on how to sideboard or tell me what is generally cut for the sideboarded cards. Thanks for any help!:smile:

[Nidd]

I've been tinkering with some changes to my DDANT and I decided to scrap the DD plan tomorrow because it hasn't been treating me too well last weeks.

My new list is this:

1 Ad Nauseam
1 Ill-Gotten Gains
1 Tendrils of Agony

4 Infernal Tutor
4 Mystical Tutor

4 Brainstorm
2 Ponder
2 SDT

4 Dark Ritual
4 Cabal Ritual

4 Lotus Petal
4 LED
4 Chrome Mox

4 Silence
3 Duress
1 Chain of Vapor

4 Misty Rainforest
4 Polluted Delta
2 Underground Sea
1 Tundra
1 Tropical Island
2 Island
1 Swamp


Sideboard:
4 Dark Confidant
1 Sadistic Sacrament
1 Duress
1 Wipe Away
1 Hurkyl's Recall
1 Chain of Vapor
1 Slaughter Pact
2 Death Mark
2 Krosan Grip
1 Ad Nauseam


Anyone got some constructive criticism? Any obvious flaws you can see?
The SB is designed to fight a large and wide-open Meta, I'm thinking about replacing 1 Death Mark with a basic Forest, though, so I can fight Dragon Stompy or similiar decks. Do you think this is a viable consideration, given my choice of Fetches?

[nodahero]

@Rico Suave.... So according to your argument Sad Sac is better than Confidant... If that is what you meant to say, why do you play Confidant over Sad Sac? I can't really think of many matches I would rather have a Confidant over a Sad Sac. Can you please list your reasons for Confidant?

[Piceli89]

I've been tinkering with some changes to my DDANT and I decided to scrap the DD plan tomorrow because it hasn't been treating me too well last weeks.

My new list is this:

1 Ad Nauseam
1 Ill-Gotten Gains
1 Tendrils of Agony

4 Infernal Tutor
4 Mystical Tutor

4 Brainstorm
2 Ponder
2 SDT

4 Dark Ritual
4 Cabal Ritual

4 Lotus Petal
4 LED
4 Chrome Mox

4 Silence
3 Duress
1 Chain of Vapor

4 Misty Rainforest
4 Polluted Delta
2 Underground Sea
1 Tundra
1 Tropical Island
2 Island
1 Swamp


Sideboard:
4 Dark Confidant
1 Sadistic Sacrament
1 Duress
1 Wipe Away
1 Hurkyl's Recall
1 Chain of Vapor
1 Slaughter Pact
2 Death Mark
2 Krosan Grip
1 Ad Nauseam


Anyone got some constructive criticism? Any obvious flaws you can see?
The SB is designed to fight a large and wide-open Meta, I'm thinking about replacing 1 Death Mark with a basic Forest, though, so I can fight Dragon Stompy or similiar decks. Do you think this is a viable consideration, given my choice of Fetches?


4 Chrome Mox is too much. Cut 1.
4 Cabal rituals are, IMO, too much. Cut 1.
8 cantrips are too few. Run 1-2 more.
Chain of vapor is horrile because it does not even bounce Chalice (Counterbalance was obvious). If you don't want to run Wip Away or Rushing River, pack at least Echoing Truth.

Basic Forest is not needed against Dragon Stompy, if you want the best solution against that deck, it's called either Slaughter pact (for Magus of the Moon) or a second Hurkyl's recall.

[Rico Suave]

@Rico Suave.... So according to your argument Sad Sac is better than Confidant... If that is what you meant to say, why do you play Confidant over Sad Sac? I can't really think of many matches I would rather have a Confidant over a Sad Sac. Can you please list your reasons for Confidant?

I would advise you to reread what I wrote, because I clearly did not say Sad Sac is better than Confidant. In fact, I said the opposite:

"In my testing of the mirror match, I found that Dark Confidant had a greater impact than Sad Sac. Almost without fail, the player who drew and resolved more copies of Dark Confidant would win - even if the opponent cast Sad Sac."

It is not a matter of Bob vs. SadSac. They fulfill entirely different purposes. I was merely stating that Sad Sac's purpose isn't strong enough to justify SB space. It only seems to steal games against weak Reanimator players or storm pilots who mistakenly exclude Bob from their decks (but you're already advantaged over them if you have Bob).

[Azdraël]

Totally agree with Piceli.
Rebuild can also be good as a second Hurkyll, and it does not take Cotv@2 after a Cotv@1, which usually means you've lost.

[JonBarber]

I won the GPT Syracuse today. Here's the list:

4 Brainstorm
4 Mystical Tutor
3 Infernal Tutor
2 Sensei's Diving Top
2 Ponder

4 Duress
2 Thoughtseize
1 Chain of Vapor

4 Cabal Ritual
4 Lion's Eye Diamond
4 Lotus Petal
4 Dark Ritual
3 Chrome Mox

2 Ad Nauseam
2 Tendrils of Agony

4 Polluted Delta
2 Misty Rainforests
2 Scalding Tarn
3 Underground Sea
1 Tropical Island
1 Swamp
1 Island
1 City of Traitors

Sideboard

4 Dark Confidant
3 Xantid Swarm
1 Sadistic Sacrement
1 Slaughter Pact
1 Hurkyl's Recall
1 Echoing Truth
1 Rushing River
1 Deathmark
1 Extirpate
1 Ill-Gotten Gains


Fairly standard B/U. I choose to play chain as maindeck bounce because its really good at building storm against control decks and to keep the mana cost low. Chain is not there to deal with maindeck chalice or counterbalance. Its there to stop things from auto-winning against you, such as Iona, Teeg, or Trini. Chalice @ 1 can still be played around, its not a hard lock. (Not to mention, if your oppenent is running maindeck chalice at 1, your probably fucked anyways.) Theres better things in the sideboard for them. When it comes to the sideboard, I choose Xantid Swarm because most of the time your oppenent will board out creature removal, and makes going off turn 2/3 pretty easy. Rushing river was my only real anti-counterbalance card, which is probably less than ideal, but trying to go for ad naus against them is a bad idea anyways. Deathmark was there for Teeg and Iona (I wanted to make sure I had plenty of hate in both blue and black). Ill-Gotten Gains was for the aggro matchups.

I certainly didn't get lucky in my matchups today. They were as following:

Round 1: Mirror (but with R for Burning Wish)
2-1
(1-0)

Round 2: Merfolk
2-0
(2-0)

Round 3: Reanimator
2-1
(3-0)

Round 4: Dredge
ID
(3-0-1)

Round 5: U/W/g Control Landstillish?
He refused to draw for rating reasons, so we played it
1-2
(3-1-1)

Top 8: NO Prog
2-1
(4-1-1)

Top 4: Dredge
2-1
(5-1-1)

Finals: U/W/g Control Landstillish? (Same guy as Round 5)
2-0
(6-1-1)

If anyones got questions, please feel free to ask!

[Muradin]

When running the Saito list, in which matchups are you guys boarding in dark confidants? The mirror of course and probably also reanimator, but when else? Du you also bring them in against Bant decks or Merfolk?

