[Deck] UW Tempo

[Fouzt]

Yes, what is your name? Maybe we played some games.

Eric Drach. I was older when u were there, and ran with jim garratano, mike henson, and michael potter.

Funny that when i started back up in mtg and decided to pick up legacy again, I chose YOUR deck out of all the ones to run.

Awesome deck though bro

[colo]

How and what would you guys probably board in and out versus Trisomy 21 (http://www.mtgthesource.com/forums/showthread.php?15846-[Primer]-Trisomy-21-Bgw-Loam-Control)?

[Yan]

Hi.

I played UW Tempo yesterday in a tourney. 43 people if I remember correctly.

Round 1: ANT (2-1) 1-0
Round 2: Zoo (1-1) 1-0-1
Round 3: Merfolk (2-0) 2-0-1
Round 4: Reanimator (ID with a team mate so that we could both still make it to the top 8) 2-0-2
Round 5: Merfolk (2-1) 3-0-2
Round 6: Zoo (2-1) 4-0-2

Third place after swiss rounds

Quarters: Zoo (2-1)
Semifinals: Belcher (2-0)
Finals: Reanimator (2-1) (not my team mate, would have splitted)

NoGoyf wins 4 Tarmogoyf :)

I tested few new things out of the sideboard.

Creature [21]
4 Fathom Seer
3 Jötun Grunt
4 Mother of Runes
4 Serra Avenger
2 Stoneforge Mystic
4 Weathered Wayfarer

Instant [17]
4 Brainstorm
3 Daze
4 Force of Will
2 Spell Pierce
4 Swords to Plowshares

Artifact [5]
3 AEther Vial
2 Umezawa’s Jitte

Land [17]
4 Flooded Strand
1 Island
2 Plains
4 Tundra
3 Wasteland
3 Windswept Heath

Sideboard [15]
1 Aura Flux
1 Aura of Silence
3 Enlightened Tutor
1 Ethersworn Canonist
1 Ghostly Prison
3 Path to Exile
1 Relic of Progenitus
1 Spell Pierce
1 Thorn of Amethyst
1 Tormod’s Crypt
1 Wheel of Sun and Moon

I probably wont be writing any detailed match descriptions. First 3 games were kind of dump. ANT and merfolk lost to them selves and the tie against zoo was clear about 15 minutes before time but I guess he didn’t want to scoop and try to win the third game. Rest of the games were incredibly tight but I really enjoyed… Sad that the deck will no longer be of any surprise around here (Finland). There was also another guy playing UW Tempo but he didn’t do so well.(EDIT. actually he was 12th so not bad at all overall).

mutsit on nutsit!

[Citrus-God]

How were the Path to Exiles in the sideboard?

[Yan]

How were the Path to Exiles in the sideboard?

great actually. I was expecting lots of merfolk so I wanted more removal. Not that bad against Zoo either. Perimeter Captain would have been better against Zoo, but I wasn't really expecting that much of it, glad it didn't matter.

[pi4meterftw]

Hi.

I played UW Tempo yesterday in a tourney. 43 people if I remember correctly.

Round 1: ANT (2-1) 1-0
Round 2: Zoo (1-1) 1-0-1
Round 3: Merfolk (2-0) 2-0-1
Round 4: Reanimator (ID with a team mate so that we could both still make it to the top 8) 2-0-2
Round 5: Merfolk (2-1) 3-0-2
Round 6: Zoo (2-1) 4-0-2

Third place after swiss rounds

Quarters: Zoo (2-1)
Semifinals: Belcher (2-0)
Finals: Reanimator (2-1) (not my team mate, would have splitted)

NoGoyf wins 4 Tarmogoyf :)

I tested few new things out of the sideboard.

Creature [21]
4 Fathom Seer
3 Jötun Grunt
4 Mother of Runes
4 Serra Avenger
2 Stoneforge Mystic
4 Weathered Wayfarer

Instant [17]
4 Brainstorm
3 Daze
4 Force of Will
2 Spell Pierce
4 Swords to Plowshares

Artifact [5]
3 AEther Vial
2 Umezawa’s Jitte

Land [17]
4 Flooded Strand
1 Island
2 Plains
4 Tundra
3 Wasteland
3 Windswept Heath

Sideboard [15]
1 Aura Flux
1 Aura of Silence
3 Enlightened Tutor
1 Ethersworn Canonist
1 Ghostly Prison
3 Path to Exile
1 Relic of Progenitus
1 Spell Pierce
1 Thorn of Amethyst
1 Tormod’s Crypt
1 Wheel of Sun and Moon

I probably wont be writing any detailed match descriptions. First 3 games were kind of dump. ANT and merfolk lost to them selves and the tie against zoo was clear about 15 minutes before time but I guess he didn’t want to scoop and try to win the third game. Rest of the games were incredibly tight but I really enjoyed… Sad that the deck will no longer be of any surprise around here (Finland). There was also another guy playing UW Tempo but he didn’t do so well.(EDIT. actually he was 12th so not bad at all overall).

mutsit on nutsit!

Yeah! Nice job.

I just had a guy path to exile me to break my mana screw and subsequently lose though. I think condemn is better, and Perimeter Captain is better than both.

[colo]

Just returning from a tournament of 12 right now, finishing third (2 wins, 2 draws). I won versus Mono Black Aggro (2-1) and Dredge (2-0 man, that was one hell of a beating!) and two times Trisomy 21 (1-1, where I'd probably have won the first match with just one more turn).

I boarded -4 Swords to Plowshares, -2 Mother of Runes, +1 Relic of Progenitus, +1 Tormod's Crypt, +1 Wheel of Sun and Moon, +1 Jotun Grunt, +2 Enlightened Tutor versus Trisomy 21, what do you think, is that the optimal choice?

[Tinefol]

Went 3-2 today, winning against 2xReanimator, Enchantress, losing to Ichorid (crappy six, probably should have mulled to 5 game3) and CounterTop (awful chain of topdecks after initial stage).

[pi4meterftw]

Eric Drach. I was older when u were there, and ran with jim garratano, mike henson, and michael potter.

Funny that when i started back up in mtg and decided to pick up legacy again, I chose YOUR deck out of all the ones to run.

Awesome deck though bro

Thanks. Small world indeed. I thought I recognized the "Whiteboycrew" handle when I saw it under Matt's viewers, but I had thought of it as a coincidence.

[Forbiddian]

Nice job to the people better than me at this deck :-(. I suck at this game.


Tournament report, before I forget.

Overall 4-2-1, 5th place (won 4 Wastelands) out of 50-60 at Knightware Tournament. The max was supposed to be 52, but I heard there were 54 or 56. Somewhere between 50 and 60 people.


Round 1 Ben (Vacrix) on SI Pact:
I rode up with him in the car and we got In-n-Out. He's a noob, told me all the deck's secrets in the car ride over. He explained that Force of Will, Daze, and Spell Pierce were good cards. I outninja him with the dice to go first, then outninja him with the cuts. I cut him a mulligan and he cuts me a hand with four counterspells game 1. I also get Vial down very early and get Jitte online and kill him on like turn 5 or 6.

Game 2 I ninja ship him another mulligan. I keep a bad hand with force but no second blue and no sideboard cards. I know that after a mulligan he's unlikely to turn 1 me (especially if I choose to keep), and then I'll probably have time to get Force active. My hand also looks fast as hell. Funny enough if he'd kept his 7, I would have shipped my hand for sure, but a game up, watching him mulligan, I thought one of the best ways he had to win was for me to mulligan to oblivion. SI pact is much better at surviving one Force of Will than Belcher is.

Anyway, his turn 1 play is ESG --> Xantid Swarm and I have the Swords. I then establish a very fast clock. His turn 3 or 4 play is Petal, Petal, Xantid Swarm. After six minutes in the think tank, I Force it with Daze, keeping another Daze. He goes for it next turn, counters my Daze with ESG, but is one mana short of the gas that he needs.

1-0. Don't feel bad for Ben, though, he made top 8 anyway.

While this round is going on, this ridiculous thing happens. The person to the right of me is playing Merfolk vs. Painter's Grind. The Painter player has Painter in play and then casts Grindstone. Scary. The Merfolk player has the Force of Will. In response, the Painter player casts CHAIN OF VAPOR to return the Grindstone to his hand (I hear the guy declare Chain of Vapor, returning the Grindstone, but it doesn't register in my brain what's going on as I'm busy with my game at the time).

The Merfolk player goes, "Yeah, sure." Takes his turn. Passes back. Then goes: OOPS! JUDGE!

In the meantime, Ben and I finished game 1, so we sit back and watch this fiasco. Jack (the judge) makes the correct ruling: "Tough Beans, warnings all around" and the painter player immediately recasts the Grindstone and obliterates Merfolk's library. Good fucking game.


Round 2: Some guy on Tempo Thresh. Adam, I think.
Game 1 I get wayfarer down which gets all 3 wastes, gg. On turn 5, I had 7 cards in hand and he had 1. This game he thinks it's totally cool when I fetchland, in response Wayfarer.

Game 2 he draws a pretty nutty hand and I draw a pretty slow hand without any turn 1 drops, but with enough land to play around his hate. Unfortunately, he comes up with a lot of stifles/wastes and he timewalks me over and over. So much for UW Tempo being a good deck at 1cc. He gets Kgrip for Jitte, double Trygon Predator, double Goyf, and other stuff.

Game 3 almost goes to time. Also, the guy is not so ok with me using Wasteland, then responding by activating Wayfarer in this game. Zzz. Call a judge, who helps me explain that I can do this, and that there's no intervening "if" clause on Weathered Wayfarer, so even if he cracks a fetchland, I still get to dig a land. I basically outplay him with Wayfarer, but in the meantime he beats me pretty low on life. I lose track of time, but I get the feeling there's not much time left in the round as a huge crowd gathers. I'm playing for a win from like 10 life vs. his 20 until time is called on my turn. I have Mom, Mom, Wayfarer, so it should be a draw, right? He goes: EE at 1. That's gonna hurt. I spell pierce it and he pays for it.

He has 1 card in the bin, EE@1 Grim Lavamancer, Nimble Mongoose, Goyf (4/5), and 3 land.

I have 3 land, Mom x2, Wayfarer, 3 land, and FIVE life.

On turn 2 of extra turns, I think, play Morph, pass.

He plays. I give Morph pro green in response. He lavamancers it in response. I tap the other mom to give it pro red. He's forced to pass the turn where I untap, float mana, and clog the board with random 1/1s, draw game. Whew. I can't believe that happened.

1-0-1

Round 3: Some cool guy on Pro Bant, Nan
I don't remember this so much. Game 1 he fetches three basics, but can't cast anything as I run around drawing infinite cards and wastelanding him whenever he peeks his head out behind his Forest, Island, Plains.

Game 2 He plays Natural Order around Daze. I have the Spell Pierce. In response, he looks to his Top, and luckily finds the Force of Will as the BOTTOM card. He forces my Spell Pierce. But I have the Daze.

2-0-1

Round 4: The Painter Guy With the Cheaty Face. After playing him, I honestly believe that he wasn't a cheaty face, but it's still pretty hilarious. He's actually a pretty nice guy, but not so good with Magic rulings.

Game 1 I get a fast Jitte while he dicks around trying to assemble his silly combo. He is very careful to play everything around Daze and give me plenty of time to build up 6 counters on my Umezawa's Jitte before trying to go off. He grindstones and in response I shoot his Painter three times with the Jitte. The guy asks me if it's an activated ability. I'm sortof confused, like: Yeah... do you not know what an activated ability is? He goes: "In response, I use Chain of Vapor to return Painter to my hand."

I call a Judge. He helps me explain how the shortcuts work and how he has to choose which Jitte activation he's responding to. I use one extra counter and bin his Painter's Servant, then a few turns later, bin him.

Game 2 I shuffle my sideboard into my library, then sideboard out 15 cards (I'm actually boarding in five cards: three aura, grunt, and Wheel of Sun and Moon). The guy asks me if I sideboarded out 15 cards ("... yes?"). I get a wayfarer out and wasteland the hell out of him, then cast Aura of Silence when he's stuck on like 3-4 land. He works a painter in and goes to grind me, but I have Swords in response (or use the Aura). I get a Jitte out, blow his team out (he makes some incorrect blocks as well that I noticed).

After the game, the judge asks who won, and the Grindstone player says, "He won. He boarded in fifteen cards against me! He was really prepared for this matchup!" At that point, I explain to the guy that I just shuffled my sideboard into my library so he wouldn't know for sure how many cards I was boarding in. Although I actually think the guy just mentally resigned himself to losing as soon as he saw me put in 15 cards. I guess when you don't know the rules, you also don't know the tricks.

The guy ends up 2-3-1 after 2-0 start.

But no matter, I'm 3-0-1, with double bubble shot at Top 8 and the best breakers of any 10 pointer.

First crack: Matt something (I find out later he's a professional with some pro points) on Pro Bant.

He wins the roll, I keep a good hand but no turn 1 Wayfarer. His hand is turn 1 Noble Hierarch, turn 2 Counterbalance around Daze, turn 3 Counterbalance Top lock. Good times. I guess correctly around how he played the Counterbalance, but the guy also has Natural Order played around Daze with Force backup. Nice.

Game 2 I don't really remember as much. I boarded in two Auras for Knight and Mom, but I don't see either, so w/e. I have a one land hand with some nice two drops, grunt, stoneforge mystic, swords, brainstorm, spell pierce, Fathom Seer, something like that.

I don't draw another land for a while and he doesn't play ANYTHING. Two turns without seeing a land and I have to pitch a card. I pitch Grunt (probably a mistake, should have pitched the Seer).

My opponent then unloads three Goyfs and a Trygon Predator. I swords the predator and Daze a Goyf, but I don't get more lands I need to play out my dudes.


Second Crack vs. Dragonstompy. Poor guy is paired down, he's 4-1 just needed a draw to make it in. I think his name was Christopher.

Game 1 he wins the roll, plays mountain mountain mountain (trying to pretend to be something other than Dragon Stompy). I wasn't sure what he was playing, but I fetch basics anyway. His hate spells are Blood Moon and Magus of the Moon. Sucks to be him, and we're off to game 2.

Game 2 he opens turn 1 Chal 1. I force. He then starts casting dudes. He casts a Rakdos. I cast a Mom. He casts Seething Song into Trinisphere to get Hellbent and float 2. I force the 3 sphere (only 2 lands at the time). He pumps Rakdos to 5/3 double strike and I have I think 14 life. He has 2 more to make it flying, but then it doesn't threaten lethal, so he just swings ground bound (correct call).

I have to chump with the Mom. Next turn I have to chump with Serra Avenger. Next turn I rip Swords to Plowshares, the only card that could save me (other than Brainstorm into a combination of cards) and cast Burreton Forge-Tender as well. We both start drawing into nothing for a very long time. A VERY long time. BFT beats him like 10 times. He ends up hardcast Akroma under Blood Moon for the game.

Game 3, everything on the line. Winner gets 100+ dollars, loser gets nothing. My hand's not terrible, I open with a basic Plains into a Vial. He plays Mox, Ancient Tomb... Morph. I waste his Ancient Tomb and he plays another Ancient Tomb and another Morph.

He swings with a Morph and I get the oracle text on Gathan Raiders and Akroma, Angel of Fury. Phil (the head judge) knows it off the top of his head. That guy is impressive as fuck. I vial in Jotun Grunt and block his Morph. It was Gathan Raiders. Not bad to trade down against Dragon Stompy. He makes a Blood Moon and another Morph, leaving me with Plains and two Mountains. I get a Jitte out but Grunt dies before I can equip it, so I vial in Fathom Seer at end of turn and equip that.

So I have Fathom Seer with Jitte against two morphs and two cards in hand. I assume that they're probably both Gathan Raiders and pass the turn. My opponent has Seething Song and flips over Akroma. Ouch. I take 6. In case you’re not Phil-knows-everything-about-Magic, here’s what it is (no, it doesn't look good for team UW Tempo):

http://www.magickingdom.it/public/catalog/images/pc/94.jpg

I use Swords to Plowshares to blast his other Morph and be able to swing clean to get some counters and keep my Seer. He pitches a card to gain 3 extra life (by morphing/hellbenting his Gathan Raiders). Maybe sloppy, he was already at 16 or 17, it’d be easier to kill Akroma than to kill him as is. I think it’s just a land or something, and he's already got his Akroma.

He swings me for 9, I go to 4 or something really low. I cast the Burrenton Forge-Tender in my hand, swing to get two more counters on the Jitte (4 counters), and transfer the Jitte to the BFT.

If he doesn’t swing me, then I just swing him with BFT (unblockable) and he loses. He swings with Akroma and BFT keeps me alive with a noble sacrifice. A swing with Fathom Seer gets me 6 counters and I blow his Akroma up and then play out some other dudes. Jitte walks the rest of the way through Arcslogger and one or two other guys that are just speedbumps.

4-1-1, that's good enough!

Top 8 vs. Eva Green: I win 1, then punt 2 (and a turn 1 Chalice @ 1 counters, literally 7 spells in my hand), then game 3 lose to Negator when I don't see any creatures.


Wrapup
Incidentally, the two people I lost to got first and second. Also of historical significance to me, in my first ever Legacy tournament, I went 4-0 beating two Goblins players on the back of Phyrexian Negator. Including game 2 of the finals, I ritualed a Negator, and the guy has Mogg Fanatic. I play a second land and hymn him (or something), and swing with Negator, losing both swamps and keeping Negator, and it goes the distance. Lucky as shit, but back then I was like 14 and I walked on water. I gotta hand it to the guy, he had guts, swinging into Vial @ 1 and Vial @ 2 consistently, hoping I didn't have the guys to Armageddon him and I didn't.

Negator and friends get "lucky" more often than you'd think. I wouldn't recommend it, but I wouldn't laugh at it either (unless you're playing red, of course).

The other UW Tempo player at the event won his Top 8 match, losing in the semi finals to the eventual winner. He seemed pretty good, I didn't have too much of a chance to talk to him, but I hope he'll write a tournament report or something. I don't think he got a pimpest play by popping an Akroma or countering a Force of Will with a Chain of Vapor, but he did better than I did and ended up with some Underground Seas.

Incidentally, while I was busy pwning a damn 6/6 protection from UW Tempo with flying and trample and firebreathing, Charlie was busy scooping a 14 year old Edward Cullen fanboi into the top 8, because he thought it'd be "Totally awesome to see a fellow Twilight Fan win the whole thing." Either that or he lost to the Vampires player in a bubble match. Not sure which is funnier.

Props and Slops:
Props
Props to Sean for driving SD LEGACY to the tournament, and for trying valiantly to dig Tempo Threshold out of the loser's bracket.

Props to SD LEGACY (12-9-3 overall, half of us made top 8 and we made a profit on the weekend).

Props to the guy who recognized my voice from my Youtube videos and after some prompting said he thought I was a 12-year old kid cause is so high pitched (I swear, I sound better than Keith Olbermann in my head).

Props to that Vampires player for making the top 8.

Slops
Slops to EVERYONE WHO PLAYED THAT VAMPIRES PLAYER. "Seriously, you guys? That shit isn't even good in Type 2." -- That was Sean's joke, but it bears repeating.

Slops to some fucking bum who took two bucks from me. Long story.

[Little Red Riding Hood]

I went 5-1-1 at a local tournament in Iserlohn, Germany (66 or 67 people) yesterday, placing 7th. A friend of mine also opted to play the deck (slightly different maindeck/sideboard) and went 5-0-2 (2nd).

//Lands
2 Plains
1 Island
4 Tundra
4 Flooded Strand
3 Wasteland
1 Windswept Heath
1 Marsh Flats
1 Arid Mesa

//Creatures
4 Serra Avenger
4 Mother of Runes
4 Weathered Wayfarer
2 Stoneforge Mystic
2 Jotun Grunt
4 Fathom Seer

//Spells
3 Daze
3 Spell Pierce
4 Brainstorm
4 Force of Will
3 AEther Vial
4 Swords to Plowshares
2 Umezawa's Jitte

//Sideboard:
1 Jotun Grunt
1 Wheel of Sun and Moon
3 Burrenton Forge-Tender
3 Aura of Silence
2 Enlightened Tutor
1 Ghostly Prison
1 Tormod's Crypt
1 Relic of Progenitus
1 Thorn of Amethyst
1 Ethersworn Canonist

Link: http://deckstats.net/deck-80650-0cb5dc66f04d422df39b079ba87d788f-en.html

Matchups:

Round 1: Rgw Goyfsligh 2-0 (Both games I won with less than 5 life. But in G1 I still had a Jitte with 6 counters left.)
Round 2: ANT 1-2 (G2 I open a hand with 2x Flooded Strand, Wasteland, Mother, Canonist, Spell Pierce and Brainstorm. Nice game. :laugh:)
Round 3: Canadian Thresh 2-0 (G1 I had a Grunt that dealed 16 damage and removed his whole graveyard)
Round 4: Dragon Stompy 2-1 (Lost G2 against a Chalice @ 1 on the play and my deck refusing to draw the second land till turn 7 :/)
Round 5: CounterTop Thopter Foundry 2-0 (G2 I had not 1 but 2 Aura of Silence in play. He had a Thopter Foundry in play and 3 basic lands. And a Top in his hand which he was unable to play.)
Round 6: NLS 2-1 (Close games against Windux. G2 I protected my Canonist ftw, G3 I had 2 Spell Pierce und 1 Force)
Round 7: LoamRock ID


I decided to play the third Spell Pierce main instead of the third Jotun Grunt. I expected quite a lot ANT/NLS plus some Reanimator and wanted another blue card for the maindeck. Overall, I'm pretty happy with the maindeck, and most of the sideboard. But I really want another Ethersworn Canonist and/or Enlightened Tutor. I guess the Ghostly Prison gets cut to make room for that.

[Exospaciac]

Second Crack vs. Dragonstompy. Poor guy is paired down, he's 4-1 just needed a draw to make it in. I think his name was Christopher.

That 3rd game was so awesome to watch.
After seeing this deck played in person, I can see what all the hype around it is about. It's REALLY powerful.

[Forbiddian]

Thanks to everyone posting their tournament reports!

Here's the summary data.



Total record so far: 116-40-16.
That's 70.5% win rate, 74.4% just counting wins vs. wins+losses. This is even higher than Jeff and I predicted, but is very much in line with the general statement, "UW Tempo beats the field."

[Little Red Riding Hood]

How and what would you guys probably board in and out versus Trisomy 21 (http://www.mtgthesource.com/forums/showthread.php?15846-[Primer]-Trisomy-21-Bgw-Loam-Control)?

I actually tested the matchup with Brot_ohne_Kruste like 2 weeks ago.

Out:
- 4 Swords (yeah, if a 1/1 token is your best target.....)
- 1 Stoneforge Mystic
- 1 Umezawa's Jitte

I found the Stoneforge Mystic/Jitte to be clunky in this matchup most of the time. You want to keep in all blue cards, Wayfarer (fetch Basics, sometimes Wasteland), Mother (Vindicate, Swords) and the Vial. Actually, if you can protect your vial, this matchup becomes a lot easier.

In:
+ 2 E. Tutor (finds gravehate + the crucial Vial)
+ 1 Relic
+ 1 Crypt
+ 1 Wheel of Sun and Moon
+ 1 Jotun Grunt (unless you play the third main)

[tgDC$]

@Forbiddian - Unfortunately the other guy (his name is Clarence) who played UW tempo will most likely not write a report. He was part of my team but he isnt really an internet guy. From what I remember these were his matchups in the swiss

Round 1 vs ThreshThreshThresh win (2-0) 1-0
Round 2 vs Zoo win (2-0) 2-0
Round 3 vs Pro Bant CBtop draw (1-1-1) 2-0-1
Round 4 vs Supreme Blue win (2-1) 3-0-1
Round 5 vs Merfolk win (2-0) 4-0-1
Round 6 vs Mono Black ID 5-0-1

Top 8
Quarters - Belcher win (2-0)
Semis - Pro Bant CBtop loss (0-2)

And to think he was gonna play his homebrew psychatog deck the day before but me and my other teammates convince him to take UW Tempo =)

[Forbiddian]

That's cool, I just needed the matchups for data.

I was sitting next to him during the Merfolk matchup, I'm almost positive he dropped a game.

[Forbiddian]

That's cool, I just needed the matchups for data.

I was sitting next to him during the Merfolk matchup, I'm almost positive he dropped a game.

[Oiolosse]

Little Red -- I have followed the trisonmy 21 thread posted by Kruste some weeks back and am curious if you have tested UW Tempo against it and how it fares? Thanks!

[colo]

I played Trisomy 21 quite some times piloting UW Tempo already, and from what I recall, I recorded one win, one loss, and two draws (due to overtime and extra-turns having passed at 1-1). It's probably been like 5-2-5 or so in terms of single games. I guess one can improve on that, since the Trisomy 21 player I faced most often is one of the most skilled players we have here, and he's been piloting the deck for like a year or so (fwiw, he created a very similar list to what is now called Trisomy 21, and evolved it to the agreed-upon list of Trisomy 21 over time) - so a more experienced UW Tempo player might fare better than I did. My gut feeling tells me it's a pretty even matchup though - not overly negative, though not overly positive, either.

[Maveric78f]

So I have Fathom Seer with Jitte against two morphs and two cards in hand. I assume that they're probably both Gathan Raiders and pass the turn. My opponent has Seething Song and flips over Akroma. Ouch. I take 6. In case you’re not Phil-knows-everything-about-Magic, here’s what it is (no, it doesn't look good for team UW Tempo):

I use Swords to Plowshares to blast his other Morph and be able to swing clean to get some counters and keep my Seer. He pitches a card to gain 3 extra life (by morphing/hellbenting his Gathan Raiders). Maybe sloppy, he was already at 16 or 17, it’d be easier to kill Akroma than to kill him as is. I think it’s just a land or something, and he's already got his Akroma.

He swings me for 9, I go to 4 or something really low. I cast the Burrenton Forge-Tender in my hand, swing to get two more counters on the Jitte (4 counters), and transfer the Jitte to the BFT.

If he doesn’t swing me, then I just swing him with BFT (unblockable) and he loses. He swings with Akroma and BFT keeps me alive with a noble sacrifice. A swing with Fathom Seer gets me 6 counters and I blow his Akroma up and then play out some other dudes. Jitte walks the rest of the way through Arcslogger and one or two other guys that are just speedbumps.
I just don't get how you got those 6 counters. You tell your story as if it was "how UW tempo ruined Akroma" from almost nothing. But apparently you already had counters on Jitte and Dragon Stompy was way behind you before that.

Another thing, Karakas and/or Vesuvean Shapeshifter would have dealt with this threat. I'm not saying that Karakas is better than a basic plains in the Dragon Stompy MU, I'm just saying that, since you can tutor lands, it's really strange that you don't play a Karakas instead of this second basic plains.

[Little Red Riding Hood]

Little Red -- I have followed the trisonmy 21 thread posted by Kruste some weeks back and am curious if you have tested UW Tempo against it and how it fares? Thanks!

I agree with Colo. The matchup is about even preboard and even to slightly favourable postboard. Both of my teammates (Brot_Ohne_Kruste and another guy) play an anti-Combo / anti-Dredge sideboard. There is like no really useful card that improves their matchup postboard aside from The Tabernacle at Pendrell Vale.

But some players may board Krosan Grip and/or Pithing Needle to combat Vial and gravehate, or even Engineered Plaque (on human).

It's a pretty tough game once they get their Loam-engine running and you need to watch out for Engineered Explosives. Your MVPs are Wayfarer, Mother, Vial and Grunt.


Edit @ Maveric78f: Dragon Stompy is already a good matchup once you win the dice roll. And even to slightly unfavourable if you don't (Chalice 1 first turn and stuff). And Blood Moon/Magus > Karakas. I rather have the second Basic Plains than a niche card that fails against one of the core strategies of Dragon Stompy.

"He makes a Blood Moon and another Morph, leaving me with Plains and two Mountains. I get a Jitte out but Grunt dies before I can equip it, so I vial in Fathom Seer at end of turn and equip that." (See Forbiddians report above.)

[Maveric78f]

I'm not saying that Karakas is better than a basic plains in the Dragon Stompy MU

proof reading...

Playing a basic plains is motivated by this single niche MU. And we can see from this report that even in this MU, Karakas can help.

[Little Red Riding Hood]

proof reading...

Playing a basic plains is motivated by this single niche MU. And we can see from this report that even in this MU, Karakas can help.

Playing the second Basic Plains is motivated by quite a few matchups.

DTB Section (Karakas vs. 2nd Basic Plains)

Ichorid: Karakas is slightly better, sometimes. But often, it doesn't matter.
Goblins: I guess you can bounce Wort and get your Karakas wasted?
Merfolk: Wanna bounce the Vendilion Clique? Maybe Sygg (both of them) gets played. Wasteland gets played for sure.
Aggro Loam: Wasteland and stuff.
Survival: Bounce Iona. Was quite good in testing.
Zoo: Makes their PoP more efficient. And their Path to Exile.
CounterTop: No difference.
Tempo Thresh: Basic Plains Nr.2 is much better.
ANT/NLS: No difference.

Established Decks Karakas looks useful against:

UB Reanimator: See Post #739/740.
Death & Taxes: Seems fine.
Doran Rock: Bounce the namesake. And that's it. And you could run into Wasteland.
Zur: :laugh:
Suicide with Hexmage/Depths: Sometimes being 20/20 flying indestructible isn't enough. But still; Wasteland.

Established Decks where you rather have the 2nd Plains:

Everything with Wasteland, Dust Bowl, Magus/Blood Moon, Back to Basics, Path to Exile, Price of Progress (Trisomie 21, Pox in general, Lands, Stax, Mirror, Team America, Suicide, Dragon Stompy, Faerie Stompy, MUC, Dreadstill, Sligh, etc.)

Established Decks where it doesn't matter:

Combo, Quinn, stuff

Sometimes against decks with Wasteland and stuff you just need one Basic Plains, but more often than not you want a third basic land in play or open a hand with Karakas as your only land/white source.

I guess Karakas is an option if your meta is full of Survival and you might suprise some Reanimatordecks.

[Forbiddian]

I just don't get how you got those 6 counters. You tell your story as if it was "how UW tempo ruined Akroma" from almost nothing. But apparently you already had counters on Jitte and Dragon Stompy was way behind you before that.

Another thing, Karakas and/or Vesuvean Shapeshifter would have dealt with this threat. I'm not saying that Karakas is better than a basic plains in the Dragon Stompy MU, I'm just saying that, since you can tutor lands, it's really strange that you don't play a Karakas instead of this second basic plains.

False. I had no counters on Jitte when he passed the turn and I was on a two turn clock.

False. I had no blue mana to flip Vesuvan Shapshifter and no way to get Island instead. Maybe I could have ramped vial to five (???) but Vial is pretty useful in that MU and the only creature that I would remotely want to copy is Akroma. I was already falling behind before he flipped Akroma (he had two morphs that were I assumed both going to become 5/5s which I couldn't handle. I peel BFT off the top only the turn after vialing in Fathom Seer, so I couldn't have known that I would have had time to ramp vial for VS).

False. Karakous would have been a mountain and I didn't have a way to tutor it anyway. IIRC, I also just had the plains in hand, so if it had been a karakous instead, I would have been knocked out.

But thanks for tuning in! Hate to sound so harsh, but you're 0 for 3 on your crazy speculation, including pretty obviously not reading even reading the report very carefully, even after LRRH quoted it.


By the way, everyone watching the game, except possibly my opponent and his friend, thought the game was an epic as hell come from behind and there was a crowd of like 20 people watching, I'm sorry if I didn't convey how cool the situation was. You seemed to do a better job at building the suspense and highlighting how hopeless the situation was. I'll quote you:


I just don't get how you got those 6 counters.

[Maveric78f]

Playing the second Basic Plains is motivated by quite a few matchups.

DTB Section (Karakas vs. 2nd Basic Plains)

Ichorid: Karakas is slightly better, sometimes. But often, it doesn't matter.
Goblins: I guess you can bounce Wort and get your Karakas wasted?
Merfolk: Wanna bounce the Vendilion Clique? Maybe Sygg (both of them) gets played. Wasteland gets played for sure.
Aggro Loam: Wasteland and stuff.
Survival: Bounce Iona. Was quite good in testing.
Zoo: Makes their PoP more efficient. And their Path to Exile.
CounterTop: No difference.
Tempo Thresh: Basic Plains Nr.2 is much better.
ANT/NLS: No difference.

Established Decks Karakas looks useful against:

UB Reanimator: See Post #739/740.
Death & Taxes: Seems fine.
Doran Rock: Bounce the namesake. And that's it. And you could run into Wasteland.
Zur: :laugh:
Suicide with Hexmage/Depths: Sometimes being 20/20 flying indestructible isn't enough. But still; Wasteland.

Established Decks where you rather have the 2nd Plains:

Everything with Wasteland, Dust Bowl, Magus/Blood Moon, Back to Basics, Path to Exile, Price of Progress (Trisomie 21, Pox in general, Lands, Stax, Mirror, Team America, Suicide, Dragon Stompy, Faerie Stompy, MUC, Dreadstill, Sligh, etc.)

Established Decks where it doesn't matter:

Combo, Quinn, stuff

Sometimes against decks with Wasteland and stuff you just need one Basic Plains, but more often than not you want a third basic land in play or open a hand with Karakas as your only land/white source.

I guess Karakas is an option if your meta is full of Survival and you might suprise some Reanimatordecks.
Thanks for addressing this option. If you had no way to tutor Karakas, I would greatly accept this analysis. The point is that Karakas is game breaker (and Tutorable) in the Reanimator MU although having plains#2 against zoo versus Kakaras is almost never game breaking. So that you can't just count the MUs where each one is better, you have to compute the utility of each card. Plains#2 utility is lesser because you already have plains#1 to tutor for. And Karakas's utility is greater because of Wayfarer.

Forbiddian: I indeed need proof reading myself. This does not answer my point though.

[Forbiddian]

Thanks for addressing this option. If you had no way to tutor Karakas, I would greatly accept this analysis. The point is that Karakas is game breaker (and Tutorable) in the Reanimator MU although having plains#2 against zoo versus Kakaras is almost never game breaking. So that you can't just count the MUs where each one is better, you have to compute the utility of each card. Plains#2 utility is lesser because you already have plains#1 to tutor for. And Karakas's utility is greater because of Wayfarer.

Forbiddian: I indeed need proof reading myself. This does not answer my point though.

