Aspirin
06-06-2011, 02:19 PM
Hello everyone,
Yesterday I won my local tournament in Dülmen (57 players) with a Doomsday- S&T- Emrakul Deck. I couldn't find a thread on that deck, although it is T8ing every now and then. So here I'd like to present to you:
"Stories of Doom and Failure"
4 Emrakul, the Aeons Torn
4 Show and Tell
4 Doomsday
4 Force of Will
4 Duress
2 Orim's Chant
1 Pithing Needle
1 Chain of Vapor
1 Solitary Confinement
4 Brainstorm
3 Ponder
3 Sensei's Divining Top
4 Lotus Petal
4 Dark Ritual
4 Polluted Delta
3 Flooded Strand
1 Scrubland
1 Tundra
4 Underground Sea
2 Shelldock Isle
1 Island
1 Swamp
Sideboard usually consists of a playset Leyline of the Void, additional Chant effects, 1-2 other fatties (Blazing Archon, Tidespout Tyrant) and, odd enough, Swords to Plowshares. I also utilized Sower of Temptation with a lot of success. You can see that the biggest part of my meta is consisting of aggrovariants and dredge ;)
As you might suspect, this Deck tries to win either by playing Show & Tell for Emrakul, or by playing an early Doomsday. In that case you either go the Shelldock Isle route or again try to assemble S&T + Emrakul. There is no Storm component in the deck, you only win by dropping fatties. Of course that makes it considerably slower than existing Storm-Doomsday decks, which only implement 1 Isle and 1 Emrakul for shits and giggles.
For reference, here you can find a list of the usual versions: http://www.thecouncil.es/tcdecks/tipo.php?archetype=Doomsday%20Emrakul&format=Legacy
Except for 3, these are all Storm based decks with Isle+Emrakul as plan B.
There are a some reasons why I dislike those decks:
1. Storm
Storm is too easy to hate. Mental Misstep hits essential spells (i.e. Sensei's Top and Rituals) and there are several aggro decks to rape you with utility critters (Gaddock Teeg, Cursecatcher, Canonist, even True Believer is played in my meta)
2. Bombs
The listed decks (with 3 exceptions) play only 4 "Bombs", I play 4 DD and 4 S&T MB. Being a Vintage player as well, I know how powerful the concept "Drop your bomb and protect it" is. Once my Fattie hits play it is protected by itself. I basically only need to protect one spell whereas the storm guy needs to calculate the odds of resolving a spell chain, in which every countered spell causes severe problems. Recovering from a countered plan is hard, if you invested 5+ spells already.
3. Some minor flaws:
- LDs Vault is a nice card, no question about that. But wouldn't it be nice, not to need them? They create card disadvantage and are unnecessary if you focus on a spell chain counting less than 3.
- I've tried Cloud of Faeries and found the cases in which it is useful very rare. One thing is, you need it in your hand, putting it in your DD pile doesn't make sense. The other is, where do you want to get the mana from, if you go 1st turn Land, Ritual, DD? On turn 2, you play your drawn Isle and need a Petal and the Cloud of Faeries in hand to untap the Isle and go for it. That isn't very likely to happen.
- Pithing Needle is necessary to be save from Wasteland once you go for Shelldock Isle. Karakas can be annoying as well.
- I would never play a tournament without 1 Chain of Vapor in the mainboard. It answers almost every permanent based threat. You don't want to have Emrakul be bounced by a Jace. Oblivion Ring, Ensnaring Bridge, Humility, there are tons of permanents that cause real problems.
- Xantid Swarm is not a viable reason to splash G imho. Orim's Chant does not need a turn to be active, answers the problem just as well, at the same cost, at instant speed. It also won me games by timewalking the opponent so I couldn't be raced.
My deck avoids all these flaws and focuses only on dropping the dude. In fact it just reduces the need to win over DD, which is inferior to a solid S&T plan in most cases. Anyone who played Doomsday in a tournament will surely agree that being on 10 life or far less does not make you feel comfortable. 1st turn Ritual, DD wins most of the time but gets weaker with every turn. So I think 4 S&T and 4 Emrakul is the way to go.
Anyone who's meta is infested with aggrodecks should consider playing this. Yesterday I only faced 1 deck (Aluren) with FoW in it and this seems to be the single reason why I won the tournament. Don't play this deck if most of your field is going to play Team America, Discard and Landstill. You won't get far, I guess ;)
I would appreciate any suggestions very much. For example I'm not sold on the number of lands to play. 17 has proved good for me but most people play more. Also there are ways to get around Karakas (Form of the Dragon namely) that I haven't tried. Finally there are good reasons to include at least 1 Stifle. The lonely needle sometimes just isn't enough. For that reason I will play some more of both in the SB in the future. Anyways, I feel there are some cards to battle my worst threats (Wasteland, Karakas, Edict like effects, discard) which i have missed so far.
Any input on that and critics regarding my analysis are greatly appreciated. I can imagine there might be some flaws in my logic. There seems to be a reason why all these people rather pick stormdecks for Legacy than I do...