[Waikiki]

I actually bring it in against anything with blue in it.

[JonBarber]

When running the Saito list, in which matchups are you guys boarding in dark confidants? The mirror of course and probably also reanimator, but when else? Du you also bring them in against Bant decks or Merfolk?

I bring bob in matches where I expect the game to go long or me to be at a serious card disadvantage. Against mefolk and reanimator, I don't expect a long game. Both of their clocks are pretty quick, therefore dark confidant isn't really worth siding in. As for Bant decks, on the play I'll usually bring them in, on the draw I wont. Also depends on how I expect my opponent to play. If I feel like he's more likely to play slow and setup cb/top, I'll bring him in. If I expect warmonk beats/early natural order, I probably won't.

[menace13]

I board in BoB vs Merfolk and any blue ,the 2-3 cards you get are sometimes all you need to push thru counters. He trumps mirrors. He is played in Vintage as a maindeck slot for a few decks for his ability to give CA and win attrition wars.

[JonBarber]

I board in BoB vs Merfolk and any blue ,the 2-3 cards you get are sometimes all you need to push thru counters. He trumps mirrors. He is played in Vintage as a maindeck slot for a few decks for his ability to give CA and win attrition wars.

Granted, a big reason I don't board BoB vs Merfolk and other blue is because I have Xantid swarm. Reanimator and Merfolk both have a hard time dealing with a resolved one, and once he hits the board they are in trouble.

[lorddotm]

Pulp, whats your current list?


Here is mine.

4 Dark Ritual
4 Lion's Eye Diamond
4 Lotus Petal
2 Cabal Ritual
2 Chrome Mox
4 Brainstorm
4 Sensei's Divining Top
2 Ponder
4 Orim's Chant
4 Duress
4 Mystical Tutor
3 Infernal Tutor
1 Meditate
1 Doomsday
1 Ad Nauseum
1 Tendrils of Agony

4 Flooded Strand
3 Polluted Delta
1 Marsh Flats
2 Underground Sea
2 Tundra
1 Scrubland
1 Tropical Island
1 Island

SB
3 Silence
2 Krosan Grip
1 Doomsday
1 Ill-Gotten Gains
1 Chain of Vapor
1 Echoing Truth
1 Hurkyl's Recall
1 Slaughter Pact
1 Mox Diamond
1 Cabal Ritual
1 Telemin Performance
1 Plains

It has been extremely consistent and versatile. The total mana cost is 51, so Ad Nauseum is pretty dang good still. The alternative is (between sideboard and maindeck):
-4 Duress
+2 Silence
+1 Ill-Gotten Gains
+1 Krosan Grip

After board is has a 55/45 against every deck except Dreadstill, which is an extremely difficult match up. Now I know that seems very off, but so far it has been able to answer every deck and there is not one deck that I haven't beaten 2/3 with an average draw when I'm playing it optimatly, but that doesn't happen every game unfortunately. This is the kind of deck that wins with skill over every deck, if one knows how to play it, their results will be great, but no knowledge of this deck makes it a horrible deck.

Doomsday is really cool.

[Lord_Cyrus]

This is the kind of deck that wins with skill over every deck, if one knows how to play it, their results will be great, but no knowledge of this deck makes it a horrible deck.

This is so true. If more people had a better grasp of this fact, ANT would probably be posting much more impressive results. But IMO, the high bar of skill that combo decks enforce on their players is one of the things that separates Eternal from other kinds of Magic. There have been skill-intensive combos in other formats, but they are never as stable or durable as they can be in Legacy or especially Vintage.

[Muradin]

@Lorddotm: So a friend of mine has come to exactly your list only with -1 Duress, +1 IGG maindeck and a little bit different sideboard. Do you feel that there is really no need for IGG maindeck? I've been playing NLS without IGG maindeck myself but that deck could compensate the lack of IGG with Burning Wish. So do you think this list can really cut IGG without making Infernal Tutor far less effective? In general the trend goes towards cutting IGG as an "autowin button" just the way Saito cut it as well.

The other fact that I still think is important that you probably want a basic Swamp in your maindeck playing 4 Duress. We added that one for the Scrubland.

[lorddotm]

I haven't had any problems with the list as it is. Personally the swamp, in my testing, was not needed if you held your fetches long enough.

About Ill-Gotten Gains: I haven't had a problem with it in the board. It is extremely terrible, with Duress, against any blue deck so if I were going to main deck it, I would take out the Duresses and add 2 Silence and 1 Krosan Grip, but that makes Ad Nauseum worse main. Plus, Ill-Gotten Gains really shows itself off in nonblue decks, which should not be a problem game one. If your life total is low setting up a Doomsday is very simple.

[Muradin]

I haven't had any problems with the list as it is. Personally the swamp, in my testing, was not needed if you held your fetches long enough.


Well exactly holding your fetches is not good when playing duress as it has to be played early on to get to it's full potential by taking away Chalice, Counterbalance or Brainstorms before your opponent can hide anything.

I've already done a few testgames and removing Igg really hasn't been a problem so far.

[Piceli89]

why is this deck in the Estabilished forum? I mean, it's arguably the best deck in Legacy. Did it suck so much in these 3 months? I don't think so. Saito copycats poured up from everywhere, maing lots of top8s.

[BantFTW]

In the netherlands at all the tournaments there are 3 or sometimes more ANt decks top 8...
So it's indeed the best deck there is^^

Get it back to Best decks^^

[menace13]

43 showings since March on deckcheck alone.

[Lord_Cyrus]

Maybe the admins are still making changes...

Still, ANT is definitely a contender although its top 8-16 records lately haven't been that impressive. Just look at the SB warping in decks like Zoo - nobody can really afford to totally ignore ANT these days.

[JonBarber]

Maybe the admins are still making changes...

Still, ANT is definitely a contender although its top 8-16 records lately haven't been that impressive. Just look at the SB warping in decks like Zoo - nobody can really afford to totally ignore ANT these days.

Haha, thats because its too busy hanging out in the 1-8 slots =P

Yeah, I definitely won a GPT with ANT 3 days ago and Bryant Cook top 8'd the Syracuse Lotus tournament 4 days ago. This is by no means a deck thats on the same level as combo elves...

[Lord_Cyrus]

Heh, I meant "Either top 8 or top 16, depending on tournament size." But yeah I constructed that badly. Your points are well made, this is a Tier 1 deck in Legacy. I believe anybody who doesn't think so has a lot of explaining to do, based on actual results. It's done better in some fields than others - but when an experienced player shows up with it, ANT can definitely shoot for the prize as well as anybody else.

[videogamer99]

This is the build I plan on running at my locals GPT on Saturday.