@Maveric: I did discuss Karakous a bit earlier, particularly in regards to UB Reanimator where Inkwell is their best target regardless.

Against 90% of the decks out there, you'll never want to draw Karakous over plains. And against 95% of the decks out there, you'll never want to tutor a Karakous. It can't just have some marginal use, it has to be the best land in the deck (which means better than wasteland AND better than a land that gives us access to both colors). LRRH's analysis is outstanding, with the caveat that he IS mainly discussing the non-tutorable aspects of it (e.g. when you draw it instead of a Plains).

I agree that tutorability swings way in favor of running the Karakous, but against most (all) of the listed decks, you're not going to tutor it up, it's going to be drawstep or never see it.




Ichorid: Karakas is slightly better, sometimes. But often, it doesn't matter.
Goblins: I guess you can bounce Wort and get your Karakas wasted?
Merfolk: Wanna bounce the Vendilion Clique? Maybe Sygg (both of them) gets played. Wasteland gets played for sure.
Aggro Loam: Wasteland and stuff.
Survival: Bounce Iona. Was quite good in testing.
Zoo: Makes their PoP more efficient. And their Path to Exile.
CounterTop: No difference.
Tempo Thresh: Basic Plains Nr.2 is much better.
ANT/NLS: No difference.

UB Reanimator: See Post #739/740.
Death & Taxes: Seems fine.
Doran Rock: Bounce the namesake. And that's it. And you could run into Wasteland.
Zur:
Suicide with Hexmage/Depths: Sometimes being 20/20 flying indestructible isn't enough. But still; Wasteland.

You'd only ever tutor it against Survival out of the DTB.

UB reanimator shouldn't play Iona against you unless the situation is somehow too hairy for a 7/11 trampler to handle, and even then it'll be extremely hard to tutor (and there's no way you dig a preemptive Karakous unless they do something extremely stupid like pass the turn with more lands in play when you have a Wayfarer out and they have Iona sitting in the bin). Some tiny marginal use, though for sure.

Doran Rock you might tutor it -- but if you have a Wayfarer, you'd obviously be getting Wastelands at least the first three times. And it already hoses them and all their removal is going to try to attempt to knock Wayfarer out anyway.

Zur is pretty :D. Tough matchup, too, but all their removal is going toward keeping Wayfarer off the table.

I might tutor it vs. DnT, but they run their own so it's probably just a Wasteland in the end anyway.

Hexmage/Depths, you'd definitely tutor the wasteland first, but the ability to get Karakous is pretty hosey. Still, not a tough MU and Wayfarer is already such a hoser (and already indeed hoses Depths), so all their removal focuses on it anyway.


So mostly (almost exclusively), you either don't want it or Wayfarer is already such a god it doesn't matter. And my list only compares to wasteland, sometimes you'll want Tundra because of mana screw/whatever. From there, read LRRH's analysis for why it's on average, not as good as Plains.

[Little Red Riding Hood]

I agree to some degree.


The point is that Karakas is game breaker (and Tutorable) in the Reanimator MU although having plains#2 against zoo versus Kakaras is almost never game breaking.


It can be gamebreaking if the reanimate their only viable Karakas target: Iona. But say hi to Inkwell Leviathan and Empyrial Archangel.



So that you can't just count the MUs where each one is better, you have to compute the utility of each card. Plains#2 utility is lesser because you already have plains#1 to tutor for. And Karakas's utility is greater because of Wayfarer.


Agreed.

But the added value of Karakas is really low.
It's good against Survival and Reanimator plus Dredge to a lesser extend. But all three decks are easily capable winning
without Iona. And you've gravehate for G2 (and G3).
It's good against Dark Depths, but you already have Swords/Wasteland.

More options never hurt, but on the other side you already have tools to beat the named decks and Karakas makes you more vulnerable to nonbasic hate (See my post above). This can be important if a) you need another white manasource for now and/or the next few turns or b) you draw an opening hand with Karakas and get screwed.

You get a sometimes good utility card which has to be weighed up against a more stable and safer manabase.
It depends on your metagame and the skill of your opponents (Reanimator getting Iona and stuff) if you win more more games thanks to Karakas or lose more because you get screwed.

In my metagame full of Merfolk, Canadian Thresh, ANT/NLS, Zoo I want the second Plains.

[mercs]

False. I had no counters on Jitte when he passed the turn and I was on a two turn clock.

False. I had no blue mana to flip Vesuvan Shapshifter and no way to get Island instead. Maybe I could have ramped vial to five (???) but Vial is pretty useful in that MU and the only creature that I would remotely want to copy is Akroma. I was already falling behind before he flipped Akroma (he had two morphs that were I assumed both going to become 5/5s which I couldn't handle. I peel BFT off the top only the turn after vialing in Fathom Seer, so I couldn't have known that I would have had time to ramp vial for VS).

False. Karakous would have been a mountain and I didn't have a way to tutor it anyway. IIRC, I also just had the plains in hand, so if it had been a karakous instead, I would have been knocked out.

But thanks for tuning in! Hate to sound so harsh, but you're 0 for 3 on your crazy speculation, including pretty obviously not reading even reading the report very carefully, even after LRRH quoted it.


By the way, everyone watching the game, except possibly my opponent and his friend, thought the game was an epic as hell come from behind and there was a crowd of like 20 people watching, I'm sorry if I didn't convey how cool the situation was. You seemed to do a better job at building the suspense and highlighting how hopeless the situation was. I'll quote you:

Hey, this is the DS player who faced forbidden. imo, karakas is definitely a nonfactor 95% of the time.
I agree mainly w/ forbidden. he played it right, and burrenton-forger was the house against me. and yea, it was a pretty epic game, i'll admit. this was the first time in tournie play akroma couldn't seal the W for me. congrats and good job on wastelands.

[ScatmanX]

What about Karakas in a Tundra Slot? Would that leave the deck with too few U sources?

[mercs]

What about Karakas in a Tundra Slot? Would that leave the deck with too few U sources?

I'm no pro, but I have been testing UW tempo a lot online.
The situation I see is this.
Karakus mainly sees play vs reanimator, survival, and hexdepths.
In those cases, u don't usually need to worry about having 2 plains, as ur killing their lands, not the other way around. u can actually stabilize on 1 plains just fine.

The only situation that would be useful in is DS. but again, against DS, not everyone runs akroma (i dont know why!) and most of the time, karakus is ineffective.

[Plague Sliver]

If anything, I'd opt for Karakas in a SB slot. It seems so situational - I'd try to fit in a 4th Wasteland instead. Even then, the list is so tight I don't know what to cut.

On a side note, I finally have all the pieces built for the deck. Played 5-6 practice games against Goblins with no SB, and dropped maybe 1 game. This is a real gem of a deck given that 40% of my meta is Goblins. It's either this deck or ANT, and I much prefer this one.

[Schembo]

Following list won legacy tourney past weekend in here finland (40-50 players, dunno exact number).

Creature [21]
4 Fathom Seer
3 Jötun Grunt
4 Mother of Runes
4 Serra Avenger
2 Stoneforge Mystic
4 Weathered Wayfarer

Instant [17]
4 Brainstorm
3 Daze
4 Force of Will
2 Spell Pierce
4 Swords to Plowshares

Artifact [5]
3 AEther Vial
2 Umezawa’s Jitte

Land [17]
4 Flooded Strand
1 Island
2 Plains
4 Tundra
3 Wasteland
3 Windswept Heath

Sideboard [15]
1 Aura Flux
1 Aura of Silence
3 Enlightened Tutor
1 Ethersworn Canonist
1 Ghostly Prison
3 Path to Exile
1 Relic of Progenitus
1 Spell Pierce
1 Thorn of Amethyst
1 Tormod’s Crypt
1 Wheel of Sun and Moon

He won against ANT, Merfolk, Merfolk, Zoo and draw against zoo and u/b reanimator. Reanimator player was he's teammate. In quartes he won against zoo (2-1), semifinals against belsker (2-0) and finals against u/b reanimator (2-1,not he's teammate)

If someone like to babel here's link to finnish mtg forum and he's tourney report: http://vaihdetaan.kapsi.fi/forums/index.php/topic,61528.msg243088.html#msg243088

[Muenstermagic.de]

I just startet testing this deck after I found a list online and wanted to convince me of Fathom Seer myself.I just finished reading the nice first post of this thread for I was not sure what kind of deck i was dealing with... Now that this is clear I can test further and ponder about some slots and card choices. After the first few test games I made so far, the following questions arose - sorry if these were already discussed in this thread, I did not want to read all 40 pages.

1.) Wayfarer is nice, as is Wasteland. But Wayfarer can get any land. Why would we waste a toolbox like that? Aren't there other Lands that do something? Manlands like Factory or Mutavault, latter of which could add a surprise effect against tribal decks which grant landwalk to their folks. We only have to run one of them since 4 Wayfarers are tutoring enough. In addition, Our Jotun Grunts can put them back into our library to be wayfarer'ed again should they die.(Of course this is meant as a 1-of addition to the wastelands, not as a replacement)

2.) As a friend of toolboxes as I am, why not exploit the advantages of the Stoneforge Mystic a little more? Has anyone conisdered Basilisk Collar? Imagine a mother with a collar, no ground creature will ever survive an attack again. 2 Jittes are minimum for this deck to work, but as with the land-box, we'd only have to add one collar to give us more options to fetch for good equipments if Jitte is already there or has left due to Extirpate or something like that...

3.) What about our Deck if our Jitte does not work? I know it sounds like "Goyf is bad, it can be handled", but reading the first post really made it seem like "stall till Jitte and win - or don't." It surely is not like that, but that chimp bone-club surely does a great deal of work. So what do we do if we play against Extirpate, Pridemage, Needle, Grip - ther are numerous ways to deal with it and people sure know that they have to be able to handle it.

4.) The matchups were displayed really well, as were potential SB plans. Has there anything been said on how this deck's matchups change due to opponent's sideboarding? Can opponents sideboard reasonable things against us (apart from Jitte-hate perhaps)? It would interest me if there is information about that around here...

So far....
Simon

[Forbiddian]

Since all your questions have been answered 30,000 times in the thread, I'll only respond to the specific questions, in order:


1) Because there aren't any lands that are better that we'd want to draw, typically. Read like two posts above yours about a discussion on Karakous.

Of course there are lands that do things.

2) Because Jitte is the best. Would you run a toolbox that can tutor out Teferi's Moat when you could just get the real thing?

Yes.

3) Even without Jitte, you're still as strong as a modern Merfolk deck (that is to say -- not that strong, but still you can win games), except you have a much larger repertoire of tricks and you're facing an opponent who is using up resources to handle Jitte.

4) Yes, all the board plans are adjusted for what opponents are likely to bring in. E.g. we expect Zoo to have Kgrip.

Not really, the new metagame is pretty friendly toward UWT in terms of board hate. There are a lot of cards that could possibly see play: Nature's Claim, Null Rod, Dread of Night. The problem is that those are all bad or very bad against the rest of the field.

[Little Red Riding Hood]

I went 5-1-1 at a local tournament in Iserlohn, Germany (66 or 67 people) yesterday, placing 7th. A friend of mine also opted to play the deck (slightly different maindeck/sideboard) and went 5-0-2 (2nd).

Nick, the other guy who played No Goyf at the same tournament finally wrote his report. Since he doesn't have an account here, I sum it up. First things first; here's the decklist:

//Lands
2 Plains
1 Island
4 Tundra
4 Flooded Strand
4 Wasteland
2 Windswept Heath


//Creatures
4 Serra Avenger
4 Mother of Runes
4 Weathered Wayfarer
2 Stoneforge Mystic
3 Jotun Grunt
4 Fathom Seer

//Spells
3 Daze
2 Spell Pierce
4 Brainstorm
4 Force of Will
3 AEther Vial
4 Swords to Plowshares
2 Umezawa's Jitte

//Sideboard:
1 Wheel of Sun and Moon
3 Burrenton Forge-Tender
2 Aura of Silence
3 Enlightened Tutor
1 Ghostly Prison
1 Tormod's Crypt
1 Relic of Progenitus
1 Thorn of Amethyst
1 Ethersworn Canonist
1 unknown card (probably the 4th Burrenton Forge-Tender)

He decided to play the 4th Wasteland instead of the 7th Fetchland and was satisfied with this decision after the tournament.

Matchups:
Round 1: LoamControl (not quite T21, but similar) 2-0
Round 2: LoamRock 2-1
Round 3: BantSurvival: 2-0
Round 4: NLS 2-1
Round 5: Ichorid 2-0
Round 6: ANT 1-1
Round 7: Ub Faeries 1-1

Both draws were unintentional. His opponent in R6 played really slow, in R7 game 1&2 took forever.

You can find a more detailed report here (http://www.mtg-forum.de/thread-iserlohn-maerz-63911.html?st=15&start=15) (Hippie = me, The Hunted = Nick), but beware; it's German. :laugh:

Fun fact; the Top8 had more Fathom Seers (8) than Tarmogoyfs (4).

[Yan]

Following list won legacy tourney past weekend in here finland (40-50 players, dunno exact number).


He won against ANT, Merfolk, Merfolk, Zoo and draw against zoo and u/b reanimator. Reanimator player was he's teammate. In quartes he won against zoo (2-1), semifinals against belsker (2-0) and finals against u/b reanimator (2-1,not he's teammate)

If someone like to babel here's link to finnish mtg forum and he's tourney report: http://vaihdetaan.kapsi.fi/forums/index.php/topic,61528.msg243088.html#msg243088

Yeah, it was me. I already posted a small report here. Just to clear that this wont mess up with the data gathered. (No two tournament wins or something like that :) )

I have to say the final was quite juicy. He won the first game with a quick Iona. In second game he played Blazing Archon and I played Wheel of sun and Moon targeting him. I had Vial, mother and Avenger so he couldn't attack, neither could I. Turns pass and he gets a wipe away and plays it on the end of my turn returning wheel back. Then he entombs Iona and tries to exhume. I have Force. Next turn I figure out that wheel is pretty useless, so I play it out, targeting myself. He exhumes Iona again next turn and the game is pretty much locked. I start building my hand of 7 counterspells he tries to find his final outs. The game takes more than an hour. Finally he bounces my wheel, tries to thoughtseize. (if I have mother, he can reanimate it and win) Counter war begins and I would have won the game I had let the seize resolve (he was at 4 life) But because the seize don't resolve, he scoops because he has no outs left. I win the last one pretty quickly with counter back ups. Really nice game :D

[pi4meterftw]

The last few posts have shown that people are interested in using the toolbox "potential" of the deck.

Many laymen know of the sunk cost fallacy, where one "reasons" that he should use what he has already invested into. It stems from an illogical human desire to not waste things.

Logically, though, here we have the opportunity to use a toolbox, and we simply won't unless the cost outweighs the benefit. We're not automatically compelled to use it just because we happened to make it available to ourselves.

Anyway, as you can see our matchup against zoo is ~50%, and even less against some of the most anti-UW Tempo builds.

Matt and I will work to resolve this problem. We hadn't been as active, but Caltech just let out, and soon UCSD will let out as well. We'll work on it this spring break. Engineered explosives is looking like a possible solution. We've tested threads of disloyalty and perimeter captain, and found both to be terrible. Some modest theorizing reveals that submerge, harm's way, and the control magic for U with a cumulative upkeep won't work either.

Indeed we've actually tested the last one, though I forget what it's called.

Engineered explosives looks like it promises to handle sylvan library, unlucky draws where he just gets more business than we do, and from other decks empty the warrens, free artifact mana, elves, and counterbalance.

I believe that EE will earn 3 slots, and the rest will be dedicated to reanimator/control hate.

[HAVE HEART]

Anyway, as you can see our matchup against zoo is ~50%, and even less against some of the most anti-UW Tempo builds.

Matt and I will work to resolve this problem. We hadn't been as active, but Caltech just let out, and soon UCSD will let out as well. We'll work on it this spring break. Engineered explosives is looking like a possible solution. We've tested threads of disloyalty and perimeter captain, and found both to be terrible. Some modest theorizing reveals that submerge, harm's way, and the control magic for U with a cumulative upkeep won't work either.

Indeed we've actually tested the last one, though I forget what it's called.

Engineered explosives looks like it promises to handle sylvan library, unlucky draws where he just gets more business than we do, and from other decks empty the warrens, free artifact mana, elves, and counterbalance.

I believe that EE will earn 3 slots, and the rest will be dedicated to reanimator/control hate.

Mind Harness.

Since cutting Weathered Wayfarer is the plan against Zoo, then being able to Wastelock them seems harder, so playing Path to Exile against them would be effective. It would also be effective against Merfolk, as cutting them off of their lords is definitely this deck's strategy against Merfolk. Engineered Explosives seems a little annoying when all of the deck's permanents would be susceptible to it. Even if you are trying to play around it, it can make for awkward hands.

[pi4meterftw]

The way the zoo matchup goes is they invest resources to actively remove our guys, so EE breaks the symmetry quite well.

Path to exile is terrible. We wouldn't run as sideboard "hate" more copies of swords to plowshares, and path's drawback is still as bad as ever.

I'd rather see my opponent gain even 12 life than hand him over the game. In fact, we still have wastelands.

I'll actually go as far as to say PTE is always bad. It doesn't "depend on the situation" or whatever. You wouldn't run the card if it worked in reverse, because damn, sacrificing a land is too steep of a cost. But giving your opponent one... that's okay.

I don't get why anybody would ever run PTE, especially before even maxing out swords. Even the most aggressive of decks suffer more from giving your opponent extra land than from giving like 2-4 life.

[Tinefol]

I've actually tested EE against Zoo. From every angle it sucked. They never had enough drops to make at least an even trade; I always had a vial, or mom, or any of the 2cc drops, so whatever cost I played it at, I would take away my own stuff. It also stayed useless when I was winning. The one time where it worked I EEd away Lavamancer with my own Vial for the win. Maybe I was doing something wrong?

[Forbiddian]

I've actually tested EE against Zoo. From every angle it sucked. They never had enough drops to make at least an even trade; I always had a vial, or mom, or any of the 2cc drops, so whatever cost I played it at, I would take away my own stuff. It also stayed useless when I was winning. The one time where it worked I EEd away Lavamancer with my own Vial for the win. Maybe I was doing something wrong?

Almost certainly you're right.

EE is just one of the cards we haven't tested, yet, so we like to try everything out. I'm kinda on the fence. Condemn was pretty decent, it turns Merfolk into a bye (if it wasn't already).

[Citrus-God]

I can see why Path to Exile would be bad against Zoo, not because Path to Exile in general is a bad card, but because Zoo can make use of that extra land via Sylvan Library. If Zoo never ran Sylvan Library, I could see Path to Exile being a great card against them.

[Draener]

If Sylvan Library is what makes path bad, it also makes swords and codemn equally as bad. Short of lavamancer, you'll almost certainly be giving them between .75 to 1.5 of a card, and I can't see that being any better. For non-step lynx zoo varients, what you need to beat them is more guys that they need to path to trade effectively. Perhaps Loxodon Peacekeeper, I don't know, the pool of cheap fat blue/white creatures is kind of limited. Submerge is actually pretty decent against the step lynx builds as it helps to run them out of fetch lands.

[pi4meterftw]

It seems like you think there are decks that can't use the extra land. Look, path is bad. It would be more obvious to you if the cost of running it were made in reverse, but it's not.

The WORST case with swords is that you get like a -1 off Sylvan library because you gave him 4 life. (And this doesn't happen if you swords the two strongest cards against you: Lavamancer, QPM.)

And even then, it's only a regular -1. It's not a put a land into play tapped -1. And this worst case requires all the stars to align: you have to have swords, you have to have swordsed Tarmogoyf, he has to have sylvan library...

I don't know how to make it obvious that path is absolutely horrendous, but I only need to argue that it's not worth a sideboard slot to at least put this case away. It turns out that nobody should be running it, but I don't actually need that claim. It seems quite obvious it's not sideboard material though. (I.e. I don't know why the merfolk players with white are running it. Actually, I don't know why anybody runs merfolk with white. If you add white, you might as well be UW tempo.)

[Draener]

You misunderstand my post. I was not advocating the use of path in the sideboard or the main for that matter, but rather to point out to Citrus-God the major reason path being bad against zoo is not that libary lets them make use of that mana. I do this by demonstrating that swords allows pretty much the same thing, but there is no debate that swords is a good card against zoo. The problem with path is that you cannot use it early without fear of them getting way ahead, and when you can 'safely' use path you have probably allready taken enough damage to put you into burn range.

[PanderAlexander]

Congrats on the tourney result Matt, I'm that probant player that you saw playing the mirror and I had amassed an army of RWMs. One of my playtest guys built U/W tempo and I finally got to use it yesterday and it's impressive, almost makes me want to not use my goyfs and build this deck, almost :tongue:

I've only tested UW tempo a few games against Zoo, but those few games didn't seem like a problem with mother and stoneforge/jitte. The Zoo I played against didn't run Sylvan though so that's probably the difference.

Pi4meterftw, I'm by the Pasadena area, so if you're still around here we should playtest.

[tgDC$]

@Matt - I noticed at Knight Ware you kept the miser KOTWO maindeck and Clarence and I decided to listen to one of your previous suggestions by cutting it and taking the 3rd grunt out of the sb and into the md. Do you guys still support this change?

[pi4meterftw]

I'm no longer in Pasadena, because I have gone home to spend some time with family etc.

Matt didn't have the cards to support the change he suggested, although my understanding is he still supports not running KOTWO in some way.

As for myself, I'm not sure grunt is actually great to have as #3. The results its been putting up against zoo lately are not impressive. As much as you may think otherwise, grim lavamancer beats it, not the other way around. Qasali pridemage also causes it problems in blocking. With most zoo builds eschewing KOTR, and lavamancer beating it, grunt really only hurts goyf and the creature it blocks. This isn't terrible, but it wasn't the Godsend we had been hoping for.

I may still choose to run 3 maindeck, but it probably won't be motivated by how "great" it is vs. zoo, but rather that it completely shuts down other strategies, and it also lets me lock enchantress and stax.

I'm also cutting the 3rd vial, which I've been drawing doubles of way too much, for a 4th wasteland; now that everybody is playing multicolor in fear of iona, I haven't seen a deck without like 8+ wasteland targets in ages. Well merfolk, and even that has 4 targets, and another 4 targets sometimes if you don't control basics. I'm contemplating some changes right now, I'll write it in here when I figure stuff out.

[markbris]

I made a video similar to the ones Forbiddian has made and uploaded it to youtube. Goofed the editing tho cuz I had to do it twice and forgot to cut off the 2nd time, you can watch what I described that happens for the last 40secs-1min.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IaKYl3RheJw

Sorry if the audios not great on this one, I mumble alot. I will speak more clearly in later ones. I thought it was interesting tho how wayfarer destroyed this guy.

I hope to do some more so let me know what you think. I'm sure forbiddian is more entertaining though haha.

[pi4meterftw]

I made a video similar to the ones Forbiddian has made and uploaded it to youtube. Goofed the editing tho cuz I had to do it twice and forgot to cut off the 2nd time, you can watch what I described that happens for the last 40secs-1min.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IaKYl3RheJw

Sorry if the audios not great on this one, I mumble alot. I will speak more clearly in later ones. I thought it was interesting tho how wayfarer destroyed this guy.

I hope to do some more so let me know what you think. I'm sure forbiddian is more entertaining though haha.

Hi, I will be commenting more now that I am on break. I'll also perhaps post some videos. (Or Matt will post them for me, if Youtube difficulties persist.)

I'm going to comment this as I go through your video, so you can see what I think as the information becomes available.

You should not have wayfarered the first time you activate it during your main phase. This is one of those situations where an upkeep activation is appropriate.

Given that you topdecked arid mesa, you ought to have played that to threaten additional uses of wayfarer even if he did nothing. It also allows spell pierce.

At 5:20 you don't play jitte. You most definitely should've played jitte. This both guarantees your next wayfarer activation and avoids the cleanup step. Also, it stops the bleeding from vampire nighthawk. True that you're not desperate to stop the bleeding, but I can't see why you wouldn't start applying the pressure already. It's obvious you win this game. In a tournament, you'd be interested in finishing it as quickly as possible.

I stopped watching at 6 minutes. You clearly win. Nothing more needs to be said. (Wait, you didn't punt and lose right? Just checking.)

[markbris]

[QUOTE=pi4meterftw;439533]

You should not have wayfarered the first time you activate it during your main phase. This is one of those situations where an upkeep activation is appropriate.

Can you expound on this? I've seen forbiddian talk about this but never really figured out when I should do it before I draw and when I shouldn't? That is what you mean right? I should still be wayfaring that turn right?

Given that you topdecked arid mesa, you ought to have played that to threaten additional uses of wayfarer even if he did nothing. It also allows spell pierce.

This is def something I didn't think about. TY

At 5:20 you don't play jitte. You most definitely should've played jitte. This both guarantees your next wayfarer activation and avoids the cleanup step. Also, it stops the bleeding from vampire nighthawk. True that you're not desperate to stop the bleeding, but I can't see why you wouldn't start applying the pressure already. It's obvious you win this game. In a tournament, you'd be interested in finishing it as quickly as possible.

I didn't realize what you meant at first, but I see. I could have played the jitte, then wastelanded next turn and wayfarered in response whereas I couldnt wayfarer again the way I did it. TY again

I stopped watching at 6 minutes. You clearly win. Nothing more needs to be said. (Wait, you didn't punt and lose right? Just checking.)

Yes haha, ez game

[pi4meterftw]

You wayfarer before draw precisely when you're sure you will wayfarer that turn.

You actually wouldn't wayfarer if you could swing with a jitted wayfarer.

Unless he leaves nighthawk untapped. If he does that, he obviously loses. He's too committed to his nighthawk plan.

Don't forget, if jitte gets 2 counters, then you can remove the counters to make nighthawk a 0/1 to eat it cleanly if he blocks with it.

[pi4meterftw]

I think it's a great idea for others to post videos too. At this point, I only post my most interesting games (I might post a pro bant one later).

The general teaching aspect of the videos has mostly been extracted out to the point of severe diminishing returns.

But there are still things that we probably don't even think to bring out that we would see if we watched you playing.

[Damnosus]

Ok so just got back from a smaller tournament (like 13-18 people or so). It has been a while since i have played in such an event/I have never played anywhere that was this competitive/I am totally new to this deck. I wound up going 2-2 with a bye. Yea I suck. Gotta say though, not sure if I want to continue with the deck: I think it is just not me.

Decklist: first post decklist except the sideboard is different (don't have enough AoS, so one is a Needle, and one is an EE).

Round 1: LEDless Dredge.
Game 1: Longish game, I stall with Mom and he gets crap for dredges. I eventually find a Jitte+more critters and take it home.
Game 2: I have Grunt and I don't mull to something better (mistake). He gets a second turn kill.
Game 3: I mull down to five looking for hate. I find nothing other than a ghostly prison which I eventually have to fetch away because I simply do not have the lands to play it. I also do find an EE, but by then he has the Iona. GG.

What a strange change: Dredge losing game 1 and winning games 2-3. I wish I hadn't had to mull into oblivion that last game. I think I would have had a chance otherwise.

Round 2: ProBant
Game 1: I attempt to pull off the waste shindig and totally screw up forgetting about summoning sickness (yea totally rookie mistake). Even so, he simply plopped a Natural Order down and there was nothing I could do about it (washout is looking really good from the board).
Game 2: I get an aura of silence, then a prison down (not sure why I boarded in prison-was looking through boarding suggestions that you guys posted and could not find anything on pro bant). Stalled him for a bit, then he dropped a Trygon. Lame. This allowed him to play a counterbalance and win from there.

This match sucked. Yea I played horribly, but I really felt that there was little to nothing I could do. I don't like playing a controlling deck and feeling like that. Sigh.

Round 3: messed around with a byesexual. Yea, that was not at all funny...

Round 4: Belcher
Let me just say, I hate Belcher with a passion: when I lived on the east coast, the store I went to was overrun with it. What a lame deck.
Game 1: he confidently tries to belch me 1st turn. I show him the force, then beat him down with a Mom+Jitte.
Game 2: He mulls to 5 (!!!), and I keep a weird hand (waste, 2x fetch, needle, jitte, swords, and a BS), play the first turn needle knowing i have time. He gains cards and I get a tutor. He attempts to go off and screws up royally (grabs the EtW without saccing the 2 LED's he had in response). He groans as he realizes his mistake. I let him take it back because I could care less at this point, and because I know I have a way out. He plays 12 goblins. I take my turn and pass. He swings. I then end of turn tutor for my EE. I nuke them and finally find a creature/jitte and kill him before he is able to go off again (man the deck can be slow at times).

Ok that game felt good. Especially because i have so much angst against Belcher.


Overall I would have to say that, yes, I still suck with the deck. However, I don't really enjoy it-I feel bad cause I was very excited about playing it, but I just don't really connect with it the way I connected with Countertop. I think for future tournaments I will return to countertop, especially due to the high number of combo players at the store (saw belcher, 2 dredge-not sure which deck is better against dredge-Dream halls). Also, I never felt like wayfarer was at all effective. I think I just don't like playing with wasteland. Ah well. I was happy though because my friend who is really new to the game (first tournament) took his modded vampires and did better than me (going 2-2 also, but without any byes). But yea, I think I might have to save this deck for another time. :frown:

[pi4meterftw]

Ok so just got back from a smaller tournament (like 13-18 people or so). It has been a while since i have played in such an event/I have never played anywhere that was this competitive/I am totally new to this deck. I wound up going 2-2 with a bye. Yea I suck. Gotta say though, not sure if I want to continue with the deck: I think it is just not me.

Decklist: first post decklist except the sideboard is different (don't have enough AoS, so one is a Needle, and one is an EE).

Round 1: LEDless Dredge.
Game 1: Longish game, I stall with Mom and he gets crap for dredges. I eventually find a Jitte+more critters and take it home.
Game 2: I have Grunt and I don't mull to something better (mistake). He gets a second turn kill.
Game 3: I mull down to five looking for hate. I find nothing other than a ghostly prison which I eventually have to fetch away because I simply do not have the lands to play it. I also do find an EE, but by then he has the Iona. GG.

What a strange change: Dredge losing game 1 and winning games 2-3. I wish I hadn't had to mull into oblivion that last game. I think I would have had a chance otherwise.

Round 2: ProBant
Game 1: I attempt to pull off the waste shindig and totally screw up forgetting about summoning sickness (yea totally rookie mistake). Even so, he simply plopped a Natural Order down and there was nothing I could do about it (washout is looking really good from the board).
Game 2: I get an aura of silence, then a prison down (not sure why I boarded in prison-was looking through boarding suggestions that you guys posted and could not find anything on pro bant). Stalled him for a bit, then he dropped a Trygon. Lame. This allowed him to play a counterbalance and win from there.

This match sucked. Yea I played horribly, but I really felt that there was little to nothing I could do. I don't like playing a controlling deck and feeling like that. Sigh.

Round 3: messed around with a byesexual. Yea, that was not at all funny...

Round 4: Belcher
Let me just say, I hate Belcher with a passion: when I lived on the east coast, the store I went to was overrun with it. What a lame deck.
Game 1: he confidently tries to belch me 1st turn. I show him the force, then beat him down with a Mom+Jitte.
Game 2: He mulls to 5 (!!!), and I keep a weird hand (waste, 2x fetch, needle, jitte, swords, and a BS), play the first turn needle knowing i have time. He gains cards and I get a tutor. He attempts to go off and screws up royally (grabs the EtW without saccing the 2 LED's he had in response). He groans as he realizes his mistake. I let him take it back because I could care less at this point, and because I know I have a way out. He plays 12 goblins. I take my turn and pass. He swings. I then end of turn tutor for my EE. I nuke them and finally find a creature/jitte and kill him before he is able to go off again (man the deck can be slow at times).

Ok that game felt good. Especially because i have so much angst against Belcher.


Overall I would have to say that, yes, I still suck with the deck. However, I don't really enjoy it-I feel bad cause I was very excited about playing it, but I just don't really connect with it the way I connected with Countertop. I think for future tournaments I will return to countertop, especially due to the high number of combo players at the store (saw belcher, 2 dredge-not sure which deck is better against dredge-Dream halls). Also, I never felt like wayfarer was at all effective. I think I just don't like playing with wasteland. Ah well. I was happy though because my friend who is really new to the game (first tournament) took his modded vampires and did better than me (going 2-2 also, but without any byes). But yea, I think I might have to save this deck for another time. :frown:

If you don't like the deck, nothing can be done. But rest assured, it soundly beats dredge and other combo, except possibly for reanimator. (The exception is made due to lack of thinking/testing.) It also enjoys about a 50% MU against CB top/pro bant etc.

[Nelis]

Hi guys I want to try this deck out this sunday (first time without serious testing) and this is the expected metagame:

BGW Rock
Bant (Mystic EquiBant possibly) / Otherwise unknown
Landstill
Survival Bant / Aluren / Dredge (not sure which one)
Zoo / Belcher (probably Zoo)
TreshTresh
White Rock
UBg countertop / Otherwise unknown possibly a discard like deck.
Merfolk

But I have a few questions.
1. With above metagame in mind(aggro/aggro control) is it smart to pick up this deck? I've tested a wee bit versus Zoo and I find it hard to win at times. I wonder if its the same vs other aggro decks.
2. I'm also wondering if I should play Spell Snare instead of Spell Pierce in this case since spell pierce doesn't counter creatures (obviously). And it's also handy vs Hymn and Sinkhole and such.
3. Did you guys test stifle in the side? Seems handy to complement Wasteland to fight Zoo's manabase. And I expect to encounter Pernicious Deed as well.

[Forbiddian]

Hi guys I want to try this deck out this sunday (first time without serious testing) and this is the expected metagame:

BGW Rock
Bant (Mystic EquiBant possibly) / Otherwise unknown
Landstill
Survival Bant / Aluren / Dredge (not sure which one)
Zoo / Belcher (probably Zoo)
TreshTresh
White Rock
UBg countertop / Otherwise unknown possibly a discard like deck.
Merfolk

But I have a few questions.
1. With above metagame in mind(aggro/aggro control) is it smart to pick up this deck? I've tested a wee bit versus Zoo and I find it hard to win at times. I wonder if its the same vs other aggro decks.
2. I'm also wondering if I should play Spell Snare instead of Spell Pierce in this case since spell pierce doesn't counter creatures (obviously). And it's also handy vs Hymn and Sinkhole and such.
3. Did you guys test stifle in the side? Seems handy to complement Wasteland to fight Zoo's manabase. And I expect to encounter Pernicious Deed as well.

