[DECK] T2: Judgement Day

[GGoober]

Tezzeretor 2: Judgement Day
(T2JD)

I haven't tested this list extensively but the idea has been brewing ever since I saw Adam Barnello's (Nightmare's) Counterthopter list (http://sales.starcitygames.com/deckdatabase/displaydeck.php?DeckID=37040). I really loved the concept behind his list and felt it was pretty amazing. Recent posts on the Counterthopter forum has also showed some promising results (http://www.mtgthesource.com/forums/showthread.php?16836-[Deck]-CounterTop-Thopter&p=534801&viewfull=1#post534801).

I PM'd Nightmare about bringing the discussion of this deck forward on N&D because I feel the core of the deck is significantly different from Counterthopter (being a more artifact focused deck than an ETutor focused deck). The direction that T2JD plays could be considered a much more pro-active approach to Counterthopter than traditional Counterthopter (essentially a deck utilizing ETutor to answer opponents reactively). Before I end up talking too much, here's the list that I've conjured up in the past week, basing off his SCG list and the list found on the original Counterthopter thread.


LANDS: 20
1 Ancient Den
4 Seat of the Synod
1 Vault of Whispers
2 Island
1 Plains
4 Flooded Strand
2 Polluted Delta
2 Tundra
2 Underground Sea
1 Academy Ruins

DRAW/TUTORS: 12
4 Sensei's Divining Top
4 Brainstorm
1 Artificer's Intuition
2 Enlightened Tutor
1 Future Sight

OTHERS: 4
3 Mox Opal
1 Pithing Needle

WIN-CONDITION: 7
1 Cursed Scroll (counts as removal)
1 Sword of the Meek
2 Thopter Foundry
3 Tezzeret. Agent of Bolas

PERMISSION: 9
3 Counterbalance
2 Counterspell
4 Force of Will

REMOVAL: 9
1 Engineered Explosives
1 Executioner's Capsule (recurring out to Emrakul)
4 Swords to Plowshares
3 Ensnaring Bridge

Sideboard: 15
1 Humility
1 Pithing Needle
2 Ethersworn Canonist
3 Spell Pierce
2 Engineered Plague
2 Perish
2 Tormod's Crypt
1 Relic of Progenitus
1 Counterbalance

TOTAL BLUE SPELLS: 20
TOTAL ARTIFACTS: 23
0CMC: 24
1CMC: 17
2CMC: 9
3CMC: 3
4CMC: 3
5CMC: 5


The list is still premature, but the idea is to play Counterthopter with a heavy artifact theme, utilizing the strengths of the Moxen Opal, and synergy of Tezzeret in the deck to win faster than regular Counterthopter lists. I think the CMC-Distribution is much smoother than most Counterthopter lists. The blue count is also high up there, and I love Etutor but not as a x4 losing too many cards.

What I found to be the strongest card in the deck is easily: Ensnaring Bridge. Bridge shuts down so many decks currently it's not even funny. With the combination of Countertop + Ensnaring Bridge, you should be prone to just Krosan Grip and will be able to lock out most aggro decks with the exception of Goblins and opposing Thopter tokens :P Bridge is a universal answer to GWx decks (if you can protect it), Emrakul/Progenitus, Merfolks, Dredge, and many other decks seeking to attack with the combat step. What I like about Bridge is that it's 1 mana cheaper than Humility/Moat, and stops aggro with greater certainty than either Humility/Moat (although Humility/Moat usually spells GG just as good against various decks).

Jace TMS is obviously powerful, but I felt that it didn't provide as much in Barnello's list i.e. Jace is good in his list because it's Jace! Tezz 2.0 is a MUCH faster win condition, and digs much faster than Jace ever will. Jace's Brainstorm is universally powerful in any situation whereas Tezz's 2.0's +1 is somewhat situational, but since T2JD is designed to dig for specific artifacts, this helps in what the deck is trying to achieve. The scry 5 is insane (can you imagine digging 10 cards in just 2 turns?). If you have 5 artifacts in play (easy situation, you will Tendrils your opponents for 10, stabilizing your life total easily against aggro). If you have 10 artifacts in play, you will Tendrils for 20 to win. The beauty I feel in this list is really the synergy in Tezzeret to dig faster/deeper for the thoptercombo or Ensnaring Bridge, to win with 5/5s when needed (very rare), the huge synergy of Tezz's ultimate in the deck with/without the Thopter combo.

I play 3 Bridge mainly to easily win my aggro matchups game 1. Postboard I'll bring in more hate accordingly or board out Bridges against non-aggro decks.