Spells
4 Brainstorm
4 Dark Ritual
4 Duress
4 Mystical Tutor
4 Orim's Chant
3 Cabal Ritual
3 Infernal Tutor
2 Ponder
2 Tendrils of Agony
1 Ad Nauseam
1 Echoing Truth

Artifacts
4 Lion's Eye Diamond
4 Lotus Petal
3 Chrome Mox
2 Sensei's Divining Top

Lands
4 Polluted Delta
3 Flooded Strand
2 Misty Rainforest
2 Underground Sea
1 Island
1 Swamp
1 Tropical Island
1 Tundra

Sideboard
4 Dark Confidant
2 Reverent Silence
1 Chain of Vapor
1 Deathmark
1 Echoing Truth
1 Extirpate
1 Hurkyl's Recall
1 Krosan Grip
1 Sadistic Sacrament
1 Slaughter Pact
1 Thoughtseize

What do you guys thing? What changes would you make?

[Lord_Cyrus]

That looks pretty good man. I've never been able to make Dark Confidant from the SB work for me, but I respect people who can do that. Usually I would go with more chants or Xantid Swarm, since you are playing a G splash anyways. I've also always preferred running an Ill-Gotten Gains somewhere in the main or SB for safety's sake; it functions both as an alt-win and to recoup spent cards.

[Rune]

Having 2 Tendrils makes little sense to me in Saito's list where you have 2 AdN, but when you only play 1 AdN, it is really useless to have the double Tendrils. You should replace one with IGG. You need more than just 1 white source to support the Chants. If your lone Tundra gets destroyed, you will have to rely on Petal or possibly Chrome Mox to cast them, which sucks. 9 fetches feel like too many, so you can remove one and fit a Tundra/Scrubland in there.

[kinda]

So what replaces mystical tutor now that it's banned?

[menace13]

Not a DTB anymore. Ponders and Tops?

[videogamer99]

Why is Mystical Tutor getting banned? This is total bs. I guess its time to build Zoo. This is so annoying.

[raptorcardz]

I agree. Mystical Tutor did NOT deserve to be banned. I cannot believe they've done this. Stupid stupid. I want to read their decision on this assanine move.

[metalhead]

Way to keep the format diverse wizards.....they've been printing storm hate cards for years. cannonist, mindbreak trap, teeg "though they may try to claim he was meant to stop wrath". and storm still keeps fighting through. So rather than print their millionth failed attempt at an anti storm card. They give up and just ban mystical tutor which then nerfs all the best storm engines as we now have to rely on...infernal tutor and burning wish..which knocks Ad Nausium out of even being a possibility for a storm engine. makes doomsday worst as we can no longer mystical for Rit to make sure we hit BBB in a timely manner, and we now have no mystical to find chant to cast Igg safely. Hope everyone that wants to keep playing storm combo as already invested in there cruel bargains...of course we have to keep tournament results on the downlow so we dont lose LED or dark rit next year round.

[raptorcardz]

No, fuck that. If ANT is your favorite deck you need to tell wizards they're fucking wrong and they need to rectify their problem ASAP. This is so stupid..

[Lord_Cyrus]

ANT might yet live... but it will drop to Tier 1.5 at best :frown: As for Reanimator, they are probably out for the count.

Why DCI, why do you nerf Legacy like this? Now of all times, when we have such a healthy and balanced format?

[lordofthepit]

I think you can still get a reliable engine going without Mystical Tutor, but it's going to be a lot more difficult to find that Wipe Away, Hurkyl's Recall, or Slaughter Pact when you need it against hate cards now.

[menace13]

I think you can still get a reliable engine going without Mystical Tutor, but it's going to be a lot more difficult to find that Wipe Away, Hurkyl's Recall, or Slaughter Pact when you need it against hate cards now.

And no more: EOT Mystic-->Duress,Ad Naus,Dark Rit...FML

[whidye]

Words cannot express my sorrow.... ;(

(neither can emoticons)

[NQN]

Guess I´m back to Dredge then..:(

[JonBarber]

RIP ant. Wizards has officially fucked combo in the ass. ANT wasn't broken, no one was complaining. Ban iona or entomb if reanimator was really that bad. Time for aggro to run rampant in the streets =/ (at least there's still belcher! -_-)

[Nizmox]

This is so shit, words cannot express.
As we all know ANT was not a problem and in fact, kept pure aggro decks in check. Reanimator was a problem but had they not unbanned entomb in the first place, it wouldn't have been an issue either!
To me it seems like Wizards read the "Attacking is Miserable" article about two months too late. Here's hoping they read the counter arguments.

[jrsthethird]

Well I'm sure they're reading this stuff now, they even posted a link to The Source on their front page (if you click on Community Spotlight).

[Nizmox]

Well I'm sure they're reading this stuff now, they even posted a link to The Source on their front page (if you click on Community Spotlight).

I have lost all faith in Wizards listening to the Legacy Community.
Evidence of this is how in the article they point to the fact that legacy cannot continue indefinitely because of the shortage of duals. Given that the shortage of duals is a result of their no-reprint policy, i find this ironic.

[piZZero]

Rest In Peace my beloved.

http://i16.photobucket.com/albums/b32/piZZero/ANT.png

I can't really express my feelings after so many years playing combo in Legacy.

Sad,

piZZero - Jordi Amat

[Davetradint]

Time to move towards TES? Belcher?
What happens to those who love combo???
All these bannings smell like clearing the path for the new Extended format....

[Piceli89]

This is unreal.
This is JUST unreal.

Seriously, someone could point me out where Mystical Tutor was exactly broken? It's a fucking card disadvantage card. If you can't deal with ANT, don't play Legacy- It' supposed to be an Eternal format, so it's fast.

Are they going to do the same thing that happened with vintage? Nerfing all the blue good cards just because people whine about "oomfg I was killed on turn3 fucking Ad Nauseum deck".

I propose to use the black ribbon , because somthing has died in here. Not only a deck (2 to be honest), but the decency in banning decisions. The truth is that Reanimator and ANT have made too much top8s in the 5K SCG, and that's the tourneys they checked to have a grip on the format (a thing that, evidently, they did not have at all). So they woke up and said, "Nahh. Combo is a bad thing in Legacy. It does not even play cards that may make us earn shitloads on Money, like Jace the Wallet Sculptor. Too broken-and too unprofitable- to go on."

[Aleksandr]

Piceli, you're totally right.

[JonBarber]

Its so frustrating because ANT is one of the few decks out there thats not linear, and actually requires some thought. There was no reason at all to ban ANT (other than to make the transition into new extended easier). Wizards, you reallyyyy make me want to keep playing this game...

[overpowered]

I was going to build ANT because it's fun to play, interesting, strong and complex... Instead, with the banning of Mystical Tutor, I'll be playing something else, losing to brainless aggro types and cursing WotC.

[oneiros76]

I'm a dedicated zoo player and I still know that this is a horrible move. Wizards seems to be just power-creeping the hell out of creatures, and now they're banning combo pieces, seems bad.

[kilukru]

I just finished building my ANT yesterday, all on trades, including Duals, im a freaking back to school student so ressources are rare, 3 freaking month it took me!

Well, theres 2 local Legacy events this week end around here, so i guess those will be the only two time i will have the chance of playing the deck...

[stu55]

This is unreal.
This is JUST unreal.