This deck is pretty good in any metagame. It's best in a combo-heavy metagame, because you 1) have great matchups against every combo deck and 2) aren't affected at all by combo hate.

You can lose matches when other people cut corners on combo decks, and occasionally bad matchups like Mono White stax will show up (but these decks are bullied out of more developed metagames.


UW Tempo splits a lot of those matchups, or no data (Equibant, WhiteRock (wtf is that?). Nothing there is a bad matchup for UW Tempo. But if you actually want to just crush that metagame for shits (or maybe convert it to a healthier metagame) roll with Ichorid. There's no other deck in the metagame for people to want to bring yard hate in for, so there's likely almost no yard hate, and Ichorid has a dominating matchup against every deck there except Merfolk.

[Nelis]

Yeah I know Ichorid or any combo for that matter will be the best choice for our meta but I really suck at combo (and also don't have the cards for it). And we definitely do not want to convert it to a healthier metagame. Nobody really likes combo and it's not appreciated at all. The bigger tournaments in Holland are very developed so if we want to play a healthy metagame we can go there.

White rock (I just called it so) is just a BGW rock deck. Equibant is the only deck on Deckcheck that features 4 Stoneforge Mystic and SoFI which I know someone will play because he wants to borrow those cards for his deck. Otherwise he'll probably pick up Dragon Stompy.

If I want to have a fair chance winning I can pick up Zoo. I crushed everybody 2 months ago playing Zoo going 5-0-0. The same players who are not there this sunday weren't there that time either (ones I have a bigger chance losing to) But I wanted to play another deck for a change and I've been following this thread for a long while now.

So I guess if I adjust the sideboard a bit vs aggro I should be ok with this deck? Do you think I should put in Spell Snare instead of Spell Pierce?

[Moonlight]

If you expect many rockish lists sundray, it might be good to think about a solution for those MU's.
Ive found it to be a hard MU (dutch rocklists).. especially those running 3-4 elspeth, 6 spotremoval and 5+ discardspells.
I dont recomand the change to spell snare, spell pierce is better with that meta i guess.
Why do you want spell snare over spell pierce?

[Nelis]

Because the metagame is more aggro I can counter creatures as well. I dont want to be losing matches because the deck has problems against creature decks.

[pi4meterftw]

Spell pierce is much better than spell snare in almost any metagame. I hope you'll just take my word for it, but if you have to try it out, do it in testing, not at a tournament.

There are lists running like 10 removal spells, many planeswalkers, and some hand disruption. Those are typically the deck's worst matchup. Decks approximately fitting into this model even include blue ones: the 4 color landstill.

Sometimes you can board in relic to stop their engine. For example, if they have loam and goyf, or goyf and witness, or witness, goyf, recurring nightmare, etc. you bring it in.

Occasionally it might make sense to bring in AOS.

We're still testing EE, and I'm looking for a zoo sparring partner. Additionally, if anybody has well thought suggestions on control hate in the colors, then I'll consider it. Thanks.

[Tinefol]

Lol, I suck at this game. Went 2-2-1 today, winning against ANT, Faerie Stompy, losing to UW Mystic Fish (by huuuge blunders both games), Reanimator (got beaten by lousy Empyrial Archangel g3. Guess what, I only could topdeck into 2 creatures (both 1/1, yeah) from 14 cards) and drawing with Zoo. I hate being flooded, and this is exactly what I experienced today a couple of times.

EE utterly sucks against Zoo. Need some other card in that slot.

@pi4meterftw I'd be glad to be a sparring partner, how can I contact you (over some IM)?

[pi4meterftw]

I can be reached at pi4meterftw. Matt can be reached at LetsgoSJ

[Nelis]

1.Spell pierce is much better than spell snare in almost any metagame. I hope you'll just take my word for it, but if you have to try it out, do it in testing, not at a tournament.

2. There are lists running like 10 removal spells, many planeswalkers, and some hand disruption. Those are typically the deck's worst matchup. Decks approximately fitting into this model even include blue ones: the 4 color landstill.

3. Occasionally it might make sense to bring in AOS.



1. I'll take your word for it.

2. Thanx for this advise. This way I know what to take in mind constructing the sideboard. Thanks to u 2 Moonlight.

3. AOS?

[Citrus-God]

3. AOS?

Aura of Silence, yo.

[Nelis]

Ok, even though I played absolutely terrible today I ended 3rd/2nd, 13 people attended.

Round 1 Win (bye)
Round 2 Loss (0-2) vs Thoctar combo with countertop. I played bad even though I was a bit unlucky (I drew a plains which otherwise would've been my 4th Tundra if i'd own it. Otherwise I probably would've won the 2nd game.
Round 3 Draw (1-1) vs Dragon Stompy, we went to extra time. I should've won game 3 but I wasn't paying attention.
Round 4 Win (2-1) vs Fearies homebrew. I absolutely played terrible but my opponent played even worse! (we were laughed at by many)
Round 5 Win (2-1) vs Dredge. Game 1 he won turn 1. game two I managed to get 2 Relic of progenitus into play. game 3 he was so unlucky with his dredges but I also had a 2 Relic again.

The deck I played:

Creature [21]
4 Fathom Seer
2 Jötun Grunt
4 Mother of Runes
4 Serra Avenger
2 Stoneforge Mystic
4 Weathered Wayfarer

Instant [17]
4 Brainstorm
3 Daze
4 Force of Will
3 Spell Pierce
4 Swords to Plowshares

Artifact [5]
3 AEther Vial
2 Umezawa’s Jitte

Land [17]
4 Flooded Strand
1 Island
2 Plains
4 Tundra
3 Wasteland
3 Windswept Heath

I didn't have much time working on the sideboard:

Sideboard [15]
2 Aura of Silence
3 Enlightened Tutor
1 Ethersworn Canonist
2 Relic of Progenitus
2 Elspeth, Knight Errant (did't face them but they were played today)
1 Wrath Of God
1 Engineered Explosives
3 Wall of Denial

I was a bit worried about creature decks so that's why I put in 3 Wall of Denial and 1 Wrath of God. I forgot to put in Wheel of Sun and Moon. Even though I didn't needed it I would've been more comfortable vs Ichorid.

The metagame today:
2 Dutch Rock (BGW)
ANT (winner)
Kavu Predator homebrew
******** (I think it was UBG)
Dragon Stompy
Faeries homebrew
Merfolk
Ichorid
Thoctar Foundry
Goblins
Monowhite aggro
UW Tempo (me)

I have mixed feelings about the deck. Genarally speaking I'm not that good playing these kind of decks anyway. And because I didn't have any experience with the deck its hard for me to know it's real strength because of all the bad plays I made. But I do have the feeling that it's very easy to go wrong if you make even small mistakes. I think mulliganing is the most important part when playing this deck. If you keep bad hands you will be severely punished by your opponent. I'll have to practice a bit more before I take it to another tournament again because I think I was lucky today.

[Forbiddian]

If you don't make mistakes, then you'll win easily. It's only if you're really horrible that you'll have better luck playing an easy deck -- but then again the decks that are "easy" are terrible. A bad player on UW Tempo is going to beat a great player packing burn every time.

But no, you're not punished for small mistakes by this deck. I still win consistently. Aaron still wins consistently. Stuckpixel wins consistently. We all have > 66% win ratio including top 8s/top 4s, etc. despite making a ton of errors.

[pi4meterftw]

Nelis, if you didn't have much time to work on the sideboard, you most definitely should've copied one of the sideboards that I've suggested in this thread. That is, unless you meant you didn't have time to find the right cards in your collection.

Currently, I am testing the following:

// Lands
4 [ON] Flooded Strand
4 [A] Tundra
3 [ON] Windswept Heath
3 [TE] Wasteland
2 [9E] Plains (1)
1 [BD] Island (3)

// Creatures
4 [ON] Weathered Wayfarer
2 [CS] Jotun Grunt
4 [DD2] Fathom Seer
4 [UL] Mother of Runes
4 [TSP] Serra Avenger
2 [WWK] Stoneforge Mystic
1 [ALA] Knight of the White Orchid

// Spells
4 [BD] Brainstorm
4 [AL] Force of Will
4 [OV] Swords to Plowshares
2 [BOK] Umezawa's Jitte
2 [DS] AEther Vial
3 [NE] Daze
2 [ZEN] Spell Pierce
1 [MR] Bonesplitter

// Sideboard
SB: 1 [LRW] Thorn of Amethyst
SB: 3 [ALA] Relic of Progenitus
SB: 3 [MI] Enlightened Tutor
SB: 1 [SHM] Wheel of Sun and Moon
SB: 2 [ALA] Ethersworn Canonist
SB: 2 [WL] Aura of Silence
SB: 3 [REW] Condemn


The only thing I'm really testing is the bonesplitter, but it might be interesting for me to see condemn in action.

Bonesplitter accomplishes the following: it's cheap enough that it's actually kind of a good thing to have two equipments. (The reason it's not usually good is that you invest too much into equipping your creatures, cause suggestions were like SOFI etc.)

Bonesplitter is hence an investment-light equipment that makes SFMs useful even after you have jitte.

It's sufficiently threatening that opponents will still remove it if they can, or else our creatures become able to trade with those of other decks like zoo. We tested the 3rd grunt and it was horrible. It has even been removed from the sideboard and KOTWO has been reinstated. I recommend you cut the bonesplitter for a vial if you want a deck that's sure to be reasonably good. I'll get back to you on how well bonesplitter worked.

[Vacrix]

Bonesplitter looks good in some situations and win-more in others. SOFI/SOLS might be investments of 3, but you can always use Stoneforger's ability to bring either into play. SOLS rapes in so many matchups. Is it really that hard to land? I'd imagine Bonesplitter is playable when you have a Mom, KOTWO, or Avenger on the field, but even then.. I'm curious as to how that change turns out.

[Nelis]

Nelis, if you didn't have much time to work on the sideboard, you most definitely should've copied one of the sideboards that I've suggested in this thread. That is, unless you meant you didn't have time to find the right cards in your collection.

Yeah. I probably should've.

[Little Red Riding Hood]

Just got back from my tournament in Bochum, placed 5th out of 29 (3-0-2, no ID).

List:

//Lands
2 Plains
1 Island
4 Tundra
4 Flooded Strand
3 Wasteland
1 Windswept Heath
1 Marsh Flats
1 Arid Mesa

//Creatures
4 Serra Avenger
4 Mother of Runes
4 Weathered Wayfarer
2 Stoneforge Mystic
2 Jotun Grunt
4 Fathom Seer

//Spells
3 Daze
3 Spell Pierce
4 Brainstorm
4 Force of Will
3 AEther Vial
4 Swords to Plowshares
2 Umezawa's Jitte

//Sideboard:
1 Jotun Grunt
1 Wheel of Sun and Moon
3 Burrenton Forge-Tender
3 Aura of Silence
2 Enlightened Tutor
1 Ghostly Prison
1 Tormod's Crypt
1 Relic of Progenitus
1 Thorn of Amethyst
1 Ethersworn Canonist

The third Spell Pierce is still very good in the maindeck, the Ghostly Priosn really needs to be something else.

Round 1: Ichorid (2-1)

Game 1: He only dredges one Narcomeoba and creates a few Zombies but my Serra Avenger combines with a Swords to Plowshares gets the job done after some early beats with mother/wayfarer.
Game 2: I draw land, land, land, land from the top and my single Forge-Tender + some irrelevant stuff isn't enough.
Game 3: Daze for his first turn play (Imp?) and anything I need (Forge-Tender, Crypt, stuff).

Round 2: Lands (1-1-1)

Game 1: I concede far too late. Fun fact; I had no lands left in my library.
Game 2: Spell Pierce for Manabond and Loam + Relic + creatures.
Game 3: I forget the Vial trigger one turn, play too slow and in the end I need one more turn to win. :cry:

Round 3: Dragon Stompy (2-1)

Game 1: He wins the dice roll and goes turn 1 Trinisphere, turn 2 Avalanche Riders for my Basic Plains and some more stuff to kill me.
Game 2: First turn Vial combined with a protected Serra Avenger kills him. And I got 2 Wastelands for his first 2 lands (Tomb/City).
Game 3: He starts with Chalice 1 but Imy hand has 3 lands + Aura of Silence + good stuff. Forge-Tender + Jitte ftw.

Round 4: Gw Survival (1-1) [Valdez]

Game 1: Lucky topdecks (Swords for both his mothers and Brainstorm into 2x Avenger) and no Swords to Plowshares on his side. He even got the Survival online, but he couldn't stop the Avengers.
Game 2: He plays first turn mother, follows up with some more threads. I realize that I can't win and stall with creatures. This matchup is really rough. We have 4 minutes left after this game and decide to draw.

Round 5: Ichorid (2-0)

Game 1: He mulligans into Putird Imp² and Dakmor Salvage (yes, Bloodghasts), but I have Swords² and an early Grunt.
Game 2: Forge-Tender, Spell Pierce/Force and Relic. Nuff said. :laugh:

Lesson learned, I'll try to play faster in the future.

I'm no longer a One Trick Pony. :tongue:

[Tinefol]

Just pondering.
Looks crazy enough (http://magiccards.info/query?q=wall+of+nets&v=card&s=cname) to just work against zoo.
Another possible card: Descendant of Kiyomaro.

[whitescorpion]

Sideboard:

+1 Bojuka Bog (tutor Wayfarer) tutorable answer with Wayfarer
+1 Vesuvan Shapeshifte (other morph+ kills progen + can keep doing fathom seer ability)

Just a thought.

[pi4meterftw]

I've been asked a few times for the extended list. I have some time now, so here it is, with modifications up to the most recent set. (It wasn't like this when I was toying with it before)

// Lands
4 [ZEN] Arid Mesa
4 [DIS] Hallowed Fountain
3 [ST] Plains (1)
2 [MM] Island (1)
2 [ZEN] Misty Rainforest
3 [WWK] Tectonic Edge
1 [DIS] Ghost Quarter
1 [DIS] Azorius Chancery

// Creatures
4 [ON] Weathered Wayfarer
4 [ALA] Knight of the White Orchid
2 [MOR] Vendilion Clique
1 [ARB] Meddling Mage
2 [WWK] Stoneforge Mystic
3 [DD2] Fathom Seer
1 [DIS] Court Hussar
4 [CHP] Serra Avenger
2 [CS] Jotun Grunt
2 [M10] Baneslayer Angel

// Spells
4 [REW] Condemn
4 [ZEN] Spell Pierce
4 [TSP] Careful Consideration
2 [BOK] Umezawa's Jitte
1 [DS] Sword of Light and Shadow

// Sideboard
SB: 1 [CS] Jotun Grunt
SB: 4 [SOK] Kataki, War's Wage
SB: 2 [ALA] Relic of Progenitus
SB: 3 [ALA] Ethersworn Canonist
SB: 3 [TSP] Return to Dust
SB: 2 [CFX] Path to Exile

The notable changes are that the removal in extended is so pathetic that path to exile actually manages to pick up some slots over the close competitor, sunlance, in the sideboard. Return to dust wins over aura of silence because of the prevalence of thopter. I'm not sure baneslayer angels should be in here, but baneslayer, seer, are here as outlets for knights and to punish people for playing PTE. Sword of light and shadow makes the list to slide attackers past recurring martyrs and BSA. SOFI almost made the list to get attackers past thopter tokens, but I decided to resign if that happens game 1. Vendillion clique and meddling mage make the list because the permission in extended is weak, and tectonic edge still makes the list, since extended has a relatively high mana curve, and decks like Urzatron and scapeshift combo should be severely hindered by it. The list is still relatively new, and may undergo minor changes like the 3 EC in the sb becoming 2 EC and a meddling mage, or such things like that.

If I were to actually play this list, I might be tempted to try to replace BSA because I do not own them. I'm not even sure they belong in the optimal list. It is possible that the court hussar in here should be the 4th fathom seer, but I will see about that. I envision having a decent zoo matchup since I seem to win the vast majority of my games where zoo doesn't either get an active sylvan or lavamancer, both of which are illegal in ext. However, if that's not the case, changes can be made. Right now the deck is heavily geared towards fighting well in the endgame. The deck tries to be decidedly less aggressive than its legacy counterpart. However, the lack of one drops might coerce me to run some steppe lynx, and that combined with a poor zoo matchup may cause me to revisit putting 1 path to exile maindeck.

After playing this again, I see that it'll take me a while to learn this deck. This deck should easily beat reveillark but I keep forgetting to do things like hating their graveyard, forgetting what extended cards do, etc. etc. I even forgot reveillark triggers when leaving play, but my biggest error was just not choosing to win by boarding in relics.

I imagine that besides zoo, my other matches will go similarly roughly until I learn the format. As such, there probably won't be any audio commentary for this deck for a while.

EDIT: BSA has been removed, and SOLS will rotate out with Mirrodin (accompanying a significant change in the metagame.)

This list is for before the rotation. I realized that most extended lists run more centralized strategies, like momentary blink, or at least certain decks only run one form of removal. Meddling mage is thus better than in legacy, and has been increased to a 4 of:

// Lands
4 [ZEN] Arid Mesa
4 [DIS] Hallowed Fountain
3 [ST] Plains (1)
2 [MM] Island (1)
3 [WWK] Tectonic Edge
1 [DIS] Azorius Chancery
3 [ZEN] Scalding Tarn

// Creatures
4 [ON] Weathered Wayfarer
3 [ALA] Knight of the White Orchid
2 [MOR] Vendilion Clique
4 [ARB] Meddling Mage
3 [WWK] Stoneforge Mystic
2 [DD2] Fathom Seer
1 [DIS] Court Hussar
4 [CHP] Serra Avenger
2 [CS] Jotun Grunt

// Spells
4 [REW] Condemn
4 [ZEN] Spell Pierce
4 [TSP] Careful Consideration
2 [BOK] Umezawa's Jitte
1 [DS] Sword of Light and Shadow

// Sideboard
SB: 1 [CS] Jotun Grunt
SB: 4 [SOK] Kataki, War's Wage
SB: 2 [CFX] Path to Exile
SB: 2 [ALA] Relic of Progenitus
SB: 3 [ALA] Ethersworn Canonist
SB: 3 [TSP] Return to Dust

[scud80]

played this for the first time in an 8-person "tournament" tonight, with the list from the OP (-tundra +plains since i don't own 4 tundra, -ghostly prison +enlightened tutor). went 2-0-1 with an ID in the third round. beat goblins 2-0 first round, landstill 2-1 second round (on the last extra turn), and lost 1-2 to 2-land belcher third round (played out for fun). game 1 belcher had first turn 10 goblins, and game 3 he had second turn xantid swarm attack/belcher for 20. had a great time with it, and i look forward to making fewer play errors the next time around.

[Tinefol]

I've uploaded a couple of game vidoes from a test session against Merfolk at my YouTube channel: http://www.youtube.com/user/Tinefol. All of them are of HD quality, so switch to 720p and watch in full screen.

Most of the games basically came down to the point there I could or could not get rid of Lord of Atlantis islandwalking effect. Unfortunately for me, the Merfolk player was running Spellstutter Sprites, which are pretty effective at stopping two of our three outs to LoA: StP and Fathom Seer. And you can't do anything if she lands off Vial.

The little fairy turned the match into fair 50/50, we went like 5-5 in a course of testing.

I'd be glad if you'd point out my play errors, I might've missed some.

[pi4meterftw]

I've uploaded a couple of game vidoes from a test session against Merfolk at my YouTube channel: http://www.youtube.com/user/Tinefol. All of them are of HD quality, so switch to 720p and watch in full screen.

Most of the games basically came down to the point there I could or could not get rid of Lord of Atlantis islandwalking effect. Unfortunately for me, the Merfolk player was running Spellstutter Sprites, which are pretty effective at stopping two of our three outs to LoA: StP and Fathom Seer. And you can't do anything if she lands off Vial.

The little fairy turned the match into fair 50/50, we went like 5-5 in a course of testing.

I'd be glad if you'd point out my play errors, I might've missed some.

Merfolk is a great matchup. I don't see how a cute little faerie could make it go from like 75% to 50%. But to clarify, what you actually said is that in 10 games you put up 50%.

That says nothing about whether the actual matchup is 50%. (It's not.)

The silly faerie is really bad for merfolk because it doesn't get pumped. I can see losing stochastically to LOA. It's not even that unbelievable that it would happen 5 games out of 10.

For an example of an error you made, I think I caught you not saccing a strand for an island in the opening of one of the videos when he was tapped out.

Maybe you were burning resources on answering things that weren't LOA. Sometimes this is warranted, but LOA is obviously the most important target. All of the rest of his deck does next to nothing if you can block. But LOA prevents those interactions that are disastrous to the merfolk player, where you block everybody, his first lord dies, then his next lord dies, etc.

I noticed quite a few people seem to be making claims and getting impressions about the deck's matchups from their own experiences. I encourage you to suppress this urge until you are practiced.

[Tinefol]

This is no more than a feeling that I've got. When they vial in Spellstutter in, when you attempt to cast Fathom Seer or StP on LoA - its pretty painful. Might need to play a couple more games there; I haven't lost a tournament match to Merfolk yet as well.

Why would I need to fetch for an Island? Anyways, as I'm replaying the videos, I notice how horrible I am at this game :D

[Forbiddian]

This is no more than a feeling that I've got. When they vial in Spellstutter in, when you attempt to cast Fathom Seer or StP on LoA - its pretty painful. Might need to play a couple more games there; I haven't lost a tournament match to Merfolk yet as well.

Why would I need to fetch for an Island? Anyways, as I'm replaying the videos, I notice how horrible I am at this game :D


Watching the games. You should add commentaries, the dead silence is like clausterphobic.


Game 1: Nice plays. He gets double Lord of Atlantis and the trick play with Spellstutter Sprite, but still gets blown out by superior creatures.
This is usually how they go.

Game 2: You just walk your mom into spellstutter when there was no reason to do that. There was actually reason not to do it since a second wayfarer would have very efficient in that situation (trades with cursecatcher if opponent doesn't play a lord, fetches a second land, and gives cover for Mom). He showed you he had spellstutter the game before, this is the card that you're complaining about, he passes turn 2 without a drop (how often does Merfolk do that -- and when Merfolk does miss a turn 2 drop that, why wouldn't you play it safe?) and you walk into it.

Also, you Brainstorm in response to his counter on your Angel, but then you won’t Daze or Force it (for sure). You should just save the Brainstorm until you can get max effect.

You probably win if you run Wayfarer out instead of Mom, although even with the very costly mistake, he had to have pretty much the perfect set of topdecks to come out on top, with his last three draws all being required to win.


Game 3 you definitely should not get the wasteland on turn 2. You have a bunch of useless lands in hand that you want to ditch with the brainstorm, but you fail to get a fetchland. No reason at all to get a wasteland at all in that situation. It costs you a free land, and drawing back into your crap again after the brainstorm.

You make the same mistake again later, costing you more land tutors. Brainstorm couldawouldashoulda been Ancestral Recall during this game, but it was only a slightly improved ponder.

The turn starting @ 6:00 should have started with your draw step. You see what you get (like if it's jitte, you can play a jitte around the daze for the game). Wasting early for no reason, then tutoring for no reason cost you the potential to jiquip.

You should SFM in the Jitte. If he has Daze or Force, you lose from that situation. It turns out he doesn't, so you get away with one. Great play with the blocks, lesser players would have missed that Angel stays pro blue and that four counters kills a lord which shrinks the other creature so that your three power Angel gets the kill. Also, the other sacrifice block was important (when would Fathom Seer be worth more than 5 life, anyway?). If you miss any of that, you lose. You saw all of it, and you win. That's called play skill.


Game 4: What is going on? Why are you keeping Spell Pierce? Why are you not cracking your fetchland so that you'll have to draw a crappy spell you didn't want to draw? Why did you pass the turn into stifle? Why are you wasting a second Brainstorm after wasting the first Brainstorm?

With audio commentary, it probably would have been more entertaining, because I would have been able to see what you were looking for, but I mean, you waste two brainstorms, keep the wrong cards, and you end up with bad cards because of it. GG.



Game 5: 1:23 you should fetch for tundra immediately. Why don't you replay the tundra to fetch again? Oh yeah, because you want to cash in for 1 damage, because Necropotence taught us that 1 life is worth more than a card.

After a play mistake like that, the way that the game should have gone is so drastically different from the way that the game does go that it's hard even to evaluate what could have happened. The mistake later costs you another land when you can't tutor (again) because you want to play Vial (Vial was the correct play then, but it's just apparent how much the mistake cost you since Wayfarer just sits idle when it should have gotten you enough card advantage to blow past your mulligan disadvantage to win easily).

Thankfully he's Merfolk, so all your guys are better and and even with the mulligan and the play mistake, you still win it. We don't have to speculate so much (although there is a point when you're hoping to draw more lands, even though you lost your Wayfarer earlier in the game, don't get any, go for Fathom Seer and watch it die to Daze. Again, not a mistake to play the Seer, but you should have had extra lands and the Seer should have just come down safely). I guess it's more interesting this way than if you just blow Merfolk out every game.


Game 6: Why don't you Spell Pierce the Vial? What else is Spell Pierce going to do in this matchup? You have dead mana and no way to wait for Spell Pierce anyway. I don't see any reason not to Spell Pierce it, although it looks like you win this one, so whatever.

Actually, sure enough, it costs you the game as he uses up basically every mana he has the next four turns with some runner-runner action off the Vial to win the race. GG luck, but he shouldn't have had the opportunity to vomit his hand (or at least should have been challenged to sac his Cursecatcher, which is probably a mistake from that board position).



I think with perfect play, that would have been 6-0, maybe 5-1.

There were two games that he just drew extremely well (games 2 and 6) where he plays out exactly every card in his hand to get there without drawing any bad cards, and the play mistakes that got you there were more advanced, so maybe the final score would have been 4-2 if you'd played pretty well, but not great. But certainly the wins should have been more blowouty and the losses should have been much closer and more lucksacky.

The games all looked pretty close, but you really missed opportunities to pull away. I pointed out the obvious/indisputable ones (you might be aware of some or most of them before I pointed them out, but you can actually watch how those mistakes kept the game close or even tipped the game for your opponent).


So I know the counterargument is that you're probably better than your Merfolk opponent anyway, and that the Merfolk player made mistakes, too. That would have tipped the balance back. In Game 3, he had a really questionable no-swing that probably cost him the game (if I remember correctly, I was mainly watching the UW Tempo side).

But Merfolk doesn't typically get hard decisions that really matter. I don't really think that UW Tempo has a whole lot of decisions (but that's only after playing it for quite a while where most things are automated), but the skills to play Merfolk are a subset of the skills to play UW Tempo.

Specifically @ Tinefol: Other than the UW Tempo parts of the game, you played it extremely clean. Your combat phases were all excellent. You didn't miss any triggers, vial opportunities, you had pretty good game sense, and you even came up with the tough blocks. If you'd played against yourself, you probably would have played a nearly perfect Merfolk set and then a poor UW Tempo set and the score would have been 5-5.

But you consistently made costly mistakes playing the UW Tempo cards (Wayfarer and Brainstorm, in particular).


Wayfarer: You have to use it and keep using it. Land is ALWAYS useful, thinning is useful (but hard to quantify), but if you get a Wayfarer out, you should not be missing land drops because you don't have lands. You should always be looking to use Wayfarer to draw cards. Occasionally you should pass this, but only if a monstrously better play comes out or if you're under extreme time pressure.

If you have extra lands lying around, Brainstorm becomes so amazing. Brainstorm becomes Ancestral Recall. It becomes a must-force that people forget that they must-force.

That segues perfectly into the other problem area: Brainstorm use.

First off: Spell Pierce is pretty bad in the Merfolk matchup, especially after turn 1 when they already have the Vial in play, and ESPECIALLY after they pass the Standstill turn (although it's quite hard to spell pierce a standstill). After that, you can only use it if you get lucky as shit. If you could Spell Pierce them casting a retarded midget with only one leg, then you do it. Merfolk in general play creatures (SP can't hit) and play basics, so you can't mana screw them back to where Spell Pierce can stop their spells.

If you can't Spell Pierce something, then it's near the top of the list for stuff you put back. Extra lands, extra-extra Jittes (one extra is fine), then Spell Pierces all go back (unless you already have the matching Force of Will and there's other bad stuff).

Then you shuffle instead of not shuffling.


I guess it comes down to like understanding the Merfolk matchup percentage. It’s damn good, like 70% or better between two good players.

In matchups that are more hairy, you can use Brainstorms like, "Hmm, if I get lucky here, and get the Swords/Jitte/X, I can win the game easily.”

In Merfolk, you should just save it until you have two dead cards and a fetchland. There’s no rush to play it earlier, and with Brainstorm you’ll blow past them as they eat up extra land draws and you get rid of yours.

In general, you should play to dull out the Merfolk matchup. You don’t want ANY sharp plays where they can win it straight up if they have the right juice, even if the gamble gives you a big edge. That means you play around Daze, especially with cards like Swords, and you play for a long game where your better everything lets you win. That also means you play mainly Plains when you can get away with it and try to have Wastelands to match your Tundras. You want to sharpen up tougher matchups, especially when you think you’ve got the goods, but play it safe against Merfolk and you’ll win almost every game.



Blah, this post meandered into a wall of text, but basically: UW Tempo is a new set of skills. Just like any deck, mistakes cost games, although UW Tempo is pretty forgiving (that's why people have been winning more than 70% of their matches, even inexperienced players who are almost certainly missing strategical decisions if not outright missing board tricks).

Still, UW Tempo plays a number of cards you (and your opponents) have never seen before, so if you practice you'll get an even higher win percentage.

[Tinefol]

Quickly: thanks for the detailed comment, I'd even have to add that my mistake in game 6 is a lot more complex; not only I didn't use Spell Pierce for Vial (which is obvious idiocy), I didn't plan the game to take what advantage of it that I could. Actually I should have ramped up to 4 lands (had the opportunity) and casted Jitte with Pierce back up when he was tapped. Instead, I walked into a FoW, I didn't use Pierce for Vial (wtf?) and then lost. Jitte would have destroyed him that game.

I'll add more later.

[jedi_gof]

Short note on my first take with UW Tempo
Played this deck at a 34 man, 6-rounds swiss standings tourney tuesday.

I only received the cards for this deck same day as turney, so sleeved up the deck 20 mins before start of turney - so never even goldfishet the deck before:)

Went 4-1-1 (actually 5-1 but last round i ID'et with my friend so we would both get top 4 prices)
Only lost to a bant-order with top-balance lock, who went 6-0 on the day. This match could have gone my way as well, but screwed g3.

I won first 2 rounds against 2x rogue decks thogh, but then beat ANT w/out problems round 3. After loosing g4 i soundly beat 43lands round 5 and ID/won against Zoo round 6.

2-0 Rogue WG aggro
1-0 MB rogue control
2-1 Ant
1-2 bant order
2-1 lands.dec
2-0 /ID Zoo

Will play this again saturday and post my experiences with the deck - hopefully ill be as succesfull then.
I must say it played well, and was easy to play (but i pride myself an an ok legacy player, always in top 15 in ratings in DK)
Can see there are room for improvement in my way to play this deck, but it performed very well i must say.

[pi4meterftw]

Besides my incompetence, it still appears that UW tempo has a poor matchup against reanimator.

There's no video of the carnage that ensued because I made an arithmetic error in combat. Apparently even someone who calculates things every day can do that. To anybody actively trying to develop the deck, here are the results:

3-2 against Matt game 1s
1-6 against MasterShaker, in 3 matches

Possibly 2-5, with an unresolved g3 if you want to reverse my mistake, which most definitely turned a win into a loss, with no probability of deviation. I thought about asking to take it back, but I was already too fed up with my own inabilities, so sorry you don't have accurate or fully played out results.

Any results obtained other than the ones above were either not generated by me, or came before the overhaul of the reanimator archetype where they ditched animate dead as an option. (Because it's horrible, and lets us win with aura of silence.)

I suggest running curfew to hose reanimator. You have nothing to lose, because you don't even want 3 of the sideboard slots against the rest of the metagame. The maindeck is well-prepared enough. You should probably also find a way to fit in the 4th curfew just to confirm the kill. Then you can make all the mistakes you want and it probably won't matter. I know I will.

EDIT: Actually fuck taking a break. I want to rip reanimator apart.

[Tinefol]

I was afraid of doing commentaries, because I probably would sound silly with my not so fluent English, incorrect pronunciation and russian accent. Nevertheless, I might just try next time; going to release some games vs Metalworker Stax somewhere in the future.

G1: nothing to add, I don't think I've misdone anything there.

G2: didn't catch the mom mistake. Indeed it should have been the second wayfarer. Brainstorming was also wrong - you are right there.

I think I've spotted another chain of mistakes:
I shouldn't have FoWed the Reejery into Curscatcher (though it was really a tough call). Curscatcher with one lord (not LOA) is not that threatening. This way I should've topdecked into a fetch I left on top (so I have active FoW), casted Serra and saved Wayfarer for a possible block into a Wasteland search activation.
Also, using Wasteland on his Mutavault during my own turn was just plain wrong (I know he has no Stifles in the deck). I really should have waited for his play, even if it wouldn't change much (and it could).

G3: I really should have looked for a fetch with first Wayfarer activation instead of Wasteland. Not only it would have saved me another activation, but I also could have abused the Brainstorm. There was no reason casting Brainstorm after that, but I did.
I shouldn't outright StP every lord that I see (I need to think of it, where as I didn't). I only should do so, if it would greatly benefit me, also I should think of not running into Spellstutter sprite. StP should be saved for LoA for as long as possible.

You're right again about haste use of Wasteland and Wayfarer activation, I could've waited to see if I topdeck jitte or something, and if not apply the same effect. I didn't catch that. I also didn't "forge" Jitte, as I should. I think I've estimated he has no counter, and I'd save a possible blocker. Obviously a wrong call. Didn't catch that either. Bummer.

G4: I think I've had that mentality of Spell is better than land (which I have an excess of), and somehow I'd be able to use it on FoW or somehting. Probably a wrong call. I think I've misevaluated Spell Pierce in this match up. I indeed wasted my brainstorms into nothing. What the hell I was doing?

G5: I've used Wasteland, instead of fetching with Wayfarer, because I thought he's somewhat mana screwed and I should emphasize on it. Apparently not only I was wrong about that; it was a wrong play as well. You're absolutely right there.

G6: already mentioned it.

I'm still learning how to play the deck. I think I'll improve over the time.