Artificer's Intuition has been a card I'm always trying to break in Legacy. With the new artifacts, it's finding a place. It cycles excess bridges/opals/thopters/tops, and grabs business spells. It's good synergy with spinning the Top, and I replace them as the 3rd to 4th ETutors. I originally wanted to squeeze painter servant combo in this list with Humility but find it difficult. I was trying to squeeze + 1 Locket of Yesterdays for the Artificer's Intuition (SotF combo chain: discard artifact find Top, discard Top find Locket, play Locket and your Tops play out for :0: and start going nuts with Futuresight) but it was also too tight and not worth the cute combo. Futuresight itself was a great card by itself, and has inbuilt synergy with Top and Artificer's Intuition. The other big advantage of Artificer's Intuition is it acts as a 'permanent' Enlightened Tutor for 1cmc artifacts, always giving you outs, and shuffling your Tops when the top 3 are bad. Artificer's Intuition can dig for recurring Executioner's Capsule, Needle on Jace/vial, EE, Mox, Top, Cursed scroll to win slowly or as an answer to tribal or opposing Jace.

All efforts for the eventual development of this deck goes to Adam Barnello (Nightmare) for initiating such a cool list! When the deck is slowly taking shape and if I have some time, I'll be willing to tidy up the thread a little more.

[perm]

can you explain future sight?

[Amon Amarth]

This deck looks really good. How good is Cursed Scroll? Do you use it as removal or a lategame wincon that chips away the last lifepoints?

[GGoober]

Cursed scroll is borderline playable in Legacy IMO. However, in the matchups where it shines, it really shines. It's mainly brought in against tribal (not too effective against Merfolks, you need Bridge here), but the nice thing about Cursed Scroll in this list is that it is tutorable with Artificer's Intuition, and also being synergistic with the overall playstyle of Counterthopter (i.e. having a small hand size and playing the game with just SDT).

Cursed Scroll is MVP against 3 matchups:
- Goblins (if you can keep them in check, it's GG, otherwise it only pings off the more importantly Goblins)
- Merfolks (same deal as Goblins)
- Opposing control decks/planeswalker
- Great under bridge as an alternate win-condition.

Perm:
Future Sight was played in one of the Counterthopter list. It was an interesting take due to the huge synergy with Sensei's Divining Top. Basically with Top, you can tap Top to draw a card, then the top card of your library is Top, which Future Sight says that you can play it from the top of your library. You are essentially drawing a card for :1:. The more important application is being able to use Future Sight with Top's spinning 3 cards, and generating huge advantage. It maybe unnecessary, but it's one of those cards that's great against slower mid-range control/rock decks (a good way to recouperate card loss). The way I initiated this list was based primarily on Countertop + Ensnaring Bridge as a combo to slow aggro and most decks. However, you don't win Legacy by creating locks, you have to win fast and Counterthopter traditionally has a slow time winning, so this list utilizes a few neat spells that works well in the list: Future Sight, Cursed Scroll, Artificer's Intuition (to dig for Cursed Scroll etc), Tezz 2.0.

I haven't tested the list yet, but would be testing some games out this Saturday after my weekly local tournament.

[ivanpei]

I'm not really sold on Tez 2.0 though. I feel that he is mad good in Affinity but I prefer Jace in other controll-ish builds. There are times when I super impulse and get pissed off. Sure, I rarely whiff but sometimes I am forced to grab crap like an opal or an artifact land. You don't always get great artifact draws with it. Jace's Brainstorm on the other hand, is always good. Also, you are likely going to need to ultimate twice (or more) to kill an opponent as you don't chip away at your opponent's life total. Jace is a soft lock that eventually kills and kills faster/as fast as Tez, since you probably need to ultimate twice with Tez. The 2nd ability is crap under a bridge and you probably won't be using it. Jace IMO is better as a kill condition and as Gas. I have to admit opal is really good. I played opal in Painter and its awesome. In this deck, w/o welder, you are forced to play artifact lands just for opal's metalcraft. You also play bad artifacts to synergize with Opal, Tez 2 and artificer's intuition. I have a feeling standard UW thopthers is just simpler and probably more effective. It has a stabler 2 colour manabase and pretty much locks up the board similar to this deck.

[Infinitium]

Locket of Yesterdays allows you to set up Sensei/Sensei using only Artificer's Intuition. Something to keep in mind if you're rocking Future Sight.