"Nahh. Combo is a bad thing in Legacy. It does not even play cards that may make us earn shitloads on Money, like Jace the Wallet Sculptor. Too broken-and too unprofitable- to go on."


This is the point I want to talk about most here. To say this is makes you look totally uninformed and actually just plain stupid. You realize WoTC makes $0 on the secondary market? "But hot cards make people buy packs to open and get the money cards!" That is maybe 10% true. I would think it is a 50-50 split on people buying packs cause they like to and not just looking for anyone card and limited format.

Maybe reanimator was putting up too good of results. Maybe a card coming out in M11/Scars would have been too busted with MT still around? You won't know the real reason until they say so.

Nothing has "died" here, way to be over-dramatic.

[Patrick]

Being that you're all dedicated combo players, you seem to have missed what Mystical Tutor actually said:

Mystical Tutor
U
Instant
Search your library for the card that wins you the game next turn and put it on top of your library.

Mystical does have built-in card disadvantage. This does not stop it from singlehandedly winning games on turn 2. There are almost no other cards in the format that can be cast for one mana at instant speed that enable like this one does. Storm is an archetype that has been around since Legacy started, and Tendrils decks have always played 4 of this card. The effect of storm combo on the format has been gradual and a part of the format forever. Simply put: storm combo has prevented many non-blue decks from performing well because they have not had adequate tools to fight it. Gaddok Teeg, Cannonist, True Believer, Rule of Law, Orim's Chant, Pyrostatic Pillar, Mindbreak Trap et. al. None of these cards have been strong enough to give non-blue decks a favorable or at least no-so-god-damned-awful combo match. Storm has been consistently performing since at least the days of IGGy Pop in 2005. The deck has been Pop, Fetchland Tendrils, Perfect Storm and ANT.

All of that is still not enough to ban Mystical Tutor.

Lately Mystical Tutor has been fetching cards named Entomb and Reanimate/Exhume. At this point Mystical Tutor is making the format too fast for a large number of decks to be viable. Banning Tutor brings the power level of ANT and Reanimator significantly lower, but it also opens a big window for decks like Lands, Goblins, Survival, Enchantress, Loam decks and an insignificant number of fringe archetypes to become playable in larger tournaments. It is shocking to see Mystical Tutor leave the format but this is a healthy decision for the Legacy format.

[jandax]

To be fair, I never read in the press release where WotC claimed Mystical Tutor was breaking the format like a lot of people have reasoned in their rebuttals towards the banning. The banning is shaking things up around the world, backlash is going to be felt in Seattle

[kooaznboi1088]

Mystical Tutor's departure will weaken ANT. But what do you guys think about simply going like this

-4 Mystical Tutor
+3 Ad Nauseam
+1 Angel's Grace

You can still keep the consistency while using Angel's Grace as a backup button.

3 ANT
2 Tendrils
1 Angel's Grace

plus the usual ANT shell is what I'll try

[sigfig8]

Mystical Tutor's departure will weaken ANT. But what do you guys think about simply going like this

-4 Mystical Tutor
+3 Ad Nauseam
+1 Angel's Grace

You can still keep the consistency while using Angel's Grace as a backup button.

How would you ensure Angel's Grace is in your hand before going off? As a singleton, seems highly unlikely you'll want to sit on a winning hand while you wait to draw it.

I do want to continue discussing alternatives though. Is there anything else that can be done? I currently run 3 IT's, and I can certainly up it to 4. LED/IT becomes our primary tutor here, and with 4x Brainstorm and 4x Ponder, we could probably dig deep enough to find what we need. I'm really nervous about running more than 2 Ad Nauseam though....way risky especially now that we will average at least one turn slower.

Maybe we can run more main deck hate for some of our poorer matchups? What about 4x Bob? If your opponents want to swords/path him then that at least buys you a turn. If Bob gets bolted, even better since that's one less bolt coming at you.

[xTrainx]

Continue to run the original ANT shell; I think.

Up the IT count to four, and then with the remaining three slots put in three Preordain(once it comes out).

Protection slots should go up too; as there isn't an easy way to ensure drawing them.

[Dia_Bot]

One last thing about the banning, mystical tutor was never ever ever the problem in reanimator. Iona (and entomb), both are mistakes made by wotc... But because they are just too f*cking stubborn to admit their mistake in the first place they banned the next best thing in reanimator: Mystical tutor. This pisses me off to a degree I can't discribe (and I'm not the only one). AnT was never the problem, reanimator was. A problem created by unbanning entomb.
(maybe I should just be glad they didn't ban LED or Drit, imagine that....)

[jandax]

Man, banning LED? People would march on Wizards' headquarters. That's like banning Tarmogoyf

Fun speculation

[stu55]

One last thing about the banning, mystical tutor was never ever ever the problem in reanimator. Iona (and entomb), both are mistakes made by wotc... )



You are clearly not very bright. Have you ever played the deck? Most of the times people win with the deck they Mystical for their missing piece or protection and that makes it so strong. Same thing with ANT, you tutor for protection or the combo piece and go off.

Tutor was keeping a lot of other decks down and this will open up design space in the format.

[kornchildrc12]

Continue to run the original ANT shell; I think.

Up the IT count to four, and then with the remaining three slots put in three Preordain(once it comes out).

Protection slots should go up too; as there isn't an easy way to ensure drawing them.

What does Preordain do?

[honestabe]

Being that you're all dedicated combo players, you seem to have missed what Mystical Tutor actually said:

Mystical Tutor
U
Instant
Search your library for the card that wins you the game next turn and put it on top of your library.

Mystical does have built-in card disadvantage. This does not stop it from singlehandedly winning games on turn 2. There are almost no other cards in the format that can be cast for one mana at instant speed that enable like this one does. Storm is an archetype that has been around since Legacy started, and Tendrils decks have always played 4 of this card. The effect of storm combo on the format has been gradual and a part of the format forever. Simply put: storm combo has prevented many non-blue decks from performing well because they have not had adequate tools to fight it. Gaddok Teeg, Cannonist, True Believer, Rule of Law, Orim's Chant, Pyrostatic Pillar, Mindbreak Trap et. al. None of these cards have been strong enough to give non-blue decks a favorable or at least no-so-god-damned-awful combo match. Storm has been consistently performing since at least the days of IGGy Pop in 2005. The deck has been Pop, Fetchland Tendrils, Perfect Storm and ANT.

All of that is still not enough to ban Mystical Tutor.

Lately Mystical Tutor has been fetching cards named Entomb and Reanimate/Exhume. At this point Mystical Tutor is making the format too fast for a large number of decks to be viable. Banning Tutor brings the power level of ANT and Reanimator significantly lower, but it also opens a big window for decks like Lands, Goblins, Survival, Enchantress, Loam decks and an insignificant number of fringe archetypes to become playable in larger tournaments. It is shocking to see Mystical Tutor leave the format but this is a healthy decision for the Legacy format.

Oh, Im sorry, I could have SWORN that the last 2 SCGs were won by Creature-based decks. One of them not even blue.