[leiweiling]

Regarding the Zoo matchup, would the Thopter Foundry/Sword of the Meek combo be any good?

It could be tutorable with ET and Stoneforge Mystic, but maybe it would not be worth the slots or mana. What do you think?

[alderon666]

Wait, what's up with Vexing Sphinx?

I once thought about suggesting it, as agressive beater that could "cycle" your lands.

"The most important aspect is that you can put the age counter on BEFORE deciding whether or not to sac the creature. So if you choose NOT to discard 3 cards, then you draw 3 instead."

But then I realized that if it's Plow'ed/Path'ed you get no cards. So what's the line of play here? Against decks packing that you swing only once and upon the second counter being place you sac it and draw 2? Losing 4 cards to a single cards looks so bad!

[pi4meterftw]

Wait, what's up with Vexing Sphinx?

I once thought about suggesting it, as agressive beater that could "cycle" your lands.

"The most important aspect is that you can put the age counter on BEFORE deciding whether or not to sac the creature. So if you choose NOT to discard 3 cards, then you draw 3 instead."

But then I realized that if it's Plow'ed/Path'ed you get no cards. So what's the line of play here? Against decks packing that you swing only once and upon the second counter being place you sac it and draw 2? Losing 4 cards to a single cards looks so bad!

This card has been on my radar for a very long time, and I've always been aware you can squeeze a card out of it more than most people would expect. Against swords, you play conservatively. You should only be pitching bad stuff. Sac it as soon as you'd have to pitch more than one good thing. Of course you can have mom too. Only the decks running swords and a way to remove mom are trouble, and even then they have to draw the perfect combination and be able to fight off countermagic. Besides that, you can brainstorm away the sphinx or pitch it to FOW if you're worried, and at worst sideboard it out, which is called for only a few times in my sideboarding plans. (And usually only because everything in the deck is good, but there was nothing better to cut.)

[steveo356]

i think i may have to try the sphinx I like the body and the potential to recycle all those extra lands i tyend to end up with into more cards, even if it is at a loss of total cards in hand. but he is a terribad topdeck should your hand run slim

[pi4meterftw]

i think i may have to try the sphinx I like the body and the potential to recycle all those extra lands i tyend to end up with into more cards, even if it is at a loss of total cards in hand. but he is a terribad topdeck should your hand run slim

Yeah, total cards in hand is useless. Total good cards in hand is a better but still rough approximation of what matters.

Why would your hand ever run thin? Do you not sandbag your lands? (Find a balance with fathom seer. The balance is usually 4 lands in play.)

[Plague Sliver]

First time playing the deck tonight in a tournament. I went 1-3, but I still loved playing the deck and will keep trying. There were a couple of play mistakes on my end and some bad draws but overall I got a good "vibe" from the deck.

Best 2 reactions from opponents:

1. (After Game 1 against ANT) "I have no idea what you're playing"
2. (After playing Seer morphed) "Ah...Angel?"

This is what I ran:

// Lands
2 [MI] Plains (3)
1 [MI] Island (4)
4 Tundra
4 [ON] Flooded Strand
3 [TE] Wasteland
3 [ZEN] Arid Mesa

// Creatures
4 [CHP] Serra Avenger
4 [UL] Mother of Runes
4 [ON] Weathered Wayfarer
3 [WWK] Stoneforge Mystic
2 [CS] Jotun Grunt
3 [TSP] Fathom Seer

// Spells
3 [NE] Daze
3 [ZEN] Spell Pierce
4 [IA] Brainstorm
4 [AL] Force of Will
3 [DS] AEther Vial
4 [IA] Swords to Plowshares
2 [BOK] Umezawa's Jitte

// Sideboard
SB: 1 [CS] Jotun Grunt
SB: 1 [SHM] Wheel of Sun and Moon
SB: 3 [LRW] Burrenton Forge-Tender
SB: 3 [WL] Aura of Silence
SB: 3 [ARE] Enlightened Tutor
SB: 1 [TSB] Tormod's Crypt
SB: 1 [ALA] Relic of Progenitus
SB: 1 [LRW] Thorn of Amethyst
SB: 1 [ALA] Ethersworn Canonist

A little bit of a deviation from the "established" list.

I still kept a 3rd Grunt in the SB as extra beats, and maindeck -1 Fathom Seer and +1 Spell Pierce. Absolutely love SP in just about every deck I play. Added the 3rd Stoneforge Mystic instead of a 3rd maindeck grunt or singleton White Orchid Knight.

[B]Round 1 - vs. Life.dec
0-2

Game 1 - He drops 2 early Vials before I can disrupt. He gets two clerics and diamond valley online to get 3 gazillion life. I scoop.

Game 2 - This one went a long time. He keeps Swordsing my Jitte carrying men until he gets the infinite life combo going. I did have 2 Wastelands on the board but tapped out to play AOS - wrong move. He goes off on his turn and we almost go to time. I get something like 15 jitte counters but it doesn't matter. In the end he used some power/toughness switching shenanigans to do massive direct damage to me.

Round 2 - vs. LED-less Dredge
2-0

Game 1 - Bad luck on his part, he mulls to 4. I get Jitte beats going early and get there.

Game 2 - Side in the full haterator package. He gets a bit of early dredge action going but Wheel soon stops him. He goes for Grave Troll beats but Mom keeps him at bay while I Jitte him to death.

Round 3 - vs. ANT
1-2

Game 1 - I know what he's playing. I mull to 5 trying to get some Forces. I can't justify going down to 4 and try to bluff counters, thinking my brainstorms will let me dig. He goes off on the 5th or 6th turn with me holding a handful of creatures. This game was quite long, would cost me in Game 3.

Game 2 - The combo hate goes in. I waste many turns trying to keep mana open and not wanting to tap out to play anything. It turns out that he's having trouble finding his pieces. After he gets Top out, I finally find my 2nd mana source and hardcast E-Canonist. Thorn follows soonafter and I beat him down with Jitte'd Canonist.

Game 3 - Almost goes to time. We go to last 5 turns. I get AOS going. He has to read the card - always a good sign. I make a critical mistake by not Spell Piercing his Chant, thinking that he's got the 2 mana. Little did I realize that doing so would have not allowed him to go off - GG me. He Nauseams down to 3 life and manages to kill me.

I'm really peeved about this one. Had I not screwed up Game 3 I could have at least gotten a draw as we went to time. Instead I rushed my decisions and blew a play.

Round 4 - vs. Lands
0-2

Game 1 - I don't see Wayfarer the whole game. We spend an endless amount of time doing nothing before I realize I should scoop. I prepare for Game 2.

Game 2 - Sided in severe graveyard hate. Didn't see any of the hate cards. He gets down 3 Explorations and a Manabond. I don't see any counters. Another long game, he surprises me by Ghost Quarter'ing my basics. On the flip side, he is surprised at the versatility of Wayfarer, and suggests I pick up some Japanese foils instead of the Chinese non-foils I have. In the end he recurs Mindslaver and I die.

Final Thoughts

It's weird to say this - but despite the 1-3 record I didn't feel like a severe underdog in the matchups. In fact I felt that with more familiarity and a little better luck the outcome could've been different. I liked the composition of the SB - I got to use every card in it. Certainly the deck feels like it has the tools to handle a wide range of matchups. I had to go to time in 2 rounds, but that's due to the nature of the decks and some less-than-ideal draws. I'll definitely try this again next month.

[pi4meterftw]

First time playing the deck tonight in a tournament. I went 1-3, but I still loved playing the deck and will keep trying. There were a couple of play mistakes on my end and some bad draws but overall I got a good "vibe" from the deck.

Best 2 reactions from opponents:

1. (After Game 1 against ANT) "I have no idea what you're playing"
2. (After playing Seer morphed) "Ah...Angel?"

This is what I ran:

// Lands
2 [MI] Plains (3)
1 [MI] Island (4)
4 Tundra
4 [ON] Flooded Strand
3 [TE] Wasteland
3 [ZEN] Arid Mesa

// Creatures
4 [CHP] Serra Avenger
4 [UL] Mother of Runes
4 [ON] Weathered Wayfarer
3 [WWK] Stoneforge Mystic
2 [CS] Jotun Grunt
3 [TSP] Fathom Seer

// Spells
3 [NE] Daze
3 [ZEN] Spell Pierce
4 [IA] Brainstorm
4 [AL] Force of Will
3 [DS] AEther Vial
4 [IA] Swords to Plowshares
2 [BOK] Umezawa's Jitte

// Sideboard
SB: 1 [CS] Jotun Grunt
SB: 1 [SHM] Wheel of Sun and Moon
SB: 3 [LRW] Burrenton Forge-Tender
SB: 3 [WL] Aura of Silence
SB: 3 [ARE] Enlightened Tutor
SB: 1 [TSB] Tormod's Crypt
SB: 1 [ALA] Relic of Progenitus
SB: 1 [LRW] Thorn of Amethyst
SB: 1 [ALA] Ethersworn Canonist

A little bit of a deviation from the "established" list.

I still kept a 3rd Grunt in the SB as extra beats, and maindeck -1 Fathom Seer and +1 Spell Pierce. Absolutely love SP in just about every deck I play. Added the 3rd Stoneforge Mystic instead of a 3rd maindeck grunt or singleton White Orchid Knight.

[B]Round 1 - vs. Life.dec
0-2

Game 1 - He drops 2 early Vials before I can disrupt. He gets two clerics and diamond valley online to get 3 gazillion life. I scoop.

Game 2 - This one went a long time. He keeps Swordsing my Jitte carrying men until he gets the infinite life combo going. I did have 2 Wastelands on the board but tapped out to play AOS - wrong move. He goes off on his turn and we almost go to time. I get something like 15 jitte counters but it doesn't matter. In the end he used some power/toughness switching shenanigans to do massive direct damage to me.

Round 2 - vs. LED-less Dredge
2-0

Game 1 - Bad luck on his part, he mulls to 4. I get Jitte beats going early and get there.

Game 2 - Side in the full haterator package. He gets a bit of early dredge action going but Wheel soon stops him. He goes for Grave Troll beats but Mom keeps him at bay while I Jitte him to death.

Round 3 - vs. ANT
1-2

Game 1 - I know what he's playing. I mull to 5 trying to get some Forces. I can't justify going down to 4 and try to bluff counters, thinking my brainstorms will let me dig. He goes off on the 5th or 6th turn with me holding a handful of creatures. This game was quite long, would cost me in Game 3.

Game 2 - The combo hate goes in. I waste many turns trying to keep mana open and not wanting to tap out to play anything. It turns out that he's having trouble finding his pieces. After he gets Top out, I finally find my 2nd mana source and hardcast E-Canonist. Thorn follows soonafter and I beat him down with Jitte'd Canonist.

Game 3 - Almost goes to time. We go to last 5 turns. I get AOS going. He has to read the card - always a good sign. I make a critical mistake by not Spell Piercing his Chant, thinking that he's got the 2 mana. Little did I realize that doing so would have not allowed him to go off - GG me. He Nauseams down to 3 life and manages to kill me.

I'm really peeved about this one. Had I not screwed up Game 3 I could have at least gotten a draw as we went to time. Instead I rushed my decisions and blew a play.

Round 4 - vs. Lands
0-2

Game 1 - I don't see Wayfarer the whole game. We spend an endless amount of time doing nothing before I realize I should scoop. I prepare for Game 2.

Game 2 - Sided in severe graveyard hate. Didn't see any of the hate cards. He gets down 3 Explorations and a Manabond. I don't see any counters. Another long game, he surprises me by Ghost Quarter'ing my basics. On the flip side, he is surprised at the versatility of Wayfarer, and suggests I pick up some Japanese foils instead of the Chinese non-foils I have. In the end he recurs Mindslaver and I die.

Final Thoughts

It's weird to say this - but despite the 1-3 record I didn't feel like a severe underdog in the matchups. In fact I felt that with more familiarity and a little better luck the outcome could've been different. I liked the composition of the SB - I got to use every card in it. Certainly the deck feels like it has the tools to handle a wide range of matchups. I had to go to time in 2 rounds, but that's due to the nature of the decks and some less-than-ideal draws. I'll definitely try this again next month.

Forgive me for being direct, but it sounds like you didn't believe me when I asserted that 4 ways to get to a jitte were enough. You never want two equipments. You cut a seer for an SFM. With my list, which is by now quite different from yours because I found out how to fill those question slots (Vexing sphinx, it's been doing amazing.) I typically have no problem with the decks you posted. I dropped a match vs. ANT today, but that's having won my last like... can't even remember, estimating about 10 matches?

I raped lands today, dredge is easy, and life should probably be easy, but also isn't that good of a deck. You have wasteland for the starlit sanctum, countermagic for the 2:1 on his sac a creature gain life business, swords for his combo pieces, and jitte to stabilize the lockout. Even if he goes off, you can pull something off with recycling grunts and make him resign to the decking that would take the whole round. (You wastelock him out while decking him so that he can't outrace your FOW drawing with his threat casting.)

There are different local metagames, and I don't think it's a terrible idea to deviate slightly from my lists to play in them. But I think if you're just picking the deck up, it would be better to take a list that has been tested. Generally, I do the same for other decks, where I assume that he creator(s) knew something that I couldn't immediately deduce easily.

[Plague Sliver]

Forgive me for being direct, but it sounds like you didn't believe me when I asserted that 4 ways to get to a jitte were enough. You never want two equipments. You cut a seer for an SFM. With my list, which is by now quite different from yours because I found out how to fill those question slots (Vexing sphinx, it's been doing amazing.) I typically have no problem with the decks you posted. I dropped a match vs. ANT today, but that's having won my last like... can't even remember, estimating about 10 matches?

I raped lands today, dredge is easy, and life should probably be easy, but also isn't that good of a deck. You have wasteland for the starlit sanctum, countermagic for the 2:1 on his sac a creature gain life business, swords for his combo pieces, and jitte to stabilize the lockout. Even if he goes off, you can pull something off with recycling grunts and make him resign to the decking that would take the whole round. (You wastelock him out while decking him so that he can't outrace your FOW drawing with his threat casting.)

There are different local metagames, and I don't think it's a terrible idea to deviate slightly from my lists to play in them. But I think if you're just picking the deck up, it would be better to take a list that has been tested. Generally, I do the same for other decks, where I assume that he creator(s) knew something that I couldn't immediately deduce easily.

I should probably qualify my statements. Although it was my first tournament with the deck, I did a couple of practice games with opponents as well as goldfishing. In hindsight, the 3rd Mystic wasn't needed but it wasn't as if I cut the 4th Seer for it. I kept the same number of blue spells as your earlier build - I went with an extra spell pierce. From reading your primer, it sounded like there was *some* flexibility allowed? I've followed the evolution of the deck and some of the earlier differences, such as 2/3 Vials, Court Hussar, Ancestral Vision, still intrigue me.

To tell you how terrible a player I am, the thought of making my opponent resign to decking by playing Grunts didn't even cross my mind.

I agree with you in the sense that compared to the amount of testing you put in, I am effectively just "picking the deck up." Unfortunately these days I theorize about Magic more than I play it, and I definitely have a lot to improve on in terms of play skill. I'll take your advice and go with the refined list and let you know how it goes.

EDIT: I re-read your comments. Will definitely try your updated list. Having a 4/4 flying beater doesn't hurt since we've got Mom and Wayfarer to draw the heat away from it. The only thing I can't justify changing is my SB, because there is no reanimator in my meta. Otherwise looks like an excellent update.

[Mayk0l]

I tried the deck for the first time (hurray, finally have all the cards to sleeve it up!). It worked really, really well and I was surprised by the power of it. On paper it looks like a complete pushover but it really isn't and oh my god, that Weathered Wayfarer is a monster.
Did some limited playtesting, went: 2-0 versus Goblins, 2-1 versus Merfolk, 2-0 versus Eva Green, 2-0 versus UWB Landstill, 4-3 against Dragon Stompy, 2-0 versus Solidarity. Not too shabby on a first try with this deck :D
Especially the Merfolk match was a lot of fun, at first the Merfolk pilot did not believe UW Tempo to have a positive MU against Merfolk at all, but when I Wasted every single Mutavault, MoR'd his Merfolk at bay, and StPd his Lords, doing all of this with 2 Plains in play, he was quite surprised. I dropped a game against Adept + Lord + Jitte + 5 counterspells or something.

I played the deck from the first post, cutting the KOTWO for a third Stoneforge Mystic but turns out you might be right; third Mystic might be one too many as drawing two, or two Jittes, was hardly ever good.

[bowvamp]

Ok, I'm liking this deck on mws. I've recently been playtesting my Pox build, and one of my teammates is really into the up and coming. However, there's one or two issues I'd like to point out.
1. Chalice @ 1: Kills Spell Pierce, Brainstorm, StP Mother of Runes, Weathered Wayfarer, Aether Vial and by kills I mean it stops them from being played. That's like 23 cards down the drain. My deck doesn't run Chalice, but Stompy and friends do.

2. Why are you running Spell Pierce?
When you could be running Spell Snare.

Oh, and KotWO owns.

[pi4meterftw]

Ok, I'm liking this deck on mws. I've recently been playtesting my Pox build, and one of my teammates is really into the up and coming. However, there's one or two issues I'd like to point out.
1. Chalice @ 1: Kills Spell Pierce, Brainstorm, StP Mother of Runes, Weathered Wayfarer, Aether Vial and by kills I mean it stops them from being played. That's like 23 cards down the drain. My deck doesn't run Chalice, but Stompy and friends do.

2. Why are you running Spell Pierce?
When you could be running Spell Snare.

Oh, and KotWO owns.

1. Look at previous posts.
2. Look at previous posts.
3. Look at previous posts, it's vexing sphinx now.

[xTrainx]

Working on building this deck ATM, what are some key cards that I need above all else?
And...is FoW a must-have staple for this deck?

Currently I'm thinking: Vial, Mom, and Weathered Wayfarer, and then two Jittes?

[Moonlight]

Fow is a must-staple for this deck. Yep.
As is Tundra.. Wasteland.. Serra avenger.. Fetch..
I guess you cant realy make it a budgetdeck..

[xTrainx]

pfff. Alright. So finish ANT before starting up on this one. Then win shit to get what I need.

[The Grim Reaper]

First time playing the deck tonight in a tournament. I went 1-3, but I still loved playing the deck and will keep trying. There were a couple of play mistakes on my end and some bad draws but overall I got a good "vibe" from the deck.

Best 2 reactions from opponents:

1. (After Game 1 against ANT) "I have no idea what you're playing"
2. (After playing Seer morphed) "Ah...Angel?"

This is what I ran:

// Lands
2 [MI] Plains (3)
1 [MI] Island (4)
4 Tundra
4 [ON] Flooded Strand
3 [TE] Wasteland
3 [ZEN] Arid Mesa

// Creatures
4 [CHP] Serra Avenger
4 [UL] Mother of Runes
4 [ON] Weathered Wayfarer
3 [WWK] Stoneforge Mystic
2 [CS] Jotun Grunt
3 [TSP] Fathom Seer

// Spells
3 [NE] Daze
3 [ZEN] Spell Pierce
4 [IA] Brainstorm
4 [AL] Force of Will
3 [DS] AEther Vial
4 [IA] Swords to Plowshares
2 [BOK] Umezawa's Jitte

// Sideboard
SB: 1 [CS] Jotun Grunt
SB: 1 [SHM] Wheel of Sun and Moon
SB: 3 [LRW] Burrenton Forge-Tender
SB: 3 [WL] Aura of Silence
SB: 3 [ARE] Enlightened Tutor
SB: 1 [TSB] Tormod's Crypt
SB: 1 [ALA] Relic of Progenitus
SB: 1 [LRW] Thorn of Amethyst
SB: 1 [ALA] Ethersworn Canonist

A little bit of a deviation from the "established" list.

I still kept a 3rd Grunt in the SB as extra beats, and maindeck -1 Fathom Seer and +1 Spell Pierce. Absolutely love SP in just about every deck I play. Added the 3rd Stoneforge Mystic instead of a 3rd maindeck grunt or singleton White Orchid Knight.

[B]Round 1 - vs. Life.dec
0-2

Game 1 - He drops 2 early Vials before I can disrupt. He gets two clerics and diamond valley online to get 3 gazillion life. I scoop.

Game 2 - This one went a long time. He keeps Swordsing my Jitte carrying men until he gets the infinite life combo going. I did have 2 Wastelands on the board but tapped out to play AOS - wrong move. He goes off on his turn and we almost go to time. I get something like 15 jitte counters but it doesn't matter. In the end he used some power/toughness switching shenanigans to do massive direct damage to me.

Round 2 - vs. LED-less Dredge
2-0

Game 1 - Bad luck on his part, he mulls to 4. I get Jitte beats going early and get there.

Game 2 - Side in the full haterator package. He gets a bit of early dredge action going but Wheel soon stops him. He goes for Grave Troll beats but Mom keeps him at bay while I Jitte him to death.

Round 3 - vs. ANT
1-2

Game 1 - I know what he's playing. I mull to 5 trying to get some Forces. I can't justify going down to 4 and try to bluff counters, thinking my brainstorms will let me dig. He goes off on the 5th or 6th turn with me holding a handful of creatures. This game was quite long, would cost me in Game 3.

Game 2 - The combo hate goes in. I waste many turns trying to keep mana open and not wanting to tap out to play anything. It turns out that he's having trouble finding his pieces. After he gets Top out, I finally find my 2nd mana source and hardcast E-Canonist. Thorn follows soonafter and I beat him down with Jitte'd Canonist.

Game 3 - Almost goes to time. We go to last 5 turns. I get AOS going. He has to read the card - always a good sign. I make a critical mistake by not Spell Piercing his Chant, thinking that he's got the 2 mana. Little did I realize that doing so would have not allowed him to go off - GG me. He Nauseams down to 3 life and manages to kill me.

I'm really peeved about this one. Had I not screwed up Game 3 I could have at least gotten a draw as we went to time. Instead I rushed my decisions and blew a play.

Round 4 - vs. Lands
0-2

Game 1 - I don't see Wayfarer the whole game. We spend an endless amount of time doing nothing before I realize I should scoop. I prepare for Game 2.

Game 2 - Sided in severe graveyard hate. Didn't see any of the hate cards. He gets down 3 Explorations and a Manabond. I don't see any counters. Another long game, he surprises me by Ghost Quarter'ing my basics. On the flip side, he is surprised at the versatility of Wayfarer, and suggests I pick up some Japanese foils instead of the Chinese non-foils I have. In the end he recurs Mindslaver and I die.

Final Thoughts

It's weird to say this - but despite the 1-3 record I didn't feel like a severe underdog in the matchups. In fact I felt that with more familiarity and a little better luck the outcome could've been different. I liked the composition of the SB - I got to use every card in it. Certainly the deck feels like it has the tools to handle a wide range of matchups. I had to go to time in 2 rounds, but that's due to the nature of the decks and some less-than-ideal draws. I'll definitely try this again next month.

Hey! You're the fellow who played this at Craving for a Game! I just noticed after reading your report haha. I'm sorry but I forgot your name - I'm Bryn. The deck looked like a lot of fun and I was hoping you would beat that ANT guy. Good luck next month!

[Forbiddian]

Hey! You're the fellow who played this at Craving for a Game! I just noticed after reading your report haha. I'm sorry but I forgot your name - I'm Bryn. The deck looked like a lot of fun and I was hoping you would beat that ANT guy. Good luck next month!

Sick, a person named Bryn. I have this longstanding bet from an ex-girlfriend from High School that I'd never meet someone named Bryn again. Although I didn't meet you, so I guess she still wins.

Hmm, this post needs more content. Did you know that it's Welsh for "hill"?

[Tinefol]

Went 4-0 yesterday, beating BGW Vial Fish (finally!), U/W Vial Fish, ANT and MonoU Fae Vial Fish.

Anyways, I had more or less that situation come up twice in the tournament: I have a hand of FoW, BLANK, Brainstorm, Fathom Seer, possibly another BLANK (don't remember exactly). I have the ability cast Fathom Seer next turn. I have a spare fetch on table and Wayfarer (potentially active with Seer). I need to FoW. What do I remove - Brainstorm or Seer?

If I'm not being clear enough on the situation, what things I should base my decision on? Twice I've removed the Brainstorm there, and that Seer greatly benefited me, but I just don't feel like I've logically justified this decision enough.

[Citrus-God]

If you have two blanks, why didn't you remove Seer instead? BS digs three cards deep, so there's a bit of a chance to dig into another Seer. BS is also more mana efficient, so if you dig into something like an Avenger, Grunt or Jitte, that would make the BS a lot more attractive.
But if those blanks were more than just blanks, then I guess Brainstorm should be pitched instead.

[Tinefol]

It was really a cornercase there; I'm rather asking what should I consider first to make a final decision.

[Citrus-God]

Isn't that question a little too broad? The problem I see with Magic players is that they tend to almost always play on auto-pilot, thus, making tactical errors by not exploiting situations where they would benefit from.

But, if I had to generalize this, I'll say treat this as if it were a control deck. For example, you're playing Landstill: you have 2 lands, a BS, Standstill and FoW in hand, and tapped out. The opponent has a Nactl in play, and is attempting the cast a Goyf. Almost always, you will pitch the Standstill. Unless you're winning or trying to break the symmetry, card quality is almost always superior. The only time you ever want card advantage while behind is usually against Control and Midgame decks. But I'll also be honest here, this theory still needs to be tested.

[pi4meterftw]

Isn't that question a little too broad? The problem I see with Magic players is that they tend to almost always play on auto-pilot, thus, making tactical errors by not exploiting situations where they would benefit from.

But, if I had to generalize this, I'll say treat this as if it were a control deck. For example, you're playing Landstill: you have 2 lands, a BS, Standstill and FoW in hand, and tapped out. The opponent has a Nactl in play, and is attempting the cast a Goyf. Almost always, you will pitch the Standstill. Unless you're winning or trying to break the symmetry, card quality is almost always superior. The only time you ever want card advantage while behind is usually against Control and Midgame decks. But I'll also be honest here, this theory still needs to be tested.

Thank you sir, your analysis is pretty close to correct. The principles are correct, but the application isn't because the correct way to play zoo against us is as precisely a midgame deck. As you say, I don't suggest thinking this way. It should be possible to deduce the right play from the in-game situation.

[Mantis]

First of all, I was very skeptic about this deck at first, however I like it a lot. It's a hard deck to play since it never really outmuscles your opponent and you have to play to gain small advantages and pile them up. Mistakes will punish you very hard and that's probably the reason why we see so many mixed results.

Have you guys considered a singleton Karakas, either main or side? Now that Reanimator is starting to become tier 1, it's nice to have a tutorable out against Iona. I'm not sure it's worth the sacrifice in your manabase.

I'm not too sure I approve of Vexing Sphinx, I think it's a bit too cute. I mean you guys rock for innovating, but beware of the lurking danger that is cool things. Vendilion Clique looks a lot more powerful, especially if you are going to play a singleton Karakas.

[Tinefol]

Have you guys considered a singleton Karakas, either main or side? Now that Reanimator is starting to become tier 1, it's nice to have a tutorable out against Iona. I'm not sure it's worth the sacrifice in your manabase.

Its been discussed in the thread. To sum it up: the correct play for Reanimator is to go for Inkwell Leviathan, where Karakas does nothing. And its not worth of sacrifice in your manabase.

[pi4meterftw]

First of all, I was very skeptic about this deck at first, however I like it a lot. It's a hard deck to play since it never really outmuscles your opponent and you have to play to gain small advantages and pile them up. Mistakes will punish you very hard and that's probably the reason why we see so many mixed results.

Have you guys considered a singleton Karakas, either main or side? Now that Reanimator is starting to become tier 1, it's nice to have a tutorable out against Iona. I'm not sure it's worth the sacrifice in your manabase.

I'm not too sure I approve of Vexing Sphinx, I think it's a bit too cute. I mean you guys rock for innovating, but beware of the lurking danger that is cool things. Vendilion Clique looks a lot more powerful, especially if you are going to play a singleton Karakas.

Every deck sees mixed results, but ours have consistently tended towards the winning side. I think Matt's last post on win %s showed a 70%+ match win.

Regarding vexing sphinx, I had a doubt for a long time so it would be intellectually dishonest to say that you shouldn't have the same doubts. I guess the difference is I had to find the card myself, but you have someone telling you it's good. Even then, your doubts are at least understandable. However, vexing sphinx does many things that vendilion clique doesn't. First off, vendilion clique doesn't do the one thing that you might've thought it does, that would potentially make it good enough. It doesn't stop combo. It's also not even that good against control, and it's quite clearly bad against aggro, and not great versus aggro control. Let's compare with vexing sphinx, which is just a blank blue spell (so slightly worse than clique which is almost always blank) against combo, it's probably about the same against control as well, and then much much better against aggro and aggro control. To speak more quantitatively, vendilion clique loses tempo to just about removal spell that is played in legacy.

Vexing sphinx usually does the following against control, aggro, or aggro control. (I.e. not combo)

It usually comes down mid to late game where you've accumulated a few extra lands, vials, and a couple copies of the one dead spell you have, either an extra jitte or a swords vs. control or a FOW without a blue spell, etc.

Usually you can feed it until it gets 2 counters without discarding anything you'll miss. This amounts usually to either 8 damage to your opponent, or stalling his attacks for two turns until you draw your 3 cards. In this time, you can play and recover from fathom seer, or whatever else.

Usually sphinx fulfills the first role, and then you never see your 3 cards because he paired up with avenger or jotun grunt (Matt might make a video of me doing this soon. I put zoo on the defense as soon as library landed and proceeded to win easily.)

If your opponent produces swords, it's about even. If he produces path and you only discarded crap, then it's pretty profitable for you. (Although not as profitable as winning, obviously.) If your opponent does something else to not die, like bolting your avenger or having blockers to block grunt, then he doesn't die, but you get 3 cards. It requires astronomical bad luck to have drawn your fair share of crap cards before, and then to draw another 3 and still not be able to do anything, when crap (including lands, vials) usually takes up about 1/3 of your deck. Sphinx is a fairly polarized card. If for some reason your opponent is running 4 swords, 4 path, and the basic land you get off path would be useless to you, or if you're simply lucky enough to not have dead weight, there are 8 ways you can get rid of sphinx without outright wasting it.

[Tinefol]

I didn't get to test Sphinx yet, as I simply don't have the card, but judging by some games, where I get like 5-6 dead weight cards stuck in hand I can even see it going to 3 counters easily and bashing in for 12. The problem I see with it is that I don't want to cut the 3rd Vial. It's too good. If you somehow find the way to squeeze the second copy by not cutting the Vial, please tell me. Right now I still play with 3 Grunts, and I think that's highly justifiable by my Ichorid-filled meta.

[pi4meterftw]

I didn't get to test Sphinx yet, as I simply don't have the card, but judging by some games, where I get like 5-6 dead weight cards stuck in hand I can even see it going to 3 counters easily and bashing in for 12. The problem I see with it is that I don't want to cut the 3rd Vial. It's too good. If you somehow find the way to squeeze the second copy by not cutting the Vial, please tell me. Right now I still play with 3 Grunts, and I think that's highly justifiable by my Ichorid-filled meta.

With practice, the ichorid matchup becomes a joke, and in any case grunt isn't *that* good. Don't get me wrong, grunt is great. But your sideboard hate is gg, whereas ichorid players aren't lying when they say they can play around grunt. You always get retarded ichorid players saying they can play around extirpate extirpate relic or w/e. But I'll back them up when they say they can get around a grunt.

But if your meta is so much ichorid, it might pay to have a 3rd grunt. It'd have to be very full of ichorid, thresh, Aggro loam, lands, reanimator and zoo for this to be justified though. And it's not that great against zoo when you have 3, same to reanimator.

I don't like the 3rd vial, especially when we have sphinx. "But Jeff, Sphinx lets you discard vial."

But I was referring to the newfound lack of creatures to throw into play. We have, now, 14 targets, and 8 of them sit at 1cc. (It's harder and less profitable to vial 1cc because usually vial moves right to 2, unless you already have extra 1cc sitting around and not 2cc.) Vial is still in the deck precisely because it's not useless at 6 2cc, and some 1cc, with the ability to discard them. It gets around counterbalance, chalice, trinisphere (Although it's much worse than a land against combo.)

It occasionally gets around blood moon, magus of the moon. So it makes the list. Just not as a 3x.

[The Grim Reaper]

Sick, a person named Bryn. I have this longstanding bet from an ex-girlfriend from High School that I'd never meet someone named Bryn again. Although I didn't meet you, so I guess she still wins.

Hmm, this post needs more content. Did you know that it's Welsh for "hill"?

Haha I've met no one else named Bryn. Its a unisex name even, so my odds should be high! Its actually welsh for "Big hill" :).
Once I was at work and I answered our support line "Hello X company, Bryn speaking" and the other person was like "Hi... what was your name?" Me: "Uhh... Bryn?" Her: "OMG That's my sons name AHHHHHH". So apparently it is that rare. To make this post about magic, I am going to say that this deck is too hard to play. :)

[Plague Sliver]

Haha I've met no one else named Bryn. Its a unisex name even, so my odds should be high! Its actually welsh for "Big hill" :).
Once I was at work and I answered our support line "Hello X company, Bryn speaking" and the other person was like "Hi... what was your name?" Me: "Uhh... Bryn?" Her: "OMG That's my sons name AHHHHHH". So apparently it is that rare. To make this post about magic, I am going to say that this deck is too hard to play. :)

Well, I'm glad that my post in this thread sparked such interesting conversation :-)

Question for the 2 creators - is it standard to run 2x Vial now? Seems like the Vexing Sphinx build runs 2x and I'm wondering how useful it is now. I know it's used for bluffing and finessing creatures through counters, I just wonder how frequently you're even going to see 1 copy for it to be relevant. The way I see it, I would either keep it at 3x or find something to replace it.

Has it ever been considered to put copies 3-4 of Vial in the sideboard? Its value seems dependent on the matchup.

[Mantis]

I have been increasingly enjoying this deck, especially Wayfarer is extremely good. This card definately deserves more attention since it's the bees knees against so many strategies. However, I still have my doubts about a few choices. Starting off with Vial, it was never any good in my limited testing. The problem is you aren't going to get the mileage out of it that Goblins or Merfolk do. You can easily pay for all of your creatures. Your goal isn't to put multiple creatures into play each turn like Goblins does or put surprise lords into play the way Merfolk does (or Standstill for that matter). I love Aether Vial, but I don't think Vial is a match made in heaven for this particular archetype. Aren't there just better slots available, such as Ponder, additional lands or more Dazes/Pierces?