[GGoober]

@ivan: yes I don't disagree, and the truth is the list still isn't dense enough in artifacts to make Tezz broken. E.g. in Affinity/Steel Stompy, by the time you cast Tezz and use his +1, you can Tendrils for 16-20 most of the time. I'll get down to testing Tezz 2.0 in this list though, and I do feel that Jace 2 is unsituationally stronger in most cases. The list is far from optimized because I still want to fit a ton of cards that I can't e.g. the 3rd Thopter Foundry, 2 more counterspells, maybe 2 sweepers. I'll have to see from testing where this list should be heading.

@Infinitium yeah it's mentioned in the opening post, but I felt the 1 slot was still not worth it. The main reason being you can't really abuse the infinite card draw with the locket combo: you don't storm, neither do you have ways to dump mana and play out your hand. Future Sight with top is still really good though (tremendously powerful against control/mid-range mirrors).

[pippo84]

Nice deck, I'll try it for sure!

I'm not really sold on Future sight and 3 Ensnaring Bridge though. I would cut the first one for the 4th Counterbalance that you put in the SB and 1 Ensnaring Bridge for 1 Moat.

[4eak]

This deck looks like a lot of fun. I'll be testing it.



peace,
4eak

[ivanpei]

I just had some ideas when I was fooling around with the list. Why are there no dedicated Max combo thopther lists? A pure Thopther deck that focuses on assembling the combo and winning of the back of the combo directly. My initial reasons for this was:

1. It's immune to common removal like STP and bolts.
2. It is a 2 card combo that requires no other components.
3. They are both artifacts, and can be easily tutored with the same tutor.

When I tried building a dedicated thopther deck, I came accross a few problems with the combo:

1. It doesn't win on the spot.
2. It can be over powered by decks with more brute force ala goblins/folk/zoo.
3. You simply do not produce enough mana fast enough to assemble the combo and pump out tokens before you die.

I believe that's what led to the stop cork cards in thopthers like moat and bridge. However, what if we could build a deck that speeds up the combo and not concentrate on slowing down the opponent. Inspired by these mox-opal metalcraft lists, I think we can possibly build a "turbo thopthers" deck. Here's my wack at it.

4 Brainstorm
4 Force
4 Thoughtseize
3 Daze
4 Intuition
2 Ponder

4 Thopthers
3 Sword of the Meek
1 Life from the Loam
4 Sensei's divining top

3 Mox Diamond
3 Mox Opal

4 Polluted Delta
2 Misty Rainforest
2 Verdant Catacombs
1 Island
1 Swamp
4 Seat of the Synod
2 Underground Sea
1 Bayou
1 Tropical Island
1 Academy Ruins
1 Gaea's Cradle
1 Cephalid Coliseum

Ok this list looks like pure Jank but here are some things I would like to point out. This deck aims to disrupt with Thoughtseize and Force so that you can push the combo out ASAP, easily by turns 3/4. You want to be in full swing pumping out tokens by turns 4/5. Opal + Diamond really help ramp up and cast intuition + pump out tokens. I believe intuition is the best tutor for this combo because it can do some not so obvious things.

Thopthers needs alot of mana, this is a fact, Life from the loam helps you grab more lands to produce mana and does plenty of other neat things in conjunction with top (multiple fetchlands + top= super filtering). If you have no components or missing Sword, you can intuition for this neat pile: Loam, Cephalid Coliseum, and Sword of the meek. It doesn't matter what they ship to your hand because you can return Sword anytime by sacking an artifact and Cephalid + Loam= Combo (Super digging engine built into a tutor!).

You must be wondering what's up with the random Cradle? It's a powerful combo enabler with Thopthers. It gets exponentially more powerful with the number of thopthers you produce. After getting 2/3 tokens on the board, you can drop cradle and make 2-3, next turn you will be making tons of tokens with Cradle. I realised that in alot of situations, you are forced to block with the tokens you make to stay alive and you can't build a big enough board presence to stabilize. Your opponent then drops more threats and you simply cannot grow your army. Cradle can give you that edge and push you over the top. If you already have Thopther in hand, you can intuition for Sword, Loam and Cradle, ensuring the blow out.

Loam also helps you recover from the initial card disadvantage of Mox diamond. I'd rather lose cards to accelerate into a powerful tutor than to have a cheaper tutor that causes card disadvantage. I'm gonna sling this and have some fun. It's a fresh take on thopthers so hope you guys will give it a spin and post about it.

EDIT: Cut some lands for some Dazes. 24 Lands was too much, 21 should be fine, even with Mox Diamonds.