Also, the Zoo vs ANT matchup is axctually pretty much the same as the Counterbalance vs ANT matchup, so I dont want to hear any shit about how ANT was unbeatable. If the problem was Reanimator (which was by no means, dominating) then just reban the fucking entomb.

I just congradulated the Zoo players for now having the best deck in the format

[Lord_Cyrus]

IMO we should be marching on WoTC, with words at least. The reason is not just Mystical Tutor or ANT - The reason is that we do not want to be treated like Vintage has been - with shitty contempt from the DCI

I have been writing a series of emails to relevant people in WoTC about this today, and I call upon everybody who cares about this issue to do the same. Words have power! And so do we, especially if we band together.

Again, this is not just about ANT -

This is about the future of Legacy, the format we love.

If you care enough to rant on here, you should be writing about your anger to the people who made this decision.

[whidye]

Cyrus - Give me some contacts and I will spread my love for the Legacy format unbanning cards rather than banning cards. Players are smart - we can find our own solutions.

[jrsthethird]

What does Preordain do?

U
Sorcery
Scry 2
Draw a card.

Serum Visions, but in reversed order.


I just congradulated the Zoo players for now having the best deck in the format

The metagame will shift. Stop being irrational.

[Lord_Cyrus]

Well, here's an easy one for anybody to do. Go to this link, and hit the "Respond by Email" button at the bottom. Let's see if we can crash their inbox!

http://www.wizards.com/magic/magazine/article.aspx?x=mtg/daily/feature/95b&dcmp=ilc-mtgrss

Past that, use your imagination. Anybody who you respect at ALL at WoTC, write an email to them explaining how you feel about this. Personally, I am going to write to Mark Rosewater, among others. I already wrote to David Brian-Marshall, regarding what I perceived to be the glaring ommision of any discussion in regard to the impact to Legacy of the DCI posting. The DCI told us that their rulings would be explained in "two articles", his being the first, and Tom La Pille's the second, to be posted about a week from now. Here's what I wrote:

*****************************************************
On Fri, Jun 18, 2010 at 12:17 PM

Dear Brian David-Marshall,
Regarding your article "Pop Quiz with Trick Questions":

How does it feel to trample upon the feelings of Legacy players everywhere, by announcing a format-warping card banning without so much as a simple explanation?

I don't want to seem insulting, but this is what your article has accomplished. If you think I am alone, or even that my feelings are "on the fringe", I encourage you to look at how widespread the outrage is on the Source forums. While I don't play either of the affected archetypes, I cannot help but feel sadness for those players who invested years worth of time and effort into perfecting decks that, while never a serious threat to the health of the format, are now virtually unplayable.

Why does a supposedly "New & Improved" Extended, which will likely never have the prestige or player base of Legacy, merit nearly the entirety of your article, while Legacy receives not a pittance?

I cannot help but feel for the anguish of thousands of players around the world, for whom your article seemed like mere heaping of salt into the wound left by the banning of Mystical Tutor - and by extension, the decks that they cherished.

And I received this reply:

To be perfectly honest Mystical Tutor intel came in to me at the last minute for me and my assignment was to cover the Extended announcement. I am certain that Tom LaPille will write extensively about the decision regarding that decision next week.

- David Brian-Marshall

************************************************

In light of this, I would strongly recommend that people write to Tom La Pille, as he is supposed to be the public face of the DCI on this one, according to what David wrote me.

[nico_CL]

I just bought a week ago ANTS and feels a bit akward this decision...
As many said the format was healthy, and the improvement of ANTS wasn't that much focused on MT...
Seems an arbitrary decision, unexpected.

For those who said that it is better to spread options to some archetypes that didn't have a chance facing ANTS, like aggro decks, banning MT is like the same as banning SDT, because many, many decks don't have a response for Counter+Top lock...

Anyway, I'l probably writing something to Tom because it is a crucial mistake for me at least... Ain't claiming that they should ban all good cards in the format, cards that I don't like, but for sure banning cards in legacy shouldn't be took as something casual.

Bad thing you've done WoTC...

[Lord_Cyrus]

I just bought a week ago ANTS and feels a bit akward this decision...
As many said the format was healthy, and the improvement of ANTS wasn't that much focused on MT...
Seems an arbitrary decision, unexpected.

....

Bad thing you've done WoTC...


Obviously you've been hit by this personally, and I'm sure there are a lot more like you. In a format that is usually as stable as Legacy, where the $$ investment is so high, banning key cards really hurts people. Doing in it such an off-handed way, doubly so.

All I'm saying is for people to write to WoTC and express how this has affected them. The DCI needs to know that their job isn't just an "academic exercise" and that if they aren't careful, they will lose the faith of this community.

[nico_CL]

Obviously you've been hit by this personally, and I'm sure there are a lot more like you. In a format that is usually as stable as Legacy, where the $$ investment is so high, banning key cards really hurts people. Doing in it such an off-handed way, doubly so.

All I'm saying is for people to write to WoTC and express how this has affected them. The DCI needs to know that their job isn't just an "academic exercise" and that if they aren't careful, they will lose the faith of this community.

I just wrote to Tom asking wy they determined to ban this card...
It's pretty obvious anyway, but I don't feel it was so broken...

Leaving the sour news I'd like to introduce another way to think about ANTS or any other Storm combo involving LED's, IGG and Doomsday.
I think that's the way to go around MT.
Rit into Doomsday, previously chanted should be still a good maneuver...
Any thoughts?

[Monochrome]

I just bought a week ago ANTS and feels a bit akward this decision...
As many said the format was healthy, and the improvement of ANTS wasn't that much focused on MT...
Seems an arbitrary decision, unexpected.

For those who said that it is better to spread options to some archetypes that didn't have a chance facing ANTS, like aggro decks, banning MT is like the same as banning SDT, because many, many decks don't have a response for Counter+Top lock...

Anyway, I'l probably writing something to Tom because it is a crucial mistake for me at least... Ain't claiming that they should ban all good cards in the format, cards that I don't like, but for sure banning cards in legacy shouldn't be took as something casual.

Bad thing you've done WoTC...


Same here. I played it at the SCG Philly Open, and was all excited to start toying around with either a Doomsday hybrid or possibly NLS variant. Now I'm going to have to either give up the deck all together or drastically change how its played. Very frustrating and annoying.

I just emailed Tom as well, saying my 2 cents.

[stu55]

IMO we should be marching on WoTC, with words at least. The reason is not just Mystical Tutor or ANT - The reason is that we do not want to be treated like Vintage has been - with shitty contempt from the DCI

I have been writing a series of emails to relevant people in WoTC about this today, and I call upon everybody who cares about this issue to do the same. Words have power! And so do we, especially if we band together.

Again, this is not just about ANT -

This is about the future of Legacy, the format we love.

If you care enough to rant on here, you should be writing about your anger to the people who made this decision.