I also think the name of the deck is a tad misleading, while you have some tempo elements I found myself to be playing the control role the majority of the time. Tempo is the name of the game in Legacy, so every deck but the most hardcore linear decks such as ANT and Ichorid is a tempo deck. You have a ton of inevetiability with Wayfarer, Fathom Seer and SFM/Jitte, that it pays to try and go for the long game so you can actually get advantage out of your engines, that means assuming the control role. However, the deck is also quite well equipped to switch between roles and in that sense isn't a classical control deck like Landstill or MUC. But perhaps I'm just arguing over semantics right now, I'm fine either way really.


// Sideboard
SB: 1 [LRW] Thorn of Amethyst
SB: 2 [ALA] Relic of Progenitus
SB: 3 [MI] Enlightened Tutor
SB: 1 [SHM] Wheel of Sun and Moon
SB: 2 [ALA] Ethersworn Canonist
SB: 2 [WL] Aura of Silence
SB: 4 [US] Curfew

I really don't like this sideboard, Curfew, Thorn and Cannonist seem way too narrow. Instead, why don't you just play 4 Top and 4 Counterbalance? That way you fix the combo matchup, you have tools to beat reanimator, between STP, FoW, Daze, Spell Pierce, Relic and the CB Top combo you should have at least a 50/50 matchup. In other matchups, where you previously didn't sideboard, you have some more options now because Top is always a decent card but I do not have enough experience with the deck to really comment on what boarding plans I would change. In any case, the idea is untested but I would like to hear your opinion on this matter.

I hope you guys take my criticism the right way, by no means I am trying to attack your ideas or philosophies, just trying to help improve the deck and spark some potentially interesting debate.

EDIT: If Inkwell is really a big problem you could play a singleton Runed Halo, it doesn't target and can be fetched with Enlightened Tutor. It's also decent against ANT, Belcher, Canadian Threshold and a nice out to Progenitus.

[Teumie]

Hi,

Just got back from a rather large tourney (144 persons, it was the side event at GP Brussels) and ofcourse, I went with this deck (the exact same build as Pi4meter stated above, including 2 vexing sphinx (which I had to buy at the tourney) and the curfew on side ...

First: the vexing sphinx were golden, I only got them/played them in 3-4 games, but every time they were very good. If only you get them for one turn, you get a blocker, get to beat for 4, get rid of 1 crap card and get to draw 2 extra cards (which is fun if they kill it, you have vial @ 2 and you draw an avenger off the sphinx ...
Anyway, I really like them, about the curfews: did not see a reanimator so did not get the chance to test it ...
btw, I used the exact same deck, sideboard and sideboarding as suggested by Pi4

Now, the report ... I must say, I'm a bit dissapointed, I went 2 - 4 and then dropped (to go home) ...
match 1: gobo's
I fend off early critters (lackey and instigator) and force a warchief. I get 2 critters in play (one of which an avenger) and a jitte (not equiped).
He then goes nuts with kiki jiki, sharpshooter ... just kills everything on the table, including me.
G2: I stabelize, and it's a rather long game, ending in him having 1 token on which he can equip a jitte ... so I finally realize how shit it is to loose from a 1/1 with a jitte ...
I don't think I made any play mistakes this match, just a bit unlucky (G1 he had an awesome hand)

match 2: stax (white)
G1: he gets a ghostly prison down, next turn another one and then another one !!! GG
G2: don't remember much, I just beat him
G3: dito

1 - 1

match 3: fearies (I know the guy and his deck really well, we test basically every week. We both know this is in my advantage)
G1: I think I made an incorrect fetch (tundra instead of basic) and after a struggle, loose to tombstalker
G2: in the beginning I thought I was gonna loose, but then got back and finally went crazy with fathom seers ftw
G3: I kept a one land hand (incl Vial, wayfarer) and I was on the play, so I kept. He got rid of both the vial and the wayfarer, I had to wait to long for decent mana and eventually die of a tombstalker.
I think I should have won this game if I made the correct plays (I remeber 2 incorrect fetches at least)

1-2

match4: recurring survival
G1: I didn't see it coming, did not have an answer to recurring nightmare (didn't see a single useful counter (he had +6 lands, so daze was not so good). anyway, he goes rather crazy ... GG (which took a looooong time)
G2: I get control and we run into time. I calculated that I would win on turn 5 in time, his only out was to topdeck a birds (to block my avenger) which he did ... I did not get a swords so could not finish it ...
I think we have the better hand in this matchup, but it is a timeconsuming match ...

1-3

match5: eva green
G1: don't remember that much, in the end he got a tombstalker and I a createrd (dont remember what) with a jitte on it, I am at 3 life when he is sub zero
G2: more or less the same, I am at 2 when he is at exactly 0 (and already in second turn of time)

2-3

match 6: zoo
G1: just too much, a library and even more then ... GG
G2: I beat him with an avenger
G3: I keep a one land hand with a wayfarer and brainstorm, the wayfarer gets blown away and the brainstorm reveals: no land ... GG

despite the 2-4 loss, I really like this deck and think it can achieve a good result. Especially the fearies game i could/should have won, the recuring match would have been a draw if we had 2 more turns and the zoo matchup ... I don't know, in my opinion it is a bad matchup, the just blow our early creatures and overrun us (again, in my opinion). and the goblins game ... well, shit happens, goblins will always be like that: out of nowhere they can suddenly be back and kill you ...

so now i'll enjoy the rest of my sunday ;-)

[pi4meterftw]

Hi, thank you for your input. CB top has been tested multiple times before, with me always being the advocate and Matt always being the devil's advocate. All the times it was pretty crappy. We want our sideboard to be polarized, not just to be a 15 card extension of our maindeck. This is for the obvious reason that we will choose the play that benefits us the most, so we want more widely varying options available, even if that means the worst option gets worse, we wouldn't choose that anyway. Translation into this specific case: I'd rather have a card that is very good in some matchups and very horrible in others because against the "others" I simply wouldn't board it in, and then compared to the case where I have a 15 card extension of the main, I get a positive difference of those matchups where I did board my polarized cards in.

Concerning the name: we didn't start UW Tempo. My performance at the SCG 5K LA did. We adopted the name because it was better than NoGoyf, which is just as confusing if you read into it technically.

Concerning vials: I definitely think 3 vials is too good. When you look at a card, you're looking at the last copy you added. At 2 vials, the probability to draw both during the course of the game is about 10%. At 3 vials, it's not even surprising if you draw 2 vials. Thus, by putting 2 vials in the deck, but not a 3rd, what I'm asserting is that it'd have to be the case that vial is good enough that I'll play it at the cost of drawing doubles (which is dead) 10% of the time, but not much more than that. I could see going to 1 vial and 18 lands, but I miscounted the number of vialables yesterday. It's 8 1cc, and 8 2cc. It's decent in this deck, so it earns itself 2 slots.

Concerning the tournament report: did you resign to 3 ghostly prisons? I thought I put a video up explaining how to beat bad hands like that. To all players: I recommend copy pasting my sideboard plans into a word document and printing it out. Of course this requires playing my sideboard.

I tested curfew against reanimator yesterday. The results are: 1-6 when I didn't have curfew, 6-1 when I did (games). 0-3 matches when I didn't, 3-0 when I did.

It changes the game, because you go from only having reactive answers, and thus needing to stay open, and even more open to avoid daze, to not having to stay open at all, and only having to play around daze the turn you curfew. That is, you turn reanimator into a crappy control deck the 50-60% of the time you draw a curfew.

[Ocean]

Hi!

Played this deck at a small tournament (35) and ended up 3rd.

Countertop 2-0

Zoo 2-1 He played Kird Ape and Burrenton + Jite is pretty brutal against it

Demon Stompy 2 - 0 Landed Chalice turn 1 both games but I managed to beat him with Avenger

Draw the last 2 games

Top 8

Goblins 2 - 1 I made a terrible mistake at game 1 and he got the perfect hand. Destroyed him game 2 & 3

Zoo 1 - 2 He won game 1 and I managed to win game 2 after a mulligan to 5. Game 3, got a very good hand (with brainstorm and vial) but with only one land. I keep but fail to see a 2nd colored land (got a wasteland). He goes like nacatl - nacatl, kird ape- tarmo - tarmo and I can't stop him in time. I feel that I could have won this one with just another Tundra, I had 3 swords effects, jitte, grunt, burrenton etc.

Still, im very happy with the deck. I played with 3rd Spell Pierce/Vial instead of the Sphinx since I don't own any.

Can someone recomend a sideboard for a Zoo heavy metagame? I just hate losing to them :tongue:

[Tinefol]

Played another tournament today
Reanimator 2-0, MonoG NO Survival, 2-0, Merfolk 2-1, ID, ID, T8: Reanimator 2-0, split in top4.

Didn't get a Curfew yet, so I played with one Meekstone in the S/B. It worked. What I'm still struggling to find, is some sideboard choice against Zoo.

[Teumie]

apparently everyone is better than me with this deck :(

regarding the resigning to 3 ghostly prisons:

yes, he had double wasteland in play + double the artefact which let you play lands from your graveyard (dont remember the name and to lazy to look it up) and it was the first match, I had no answers to either of the artefacts or enchantements.
i already had my 3 basics and would never reach more than 3 mana (unless you tell me otherwise)

I did use your sideboarding strategy, thanks for that ;-)

[Forbiddian]

@ People discussing skill:

It's just like anything else, you have to practice. You don't pick up a Trumpet for the first time, break out a middle C and go, "Damn, this instrument sounds like shit." The difference is that UW Tempo has been putting up pretty amazing results for everyone, even people who are just dusting the deck off for the first time. The last time I did a compilation, new players averaged over a 70% match win ratio, and almost everyone reported making a number of play mistakes that they noticed that they wouldn't have made with more practice that would have allowed them to have an even higher percentage.

Basically: If you're good, you're going to win 75%+ of your matches. Even if you're bad, you're still going to win 60-70% of your matches. I don't know how that's "mixed results" the learning curve for UW Tempo seems to be about the same as other decks in terms of how well people are performing.

[jedi_gof]

with the sphinx, can you please elaborate or confim how to stack the age counters.
Can you stack it like with smokestack?

Example, my sphinx lives for 3 turns.
my first upkeep:
2 triggers go on the stack for sphinx: age (A) and discard (D)

If i stack the A then D, then D resolves and I discard 0 cards and then A resolves amping A to 1

2. upkeep.
If i stack the A then D, then D resolves and I discard 1 card and then A resolves amping A to 2 Correct?

3. upkeep.
I then in reverse order, D then A. A resolves and =3 and then i choose not to discard and sack Sphinx=i draw 3? or is there a better way of exploiting the sphinx?

Thanks

[Forbiddian]

@ above: Read the updated rules on the keyword Cumulative Upkeep.

You're not stacking anything, when the cumulative upkeep trigger resolves, you HAVE to add the counter, then (immediately) you may pay the upkeep cost. You'll always draw one more card than the last paid cumulative upkeep if you let it die.

[pi4meterftw]

with the sphinx, can you please elaborate or confim how to stack the age counters.
Can you stack it like with smokestack?

Example, my sphinx lives for 3 turns.
my first upkeep:
2 triggers go on the stack for sphinx: age (A) and discard (D)

If i stack the A then D, then D resolves and I discard 0 cards and then A resolves amping A to 1

2. upkeep.
If i stack the A then D, then D resolves and I discard 1 card and then A resolves amping A to 2 Correct?

3. upkeep.
I then in reverse order, D then A. A resolves and =3 and then i choose not to discard and sack Sphinx=i draw 3? or is there a better way of exploiting the sphinx?

Thanks

Certainly A happens before D, but I'm not sure if it's two separate items on the stack. I would imagine it's one item on the stack so that that way the smokestack interaction doesn't work such that you can sac the creature to smokestack AND draw an extra card.

[Phoenix Ignition]

@ People discussing skill:
The last time I did a compilation, new players averaged over a 70% match win ratio, and almost everyone reported making a number of play mistakes that they noticed that they wouldn't have made with more practice that would have allowed them to have an even higher percentage.

Wooooooooooow!!!!!!! I thought you guys were supposed to be really smart!

Please understand what selection bias is. Do you know the number of people who are taking this deck out and losing with it? Not nearly well enough because people who do poorly won't come back with a tournament report. Go look at the tournament reports section, almost every report (probably around 95%) is of someone who at the very least top 8ed. If you just went off of the "people who report here" statistic then every established deck and deck to beat would have a well over 50% win ratio. Probably even over 50% win ratio in top 8's.

I have personally seen this deck get piloted to failure (not top 8 or even breaking even) at least 4 times in local tournaments, and 2 top 8's, one of them being me. Of which I have seen no reports on this thread of the failures.

This is just ludicrous and I really am astonished you didn't know it.

[Tinefol]

Well, I, for one, reported all my results with the deck, including both failures and wins.

[mossivo1986]

Well, I, for one, reported all my results with the deck, including both failures and wins.

But the difference is, you actively care about the deck. Whereas there are many more people who just read the source threads and don't post anything. I can't tell you how many times i've asked someone if they are on the source and they say "yeah, but I mostly just read the threads. I posted in so and so thread and was disgusted with the responses, so I don't really ever post anymore." Judging from the history of this thread I can definitely see where this would be the scenario for many people even considering the archetype.

I wholeheartedly agree with Pheonix in the sense that i've also seen the deck just fall round after round due to a combination of play mistakes and the simple fact that the deck isn't exactly the redundant machine that other decks in the format are. I think another problem the deck has is it's weakness to ill timed EE or wasteland. In my testing with various decks against various different models of UW Tempo (Land hax is my fav. name.) I have been able to crush it with well timed ee at 1 in combination or not with wasteland.

[pi4meterftw]

Wooooooooooow!!!!!!! I thought you guys were supposed to be really smart!

Please understand what selection bias is. Do you know the number of people who are taking this deck out and losing with it? Not nearly well enough because people who do poorly won't come back with a tournament report. Go look at the tournament reports section, almost every report (probably around 95%) is of someone who at the very least top 8ed. If you just went off of the "people who report here" statistic then every established deck and deck to beat would have a well over 50% win ratio. Probably even over 50% win ratio in top 8's.

I have personally seen this deck get piloted to failure (not top 8 or even breaking even) at least 4 times in local tournaments, and 2 top 8's, one of them being me. Of which I have seen no reports on this thread of the failures.

This is just ludicrous and I really am astonished you didn't know it.

Well first of all I didn't say this so you should get back to Matt on that, but just reading this exchange, it seems as if Matt used the data to fend against the claim "You're getting mixed results."

It might be that the deck has mixed results, but we're certainly not getting them because almost all the results in this thread are rock solid. Now if Matt were defending against the accusation "This deck is not good" I agree using this might have been skeptical. But the claim was that people have been reporting mixed results. So now, why can't we use the data people have been reporting to establish some facts?

For the quote, look here:


First of all, I was very skeptic about this deck at first, however I like it a lot. It's a hard deck to play since it never really outmuscles your opponent and you have to play to gain small advantages and pile them up. Mistakes will punish you very hard and that's probably the reason why we see so many mixed results.

Have you guys considered a singleton Karakas, either main or side? Now that Reanimator is starting to become tier 1, it's nice to have a tutorable out against Iona. I'm not sure it's worth the sacrifice in your manabase.

I'm not too sure I approve of Vexing Sphinx, I think it's a bit too cute. I mean you guys rock for innovating, but beware of the lurking danger that is cool things. Vendilion Clique looks a lot more powerful, especially if you are going to play a singleton Karakas.


Anyway, you're the one who thought we had a time machine or w/e so you keep coming up with ridiculous ideas as to why this deck isn't destroying the format. The fact is that when Matt, I, or a few others play it, we seem to do pretty well with it. And we report every statistic. I've played, ever since the creation of this deck, in 3 small tournaments and one big one. You saw how I did in the big one, and in the small ones I went 2-2, 2-0-1 (ID) and then 3-0.

I don't see how you don't think YOUR statistic isn't misrepresentation of data. You mention only the negatives that you've seen, without providing information such as who the players are, whereas our thread lets you easily access who the players are. You could have been speaking of the most terrible players in existence. You haven't said anything about if they were big tournaments, where one of your supposed horror stories would be more statistically significant than at a local tournament.

I don't see how you could possibly doubt that we have our shit straight. Granted, not everybody gets to be someone who knows how to do math and science, but we sort of assumed that even from the sidelines, you could identify us as among those who can. You're probably good at something else, and it might even be something else useful. But what that means is you probably shouldn't be discussing numbers/data where everybody can see you.

[Phoenix Ignition]

It might be that the deck has mixed results, but we're certainly not getting them because almost all the results in this thread are rock solid. Now if Matt were defending against the accusation "This deck is not good" I agree using this might have been skeptical. But the claim was that people have been reporting mixed results. So now, why can't we use the data people have been reporting to establish some facts?
Because the facts you are getting are things that require all of the data, not just the cherry picked version of it. Saying something with the data you've "acquired" off of this page is worse than using no data at all. Data like

The last time I did a compilation, new players averaged over a 70% match win ratio is just completely bullshit. The statement may be true (that his compilation got a 70% win ratio) but the facts used to find it are absolutely wrong since they are only ones posted in this thread. The last compilation I ran on Zur, your guys' favorite deck, it NEVER MISSED GETTING TOP 8!!!! That is by far the best deck in the format then, isn't it?



Granted, not everybody gets to be someone who knows how to do math and science, but we sort of assumed that even from the sidelines, you could identify us as among those who can.

Do you read things that you post? I don't want to begin commenting on character flaws etc. but this garbage is really not going to get you anywhere in life.

[mossivo1986]

Wait Joe, you were supposed to let me answer your question for you as to make this switch hitter game so much better!

I don't like fathom seer. I think it's a terrible card. I've tested it and I still think It's terrible. Any suggestions on running a card that is of better quality in terms of a stand alone threat?

I've talked with Forbidden talk about the deck not running green, but I wasnt fully able to finish the discussion.

[pi4meterftw]

Because the facts you are getting are things that require all of the data, not just the cherry picked version of it. Saying something with the data you've "acquired" off of this page is worse than using no data at all. Data like
is just completely bullshit. The statement may be true (that his compilation got a 70% win ratio) but the facts used to find it are absolutely wrong since they are only ones posted in this thread. The last compilation I ran on Zur, your guys' favorite deck, it NEVER MISSED GETTING TOP 8!!!! That is by far the best deck in the format then, isn't it?




Do you read things that you post? I don't want to begin commenting on character flaws etc. but this garbage is really not going to get you anywhere in life.


If you read the second quote I posted, it shows that the person who brought up "mixed" results actually said "We see so many mixed results."

Questions about what we see mean that we use the data we can see. If he would have said "That's why the deck is mediocre" then we would not have been able to use the data here to refute his claim. (Or yours.)

But he didn't say that, so I don't see what you're still saying. Furthermore, if you think about it, you could have deduced that what you said weren't a legitimate concern, or else somebody else would have came up with it first.

[stuckpixel]

Every tournament match I've played with the deck I've reported. I have a feeling that the majority of players have done the same.

[Phoenix Ignition]

Furthermore, if you think about it, you could have deduced that what you said weren't a legitimate concern, or else somebody else would have came up with it first.

But the emperor is naked. Also this is awful logic... and grammar.

[BreathWeapon]

Wait Joe, you were supposed to let me answer your question for you as to make this switch hitter game so much better!

I don't like fathom seer. I think it's a terrible card. I've tested it and I still think It's terrible. Any suggestions on running a card that is of better quality in terms of a stand alone threat?

I've talked with Forbidden talk about the deck not running green, but I wasnt fully able to finish the discussion.

I tried it with Sea Drake instead of Fathom Seer, that's probably the best card you can find synergy wise altho' the deck plays differently (cast Sea Drake and race while Weathered Wayfarer pounds their mana base).

I think I hate Serra Avenger more than I hate Fathom Seer, that card sucks with out Aether Vial really fucking bad.u

Even tho' it's not the same deck, I'd be interested to try using the Aether Vial/Standstill and Spellstutter Sprite/Mutavault package in here and just use Sea Drake as the flying finisher and Wayfarer enabler.

[pi4meterftw]

But the emperor is naked. Also this is awful logic... and grammar.

What? No, who said what I said applies to everybody? Other people can come up with ideas first. You simply can't because you're retarded.

[colo]

Every tournament match I've played with the deck I've reported. I have a feeling that the majority of players have done the same.

Nope - I actually left out reporting another win of mine ;)

[Zork]

I think anyone who "can do math and science" would have no issue agreeing that any statistical sample based on non-random reports from a single source is, in fact, not an unbiased estimator of that statistic. On top of that, the nature of the source would likely introduce a positive skew on any estimation of means or positive count data.

This is true for any deck on this site, as no one wants to read a wall-o-text about going 0-4 give-up-on-the-deck, nor will anyone who gives up on the deck bother to write a report on said 0-4.

[mossivo1986]

I think anyone who "can do math and science" would have no issue agreeing that any statistical sample based on non-random reports from a single source is, in fact, not an unbiased estimator of that statistic.
But it is in fact an un-biased statistic because people are using this information to improperly judge how “format warping” this arch-type is. So when we are talking about how good a deck is on the source then obviously it’s going to make a bit of a difference in regards to meta-games on small and large levels, warped or not warped meta’s. The point being while the statistic is un-biased in regards to it’s meaningfulness on the source, it’s definitely not true in many other cases.

On top of that, the nature of the source would likely introduce a positive skew on any estimation of means or positive count data.
But this is the problem. Obviously if we are tracking only positive count date then the winning percentage will always be positive. The same is true if I only checked for negative feedback. The bottom line is the data is inaccurate in regards to a national perspective and thus should have never been talked about because it literally is bullshit.
With so many variables out there like luck, player skill, as well as other unknowns its best to just say from what people are saying on this webpage, we can safely assume that the deck is doing its job for other people, and not just us. And since there would be no way to get into contact with more then 3 players at a gp level tournament and ask them about their record with the deck and what tweaks would you make I think it’s best asserted to just say no to the bullshit.

[jedi_gof]

i dont think this deck is format schewing. Actually on the contrairy.

This is without a doubt a great deck, in a tuned format its really great! It has its flaws, but in general its really good.

Problem for me is,with the current very diverse meta where i am playing i Denmark, its not so much the deck but the player.
I currently boast a 1800 rating in eternal and regularely go in top 4/8 or what we are playing the day - regardless if it is this dec, ant or even hombrew. A good (read: not great) player almost always posts winning records. If good players are the ones picking uo the deck, off course it will de well. This is not dregde or antother play with your head under your arm deck. It is a lot of work to play, lot of triggers to keep track of and exploit which should scare some/most of the newbies away and encourage an experienced player to pick up.
This might be part of the reason this deck is doing so well.

I find this an incredibly fun, powerful and hard to play correctly deck that goes outside the regurlar cards like goyfs and CBtop, and if you bring this deck to an unexpecting crowd you can come a long way! Just love the expression on my opponents face when they (again) have to ask to read my card:D


my records so far after 3 turneys:

4-1-1 (last game I ID'ed and played for for and won a landslide win against zoo) 34 players, 6 rounds swiss/top4 standings - 3rd place

3-3 (lost against alluren and reanimator - didnt have the curfews then for reanimator and an more or less all basic land reanimator was a bad mu)
conceeded against my friend round 6 so he had a shot at top8) 36 players

5-0-1 wit an ID, 28 players, 6 rounds swiss/top4 standings - 1st place
won against meat hooks, dredge, zoo, lands and merfolks, ID'ed with goblins as my first was secure.
sidenote, only game i did not win 2-0 was lands where i scooped after 3 mins game won to have a shot at winning 2-1 since we play 40 mins rounds on the tuesdays.

[(nameless one)]

I was just reading a bunch of posts 10 pages back and I have to say, this deck is fawesome!

I tried building a deck with Weathered Wayfarer back when I first started playing Legacy (with Scroll Rack and ran it ala Parfait) but that did not worked out.

I am looking at this now and I have to say, its awesome.

I am currently working on Quinn and in the process of completing my D&T list. I noticed that while playing WW, it also played a lot of common cards from the two decks that I've been working.

I have most cards mentioned (except for Fathom Seers, Duals and Fetches).

Now I have a couple of questions:

How bad would the deck be if I ran it on mostly basics? Since I don't own Duals or Fetches, my inital landbase would look like this:


4 Wasteland
8 Plains
7 Islands

Would you guys recommend doing this to the manabase (Although I am willing to experiment on it myself):



3 Wasteland
3 Ghost Quarter
7 Plains
5 Islands

More mana denial, why not? I will try to get Flooded Strands and Tundras, if the budget permits. If this won't work, I might just end up with the way previous suggestion of 5 White fetch and 2 Blue fetch.

With budget being said, I currently only own a single Jitte, although I do have a single Sword of Fire and Ice and Sword of Light and Shadow. Would one of those swords worthy enough to be a Jitte substitute?

Also, there was a previous thread on using Stoneforge Mystic as an equipment toolbox. I will try experimenting on using the mentioned 3 above as a toolbox. If it works for D&T, why not here right?

Anyways, any more advices and suggestion with the deck?

Thanks!

[lordofthepit]

How bad would the deck be if I ran it on mostly basics?

I haven't run this deck much (although I've played quite a few times against pi4meterftw being on the other end of the matchup), and I'll tell you what the more experienced players will: your manabase will suck. One of the key interactions in the deck is being able to sacrifice a fetchland and respond with a Wayfarer interaction (with the land grab still on the stack). Not to mention all the color fixing (and the possibilities with Daze and Fathom Seer) you will miss out on.

[colo]

Tournament of 15 today, won CBTop-Bant-NoProg 2-0, lost to UB Reanimator 2-0 (Iona sucks, I don't run the "Updated", reanimator-hating SB and misplayed quite grossly game 2 - tried Daze like a chicken when I should have used Spell Pierce), lost to Imperial Painter 2-0 (first time I've ever seen that deck though) and ID'd versus Merfolk because I did not want to play an more today.

[Forbiddian]

@ People saying the data isn't ideal: you're right, but I'm doing what any statistician would: I'm trying to find the highest resolution image using the data that I'm given.

I don't know what type of "real world problems" you people normally work on, but real life doesn't work like a statistics examination. You have statistical models that can help you find new and elucidating methods of looking at data, but the models rarely hold in the real world except to a grainy approximation, and to compound the problem there's always a huge problem in getting good data and correcting for sampling problems. But you still do the best you can because you still have SOME data. Even if it's not the mythical "perfect data" you can still point to events that definitely happened and attempt to paint a picture.

Theoretically, all the models require an SRS. What happens in a gallup poll if one person doesn't answer? Or close to home for Americans today, what happens if you're not included in the census? Bam, the data is useless, obviously!

There's still a happy medium between understanding the limitations of the data and completely rejecting everything. Following is some steps I've taken to get better data, and the possibilities that I've considered.


I'm encouraging people to post all their tournament results (and for the record, I have assurances that I have all the tournament reports from myself, Jeff, Aaron, Tinefol, and Stuckpixel). With the exception of Jeff, I'd say we're all tournament players of pretty average caliber. You can watch my games (and the ones with Stuckpixel) and watch us make tons of errors, all the time. Tinefol released some videos where he consistently made mistakes as well. And Aaron is now world famous for his punts. So obviously the data isn't perfect, but you can see players with a pretty wide range of skill and a wide range in familiarity with the deck be successful in a wide range of events, and that's what the data is trying to show.


Anyway, just for the record, here are some of the potential biases I've considered and then responses:

Q) The data is only from Source members, who are better than average players and your overall estimate is too high.
A) True, but I'm also posting on The Source, FOR these better-than-average players. I'll freely admit that horrible players will probably fail with UW Tempo, but the pretty good players here, reading this thread and posting in this thread can expect to do the same things that other people have been doing.

Q) Not all data has been included from everyone. People are more likely to exclude poor performance than exclude wins, and your overall estimate is too high.
A) I've encouraged people to post up, even if they lose, but it's definitely true. If you'd like to avoid that sampling bias, only look at games from Stuckpixel, myself, pi4meterftw, Tinefol, and Awayne (Aaron). I'll note that we've been having similar results to the rest of the sample set, so I don't really see a reason to reject the rest of the data.

Q) UW Tempo has a lot of tricks and some learning curve even if you're good at other decks. A practiced player would do better than the random smattering of first-time players, so your overall win estimate is too low unless you discard early performance data.
A) Also true, but this time working in the other direction. Players like Tinefol and Stuckpixel both had improvements in average performance after some practice with the deck, just for example. I still wouldn't reject the first-tournament data, although everyone gets better with practice.


Specifically at Mossivo and PI: I'm looking for better suggestions for data collection, as always. Not just to shoot you down for requesting the impossible, but you seem very interested, as I am, in collecting good and unbiased data. I would love if a collection method existed where I could do that, but I can't think of anything better than what I'm doing. Please let me know if you can think of anything.

[Vacrix]

There is some talk about unbanning Gush. Its not as powerful anymore as it used to be in the days of Tog. I think UW Tempo would benefit the most from its unbanning, if its gets unbanned. Surely it would replace Fathom Seer. Its one less creature that holds a Jitte but its instant speed and doesn't require an initial investment of 3.

[Zork]

I wasn't suggesting that the statistics should be tossed out. I was merely pointing out that the data was not an unbiased estimator of overall performance. As long as these things are accepted and listed as assumptions of the model, everything is fine. The best procedure, however, is to alter claims to remove as much assumed error as possible, such as the following claim:

"Active Sourcers who pilot this deck have around a XX% win rate"

I just hate situations where statistics are misrepresented, misinterpreted, or misunderstood, since I do that for a living.

Cheers all,

Zork

[pi4meterftw]

There is some talk about unbanning Gush. Its not as powerful anymore as it used to be in the days of Tog. I think UW Tempo would benefit the most from its unbanning, if its gets unbanned. Surely it would replace Fathom Seer. Its one less creature that holds a Jitte but its instant speed and doesn't require an initial investment of 3.

The important thing isn't that it's instant speed. I don't know why everybody gives rave reviews to instants. The most important thing is it doesn't pump goyf.

I hope gush doesn't get unbanned, because UW tempo stands to benefit from it least among the decks that could possibly use it. We get over the hump by being able to use fathom seer, so we'd only be able to cut fathom seer for gush, while other decks could cut truly bad cards for it.

However, supposing it happens, you're probably right that I would cut some fathom seer. But it wouldn't be 4 for 4. I'd add in 4 gushes, cut probably 2 seers, and then 2 sphinxes probably. Or something like that, I don't know. Perhaps -3 seer -1 sphinx.

Or perhaps ANT would actually be an okay choice. I can't imagine Combo not creaming its pants if this happens, but I've also not heard a single word about this happening until now.

[Vacrix]

I've been reading the thread about unbanning cards so yea, thats where the talk is going on, and just amongst people I know. I don't think a deck with AdN would run it. Its CC is too high. Flipping and losing 5 life makes playing with AdN extremely risky. I doubt ANT will run it or if they do, they will most certainly drop AdN (which I really don't see happening).

Sphinx? What Sphinx? Whats your current build look like?

EDIT:
What decks would be cutting bad cards for Gush besides UW Tempo? I'm sure Thresh and Merfolk would play it, but how much would it affect those matchups?

[pi4meterftw]

I've been reading the thread about unbanning cards so yea, thats where the talk is going on, and just amongst people I know. I don't think a deck with AdN would run it. Its CC is too high. Flipping and losing 5 life makes playing with AdN extremely risky. I doubt ANT will run it or if they do, they will most certainly drop AdN (which I really don't see happening).

Sphinx? What Sphinx? Whats your current build look like?

EDIT:
What decks would be cutting bad cards for Gush besides UW Tempo? I'm sure Thresh and Merfolk would play it, but how much would it affect those matchups?

The problem is UW tempo has no bad cards to cut. We are essentially full, and are not looking for other cards to add in. Obviously if an option comes along, we get a +, but not as much as decks like merfolk that have stifle (or whatever they have in that question slot) to cut, or maybe even a few copies of standstill so that they're not all in against decks where standstill does nothing.

Also, since our deck makes more efficient use of wasteland than any other deck in the format, we stand to lose the most from gush protecting islands.

[Forbiddian]

I wasn't suggesting that the statistics should be tossed out. I was merely pointing out that the data was not an unbiased estimator of overall performance. As long as these things are accepted and listed as assumptions of the model, everything is fine. The best procedure, however, is to alter claims to remove as much assumed error as possible, such as the following claim:

"Active Sourcers who pilot this deck have around a XX% win rate"

I just hate situations where statistics are misrepresented, misinterpreted, or misunderstood, since I do that for a living.

Cheers all,

Zork

Everyone reading it who has any complaints obviously read the OP, so it's not like they were confused and not sure where the data came from. They're just whining about nothing.

So I don't really understand where you're coming from at all. Perhaps you somehow have like never read any posts in this thread and were confused where the data was coming from. In that case, check the OP. And at any rate, your qualifying statement is far more misleading. "Active sourcers" is misleading, since some people hardly post at all. Also, Aaron I don't think even has one post.

Incidentally, the word "data" is plural. I can't believe someone who "does that for a living" doesn't know that.

Cheers!

[Vacrix]

Also, since our deck makes more efficient use of wasteland than any other deck in the format, we stand to lose the most from gush protecting islands.
I'd agree if you ran Crucible, but you don't. Its a good point though that Gush makes your wastelands worse. I respect that. I think that decks with Crucible take advantage of wasteland much more so than UW Tempo does.


The problem is UW tempo has no bad cards to cut.
Nobody is saying you are running bad cards, just suboptimal cards if something better comes along or if something like Gush gets unbanned. I think that Gush would be much better than Fathom Seer, even if thats x4 less creatures that hold a Jitte. That singleton KotWO receives a lot of attention as being a questionable slot. I really don't like it myself and if I played UW Tempo, would rather play Grunt number 3.


Incidentally, the word "data" is plural. I can't believe someone who "does that for a living" doesn't know that.

I lol'd. Come on man, most Americans don't even speak English properly!

[Zork]

Alright, I was actually not trying to be abraisive. I only stepped in and said something because some people were bitching about the 70% win claim by saying the stats were not representative while the people reporting that stat were (oviously) stating based on what data they had: people who report. My suggestion was to adjust the claim to be more clear. I wasn't trying to point the finger at anyone, and my suggestion of adjusting the claim wasn't a concrete suggestion (hence the XX% instead of a number), just an example of how statements can be adjusted to be more clear.