Yesterday I won my local tournament in Dülmen (57 players) with a Doomsday- S&T- Emrakul Deck. I couldn't find a thread on that deck, although it is T8ing every now and then. So here I'd like to present to you:
"Stories of Doom and Failure"
4 Emrakul, the Aeons Torn
4 Show and Tell
4 Doomsday
4 Force of Will
4 Duress
2 Orim's Chant
1 Pithing Needle
1 Chain of Vapor
1 Solitary Confinement
4 Brainstorm
3 Ponder
3 Sensei's Divining Top
4 Lotus Petal
4 Dark Ritual
4 Polluted Delta
3 Flooded Strand
1 Scrubland
1 Tundra
4 Underground Sea
2 Shelldock Isle
1 Island
1 Swamp
Sideboard usually consists of a playset Leyline of the Void, additional Chant effects, 1-2 other fatties (Blazing Archon, Tidespout Tyrant) and, odd enough, Swords to Plowshares. I also utilized Sower of Temptation with a lot of success. You can see that the biggest part of my meta is consisting of aggrovariants and dredge ;)
As you might suspect, this Deck tries to win either by playing Show & Tell for Emrakul, or by playing an early Doomsday. In that case you either go the Shelldock Isle route or again try to assemble S&T + Emrakul. There is no Storm component in the deck, you only win by dropping fatties. Of course that makes it considerably slower than existing Storm-Doomsday decks, which only implement 1 Isle and 1 Emrakul for shits and giggles.
For reference, here you can find a list of the usual versions: http://www.thecouncil.es/tcdecks/tipo.php?archetype=Doomsday%20Emrakul&format=Legacy
Except for 3, these are all Storm based decks with Isle+Emrakul as plan B.
There are a some reasons why I dislike those decks:
1. Storm
Storm is too easy to hate. Mental Misstep hits essential spells (i.e. Sensei's Top and Rituals) and there are several aggro decks to rape you with utility critters (Gaddock Teeg, Cursecatcher, Canonist, even True Believer is played in my meta)
2. Bombs
The listed decks (with 3 exceptions) play only 4 "Bombs", I play 4 DD and 4 S&T MB. Being a Vintage player as well, I know how powerful the concept "Drop your bomb and protect it" is. Once my Fattie hits play it is protected by itself. I basically only need to protect one spell whereas the storm guy needs to calculate the odds of resolving a spell chain, in which every countered spell causes severe problems. Recovering from a countered plan is hard, if you invested 5+ spells already.
3. Some minor flaws:
- LDs Vault is a nice card, no question about that. But wouldn't it be nice, not to need them? They create card disadvantage and are unnecessary if you focus on a spell chain counting less than 3.
- I've tried Cloud of Faeries and found the cases in which it is useful very rare. One thing is, you need it in your hand, putting it in your DD pile doesn't make sense. The other is, where do you want to get the mana from, if you go 1st turn Land, Ritual, DD? On turn 2, you play your drawn Isle and need a Petal and the Cloud of Faeries in hand to untap the Isle and go for it. That isn't very likely to happen.
- Pithing Needle is necessary to be save from Wasteland once you go for Shelldock Isle. Karakas can be annoying as well.
- I would never play a tournament without 1 Chain of Vapor in the mainboard. It answers almost every permanent based threat. You don't want to have Emrakul be bounced by a Jace. Oblivion Ring, Ensnaring Bridge, Humility, there are tons of permanents that cause real problems.
- Xantid Swarm is not a viable reason to splash G imho. Orim's Chant does not need a turn to be active, answers the problem just as well, at the same cost, at instant speed. It also won me games by timewalking the opponent so I couldn't be raced.
My deck avoids all these flaws and focuses only on dropping the dude. In fact it just reduces the need to win over DD, which is inferior to a solid S&T plan in most cases. Anyone who played Doomsday in a tournament will surely agree that being on 10 life or far less does not make you feel comfortable. 1st turn Ritual, DD wins most of the time but gets weaker with every turn. So I think 4 S&T and 4 Emrakul is the way to go.
Anyone who's meta is infested with aggrodecks should consider playing this. Yesterday I only faced 1 deck (Aluren) with FoW in it and this seems to be the single reason why I won the tournament. Don't play this deck if most of your field is going to play Team America, Discard and Landstill. You won't get far, I guess ;)
I would appreciate any suggestions very much. For example I'm not sold on the number of lands to play. 17 has proved good for me but most people play more. Also there are ways to get around Karakas (Form of the Dragon namely) that I haven't tried. Finally there are good reasons to include at least 1 Stifle. The lonely needle sometimes just isn't enough. For that reason I will play some more of both in the SB in the future. Anyways, I feel there are some cards to battle my worst threats (Wasteland, Karakas, Edict like effects, discard) which i have missed so far.
Any input on that and critics regarding my analysis are greatly appreciated. I can imagine there might be some flaws in my logic. There seems to be a reason why all these people rather pick stormdecks for Legacy than I do...