Talk about a drama queen :rolleyes:

[Eksem]

This is isn't the end of AdN-based Tendrils-decks, it's just getting a bit less consistent and, more importantly, has to fight harder against hate. Just add a protection spell, some digging and perhaps some other tutors and you should still have a very playable deck. And of course there are other Storm-variants less dependent on MT. I'm starting to think this isn't hitting Storm-combo as hard as it might seem. And maybe, just maybe, AnT actually was too good at fighting hate. The main reason I switched to this deck from Dredge was being tired of always getting screwed games 2 and 3 by too efficient hate cards. In the long run for the health of the format, combo decks should have problems post boarding, which is something AnT did not really have.

At least, I still love storm combo, and I will keep playing decks like that (if nothing else and contrary to popular belief, there is still Vintage :^D).

[metalhead]

I'm sure Zoo and Goblins players are all having a joygasm rite now. but honestly those matchups arent even as one sided as people would like to believe. Now at the same time. how will the non U based decks feel if we all started showing up at large events with Belcher. To be completly honest. if i were sitting at a table with any non u based deck.. i'd much rather play against ant than belcher. Hell even playing something with force of will, i'd be much more terrified for the first few turns if i were playing against belcher as unless i lucksack into EE i am kinda dead to a in hand ETW.

[Pulp_Fiction]

One last thing about the banning, mystical tutor was never ever ever the problem in reanimator. Iona (and entomb), both are mistakes made by wotc... But because they are just too f*cking stubborn to admit their mistake in the first place they banned the next best thing in reanimator: Mystical tutor. This pisses me off to a degree I can't discribe (and I'm not the only one). AnT was never the problem, reanimator was. A problem created by unbanning entomb.
(maybe I should just be glad they didn't ban LED or Drit, imagine that....)

Agreed. They ever ban: LED, Dark Ritual, or Tendrils .... all my cards, including Dredge and Goblins will be up on eBay the next day. Its fucking ridiculous and insulting.

[stu55]

You realize Personal Tutor is probably a just as fine replacement, making the deck a little slower however still probably good enough?

[honestabe]

T (if nothing else and contrary to popular belief, there is still Vintage :^D).

You're better off without it.


Trust me (I quit vintage once it started to suck to play legacy [ ironically enough, my deck of choise was ANT] and now Legacy is getting fucked up. hmmm maybe it is time to go back to vintage.....)

[Rune]

You realize Personal Tutor is probably a just as fine replacement, making the deck a little slower however still probably good enough?

Nah, although it's the closest thing there is to Mystical, it's nowhere near as good.

It's like telling Zoo players they should just play Watchwolf and Jungle Lion if Tarmogoyf and Wild Nacatl got banned.

[honestabe]

when does this deck get removed from the DTB forum?

[Lord_Cyrus]

Given how much the entire meta is likely to shift... DTB status doesn't mean much for any deck right now. Maybe Zoo, that's about it. Without combo to prey upon, it's not too clear how well Merfolk and several other current DTB will survive. That's the real issue here - you ban one important engine card, and suddenly the whole format is a complete mess. What things will like after the shift, who can say? Hard board control (Landstill would be an example) is probably coming back to DTB in some form or other very soon though...

[Nidd]

when does this deck get removed from the DTB forum?
When we have data that proves that the deck got less popular?

[OneBigSquirrelGod]

I Do think this was a bad decision. I know all the ANT/Reanimator Players are devastated, but the good thing to come from this....

42 Lands just got a whole lot better again...

Merfolk will probably not be the deck to play anymore, because of more zoo/goblin decks.

Reanimator can just throw in Lim-Duls Vault...

You can just go back to TES....

Looking at tournament statistics, they should have banned FoW, because it is in every deck Mysticals in, minus ANT, plus some, which is well over 50 percent of all SCG 5K's.....

This is no longer a DTB, because it is no longer a deck really.....

:mad:Tom LaPille:mad:

[PanderAlexander]

One last thing about the banning, mystical tutor was never ever ever the problem in reanimator. Iona (and entomb), both are mistakes made by wotc... But because they are just too f*cking stubborn to admit their mistake in the first place they banned the next best thing in reanimator: Mystical tutor. This pisses me off to a degree I can't discribe (and I'm not the only one). AnT was never the problem, reanimator was. A problem created by unbanning entomb.
(maybe I should just be glad they didn't ban LED or Drit, imagine that....)

This is the reason WotC banned Mystical. Everyone complained about how much a monster Reanimator, but it only did good at Madrid because hardly anyone was prepared for it. Since Madrid how many times has it gotten first place at a major tournament, or even better how many times it top-8, look at the SCG 5ks. Mystical Tutor banning was completely unjustified, even for Reanimator.

[kooaznboi1088]

How would you ensure Angel's Grace is in your hand before going off? As a singleton, seems highly unlikely you'll want to sit on a winning hand while you wait to draw it.

I do want to continue discussing alternatives though. Is there anything else that can be done? I currently run 3 IT's, and I can certainly up it to 4. LED/IT becomes our primary tutor here, and with 4x Brainstorm and 4x Ponder, we could probably dig deep enough to find what we need. I'm really nervous about running more than 2 Ad Nauseam though....way risky especially now that we will average at least one turn slower.

Maybe we can run more main deck hate for some of our poorer matchups? What about 4x Bob? If your opponents want to swords/path him then that at least buys you a turn. If Bob gets bolted, even better since that's one less bolt coming at you.


You either have Angel's Grace in your hand and cast it before going off. Or you go off and if you hit another ANT and Angel's Grace, you stop. Cast Angel's Grace and go off with your 2nd ANT but this time drawing your whole deck.

[GoboLord]

Let me speak from Goblin's and Zoo's perspective to you guys:

You have my deepest sympathy.

You have lost a strong deck, and we have lost an infamous opponent.

[nico_CL]

Ok. I feel everybody is complaining about how hard this card ban will strike ANTS...
Does this move kill the deck? Is it going to be removed from DTB (foreseeing future events)?
I believe this deck has still so many opportunities. Of course it won't be as fast as it used to be, but the chance to hit angel's grace isn't that bad, letting you draw the entire deck at once
Mixing two game plans AN/DD doesn't feel akward to me. There are several decks playing this hybrid.
Migrating to old staple Iggy pop, Fetchland Tendrils or The Epic Storm?
Any thoughts about this?

[kooaznboi1088]

Ok. I feel everybody is complaining about how hard this card ban will strike ANTS...
Does this move kill the deck? Is it going to be removed from DTB (foreseeing future events)?
I believe this deck has still so many opportunities. Of course it won't be as fast as it used to be, but the chance to hit angel's grace isn't that bad, letting you draw the entire deck at once
Mixing two game plans AN/DD doesn't feel akward to me. There are several decks playing this hybrid.
Migrating to old staple Iggy pop, Fetchland Tendrils or The Epic Storm?
Any thoughts about this?

I agree, the deck still has all of its parts. Infernal Tutor/LED most importantly. I think it will make ANT more inconsistent but ANT can still be a viable deck.

[MMogg]

Nah, although it's the closest thing there is to Mystical, it's nowhere near as good.

It's like telling Zoo players they should just play Watchwolf and Jungle Lion if Tarmogoyf and Wild Nacatl got banned.