[GGoober]

Interesting list Ivan, I think Nightmare's initial list was pretty focused on the thopter combo (refer to the opening post link). He played 4 Lim-Dul's Vault which is incredible to dig for the combo. I'm personally not sold on the 3 Swords in your list. Because they do nothing much unless youu have Thopter. Having just FOW and Daze seems a little light in protecting the combo (it's usually enough disruption against most decks but in deck with Thopter as a win-condition, I feel that you need other cards to either draw into counters or play more counters). No EE in the Intuition package? I'll cut the 4th Intuition for the lone EE, or drop down on the swords. With Etutors and draws, you should be tutoring Sword and playing Thopters naturally (that's how hist list worked at list with 4 LDV). I'm not sure if I want to drop to 1 Counterbalance like he did, and I'm tempted to. The way I see how his list plays out is what you're suggesting: If I have Thopter combo out and an additional lockpiece e.g. Counterbalanace/Moat/Humility, not many decks can fight through that.

I still haven't had time to playtest it out, but I definitely know my opening post needs a few tweaks, like adding the 3rd Thopter, trying to fit a Moat/Humility MD and drop to 2 Bridges.

The most recent list I thought about was a Painterstone Counterthopter, which may end up being horrible, but there are a few bonuses: it increases the artifact count for T2JD, and makes Humility significantly more assymetrical (since Humility with Painter/Thopters is great against aggro decks). The list is just incredibly tight I have no clue how to fit them in without hovering too much on the danger-of-cute-things-zone.

[ivanpei]

Yup you are right, sword of the meek was absolutely crappy to draw during testing. I've currently made the following changes: -3 daze (didn't do much and this deck is mana hungry),-1 sword, -1 island, - 1 swamp, + 1 vault of whispers, + 1 tundra, + 1 scrubland, + 3 enlightened tutor. I thought about fabricate, but the deck just needs to be fast at times. Some testing I did yesterday showed the deck to be incredibly fast. I was surprised how good the loam, cradle, sword package was in testing. Every other game, I abused it to absolutely take over the game by pumping out 3 tokens, doubling to 6, chump with 3 and next turn, make 3 plus 6= 12 tokens. Its insane.

Revoker is insane against us, so totally cutting tutor is not an option, I'll have some o-rings in the board to answer revoker. Another problem card in the pure combo list is piledriver. Man not being able to block it since it is pro blue is just pissing me off. Though I have the fame wrapped up, double piledrivers + swarm still gets me. I'll need the standard thopther bullet package in the board like moat etc.

[Hanni]

Why go through all the hoops to try and get Thopter/Sword going in an Intuition/Loam package if you can just run Worm Harvest? I mean, sure, you're not gaining life each time, and they don't have flying, but swarming the board EtW-style with 1/1 tokens is still effective against aggro, and you don't need to assemble a 2-card combo to make it happen. A well built Intuition/Loam control deck can easily crank out 6-12 1/1 tokens a cast, and it only costs 5 mana a pop.

Honestly, if you want to maximize the Thopter/Sword combo, just run 4 E Tutor's, more cantrips, and maybe a copy or two of Lim-Dul's Vault. Intuition/Loam is so friggin slow that by the time you Loam for Ruins so that you can bring back Thopter, you're probably dead anyway. 2U + 1G + 2U is alot of mana to set up an engine, and that's not counting the cost to cast Thopter or the cost of making tokens. Even with Mox Diamond and Mox Opal, I just don't see it working out too well. Not to mention how badly a deck like Merfolk or Tempo Thresh would stomp all over you while you fumble with your nonbasic manabase.

[ivanpei]

When going for thopther, you look for triple thopthers, so its basically a demonic tutor. For sword, you don't need the sword in hand so you can look for sword, loam and coliseum/cradle. To make sure you have at least one sword in the yard, youcan look for double sword + loam. Its just a powerful tutor that is synergistic with both sword and loam. As for worm
Harvest, I'll have a test. Looks interesting.

@ hanni, worm harvest-cradle-loam looks like a very broken pile for intuition. Would you like to work on a list to abuse this combo? You could possibly cast multiple worm harvest a turn with cradle! It's insane!

[Tree]

Jacin' Bros

4 Brainstorm
4 Force
4 Thoughtseize
4 Intuition
2 Ponder
4 Jace, TMS
4 Counter Balance
1 Life from the Loam
4 Sensei's divining top
1 Worm Harvest
3 Daze
1 Engineered Explosives

2 Wasteland
4 Polluted Delta
2 Misty Rainforest
2 Verdant Catacombs
1 Island
1 Swamp
4 Underground Sea
4 Bayou
1 Tropical Island
1 Academy Ruins
1 Gaea's Cradle
1 Cephalid Coliseum

CMCs:
0: 25
1: 14
2: 8
3: 4
4: 4
5: 5



A rough draft from a more recent addition to the Legacy Scene. :D