Also, I tried to keep personal attacks out of it, but since you decided to be an ass:

Data - "a collection of facts from which conclusions may be drawn." (Princeton) A collection is singular, not to mention the term dataset is often shortened in colloquial english.

I don't actually give a shit about the petty e-peen bickering over whether this deck has any particular win percentage; rather, I wanted to point out that unless both parties agree on the same ground assumptions, statistics are ambiguous.

[Fouzt]

Is there an updated list with the 1 vial cut out and sphinxes + curfew? is it 1 or 2 sphinxes? sorry if i missed it somewhere.

Also who cares if the statistical data isn't completely accurate, for most of us all it needs to show is that the deck is competitive in a diverse format. With such an interesting and unique deck, that's all many of us ask for.

Don't give into the trolls Jeff and Matt, just let them rage on while they stroke one off to their "superior net-decks".

[pi4meterftw]

Is there an updated list with the 1 vial cut out and sphinxes + curfew? is it 1 or 2 sphinxes? sorry if i missed it somewhere.

Also who cares if the statistical data isn't completely accurate, for most of us all it needs to show is that the deck is competitive in a diverse format. With such an interesting and unique deck, that's all many of us ask for.

Don't give into the trolls Jeff and Matt, just let them rage on while they stroke one off to their "superior net-decks".

// Lands
4 [ON] Flooded Strand
4 [A] Tundra
3 [ON] Windswept Heath
3 [TE] Wasteland
2 [9E] Plains (1)
1 [BD] Island (3)

// Creatures
4 [ON] Weathered Wayfarer
2 [CS] Jotun Grunt
4 [DD2] Fathom Seer
4 [UL] Mother of Runes
4 [TSP] Serra Avenger
2 [WWK] Stoneforge Mystic
2 [CS] Vexing Sphinx

// Spells
4 [BD] Brainstorm
4 [AL] Force of Will
4 [OV] Swords to Plowshares
2 [BOK] Umezawa's Jitte
2 [DS] AEther Vial
3 [NE] Daze
2 [ZEN] Spell Pierce

// Sideboard
SB: 1 [LRW] Thorn of Amethyst
SB: 2 [ALA] Relic of Progenitus
SB: 3 [MI] Enlightened Tutor
SB: 1 [SHM] Wheel of Sun and Moon
SB: 2 [ALA] Ethersworn Canonist
SB: 2 [WL] Aura of Silence
SB: 4 [US] Curfew

Feel free to name a better hate spell than curfew if you can find one. Without it, I 1-6'd reanimator, and with it 6-1 (games) so it seems to be fairly effective. Matchwise, it went from 0-3 to 3-0.

It seems more effective than faerie macabre could be, but the faerie would have more applications. Also, it might be better to run 1 aether spell bombs, but I'm not really that excited to bring in ET, and I doubt that it would be better to do so. Faerie Macabre seems pretty good against dredge, which is almost an autowin. I'm not too enthusiastic about it, since it doesn't seem like it would come in anywhere else.

Also, Faerie Macabre doesn't stop show and tell.

At the most recent surge of doubts: You've seen the deck in action. I'm not sure why there are *suddenly* doubts about us playing good cards.

EDIT: I just had the pleasure of winning a match even though I was force to mull 3 no land hands g1 and then 2 no land hands g2. It went to g3, starting with a loss and winning the back two, ending with an SPL forced by a wayfarer lock.

[evanmartyr]

Has anyone tested replacing a Fathom Seer or two with Sea Drake, or is drawing cards noticeably more important than a flying beater? I've noticed that in a lot of Forbiddian's youtube matches the card draw seems to be the thing that puts him over the edge but he very rarely gets to start putting down Morphs until the opponent is nearly beaten into submission.

Also, I think his lists run more Dazes/Spell Pierces/Vials...or at least, I thought he did. How did you make room for the Vexing Sphinxes, pi4? Do you find yourself less with less consistent disruption early in the game?

[Vacrix]

Yeah I was a little surprised about that too. The Sphinx's I mean. I like the idea and all but when you aren't likely to move vial from 2 to 3, I guess you'd have to hardcast it like Fathom Seer. How often do you keep it alive? It looks sick, being able to act as a filter, beater, and draw spell.

Jeff or Matt, can you post an updated list?

[pi4meterftw]

Yeah I was a little surprised about that too. The Sphinx's I mean. I like the idea and all but when you aren't likely to move vial from 2 to 3, I guess you'd have to hardcast it like Fathom Seer. How often do you keep it alive? It looks sick, being able to act as a filter, beater, and draw spell.

Jeff or Matt, can you post an updated list?

Matt told me he would post and comment on some videos where I played sphinx as soon as he had time. The last list I posted is up to date, and sphinx has been working well. Sphinx is costly, but it's worth it. If you want to see an example of this, I recommend watching my video when Matt puts it online.

Matt and I both have school right now, so we might not do as many videos. But if we do, he'll probably do more, but it might be fun for him and I to switch some games so we can see more behind the scenes on how the other guy plays.

[(nameless one)]

So, what is the general concensus with Vexing Sphinx? Is it a cute card, a necessary card? How does it make the deck better?

[Vacrix]

So, what is the general concensus with Vexing Sphinx? Is it a cute card, a necessary card? How does it make the deck better?

It acts as a card filter, beats for 4 evasively, and draws you cards when it dies. Nof said. I think its a great add and I'd love to test it if I could get my dam MWS working on my Mac..

[(nameless one)]

I would love to see the current list right now.

[pi4meterftw]

I would love to see the current list right now.

... I just posted it hours ago... post 900.

[(nameless one)]

Oh, sorry about that... Thanks anyways Pi!

[Vacrix]

How would you compare Fathom Seer and Vexing Sphinx? If at all. My analysis is:
-Both initially cost 3.
-Both draw you cards
-Both can hold Jitte
-Both need 2 islands in play

Fathom Seer
-Bounces your Islands, which creates Wayfarer interactions
-Looks like an Exalted Angel to an opponent who isn't familiar with the deck
-Beats for 1 unmorphed, and 2 morphed
-Stays in play until removed

Vexing Sphinx
-Beats for 4
-Acts as a card filter
-Evasive
-Will often draw you more cards than Fathom Seer (3 from Sphinx vs. 2 from Seer)
-Eventually leaves play due to upkeep issues

Therefore, I believe that +1 Sphinx, -1 Seer is a good idea. Thoughts on this?

[Fouzt]

How would you compare Fathom Seer and Vexing Sphinx? If at all. My analysis is:
-Both initially cost 3.
-Both draw you cards
-Both can hold Jitte
-Both need 2 islands in play

Fathom Seer
-Bounces your Islands, which creates Wayfarer interactions
-Looks like an Exalted Angel to an opponent who isn't familiar with the deck
-Beats for 1 unmorphed, and 2 morphed
-Stays in play until removed

Vexing Sphinx
-Beats for 4
-Acts as a card filter
-Evasive
-Will often draw you more cards than Fathom Seer (3 from Sphinx vs. 2 from Seer)
-Eventually leaves play due to upkeep issues

Therefore, I believe that +1 Sphinx, -1 Seer is a good idea. Thoughts on this?

You are forgetting that Fathom seer also guards against land destruction and provides a more favorable matchup with fish/merfolk. I think it the ratio is fine as it is currently

[Vacrix]

True. I knew I was leaving something out.

I'd still try that config if I could somehow. VMware fails at using MWS..

[huygee]

Hi, I'm kind of a legacy noob, but I'm interested in participating in the data collection, and helping to improve the deck and how well I play it. I've taken this deck to the weekly legacy tourney at the local shop twice now, and have just returned from a successful outing. I'm not sure if I should report the results from my first tourney, since it was my 1st time playing the deck, and only my 2nd time playing Legacy ever, so it doesn't seem that helpful in evaluating the deck's performance. In any case, I finished with a 3-0-1 record tonight, with an ID at the top table to split the prize. I played pi4meterftw's latest build with vexing sphinx and curfews in the SB.

Round 1 vs. UW Landstill (2-0): Game 1 on the play, he plays standstill when I have wayfarer in play, and eventually has to break it when I fetch a wasteland for his mishra's factory. He sticks a humility and jace, the mind sculptor, but I just attack through with 3 donks and a jitte. Some notable play errors: playing wayfarer before mom on turn 1 on the play. Played a fetched wasteland with no targets (and no reason) which evened out the land count and turned off my wayfarer. SB -4 swords, +2 aura +2 tutor.
Game 2: I have wayfarer, and he plays top and EE for 1, so I just play > 1CC guys and jitte. He picks off my guys with swords and paths, but refuses to blow up the EE. I have fathom seers, so I'm able to keep drawing into more threats, and eventually I play aura, but it's pretty much over by then. Play errors: forgot to tutor for jitte when I played sfm because I already had jitte in hand. Wasn't careful with mana and occasionally ended up with an untapped wasteland instead of leaving up SP mana.

Round 2 vs. CB Top-Progenitus (2-1): Game 1 on the draw, we both mulligan to 5 and I keep a hand with 2 wasteland and a wayfarer, hoping to lock him out and draw into a white source. After getting his first land wasted, he starts fetching for basics, and gets a few basics, wall of roots, and some uncracked fetches on the table before I can draw my first colored source. When I finally get a tundra into play, I run out a mom as bait, but failed to see that he had natural order mana +1 on the table. He puts progenitus into play while I stare at the spell pierce in my hand. SB -2 Sphinx +2 Aura of Silence
Game 2 on the play, I land turn 1 wayfarer, and basically use it to draw every single land in my deck. He doesn't play much, except a trygon predator, and I eventually finish him off with a grunt. Notable play errors: walked a fathom seer into a daze. During a wayfarer trick with a fetch, I forget to actually fetch a land and put it into play. With all the wayfarer action, game 2 took up a huge chunk of time, and we were only left with 10 minutes left for the 3rd.
Game 3, I get 2 moms and a wayfarer online facing two 5/6 goyfs. I force his natural order and get avatar + jitte into play as time is called. I only get two attack steps, which isn't enough. He EEs away my 1 drops, but graciously decides to concede to me on the last turn when I show him 2 swords in hand. Notable play errors: should have just blocked with avatar + jitte counters instead of showing the swords.

Round 3 vs Dragon Stompy (2-0): Game 1 on the play, I brainstorm in response to his chalice on 1, but decide not to force it because I have a bunch of 2 drops in hand. I waste his city of traitors after he plays trinisphere, and he doesn't have enough mana to do anything for the rest of the game as I run him over with avatar + morph + jitte. I know not forcing the chalice was questionable considering how many 1CC spells are in the deck, but I had no idea what he was playing and no 1 drops in hand after the brainstorm, so I wanted to save the force for something more immediately relevant.
Game 2: I sideboarded -4 swords, +2 aura, +1 thorn, +1 tutor because I thought he was mono-red stax, and was really confused when he dropped a jitte and a morph. I sfm into my own jitte and legend rule his while he flips garthan raiders and plays taurean mauler. With the coast clear of jitte counters, I drop jotan grunt (which ended up ticking up to 4 age counters by the end) and avatar. He elects to chump the grunt over successive turns, I guess hoping that he'll draw something or that the graveyards would empty out, but I use wasteland and daze something irrelevant that he can pay for to prolong my grunt's life long enough to finish him off. Note: I only had 2 land for most of this game, demonstrating the deck's resiliency when mana-constrained.

Round 4 vs BG Dark Depths (ID): Was kind of interested in trying this matchup, but he was busy doing other stuff, so I decided to call it a night.

As you can see, there's a lot of room for personal improvement, but hopefully some readers can learn from my play errors.

[stuckpixel]

Nice work Huygee. I assume you mean 'Avenger' when you say 'Avatar'?

[huygee]

Oops. Yeah, I meant avenger.

[Tinefol]

Something weird happened today. I went to time 3 out of 4 matches.

R1. 0-1 to UR Fish. Game1 Got raped by maindeck Sulfur Elemental + Lavamancer + Jitte. Game 2 was long, I managed to come from behind with a timed EE (played 2 in S/B), to finish in turns. I was somewhat upperhand, but its time anyway.
R2. UW Mystic Fish. Quickly lost game1, won game2 with a series of nice topdecks, and in 3rd game, where I was seriously upperhand, turns were announced. I couldn't deal enough damage, so that's draw.
R3. Zoo. I win a long game1, Game 2, I manage to get some edge with a well timed EE, but I'm low on life. We go into topdeck war, where my mom + multiple jittes (Gripped/Qasaled) happen to exhaust his resources on turn 4 of additional turns. Well, I still win 1-0.
R4. BGW Rock. 2-0, that build is easy to play against.

[godryk]

Hi guys! I'v been giving this deck a try and would like to ask some things. I've played pi4meterftw's list and I've started wondering how useful is Aether Vial as a 2-of. I very rarely draw it in the first turns, so, when I draw it, I'd rather use mana on Wayfarer card advantage, playing Brainstorm and many other things. This deck seems realtively mana hungry considering we play with 1-3 lands most of time. So, I wonder, what's the point on playing Vial as a 2-of. Am I the only one concerned with this?

Sphinx seems a little winmore, as is only good when you have repeatedly activated Wayfarer and your hand is full of chaff. As other people, I've wondered if Vandilion Clique would be better. I don't know, it seems more consistent as it needs less "setup", this is mostly a control deck that needs to get rid of many things before they come into play. However I've heard it has worked nicely for you, so I guess it deserves more testing.

And finally...have you guys considering running something like Maze of Ith or any other utility land, to be tutored by Wayfarer? This is a controlish deck and tries to handle the opponents threats, but you can't stop everything, and sometimes a pesky big boy enters the battlefield and you have no answers for it, then, the only thing you can do is pray for StP. In those situations, I hate when I have Wayfarer in play, my opponent succesfully casts a Tombstlaker or Vendilion Clique and all I can do is generate card advantage for some turns while I die. What do you think about this?

[pi4meterftw]

Hi guys! I'v been giving this deck a try and would like to ask some things. I've played pi4meterftw's list and I've started wondering how useful is Aether Vial as a 2-of. I very rarely draw it in the first turns, so, when I draw it, I'd rather use mana on Wayfarer card advantage, playing Brainstorm and many other things. This deck seems realtively mana hungry considering we play with 1-3 lands most of time. So, I wonder, what's the point on playing Vial as a 2-of. Am I the only one concerned with this?

Sphinx seems a little winmore, as is only good when you have repeatedly activated Wayfarer and your hand is full of chaff. As other people, I've wondered if Vandilion Clique would be better. I don't know, it seems more consistent as it needs less "setup", this is mostly a control deck that needs to get rid of many things before they come into play. However I've heard it has worked nicely for you, so I guess it deserves more testing.

And finally...have you guys considering running something like Maze of Ith or any other utility land, to be tutored by Wayfarer? This is a controlish deck and tries to handle the opponents threats, but you can't stop everything, and sometimes a pesky big boy enters the battlefield and you have no answers for it, then, the only thing you can do is pray for StP. In those situations, I hate when I have Wayfarer in play, my opponent succesfully casts a Tombstlaker or Vendilion Clique and all I can do is generate card advantage for some turns while I die. What do you think about this?

Yeah, if there was a BB 5/5 flying with no drawback in the format, we wouldn't be able to handle it. However, it does have a drawback. We got lucky in that jotun grunt can stop tombstalker and goyf from being scary. The situation you described should also happen only rarely because both wayfarer and mom in most matchups are cards such that once they come into play every removal spell your opponent casts should target them until they die. We of course hope that wayfarer wins the game, but for smart opponents, it usually ends up being: 1:1 trade with 1:1 tempo and +1 life, or even path-> gg. (Path is horrible) or the worst case is lightning bolt, which is even against zoo. The rest of your points have been addressed in this thread, even, and especially your comment about 2 vials.

[(nameless one)]

Hello deck creators and avid users of Land Hax.dec!

I myself am a fan of the Parfait Engine (Land Tax/Scroll Rack toolbox engine). I have been doing research on making this engine efficient in Legacy (I cant seem to make it work on this format and yes, I know Land Tax is banned).

Anyways, while doing research, I came across this thread:

http://www.mtgthesource.com/forums/showthread.php?11391-[DECK]-Parfait-Beatdown

It essentially follows the same principle of the deck, but it has more toolbox appeal to it.

Is it possible that we can borrow some ideas off of that forgotten thread?

[tgDC$]

Just got back from the Shuffle and Cut tourney for duals today. I didnt fare so well but my teammate Clarence Klase took UW Tempo and ended up 6th after the 6 rounds of swiss and took it all the way to finals for a prize split. His list is the list packing 3 md jotun grunt instead of the miser KOTWO and no vexing sphinx. His Matchups were as follows if I remember correctly.
Round 1 Zoo draw (1-1-1)
0-0-1

Round 2 Merfolk loss (2-1)
0-1-1

Round 3 Zoo win (2-0)
1-1-1

Round 4 Bant Survival win (2-0)
2-1-1

Round 5 Merfolk win (2-0)
3-1-1

Round 6 Rgb Goblins win(2-0)
4-1-1

Cut to top8 which consists of
4x Merfolk (all mono blue)
1x ANT (straight blue black)
1x Pro Bant
1x Reanimator
1x UW Tempo


Quarterfinals against Merfolk win (2-0)

Semifinals against Merfolk win (2-0)

Finals split with Merfolk

After Clarence won his semi final match he didnt know the guy was playing merfolk because he most certainly wouldve played it out. In the end he got the duals he wanted anyway so it didnt matter. So this deck really does smash merfolk. The one match Clarence lost to merfolk was he kept a very very shaky hand that relied on sticking his vial of his only land (wasteland) which got FOW'd and also involved the merfolk player to perfectly curve out with lords and jitte while Clarence did not draw a colored land over the next 6 turns. Other than that both of the matches Clarence played in the top8, the merfolk players never had a chance.

[evanmartyr]

Round 1 Zoo draw (1-1-1)
Round 3 Zoo win (2-0)


Pro stuff, right there.

EDIT: Ack, that was a worthless post, so I'll move the discussion along.

What list did you play, what matchups did you face, what was good, what wrecked you, what was good out of the board?

[tgDC$]

@evanmartyr

Just to clear up it wasnt me who played the deck, just my friend Clarence. He doesnt really get online much so im posting the results for him. As for how he boarded, what was good etc. ill talk to him and find out because I was only able to watch his top8 matches and none of his Swiss Rounds matches. And since both his top8 matches were against mono blue merfolk, there was no need to board in anything. For reference this is the list he ran. Its pretty much Jeff's list from the SCG LA 5k -2 KOTWO, -1 Jitte, +2 Stonefore Mystic, +1 Jotun Grunt

Maindeck
4x Tundra
2x Plains
1x Island
4x Flooded Strand
3x Windswepth Heath
3x Wasteland

4x weathered wayfarer
4x mother of runes
4x serra avenger
4x fathom seer
3x jotun grunt
2x stoneforge mystic
3x aether vial
4x brainstorm
4x swords to plowshares
4x force of will
3x daze
2x spell pierce
2x Umezawas Jitte

Sideboard
3x Burrenton Forge Tender
3x Enlightened Tutor
3x Aura of Silence
1x Tormods Crypt
1x Relic of Progenitus
1x Wheel of Sun and Moon
1x Ethersworn Canonist
1x Thorn of Amethyst
1x Runed Halo

[Tinefol]

Weren't alot of people today, so only 4 rounds and and top4.

Round1. Bg Train Wreack. Easy win 2-0
Round2. MonoG Progenitus Survival. Game1 I open without counters, and get blown out by a quick Survival. Game 2 and 3 are both trickier, where I managed to come from behind against Masticore with tons of mana.
Round3. Bant variation (Goyf + KoTR + Terravore + Wasteland + Stifle + 4EE + Jace-sculptors). Game1 is very long and in the end I get slammed by a huge Terravore, despite having active jitte. I had to swords a couple of his huge KotRs, so couldn't race. Game2 ends on turns, where I'm 1 damage short of killing him.
Round4. MonoU control. 2-0, game1 was won with active Shackles on his side.

Top4. Same Bant. Game1. I lose to 15/15 Terravore from topdeck. With active jitte. Again. Game2 I keep a nice hand of Tundra, Vial, Wayfarer, Mystic, Daze, but my Tundra gets wasted and he EEs away the vial. Some turns later my fetch gets stifled, and I don't see a 3rd land till the end.

[Forbiddian]

Just got back from the Shuffle and Cut tourney for duals today. I didnt fare so well but my teammate Clarence Klase took UW Tempo and ended up 6th after the 6 rounds of swiss and took it all the way to finals for a prize split. His list is the list packing 3 md jotun grunt instead of the miser KOTWO and no vexing sphinx. His Matchups were as follows if I remember correctly.


Wish I coulda gone to this one, but no ride and Ben and I couldn't organize anything to go at the last minute.

Tell Clarence I said congratz! I talked to him for like ten seconds at the last tournament, but he pimped that one, too, with a top 4 finish (I only made top 8).

[Fouzt]

This past Tourny at Shuffle and Cut was my first legacy play since 2003. I was the only other UW Tempo player there besides Clarence, and rolled in with the Dicehouse guys. I had not even really tested the deck that much, maybe a total of 20 matches all against zoo/eva green/and dredge. I also forgot to check what to sideboard against each deck from this thread, so I went with gut instinct.

Top 8 was going to cut down to 4-2 record, so that was the goal to hit.

I was running the up-to-date list, with perimeter captains instead of curfews since I couldn't find any before the tourny :(.

Round 1: Dredge

As soon as I played the first tundra and wayfarer, the guy had a disgusted look on his face and said "Oh god I don't want to play against this deck". And that pretty much sums up the entire matchup.

Game 1: I was one turn away from grunts wrecking his gy, but he managed to find his second bridge to go off and I scooped up quickly.

Game 2: I actually didn't see any graveyard hate, but had a strong opening hand while he mulls to 6. Eventually I have a Jitte online attached to an avenger by the time he gets his first bridge, and pop my own wayfarer to finish off his bridge and swing for lethal in 2 turns.

Game 3: Wheel of Sun and Moon is good.

Record After Round 1: 1-0

Round 2: Reanimator

Oh god, I cant find curfews and manage to get paired up against the only reanimator in the entire tournament in round 2 @_@. I practically cried when he dropped his Iona in the GY game one.

Game 1: Despite countering two of his attempts at popping out his Iona from the GY, He eventually pulls it through and I sit helplessly sobbing on the inside.

Game 2: Kept a hand with heavy counter and Relic of Prog. Despite him bouncing Relic constantly, he wasn't able to find a counter answer for it and my angel swings for lethal.

Game 3: With 3 minutes left in the round, we both mulligan to 4!!! Unfortunately, I cut him into (Entomb, Underground sea, exhume, and daze) needless to say i was devastated from what should have been a draw @_@


Record After Round 2: 1-1

Round 3: Tony S Playing Countertop

Tony and I have played against each other for a little while, and I could tell he was really hungry for a win against me. He opted to play the true blue version instead of Natural Order- Progenitus.

Game 1: Despite having 2 Force of wills with 2 blue cards to pitch, he powers through a second top on turn 2, and counterbalance falls on turn 3. Avenger falls onto my side the next turn since he is tapped out, but can only get him down to 6 before he finally finds a Rhox war monk. I pop a second angel with him tapped out (wayfarer kept him on 3 lands the whole game) but he has the Firespout to finish off the flyers and its on to game 2.

Game 2: He mulls to six, and manages to land a top, But cant find the counterbalance to compliment it. Mother of runes does a total of 10 damage to him! haha! An angel with a Jitte swings for the win

Game 3: 6 minutes left in the round. I have 2 angels and wayfarer on board, and had managed to pop his counterbalance with an Aura of Silence. He was at 10 life with a 6/7 tarmagoyf in play, and I have 2 brainstorms, a second wayfarer, and a land in my hand. He taps out to cast Firespout to pretty much win the game. I use the last mana open to brainstorm......and get Force of Will/Force of Will/Force of Will!!!!!!! needless to say it was a miracle, since he had a second Firespout next turn and was devastated to see it also countered.


Record After Round 3: 2-1

Round 4: RGB Goblins

This guy had the craziest goblin deck. black for making opponent sac creatures, and green for the goblin that kills artifacts.

Game 1: Mulled to 4 with no lands in any of the hands. Watch lackey and a few others rape my face.

Game 2: got 3 perimeter captains out! was at 44 life, but didn't draw another creature for 10 turns and he finally managed to make me sac enough of them to swing for lethal. Yes, he had about 40 points of damage of goblins on the board.

I was super disappointed in this matchup because I feel like UW tempo can handle goblins very well. sometimes luck works against you as it does with you. I also sided out forces for the captains so I wasn't short any creatures.


Record After Round 4: 2-2

Round 5: Eva Green

This guy turned out to be the coolest guy at the tournament, which will be clarified later. I liked the matchup, but wasnt sure what to sideboard against the deck so I didn't add anything in second/third game.

Game 1: His first turn consisted of dark ritual into a thoughtseize and Hymn to Torach, followed by a second hymn on turn 2. I lose @_@.

Game 2: Wayfarer keeps him off green and grunts eat his GY to prevent a Tombstalker. that's a win.

Game 3: Epic Game, in which thanks to wayfarer I have sifted through so many lands that I manage to find all four swords to deal with his top-decked tombstalkers and goyfs. Finally time was called with him only having 3 swamps and me having a mystic with a jitte in play. Both of us had 2 cards in hand (mine were lands haha).

On turn 5 of turns, we just sit there knowing we both wouldn't have a shot at making top 8 with a draw, and finally he just concedes to me! I didn't even know the guy and despite him being at 24 life he was convinced by the board position and just let me have it! I have never seen something like this in a tourny where I did not know the person. Mad props. I am inspired to do the same good deed in future matches.


Record After Round 5: 3-2

Round 6: Mono green Natural Order-Progenitus

Another really friendly and likable opponent, At first I had no idea what he was playing but soon found out.

Game 1: Kept a fairly agressive hand with 2 spell pierces as backup. On his first turn he plays forest and......llanowar elves!? I practically fell over in my chair, as I had not expected an elf deck to be 3-2. He proceeds to play out more mana acceleration with 2 wall of roots and a Rofellos Lanowar Emissary. We both knock each others jittes off the board. He then pops natural order for progenitus as I stare at my usless spell pierces (he has like 100 extra mana) and shake my head in laughter. Cool Deck Bro!

Game 2: I sided in Auras as I knew he had jittes, survival of the fittest, and had probably sided in chokes (which he did). He mulls to four and his only attempt at a natural order is forced without hesitation.

Game 3: probably the best game of the night, in which a constant jitte battle along with 3 natural orders are cast. I manage to get a a mom and angel going as we both blast each other jittes with krosan grips and aura of silences. I keep wayfarer active every single turn and manage to always have the counter mana when he trys to natural order. eventually with 3 minutes left in the round. Angel swings for lethal over his tiny sea of ground creatures.


Record After Round 6: 4-2 (12 points)

As the Board posted the final standings for top 8, 3 players with 4-2 records made it in............I had managed to hit 9th place from tiebreakers! Apparently all of my opponents scrubbed out on their last games?? laaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaame @_@

Overall the deck was a Blast to play competitively, and I had no problem facing a multitude of decks. Even the losses and bad matchup's didn't feel out of reach, and I loved how people were so interested in the deck because it was "techy". My last two opponents even wrote down the deck list and had me explain the sideboard because they wanted to possible play the deck!

Hope you guys enjoyed the tournament report, sorry if it was too long and had possible spelling/Grammatical errors.

[Forbiddian]

Overall the deck was a Blast to play competitively, and I had no problem facing a multitude of decks. Even the losses and bad matchup's didn't feel out of reach, and I loved how people were so interested in the deck because it was "techy". My last two opponents even wrote down the deck list and had me explain the sideboard because they wanted to possible play the deck!

I pretty much hear this every time I go to a tournament. The worst review the deck got was a guy who made a top 8 with it and then said, "It's not really my style."

Bummer about the tiebreakers, man. Out of curiosity, how many players were there?

[Fouzt]

I wanna say there was about 35-40? maybe slightly less than that

[pi4meterftw]

Eric, why did you FOW SDT? Even more questionably, why did you FOW back after he countered back?

[Fouzt]

That was the advise given to me by the countertop player in my group. What should i have been forcing? the balance? goyfs?

[pi4meterftw]

That was the advise given to me by the countertop player in my group. What should i have been forcing? the balance? goyfs?

It makes sense that someone else gave you this advice, because the common misconception is that SDT is good.

It's not a bad card (Although it's very close.) It's kind of a mediocre spell that is overhyped because people somehow come to count cards they are floating as if they are "in their hands."

The problem is top doesn't actually draw 3 cards, although for the 5 or 6 mana you pay over the course of a game into it, it better draw 3 cards. But instead, it draws 0 cards. It's good because the card quality probably amounts to like about 1 or 2 cards, AND it sets up counterbalance.

I always FOW counterbalance if I FOW either of the two pieces at all. Sometimes when my board position is threatening, or if I have sphinx/vial/SFM in play with jitte in hand, CB resolves and I FOW their answers, if any. I never FOW top. I almost never daze top. Necessary conditions for me to daze top are reasonable evidence that doing so will mana screw my opponent. Otherwise, it's a waste of a daze.

I also rarely force goyfs. Goyfs are not threatening, because usually they are a 3/4, 4/5 is also somewhat common, but something really perverse has to happen to make it a 5/6. We don't play sorceries, and they only play 4.

At the end of the day, what you force will depend on the history of the game. You're going to make the optimal play at every step, and it will "probably" determine you into something recognizable as aggro or control (even though sometimes the optimal play puts me into a situation where I'm wishy washy... some combination of both.)

I've seen even professionals do things like double daze top. If you didn't know what top did, and just knew it was a magic card, and heard of the plays people execute against it, you might guess it was ancestral recall or something. People like to make grand statements like: All you have to do is FOW the top! Or like earlier in this thread "All UW tempo has against deck X is Y." They like to have catch-phrases they can parrot so they sound like they know what they're doing about magic. But if you optimize at every step, then I think you'll find the results are quite different from what people say. It could be that your friend independently reached these ideas, which would be commendable. But all I'm saying is that most people haven't really thought through the reasoning behind the statements. This, by the way, is why you'll hear things like "4 ofs only plz." Because some guy was like: consistency is good.

(Here ends the response about SDT)

See, notice the trick here, some pro probably put like a positive spin on the word, and also was sufficiently ambiguous that the good kind of consistency got confused with this useless kind. Good consistency is largely in reference to mana, because with mana I actually care about drawing a certain number, which is relatively large, and so you see more 3-4x in mana bases. I've made game theoretic arguments for doing otherwise for spells in the past. But if the pro in question had instead said like "monotony is good" or something, people wouldn't parrot that. Or if he said "Mana consistency is good" our thread wouldn't be polluted by suggestions that it's "4 vials or nothing, yeah!" when the probabilities clearly scale approximately in step. (Actually, with diminishing returns.)

I guess what I'm saying is be careful with taking advice, since most people didn't derive their facts themselves, but they still say it for one reason or another. Probably to sound impressive or something.

[(nameless one)]

Hey guys, just to let you all know that I dropped Vials from my build.

Throughout my MWS testing, I substituted the 2 Vials with +1 Stoneforge Mystic and +1 equipment (I am actually running Jitte, SoFI and SoLS). If you dont like that idea, maybe you can try running 2 Scroll Rack on Vial's spot. Its awesome late game when you have multiple but not-so-useful cards in your hand. And with tons of shuffling effects, you can shuffle away chaff cards.

[Fouzt]

Yeh I get what you are saying Jeff, I'll do that next time hopefully with more productive results.

Let me know if you are ever in Inland Empire area (Pomona, Brea, Anaheim, etc), I'd love for a chance to meet up and get some insight on the deck.


Good for you!

On a somewhat related note: Who are you and why should anybody care what "your build" is? Also, I strongly recommend to you and anybody who happens to be reading this: Don't do anything he just said.

harsh Matt, and yet I laughed.

[(nameless one)]

I was just adding suggestions. It is the essentially the principle behind this site :(

I also, I'm sorry if I use the wrong choice of words. Calling it my build and all. I'm just used of saying that when I am playtesting a deck, to avoid confusion on deck variations.

[elof]

Would you Spell Pierce a Top on turn 1? Against CB-Top? Against "Island-Top" (considering it could be ANT or something else, landstill perhaps)?

[ScatmanX]

Do you guys think I could run this deck with only 2 Tundras?
If so, what other 2 lands would come in in they're place?

[pi4meterftw]

Do you guys think I could run this deck with only 2 Tundras?
If so, what other 2 lands would come in in they're place?

Probably your favorite 2 UW lands: at your own risk.

Also, I almost never counter tops.

[Forbiddian]

Would you Spell Pierce a Top on turn 1? Against CB-Top? Against "Island-Top" (considering it could be ANT or something else, landstill perhaps)?

Depends on what I have in my hand. Since I didn't keep a hand with a one-drop, I probably have a two-drop that I want to cast, so against CB-Top I'd almost certainly just Spell Pierce it. The threat is turn 2 CB-lock while I'm tapped out, and a spell pierce can prevent that threat (although typically you want to save SP for the NO).

In general, I'd rather keep a Spell Pierce and have them keep a Top, it's just that the situation described it's really unlikely that I could stay open the next few turns, and my hand doesn't have the one-drop so kinda a slow opening and in that situation, I'm looking to fill out my mana.

[huygee]

It makes sense that someone else gave you this advice, because the common misconception is that SDT is good.

It's not a bad card (Although it's very close.) It's kind of a mediocre spell that is overhyped because people somehow come to count cards they are floating as if they are "in their hands."

The problem is top doesn't actually draw 3 cards, although for the 5 or 6 mana you pay over the course of a game into it, it better draw 3 cards. But instead, it draws 0 cards. It's good because the card quality probably amounts to like about 1 or 2 cards, AND it sets up counterbalance.



The "virtual card advantage" theory that gets people so excited about SDT takes into account the many shuffle effects available in legacy. Presumably, with a 1 mana investment each turn, you can always draw something useful, and then shuffle into a new top 3 when that's no longer the case. I've also seen CB decks with Bob that were able to use SDT effectively to draw the extra cards for free. Obviously, SDT isn't THAT powerful by itself, but I've definitely been on the receiving end of a beating orchestrated by an unanswered SDT.

However, I believe there are a couple of reasons that UW Tempo can ignore SDT more than other decks: 1) real card advantage, and 2) the 1 mana activation cost can start to seem really expensive when you're wasting all their lands with wayfarer.