LOL So true. To say Personal Tutor is just as fine sounds like someone who has never piloted it before. Apart from the more limited targets for fetching parts of your deck (especially key removal or mana accel), you also lose the instant speed. Upkeep --> Mystical --> AdN --> draw, play is so key, especially when you have an LED as one of the necessary mana sources. It's certainly worth testing Personal Tutor, but to say it's a fine replacement . . . it's not just that ANT will be slower, it will also be less versatile. PT can't get your Wipe Away, for example. That loss of speed euphemistically termed "a little slower" may be the turns needed to kill you. Also, it can't even get AdN, :eyebrow:

[Azdraël]

PT sucks, it can't tutorize for the most important cards as MT did.

[Jim Higginbottom]

Upkeep --> Mystical --> AdN --> draw, play is so key, especially when you have an LED as one of the necessary mana sources.

You haven't been allowed to do that for a year now.

[Piceli89]

I'll explain it once again. Ad Nauseam Tendrils has died, because if you want to stick with a consistently fast Ad Nauseam now, you have only one opportunity: to play 4. Without Mystical Tutor, this deck must rely on quantity from now on. But, as you should know, 4 Ad Nauseam is too much.
The other option is to go back and switch to TES, with the fragile manabase and shitty late game issues.

If you want to stick with solid Tendrils, forget playing the classic UBw or Saito list. Those have been totally slaughered by this ban. Go back to the slowet, but still strong Fetchland Tendrils builds, with 3-4 Doomsday and 3 Infernal Tutor and a more suared Sb configuration.
Ritual-based Storm Combo, as a general approach, has been reduced in its power, but will go on smashing face, just into another way. And Goblins and Zoo will be constantly smashed as they were before, so they should not really be happy. Storm never dies until they ban Dark Ritual, LED or Brainstorm, which will never happen after yesterday.

[xTrainx]

You haven't been allowed to do that for a year now.

You havn't been able to float the LED mana, but you have been able to Tutor for ADN in upkeep.

[Jim Higginbottom]

He specifically said using LED as one of the mana sources.

[jiazhouhuaqiao]

I've very little experience with this deck but what about this idea:

If the issue is running too many copies of Ad Nauseum, why not play Entomb and Reclaim?

Entomb is your tutor, and then Reclaim gets Ad Nauseum from your yard to the top of your deck just like Mystic Tutor. Entomb can also be used to remove the extra copies of Ad Nauseum from your library before you Ad Nauseum.

Reclaim basically otherwise counts as a mana source and ups your storm count and does pretty much everything else.

Or you could instead Regrowth, since you can Regrowth Regrowth until you run out of mana.

[MMogg]

He specifically said using LED as one of the mana sources.

Actually, I said "especially" not "only". :tongue: Mystical in your upkeep still allows you to draw it for turn two. That was my main point. With PT, if you don't cast it during your first turn, you won't be able to draw it your second turn. That's important because it gives you flexibility. Maybe first turn you used a Brainstorm or Ponder, then you are able to go off but need AdN, so untap, use MT in your upkeep, draw, play a land, ritual, ritual AdN. That's the basic idea I was trying to explain.

[Vacrix]

You realize Personal Tutor is probably a just as fine replacement, making the deck a little slower however still probably good enough?
I thought the same thing at first. It only finds sorceries and its sorcery speed.

There is plenty of other storm combo to choose from that are arguably just as good as ANT in the right meta. Solidarity and SI are harder to play but I prefer storm to be the 'hard archtype' to play that way there are fewer storm players. This means greater rewards for storm players because people will be packing significantly less hate in their boards, expecting significantly less combo.
I play Solidarity in control heavy metas (where it rapes) and SI in combo/aggro heavy metas (where it rapes). Now you guys will just have to learn how to play the harder decks if you want to continue to play storm.

[Morim_Brightsmoke]

Isn't Solidarity (read any high tide combo) a dog to CB/Top and don't they win on turn 4 (read not 2 or 3)? I haven't played this, well in a long time, but I never liked solidarity cause it couldn't race Goblins consistently, which seems like an even bigger problem with zoo, and it was a coin flip to thresh before there was CB TOP. Now it just seems totally unplayable to me. Admittedly, the worst matchup for ANT was counterbalance, but at least we still have game against other decks with blue sometimes, and we should always outrace shitty aggro, I am not convinced any high tide combo does this, especially Solidarity with no Mysticals and therefore no tutors. Maybe spring tide with merchant scroll, but you are still pretty upset about not having mystical.

[Lord_Cyrus]

Unless Landstill starts making up 30% or more of the meta, Solidarity seems dead as a doornail.

This deck is still playable without tutor, but it's not terribly good...

Essentially, you need to either have Ad Nauseam in hand already, or LED + Infernal tutor. That means you need to play 2-3 Ad Nauseam to have a chance to draw into it reliably, and 4 Infernal Tutor. Personal Tutor isn't the worst card now either... mainly because it finds your Infernal when you only have LED, which should lead to a win. Basically this deck become a bit slower, and a lot less consistent. People who plan to keep playing it should start practicing now, because your mulling decisions become hugely more important now.

Also, the new Scry 2 + draw card from M11 (name escapes me) is pretty good. This deck basically now wants to dig > shuffle > dig > shuffle as fast as possible to get whatever key card is missing from your hand. It's not dead, but it's also definitely not the same kind of deck, and it's a lot harder to play correctly as a result.

[Rico Suave]

The problem with storm combo in Legacy has always been a spectrum of resilience and speed. Imagine a continuum like this:

Fast<------------------------------------------------>Resilient

Combo decks in general tend towards one side or the other.

On the full speed side we have the blazing fast all-in decks like Belcher, which can frequently get turn 1 kills and really punish decks that don't interact with it. The problem with such a fast deck is that it's inconsistent and really vulnerable to disruption.

On the other end we have the resilient combo decks like Solidarity, which are very consistent and can win through a variety of disruption cards. The problem with such a resilient combo deck is that it will never be as resilient as an aggro deck, except the aggro decks have the same fundamental turn.

A deck like ANT was the sweet spot of speed and resilience. ANT had a fundamental turn 3. This was just fast enough to beat aggro decks even on the draw, because aggro decks had a fundamental turn 4. But what made it really good was that out of all the storm combo decks with a fundamental turn 3 or earlier, ANT was not only the hardest to disrupt but it was legitimately really tough to stop.

The problem is that losing Mystical Tutor does not provide speed or resilience, it provides both. Any "substitute" for it will detract one or the other enough to make the deck either really slow or really inconsistent. For example if you want to maintain the same consistency as Mystical Tutor, the best replacement is Lim-Dul's Vault. But guess what? The deck is no longer a turn 3 deck with LDV replacing M.Tutor. If you want to maintain the speed that M.Tutor provided, you need to run more fast mana (because M.Tutor -> Rit is probably the most common target for it) and you need to run more business spells - but then your deck is a pile that craps its pants like Belcher.