With that understanding (not that I'm saying that it's correct), would it be worth it to FOW a sylvan library?

[pi4meterftw]

The "virtual card advantage" theory that gets people so excited about SDT takes into account the many shuffle effects available in legacy. Presumably, with a 1 mana investment each turn, you can always draw something useful, and then shuffle into a new top 3 when that's no longer the case. I've also seen CB decks with Bob that were able to use SDT effectively to draw the extra cards for free. Obviously, SDT isn't THAT powerful by itself, but I've definitely been on the receiving end of a beating orchestrated by an unanswered SDT.

However, I believe there are a couple of reasons that UW Tempo can ignore SDT more than other decks: 1) real card advantage, and 2) the 1 mana activation cost can start to seem really expensive when you're wasting all their lands with wayfarer.

With that understanding (not that I'm saying that it's correct), would it be worth it to FOW a sylvan library?

Yes, you would FOW a library in almost any case where it's possible and if your opponent is at like >10 life. If it's only acting as a top, and your opponent doesn't have 4-8 life to spare, then you wouldn't FOW it.

[Tinefol]

When I would counter Top:

1) I'm positive they're mana screwed and top is their only way out.
2) They complete a C/B lock with it.
3) Their hand and board is empty except for the lands, and I don't have a clear advantage.

I would almost always counter a library, because Zoo makes a huge use of it and it actually provides card advantage.

[pi4meterftw]

You should not counter top in situation 3. You and your opponents are locking horns in a topdeck war, and he just drew a card card. Don't waste one of your good cards on it. Of course, don't take this piece of advice too far, or you may never counter anything cast at all.

[Forbiddian]

Tinefol has the right idea.

1 and 2 I definitely agree on (although one is so hard to determine for sure, he'd have to have missed a land drop already). I would consider 3 to be just on part of a larger group of strange-situations-where-it's-ok-to-counter-Top.

So yeah, say your opponent has a fetchland out, three other lands, no cards in hand, and then he taps out his non-fetches to play Goyf and Top, obviously you spell pierce the top.

Or like your hand is loaded with heavy spells but no land disruption, so you want to get rid of cards like Spell Pierce and know you won't be open to cast it for a while regardless of what you're afraid of. I can think of other exceptions, but you'll probably notice them in the course of the game.

The point is that you'll need some outside justification to even Spell Pierce a Top, and a very, very good reason to use a Force of Will.



Possibly it's a difference with UW Tempo generally putting them under mana pressure, but I think it's just a misevaluation of the relative effectiveness of cards. When I look over a list like NO Bant or CB Bant, I don't see very many cards that stand out as something that they're looking for. It's all the same reasonably useful cards. It's not like they can look for Ancestral Recall or something and that digging to power cards is worth a card and a bunch of mana.

Since all the cards are basically the same (Goyf vs. Lifelink Goyf, etc. it doesn't matter, you'd rather just draw one without wasting extra mana) the only real choice that Top gives you is you get to pick whether you want a land or non-land. That sounds extremely powerful, but in practice you never get that choice.

But using Top the way it "should be" used is predicated on drawing multiple fetchlands to shuffle away the cards you don't want.

That means you don't GET to pick non-land (at least not for long -- you end up having to pick about the same ratio as land/non-land that you would have gotten anyway, meaning that top was useless) and if you want to pick land because you're mana screwed or whatever, it costs you mana to pick land and then you need to luck into the land to keep using it to get more land.

[Herudaio]

About the free slot/slots in main now filled by sphinx.
Have you guys considered spellstutter sprite? It sound most reasonable and fits well NoGoyf style of play.

[Zappa]

There was a tournament I entered several weeks ago, and I saw a girl playing what I thought was some weird deck. But after recalling some of the cards, looking at the original poster's decklist, and seeing the video, i think it really is deck since it runs seer and wayfayer. I am kinda curious at this deck but would like to ask about some match ups.

Combo decks aside, how does this deck fair against fast aggro decks, say goblins or zoo. Also how does this deck fair against decks that like to sweep the board like Landstill? Thanks, I'll try reading through the pages, but may take some time due to the amount of pages so far.

[Nelis]

In my limited testing I found that Goblins is very doable especially if you are able to keep their Vial off the table. Zoo is a bad match-up, personally I don't think its ever gonna be a favourable matchup at alll, not even after sideboarding. Don't know about landstill.

[Forbiddian]

Goblins is a bye, Landstill is a bye, Zoo is around 40%.

[stuckpixel]

Goblins is a bye, Landstill is a bye, Zoo is around 40%.

Didn't Jeff report some problems with 4c landstill? I know when I played it last tourney it was rough going.

[pi4meterftw]

Didn't Jeff report some problems with 4c landstill? I know when I played it last tourney it was rough going.

Yeah 4cc isn't a bye. But it's a pretty good MU at like 60%. I'm sure what Matt meant was the UW build, which essentially is a bye.

I'm also able to win more than 40%, but I have a feeling it's because of an experience difference between my opponents and I.

[Cindarin]

I'm pretty new to legacy. I've done enough reading to know the main decks pretty well and the strengths of different cards, but I've only played about 20 legacy games total (4 real life games as burn, 4 RL as merfolk, 10ish as UW tempo on mws). I really enjoy this deck and have been following this thread since Jeff's performance at the SCG 5k in January.

My issue is that I don't really know when I'm making play mistakes. I do think that this deck is innately powerful, and because of that, I seem to be winning most of matches I've played with it. That is a problem because I'm not being punished for my mistakes, so I don't really know when they are mistakes.

I've watched Matt's videos on YouTube, and that gives me a general idea. Any other suggestions?

[Nelis]

When the mistake is not obvious you need other people to tell you. There have been plenty of times I thought I didnt make any play mistakes (because my choices didn't have any negative effect) but people pointed out I could have played better. Ask friends who are better than you to watch you play when they're finished playing themselves. And don't forget to ask why their solution would've been better.

And you'll also find out that the more you play the more you realize it when you actually made a mistake.

[huygee]

Ouch. LSV dissed UW Tempo in his latest article on CF. I may be partially responsible for this because I punted pretty badly when I played it against him. I think I was a little starstruck. Anyway, I'm interested in finding experienced UW Tempo players to practice with and help me fix my play errors so that I'll be ready for the next time. I'm new to the Source, so I'm not sure if this is the appropriate forum for this, but message me if you're interested.

[pi4meterftw]

Ouch. LSV dissed UW Tempo in his latest article on CF. I may be partially responsible for this because I punted pretty badly when I played it against him. I think I was a little starstruck. Anyway, I'm interested in finding experienced UW Tempo players to practice with and help me fix my play errors so that I'll be ready for the next time. I'm new to the Source, so I'm not sure if this is the appropriate forum for this, but message me if you're interested.

Well, whatever. The bigger worry is how'd you lose to LSV? What was he playing? Like zoo or something?

[huygee]

Well, whatever. The bigger worry is how'd you lose to LSV? What was he playing? Like zoo or something?

He played countertop splashing black for dark confidant. Game 1, I forget about the exalted trigger and try to vial in a jotun grunt to block a rhox war monk. I'm on tilt and do basically the same thing a turn later. Game 2, he gets a CB lock and I have a vial at 2 on the table, but since I can't play the mother of runes in hand, he steals my angel with sower and that was game.

Also, I've read through the thread, and didn't see anything about the matchup vs. merfolk w/ goyf + jitte. I'm having a really hard time with that matchup, since it seems like they do have threats on par with yours, and more aether vials to out-tempo you.

[Forbiddian]

Yeah, a lot of people obviously punted away opportunities to win with this deck. Definitely myself included, I double choked my single-elimination matches. Don't beat yourself up about it, the important thing is just to make the top 8.

As far as getting better, I really recommend that you record your matches and watch them back. If you post them on youtube or send me the .avi, I'll be happy to watch/leave comments/whatever if you'd like. But mainly you can just watch them yourself. Just go through one game and look at every single play that you made.

You'll be able to see a lot of mistakes and a lot of patterns of mistakes that you can work on.

[Forbiddian]

It's not a big deal, but thought I'd update you guys on the MTGSalvation tournament.

For sure I'm into the top 8 at 3-0-1. Had very easy matchups (but then again, I can't really think of any matchups I'd consider "hard," I guess I dodged Zoo). The draw was unintentional because he was moving and I was starting my term both that week. My last two opponents didn't want me to post the games, but I have them recorded and I'll put them up once the tournament is over.


Honestly, I'd have been very surprised not to make this top 8, but we'll see how I do in a couple weeks. Yeah, the tournament is slow. Zzz.

[colo]

I won yesterday's weekly Legacy tournament here, going 3-0-1, beating a weird, sub-par UW Aggro build with a lot of shroudy critters, including Wall of Denial and some Sphinx whose name I'd forgot (2-0), Bant Survival (2-0, although my opponent was rather crippled by mana screw, and later mana flood), non-Imperial Painter (2-0, my opponent's biggest play mistake allowed my freshly cast Jotun Grunt to save me from decking - it's really nice when Grunt works as a tutor for your two next draws and fetches those Aura of Silence out of your _fat_ graveyard :D), and drawing against Trisomy 21 (1-1, as the extraturns of the third match could not produce a winner).

If anyone has suggestions on how to imrpove the Trisomy 21 matchup, I'd be happy to know. Maybe Mystic Remora could be worth a shot in this matchup? (Trisomy 21 runs exactly _one_ creature, so Remora should at least draw one or two cards for me - haven't tested this assumption yet, though).

[Forbiddian]

I might invest more into MTGO when Urza's Legacy goes live to win a bunch of packs. The MTGO metagame looks unbelievably favorable right now for anybody playing UW Tempo. To the point where I'd be surprised not to win all the dailies.

It's like Goblins, Goblins, Goblins, Dredge, ANT. Rofl.

[Barook]

I might invest more into MTGO when Urza's Legacy goes live to win a bunch of packs. The MTGO metagame looks unbelievably favorable right now for anybody playing UW Tempo. To the point where I'd be surprised not to win all the dailies.

It's like Goblins, Goblins, Goblins, Dredge, ANT. Rofl.

Wouldn't Benevolent Bodyguard be a somewhat useable replacement (especially with a Vial @1) until Mom comes out?

[Forbiddian]

Wouldn't Benevolent Bodyguard be a somewhat useable replacement (especially with a Vial @1) until Mom comes out?

No. I'd probably go back to Meddling Mage or something else awful. I mean, the deck still dominated with Meddling Mage, but Mother of Runes was just a massive improvement.

[rayaj]

I'm new to playing this deck and I was wondering how it was matched up against dreadstill. But so far I really like this deck, its tested well so far. I'm iffy on vexing sphinx but I want to test it with and without to see which build I like more

wheel of sun and moon
aura of silence
aura of silence
curfew
curfew
jotun grunt
burrenton forge-tender
burrenton forge-tender
burrenton forge-tender
tormod's
relic of progenitus
thorn of amethist
tutor
tutor
canonist

This is the sideboard I'm thinking of using, any thoughts?

[Forbiddian]

Dreadstill is an easy matchup.

What else is in your metagame?

[rayaj]

various vail goblins, CT bant, survival bant with iona and loyal retainers, weird alluren combo, NLS, next level ichorid, merfolk, sligh and faries are usually what I can look forward to

[Forbiddian]

various vail goblins, CT bant, survival bant with iona and loyal retainers, weird alluren combo, NLS, next level ichorid, merfolk, sligh and faries are usually what I can look forward to

Don't run Curfew if there isn't any Reanimator.

[huygee]

I'm new to playing this deck and I was wondering how it was matched up against dreadstill. But so far I really like this deck, its tested well so far. I'm iffy on vexing sphinx but I want to test it with and without to see which build I like more


I'd like to hear more about your (and other's) experience with sphinx. So far, I haven't been too impressed. But to be fair, I haven't played too many matches with it, and have actually never even attempted to cast one. So far, I've only pitched it to FOW or brainstormed it away because I often find myself either too land-light or card-light to play it. I'm actually planning on switching back to the 3rd vial and 3rd jotun grunt for my next tourney because my meta has a lot of CB-top, where I really like to resolve an early vial or get jotun grunt out to suppress goyf. One thing I've discovered is that activating wayfarer tends to tie up my mana through most of the early game, so being able to play creatures via vial vs. aggro decks (especially merfolk) is pretty important.

[Tinefol]

2-2 today.
Rolled over the Ichorid 2-0. Lost to BGW survival 1-2 with a huge punt in game3. Could've finished it as a draw. Won White Weenie 2-0. Lost to MonoG Prog Survival. Didn't get FoW once, got rolled over by Progenitus g1, by survival g2.

[TooCloseToTheSun]

I went 2-2-1 today at our local event. I beat elves and eva green, lost to goblins and MWC, and drew with bant survival.

[Hattivita]

Hi

Long time lurker, but since I have sleeved this deck up and played around 30+ games with it (workstation and paper), I just want to add a few comments from what i have experienced.
I used to play death and taxes, and 4c Landstill, so the jump to this deck seemed like taking my decks and merge them into one. :)

I have decided to play this deck at a tourney in the near future, so i hooked up with some friends to get some testing done.

The matchups I did test for more than one game are:

Merfolk (~10 games)
I played against a list with 7 lords, vendilion clicque and spellstutter. And I must say that this list was BRUTAL against UW tempo. vendilion clique in response to my vial activation. vialed spellstutters on fathom seers or spellpierce. Combined with riptide laboratory gave me a lot of headaches.
However, if you stick a Jitte your golden, but getting it into play can be a problem.
because of lord of atlantis and mutavault, the mothers are mediocre at best. your wayfarer is quite good at stopping mutavault and riptide laboratory shenanigans.
This kind of merfolk/wizards is definitely NOT a good MU for this deck.

Goblins (~7 games)
If they draw the nuts you still die. T1 vial from them into inevitable T4-5 matron/ringleaders are very hard for you to deal with. But if they just rely on t1 lackey, you can easily stop them dead and out tempo them. Jitte, KotWO and Avenger are the cards you want to see here. Mothers are awesome for stopping lackey and piledrivers untill you can find a jitte.

Bant survival (~5 games)
If they resolve survival you lose. Again, Vendilion Clique shenanigans along with exalted Warmonks can beat your face in pretty fast if you cannot stop their early hierachs.
If you stop their accel and counter survival, you will have all the time in the world to kill off their mana and drown them in card advantage. Jitte in this MU is kinda meh because of 4x pridemage.

BWG rock (~5 games)
Brainstorm > thoughtsieze, and wayfarer > 3 color land base. Bob can become a big problem if they manage to stick him. It is very hard for them to play vindicate/pulse around daze/spellpierce if you keep them stuck on mana. Jotun grunt eats goyfs all day.

Astral slide (~3)
Jotun grunt was MVP here, He took care of the graveyard engine before it got out of control. the deck relied on loam engine to cycle alot of lands, but Juton grunt did his job. They also can only drop one land a turn, so wayfarer was also pretty good slowing them down for you to find the grunt.

rest of my games have been on MWS, so they are not worth mentioning.

I didn't test against combo yet. But i guess the combo MU will be played much like I play with landstill.
put down a clock, and sculpt hand with maximum counters. After sideboard, you will have hate for a better MU.
Am I correct here?

[Forbiddian]

Your analysis basically just lists the cards that are good.

@Merfolk: Haven't played that matchup. Regular Merfolk is a bye, but a variant that wacky might be something different. You should definitely bluff Vial activations, if you weren't. With only seven Lords, it doesn't seem like they could even handle the main gameplan, which is: Play only plains out, then favorably block them with or without Mother of Runes, then beat them down from the air with Avenger, gfg.

Note, you can watch Tinefol play on Youtube (handle=Tinefol). I think he's playing against a similar matchup. Note how he makes many, many play mistakes and ends up 3-3. In my opinion, he should have gone 5-1 with solid play, and with perfect play probably 6-0. The mistakes are a little bit subtle, but the ones I pointed out were strict improvements.

@Goblins: I take it you're playing the OP list? First off: why didn't you mention BFT, which basically trumps everything that they could possibly do? I definitely would mention that card. But anyway, you say that it's hard to win with Vial. I'd say it's harder (with Vial being definitely the best card in their deck). Even with Vial @ 1, you *easily* trump them with any Jitte play. Not to mention you have Force on the draw and Daze on the play.

For them to win, they basically need: Lackey+a very good vial-in target vs. no answer or they need Vial vs. no Jitte in the first 5 turns and Ringleader combo.

The most dangerous version of Goblins (the one that can take maybe 30% win percentage from us) is the four lord version, because a pump makes them about even with our guys and two pumps lets them trump our guys in combat. It's really important that our guys each act as a Royal Assassin if they choose to swing. Fortunately, the four lord version is pretty terrible most of the time, so we don't see a lot of it (Piledriver doesn't even make every final list and it seems better than a Lord for R less).

@Bant Survival: Without Survival, Bant Survival is a joke. They have a flimsy manabase and a number of nearly-useless creatures dotting their marginally useful creatures.

With Survival, they become very scary, but only if they manage to get a lot of mana on board. Wayfarer can really pose problems for them as their methods of getting mana become extremely inefficient. I guess their best option is to tutor a Noble Hierarch, but that costs GG for something without Haste. If they only have two mana, that ties up an entire turn's play. By the time they can get enough mana to "go off" (the upper limit is 2GGW which is the cost of Iona), you probably have a Jitte up to destroy their team of Hierarchs and send them back to mana screwed.

@The Rock: Wayfarer trumps them. Without Wayfarer, it's pretty close to even (assuming you don't also randomly get double waste and they get enough lands to play their spells, since I'd say at least 30% of the games their mana base just craps out since they have ridiculous color and CMC requirements), but it's very hard to drop a game where you resolve a Wayfarer.

Even when their deck dodges all the really good answers you have, and magically their stretch mana-base works out, it's still about even.

@Astral Slide: Never played this or even heard of it in Legacy.

[pi4meterftw]

Don't run Curfew if there isn't any Reanimator.

Indeed, I am still looking for better hate than curfew. Stopping reanimator is the #1 priority, but it's obviously a + to also come in against other decks. We don't really need to board in any more (As in nothing is dying to come out) so it's fine if it just comes in vs. reanimator. The problem is curfew has absolutely no prospects of coming in even against random decks, and UWT isn't a deck that punishes the random decks you've all seemed to have faced lately. It would be nice to be able to board in stuff against them, I suppose.

[Tinefol]

I've run Meekstone against Reanimator for some success. It also comes handy against some fat critter decks that don't run Qasali.

[Waikiki]

@Bant Survival: Without Survival, Bant Survival is a joke. They have a flimsy manabase and a number of nearly-useless creatures dotting their marginally useful creatures.

With Survival, they become very scary, but only if they manage to get a lot of mana on board. Wayfarer can really pose problems for them as their methods of getting mana become extremely inefficient. I guess their best option is to tutor a Noble Hierarch, but that costs GG for something without Haste. If they only have two mana, that ties up an entire turn's play. By the time they can get enough mana to "go off" (the upper limit is 2GGW which is the cost of Iona), you probably have a Jitte up to destroy their team of Hierarchs and send them back to mana screwed.


I really wonder this. With 4 basics the manabase is far from flimsy. Also I have been tuning the deck to make it as strong as possible without survival in play. I really wonder how this matchup would turn out in real life. But havent found anyone here playing this deck so far.

[colo]

I usually don't have much trouble with Bant Survival, but GW Survival has given me a fair share of headache when piloting UW Tempo - probably due to its more aggro-ish nature that works well even if Survival isn't online.

[Forbiddian]

I really wonder this. With 4 basics the manabase is far from flimsy. Also I have been tuning the deck to make it as strong as possible without survival in play. I really wonder how this matchup would turn out in real life. But havent found anyone here playing this deck so far.

If you're fetching all-basics, then you can't activate Survival effectively even if you do get it.

It's funny, people think that fetching basics is a really good strat against us, like the following will happen:

1) Their 3+ color janky decklist with a stretch mana base operates at 100% efficiency.
2) Our Wastelands will be unable to find any targets because they have basics, which can magically protect the dual lands that they're drawing and forced to play.
3) Wayfarer can't tutor for other lands.
4) Wasteland can't tap for 1.

When in reality all it does is guarantee:

1) You will always have at least 1 land out, that may or may not be the right colors.

Which means that it's still possibly the only good play, but it's hilarious how people figure out midway through a tournament game that because they fetched basics early, they can't play anything in their hand, AND my Wastelands were happily tapping for 1 per turn and waiting for them to play a non-basic (which they invariably have to do eventually), so I wasn't even remotely affected by them jumping through hoops.

It's not like against Blood Moon where Blood Moon *has* to be crippling, and then one or two basics makes blood moon not-crippling, meaning that Blood Moon failed (even though your deck is operating at 60-80% efficiency, you still have the game in the bag). If I don't even have to draw or play a Wasteland or Wayfarer in order to get you to put your deck in first gear and try to operate it off of basics only, you've already given up on trying to win the game.


@Waikiki: Not that you necessarily espouse those ridiculous beliefs above (though it sorta sounds like you do), if you haven't played against Wayfarer/Wasteland, you have no idea how powerful it is.

It's among the most powerful land destruction suites in Legacy, and it's the only suite that you really can't play around without crippling yourself more than us. That's what makes it a strong suite.

[Waikiki]

Im not defending the fact I fetch all basics Im defending the fact that I do not have a weak manabase.

I will stop the discussion tho, since I believe it is not leading towards anything good. I was just defending the statement about the manabase which I believe is false. Where you start throwing things in like "janky decklist" "ridiculous beliefs" I do not feel to be taken serious.

I am totally aware this deck is strong. Tho I do not believe the ease you describe your matchups to be. Sure it could be positive but you sure hell have to give a good fight to win.

Hope this was more of a misunderstandment.

[Forbiddian]

Im not defending the fact I fetch all basics Im defending the fact that I do not have a weak manabase.

I will stop the discussion tho, since I believe it is not leading towards anything good. I was just defending the statement about the manabase which I believe is false. Where you start throwing things in like "janky decklist" "ridiculous beliefs" I do not feel to be taken serious.

I am totally aware this deck is strong. Tho I do not believe the ease you describe your matchups to be. Sure it could be positive but you sure hell have to give a good fight to win.

Hope this was more of a misunderstandment.

I was responding to the general idea that Basics = Stable Manabase, when they obviously don't, but that theme is repeated again and again in this thread, by different people, and I had to say something about it eventually.

The whole post was directed at the belief that a "3+ color deck with a janky mana base" can operate off of basics alone and that UW Tempo somehow cares. That belief is definitely ridiculous.

I actually used more vibrant language to make it extremely clear that I wasn't specifically referring to you or Bant Survival, which has exactly 3 colors and doesn't have a janky mana base, but in hindsight, I probably could have foreseen that it would be lost in translation. For the record, I put Bant Survival in my top 5 decks in Legacy, in part because it doesn't get greedy with its mana base and only UW Tempo and possibly other extremely caustic disruption suites can take advantage of it.

[TooCloseToTheSun]

The only game I lost to bant survival the other night was when he had a ridiculous draw of like four big creatures and I couldn't find an answer. He did get survival on line game three and there was no way for me to win but I ended up drawing the match with a timely relic to get rid of wonder and I had a mom boarded. This match-up seems very win-able as long as they don't have a broken start that goes unanswered.

[pi4meterftw]

Bant survival is a very impressive deck, and I would think it is one of the top of pillars of legacy. (I define a pillar as a chain of strictly dominated decks.)

Obviously every deck falls in a pillar, and pillars can converge (which sort of makes the physical analogy somewhat less effective), but being at the top is equivalent to not being strictly dominated by any deck. (Strict domination is a "within reason" thing.)

Additionally, I think that survival is quite a good deck. The top 5 decks in legacy right now are UWT, Bant Survival, Charbelcher, Zoo, and Reanimator. Despite being nearly strictly dominated by Charbelcher, ANT is also pretty good.

If I were the creator of BantSur, I'd probably speak of it with almost as much of an advertising tone that I speak of UWT. It seems to play moderately well without survival. (It's like a strictly worse UWT, which is pretty good.) But then if it lands survival, then it's probably even better than UWT. (Although I've won my fair share of games even after survival resolved, but mostly against other nonBANT survival.) Definitely, BantSur with survival in play is not strictly worse than UWT, which is how it gets to be the top of its own pillar.

But running basics is not an answer to wayfarer waste. To play around wayfarer waste, you have to:

fetch all basics
Never play a nonbasic.

For us to be punished by this, we have to draw a wasteland or wayfarer. Upon this happening, we "only" get to fetch fetchlands, beat with jitte equipped wayfarer, and tap wasteland for 1. I think I'd actually rather my opponents do this, which is the scary thing. At least, it's pretty close. So you think of the people who say "wayfarer is bad. Land Land waste land waste land waste" as retarded, but actually this ridiculous looking strategy puts them in about the same situation as they would be in for playing around wayfarer.

I think if you include the lists stax, CB/top, and landstill with the ones I listed in the top 5, you'll have a list where almost every tier 1-2 deck is either present or strictly dominated by one of the things in the list. (Merfolk<UWT, lands is worse than landstill, goblins is almost strictly worse than zoo, ichorid is worse than reanimator, DS is bad, FS is bad, D&T is worse than UWT, canadian thresh is bad etc.)

[huygee]

Despite being nearly strictly dominated by Charbelcher, ANT is also pretty good.


Why do you believe that belcher > ANT? ANT has hand disruption and counterspells to protect the combo, whereas belcher seems pretty dead to hate.

[pi4meterftw]

Belcher goes off before nonFOW disruption can come online. This gives it a solid like 40% game against decks with FOW, that does not depend on if your opponent brings in hate or not. Against belcher, you bring in thorn of amethyst for show. Like maybe it'll make a difference, but honestly, if you last that long, then it's probably gg. Belcher can always do better by waiting it out vs. aggro (And it can wait longer cause it can win from 1 life.) So it's better vs. aggro than ANT is. It's about the same vs. combo as ANT is, since belcher is faster but ANT can chant, it's probably like a wash. (This is where ANT isn't quite strictly worse, but very close, so it's technically in its own pillar, but it's quite worse than belcher.) Against control, it's not even close. Belcher can ignore hate, unless you're talking decks like landstill without a clock where ANT can probably do that too. But against control with a clock (Like UWT) Belcher is better, and in any case Belcher is at least as good vs. every control deck.

A lot of people seem to be doubting sphinx. I guess I can't ask that you test it, because you have, but I'm curious what you're not seeing that I do, because sphinx seems amazing to me. It's not even the worst creature in the deck. (Usually the flex slot becomes the worst card in the deck, because it's the "debatable" slot, but here Sphinx is not only not the worst card, it's not even the worst creature.)

Often times against zoo, you can't really play for an endgame if they stick a library, but if they do that, then you can play a few avengers which they probably remove, and then play a grunt and a sphinx. The clock is outrageous. If you would like to see this happening both games of a match twice, I've sent Matt I believe two and certainly at least one of the videos of zoo matches where this happens. Keep in mind, path to exile was always a possibility (I had other stuff pathed.)

Even if your opponent conjures up a way to deal with sphinx, then you draw 2-3 cards. Against counterbalance, sphinx slips around CB and then discards all your 1cc stuff, and deals 8-12 damage. Grunts also deal 8-12 damage, barring chumpblocks.

Sphinx essentially turns on a surprisingly powerful aggro substrategy that you can default to if your opponent does something cute like dropping CB/library where it doesn't look like you can win the endgame. It also strengthens the endgame immensely. When it's too expensive, it removes to FOW, or it waits for you to have 3 mana, just like fathom seer does. Or you BS it away. It ups our blue count to 19. I actually think sphinx solved a lot of the deck's few problems: lategame deadweight lands and dazes, small difficulty in sealing the game really early if needed, low blue count. And then it provided answers to questions I wasn't even asking, like: how do I get a stronger team in the air?

[Forbiddian]

Meh, I know I could just tell you this on AIM, but whatever: I disagree about the hate being useless vs. Belcher, it's pretty relevant, since Belcher doesn't actually go off all the time. It sets an upper limit and demands that they have to try to turn 1 us in order to have a chance to win, though. I agree that Belcher is harder, though (although still an extraordinarily good matchup). Against Belcher they can at least try to go off before the hate hits (without requiring a God-hand).

Against ANT if you so much as draw an Enlightened Tutor (or any of the dozen other hate spells), you've already won the game since they can't really go off before you get a chance to resolve Thorn.

And even if they happen to have the Ritual Ritual Ad Nauseam opening, very few ANT players actually go for it against known blue decks, prefering to wait for protection.

Belcher players in general are more used to the idea of accepting the coin flip against Force of Will. Belcher players just go for it, and that makes them a lot scarier because they're willing to challenge our hands, even if they're saying, "I scoop to any one Daze, Force, or Spell Pierce" they're still giving themselves a chance to win the game instead of passing the turn into the maw of Mephisto, the Lord of Hate!

Of course, Belcher has a much weaker game 1, so compared to ANT our matchup is pretty similar.

[pi4meterftw]

Yeah, I agree that we should board in our hate vs. belcher in case they are uninformed. But any reasonable belcher player knows what's coming, and so he will go off turn 1, unless he can't. (Which would be weird.) That's what for show means.

[Yan]

I played a small tourney yesterday... 20-30 players.

1st round against NO-Bant: Mana skrewed him first game and pretty much the same thing in the second. This is such an easy match. 2-0

2nd round against ANT: This was a Finnish version without LED and Infernal Tutor, I actually think it is better than the usual list. This was a close game. First game he wins with just 1 life. Second game I get canonist and win. Third game I get canonist again but it is not enough as he comboes and again wins from 1 life. Great luck for him, not for me.

3rd game against 43 Lands: This was probably the best game of the day. He wins the die and slams his whole hand on the table. He gets pretty much everything to lock me out for many turns and after 2 minutes I decide to scoop it up. Second game I get my hate early and he doesn't have an answer so I slowly win. Third game was quite the same but my hate wasn't so early this time so it was a bit harder. The game ended for me at same time that the time was called so I quess it was the right desicion to scoop right a way and not try to win a really long game.

4th game agains BGW Loam Depths: This was a really cool new deck. He wins the first game because I had no idea what he was playing. Second turn Marit lage is pretty harsh when I didn't have StoP for the token or FoW for the mage. I had daze but he had Mox to play around it. Second game I'm ready and Jitte+Avenger wins the game against 2 Goyfs and 3 Knight of the Reliquary. He fetched Maze of Ith with the knight and Loamed it over and over so it really was a hard game. Nice Deck. Third game I start with a mom and he plays a second turn Chalice for 1. ooops. I really didn't see that one coming. After that I'm pretty much mana skrewed and when I finally get something it's already too late. I should have seen the chalice because usually those kind of decks play it so I think it was my mistake. But a nice guy and a nice deck so he totally deserved it.

5th game against Tempo Thresh: I was the best 2-2 so I had a small chance for top 8, and this was a lottery win match up. UW Tempo is just better than Threshold Tempo. I don't know if he had played the match up before but he did few wrong decisions so it was a pretty easy 2-0. 3-2 and I was 8th after swiss rounds.

Quarters agains ANT: This was another player with the more usual list. Again ANT players have all the luck in the world and I don't. I have nothing to say about this one, bad games and I lose to luck of gods in both games.

[pi4meterftw]

There's now a commentary showing how sphinx works on Forbiddian's Youtube account.

[Hattivita]

took my deck to a 52 player tourney today and made it to top 4 where we split prices.

Match 1: counter top bant with no natural order.

Game 1: wayfarer eats a sword turn one, I come back with mothers and avenger and grunt, that keeps his goyfs small while i draw 3 swords to take care of warmonks. At some point he plays elspeth to send a warmonk flying for an impressive 12 life swing, i crack back with pro green knight + flying avenger to take out elspeth, and then stall up the ground with a second mother, when he had already used 3 swords. he topdecks 2 counterbalance and a top late game, but his goyfs is only 2/3 from instant + walker. and i can effectively block. Avenger goes all the way.
Game 2 he gets turn 2 counterbalance. I test the ground with brainstorm and gets rid of his pridemage with swords. then i get stoneforge through again after testing ground with a force countering a warmonk. i stick a avenger, but lose my grunt and KotWO to blind flips
The "vialed" jitte and an avenger sticks as i reinforce my position with 2 mothers. on his final 2 draws he finds top and Trygon predator. but it is too late.

2-0 (1-0)

Match 2: Merfolk 12 lords

Game 1: I stay on fewer lands than him with wayfarer and bury him in card advantage.
Game 2: he get turn 1 vial, and i lose. I had wayfarer, but he just stayed on 1 and then 2 islands, and i kinda just draw mana while he vials in a lord each turn. I really missed playing with Deed this game >_>.
Game 3: i keep a God hand with hand with plains tundra stoneforge jitte swords spell pierce mother and brainstorm. I play out mother, he plays island. I play stoneforge, he stiffle the trigger. and i think, great, because i have another jitte. Then he waste my tundra, and i don't see a land on my next 12 cards. -_-. I just needed 1 more land to vial in jitte and mob the floor, since he was kinda flooded. and only had adept and muta for a while. The mother keeps me from loosing too much life, but i never see my land until I am dead. :( . sometimes magic is just unfair.

1-2 (1-1)

Match 3: Mono black discard, aggro

Game 1: he is on the play and do dark ritual, duress and hymn. I dont remember much, exept that i slowly claw my way back into the game with mothers stalling up his and wayfarer finding a land or 2 until i had to sack him to gatekeeper. My opponent played a gatekeeper, bob and 2x nyxathid. where i sword the bob and counter a nyxathid.
Mother stalls the ground like a champ while i find avenger. My opponenet then makes a huge mistake of swinging his gatekeeper into death, and i gladly take 4 from the unblocked nyxathid. I draw more cards and his nyxathing shrinks while my avengers barely gets there, with me at 3 in the end.
Game 2: he opens with dark ritual, duress taking force, and play bob. He reveals top to bob and starts playing threats after a couple of turns, as i find some lands with wayfarer and digs for a sword for the bob. (he gets like 3 cards on him for free) Then my opponent drops tombstalker attempts hymn and nighthawk which i pierce and force and another bob (that gives him like 4 cards again). mother and avenger holds the fort barely as he almost get there with nyxathid, tombstalker. But then for some mysterious reason he smallpox when I'm at 3 and i sack my stoneforge mystic, which had already fetched a jitte. and he sacks his bob. I then sword his tombstalker, and jitte avenger beats him down fast, as i stall the ground with mother.
I have never seen someone have such a flying start, and proceed to throw it all away in both games.

2-0 (2-1)

Match 4: Bloodghast dredge

This is a friend of mine that i have tested with for a number of games.
Game 1: I have daze pierce and swords for his early outlets, and wasteland for his paradise. I play avenger, jitte, grunt in the mid game. He never had a chance to go off before i beat him down.
Game 2: I again have the nuts, but this time with hate as follow up. Disruption for his early outlets followed by Wheel of the sun and moon with counters for the chain of vapors ended the game before it even started.

2-0 (3-1)

Match 5: LED dredge

Game 1: I mull to 4, Becuase i have no land in ANY of my 7,6 and 5 hands. I can only disrupt him a little and he goes off turn 4-5 where i have land vial and KotWO. in play and no cards in hand.
Game 2: I mull a no land hand again to 6 and keep a wasteland hand with crypt. I top deck relic on my turn 2, and draw another land turn 3. This disruption is enough to stall the game until jitte + mothers kills off his outlets and grunt seal the game.
Game 3: Again i mull a no lander into a 6, with 2x wasteland and no hate. I mull down to 5 to see a wasteland hand with relic and force + seer. I force his T1 outlet and waste his land, and the game goes to a total stall, where i am able to find another land to play the relic that slowly nibbles away his grave, that have no dredgers at this point. I have a mother in play that hits him for one a couple of turns, while my relic keeps him from doing any explosive plays. and daze / wasteland takes care of blowout cards like breakthrough and coliseum. In the end i get a second white source for avenger, jitte and equip, and the game ends as he desperately resolve a breakthrough for 1 (with no dredgers in the grave), and plays a putrid imp to chump. I sword the imp, and swing over for the last 8 damage with avenger + jitte + mother.

I have never seen so many 0 landers in a row, but i knew the deck had what it took to beat dredge, so i never lost confidence. I thank my friends for playing so much dredge in my local meta, as knowing dredge in and out gave me the insight of what to counter and what to let go, as every card becomes even more important when you start every game 1, 2 or 3 cards down.

Match 6: ID with goblins

I had the best tie breakers for the 12 pointers, and the other 12 pointers played, so going to 13 seemed to be safe for me. It was, but only barely. I get into top 8 placing 8th after the swiss.
I play some matches against the goblins for fun, but i don't concentrate and have crappy draws, so i lose 2 in a row and take the third.

Top 8: match 1 - 43 lands

Game 1: I have never played a single game against 43 lands, and my knowledge of the deck was limited to what i have seen on youtube, and a game i scouted of him playing against reanimator. So i had to work out a gameplan for game one, which turned out to get very rough very fast.
He start out with mox port, and i follow up with plains wayfarer. He then plays mana bond and drops a metric fuckton of lands into play, discarding loam, next turn he dredge loam, transmute academy, plays loam, and he is out of control. I get a force on intuition at some point, but it didnt seem to have an impact on the game. I try to keep up with wayfarer and wastelands, but it is pretty uphill as he tabs down land with port every turn, and threatens wasteland if i drop the tundra i have in hand. I finally get another fetch to get a basic, to play the grunt i had in hand, which is the only out i have at this point. Alas, i foolishly throw away the grunt after only 1 upkeep in a reckless attack against factory and a barbarian ring. :(, he finds a tabernacle, and i decide i have had enough.

Game 2: luckily this deck have a load of dredge hate that also work against land deck, so i sideboard in 8 cards. taking out the dazes, mothers and a sword.
I again start with good draw of crypt land and wayfarer. I hold back the crypt and let an intuition resolve that puts tabernacle and maze in the grave, and a fetch in his hand. On my turn i fetch wasteland and plays crypt, which stalls out the game, as i fetch some more lands, and he plays some more lands. I get a jitte into play and hit him with the mighty wayfarer, to build some counters. My opponents decides to play loam to break the stalemate and i crack the crypt in response. removing a maze and a tabernacle. he restocks his hand with some life from the loam + tolaria west but i manage to land a grunt that forces him to dredge loam but not play it. Next turn i recycle some wastelands, to take out maze, and swing in with some hard hitting grunts. I am on very few lands as my opponent waste and port them down, so i cant actually manage to equip the jitte to the grunt, and i have to play wastes every turn to keep up mazes. I finally manage to get the mazes in check and beat him down.

Game 3: I get a hand with lands but no business, so i decide to go to 6. The 6 i get are decent with wasteland and a relic.
I don't recall all the details but it includes me wasting a factory, and relic away his only card in grave. he then proceeds to manabond into EE, that take away my vial with 1 counter and relic. I have one blue open at this point, but since his grave was empty i decide to try brainstorm. I find no force, and realize that i should have sacked the relic and drawn a card instead. However, after forcing EE once, i find another wasteland for his academy ruins, so i'm safe from the EE lock. Again his table is full of ports and my fear of wasteland forces me to fetch only basics, while he keeps me of casting my avenger, KotWO and Wheel of the sun and moon by tabbing down my second white. However, I do what i can, so i cast stoneforge into a jitte, and finally resolves wheel of the sun and moon + avenger. But just as my jitte wielding avenger is about to kick some serious butt, he drops an ensnaring bridge, followed by manabond, discarding 2 mox, that goes to the bottom of his library. So now the game is stalled again for several turns, as he plays a smokestack, and i play grunt + wayfarer and another vial for smokestack fodder, while i dig for aura of silence. He keeps smokestack on one, and sack manabond + land, while i sack enough land to still find one on the wayfarer, all the while sacking random fodder.
In the end i find an enlightened tutor that finds me an Aura of silence. I destroy the Ensnaring bridge and cracks over for 12, he draws a card and concedes.

The three games took 1:30 hours (no time on top 8) so it was getting late. We decided to split prices top 4, and get home early.

I took home 2 Wasteland, 1 Force and 1 Tundra. So now i am only 2 tundra short for owning my entire UW tempo deck :)

[huygee]

Thanks for the analysis, Jeff and Matt.

People submitting tournament reports: could you please give more details about what version of the deck you're playing?

[Forbiddian]

Nice job smashing face despite some pretty rough luck.

How'd you like the deck in all?

[Hattivita]

Nice job smashing face despite some pretty rough luck.

How'd you like the deck in all?

Thank you :)

I have had the eye on this deck for a while since i saw it go in top 8 on some videos on GGslive.com and i have always seen this kind of deck as the alternate direction of the monowhite death and taxes. which also started out with blue and mother of runes, but later dropped it.

I really enjoy playing this kind of deck for a number of reasons.
1) I like to play decks with options, that have a solid game plan against any achetype in the field, combo, control or aggro.
2) I like to play control
3) I like to play WW

This deck condenses everything I like about magic into one deck, without playing cards i despise (top, counterbalance and goyf).

I think this deck is somewhat in the same style as the countertop decks, as it is a control deck playing creatures which are very hard to deal with. (you can call them slippery). in countertop you have a counterwall. where in UW tempo, mothers give you protection and a jitte wins in combat.
UW tempo happens to chose utility over body, as wayfarer and mothers might be small, but often they bring so much more than any number of goyfs and warmonks can bring.

However, that being said, I think I would like to note some room for improvements. especially when it comes to sideboarding.
From the front page list I had
+1 KotWO
-1 seer

My sideboard was:
1 Crypt
1 Relic
1 Wheel of the sun and moon
1 Ethersworn canonist
1 Thorn of amathyst
1 Ghostly prison
2 E.tutors
2 Aura of silence
2 Burrenton Forge Tender
1 Karakas
1 Mishra's factory
1 Jotun grunt

I added the extra KotWO maindeck to increase my recovery rate after daze / seer, and also because i think that the seer is many times too dead in the early game. Im not sure if it was smart, as one of the problems I noted was: I often had problems having blue cards to pitch to force.
I have not read all 50 pages of this thread, so i don't know what the consensus on this problem is. Im still not sure if 3 or 4 seer is the correct number.

In the sideboard, i feel like you are very prepared against dredge and ANT, while i am not so sure you have what it takes to handle reanimator. The karakas was added as an out to Iona from both reanimator and dredge, but it was never relevant. (I sided it in against dredge to up my land count!). I never found a situation where i really wanted the man land. so this SB slot was clearly a mistake.

What i have done now is to take out the 2 lands, and put in 2x EE. As I see this card could be relevant in charbelcher, ichorid, lands as well as goblins, merfolk and mirror to get rid of resolved vial, lackey, mother, wayfarer etc. on 0 it can handle a bunch of tokens or even resolved chalice. @1 or 2

For the reasons stated about Force pitching, I think propaganda would overall be better than ghostly prison.

When playing against other decks with jitte: Did you guys consider having another jitte in SB to increase your chance of having your jitte to stick and not theirs?

Another comment I got was: Why do I run aura of silence over seal of cleansing? Other than being easier to cast through counterbalance, I could not find any argument that justified paying 1WW instead of just 1W. Against lands, you definately want the seal, but i guess aura can also be added as an extra hate piece against ANT? overall, I think you should definitely consider the speed and consistency of seal, over the added benefits of aura, maybe you could split it?

[Nelis]

I have a crazy idea. I haven't tested it or anything but its been swirling around in my mind for a while now. I've been thinking of a a totally different approach towards the Zoo and possibly other matchups as well.

How about running a single Sword of the Meek and a single Thopter Foundry in the sideboard? Taking into account there are also 3 Enlightened Tutors in the board.

We have 5 ways of getting Sword of the Meek (3 Enlightened Tutor and 2 Stoneforge Mystic) en 3 ways of getting Thopter Foundry. Even without Thopter Foundry Sword of the Meek isn't really that bad in this deck since we run 8 1/1 creatures. So if you happen to draw it (and not have thopter foundry) it still has its uses.

I'll try it out myself when I have time but it wont be anytime soon but I'd like your thoughts on it beforehand anyway.

[Little Red Riding Hood]

Short overview of my weekend:

Saturday, 18 players, 5 rounds.

2-1 vs. Ichorid
2-0 vs. Monoblack Pox
2-1 vs. BUg Reanimator
1-2 vs. Death & Taxes (harsh matchup)
1-2 vs. Ichorid

Sunday, Outpost Masters Legacy Sideevent, 28/29 players, 5 rounds + top 8.

2-1 vs. ANT (NLS?)
2-1 vs. Rb Goblins
ID with a friend (ANT)
2-0 vs. Bu Reanimator
ID (ProBant)

Top 8
2-0 vs. 4c Landstill
2-0 vs. Dreamhalls
Split the finals (ProBant)

I'll post a tournament report for the second event later. =)

[Forbiddian]

I added the extra KotWO maindeck to increase my recovery rate after daze / seer, and also because i think that the seer is many times too dead in the early game.

What i have done now is to take out the 2 lands, and put in 2x EE. As I see this card could be relevant in charbelcher, ichorid, lands as well as goblins, merfolk and mirror to get rid of resolved vial, lackey, mother, wayfarer etc. on 0 it can handle a bunch of tokens or even resolved chalice. @1 or 2

For the reasons stated about Force pitching, I think propaganda would overall be better than ghostly prison.

When playing against other decks with jitte: Did you guys consider having another jitte in SB to increase your chance of having your jitte to stick and not theirs?

Another comment I got was: Why do I run aura of silence over seal of cleansing? Other than being easier to cast through counterbalance, I could not find any argument that justified paying 1WW instead of just 1W. Against lands, you definately want the seal, but i guess aura can also be added as an extra hate piece against ANT? overall, I think you should definitely consider the speed and consistency of seal, over the added benefits of aura, maybe you could split it?

Haha, it's funny, we're actually not running any copies of KotWO anymore. I really loved when it was in the deck, for the exact reasons stated, but there's really strong pressure on us to churn out a >50% Zoo matchup (since Zoo is the only reasonably common deck that has a good matchup against us right now) and KotWO is particularly weak against Zoo.

EE I found not to be good, only very good against Belcher and pretty good against Ichorid. Every three months, Jeff and I get excited about running it, but it continually has been terrible against Goblins, Merfolk, and Zoo (the decks we think it might perform against). If it's only good against Belcher and Ichorid, we can find better

I've actually cut Propaganda and GP entirely. It's easier just to prevent Ichorid from doing anything, and I haven't so far missed having them against Belcher. If there's a lot of Belcher in your metagame, you might want one copy of EE to handle the tokens, but I wouldn't recommend both Propaganda and GP.

Not really (@Jitte comment). Board space is at a premium.

Aura turns a very tough MU (Enchantress) into a very easy MU, hates the hell out of storm combo, and it's more useful against CB. It also notably stops ANT players trying to use Hurkyl's Recall effects to remove our hate.

Hurkyl's Recall goes through Canonist, Thorn, Relic, bounces Jitte, and also prevents revialing Canonist. I've never had a combo player dig and resolve a Hurkyl's Recall in time, but it's a possibility and why I generally try to get Aura of Silence out as well.

[kicbak]

I played the "newer" version with vexing sphinx this weekend and went 2-2.

1-2 Reanimator - game 3 kept 6 with 1 land and 2 brainstorms and a curfew but never found another land before he dropped iona naming blue.
2-0 Team America - drew swords like crazy to keep Tombstalker away from me
0-2 Lands - Game one just seems terrible to me. Other then an earlier Grunt (2 of), it seems really hard to beat. Game 2 got Wheel of sun and moon into play but just drew crap and got killed by Factories...
2-0 Merfolk - Wayfarer kept pulling wasteland game 1. Game 2 - Jitte on anything to get counters wrecks 1/1 and 2/1 merfolk.

I really enjoy the deck. I've watched the vids and have a few questions.
Lands - I seem to have trouble with it. Any tips? Wasteland has so many targets I'm not sure I pick the right one. Ith, Academy ruins for EE and Tabernacle seems really hard to overcome. It almost makes me want to run limited resources in the SB.

I hardly ever seem to use the Sphinx. It seems if I have enough to cast I almost always want a fathom instead since it really helps dig for a force when I really, really need it. When I have enough land to discard to the sphinx it seems a little win more. After getting hit with firespout twice I was thinking I might try Serendib since a 4 toughness seems helpful. Keeping enough blue in the deck for FoW makes the last 2 slots blue or gold. There have been a lot of post about meddling mage and I may try that depending on the meta. I was also thinking Thalakos Seer may be decent with jitte and getting a card when they have to remove it.

I really wish there was a Serra Avatar like card in blue as it is amazing in deck.

[Phoenix Ignition]

Every tournament match I've played with the deck I've reported. I have a feeling that the majority of players have done the same.

How did the tourney go last Thursday? I don't see your report, strangely enough.

[JohnnyCage]

So whats the "current' list then if we had to post an "optimized" one with board

[Hattivita]

@kicbak:

Yes the lands matchup seems pretty much unwinnable pre board, unless they stumble, and you are fast out the gate with dudes and jitte. + wastes for his mazes and counter his loam, as it is his CA engine, and without it he can do nothing.
Fetch basics so you blank out his wastelands. and hold on to nonbasics untill you need the mana.

but as you say, if he gets loam active, your only mainboard out is a grunt.

my wasteland priority was:
tabernacle
academy ruins (if he have EE, if not, get mazes first)
mazes
ports
man lands

man lands should only be wasted if you have no other way to deal with them, but since you have jitte and swords they should not be a priority at all. It takes 10 turns to die to a factory, you have all the time in the world.
some goes for ports. If you have a wayfarer, you can just activate him and fetch a land when he tabs you down, so you don't lose too much.
Your wastelands are your best friend, don't play it unless he plays some important land, if you play waste, he will just waste your waste, he dont worry about land tempo, he just worry about surviving until he can find a loam and destroy you. After he gets rid of your waste, he just plays a maze, and you cant get there.
If he gets tabernacle, you will lose a ridicules amount of tempo if you keep up your creatures, but if you don't, then you don't have a clock. tabernacle is quite a predicament.

After sideboarding, my strategy is not to beat down, but to win the control game, you must remember he can barely interact with your CA engine, while you have 4 grave hate pieces + 2 tutors in the board, that all hurt his engine.

I sided out dazes and mothers, but kept the spell pierce, as it can potentially counter an early intuition, loam or a smokestack if you are lucky.

Play the wheel ASAP if possible, but hold back with the crypt and relic (play the relic if he only have few cards in grave). he cant loam as instant, so you will most likely catch him with his pants down. Remember it gets exponentially harder for him to find additional loams, while your grunt can recycle everything that goes to your grave, especially wastelands and crypt / relic. Grunt is MVP in this matchup as he destroys their engine, and bash through pumped factory.
Without loam it is very hard for him to find up the lands he need, while you get your wastes for free with wayfarer.

once he have no mazes/tabernacle/ ensnaring bridge he dies very fast to your army.

Limited resources might seem as a good idea, but in reality it is total suicide:
Best case: you are on 5 lands and resolve a limited resources: he sacs some lands, but then play loam > manabond > play some wastelands > kills of your manabase, and plays even more lands. The game will end pretty quick when he is on 10 lands and you are on 0. I know some run ghost quarter, so don't count on your basics too much.

[Forbiddian]

my wasteland priority was:
tabernacle
academy ruins (if he have EE, if not, get mazes first)
mazes
ports
man lands


Game 1 I waste:

Green Sources (when I think I can mana screw him for green)
Tabernacle
Academy Ruins
Mazes

I don't waste wastes on anything else.

I've found I have almost no chance to win game 1 if I just cross my fingers that Grunt can get there. If you're wasting the green sources from the start, a counterspell or two on the loam (coupled with more wastelands) can pretty easily get you there or stall until Jotun Grunt can save the day.

I have a match that I'm not allowed to post for a bit where I do this to win a game 1 handily. Note that he can't both dredge the Loam AND draw green sources, so if you run his hand out of green sources, then it'll take him at least two turns (with a lot of luck) to Loam, and more like 3-4 turns.

[rayaj]

So whats the "current' list then if we had to post an "optimized" one with board

I'm in agreement here, I'm testing with the first post build and would like to see the more current list

[Forbiddian]

Check post 900 for Jeff's current build. It's pretty good, I approve.



All tournament reports
Due to recent criticisms levied, and some thought (believe it or not, I actually had thought about the problem, and now have thought of a solution), I’ve changed the way that the tournament reports are tabulated.

There is a problem of people only recording their top performances with the deck and not posting all of the times that they lost. This obviously would make UW Tempo look better than it is.

Ideally we want results from every tournament played by every person ever playing UW Tempo, because the results serve a more important purpose than bragging rights: I actually go through these to identify potential problem matchups and discuss with other UW Tempo pilots problems and solutions.

To help alleviate the problem, the tournament reports are now categorized into two distinct categories:

1) Trusted Reports
2) Questionable Reports

A trusted report is at a minimum risk of this sampling error. It’s a report posted by a regular user of The Source or about a person who can accurately be datamined. A trusted report is a report from a user who has shown willingness to post ALL of his finishes, even unimpressive finishes.

Only Trusted reports will be used for further data analysis.

The rules
Any user who has posted an unimpressive finish is trusted, and all his tournament reports are trusted reports. By posting an unimpressive finish (possibly at my veritable begging for people to do this), he’s displayed a willingness to put the data first. These users can be counted upon for reliable tournament results.

Exception: for obvious reasons, reports from Forbiddian and pi4meterftw are trusted. And at any rate, if either of us went to a tournament and didn’t make top 8, you’d hear about it whether we told you or not. I can’t go to a tournament without people recognizing my girly voice from Youtube (or how much of an asshole I am).

Note: This sets an upper limit to how well UW Tempo can possibly do, since players are essentially required to do poorly before their matches can be counted. For two examples: Jeff and I have only played in a few tournaments and have always done well. I’m sure at least a few of the tournament reports posted in the Questionable column are indeed the only tournaments ever played. Still, in the interest of having only the most trusted possible data, I’m removing the deck’s winningest performances.

To this end, I’ve removed a TON of reports with amazing finishes because I’m just not sure if those users are posting all of their results or not.

If your reports are Questionable: Please keep posting results. Eventually you will have a bad day :-P. I will still look at questionable results and maintain the list, and it’s still very useful to me.

If you can show some proof (e.g. an image of your match history from The DCI) that you’ve posted all of your tournament results, the report will be moved to trusted. Yeah, it’s a lot of work, I’m sorry! It would help us all out, though, if you could do this.

If your reports are trusted and you have not posted a poor performance and have no plans to post the results in the future (or have forgotten the results), please post in the thread so I can move your reports to questionable. You can check your DCI match history to help you try to remember, I’ll work with you to try to salvage any data (or possibly just add the results to the total without having specific game-by-game results). Sorry for the work, but I want to get this right.

If your report is trusted and you’ve failed to post a GOOD performance, I would like to see the results if possible, but don’t worry about it too much, we’re mainly looking just to avoid missing bad performances.

Questionable Reports
Anatural Death*: 5-2-1 @ SCGs.
RexFtw: 5-1. Goblins (1), Threshold (1), ANT (1-2 loss), Stax (0), ANT (1), Dream Halls (1).
mcnubbins2t*: 5-1. Ug Faeries (1), Life.dec (?), Dreadstill (?), Bant Survival (?), Ichorid (?), Rb Goblins (0-2 loss)
Amaroid*: 4-0-1. WStax(1), BUG Thresh (1), Tempo Thresh (0), Bant Survival (1), Zoo (1-1-1 draw).
Chokin*: 3-0. GR Burn/Sligh (0), Dredge (0), Canadian Thresh (0), NOBant (ID (1-0 win in the fun game))
Little Red Riding Hood's friend: 5-0-2. Trisomy 21 (0), LoamRock (1), BantSur (0), NLS (1), Ichorid (0), ANT (1-1-1 Draw), Ub Faeries (1-1-1 draw)
Nelis: 2-1-1. Thropter Combo (0-2 Loss), Dragon Stompy (1-1-1 Draw), Faeries (1), Dredge (1),
Scud: 2-0. Goblins (0), Landstill (1)
Ocean: 4-1. Countertop (0), Zoo (1), Demon Stompy (0), Goblins (1), Zoo (1-2 Loss)
Hattivita: 5-1. CT Bant (0), Merfolk (1-2 Loss), MBA (0), Ichorid (0), Ichorid (0), Lands (1)
huygee
3-0. Landstill (0), NO Bant (1), Dragon Stompy (0).

Jedi_Gof: 4-1. WB Aggro (0), MBC (0), ANT (1), NO Bant (1-2 Loss), Lands (1),
Jedi_Gof: 3-2. Losses to Reanimator and Aluren.
Jedi_Gof: 5-0. Meathooks (0), Ichorid (0), Zoo (0), Lands (1), Merfolk (0)

Even though Jedi_Gof played in multiple tournaments, and had a fairly unimpressive finish, he wasn’t consistently posting all his data. I don't know which decks he beat for his 3-2 score.

Fouzt
4-2. Dredge (1), Reanimator (1-2 Loss), Countertop (1), RGB Goblins (0-2 Loss), Eva Green (1), Mono G NO Pro (1).

This guy is also on the fence. He didn’t make top 8, and I have assurances that it was his only Legacy tournament (so he couldn’t possibly be leaving tournaments out). Still, I set up the rules to increase transparency and confidence in the data collection, so Fouzt is out. Sorry, Eric, I still want to find out how you’re doing with the deck if you go to any more events. I might see you in May.

"Clarance" (not a member of The Source, but I've been getting regular updates on his performance since he lives sorta by me
5-1-1: Tempo Thresh (0), Zoo (0), ProBant (1-1-1 draw), Supreme Blue (1), Merfolk (?, win), Belcher (0), ProBant (0-2 loss)
6-1-1: Zoo (1-1-1 Draw), Merfolk (1-2 Loss), Zoo (0), Bant Survival (0), Merfolk (0), Rgb Goblins (0), Merfolk (0), Merfolk (0)

Again, pretty sure these are the only tournaments he’s been to, but he’s not even a source member, so whatever. I still would like to get updates on how this individual is doing. Go Clarance, I might see you in May.

Total Questionable Report Record: 70-14-8



Trusted Reports:
Forbiddian:
5-1 @ Pro Tour. Ugr Dreadstill (1), Tempo Thresh (0), Merfolk (0), Enchantress (1), Belcher (1), Top 4: Enchantress (1-2 loss)
4-2-1 @ Knightware. SI Pact (0), Tempo Thresh w/ EE (1-1-1 draw), Pro Bant (0), Painter's Grind (0), Pro Bant (0-2 loss), Dragon Stompy (1), Top 8: Eva Green (1-2 loss)
Total: 9-3-1

pi4meterftw
7-1. (See Star City Games Database for match history)
Total: 7-1

Aaron Wayne:
Awayne*: 5-1-1. (See Star City Games Database for match history)
Awayne: 6-2-1. (See Star City Games Database when it's posted -- doesn't look like this is happening)
Awayne: 1-2. (See Star City Games Database when it's posted -- doesn't look like this is happening)
Total: 12-5-2

Tinefol:
1-2*. Goblins (0-2 loss), Aluren (0-2 loss), ProBant (0)
1-3. Crappy MonoU Illusions/Donate (1-2 loss), ANT (0), B/w Midrange (0-2 loss), Enchantress (1-2 loss)
3-0. Belcher (0), RGW Aggro Loam (0), Merfolk (0)
3-1. LEDless Ichorid (0), ANT(0), BGWSA(0-2 loss), Goblins (0)
6-0. Merfolk (0), Train Wreck (1), Tempo Thresh (0), Swans (1), Tempo Thresh (0), Train Wreck (1)
2-1-1. Bant (1-1-1 draw, 40 minute rounds, said he had it wrapped up), Dark Depths (0), Zoo (0-2 Loss), Aggro Loam (0).
5-4. Survival Bant (0-2 loss), Dream Halls (1), Merfolk (0), Dreadstill (0-2 loss), Dream Halls (1), Bant CB (0-2 loss), Dragon Stompy (1), Bant CB (0), ANT (1-2 loss)
3-1. Lands (0-2 loss), Eva Green Depths (0), Bant CB (0), Bant CB (0)
3-1. Ichorid (?), MUC (?), Team America (?), Belcher (? Loss).
3-2. Reanimator (?), Reanimator (?), Enchantress (?), Ichorid (? Loss), Countertop (? Loss)
2-2-1. ANT (?), Faerie Stompy (?), MysticFish (? Loss), Reanimator (? Loss), Zoo (1-1-1 Draw).
4-0. BGW Fish, UW Fish, ANT, MonoU Faeries. Game data unknown.
4-0. Reanimator (0), Mono G NO Survival (0), Merfolk (1), Reanimator (0)
2-1-1. UR Fish (0-1 Loss [Editor’s comment: Holy shit! Long game]), UW Mystic Fish (1-1-1 draw), Zoo (1-0 Win [Editor’s comment: Holy shit^2]), BGW Rock (0).
3-2. Bg Train Wreck (0), MonoG Progenitus Survival (1), Bant-Something (#922) (0-1 Loss), MUC (0), Bant-Something (0-2 Loss)
2-2. Ichorid (0), BGW Survival (1-2 Loss), White Weenie (0), Mono G Prog Survival (0-2 Loss)
Total: 47-22-3

Stuckpixel:
1-1-1*. W/B Pestilence (0), Eva Green (1-2 loss), Goblins (1-1-1 draw)
4-0. Type 2 Allies (?), B/W Pestilence (?), GBW Midrange (?), Reanimator Hulk (?)
2-1-1. Merfolk (1-1-1 draw), 4c Landstill (0-2 loss), Lands (0), Merfolk (0)
Total: 7-2-2

Colo:
1-2-1*. Type 2 Soldiers (0), Bant Countertop (1-2 loss), Bant Survival (1-1-1 draw), NO Bant (1-2 loss)
2-2 (possibly 2-0-2): Unknown matchups.
3-0-1: Bant Survival (?, win), Aggro Loam (0), GW Survival (1-1-1 draw), Some European Gwb Loam deck (1).
3-1: Elf Aggro (?), MBA (?), WG Weenie (0), Survival (0-2 loss).
2-0-2: MBA (1), Dredge (0), Trisomy 21 (1-1-1 draw), Trisomy 21 (1-1-1 draw)
1-2. NO Bant (0), Reanimator (0-2 Loss), Imperial Painter (0-2 Loss)
3-0-1. UW Crap (0), Bant Survival (0), Non-Imperial Painter (0), Trisomy 21 (1-1-1 Draw)
Total: 15-7-5

Jeanbathez
1-1-2*. Merfolk (1-1-1 draw), Goblins (0), Supreme Blue (1-1-1 draw), Elves (1-2 loss), Bgw Loam Pox (No idea what happened)
3-1-1. Zoo (0-2 loss), UB Mill (0), Belcher (0), UB Reanimator (0), Dream Halls (1-2 loss)
Total: 4-2-3

Little Red Riding Hood
5-1. Zoo (1), ANT (1-2 loss), Tempo Thresh (0), Dragon Stompy (1), Countertop Throper (0), NLS (1)
3-0-2. Ichorid (1), Lands (1-1-1 Draw), Dragon Stompy (1), Gw Survival (1-1-1 Draw), Ichorid (0)
3-2. Ichorid (1), Pox (0), UBg Reanimator (1), Death and Taxes (1-2 Loss), Ichorid (1-2 Loss).
3-0. ANT (1), Rb Goblins (1), UB Reanimator (0), 4c Landstill (0), Dreamhalls (0)
Total: 14-3-2


Yan
7-0-1. ANT (1), Zoo (1-1-1 draw), Merfolk (0), Merfolk (1), Zoo (1); Top 8: Zoo (1), Belcher (0), Reanimator (1).
3-3. NO Bant (0), ANT (1-2 Loss), Lands (1), BGW Loam Depths (1-2 Loss), Tempo Thresh (0), ANT (0-2 Loss)
Total: 10-3-1

Trusted people with only one report, by definition, these have to be losing records
TooCloseToTheSun
2-2-1. Elves (?), Eva Green (?), Goblins (? Loss), MWC (? Loss), Bant Survival (1-1-1 Draw)

kicbak
2-2. Reanimator (1-2 Loss), Team America (0), Lands (0-2), Merfolk (0).

Citrus-God*
2-2. Goblin Sligh (0), Zoo (0-2 loss), NO Bant (1), UWB Countertop (0-2 loss)

Damnosus*
1-2. Ichorid (1-2 Loss), ProBant(0-2 Loss), Belcher (0).

Plague Sliver:
1-3. Life (0-2 Loss), Ichorid (0), ANT (1-2 Loss), Lands (0-2 Loss).

Teumie
2-4. Goblins (0-2 Loss), Stax (1), Faeries (1-2 Loss), RecSur (0-2 Loss), Eva Green (0), Zoo (1-2 Loss).

Total Trusted Users With Only 1 Report: 10-15-1

Total Trusted Record: 135-63-22

[Forbiddian]

New post because some asshole posted a wall of text right above me.


People have been asking about matchups:



Bant (included CB Bant and NO Bant)
8-5-1

Tempo Thresh
5-0-1

Goblins
3-3-1

Zoo
4-4-2

Ichorid
8-3

ANT
6-6

Belcher
6-1

Merfolk
9-0-2

Lands
2-3-1

Survival Bant
2-1-2

Eva Green
2-2


More or less what I expected, actually. I'm a little surprised that ANT is so low, I generally think of this MU as at least 75%, and the storm combo players I test against also agree.

I'm also surprised that Merfolk is so high. I normally think of it as basically a bye, but not *that* much of a bye.

[Phoenix Ignition]

Forbiddian, while I honestly appreciate that you are going super in depth to try to get less biased results (and the new matchup list you posted looks A LOT more accurate), I just want to point out that it is still going to be slightly skewed by non-reporting of individuals. People may say they had a bad night or whatever, but I can only say what I see out of experience, and you still aren't getting all of the results.

Case in point:




Stuckpixel:
1-1-1*. W/B Pestilence (0), Eva Green (1-2 loss), Goblins (1-1-1 draw)
4-0. Type 2 Allies (?), B/W Pestilence (?), GBW Midrange (?), Reanimator Hulk (?)
2-1-1. Merfolk (1-1-1 draw), 4c Landstill (0-2 loss), Lands (0), Merfolk (0)
Total: 7-2-2






Every tournament match I've played with the deck I've reported. I have a feeling that the majority of players have done the same.How did the tourney go last Thursday? I don't see your report, strangely enough.

X-3 (or 4, didn't see his last game) finishes at weekly 4 round tournaments still don't get reported. Even by "trustworthy"s who say they do.

[Forbiddian]

X-3 (or 4, didn't see his last game) finishes at weekly 4 round tournaments still don't get reported. Even by "trustworthy"s who say they do.

Thanks for the tipoff.

I've alerted the FBI that his tournament report is 3 days late AND COUNTING. They've pulled every person off the Tiger Wood's case to look for Stuckpixel's missing tournament report. Oh no, it's just passed midnight. Shit, it's now TUESDAY! His tournament report is FOUR DAYS LATE!!!

Seriously, check his profile. He hasn't posted anything in over a week (since two days before "Tournament Gate"), meaning he probably just hasn't been around. Is there any particular reason why you're implying that Stuckpixel is systematically hiding tournament results before giving him a chance to post anything? He actually pretty routinely goes a couple weeks without posting anything, so it's not even to the point of being unusual.


But yeah, you sound really, really obsessive right now. It's only been 3 days and you already have two posts screaming at him... and he's not even here. Lmfao.

[colo]

This Sunday, I finished 2-2. Lost to RGw Zoo 0-2 (I had adapted my board to be able to beat Reanimator, exchanging Forge Tenders for Curfews - that further weakens the Zoo matchup, and quite naturally, I was paired against the meta's only Zoo player round one ;)), won against Elf Aggro 2-0, won against CBTop-Supreme Blue 2-0, and lost to ANT 2-1. I would have won the last match, if my opponent weren't so quick about (whether willingly or not) cheating a Lotus Petal for 0 into play while I missed making pay him 2 for it due to my Aura of Silence, and immediately playing Orim's Chant off of it. "Panicking", I flipped my Fathom Seer to draw into (more) counters, and after I'd drawn my two cards, someone from outside questioned his play of Lotus Petal. The judge was summonned, we both received a warning, and it was decided that we'd have to make the most out of what we had played as of then. So I Spell Pierced his Chant (I had that Spell Pierce for a while already, Fathom Seer did not draw me anything useful, sadly), he answered with Dark Ritual off of Chrome Mox, paying two this way. He went on to tap his Island, playing LED in turn, playing some more rituals, followed by the usual Tutor-Tendrils-finish. I was pretty pissed, finished 8th instead of 3rd, and my opponent won a mint Survival of the Fittest.