Looking at our spectrum:

<---------------------->

Losing M.Tutor does not push it left or right. It pushes it down.

|
|
|
|
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|
V

In short, ANT is dead. Other combo may rise to take its spot, but finding a good turn 3 combo deck that doesn't suck is going to be an extremely difficult, if not impossible task. Consider that we're not just looking for the best combo deck that beats aggro, we're looking for a reason to play this combo deck over other deck choices such as control, aggro, or some control/combo hybrid.

For those who just want to play Dark Rituals, go for it. For those who want to win and play the best decks, I'm sad to say that combo is not that deck anymore.

[Vacrix]

Isn't Solidarity (read any high tide combo) a dog to CB/Top and don't they win on turn 4 (read not 2 or 3)? I haven't played this, well in a long time, but I never liked solidarity cause it couldn't race Goblins consistently, which seems like an even bigger problem with zoo, and it was a coin flip to thresh before there was CB TOP. Now it just seems totally unplayable to me. Admittedly, the worst matchup for ANT was counterbalance, but at least we still have game against other decks with blue sometimes, and we should always outrace shitty aggro, I am not convinced any high tide combo does this, especially Solidarity with no Mysticals and therefore no tutors. Maybe spring tide with merchant scroll, but you are still pretty upset about not having mystical.
I play a U/g version right now and win my matchups against Zoo and Goblins 2-1, even after both get Pyroblasts post-board (I get Moments Peace post-board). Its certainly not the fastest combo deck, but if you get to turn 4, your chances of winning increase significantly. I find that I lose to Goblins if they get a fast Lackey online, otherwise its a pretty even matchup. Also, the Zoo matchup is deceptive. Goyf is usually very small, a 2/3, because Solidarity only plays Instants and Land. They can play their burn directly but you can twincast it to remove your opponents guys to buy you some time (last time I played against Zoo I twincasted his Lightning Helix to kill one of his guys). Moments Peace has been savage ass tech against Zoo and Goblins.
As for the CB matchup, its not supposed to be easy. Last tournament I beat a guy playing CB. I forced his first one on turn 2, and Remanded his 2nd one twice on turns 5 and 6, went off turn 7 (he was playing Back to Basics so could only cast his CB once each turn). The CB matchup isn't even an autoloss, its just a difficult matchup and its not-favorable (though in my experience its about even). Then again, I also play Krosan Grip in the board (green splash tech).
Also, IDK about Solidarity being a coinflip vs. thresh. Now Solidarity players are playing Mindbreak Trap in the board. Thresh cannot apply enough pressure before Solidarity gets enough land to start going nuts. Once you hit an optimal number of land, you can just let them play their countermagic, Remand your High Tides to resolve them, and just win. If they have heavy countermagic, you use the Mindbreak Trap. I haven't had much trouble beating control since I started playing Trap in the board. CB is the only control matchup I've had trouble with.
I haven't liked Spring Tide. The ability to just bide your time, watch and wait, is one of Solidarity's greatest strengths. After you hit your 4th land, you are always threatening the win because the opponent doesn't know what you have in hand. You can go off at the end of turn, in response to hate you don't want to deal with, once your opponent moves to the combat phase, etc. Having that flexibility is beautiful.


Unless Landstill starts making up 30% or more of the meta, Solidarity seems dead as a doornail.
For the record there are a few Landstill variants in my meta. Even so, its far from dead as a doornail. Hell I took first with it at my local event last week. Its still a great deck, you just have to keep your meta in mind when choosing a deck. Some storm combo like ANT is great in an aggro heavy meta. My meta consists mostly of fairly experienced players who play blue. Solidarity beats the shit out of blue with the exception of counterbalance. I would never advise anyone to play Solidarity in an aggro heavy meta. If thats the case, play TES.



Excellent analysis Rico, however, I think that TES and NLS will likely remain as the combo decks with a fundamental turn 3, even post MT. They didn't rely on it nearly as much as ANT did.
I think its also worth noting that ANT was one of the easiest decks to play in the format. It was really a step up from Belcher. I'm very happy its gone. Now storm will go back to being an uncommon matchup. We will likely see less hate in the board, and storm players will have to be very skilled if they want to win.

[Rico Suave]

Excellent analysis Rico, however, I think that TES and NLS will likely remain as the combo decks with a fundamental turn 3, even post MT. They didn't rely on it nearly as much as ANT did.
I think its also worth noting that ANT was one of the easiest decks to play in the format. It was really a step up from Belcher. I'm very happy its gone. Now storm will go back to being an uncommon matchup. We will likely see less hate in the board, and storm players will have to be very skilled if they want to win.


The problem is that TES and NLS just aren't good. Yea they can maintain the speed, but speed isn't the only problem. It's having the speed along with as much resilience and consistency as possible.

Anyway, people will always have opinions about Legacy storm combo and the subject of skill. Since we're sharing opinions, I'll share a couple of my own:

1) There is difficulty in winning with a deck, and difficulty in piloting a deck. For example it's very easy to pilot a 60Island.dec, but very difficult to win with it; and I think a lot of people get confused when talking about decks that are difficult to win with and mistakenly assume they are difficult to pilot.

2) While Legacy storm combo isn't easy to pilot optimally, it can't hold a candle to Vintage storm combo in terms of how difficult it is to play or what kind of skill cap it has.

[Vacrix]

wuhh?? TES and NLS aren't good? TES and NLS are good exactly because they are resilient (consistency with these decks is primarily an issue of skill level). DD piles redefined resilience in storm combo, and Burning Wish in both decks provides many outs when dealing with hate. Sure Mystical Tutor was a piece of work at finding post-board answers like Krosan Grip. Even so, neither deck died from the MT ban and both are known for being more resilient than your typical storm combo --> ANT. I'm glad ANT is gone. It was just storm combo for dumbies. Now storm will return to being the harder archetype to master (IMO thats the way it should be).

[Blitzbold]

Thanks for the analysis, which I have to second in part - unfortunately.

TES is indeed very fast, and replacing MT with some additional disruption might help it a bit. I am even considering giving it a try again myself. However, one of the reasons I liked decks like DD-ANT was their resiliance even in the face of tempoish decks. Having access to different strong storm engines as well as basics to cast all your stuff was a very nice thing which TES cannot offer.

I also loved NLS for the time I tested it (didn't play it at tournaments because you need such a deep understanding of it), but I think it's hurt a lot by the banning of MT. Only time will tell wether DD-Fetchland Tendrils or the like will be strong enough.


EDIT: Vacrix got it right. Storm should be hard to master, and Ad Nauseam lowered the skill level required to be successful with such a deck.

[Morim_Brightsmoke]

I think the logical step for storm to take is:
4x Doomsday
4x Infernal Tutor
since you can afford to play more copies of doomsday as your engine, and the deck will be harder to play but not that much slower or less consistent.

We also have to probably play 8 disruption spells since there is no longer mystical to tutor for one. I think it makes sense to either max out on Duress/Thoughtseize effects or Chants but not mix them (as we used to do in some lists) since we have no guarantee to have the right kind. Finally, I think we should consider playing impulse (or maybe even Peer Through Depths) as these effects seem quite strong, especially if out decks begin to rely more upon cantrips.

Other thoughts?